So this is kind of a new series of classes, right? The last set of classes, I think, was six classes, is that right? Did we spend six classes on Case 32? I thought we'd spend at least one more night on Case 32. I... I... Today it occurred to me that what's happened concerning this study is that by staying with this koan long enough, people are starting to do what you're supposed to do with these things. They're actually working with them in their meditation, in their daily life, and they're actually coming to talk to me about them. I say, you know, talk to somebody about these koans, but I understand that if you don't spend enough time on it, you feel, you know, you don't feel ready.

[01:09]

It takes a while to work with it long enough so you really want to talk to somebody about it. And people have been working long enough so that quite a few people are now working with this thing and talking about it and... It makes me think that when we study a koan, we should study it until people really start working with it. Usually what I do in this class is I stay with the koan until I feel like the class starts moving with it, or the class goes a few steps deeper into the koan than than it first appeared, so that there is a sense of working on it in this room. But I think this koan that we spent six and now seven weeks on has moved at several levels deeper into the practice situation.

[02:17]

So it might be that the next koan we'll spend a long time on, too, until I feel like people are really comfortable enough with it that they really can work with it. That's one thing. Thank you, Lee. So some new people don't know the story, right? Thanks. Sit over there if you want. So here's the story.

[03:19]

Excuse me a second. I have to say something to her. The story is a monk comes to see the teacher Yangshan and Yangshan says, where are you from? And the monk says, you province. And Yangshan says, do you think of that place? And the monk says, I always think of it. And then Yangshan says that the the ability to think or the active aspect of thinking is what we call mind or thought. And the passive aspect of thinking or that which is thought of is called objects or the environment.

[04:28]

So the name of this case is Mind and Environment Diane, you want to come closer? There is room up here, closer, yeah. There's some Zafras there, too. This is Diane. There's some persons right there. You can sit over here if you want to. Thank you. Okay, so the monk comes to see Yangshan and Yangshan asks him what?

[05:32]

And what does the monk say? And what does Yangshan say? And what does the monk say? And then Yangshan says the the ability to think, or the thinker, is the mind, and that which is thought of is the environment. And therein are buildings and lands and animals and everything in the universe. And he says, reverse your thinking and think of the ability to think, or think of the thinker. He says that to the monk. And then he says, dot, dot, which means one minute, one second, twenty years, we don't know how long. And then he says, at some point in history, he says, now, are there many things there?

[06:42]

And the monk said, when I get here, I don't see anything at all. And Yangshan says, this is right for the stage of faith, but it's not yet right for the stage of the person. And the monk says, do you have any further particular instructions? And Yangshan says, to say that I do have some particular instruction or that I don't, either way wouldn't be accurate. You have the seat, you get the seat, you get the robe, you get one mystery out of three, and from now on you see on your own. And that's the end of the story. Central instruction of this story, the central instruction is reverse your thinking. and think of that which thinks, or think of the ability to think.

[07:47]

That's the central instruction. Once one fully accomplishes this instruction, then the rest of the story will come into play. And so I want to, I want to, before we leave this story, once again, Consider what that instruction is and how that instruction is practiced. And then see what you have to say about it. I was walking with Arlene yesterday back from the ocean. And we were walking from the ocean towards Green Gulch on the path. And some people were walking from Green Gulch down towards the ocean and they said to us, you can't get through that way, it's a dead end. And we said, oh, thank you.

[08:53]

And we kept walking and they said, maybe you know something we don't know. Maybe you live there. Or something like that, is that what they said? And then I said, either I said in my mind or I said out loud, to us it's not a dead end, it's a place to turn around. It's our home. For us, our home is not a dead end, it's a place we turn around, we go in there, we turn around, we go in and out. And this case has become, is becoming or has become not a dead end, but a place to turn around. When first studying this case, I think it seems to a lot of people like a dead end, like you can't get through, just like go back where you came from, but go back to your province and come back later maybe.

[09:58]

it can, this case, this place called Green Gulch, this place called, this practice place, and this story can be a place, a way to turn around, a place to turn around. So, again, someone came this morning and said that when he tries to reverse the mind, anxiety comes up, and then with the anxiety there's a tendency to try to get a hold of something again. And I think a lot of people have that experience, trying to do this, follow this instruction. I don't feel like this instruction is a, exactly a technique. It's more like a direction. It's a direction, but not exactly something, and a technique. And in a sense, to use a technique What you do, for you or me to use a technique, which I would do, even the most wholesome technique, is still the usual direction of thinking.

