First I'd like to say thank you very much for welcoming me. Last Sunday after I gave a talk about this place being a welcoming space, a lot of people welcomed me to be here. Thank you. I hope you welcomed each other too. I hope you continue that practice which you took up so sweetly on this evening. You seem to be enjoying it. That practice is an example, I would say, practice is an example of using imagination to liberate imagination.

[01:09]

Using the story to liberate story. I mentioned that One could study this book from the point of view of receiving the poetry and then looking at the background story. So I thought I would start tonight by reading the poem of the first case of the Blue Cliff record. The holy truths are really empty. How can you discern the point? Who is facing me? Again he said, no.

[02:21]

Henceforth, He secretly crossed the river. How could he avoid the growth of thickets and brambles? Everyone in the whole country goes after him. He will not return. Wu goes on and on, vainly reflecting back. Give up recollection. What is the limit of the pure wind that circles the earth? Master Sway Do turned around right and left and said, is there any ancestor here?

[03:26]

The background story is that the Emperor of China, Emperor Wu of Liang, asked the great teacher Bodhidharma, he said, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? Bodhidharma said, vast and empty. The emperor said, who is facing me? Who is meeting me? Bodhidharma said, don't know. The emperor did not understand and after this Bodhidharma crossed the river and came to the kingdom of Wei.

[04:44]

Later the emperor brought this up with Master Jir and asked him about it. Master Jir said, does your majesty know what this is? The emperor said, I don't know. Master Jhura said, he is the mahasattva Avalokiteshvara transmitting the Buddha mind seal. The emperor felt regretful, so he wanted to send an emissary to invite Bodhidharma to return. Master Ajira told him, Your Majesty, don't say that you will send someone to fetch him back, even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him. Return. So the Bodhidharma's answer to, you know,

[05:57]

meaning me, was don't know. And I wrote the characters there. And those characters are between Ted and Susan. Don't know. Bushir. Which actually, I think that's colloquial Chinese speech. Which means don't or not. It means not or negative. And then the next character means to know and that character also means consciousness. But it means consciousness in the sense of discriminating consciousness. Consciousness which knows objects. Ordinary karmic consciousness. And then it says, after Bodhidharma said, don't know, when the emperor said, who is meeting me?

[07:10]

And Bodhidharma said, don't know. It says, the emperor did not understand, but actually what it characters are, you know, fukai characters. not, that character between Fu and Ted is not, the characters are not, and that character is the character in Sando Kai, the Kai of Sando Kai, which we translate as merging. Bodhidharma said, don't know, and the emperor did not merge. Another meaning for that character is did not agree, did not bond. did not meet. The emperor didn't enter, didn't meet Bodhidharma when he said, don't know. And then Bodhidharma left. You could try to say the emperor didn't understand, but I think it's better to

[08:18]

to say the emperor didn't merge, didn't agree, didn't realize the meeting, didn't meet. So one way to look at the story is they're meeting. Bodhidharma is meeting the emperor. The emperor has been listening to Buddha's teaching for a long time and has friends who are great teachers. He has great teachers and he He studies with them and they're good Dharma friends. So he meets this new person and asks them, what's the meaning of the highest meaning of the holy truth? And he says, really empty, no holy. And then the emperor turns from asking questions about the teaching, which he's been studying and has some understanding of, he turns to the situation where he's actually meeting this person. This story is not just the emperor sitting there reading Buddhist scriptures or listening to Buddhist scriptures and wondering about them and meditating on them.

[09:30]

It turns out he's actually meeting a teacher. And then he says, after Bodhidharma says, all these teachings are really and empty. And one could go on about that. And there's no holy teaching. And the emperor then turns to the event that's going on, namely, who is meeting me? What is this meeting? And Bodhidharma says, don't know. As Bodhidharma is saying, don't try to know it. Or you could understand that Bodhidharma is saying, it's not knowable. It's not knowable with that kind of consciousness, which is our ordinary karmic consciousness. the way we meet anybody, really, but certainly not the way we meet a teacher or the way we meet Buddha. And Buddhas don't know how they're meeting us either.

[10:31]

They don't use that consciousness to know how they're meeting us. And they meet us in that way, that way of knowing. We do see each other, and that's our karmic consciousness. It's not to say that that's not going on. But the way we see our meeting is not the way we're meeting. Emperor and Bodhidharma did meet. And then Bodhidharma told him about the meeting. And the emperor couldn't enter it. Bodhidharma was telling him where to go to find out about this meeting. So in one sense this is a really simple story and I often refer to Bodhidharma as a or you could say Bodhidharma is representing the radical part of the teaching which is go to the place where the meaning is really happening which we do not know.

