I'd like to talk about this story the whole story and again so the story starts that a monk came to see Yangshan and Yangshan asked him where are you from and the monk said you province and Yangshan said do you think of that place and the monk said I always do And then Yangshan said, the ability to think is the mind, that which is thought of is the objects or the objects of mind or the environment. And therein are, you know, basically infinite things. reverse your thinking and think of the mind, or think of the ability to think.

[01:16]

And then there's some space there, we don't know how long. And then Yangshan asked the monks, now are there many things there? when you think of this ability to think. And the monk says, when I reach here, I don't find anything existing at all. And Yangshan says, that's right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. And you get one mystery. And you get the seat. And you get a robe. The robe. Oh, no, I skipped a part. He said, that's right for the stage of person, but not right for the stage of faith.

[02:26]

Other way around. And then the monk says... Yeah. Then the monk said, do you have any further instruction? He said, to say I have any particular instruction or not wouldn't be accurate. Based on your insight, you only get one mystery. You can take the seat and wear the robe and from now on, from here, you see on your own. So I'd like to talk tonight about, give a kind of overview of the story in terms of what I spoke of earlier as two kinds of initiation that are alluded to here, a fiery initiation and a watery initiation.

[03:33]

And I could present this in a more systematic way than I'm going to, which in some sense would make it easier to understand than it will be. But I don't want to make it too systematic, my presentation, even though it's going to be a little bit systematic. I want it to be a little looser for you for now. So the story I'm telling is a story that we all come from U Province. And another thing I want to say is that we all come from U Province, and the people in this room are in different places in the process of this story and the process which I'm going to talk about in a generalized way.

[04:57]

We're in different places in this story, partly because we're, you know, different ages. There's some young people here. Young people, there's some people in their 20s. And then there's people in their 30s and people in their 40s and people in their 50s and people in their 60s. Anybody 70 here? People in their 70s. Anybody in their teens here? People in their teens. So we have people in different phases of this process, this life process, this life process and life and death process. We're in different places in terms of life and death. So I'm going to be talking and not only will you be hearing this from different stages in the process which I'm describing, in which the story is describing, but also because you're in different places, you're going to respond differently to what this story is saying and what I'm saying and what happens here.

[05:59]

And that's part of the mix that makes this class work, actually. We're not all in the same phase at the same time. which is part of the interesting thing here, and part of normal life, and part of the way you make a normal self is in a full context. Carrie, I didn't see your name, did I? I didn't see your name, did I? I did? Would you move over that way a little bit so I can see your face? Thank you. So here's the story I propose to say. Is that we all come from U-Province and once again, we come from U-Province if you...

[07:05]

we hopefully come from U-Province, we hopefully experience U-Province. In other words, we hopefully have a home at some point in our life. If we wind up in this strange situation of growing up in an orphanage, which some people wind up in, then there may be some problems. Some people maybe haven't been to U-Province yet, or they have a fragmented or... dented U Province in their background. But U Province is a situation which often happens in human development and seems to be necessary in human development where we experience some sense of union with the other. And where there is this thing of this face-to-face meeting, face-to-face mirroring, and affirmation in both directions, mutual affirmation, mutual mirroring.

[08:20]

the one who does this, whether it's a man or a woman, is performing a function which we call mothering, where the mother looks at the child and says, you're just like me, aren't you? And that's just about the neatest thing there is. And that means you're just about the neatest thing there is. because I'm the neatest thing there is, and you're just like me, and I just love to look at that." And the baby looks there and feels this affirmation and gives it back. And this is a very affirming, secure situation. Sometimes this doesn't happen quite right, doesn't happen enough or happens too much. It's hardly ever possible for it to happen just right. If it doesn't happen at all, the person sort of has to somehow get that to happen. Yeah?

[09:26]

Isn't it more like, I see you rather than you're like me? It's just, I see you. It's, I see you, and you're wonderful. You're the center of the universe. You're the most interesting thing in the world. And I think it's also, and you know what? You're just like me. That's there too, I think. No? I say that's there in you province, whether that was there in all cases, whether that's there in all cases. I don't know, but there's two things. I see you, and you're just like me. And for blood relationships, it's a lot like that. You can see yourself in that baby, whether you know it or not, and it's just like, you know, It's your own blood, it's your own shit, it's your own saliva, you know, everything's mutual, it's an exchangeable situation without even working at it.

[10:29]

So, and this security, from this security naturally arises, because you feel so secure, based on this security there arises an impulse to be an individual, to break out of this union, And so based on this, you break out, you go out, you separate yourself, you develop autonomy, individuality, independence. You break out of the nest. You break out of the circle, the mothering circle. You go off on your own, male or female. We do this. And then at a certain point, we reach sort of the limits of that kind of thing. and we come back. Now this cycle would just keep going round and round indefinitely, except there's more to the story than that.

[11:38]

And as a result of this security and going out, we also develop some mastery of things. And if we don't master things, in that dimension, we just go back and get some, you know, more affirmation and when we feel secure again we go forth and try again until we get more and more, eventually feel masterful. And we also feel gradually, or whatever, we feel grandiose. We feel grandiose and the thing out there which mirrors our grandiosity supports our grandiosity. And also we can, after a while, can take that mothering thing into us so we can also then feed our own grandiosity inside. And we can make ourselves into little emperors and empresses in that kind of cycle.

[12:43]

And I just heard about this guy, who was it? Oh, it was the guy who shot John Lennon. The guy who shot John Lennon had a little, I think it was a Democratic monarchy or something like that he had in his head. He had a little board of directors of his Democratic conglomerate or whatever that he was the head of, and he actually had a board meeting just before he shot John Lennon, and the board told him that they totally disagreed with his plan to shoot John Lennon, and they walked out of the board meeting Is his name Chapman? Yeah. So he internalized this mother thing and had his own little kingdom where he could go back and get mirroring and then he'd go out and try stuff and come back. He also told his own mother, just before he shot John Lennon, he said, Mom, I'm going to be great. I'm going to do something great.

