The seat could be called the storyteller's seat. Someone told me once that they thought I was a storyteller. And I can go along with that story. Recently, while I've been telling stories, some people have been saying that they think the stories I'm telling are tall tales, even maybe ridiculous. And if I remember that they're stories, I don't mind whatever you call them. I have a story that human beings have stories and I have a story that the problem that human beings have is primarily because they attach to their stories or that they, yeah,

[01:29]

And I think the attachment to the stories comes from a basic story that's maybe the one story that's incorrect, that's really ridiculous. Maybe there's one basic ridiculous story which almost everybody is born with. And because of that basic ridiculous story, we tend to attach to other stories which aren't so good or bad. But when we attach to stories, I say, we suffer. But we wouldn't attach to stories, I don't think, if we didn't have this basic, this one main misconceived story. And it's a story that we're separate from each other, that the people we interact with and the mountains and the rivers and the whole earth is out there separate from us rather than that we're born together.

[02:53]

with each other and that we're born together with the mountains and the rivers. Even the story that we're born together with the mountains and the rivers is just a story and I wouldn't want to attach to that. But I wouldn't attach to that story if I lived by that story. and living by that story, I wouldn't hold to that story. I would just understand it, and understanding it, I wouldn't attach to it. But if I have a story that I'm not born together with all of you, then I might attach to various stories. So I just told some stories just now, which I hope I didn't attach to. Also, just recently a person said to me that he kind of likes the teaching that, I don't really remember what he said, but it's just a story, so okay if I don't get it right.

[04:12]

He said something like, I like the practice of just being kind. I could have said, I like the practice, the teaching that the Buddha way is basically being kind. But that doesn't have to be the Buddha way. It can just be the kind way. And I heard another story that the wonderful teacher who we call the Dalai Lama was interviewed and somebody said, what's your favorite religion? You say, well, I was born in the Buddhist tradition, but now I think the best religion is kindness. You could say, well, that's Buddhism, but I don't want Buddhism to own that because it could be Christianity, it could be Judaism, it could be Islam, all those traditions, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, they all could be basically kindness. And in the tradition of the Buddha way, you often hear people say, or yeah, you often hear people say, matter of fact, I often hear myself say, that Buddhas are born of compassion.

[05:35]

And those who aspire to be Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, are also born of compassion. That's a birth story. So in the tradition of the Buddhadharma, we have some birth stories. So I just told you a little birth story. The birth story is that Buddhas are born of compassion. And then I might elaborate on that story and I might say, and what kind of compassion are they born of? Well, it's universal compassion. And well, it's objectless compassion. It's non-dual compassion. It's caring for all beings

[06:41]

free of the idea, free of the story that all beings, or any being, is separate from you. So it's not just caring for a person and wanting the best for them, it's also joined with the Buddha's compassion. The compassion that gives rise to Buddhas is a caring for beings and wanting to protect them and help them, joined with an understanding, a knowledge but they're not separate from you. Buddhas are born from this non-dual, objectless compassion. And this compassion means that they wish, they wish, they want everybody to also join and realize that compassion.

[07:50]

They want everybody to have that compassion for everybody and they want everybody to have that wisdom, that knowledge, which knows that we're not separate from each other. So another way to say this is that Buddhas are born By born, I mean they appear in the world. So Buddhas are born in this world. You could also say that Buddhas are born from Buddhas. And some Buddhas are not born. So part of the birth story of Buddhas is that some Buddhas aren't born in this world. And those Buddhas are the Buddhas which are just the wish of just the desire, just the compassion to help beings. The Buddhas that are born are the knowledge, are a knowledge.

[08:56]

Buddhas are an understanding. Buddhas are a knowledge, an awareness of non-separation among all beings, plus the wish to help them. And that wish together with that knowledge, precipitates Buddhas in the world of beings who have not yet realized that wisdom. Buddhas fundamentally live unborn. But they can be born because of this wish They can take a body because of this wish. They can appear in the world because of this wish. The wish to help all living beings open to this wisdom which will overcome the story of separation.

[10:00]

The wish to demonstrate, to show people this wisdom which overcomes the illusion of separation. The wish to awaken people to this wisdom and the wish to help people enter into it and become it. This is the story of the birth of the Buddhas. Another story, it's almost like a story of the birth of the Buddhas, is a story that a Zen teacher in China, and his name was Cloud Gate, Yun Mun, he was talking to his group, and he said to them, I think, where are all the Buddhas born, or how are all the Buddhas born?