[11:35]

And Bodhidharma the Buddha doesn't know And the emperor also couldn't know. Nobody can know it. But some people would say enter that place, can go to that place of not knowing where we're actually meeting. Where there's another kind of experience which is not discriminating karmic consciousness. When Bodhidharma, the national teacher probably, the teacher that the emperor has in his palace as his personal tutor, asks the emperor if he knows who that was, and the emperor says, don't know.

[12:36]

He says the same thing Bodhidharma said. That's really true. So I have a picture of Bodhidharma up here behind me, I think. Yep. And there's something about the way he functions, the tradition that he represents at the beginning of this collection. He's saying, you want to know what it's like to meet, go to the place of not knowing. And this does not mean you don't take care of the knowing. The way you get to the place of not knowing is by taking care of knowing. As I said on Sunday following up on a conversation with somebody,

[13:51]

The way we're not alone is not knowable. The Buddha way is the way we're not alone. But the way we're not alone is not knowable. Our actual life is not an object of consciousness. and the way we are living completely includes karmic consciousness. But karmic consciousness is confused about our life. Karmic consciousness thinks, you know, that it could be alone. ...of being alone and being separate. It may think, oh, I'm not alone. But the way it thinks I'm not alone, and certainly the way it thinks I am alone, that's not the way we're not alone.

[14:57]

Our various thoughts are not the way we're not alone. The way we're not alone is the Buddha way. How do we enter that place called the Buddha way? By not knowing. We can help each other with our karmic consciousnesses. We can help each other take care of our knowing so that we can all enter the place where we meet. I thought I might mention, oh, I think I've said this to you before, that the Zen teacher, the Zen student, Nyogen Senzaki, who teaches in Los Angeles and used to live in San Francisco before the Second World War, Japanese-American, he...

[16:28]

he said when he was teaching his students about the Blue Cliff Record, he said, I just warn you that we're going to be working on these stories as our actual daily life and not as stories about something that happened a long time ago. So usually we A long time ago, in China, there was a Bodhidharma, and he met an emperor, and they had this conversation. So, Nyogen Senzaki says, I'm not going to work with you that way. This is not going to be a story about some people who live some other time than this. It's going to be about, like Sui Do said, at the end of his poem, he said, are there any ancestors here? So Nogin Senzaki is saying, where are the ancestors now?

[17:35]

Where are the Zen masters now? This story, he was saying, we're going to work with this story, we're going to try to, this story and the other stories in the record, we are going to be trying to, we are going to be working with them as our life right now. So how are we meeting each other? How are we meeting the ancestors like Bodhidharma? How is Bodhidharma here now? The way Bodhidharma is here is don't know. You don't know how to meet. You want to meet, but you don't know how you're meeting. And again, the Buddha way is all-pervasive. It's perfect and all-pervading. There's no place it doesn't reach.

[18:37]

In other words, the way we are not alone is all-pervasive, but we have to practice to realize it. We do not know it. It's not an object of that kind of consciousness. We have to practice in order to agree with it, in order to merge with it, in order to bond with it. We are actually bonded with it. We have to practice in order to realize that we are bonded to the Buddha way. It's the way we're really living. So that's what Nyogen Senzaki said, and with your permission, I'd like to be like that. There's nothing we... There's no conversations we couldn't have, but I would like those conversations to not be about some other time or place. And I would like those conversations to be exercised as opportunities to enter into realizing our actual relationship.

[19:48]

And I've heard for many years about what's called Tathagata Zen, which is Zen and ancestral Zen. Buddha Zen or Tathagata Zen is a definite part of the Buddhist tradition. It's about like, it refers to the approach approaches to realizing Dharma. One approach is you listen to teachings about how to practice. You listen to teachings about reality and about delusion. And you study them and discuss them. You practice them together with concentration. like you sit quietly and sit still and become calm and concentrated. And in that calm, concentrated space is the place where traditionally the teaching is that that's how you understood in that concentrated place.

[21:03]

In that concentrated place, this karmic consciousness is turned down a little bit. And when it's turned down, when it's calmer, it can receive and absorb the teachings about itself and become free of itself. So we've been talking about teachings about this karmic consciousness that it's always imagining, it's always telling stories, that's its job. but it's trapped by the stories that it makes. Every time it tells a story, the consequence of that is to support more storytelling, which it tends to believe is what's going on. To hear that teaching, and many others, and to apply it to your karmic concentration could lead to understanding and becoming liberated from karmic consciousness. That's called sort of Buddha Zen or Buddha concentration or Buddha Samadhi.