[13:43]

I don't know if it's going to be good or bad, but it's going to be great. And I'm going to be famous. And so now he is in the history books, right, alongside of John Lennon. He made himself, you know, put himself in the history books by this thing, which his board of directors told him not to do. His internalized mother actually turned against him on that case and told him not to do it, but he disregarded them and went ahead and did this thing. If you keep cycling around in this particular dynamic, although the first part of it is healthy, and going back and forth a little is healthy, something else has to come to pass, and that is we have to sacrifice this impulse to individuality and grandiosity and submit to a training program. We have to submit to a social order,

[14:44]

And in Buddhist practice, you have to submit to the practice tradition or the meditation instruction. You have to submit your grandiosity to it. And in some sense, and again, we're in different places in the cycle, some part of us resists submitting to this training program. because it means sacrificing our grandiosity, which in some sense says, you know, which is true, you know, on some level your Buddha nature should just be recognized and that should be it. Which is true. But somehow for that to work we have to sacrifice our grandiosity. Doesn't mean we have to sacrifice our individuality completely. It isn't that you, like for example, go flat in relationship to the teaching or the teacher and give up your autonomy and integrity, while still standing up on your own two feet and being a person and being an individual, you sacrifice your grandiosity.

[15:57]

You sacrifice your overblown sense that you're going to decide how things are going to proceed. and you submit, and this is what we call a fiery initiation, where you submit to, it's not just a random situation, you don't submit to chaos, you submit to a fairly well laid out tradition, a practice, which has all kinds of complexities and resources, but anyway, you figure out what part of the tradition you're going to work with, and you work with that part, and you can go work with another part later, and another part later, but anyway, you work with some concrete order, and you become transformed by this. This is an initiation. An initiation is fiery in the sense of like jumping through fire, or jumping through hoops of fire, like training a lion or something. But it's also fiery in two senses.

[17:01]

It's fiery in the sense of the challenge of understanding the instruction and how to do it, and being willing to do the instruction, but also it's the fire of the frustration of doing this, of entering into this hierarchy. It's a hierarchy, to some extent, or organization. And again, in this situation, some people, I think, are actually at the phase of their life where they're actually working with that very strongly. they're at the culmination of this independent striking out on their own grandiosity, or maybe at the culmination or the end of that process and just starting to now submit to the sacrifice of this.

[18:01]

Others people are older and have gone through this in many ways, have gone to, you know, medical school or law school or got their PhD or whatever, and they've done this already in one or two other dimensions. But still, everybody goes round and round in this, so still when you come to a new teaching, like if you're coming to Buddhism now, even in middle age or late middle age, you still now have to, like, something like that has to happen over again, but it may be something that's very familiar to you. You may have done it within your memory already two or three times. Some of you, this may be like the first or second time you've done it. And So there's a resistance to go into this testing situation where you're going to be dealing with somebody else's standards. And so there's that. And you're going to feel frustrated.

[19:03]

The safety of this feeling affirmed causes the striking out on your own. It's engendered by that feeling of safety. The thing that engenders the striking out from this grandiosity and going into this fiery situation, which is difficult and frustrating, it's engendered by seeing a person who carries this, who carries this. Seeing the Buddha is the, in our tradition, seeing the Buddha is the primal thing. You see somebody who carries the tradition, who's gone through the training and who's gone beyond this training too, but anyway, still represents that phase of your practice of this established order. And you're attracted to it, so you choose to emulate it, which means some sacrifice, but you're attracted to it.

[20:07]

When you enter into the program and finish the program through this relationship with beings who carry this or represent this tradition or this form, your self changes. You give up the grandiose self and you form a self which is formed in relationship to society or the lineage of practice. And you have a new self. And in terms of this story, you have a self which is... born in relationship to not only instruction that's given here, but also the environment of all the things that you see. At the fulfillment of this ordered self, there's a natural the actual, the natural turning happens, which is this reversal of mind.

[21:15]

So the instruction here is to reverse the mind, but that's not something you can do. It's something that happens spontaneously when you submit to the instructions of turning. And you submit to the frustration of the process of trying to do something you can't do. And again, part of what keeps you going and part of what this class is about, is sympathy with the frustration you're feeling in learning this practice, and encouraging you to keep going, that you can finish this process, you can finish this training or this learning. this soothing or this support can come from, but not necessarily just from, the people who carry this attractive possibility of the training.

[22:28]

When the turning happens, you can't find anything at all, or you sort of can't find anything at all. your old thing which you sacrificed to enter the practice plus all the new forms you learned are uh... you can't get a hold of them anymore so you experience disorientation and so on and but this disorientation where you really can't get a hold of anything anymore because you've so thoroughly followed the instructions uh... it opens you up to this stage of the person really the creative phase of expression and again there's resistance to move into the training phase and once you're in the training phase and you've completed it you have a new security which is something like akin to the security that you had before you sort of left home so to speak you have a new security the security of order

[23:43]

and reason and established society and the tradition. So that, again, if you fulfill that completely, you naturally, spontaneously move into this. That pushes you into this realm of the unknown. The security of the known, of the teaching, of the system of practice, is that that security pushes you into the unknown spontaneously. If you push yourself into it, That's not part of the, that's not part of the program. The program is to work just with the known, and that naturally pushes you into the unknown. When you get into the unknown, you're going to, there's a tendency to recoil back into the known. Yeah. Yeah, how did, Just space. it's partly the nature of the known and the established that it naturally, that's like a, that naturally implies the creative, unpredictable, unimaginable possibility.

[25:39]

Okay? It isn't that you have to do anything to create that implication of the known. The unknown is naturally implied by that. And by submitting to your idea of the known, you enter into a more thorough and reasonable known, a known which is built in relationship to others, and giving up overblown ideas of your own security and entering into the security of language and so on has a lot to do with entering into the security of language. And it isn't that you go looking for the unknown, the creative, the unpredictable, the ungraspable. It's that that is naturally implied by what you have just pretty much mastered.