[11:11]

It's thinking sort of in drive or in the usual direction. Anything you do is the mind working in its usual way. So this instruction says, reverse the tendency, reverse the way of thinking which is that you do things. And I was careful to tell this person, I didn't say, don't try to do this instruction. Because again, if you don't try to do this instruction, still your mind will be in drive. It's okay to try to do this instruction because trying to do this instruction is just regular old thinking. And remember also that the Chinese character that is used there for thinking is also the character which they use to mean will or volition.

[12:22]

And it's the definition of karma. It's the definition of action. So thinking, the character for thinking that's used here also is the character that's used to define karma. So another way to say this is reverse your karma. Reverse your karma. Or reverse the definition of karma. Turn the switch without doing anything. So I said to this person, for example, thinking... it isn't that you think some other way, it's that the reversal is that you think thoroughly. That whatever you think, you think so thoroughly that you realize that it's turned around. Or we had a discussion with the practice group the other day, so I would say Reversing the mind means to think to the brink.

[13:24]

Think to the brink of thinking. And at the brink of thinking, you realize that thinking is not thinking. And so again, this famous teacher, Yao Shan, was sitting and a monk said, what kind of thinking is going on when you're sitting still? And he says, thinking of not thinking. But thinking of not thinking doesn't mean you think of something called not thinking. It means that you think so thoroughly that in the thoroughness of thinking, there is a reversal of the thinking. But to do something thoroughly is nothing in addition to the thing. There's no medium that you use to get to thoroughness.

[14:27]

So it's an immediate practice. And that is a new definition of action, too. It's action which is simply the thoroughness of a thing. So thoroughness is the medium of transformation, or thoroughness is the medium where things will turn. And it's still, the mind will try to do various things, and it may even try to do thoroughness, but you can't do thoroughness you can try, but in the end you can't do thoroughness. There can be nothing doing thoroughness. Thoroughness means that when whatever it is is completely itself, there can't be anything lacking. There can't be anything left out that's doing anything that's outside of it. It is just the thoroughness of the thought that you're having. And how to find that thoroughness, how to realize that thoroughness is something that takes

[15:36]

in one sense, great determination and courage and also gentleness and subtlety and flexibility. And again, someone said to me today, he said something like, I hate it. I hate everything. And I said, I felt good hearing this person say this because I felt like this person was in the mud of thinking, was really in the thought of I hate everything, or, you know, I hate. And as you know, it says in the Lotus Sutra that to practice all virtues, what that means is to enter the mud So practice all virtues and be upright and gentle and flexible and honest.

[16:41]

And if you do that, then you will see Buddha in the mud. But you have to walk all the way up, in a sense, you have to walk all the way up and, you know, get to the dead end and go all the way into the dead end before you can turn around. So, should I go on any more? Yeah, I'd say a little bit more. And that is, last Wednesday I introduced the first of the six subtle dharmagates, which are these six ways to dance with your breath. First is counting, then is following, then is stopping, then is contemplation, and then is reversing.

[17:50]

And reversing is basically the same as this one. And then there's purification. Purification is basically the same as this stage of the person. And so I recommended that we all just count our breathing for a week. And I mentioned that Suzuki Roshi assigned us to count our breathing in January of 1969. And he said he would do it too. And so I assigned this, and some people... took this assignment sincerely and actually, by taking it sincerely, actually didn't like the assignment because they were going to do it and they didn't want to count their breath because, for various reasons. They didn't, they, they, one person didn't want to count their breath because he gets into a certain mechanical approaches to meditation in counting. He can count the breath actually quite successfully, but he doesn't like the kind of robot feeling that he gets into. And I feel that way too, myself.

[18:51]

But I was willing to be a robot for a week with you. I was willing to, if you excuse the expression, be in the mud of robot, robot, robot, robotic mud. Be a machine, a counting machine for a week. And all the kinds of frustration that come up when you become a machine or a machine-like meditator, all that stuff comes up. And similar kinds of frustrations that come up when you're trying to do the reversal practice. And this person told me more about this frustration that happened. And in the process, this person took a walk all the way around those, I could hear her as she talked, telling me about all these different stages. and coming back basically to counting the breath happily. So, when you are counting your breath, or following your breath, you can also do this reversing thing, even so the fifth stage can be done in the first stage.

[19:56]

And what's in the central message of this koan can be done when you're thinking of your posture. Think of your posture, think of your breathing, you can still do this reversal of your thinking. So this week I will talk about following on Wednesday and see if everybody will be willing to follow the breath for a week. Excuse me, but everybody's got their favorite point at which to, you know, do the practice, basically where, the place where they're at, sort of, or where they think they should be. But then eventually we'll get to doing the practice, we'll get to stage five of this, and we'll be doing, again, the practice that's recommended in this koan, in relationship to the breathing. So, I guess that's for maybe enough of an introduction and a review of this basic practice. Yes? In case some people might want to come to that lecture, it might be good to show them when it is this week.