[22:12]

But there's an ancestral Samadhi too which totally agrees that that is an approach. but also says that really the even more essential ingredient is that we enact the teachings in a relationship and in concentration. So we still work on the teachings, but we practice them in a meeting. And we watch how they are articulated in daily life. We still need to be concentrated. In order to fully realize the understanding of these teachings, we need to enact them in daily life. And part of it is student-teacher-teacher-student. But it means with everybody.

[23:15]

But the teacher-student part is part of the ancestral Zen path. Many of the stories in the Blue Cliff Record and the Book of Serenity are about the difference and interrelationship between these two approaches, these two types of Zen, or these two approaches to Dharma. The approach of listening to the teaching, talking to the teacher, listening to the teaching, talking to the teacher, talking to your friends, listening to the teaching, studying the teaching, practicing concentration with the teaching and understanding the teaching. That's one way that appears is practiced by the people in these stories, and that way is brought up in these stories, but also the other way is brought up in these stories. So Emperor Wu was a noted student of Buddha.

[24:21]

When he met Bodhidharma in that story, you had the an adept of Buddha Zen in a way, meeting an adept of both Buddha Zen and Tathagata Zen, but he can't do that. This is, I guess, you could say, look, it's the first time that he met somebody who addresses the meeting and says, right now while we're talking, let's do what you learned in many, which you've learned in many scriptures. Let's do it right now. The emperor couldn't enter the Tathagata Zen practice, so Bodhidharma went and sat as his daily life expression of not knowing. And people came to see him. And I'm going to stop now and not tell you stories yet about what happened when the people came to see him.

[25:29]

Okay? I just want to stop now and see how you're doing before we go on to more stories about how to be free of stories. I misspoke. Bodhidharma was teaching ancestral Zen in that meeting. He was trying to show the emperor what it's like to enact the emperor had been studying in the conversation. So the emperor had been studying the highest meaning of the holy truths, so he was going to ask this guy, what does he think? He actually knew these other great teachers who he had probably talked to about that very fact, and he got their response, and they got his response, and then they had a concentration together and had really good understanding. He was a noted Buddhist scholar and he was a Buddhist teacher. The emperor was a Buddhist teacher.

[26:31]

Somebody told me that he went to monasteries and he wanted to become a monk and that the monasteries, they thought he was such a good monk that they wanted him to be emperor because they wanted this excellent student to be the emperor. So he was actually really a great student of that kind of practice. Bodhidharma comes and now he has, so he's got an understanding of what's the highest meaning. And this teacher says, well, let's just meet now, shall we? Let's forget about the highest meaning. And let me tell you, there's no holy. Can we just like have no holy? Between, you know, what's the highest meaning of the holy truth? Could we have no holy? Between you and me, could we just like dispense with this meat? And then the emperor says, who is this? What's going on?

[27:32]

I thought I was meeting this Zen teacher, this great teacher from India, and now he's saying no holy truth, and he's saying emptiness for... What's going on? And then Bodhidharma says, and then Bodhidharma tells him what's going on. Don't know. And the emperor can't go with it. Not yet. Bodhidharma leaves. And I think maybe one might guess the emperor wanted to go with him, but they wanted to go and talk to him up at Shaolin where he's facing the wall and carry on the conversation and learn how to meet. He hadn't, he didn't, when Bodhidharma came in, he didn't say, it looks like we're meeting. He seemed to not understand what's going on. Didn't realize what he was up with. So the emperor couldn't enter, couldn't agree with this, with this ancestor Zen.

[28:42]

which used to be called Patriarch Zen, but we changed that. I mentioned this morning to some Zen Center priests that there was a There was a, there is a Zen master named Toray and he is the descendant of a Zen master named Hakuin. And Toray wrote many vows, many bodhisattva vows. And sometimes at no abode we chant one of the vows. But I recently came across a wonderful record of correspondence between Tore and Hakuin.

[29:53]

I found some writings about how they're talking to each other. Dogen writes in the historical present, but not usually translated that way. So Tore Zenji and Hakuin Zenji are corresponding with each other. And part of the correspondence is Tore. Part of the correspondence, Tore is telling his teacher about vows he's making or has made. And in a lot of the responses to Tore's letters, Hakuin says, would you please come with me? I need your help. So Tore has visited Hakuin and he's enlightened with Hakuin and Hakuin is appreciating his enlightenment and Hakuin wants him to stay and take over the temples that he's in charge of.