[26:46]

And mastered, again, not just in a, what do you call it, mental fabrication sort of way, but in a kind of lawful, interactive way, because concepts are not something that individuals make up by themselves. Language is not something you make up by yourself. So at the extreme of mastering this limited thing, it naturally turns around and puts you back in this complete flip And in some ways, meditating on reversing the mind is, in some sense, you could meditate on anything thoroughly and you'd have the same result. But this meditation is like preparing you for what's going to happen by thoroughly following through on something. And as you start to spin around and go through what you go through, as you start turning, and all the frustrations you go through as you start to turn, Because of the nature of the instruction, the instruction is very well set up to console you and support you in this transit.

[27:55]

this conversation you're having with me could be seen as part of what I'm doing to try to encourage you to completely submit to this particular meditation practice. And for you to, and part of you to use to submit is for you to really understand how to give yourself to it. And if you give yourself completely to this to this particular meditation practice in this text, that's an example of a fiery initiation for you, which you do sort of in relationship to this text and me assisting you and talking with you about what this text means and whether or not you're going to put it into practice. And at the extreme limit of putting this teaching into practice, you will naturally turn. And you'll turn through unusual experiences and unusual ways, new ways of dealing with unusual experience until you're right back where you were before, completely changed.

[29:20]

And this relationship between this working with the known, submitting to a known system and then going beyond it, That also can keep going back and forth indefinitely, just like the other one of going from being secure and reflected can go towards being independent. That can go back and forth. In order to break out of that one, you naturally go over into this training outside yourself. This one, can go back and forth, too. And what you need to do there is somehow you need to go through another initiation, which we call the watery initiation, or initiation by water. And again, what's happened in this case is that you have died of an order, of an ordered system, of a secure and ordered system. You have died of it and entered an unpredictable world where you can't get a hold of anything.

[30:28]

You can't even get a hold of a thing called nothing. Making this unpredictable creative space into a nothing is again going backwards and putting it into language again, and then you can get a hold of it. And the training would be that when you do that, the tradition says, That's not the correct understanding of this teaching. And then by listening to that and absorbing that instruction, you again move away from that, back into the actual, unpredictable, uncontrollable, ungraspable mind. You move back into the actuality of what it's like to think of the ability to think, for example. But then when you get there again, you naturally resist that and reflect from that and go back to the security of order and the knowable. You just resonate back and forth on that dimension for a while until it's so clear that you're resonating back and forth that you realize that that's, at a certain point, is going to be not healthy.

[31:42]

And then it's time for this other initiation, which will be basically to unify these two dimensions, to realize that the security of logic, of language, of the socially created self and the uncreated self, that the union of those two will take you right back to you province. And you really re-experience the complete union of yourself which you felt through your relationship with the mothering principle. And there again, since there is a tradition and a teaching for the fiery initiation, that teaching and that teacher is there also to see you resonating back and forth and at a certain point you've done it enough and

[32:43]

the teacher and the system and your inner need will push you into this reunion where again now you have the same experience of the face looking at a face and one face saying I see you and you're just like me except this time you're older than you were the last time and this is called a Buddha face looking at a Buddha face this time it was before too But you didn't have enough mastery and independence to appreciate that. This time it's a Buddha face looking at a Buddha face. And now it's a reenactment of the Buddhist tradition. And then you go around again. Just keep going around like this over and over on this story, either yourself with your teacher or yourself as the teacher with the student. You switch sides and go through on the other side, perfectly willing to do either side. If you should happen to just wind up as a student, fine.

[33:47]

If you wind up as a teacher, after going around once or twice or whatever number of times, you could play the role of the teacher. However, it's frustrating for the teacher, too, because, you know, to see the frustration of the student and all that goes on, and also the way the student resists at different phases in the process is different, and so on and so forth. That's what, in a sense, what I see in this story. And that's what I saw in that poem about the bird, painting a portrait of a bird. Again, I was talking to Stuart at the end there, he said, when the teacher said, after this you see on your own, in one sense that seemed a little, do you think, cold or a little bit rough, kind of like pushing him out the door? And it's a kind of weaning, you could say, but it's also a kind of affirmation that you can see on your own now, encouraging him to, you know, go back to you province, go back home,

[35:00]

and finish the story on your own. And... This whole process is, you know, quite tricky because... In a... Sometimes I feel like I wish I could simplify my own life and just play a role and part of this story. Like, in some sense, I wish I could be just in the phase where the people would come for the training part, and I could just be the part of, you know, learning the part about learning the system. Just be involved with the part where they give up their grand… people give up their grandiosity. But it just doesn't happen that everybody Zen centers at that point in their practice.

[36:04]

So I sometimes have to play the role of being the mother and saying, I see you, you know, and you're just like me. Which is people in an earlier phase of their practice, sort of reiterating an earlier phase of their childhood, they do the same thing in practice. They come and you look at them and you say, you're just like me. You know, and you're great. You affirm them. And then they can develop some independence. But it's complicated if you play that role, and then you play the role of the trainer too, and saying, you know, you're not like me. You don't know anything about this, and you have to learn it. You have to do this work. I'm not going to do it for you. I wish the best for you, but you've got to do this work. And the fact that you're just like me and you're great doesn't count anymore. It's hard to play both roles. And then after playing the second role, it's hard to play the role of saying, you know, not just pushing a person out and not pushing them out necessarily in a real friendly way like, you know, hinting that actually you're their pal.

[37:17]

But really saying, you know, you don't even need me to be your pal anymore. You're going to do this on your own. And there's many other examples of the trickiness of the process and how, in some sense, one would like to be just a part of it and play one role rather than complicating it by playing several roles and also having people at different stages. It's really complex and complicated. And, you know, there's just another example, you know, of how complicated it is. I was in this room one time, I came to a meeting and I was walking, you know, like there were people sitting in a row like this and I was going to sit back there and I was walking down the row and there was a young man sitting in front of me and I was just going to put my hands on his shoulder, you know, and kind of like just put my hands on his shoulders to touch him. Not some big affirmation or anything, but in fact, that was the feeling of me of just sort of like liking this young man, wanting to put my hands on his shoulders.