[20:59]

It will be at 7.30 in the evening. I thought it was going to have to be in the morning because it's my daughter's birthday on the 27th, But it turns out she's going to dinner with her friends that night. I can give a talk before they come back to the house for ice cream. Cake. Pardon? Inizendo. Inizendo. And also, we're also studying the paramitas. So on Monday, I introduced the first breathing practice of counting and the first paramita of giving. So I introduced the second breathing practice of following.

[22:05]

But I don't know if I'll get to the second paramita. I might have to do a little bit more in giving. We'll see. So any questions on this central practice? Yes. I was wondering if you could talk about, I'm not clear on why the monk's success at not being able to find objects with that exercise is right for the stage of faith. I don't understand the association. Your question is what? Yashang said that the monk's practice was right for the stage of faith. Yes. I don't understand why. Wasn't Yangshan that said that? Yangshan. Yangshan said what? Yangshan said that the monk, the monk's practice at that point, found the monk saying, I can't find anything. Yes. Yangshan said, that's right for the stage of faith. Yes. I don't understand why that's right for the stage of faith. You don't? Stage of faith, well, stage of faith can be understood in many ways, but two ways I would understand it in this story is, one, that stage of faith means

[23:10]

that faith means, in this case, faith means that... Are you uncomfortable? Physically? A little bit, it's fine. You sure? You can sit here if you want to. No, no. You okay? Yeah. Faith, the Chinese character for faith has one part of its person and the other part is word. So, in one sense, I read that as meaning that what faith means, in this case, the Buddhist character for faith that's used, what faith means is that the person lines up with the word. The person lines up, in this case, with the verbal instruction, reverse your thinking. He became that instruction. So, if your concern, his concern was, this monk came to the teacher, his concern was to follow the instruction, to follow the directions of this teacher. And he did follow the instructions of the teacher.

[24:13]

I don't know how fast he did it or how long it took him to do it, but he finally brought himself into perfect alignment with the instruction. He gave up everything else for what he was concerned about, which was to follow his instructions, and he did follow the instruction. And the teacher confirmed that he reached the stage In other words, you have completely followed the instruction. Now, also implied in this particular instruction is that if you follow this instruction, you will experience a liberation from entanglement with objects. you will experience that the world you see around you, you're no longer like, it's no longer out there. And you're no longer entangled, hung up, whatever with it.

[25:17]

Your obsessions and all that stuff will drop away when you follow this instruction completely. So another meaning, and another meaning of the stage of faith is that he had entry into an awakening experience by this. that he understood that objects are not out there, but we just think they are. He understood this. And he demonstrated that he understood it by what he said and how he was at that time. Okay? Does that make sense? Any other questions on that? Yes? I was wondering if his teacher's instructions could have taken root to the stage of cursive. Yes, they could have. It sounds like he said he had thoroughly followed the instructions and the stage. Right. And again, I could say, well, he did thoroughly follow the instructions, but perhaps if he'd followed them even more thoroughly, he would have gone even beyond that stage into the stage of persons.

[26:22]

Maybe there was still, actually one commentary says, although I just said he was disentangled from objects, there are two other levels of disentanglement from objects that are more subtle that he had not yet attained. Which I said, he attained the disentanglement from objects which means he was simply disentangled. He was detached from what he saw. He was detached from what he felt. He was detached from what he thought. He was detached... and liberated from his emotions. He was detached from every object he could be aware of. He experienced a preliminary bona fide detachment. But he had not yet experienced detachment from the detachment. In other words, he had not gone beyond the attachment to use attachment to express his detachment.

[27:27]

That's why the verse celebrating this talks about the Garudas and the dragons. The enlightened person who's gone beyond just the entry into enlightenment then uses attachment, uses entanglement as material to fly, as material to walk. and he hadn't gone that far. So he had experienced detachment, but not detachment from detachment. And then even more thoroughly, he hadn't experienced detachment even from the idea of detachment, and the idea of detachment from detachment. So it is possible to experience release and relief and entry into liberation and yet still not be able to use daily life as a mode of expression. The bodhisattva needs to be able to use daily life experiences to express detachment.