[11:08]

And he answered the question himself. He said, Eastern mountains travel across the water. Eastern mountains traveling over the water. Does that remind you of anything? Guess what it reminds me of? What? That's a good guess. It reminds me of the place that Buddhas are born. You don't look like you got that one. Did you get it? No. Where are all the Buddhas born? Eastern mountains move over the water. What does eastern mountains move over the water remind me of? It reminds me of the place that Buddhas are born. When I think of eastern mountains moving over the water, I think, oh, that's where the Buddhas are born there.

[12:12]

That's where Buddhas are born. That's what I think. That's because I think about eastern mountains moving over the water a lot, and I see the Buddhas born there. I train myself to think like Yun Min. But you know, what else does it make me think of, this eastern mountains moving over the water? It makes me think of non-dual compassion. Most people, I would guess, you know, most people think eastern mountains moving over the water, that's compassion? That's not the compassion that most people think is compassion. Right? Most people look at the mountains and they say, yeah, okay, mountains, cool, especially today with the sun and everything, nice mountains. But that's compassion? That's Buddha's compassion? Yes, that's Buddhist compassion. That's not my idea of compassion. It's those mountains walking all over the place.

[13:14]

That is non-dual compassion. Non-dual compassion is not my idea of compassion. It's objectless compassion. It's the way the mountains are being born together with us. The mountains are the way we're being born together with each other. The way we're born together with each other is the mountains. That's another way to talk about non-dual compassion. In other words, compassion isn't my idea or your idea of it. It's where the Buddhas are born. And also it's been taught that if you go down to the bottom of the mountain, You know, in the lower part of the mountains, you know what they call that part of the mountains? What do they call that part of the mountains where the mountains aren't so high? What do they call that? Foothills, right. You got that one. And then down at the bottom of the foothills, what do they call that part of the mountain? The toes, right.

[14:16]

That's not so common. Foothills is pretty common. But the toes of the mountain are at the bottom of the foothills. And the mountains always go down to the foothills. The mountains, except for cliffs, cliffs skip over foothills. But mountains, they go down, they slope down, you know, they don't just drop off. Mountains go down, and they get to the foothill area, and then at the bottom of the foothill area, you have the toes of the mountains, and mountains always go down all the way to their toes. They never skip. But they do. I tell you, this is a story. Remember, this isn't something you have to believe. This is just a story I'm telling because I'm sitting on the story teacher's seat. Some of you said I could sit here, right? So now I'm going to tell you a story. The story is that the mountains go all the way down to the toes of the mountain. They always do. And at the toes of the mountain, the mountains are skipping.

[15:21]

on the water. And the toes of the mountain are splashing in the water that the mountains sit on. And the place where the water is splashing up to the toes, that's where the Buddhas are born. That's a story about the birth of Buddhas. Yeah. Tassajara, yeah. That's why we have Tassajara, for Buddhas to be born. So we have this monastery where you can go and you can jump into that place there where the mountains, the toes of the mountains splash in the water. And you can join the Buddhas there. Now, there's quite a few stories to tell and one more story or several more stories are the stories of what are called the stories of when the Buddhas appear in the world because they're born of this wish to open beings to the wisdom as joined with compassion

[16:39]

When they appear in the world, they need to meet the people so that in the meeting with the people this non-dual wisdom, this non-dual wisdom joined with compassion, this non-dual compassion can be awakened and realized in the people the Buddhas meet. not just are born, but then when they're born they meet people. And in that meeting we have what we call the transmission of the teaching. The Buddha's wish to open and demonstrate and awaken and help people enter the wisdom, that's called Buddha's wish to teach. or rather the wish to teach, the non-dual wish to teach, the wish to teach free of any kind of concept of separation.

[17:51]

That is the Buddha. And that wish to teach manifests in a face-to-face meeting. And you look at the early stories of the Buddha in India, Shakyamuni Buddha. He met people face to face, interacted with them, and they woke up too. He met with them and talked with them, met with them and talked with them, one by one often. Sometimes he would be talking to one and that one would wake up, and other people who are nearby listening to what he said to that one, they would wake up too. So sometimes when he's looking like, you know, eyeball to eyeball with somebody, face to face. There's other people around and he's meeting them cheek to cheek. So the face can be, you know, the forehead to forehead or chin to chin or eye to eye or nose to nose. But also cheek to cheek and ear to ear.