[38:25]

But I remember that sometimes in my past when some older man or senior teacher or whatever put his hands on my shoulders, I realized that that was nice, but I couldn't do the same back to him. When he did that, I realized it was funny because if he had been sitting there, I wouldn't have felt comfortable putting my hands on him. So, you know, when the senior person says, that's really a good job there. then the young person doesn't feel like turning around and saying, yeah, you did a good job, too. It doesn't necessarily go that way. And that's part of the way it is. So then, should you touch them? Saying it is okay, I think. But the touching is tricky. And I mentioned that at a... We were having a teacher's meeting one time, and somebody said that Nietzsche says familiarity...

[39:34]

in one's seniors causes bitterness because it may not be returned?" You say, well, yes, it can, but then something gets, you know, it's tricky. So that's just a little sample of the complexity and And in some sense you want to be people's friends, and so on. And you feel bad if you're not friendly. And on the other side, But that may not be your role. That may be somebody else's job.

[40:36]

Friendly in the sense of, you know, high pal or whatever. Siddharth Garshi was very gentle and sweet and tiny. But when he came in the room, some people said that they'd sit up straighter. It wasn't real heavy, but there was something about that that they set up straighter. The issue of training was raised. The issue of a standard. Not everybody set up straighter, but a lot of people did. Or people would be a little bit more mindful of how they're eating when they ate with him or something. I felt very close to him, but I didn't feel like he was my pal. Some people said, well, he's both my friend and my teacher, and I thought, well, okay, maybe that's possible, to be their pal and also their teacher.

[41:42]

But for me, it wasn't that way. Do you wish it was that way? No, I have no other wish. I don't wish for things to be different. I don't wish for things to be different, but if I could see him again, I'd like to. If I could just have, you know, ten minutes with him, I'd take it. I have a few questions I'd like to ask. If I could have a whole day with him, I don't know if I could use it. I probably would, you know, lose my concentration at some point during the day. So maybe it would be better just to have, what, half an hour or something. Yeah. I would think in the olden days it's always been like this, where there's people in different stages at different... Unless you're just with a small group, like one person, then you can... Right.

[42:46]

Well, this story is with one person. And this person goes through some stages in the story. But when working with a story like this, with a group of people, and the story has a process, different people are coming at the whole story in different ways. They have different places in the story and different problems with the story. And... But that's part of what's going on in this class is people are relating to stories, different parts of it. And then each of you also maybe is being different parts of the story at different weeks since we've been doing this for a while. You may have changed during the five weeks we've been on this story. You may be at different places in this story. I myself have also moved around through this story quite a bit during the time that we've been studying it.

[43:47]

because I've also been moving with different ones of you at different places that you're concentrating. I've been coming to meet you at those places and therefore getting into those places and understanding those places and sometimes being confused about understanding where you're coming from, whether you're coming from you province or whether you're coming from thinking of you province or whether you're coming from turning around, or whether you're coming from no place at all, or between turning around and no place at all, or whether you're coming from the stage of faith, or whether you're coming from the stage of person, or whether, you know, it's all these different possibilities. Or whether you're, time for you to go home again, you know. And mainly it's by, you know, I look at your posture, Of course, then I can ask them questions like, well, what's it like there? How is it? What's it like being in a place where you can't find anything existing at all?

[44:55]

Tell me about that. Or what's it like to start to turn the mind? What's happening to you? How do you feel about it as you're reversing your thinking? How is that? And we've talked about this in class, too, about people's experience of turning, reversing their thinking. and what's been happening to them. Or what's it like to even resist the instruction to reverse the thinking? What's it like to think of, are you from your province? Do you think of your province? Like in the lecture the other day, that one woman, I said, she didn't think of your province, right? I said, where are you from? In the Sunday lectures, where are you from? People said, do you province? And I said, do you think of that place? And this one woman said, no, she didn't. You know? Some of you who know this woman have noticed that's her thing. That kind of answer is right where she comes from, saying, no, I don't think of you, province. Yes?

[45:55]

Would you talk about a stage-up person? A stage-up person? Well, um... talk about it. In that poem, you know, in the later part of this thing where he says, crossing the summit of mystic peak, it's not the human world. Outside of the mind there is no other things. Filling the eyes are blue mountains. Okay? Can you find that poem? It's on page 144. See it? Okay, so crossing the summit of Mystic Peak.

[46:58]

This is the world you go out into. You go out into the mountain range, you go out into the world, and you walk around, and you learn things. This is a poem, but this is a process poem. It's not the human world. This is talking about the mind which thinks. This is talking about the ability to think or the capacity to think of things. Okay? So in your life, there's the world all around you, which includes all of us and everything, everything you can think of, everything you can be aware of. And you walk around in that world and you learn about that world And you're disciplined by that world and you form a self in that world.

[48:23]

According to that world's contingencies, the world's requests, you become that kind of a person. Then there's this thing which is not of the world. Which is not of the world. The ability to think is not of the world. It's an undisciplined realm. You can't discipline it. Because you can't get a hold of it. I have to warm up to this stage of person, okay? So I can't just tell you this stage of person. I don't think I mean anything unless you come at it from this. So this poem is saying, this poem is starting from the training, okay? Train yourself in the world. Walk across the mystic mountain range. Learn about the world. Learn how it works. Learn how you're born of your relationship with all things and aren't you.

[49:25]

See how the self is born after you now come out into the world. Then there is what is not of the world, namely this mind that can't be grasped, the mind which thinks of things. And then he says, outside the mind there's no things. Which really means also that, you know, when you look at the mind itself, you find no things. I don't know if you're following this. You're looking all over the place for things. You seem to be looking all over the place for things while I'm talking to you about going someplace where you can't find anything. I mix up with faith. Pardon? I mix up this with faith. You mix up what with faith? Just, I don't know what it does with faith.