[28:32]

And then by working in that way to even be able to use the daily life so thoroughly that even the thought of detachment, even the thought of using daily life as an expression, even that is dropped away. And that's, in a sense, if he had followed the instruction all the way, he would have attained those. But, anyway, that's asking a lot. And most people need to do that and because of doing that he got the seat and the robe and he had to go now out in the world with his enlightenment and eat a lot of stuff and process it through this awakening until he could use this material of ordinary entanglement in an enlightened way. He wasn't yet able to do that in his story. Whereas the verse of the National Teacher said, after getting to the place of where there isn't anything at all, he also said, blue mountains fill my eyes.

[29:41]

So he could use the blue mountains to express nothing at all. Most people express the blue mountains, but they're coming from believing that the blue mountains exist and that they're out there as solid mountains aside from themselves. So then they're just expressing their thinking, basically, which is fine, but they haven't yet thoroughly followed through on their thinking and experienced liberation from their thinking and then used the Blue Mountains to express liberation from thinking of Blue Mountains. This monk couldn't do that. But he did do very well and I hope all of us will do as well as that monk and I hope you practice this practice until you get to that place that he got. And if you get to that place, I'd like to hear it. And clap for you. And even see if perhaps you could take a step from there.

[30:47]

Yes? I read the commentary. Yes? And it says, nowadays, hardly one of 10,000 people reaches this state. Yes? What do you say to that? I think that's certainly true. Now, I don't know if you meant one in 10,000 that make an effort, or just one in 10,000 in the general population. But certainly, it's one in 10,000 in the general population. Where there's one in 10,000 among the people who are practicing Zen, that's getting a little stricter. I don't know how many people are practicing Zen in America. 10,000, 100,000, 200,000. If there's 200,000, that means there's 20 people. No, no, no. which is not done by very many people. But on the other hand, that's 20 somewhat enlightened people, which is pretty good. And we could join them if we made the effort and swell the ranks to 26 or 38 or whatever.

[31:56]

Anyway, it is pretty rare that people follow through this way. First of all, it's rare to hear even the instruction. Second of all, it's rare to follow it all the way That's the tough thing about this practice, is that there's some rare thing about it. Yes? The monk admitted to thinking of the new province often, or all the time. Always. Always. Yes. Is that following through with the instruction thoroughly? No. I mean, it doesn't... Admitting that you think of you province always, for the new people in class, thinking of you province, you province is where he's from, right? So a basic principle in Buddhist psychology is that whenever you think, all you're thinking is entirely about where you come from.

[33:01]

You cannot... You never use... new material to think. You always use old material to think. That's why thinking should be reversed, because you're thinking just processing old stuff, old concepts. So you always think of what's already happened to you, where you came from and everything that happens between when you were born and now, but also for many lifetimes. So, according to regular Buddhist psychological theory, the monk is simply right that he always thinks of your province. And the other meaning of always thinking of your province is that we always think not only in terms of what's already happened, but we're also always thinking back to our origins. The thinking refers back to our origins. So in those two senses, this monk... was either telling, either he's given the correct answer according to Buddhist psychological teaching, and or he was actually reporting his own experience, that he actually does think about his home all the time. Which seems unlikely because, so I don't think the literal meaning was true because we don't just literally think of our home.

[34:09]

I don't just think, like for example, I don't just think of Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi. I don't do that all day long. I don't always think of Mississippi. I occasionally think of Mississippi. But we always think of all the places we've all the experiences that we've ever had and all the concepts we have available to ourselves to pull up and say that's what's happening. So he was and he probably I think this monk was consulting his experience and also that was his understanding. But that's not yet following Yangshan's instructions. He hadn't heard Yangshan's instructions yet. In the sense that rather than looking away from his home, rather than being someplace besides where he's come from, Wait a second. I think what you're saying is really important, so I want to make sure what you're saying. What? Instead of what? Instead of being someplace besides where he comes from, or trying to think of something.

[35:15]

I mean, to me it... What do you mean by instead of being someplace besides where he's coming from? What do you mean by that? Seeking outside himself, seeking outside where he's coming, what's given rise to him. Oh, you mean like... Okay, you can finish. This is... Okay, go ahead. I think it's a little bit striking that the monk says I always think of it. And maybe I'm reading too much into that, but I'm just interpreting it to mean that he's not someplace besides... He's not seeking outside where he is, or where he's come from, or what he is, or what his life is. He's at that point. It seems to me that that's the stage of this step, this process. Okay, yeah, I see. When he says, you think of that place, I always think of it.

[36:18]

There is nothing else besides this life that I'm doing, that I'm involved with. This is right, it's turning the plight inward, in a sense. To some extent, he's already turning the light inward. Right, he's already turning the light inward at that point. I think that instruction, it seems to me that just from that point, Yangshan is then able to proceed with his instruction. Because the monk is not looking somewhere else. He's not looking somewhere beyond. He's looking exactly where he's at. He is looking somewhere else, I think, because he's been in places before where he looked someplace else. So I think his habits of looking someplace else are there. But I think he's already quite present. I think you're right. This guy is primed for this instruction. He's already quite present. He knows that he deals with what's happening in terms of his past. He knows that he deals with what's happening in terms of his concepts. He understands that already, pretty much.