[30:59]

And Tore wants to go away from Hakuin and does. And he keeps asking Hakuin if he can leave, and Hakuin says no, so he sneaks out in the night, like Bodhidharma snuck away from the emperor, and practices, goes on 100-day retreats, and he's going on 150-day retreats, and he's having a really good time, but not good enough to come back and do what his teacher asked him to do. I thought, oh, Tore is into Togata Zen and Hakowin wants him to come back and do Ancestor Zen. He wants him to come back and work at Green Gulch. And he's like having these great enlightenments but not quite ready to come back to Green Gulch. I can't But I think if I just do another 100-day retreat, I'll deepen my enlightenment sufficiently so I'll be able to come back to Green Gulch.

[32:10]

And then he does another one and he says, oh no, my doubts are gone, but I still can't come back to Green Gulch, not yet. And Hakuin is saying, come back, I need you, come back. And he's saying, dear teacher, I can't. He finally does go back, and I'll tell you the rest of the story about him later. But I just want to tell you about one of his vows, which I told people about. Of course, what was I doing when I told them about it? Go ahead. Telling a story? I was telling stories, and what else? Ancestors, yeah. I was ancestor-zenning it. I was meeting them. I was having a meeting with them. We were having a priest meeting. We were actually meeting in the priest meeting. We weren't having a priest meeting to get ready to have a priest meeting. We were actually having a priest meeting. And I was telling them stories at the priest meeting as a way of meeting.

[33:15]

And I told them that this guy who became a great... this vow, which... And this is how he wrote before he met Hakuin. And he thought, practicing the way, the Buddha way, should imitate the virtue of Bodhidharma. We should imitate the virtue of the living Bodhidharma. And, well, I'll just go on and come back and say later, if you remind me. That's what he thought. And his glasses went off his nose to that side and they put him back like that. And then he wrote, the best I could do, but there were no teachers around to help him imitate the way of Bodhidharma.

[34:18]

So he thought the best he could do was drawing a Bodhidharma like this. And he said, I did that. So he's got this picture up and he's performing a hundred prostrations now, every day. And he does that every day for years. And then while he's prostrating, he makes this vow. I entrust myself. I'm entrusting myself completely to the great teacher and bodhisattva. Bodhidharma of complete enlightenment, the first ancestor of Zen. I vow to attain your dharma eye. I vow to attain your way. I vow to attain your virtue. I vow to acquire your transcendental powers. I vow to acquire your wisdom. I vow to acquire your expedient means. I vow to acquire your influence.

[35:21]

I vow to carry out The Bodhisattva vow. I vow to liberate all beings unconditionally. I vow to receive your affirmation and sanction. I did this every day for a number of years. So, the priest meeting today, they said, what's your game plan? I said, well, my game plan for the class tonight is to tell them about this vow and ask them, do you have a vow like this? do you want to basically meet Bodhidharma and agree with and merge with Bodhidharma? And one person said, well, not really. I don't like this thing of like vowing to be like a person. But the attributes, I could vow to be like the attributes. Like I vow to realize

[36:23]

perfect wisdom, I vow to realize great compassion. You could rephrase this of, you know, I vow to, I vow to realize Avalokiteshvara's way. I vow to realize Avalokiteshvara's Dharma I. But still someone says, I don't like to do it towards a person, I like to do it towards the practice of the person. So there's this dynamic between you need to be like in order to be like the person's practice. So I heard somebody say once, the secret of education is that the students love the teacher so that they'll love what the teacher teaches. So really the point is not to love the teacher, it's to become what the teacher is teaching.

[37:24]

But some people, it works for them to try to imitate. So when I first heard Zen stories... I kind of thought, well, I want to be like that person, but really I wanted to act like that person. I didn't want to be able to perform and respond the way they did. So there's a dynamic there between using a person to help you orient towards a practice and really it's not the person you're trying to be like, but the practice. want to become. So there's something about that. This is when he was a young person. He was about 18 when he wrote this. So 18-year-olds might be more like, I want to be like the person. More mature people might be like, I want to be like the practice of that person. There's a Bodhidharma. But the record book doesn't have pictures of him.