[50:30]

If you would stop looking around and listen to me talking to you about this, that would be faith. You don't have to do the reality of this practice in order to follow what I'm talking about here, but you could actually realize what we're talking about here if you would listen to me and not look around. That's hard, I know, but if you could just listen to me and do what I'm talking about right now, you could enact this story. So I'm not asking you to do that. So the next step is, after you completely give up everything other than this instruction which you're receiving right now, which is the reenactment of this story, the teacher in that story was giving this instruction and that monk listened and completely followed that instruction.

[51:37]

And then the teacher said, After he completely followed the instruction, the teacher said, are there so many things here? And the monk said, when I get to this place, now that I followed your instruction, I don't find anything at all. And that's what you'd find if you could somehow follow what I'm talking right now. You'd find nothing at all. But that wouldn't yet, that would be the stage of faith. Maybe everybody else in the room can follow this except you, because I'm not talking directly to them. So they're not looking someplace else. Can you see yourself looking someplace else? But you're looking someplace else, too. Can you see yourself looking someplace else? You just did it again. Can you see yourself looking someplace else? That's not faith. Unless you really stay with yourself when you look someplace else, do you? Did you go with yourself there? Did you stay with yourself then?

[52:41]

Follow yourself? Yes. Okay. If you keep doing that all the way, your mind will turn and you'll find what he's saying here. You'll be turning towards, this is not, what? It's not of the human world for you to follow the difference between you're looking at me and when you look away. To follow that is the instruction of reversing the mind. And if you do that all the time, thoroughly, all the way, you will experience the third line of the poem, which is that you won't be able to find anything at all. And that will be the stage of faith. In other words, you'd have to give up everything else other than to follow what you're doing and stay with yourself moment by moment and watch your mind that way. Then, if you do that, that's a stage of faith. And then, if then, the blue filling your eyes is the blue mountains, that's the stage of person.

[53:45]

If you follow these instructions completely, that's fate, to put aside everything but following the instruction. The instructions, the only instructions are basically, well, the background instruction is the ability to think is mind, that which is thought of as environment. The basic instruction is reverse your thinking and think of the ability to think. which is the same as the think of the thinker. Okay, that's the instruction. If you put everything aside and sacrifice everything except following that instruction, you will realize the place where there's nothing to get a hold of at all. That's the stage of faith. And that will lead to the appearance of something unpredictable, unforeseen, unexpected, Like, for example, your eyes will be filled with blue mountains. And then that's a stage of person, and you will speak from that place.

[54:54]

You will not just say, I've reached the place where there's nothing at all. You will speak from the place where you have just been filled by the next thing that happened, or you'll be filled by what's happening. And you speak from that place, and you fly from that place, and you walk from that place, and you're walking. What you do then interacts with what's coming up. And your flying interacts with what's coming up. That's the stage of person. And the stage, the first mystery is the mystery of when you disentangle from objects. So I'm talking to you, and you're all hearing what I'm saying, you're seeing things, objects are flying by all the time, coming up and going away all the time, and if you disentangle from these objects by, whenever you meet an object, there is the mind that thinks of the object at that time.

[56:01]

As soon as you see an object, the mind which thinks of the object is alive. where you then, on that moment, also turn around and look at the ability to think of that object. If you do that, moment after moment, that's following this instruction. And that, when that's done completely, that's the stage of faith. And when it's done completely, while you're aware of objects, you will also be looking directly into the ungraspable realm. And then spontaneously, things will come up. Everything will be spontaneous and unexpected. And then to act from there will be the stage of person. And by acting from that place, you unite the structured meditation with the ungraspable mind

[57:07]

And you unite it by, you know, whatever's coming up is the proof of the union. It's you, actually. It's you. But you are now the union of these two sides. That's the stage of person. So you can say with certainty whatever you have to say. Namely, in this case, blue mountains fill the eyes. So what's going on now? How are you doing? I'm not there yet. You're not? Where are you, though? I know I'm not in this in person. But where are you? Do you want to tell us, or do you want me to talk to somebody else? I'm turning. You're turning? You have any other questions now?

[58:15]

Do you have any other questions now? Yes? With respect to the turning that's taking place in the poem itself, didn't you say that the man's name meant something mountain in the beginning? The teacher's name is Yangshan. And yang means to look up in reverence towards something or pay homage to something. So his name means paying homage to the mountains. That's the teacher's name. So in a poetic way, does Blue Mountain in the end, seeing Blue Mountain have any kind of poetic relationship there? Showing the turning of the palm where the student sees the teacher's point of view, the mountain relationship? Well, it does, but it's like a transpersonal poetic relationship because the person who wrote the poem is, you know, not the teacher in this case, right?

[59:21]

It's somebody else. It's some other teacher. It's not Yongshan. So it's part of the big mind of the Zen world is that all these guys are writing about mountains and rivers and stuff like that, floating around in this cosmic soup, playing different roles in this thing. And poems are sprouting out of people here and there. I think Kim was next. I'm not sure. I was wondering how much of this stage of person depends on a sense of order. And I'm wondering if the watery initiation can be experienced without this sense of security and that order that the mind has created. Does that make any sense? Yes, and I'm thinking about your question.

[60:22]

No, it cannot be, because what the water initiation is, is it is the union of this sense of order impersonal, transpersonal, societal, traditional sense of order that you've learned through interaction with authorities of a tradition. That's on one side. And the other side is a spontaneous, wild, unpredictable, ungraspable, unorderly, non-hierarchical, freak-out world. It's the union of those two is what causes the watery initiation because, in fact, that's what you are then, is you're a combination of someone who has grown up in a culture, in a society, who has been modified, was given up some of her own overblown sense of herself to learn and conform to the subtleties of social relationship. At the same time, you're somebody...

[61:29]

It's totally creative, unpredictable, spontaneous, and a wondrous being. You're both of those things. And you need to harmonize those two in order to really feel that you're yourself. And that's the watery initiation. And then you feel really at one again like you did when you were a baby. I guess I think about it in terms of the scheduled theater and, like, the monastic life, and figuring how, in a sense, it doesn't seem like a vow to the two, and it seems like more of a fiery initiation, and I wonder why it is that way. What I'm saying is that for you, if you're one of the younger people, for you, probably you're in the fiery initiations phase now, and a lot of other people who are the younger people are in the fiery phase and feeling lots of frustration and resistance to that phase. And that's normal. So the problems that you have and some people who are your peers are different problems from the problems that the 40, 50, 60-year-olds have.