[37:21]

So he's ready for this instruction. But if he does do that, he still is dealing with the habit of thinking that there's something outside himself. He still thinks that there's something outside himself at that point, I think. But he's quite present with that process. So the instruction was successful because he was... Like some people, like I talked in one lecture, I said something about this monk saying, well, I always think of it, and I asked the people in the audience if they thought of where they were from, if they always thought of your province, and this one person said, no, I don't, you know. she wouldn't admit it. A lot of people will not admit that's what they're up to. They think they're actually thinking of some new place. You know, that they're not dwelling in their past, they're not hung up on their past stuff. A lot of people will not admit, will not come down into the mud in that sense, or in some other senses too. So this monk was good in that way. Yes.

[38:22]

Yes. In case 15, Yang Chang asked a very same question. He responds a bit differently. He doesn't want to talk about where he came from. He could stand there. I was wondering how that compares with this one, where he is or Yang Chang was at that time. Are you any plans as hope? So he's all hoeing with his teacher, Guishan. And Guishan said, where did you come from? Let's look at it. By the way, there's books for people in this class. If you want books, you can get books from me. Okay, so this is a simple story. This was kind of a theme story for a practice career we had where Peter Rudnick was the head student.

[39:25]

So, where are you coming from? And Yangshan says, the fields. He did say where he was coming from. Yeah, and then he planted, then he planted his hoe. And then Yangshan says, on South Mountain there's a lot of people cutting thatch. And so, now, was his first answer, where are you coming from, from the fields, is that any different from the monk saying, you province? Sounds the same. Pretty much. Then he says, how many people are in the fields? Now, you could read this as he's saying how many, he has jumped to the question of now when you get there, are there lots of things? But Yangshan's so fast that he went back and looked at that, and now the teacher says, are there many people there?

[40:42]

Are there things there in this place you're coming from now? Are there a lot of people there? And he plants his hope. Instead of saying, no, there aren't, or whatever he could have said, because he was disentangled from that space, he plants his hope. Now, had he reached the stage of faith? What do you think? did he reach the stage of the person? Right, but before he was told that, was his planning his hoe an example of stage of person? Well, I don't know. I wasn't there. But I could see that maybe it was stage of person. That he could have said, you know, there aren't any people in the fields, teacher. when I look back at where I came from, there's nothing there.

[41:48]

He could have said that. But instead of doing that, he planted his hoe. I also could have been doing some other things too. But if we give him credit for the stage of faith, for the stage of realizing disentanglement, then he was able to use his hoe to express his disentanglement. Boom. And then his teacher, confirming his demonstration, says, some people are cutting thatch over, why don't you go help them? And he goes and helps them. So you could understand that what's going here is that case 15 is a... The person in our case right here realized both stages in a previous story that he had with his teacher where he was successful, where this monk wasn't. You could read the story that way. Now, what other way could you read the story? Did he do anything that makes you feel like he didn't... Is there anything that shows that he didn't experience disentanglement and liberation from the objective world? Did he do anything that would make you feel like he still hung up there?

[42:53]

And if you say that he did succeed in disentanglement, is there anything that shows he wasn't able to come forth and go beyond disentanglement? Is there anything in the story that shows that? In the whole story? Huh? In the whole story. Well, he could have done a lot of stuff, but if you make up some other stuff he had done, let's hear some other examples and see if we think that they would show any problem. But looking at this story, I can see that what he did is he succeeded where the monk in case 32 didn't. I can see it that way. And I'm willing to entertain other possibilities, but I'd like to hear how you would do that. And I'll give you some time to think of that. Something comes to mind, a time that Buddha spoke to, and I can't remember his name, where he said, I think we should plant, we should build a sanctuary. He pointed to the ground and he said, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. And then Indra took a blade of grass and stuck it in the ground and said, the sanctuary...

[43:59]

It's very similar, yeah. In both case 15 and case 32, the Buddha, in one case the Buddha is Yang Guishan, in the other case the Buddha is Yangshan, they point to a place. This is a good place to build a sanctuary. It's the same as saying, where are you from? And then once you say where are you from, then you point again. How many people are here? Now, in Yangshan's case, Guishan didn't give him any instruction on how to do this. Maybe he'd give him this instruction some other day. In the case of 32, we hear the instruction. It's an instruction about how to use this place to build a sanctuary. How do you use this place to build a sanctuary? Reverse your thinking. How do you use your thinking to build a sanctuary in your thinking? Reverse it.