[38:26]

It has words to meet our words. The thing I liked about Torrey writing this is that he generated a lot of energy by those vows. So I kind of feel like part of the game plan is to generate energy about how to take care of karmic consciousness so that you can enter not karmic consciousness, or how to take care of karmic consciousness so you can become free of it. Can you articulate a bit about the difference between karmic consciousness and non-karmic consciousness? Non-karmic consciousness? What did you just say? Non-karmic consciousness.

[39:27]

Not karmic consciousness. It's not like Bodhidharma says there's something called not-karmic consciousness. No, I understand. Yeah, you do? Okay. Will you define the difference between karmic consciousness and non-karmic consciousness? Being free of karmic consciousness, is that what you're meaning? The difference between karmic consciousness and freedom from karmic consciousness? From karmic consciousness, no. What is karmic consciousness to start with? Because I don't know what consciousness is anyhow. Did you want me to call on you now or later? I think it's on. Okay. Do you want to hold your hand up until that time? This response of Bodhidharma is not saying that you should, that there's a thing that's not karmic consciousness.

[40:33]

All things, all things are, all, all, everything arises only as conscious construction. Freedom from karmic consciousness, okay, is not a thing. you can only, I guess, say that it's what it's not involved in, you know, like it's not involved in existence and non-existence. Karmic consciousness is. Everything that we're dealing with always is karmic consciousness, but what we are, our life is not actually karmic consciousness. But our life doesn't get rid of karmic consciousness. It totally includes it. Of course. But we believe karmic consciousness.

[41:39]

We do. And freedom from karmic consciousness doesn't destroy believing in karmic consciousness. It just is free of believing in karmic consciousness. It's not something in addition to it. Something in addition to it is consciousness. Something beyond it, something other than it, is just another fancy rendition of karmic consciousness. So I remember a talk by you, like, from 2000 centuries or so, when you discussed that there is consciousness, karmic consciousness that reflects back on itself, that's on 80 degrees and look at itself. I did? Am I doing that now? Am I doing that now? But there could be a construction that I am.

[42:43]

So when I said, when you say, is there something other than karmic consciousness? We can now see that we can now reflect, oh, that's karmic consciousness asking a question about itself, but it's talking about something other than itself. But the things that you think are you and the things that you think aren't you, those are just conscious constructions. It's not that they are or aren't you, it's just they're conscious constructions. and to understand that from these constructions. Yes? So Dogen says to go off to dusty realms is not necessary and one can

[44:21]

sit on the seat in one's own home. And Hakuin and Tore, Tore left his teacher and went off and did his thing of sitting for long periods studying on presumes I presume and And his teacher was asking him to go back and How do those two teachings apply in the 21st century?

[45:29]

What two teachings? That one has no need for the 60 realms. One can practice the Way in one's own home. that it is possible to study the self in practice by leaving one's teacher. You aren't by any chance knowing something, are you?

[46:57]

I don't know. So, I didn't ask him, but do some of you have the story of the 21st century? Yes. And does anybody have the story that we're practicing that way in the 21st century? Which way? The way of not. I'm suggesting that's what the practice is.

[48:03]

The practice is not happening in karmic consciousness. The practice is the way karmic consciousness is liberated from karmic consciousness. And the demonstration that liberation from karmic consciousness has happened is most importantly, demonstrated in karmic consciousness. To demonstrate that we're free of karmic consciousness without using karmic consciousness, there's no other place to demonstrate it. But people sometimes want to, and that's what Tori was trying to do. So in karmic consciousness you can have a story that you're trying to demonstrate freedom from karmic consciousness.

[49:08]

And you could use that story to demonstrate it. Please come. Yes, welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. If I tell a story about this meeting, That's not just a story.

[50:14]

Is that a story? Sounds like it. That the story is not just a story. If you say it is not just a story, does that sound like a story to me? No, I'm not asking about its sounding. I'm asking, I mean, in other words, I'm not asking about its appearance. Uh-huh. What are you asking? About... I'm asking about whether we can say something more than a story. No, we cannot say anything more than a story. In words? Right. Okay. But as we are we communicating something that's not reducible to a story? You mean when we tell a story, are we saying something that's not reducible to a story?

[51:18]

Well, it depends on the story, right? Sorry. When you tell a story, you don't have to exactly reduce it to a story, but you could because it's a story, and you could just stop there and say that I've just told a story, for example. Now I could admit I just told one. All we've got is stories, nothing more. There's nothing more to have. And all our stories are just conscious constructions. And if we practice with these stories, which is what we do have, we can become free. From the freedom of stories, we can tell stories from freedom from stories. But they're still stories. It's just that when we tell stories from freedom stories, we convey to other people the possibility of telling stories that way, and we can get to the place of freedom from stories.