[62:32]

For them, it may be that they also are going through a fiery initiation, but it may be in a more internal way of how they're handling certain internal material. Or they may not be at the fiery initiation phase. But in terms of this particular story, almost everybody is having a fiery initiation with this story, because this story is a new structure to almost everyone in this group. But a training period is a big, fiery initiation for everybody in the practice period almost. Even the people who've done many practice periods, you still submit to something outside yourself. no matter how great you are or how long you've been practicing, you still have to face that thing. And some people think, well, I've been practicing so long, I don't have to face this structure anymore. But then they miss a reiteration of the fiery initiation. And if you miss the reinitiation or the first time of your fiery initiation, if you don't feel the fiery initiation, the submission of your grandiosity to something outside yourself, then you don't experience the other side, which is this

[63:42]

unbounded, unordered, you know, unstructured wildness. And that's what happens to some people is some people go into that phase and inhabit it and stay there their whole life. And they get dry and stiff and even religious traditions go and get stuck in that phase and they need a prophet to come by and break it up and force them into this scary, broken-up catastrophe. And even some people who have gone the whole cycle of submitting to a training system, having it, doing it thoroughly, having the whole thing break down and experiencing the tremendous release and realization that happens when the whole system breaks down. Even people who have done that still sometimes back away from that, back into the rigidity and safety and security of the system and stay there and dry up and try to impose that dry, dead system of religious practice on others.

[64:51]

And that can happen in every single practice period we do at Zen Center. It has some people who, because they haven't fully done and fully submitted recently to the system, by the very fact of not fully submitting to the rigidity of the structure, they don't set up the liberation from the structure. And partly they don't have to do it because they already did it once before. And I had the liberation, so why do I have to go back and stick my nose back in the structure again and go through the same thing that the beginners are going through? But whenever a person goes and submits himself to this structure, they set up the possibility of personally experiencing. If they personally can submit, they also can personally experience liberation from that structure. That's not the end, though. In this story, that's what he experienced. He experienced liberation from the instruction.

[65:55]

He experienced liberation from the system. He experienced liberation from all objects. He experienced disentanglement. which is good. And that came to him because he submitted to the realm of objects very thoroughly. He submitted to the realm of structure very thoroughly. And because he did, he rendered the realm where there's no structure, no hierarchy, and everything is just spontaneous, fresh flow of experience. Experience unmediated, unpredicted, pure, fresh life he experienced and couldn't get a hold of it. Yes. Yes. The other way is, out of grandiosity, you define the training program. And you dare to do that because someone has just told you that you are the universe.

[67:01]

You are the greatest thing in the world and you're just like me. And baby, we're here to tell you to go for it. And you feel like that. So you do go for it. You go out there and you decide the game. And the game is, okay, we're going to throw paper around now. That's the game. Well, you see, wasn't that cool? This is the game. I'm making the game. This is fine. And I keep that up until finally somebody slaps me in the face or something for messing the room. And then what I do? Go back to mama. And she said, that's not so bad, dear. I love you. You're great. You know? And she doesn't say, go out and try it again, though. She just says, stay here and I'll keep telling you how great you are. And after you've had enough of feeling how great you are, you naturally go out and try another game, which you define. And then the world slaps you in the face and says, we don't like this game. You can go back to mama. Or you say, well, what's the matter with this game? And then you start to move. Rather than this this repetitive thing, which after a while you've done enough, you go off into this thing and you're trying to find out, well, what do you mean?

[68:06]

And the person who draws you into asking that question is somebody who is standing not in the position of saying, you know, you're perfect as you are and you're like the whole point of the universe is you. It's not that person. It's somebody who is representing something outside herself or himself and looks pretty good. You think, hmm, I'd like to be like that. That was cool. That was cool. That was a triple backflip. That was really cool. How did you learn that? Or, boy, that's beautiful, that Sanskrit that you have learned, or Chinese or whatever. Or you sit very nicely, or that was a beautiful bow you just did, or whatever it is. That was very kind what you did to that person. It wasn't just affirming them unconditionally. It was like you helped them. They were totally freaked out, and you kind of turned them around. How did you learn that? So I was attracted to Zen when I was about your age, hearing stories of these Zen monks doing these things which I thought were so cool. So I said, you know, I thought, how can you get to be like that?

[69:09]

And then there was this training course these guys went through. So I wanted to join the training course by seeing that example. And then joining the training course, of course, was a lot of frustration and pain because I have to give up me defining the program and me deciding when I've had enough and all that. Yes, it seems also that there are many different structures of a meditative process. Yes. Maybe I think that it can be not such a positive thing to have a certain structure become like leather, maybe, in a sense, where you can't leave it because you can't leave the affirmation. Like to have, let's say, Zen training, or living in a Zen center become like an affirming leather where you can't leave it You can't, like... Well, in this case, it's more like an affirming father. Now you get the security of the father.

[70:10]

You left the mother who basically unconditionally approves you just as you are just for your being. You don't have to do anything particular for your mother to love you because she doesn't love you for your skills. She loves you for being like her. You know? Which is unconditionally set It's narcissistic, but it's a necessary kind of narcissism, that the mother is fulfilled by the baby. She couldn't be a mother without a baby. The baby is her, and she is the baby. It's unconditional. However, the trainer, the teacher, the father, is not unconditional. They hope the best for you no matter what, of course, but still, when you climb the mountain, they say, you have just climbed a mountain. That is mountain climbing. You did it. Congratulations.

[71:11]

And you feel great. And it's different. It's a different form of affirmation. It's a conditional affirmation. It's conditioned on fulfilling a particular form. And before you climb the mountain, the father gently, kindly says, it's hard, isn't it? But you haven't done it yet. But keep it up. You can do it. I know you can do it. I want you to do it. I'm there for you, you know. Come on. But, you know, do it when you're ready. And I'll tell you when you did it. And when the father says you did it, you feel you did it in a different way than you thought you did it before he said so. And there you can get stuck too. And Zen centers can have people who are stuck in that phase. So Zen centers have more people stuck in that phase than the earlier phase. Because the society of a Zen center naturally kicks people out of that infantile phase. Most people are not in that infantile phase at Zen center. But some people need a little of that to break into the training program fully.