[18:52]

We don't usually talk about the back of the neck to the back of the neck, but that's possible. One time I saw a picture of Suzuki Roshi. He was... Well, let me tell you another... This is a story about Suzuki... This is one story about Suzuki Roshi and one story about me looking at a picture of Suzuki Roshi. Well, actually, it's one story of me looking at kind of like a picture of a living Suzuki Roshi and then another story of me looking at a picture of Suzuki Roshi, of a living Suzuki Roshi. So first of all, I saw Suzuki Roshi one time on a Sunday morning when Zen Center used to be in Japantown. And Suzuki Roshi was the teacher to the Japanese congregation of Zen Buddhists in Japantown in San Francisco. And he's also the teacher of the European Zen students, people from Europe who live in America now, like me.

[20:00]

I'm from Norway, hi. So anyway, it was Sunday and he was talking to the Japanese ladies after the morning service and he was standing on the steps of the temple and he was talking to them and they were being very talkative and happy to talk to Suzuki Roshi and he was chatting away with them very happily and they looked happy and he looked happy and I thought, he doesn't talk to me that way. But I thought, it's okay, I'm not an elderly Japanese lady, it's okay. Anyway, the look on their face was very happy and he was very happy and he was talking more than he usually talked to us Europeans and students, European-Americans. He talked to the Japanese-Americans, in my view, a little bit different than he talked to the European-Americans. So then I saw this picture of him a little while after that, and it was a picture of him from the back, showing the back of his head.

[21:08]

And in front of him was several elderly ladies. And they looked very happy. They had these happy looks on their face. They were laughing, and they looked almost like they were jumping around, talking to him. So I thought maybe he was like, maybe his face was smiling, and he was telling some jokes or something. But the back of his neck looked like an iron mountain. He was like, it looked, you know, it looked very, very strong and upright. Like he was really very conscious of his posture, I felt. And I thought, but probably in the front he's real soft and cheerful. So I think you can learn, you can have this transmission from the back of the neck, too. You can have it from the smiling face, a stern face, a crying face, lots of faces from the front, from the side, and from the back, and also from the top.

[22:12]

But it's a big part of the tradition I propose is actually meeting face to face. We have the, we call that menju in Japanese, or Chinese, menju. And men means face. and ju means to receive. And that's translated as, it's a short kind of a condensation, but it literally means men face receiving, but it means face-to-face transmission of non-dual compassion. Face-to-face transmission of the truth, of the teaching of the teaching of non-dual compassion, which comes into the world to help people get over the story that we're not completely together with everybody, the story that we have separate existences from each other.

[23:34]

And we're not born together with all humans, all plants, all animals, all mountains and all rivers to help us get over this story, which is a story which makes us attach to our stories and suffer. Once again, as I've been saying over and over, I just want to remember what I told you is a story. The story I told you is not really, it's just a story, it's not really what I'm talking about. The story I told you about how Buddhas are born is not how Buddhas are born. And now the story I told you that the story I told you is not how Buddha is born is also just a story.

[24:39]

The point of these stories is to help us get over our stories. At least that's my story of why I'm offering these stories is to help all of us be people, normal people who have stories about ourselves and have stories of others. We do. We can't avoid this. We wouldn't be able to live together if we didn't have stories of each other. And it's nice to have stories like, everybody's my friend, and I have a story, this person's really a wonderful person, and not only that, but I have a story that even people who are less wonderful than this person, I still really am devoted to because, you know, I have a story that we're really interconnected and I love everybody. That's my story. But if I attach even to that story, it won't be good, I say. So whatever stories you have, even if you have stories which are that not everybody's your friend and not everybody's wonderful and that you don't care about people, matter of fact, you hate everybody, I would like you to be free of that story too.

[25:48]

Or if you have a story that you're really miserable and you can't go on one more moment with this horrible life, I would hope you get over that story. It's actually quite a dramatic story and they write a novel about it, but I think I would suggest that you write a novel about it rather than believe it. Make it into a fiction, which it is. Stories are fictions. Convert your fictions, convert your stories into art. Make some money. Don't attach to your stories, because then not the story won't backfire, but your attachment will backfire. Attachment backfires. We attach because we think it'll be good to attach. But it won't be good to attach.

[26:50]

So I'm just sort of like trying to stretch this talk out a little bit more because I'm basically done. But I don't want to shock you too much by stopping so early. Because usually, as some of you know, I go on for longer than I have today. You think that's funny? You won't think it's funny if I go on much longer. But now it's getting past a half an hour, so that's pretty good. I could stop now, right? It wouldn't be that short, would it? But I just thought I might mention that people like, when I tell stories of my grandson or grandsons, people often like those stories. After I give a talk, if I've told a story about my grandson, usually after a talk, somebody comes up to me and says, I like the story about your grandson. So usually it's a successful talk if I can find a story of my grandson. Now I could tell you some old stories of my grandson, maybe I will actually, but I just wanted to tell you a story, it's not exactly, it's sort of about my grandson, but the story is that my grandson has moved out of town.