[52:23]

And when we speak from freedom, our speech is not a story. Okay? Okay. But when people hear what we said, they make it into a story. I understand. That's important. Thank you. I have that same story. Um, how is it that we, that we meet?

[53:28]

How do we practice, um, ancestors and... Um, you first, I heard you, I heard of how do we actually meet, okay? And, um, we have a name for how we actually meet and that the name is the Buddha way. How the Buddha way goes is unknowable. So you're asking me how we meet and I'm responding to you that way and then we're taking care of this conversation. Is it possible to know if we have met, if there has been a meeting?

[54:31]

No. Well, I would say it's possible to and merge with the meeting, with the real meeting, and act from that place of the reality of the meeting, but that meeting is not an object of knowledge. It's not an object of karmic consciousness. So what we ordinarily call know is and that does not reach the way we're meeting. But if we don't take care of the way we appear to be meeting and the way we appear to be not meeting, if we don't take care of the way we appear to be in harmony, appear not to be in harmony, we'll be trapped in those appearances. We will be meeting all the while the Buddha way is not hindered by our belief in our stories.

[55:34]

But if we don't take care of the stories, we will believe them and we will kind of feel alienated from something which we might feel alienated from what we think is the way. But we also might be alienated from something we don't know what it is, but we still feel bad and stressed. So how is it that we, how is it that, and I don't know the way to say this, but how is it that we come to see past stories or come to not, and that's not right, but the way you come to see past stories is as present stories.

[56:46]

And the actuality or the way past stories function in our present storytelling is not known. But the past stories I have told are supporting my present storytelling. But I can't see the consequences of my past stories. And those consequences are supporting the story I'm telling you right now. And when I see a story of my past stories, that's not the consequences of my past stories. That's a present mental construction of my past stories. You don't have to go.

[58:01]

Do you want to stay or go? Do you want to stay or go? I wouldn't say anything more. I don't know what I want, but I think I'll go. Okay. That fits nicely into her coming. But I wasn't dismissing you. I didn't dismissing you. I had the story of welcoming her to come up. So why can't you see the consequences of past stories? The consequences of past stories are inconceivable. And also the way the inconceivable consequences are supporting the present storytelling, the way that works, the way it actually works is inconceivable. Even though I just said, and I've been saying this for a while, I've noticed that I have a story that there's great consistency in that story, that it keeps coming up.

[59:09]

but I cannot actually see how consequences are supporting my... Like, for example, when you learn English, you can't actually see how English lessons are supporting your ability to speak English. Most children, you know, when they first start speaking English, they cannot, they don't even have an idea that what they've been doing for a year and a half is actually be able to say their first sentence. They do not have the ability to think of that. But as we get older, if we would reflect on how is it that my saying, speaking English, how is it that that supports me to speak English now? How is it that my practice in the piano, to play the piano now, how that supports, works, is inconceivable. But the story is that past karma of moving the fingers in a certain way and listening to music, that karma supports the ability to perform music now.

[60:16]

But how the support is unconscious. So our past karma, not what we did, because what we did is gone, but the consequences of everything we've done is present and inconceivable. And the message from the truth is that Buddhists are telling us right now that only by realizing that process do you know it. That also is not something you know. It's something you realize. Many people say you cannot, no one could know the process of causation. Buddhism says we don't say we know it, but we say it's possible to become it. to realize it, to actualize it, by being kind to the appearances which are not the causation process.

[61:19]

are caused by the past enactment of appearances. Past enactments of appearances support present enactment, but how that works is not another appearance. Just like my life is supported by my past karma, but my stories about how my life supports my past karma are not examples of my present karma. They're not how my past karma supports my present life. My actual life is that process. And the Buddha way is to realize that, not to make an object of knowledge. And when you realize that, it's also inconceivable. That is inconceivable. That is realizing inconceivability. Freedom must be inconceivable. Freedom is inconceivable. Freedom is primarily of the main thing that causes our bondage, conception.

[62:24]

So we have to learn to be kind to storytelling, conceptions, imagination, and we need to use storytelling, imagination, and conception in order to be free of them. Free of them, then we continue the same practice, but we're free at the same time. Okay, yeah, thanks. Okay, bye. I was just wondering, it's a quick question. Yeah. I was just wondering, I didn't understand your answer to Susan's question, so I was wondering if you could elaborate. This Susan or the other Susan? Okay, you didn't understand, yes? So what was the question? You said something about speaking from a place which is free of karmic consciousness, and that being that speech.