[72:16]

They need a little reiteration of that so that they know, if I join this program, on some level, no matter how I do in the program, am I basically, ultimately, absolutely, even though I can't do it, loved? Yes, you are. Even though you never will complete this course, even if you never complete the course, even if you quit, even if you don't start, no matter what you do, you don't have to join this course, we love you anyway. Forever, always, unconditionally, it doesn't matter, that's it. But if you want to try the course, once you join the course, then... If you want to know the truth, you're not doing it. This is not it. The love is not taken away. The original love is not taken away, but that's what gave you the courage to try training in the first place. That's why it's complicated for the same person to say, I love you and support you unconditionally no matter how this thing works out, and also at the same time to say, this is not what we meant by climbing mountains.

[73:19]

This is called a curled up in a ball in your bed. And then once you get out of bed and you do it and you not only get up and sit and follow the structure, but you do it enough and thoroughly enough so that you fully do it and then transcend it and realize unpredictable, uncontrollable creativity, then even then, that's not the end of the story either. Then you have to harmonize that with structure. with forms, with blue mountains coming up in your eyeballs. And there's that too. And then you get back to the unconditional acceptance, but now as an adult. And that's the story here. And to get fixed in one particular way is a problem, but even to get fixed in innumerable ways can be a problem.

[74:20]

The point is, at any point in this process, you can get stuck. And it's not healthy. Thoroughness is one of the key principles here. If you thoroughly do any one of these phases, it naturally pushes you forward into the next one. Yes? The father in this case is not teaching you how to climb a mountain. He's teaching you to do something which can't be put into practice, which can't be seen, which can't be even talked about. And he doesn't... He can't tell you whether you're doing it. You can't tell him whether he's doing it. And I have a problem with the authoritarian nature of that, because I think we're talking about something ineffable, something that is not teachable. I mean, we've said this many times, and we can't teach somebody how to do this.

[75:21]

So my problem is in having somebody as a teacher in that role, when what we're all learning is something that we can't see. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's where I find myself constantly rebelling against the idea of the teachings of an authority, of a hierarchical structure. I can see doing this with another person. and kind of doing it as a, we're doing this together. What are you doing? What are you seeing? This is what I'm doing. This is what I'm seeing. It's kind of like when you taught me about putting your hand on the back. There's something, as soon as you get into this hierarchical thing, that's disturbing to you.

[76:23]

And I think that might get in the way of the process. The hierarchy does get in the way of the process, and part of the process is that something gets in the way of the process. If there's no obstacles, you're skipping over part of the reality of the process. So it has to be hierarchy, and hierarchy gets in the way. There's another part of the process where there's no hierarchy. And the hierarchy, if you fully work with the frustration and the problems you have with hierarchy, if you fully accept and exert all the problems you have with hierarchy and you look at those fully, that will naturally put you in a place where there's no hierarchy. Then your job will be to unify where you got into with where you came from. which was hierarchy.

[77:23]

And that will take you back to a place again where there's now not only where hierarchy and non-hierarchy have been unified because they create each other. Anarchy and hierarchy create each other. You have to unify them. Once they're unified, you're back to where you started. You're back to you, province, but you're a realized being. The baby who's told that they're just fine as they are, that they're the center of the universe, is not yet realized. They can't prove that. They can't demonstrate the process by which they got there. Even though there was a process by which they got there, they don't understand it. They have to go through this odyssey. They have to go through this story in case 32. The central instruction here could be another instruction, but whatever the instruction is, It's hierarchical in the sense that somebody else gives it to you. And they assist you in fulfilling it. And they play a role.

[78:24]

And they're not just an equal. They're also a senior. They were there before. They've done it already. They gave it to you. You asked for it. They gave it to you. You came to them. You asked them for it. And they gave it to you. And there's a difference between you. And that's a problem. And it's not that they teach you something, but that they are, anyway, playing this role in your life. And if you skip over this, you're skipping over a stumbling block which is just sitting there in the middle of your psyche, in denial. And as soon as we bring up the authority, you run for the hills. Yet we have to deal with this issue of what authority means to us, of this thing outside of ourself, which is not outside ourselves. Okay, Carrie?

[79:29]

Yes, the paragraph that you were talking about, the poem or the paragraph? Well, Filling the eyes with mountains. Yes. At the end of that, it says, one mystery, three mysteries, so that gates and walls are like cliffs, doors and locks are like doors, after all, it's difficult to see each other. To me, that sounds like it's saying it's not sequential, but cyclical. Yeah, I think this is, well, what do you call it? Cycles have sequence. Cycles have sequence. No, cycles have sequence. It's just that there's linear sequences and cyclical sequences. Yeah, or it's like, what do you call it?

[80:35]

It's a helix or a spiral. A spiral. where you go around and around, and it's the same. Actually, this is like a helix. Just ironically, something like DNA is being reenacted in spiritual realm. But you go around this cycle, kind of like a figure-eight cycle, and you get tighter and tighter the more times you go around it. So where do you see it after all the difficult decisions? Pardon? Why does it say, after all, it is difficult to see each other? What do you think? Well, I think, after all, it's difficult to see each other because there's nobody else. But you need somebody else in order to get to the place where you can't see another person when you're looking at them. Just like you need obstacles to realize the unobstructed realm.

[81:49]

So the first mystery is to become free of obstacles. The next mystery is to become free from being free of obstacles, which means to get stuck again. One of the ways you can prove that you're free of being free of obstacles is to get stuck. But what's the difference between just being stuck and getting stuck, which is a demonstration that you're free of not being stuck? What's the difference? There's no way you can tell the difference. If you use a way to tell the difference, then you'd just be stuck again. And yet, we work this out together, and there is certainty or not. So, you know, the word, there is, you know, Buddhas don't know anything, don't know they're Buddhas, and yet they're completely certain about it. They have no doubt that they're Buddhas, even though they're, and because they're so certain that they're Buddhas, they don't need to know that they are.