[45:02]

How do you reverse it? Use your thinking, use this place, use this time, use this experience to the brink. At the brink of whatever place you are, you will experience liberation from that place. Yes? What's the difference between Reversing your thinking and reversing your thinking with the intention to reverse your thinking. Reversing your thinking with the intention to reverse your thinking is regular thinking. And reversing your thinking would be just whatever thinking you're doing, as it happens, just do that completely. That's reversing. That reversing of thinking is not something you do. It is something that is revealed to you in the totality of your thinking. But say you did this in this way of not doing it, as a culmination of a course of

[46:12]

you know, meditation practice. You did it like while you were sitting, cross-legged. So what's the difference between doing it that way and just doing it without ever having heard of this instruction of reversing your thinking? and spending long hours attempting to reverse your thinking, but, you know, like a stone, you know, hit the windshield of your car and your thinking just kind of reversed for a moment. What's the difference? Well, in terms of the actual effect, there wouldn't be any difference. Whenever, when a stone hits your windshield, And at that moment, if you are completely there with the thought, a stone is hitting my windshield, and you completely thoroughly have that thought, the reversal will occur.

[47:13]

And as a result of that reversal, it might be then that if you went to a Zen center and someone said to you, reverse your thinking, you might be able to follow that instruction. But sometimes events are such that they, just karmically speaking, somehow we're able to enter into the thoroughness with them because there's something about them that completely fits with our intention and we can completely express it. Like one time one of our students was murdered on the street and I was standing there over the body with one of our members and he said to me, as we were standing there over this dead body, he said, why can't we be like this all the time? Because nobody, everybody was kind of like right there, you know, pretty much up around the brink of what we were doing. I mean, nobody was like, almost nobody was kind of like daydreaming or, you know, thinking, well, gee, when do you go to a movie or, you know, or, you know, I wish I was someplace else.

[48:20]

People were, like, not even thinking of that a lot and they were just, like, totally there, you know. There are situations like that or, like, certain kinds of meditative arts. If you don't concentrate, you'll get immediate feedback. So certain kinds of things, situations are very easy to be totally that way. But this kind of talking is a way to see if you can stand up to words, and a word that's telling you to do something as though you should do it, and see if you can not be caught by that. So this would be used to further test basically the same phenomena that does happen to people in many ways in their lives, in various things they do. And these words are the test to see if a person can do it, even for language that doesn't, that isn't so conducive or so easy to see what you should do. Because even though it's straightforward and it also catches people's, it catches that tendency of karma, it catches that tendency of doing something, of thinking.

[49:25]

And it goes in there and it cleans out some kind of like a dirty little old closet, you know, that you can't get at otherwise. So these koans are to get at various kinds of places where we catch and get stuck and see if you can respond here too. It seems that the description of the people around the dead body is the description of the stage person. Tell us more about that, please. Well, my sense of these people being absolutely, you know, as you talk about them that presently, unfocused, is that they're going beyond the stage of faith to the stage of person. Well, what are they doing to demonstrate that? Or how do you see that they got to the stage of faith? Well, they may have gotten to the stage of person through the stage of faith.

[50:28]

Right, but what in the story makes you think that they got to the stage of faith? The story you just told? Uh-huh. Well, I guess I can answer how it felt like it was the stage of person because there was engagement. It was total engagement. in the object, in the body, in the time, the environment, and they were absolutely there, present, engaged. Right. But that also could have been prior to the stage of faith, because as you approach the stage of faith, you get more and more engaged in the object. You get more and more engaged in that it's an object and in that you're thinking of the object. And as engagement gets more and more total, as you approach this place of total engagement, it sounds very much like what you're saying. So I feel that actually people were approaching that stage of meditation because of the circumstances of this totally engaging event, that they engaged with it.

[51:38]

I don't know if anybody attained the stage of faith in that event. I don't know if they did. But I think everybody was doing the kind of thing that does reverse your mind, namely to completely be present with what you're thinking of at the time and to watch your mind. People were watching their mind, I think. People were watching themselves be with this person. Everyone was quietly exploring the inner reaches of their own consciousness, I think, at that time. But I don't know if anybody did it so thoroughly that they experienced that crisp person was not outside them. I don't know if they got to that stage. Maybe somebody did, but I didn't hear about it. I didn't hear any reports of actually an entry of awakening at that time. But I did feel like everybody was following these instructions in fact. And nobody was fooling around.