[63:39]

If karmic consciousness, but when someone hears it, then it becomes... So how is the speech free of karmic consciousness? When a living being takes care of their karmic consciousness, they enter the realm of karmic consciousness, and from that place they can speak. But what they say is not constructed. But in speaking to living beings that can construct linguistic phrases, they will take what's in the language and turn it into language. So by being kind to linguistic consciousness, you enter the realm which is free of it, and from that realm you will sometimes speak and also make gestures. But when you make the gestures, they're not linguistic, but people will learn the language of that gesture.

[64:42]

And when you speak, you will not be speaking words, but they will make language out of your speech. So a Buddha can talk to people who speak many languages, and they will all turn what the Buddha is saying into their language. And if they speak several languages, one of them sometimes, and another one another time. But the Buddha is not... You know the chant where we say, although it's not fabricated, it's not without speech? Remember that part? So that speaking, this freedom is not fabricated, it's not speech, but it goes and people turn it into speech. And the way you get there is by using speech to train yourself to work with speech in this way which liberates you from speech. that you understand with speech, that what we're trying to do with speech is not trying to get the meaning from the speech, our attention to the speech in such a way that we'll become free of it.

[65:45]

Again, as I said last week, karmic consciousness is words. And words liberate karmic consciousness. And once you're free, speak words, You speak freedom and that gets turned into words by beings who are linguistic beings. But the message is coming from freedom and people who are not free, they think they're speaking words and then people turn their words into other words. So I say words, and then you make words out of my words. But speaking from this place of freedom, from that place, the Buddha does not have any words. He can say something, but without words, and people make what the Buddha says into words. But the words they make them into, the Buddha helps them use those words to address the quality of what they're doing, this language to construction, in order to become free of it.

[66:58]

And one of the things that what the Buddha is saying, you know, like the words of the Buddha are not speech. So when the Buddha senses that somebody is using their language in such a way as to entrap themselves, then another message is sent which they will turn into words which will confront the entrapment policy. And it just keeps working until beings are free. So, I won't really be able to understand exactly how that works. You'll only be able to understand how that works when you become free of karmic consciousness. When you become free of karmic consciousness, you will enter how it works. We're already in how it works, but we're isolating ourselves from it. If you care for your storytelling, you will become free of it and you will enter how it works.

[68:06]

But you won't understand how it works the way you understand. It won't be an appearance that you see. You will be totally intimate with it. and you will speak from there, and people will turn into speech, and then they'll ask you if that's what you said, and you might say yes, or you might say no. But when you say yes and no, you're not really speaking language, you're just responding, and they turn what you say into yes and no. And if you're happy with the way they did it, you send them a message, let them know that you agree with what they did. But your message is not words, but they turn it into yes. And then they say, did you say yes? And you say yes. I mean, you do something that they turn into yes again. So there is confirmation from Bodhidharma. And there's confirmation of the meeting. But we have to go to the place where Bodhidharma is. So now I'll tell that story which I was postponing.

[69:08]

about Bodhidharma. So he's sitting there facing the wall and his second ancestor comes to see him and finally he accepts him. And Bodhidharma says, train yourself thus. Outwardly, don't activate your mind around objects. Inwardly, no coughing and sighing in the mind. the wall, you enter the way. So he's suggesting to this student, make your mind like a wall. Make your mind like that. And then Ancestor Hueca tries that and he goes and tells Bodhidharma what he's doing, and Bodhidharma says, no. And then he tries it again, and Bodhidharma says, no, no, no, no.

[70:11]

For seven years, he tries to make his mind like a wall. He tries to, like, look at things without, you know, making stories about them. And then inwardly, he tries to have experiences without telling stories about them. That's the instruction. And then he goes to tell Bodhidharma to see if he's got it. And Bodhidharma says, no, for seven years. And then finally, after seven years, Bodhidharma says, has the disciple given up storytelling? And the disciple says, yes. And he says, prove it. And he says, I always, no words reach it. And Bodhidharma says, confirmation. And I say Bodhidharma says confirmation, but I mean Bodhidharma speaks and the student hears the word confirmation.