[28:02]

That's a story, right? He's left me, he's gone away and left me, he's left me all alone. So now I found a new place to dwell, it's called Heartbreak Hotel. That little guy has gone away and left me. He's left me all alone with you. So actually it's not so bad. I still have you, even though I don't have him, the little guy. But it really is painful for him to live in L.A. I'm moving to L.A. So that's a story about my grandson, right? That he left. But anyway, since I don't see him as often, I don't have like new fresh, I won't be having so many new fresh grandson stories. I'm really sorry for you and me. Maybe more for you than for me because for you, the stories, all you get is these wonderful stories. I have to live with them in between those stories where he's being mean to me.

[29:08]

And I don't know how to turn that into a story. Actually, I do don't know. I tell, yeah. So I told you, like, you know, actually, when he's mean to me, you like those stories too. But I don't like them. I mean, I don't like them when they're happening. Those stories about him being mean to me that I'm telling. He's not telling the story he's being mean to me. He's having fun relating to me in a way. And when he's having fun, I make the story up. He's being mean to me. Do you know the story about playing soccer with him? Do you know that story? Karin, do you know that story? You do. You want to tell it? No? How many people know the story of playing soccer with my grandson? One, two, three. Okay, well, should I tell it? So we're playing soccer and we're playing soccer in front of a garage and the garage door is the goal. So when he's the advancing team and I'm the goalie, he kicks the ball and I catch the ball.

[30:19]

And he says, no, not that way. So he told me to move over way over on the other side, over on the far left-hand side of the garage door so he can kick on the right side. So then when he's the goalie and I'm kicking it, I have to kick it right to him. Actually, first time I kick, you know, and he misses it. So he says, that's not the way to do it. Kick it to me. So you think that's a nice story, right? I think it's a story of him being mean to me. So let's not attach to our version of what that happened there. Something happened, but it really wasn't that he was being funny And it really wasn't that he was being mean. Those are just some stories you can tell. But the main thing about Zen that attracted me is laughing at the stories. Understanding that, can you believe it? All the stories are jokes.

[31:21]

No, no, no, no, no, no. The story of cruelty is not a joke. It's true that the story of cruelty is not a joke. It's the waking up from the story of cruelty. that you get the joke that the story of cruelty is not really what's going on. It's a story of what's going on, and it's a very unhappy story of what's going on. And the story of kindness is not really what's going on, it's a story about kindness. Kindness is not my story about it. So now I'm going way, now it's getting kind of late, right? So I can stop. Actually, one more grandson story. And again, it's not exactly about my grandson. It's about my mind. And it's about my mind that had a dream just recently that I was in a busy downtown area like San Francisco with my grandson. And we were together.

[32:24]

And then I looked over someplace and did something. I forgot what I did. I wish I could remember. But anyway, I got involved with something. I looked back, and he was gone. And I couldn't find him. And I called 911. And the people were very helpful. They wanted to help me. Actually, first of all, I'd called not 911. I'd called something else. And they said, I want to call 911. And they said, I'll do it for you. And then they did it. And I said, I can't find my grandson. And then I woke up. But I thought, keep your eye on that boy. I don't want to attach to him. I don't want to hold his hand all the time. I mean, I do, but I want to let him go free. But at the same time, I want to keep my eye on that guy. I don't want to get distracted from caring for him. That's kindness, too. But I would also like to realize non-duality with him.

[33:25]

That's what I want. And so I'm trying to have meetings with the Buddhas all the time. I'm trying to live at the place where the Buddhas are born. I'm trying to find the place where the Buddhas come to meet me face to face and transmit together with me and everybody else this way that more beings can be born into the reality of non-dual compassion. And then the other thing that some people like besides stories of my grandson are when I sing, because it's so funny. And so I have a song today for you. And excuse me for changing it. It's called Menju. It's called Face-to-Face Transmission. It's written by Irving Berlin.

[34:33]

Made famous by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Menju. I'm in Menju. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek when we sit together meeting cheek to cheek. Manju. I'm in Menju, and the cares that hung around me through the week seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak when we sit together meeting cheek to cheek. Oh, I'd love to climb a mountain and to reach the highest peak, but it doesn't thrill me half as much as meeting cheek to cheek.

[35:52]

Heaven, I'm in Menju. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek. When we sit together, meeting cheek to cheek. Thank you for listening.

[36:27]

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