[52:39]

Everybody was really taking care of business. The business of their own mind. Because there was nothing to do. For a long time we were standing there waiting for the ambulance to come It was a long time. We were just there. There was nothing we could do but just be there. There was nothing to do. A few people could talk, you know, but basically everybody was just there with themselves with whatever was going on and each person had their own thing and each person was dealing with their own thing and how they felt about their own thing. I think that's what it was. And that's, again, why can't we be like that all the time? Why does it take a murderer of a friend, to get us that serious about our own experience. Well, it doesn't take that. We can do it without that. But things like that do help us at that time anyway. And so you work with hospice people and you know sometimes with them, sometimes it's not too difficult to be like that.

[53:42]

On the other hand, I told people about one time I was with Suzuki Roshi in Portland were coming back from Portland after he had his gallbladder attack, and it was... I could not... Well, I was with myself, and I was with myself as I watched myself completely be everywhere else but on that airplane. I noticed I could not stand to be in that seat next to him. So in a sense, I was aware of how much I was running away. But I still really never could even be in my seat. It was so terrible to have his pain like that. But still, I was somewhere in the neighborhood, at least I noticed I was trying to get away. But I really never did get to being there. And I was ashamed, too, that I couldn't stand to be there in that seat. So anyway, I'm not so sure that those people... But again, using the situation and being engaged in objects before and after is quite similar...

[54:46]

actually the question is was there a realization that there isn't anything here in between those two engagements and that's something you can just ask somebody if it was so and and people usually don't lie about this kind of stuff because because when you're engaged like this you start telling the truth that's part of this thing about being honest People were pretty honest there in that street that night, and I think when people try to do this kind of instruction, they get pretty honest. I'm getting pretty honest responses from people, actually. They're telling me... What they're saying makes me think that they're telling the truth, because it sounds just like what a person would say, given what they say they're doing. It's very... You know, it's all hanging together very nicely. Sarah? When this reversion of mind happens, is it the same... Yes, it's the same thing.

[55:51]

And as I said before too, it is the actual enactment of the logic of perfect wisdom, which is, you know, thinking, thinking as not thinking is taught by the Buddha. Or in other words, the meaning of thinking, the meaning, the liberative meaning The liberation meaning of thinking is that it's not thinking. That's the teaching of the Diamond Sutra. But to realize that, we must think to the brink of thinking. And at the brink of thinking, you will see, oh my God, thinking isn't thinking. I mean, the Diamond Sutra will start popping out of you about whatever you're looking at. Although, you may be looking at some example that's not in the Diamond Sutra. Like Blue Jays, are not in the Diamond Sutra, literally, but you might see, oh, blue jays are not blue jays. Or, you know, pumas are not pumas. Salmon are not salmon. You may see.

[56:56]

Suddenly, by studying salmon thoroughly, you may see, oh, salmon are not salmon. You understand that. And then, and that's why they really are salmon. That's why salmon can go do the things they do is because they're not salmon. And that's the stage of the person for you in terms of your relationship with salmon, and it's the stage of salmon for the salmon. When you say that not salmon, do you mean that it's not an object? When you see that objects are not objects, then all the objects stop being what they are. and become liberated from... They're liberated too. So it isn't just that you drop your body and mind, the salmon drop their body and mind too. Everything... The puma are liberated too. Everything gets liberated from the categories you project on them. And they actually get liberated by you getting liberated from what you think of them.

[57:57]

Just like that story about pumas, you know, that I told... How many people heard the story about pumas? how many people heard the story about not pumas okay so pumas pumas what do they do what do they eat they eat deer mostly is puma the same as cougar huh puma yes Is it the same as mountain lion? Yeah. So three names for pretty much the same animal. Puma, mountain lion, and cougar. They used to live all over North America. Now they live in New Mexico and California and places like that. And mostly they eat deer. It's one of the main things they eat. Anyway, one time a puma poached a lamb or a sheep.

[59:03]

And so the New Mexico sheep herders decided that puma should be killed because their puma are killing their sheep. So they killed a lot of puma. So then after they killed the puma, there weren't the animals to eat the deer, so the deer multiplied and ate the grass that the sheep eat. And then the deer died and the sheep died. And the moral of the story is that puma are not puma. If you think a puma is a thing that kills deer and therefore, because a puma kills a sheep, a puma is an animal, a big cat kills sheep, and you think that's what a puma is. That's their idea of a puma, right? They went to shoot the puma that were killing the sheep because that was a puma. But they didn't understand puma kill animals. They eat the deer, and the deer eat the grass.