[71:21]

In the student accent, Bodhidharma will respond in such a way that the student will hear confirmation again. So he's confirmed in the realm of words. But really, it's his freedom from words that's being confirmed. He reaches a place where no words reach. But it took a lot of, tried all kinds of methods. And the teacher didn't, the teacher supported him to keep trying to treat his words in that way. And he finally found a way to work with his words where he became free of them. He was clearly aware. And it's a place where no words reach. And then from that place, he can say, I put aside everything. I put aside what? Doing things to things. I put aside stories. It isn't that he has no stories that are going on. He just put them aside. He's just letting go of them. He's free. So he can still say, yes, I have.

[72:25]

I'm free of this stuff. And then Bodhidharma says, okay, now show me in language how you're free. And then he says, I'm clearly aware, but no words reach it. We need to demonstrate in the world of prison, we need to demonstrate in prison the freedom. We need to demonstrate in the world of form and enclosure. We need to show freedom in prison. And in that story he did. And Bodhidharma gave instruction demonstrating his freedom. He gave that instruction in the realm of karmic consciousness. May I ask one more question? Yeah, please. In terms of the kind of back to the speech thing, is even if

[73:30]

Like, even if something isn't spoken from awareness of being... Say again. Even if something is what? Like, even if I'm speaking... Yes. And I'm not aware that I'm... Like, I'm not free from... I'm not aware that... You're telling a story. Yeah. You think you're saying something that's true rather than just telling a story? But... Saying it in ignorance, is it still... Is the same thing still occurring, like it's still coming from that place, whether I understand or not, you know? Yep. The Buddha way, do all day long. And if you're kind to everything you do all day long, you'll be free of what you're doing all day long and enter into the way you're actually saying the things you're saying.

[74:35]

The way you're saying, the way you're performing these things, you really are doing it that way. But if you're not kind to what you're saying, if you're not really like totally there on the job, so thoroughly there that you're completely free of it, you don't see how the Buddha way pervades that. So we're training ourselves at embracing what we're doing. And to target a Zen is to do it with somebody else. And we're doing it in karmic consciousness either way. But to target a Zen is to do it with somebody else. Sorry, thank you. See? And is to do that with other people so they tell you when you say to talk to someone. Did you get that, Simone? Hi. I thought that to talk to someone means like the wise teacher and that's what an ancestor means.

[75:39]

Now, to talk at the Zen means that I hear the teaching, I enter into concentration, and I understand it there, which is true. And Ancestor Zen is saying, if you understand the teaching, then enact it with somebody else. So bring it back into karmic consciousness of daily life. Now that you've understood freedom from karmic consciousness, bring it into karmic consciousness with somebody else. The way, the Tathagata Zen doesn't explicitly mention that. So as many Buddhist texts would talk about, here's the teaching of reality. And, you know, like for example, all things are just conscious construction only.

[76:45]

All things are insubstantial. You receive that teaching and you meditate on it and then you get to a place where you feel that you become free, that you're happy, you're free of your suffering, your practice is really unimpeded more than before. And to talk it as in and say, now, see if you can get somebody else to do that with you. and see if you can do that in all aspects of daily life. I can see in a specific conversation the distinctive being important, but in my heart it doesn't really... I guess maybe that's why I'm not understanding the difference that much. Well, I appreciate that story. People wonder, do you actually need a teacher? Once you receive the teachings, so even these stories, these Zen stories, they're stories about how to help you become free of your stories.

[77:52]

You could do the same thing with the stories without a person. Recognize the relationship with beings. then it's not so much important whether the teacher is the text or the teacher is flesh, you know, like a human too, is it? Or, I mean... The Ancestors Zen is saying it's very important to do it with another person in karmic consciousness. There's no persons other than karmic consciousness. Only in karmic consciousness are there persons. So we want, and for persons, especially human persons, human persons are the most difficult thing to arrive at harmony with. That's why Tore liked to go out in the woods because he could actually find harmony. And his teacher said, yes, you've got it. Now come back and do it with me. And Torrey says, yeah, I've got it now, but I don't have to come back with you to realize that I lose it when I come back.

[78:56]

So I'm going to go deeper and deeper and really confident that I can be as settled and as free and as at peace in daily life as I am here. And I don't want to come back until I get to that place. And he repeatedly says, now I'm completely free of all doubts about the teaching. I'm totally happy. But still, daily life is too much for me. And the teacher doesn't say, come back so I can test you. The teacher says, come back because I need you. He says, you're perfect, you're the best. Come on back. But Tori doesn't want to see how he's the best. He's the best at having a problem integrating his great understanding with daily life. He's really good at noticing how much of a shortcoming there is there. So he, in fact, he did finally come back.

[79:57]

And I got to say more about how horrendous it was when he came back.

[80:02]

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