[82:58]

They don't need to depend on knowing it as some objective fact. But they're not like, kind of like, wishy-washy about it, except that they can even be wishy-washy if that would be helpful. but it's not usually helpful, so they're not. They're just completely solid, sitting still, and being who they are. Yes? Me? Yes. Well, what I was thinking about is you were talking about a cycle from going from the unification into the structure, and then that'll put you back in where everything's comfortable and back to unification again, and then you put yourself in the structure again. Like that. And you also said that when you're at one point in there and you're, like, stuck, to do it thoroughly and then you'll get to the next point. So, like... Will I be doing the cycle from unification to structure to that freedom to unification again all my life?

[84:08]

Or will I, like, get better and better at doing it and do it faster and there's a chance I'm not going to go somewhere else? Well, it depends. If you want to be a Buddha, if you're shooting for Buddhahood, then you do it forever until everybody does it. So the bodhisattva path is to keep doing it until all beings join the program. So you might go through it once or twice or a hundred times yourself, but then even if you think that you've done it enough, you do it with other people. And doing it with other people brings up subtleties in the way of doing it and brings up kind of little clingings in yourself, little holdings that you maybe got through your own personal journey Okay. But when you went through it with other people, you start to notice that there was some sloppiness, actually, and you didn't really get through it so well. You know. But when you do it with others, it shows up.

[85:13]

Other people will bring it out. So it develops you more, partly because it helps you see more about yourself. The way you see about yourself, the way you understand yourself is by saving all sentient beings. By what, I'm sorry? saving all sentient beings. The way a person realizes that they're Buddha is by saving all sentient beings. The process of all living beings. The way you go through this thing, this Buddhist practice with all sentient beings is how you find out who you really are. So maybe you go through once or twice or whatever times some formal training course with somebody being your teacher and feel like, okay. And your teacher may say, okay, you finished the course. Now you're on your own. See you later. Then you go over it by yourself many, many times. And then you go over it with other sentient beings, other living beings, many, many times. So partisan training is to do this with a teacher once thoroughly or 85 million times sloppily. And then leave the teacher and go off and do it by yourself with no students for a while.

[86:19]

And then people will find out about you. Somehow they'll find out about you. They won't necessarily know what they found. but they'll find something. And you'll find yourself going through this process with other people because people will come to you either for affirmation to be their mother, which you can do, or they'll come for you to give them a training course. because they'll see you demonstrating some form, some order, some logic, some logos they'll see in you, and they'll say, that's cool, I want to learn that logos. So you say, well, go sit, or whatever. And you go with other people. If you're just going to do it for yourself, then there would be an end to it. So there is a path in Buddhism, a personal vehicle path, which seems to have an end. But according to the Mahayana, that end is just what we call a magical city. It's just a kind of like parent end. Really there's no end to it until all living beings join this path.

[87:23]

So you said you go up and do it by yourself for a while, but you also said that you can't, like the structure has to be created by someone else. Well, by doing it by yourself means you reiterate the structure which you received from a practice lineage. You just keep doing it. You might also make up some new structures by yourself after you also have gone through a traditional structure which someone gave you. You might make up some new structures. But the healthiest way, I think, the safest way to make up new structures is to make up new structures in a process of trying to help others. That other people come to you and show you that the old structures don't work so well. So part of it is that From the student's point of view, they come into the situation and they give up their idea of what challenges to take on and what they think training is going to be. And from their side, But from the teacher's side, the teacher looks and says, well, maybe we should adjust this a little bit because actually this person, this is a better way to do it, what they're talking about or what they're showing. You adapt it for their benefit. It's more skillful to do it slightly differently.

[88:27]

So new teachings, new skill and means come for the new people. So the teaching changes from the side, the teacher gives up the tradition for the student, the student gives up their own grandiosity for the sake of the tradition. And that way it evolves. And one thing I missed was, did you say that you have to do it thoroughly with the teacher before you can do it by yourself? Is that what you said? Okay. All right. Have to means that that's ideal. Thoroughness is, it's good to do something thoroughly before you do the next thing, basically. Okay. Oh, right. Okay, right. And if you do things thoroughly, then the next thing kind of pops up naturally, rather than like, well, I think I'd like to do the next thing now. it happens right as a result of being thorough. So this process, thoroughness drives this process forward in a non-judgmental way. That's why I said also that this turning, turning is very good. Turning helps you tell whether you're indulging in what's happening, indulging in the stuff that's coming up as you're traveling the path, or whether you're pushing them away.

[89:37]

In America, Zen has been most criticized for the possibility that we repress the stuff that comes up in meditation. Whereas some other traditions have been, you know, like some people feel Vipassana people get too much into all the stuff that comes up. Like one of the Zen students who then became a Vipassana teacher says, these Vipassana people just have so tremendous suffering. They just have so much problems. They bring up so much stuff where Zen students come in and don't seem to bring up as much. So the Soto Zen, the problem, Rinzai's then they have koans maybe that they work on more and have problems with. Their problems are koans. And soto's then maybe the problem, the tendency is denial or obsession. And some other school, maybe their problem is hysteria or indulgence. But to hit the middle, the turning is a great way to find the middle. Because in turning, you won't have to deny the stuff that's coming up, nor indulge.

[90:43]

If you're turning, you don't have time to deny or repress, because you're moving on according to the principle of turning, which is keeping track of yourself as you turn into the next self, keeping track of your mind as it operates on objects. The way the mind works, the way the self evolves is this constant turning. And if you can tune into that turning, that's the real good place to sit. That turning, that turning, that turning. And that will guide you on the path which is neither indulgence nor denial of phenomena as they arise. Thank you. Just like this. Let's do this. you want to.

[92:00]

Michael doesn't want to. Now do I have everybody under control here? David's not doing it.

[92:13]

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