[60:04]

And the deer, when the deer don't eat the grass, then the sheep eat the grass. The puma is not just a puma. Puma is an ingredient in a whole ecology. It's not just a puma. And if you study, if you just go shoot puma, you know, then you just get, your life follows from what happens if you go shoot puma, namely... You kill the puma, the deer multiply and kill themselves, and you lose your herd. So that's what follows from not understanding that puma are not puma and Walter is not Walter. If you don't understand Walter, especially if you don't understand Walter is not Walter, then you're capable of doing things that are antithetical to the ecology, healthy ecology. But if we understand blue jays are not blue jays, People are not people. I'm not me. Thinking is not thinking. If you understand this stuff, then you start to understand Puma are vast. They're representative of a vastness. Salmon are an indicator of a vast process.

[61:08]

People are an indicator of a vast process. So everything is not what it appears to be. But you find that out by following through on your narrow-minded version of things. And as you approach and completely exert your narrow thinking on something It will turn and show you that what you're thinking is is basically not that. And that will then apply to everything. And then you'll start to have good relationships with people. But that's the stage of the person. First stage is to realize, is turning to realize that there isn't anything. And there isn't anything, really. There isn't Puma, there aren't people, there isn't thinking. And then there is people, there is Puma, there are thinking, and then the stuff really starts working for you. Yes. It seems like this logic has permeated the society to some considerable extent. Which logic? The logic that

[62:10]

you know, like the salmon is an indicator of a vast process. So, you know, people who are offering leadership training seminars in business or, you know, in terms of the physical sciences or biology or whatever, people are developing much more sophisticated models for how things work. And yet, maybe they're not, in terms of their own life, doing what you're saying, which is really staying close to the aspects of their thinking that are fixated on some object, giving it concreteness. Right, they might not be doing that. So are you willing to accept I mean, do you think it's okay that people are doing this other stuff in the meantime?

[63:16]

Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. However, I personally was not as interested in salmon before I personally had my own awakening about salmon. So, and I personally am not as interested in the people who are doing this who have not had an awakening that salmon are not salmon. and who are just dealing with it at the conceptual level, even though I agree with the process even more now than I did before, and I'm more behind it than I was before, still, I'm not attracted to people who are operating at that level, because I feel like they're not dealing with themselves. They're off the ground. So I'm just not attracted to people like that, personally. I feel that they're a little off the ground, but I think they're doing good things. But I feel funny about them, because... Until I understand that whatever their thing is, it's not their thing, I can't, I don't get it.

[64:23]

It just sounds like a good idea. It's like the Avatamsaka Sutra is a good idea, but until you actually enter into it, you don't really have your whole life behind it. So now I'm much more behind salmon, but the reason why I'm behind salmon is not just because people taught me about salmon, but because I watch my own thinking about salmon. And I watched how I had reservations, and I didn't understand what the big deal was about salmon. I watched my mind working, and then I saw the difference that happened in my mind when I understood more about what salmon were. And then I was much more behind it. It sounds like you needed both things. I mean, it sounds like you needed both your discomfort or suffering around your narrow understanding of salmon and the people who are giving you more information about what salmon really are. Right, so the people who are working for the salmon who, I don't know, in our various classes of understanding of the process, they help me. They help me by, over the years, again and again, talking about salmon.

[65:27]

Until finally... it dawned on me that salmon, the salmon I thought was salmon is not the salmon that they're talking about. And it's not the salmon that's important. The salmon that's important is this thing which is not salmon. It's not what I thought salmon was, but it's not salmon anyway. It's not this individual thing. It's the whole coast of America and all the people and plants and sun and moon and rain. It's all that's what the salmon is. So, let me just say one more thing. So the people who are researching the, you know, salmon spawning habits or whatever, who may not be coming at it from a Buddhist perspective... Well, Buddhist, do you mean enlightened perspective? Yeah, okay. But they actually helped you a lot, it sounds like. Yeah. So... So, I don't know.

[66:29]

In a way, from this enlightened perspective, how is the work that they're doing relatively not as good or something as your part of the realization? It's relatively not as good for them. But for me, it's virtually the same as if they were doing the work which would be better for them. For them it's not as good. But they might be doing the same work after an enlightenment experience that they're doing now. That's often the situation, is the person goes right ahead with what they were doing before, does exactly the same work, there's not the least bit of change in their work, but they're just totally inspired to do the same thing again because they realize much more deeply the point of it all. So, yeah. And so they help me, and hopefully, if they need any help finding out what they're doing, I might be able to help them get down to the ground of what they're doing there.

[67:43]

And then they'll be more effective. See, the thing we have to offer them is to help them, protect them from burnout. Because if you're working to help to research the behavior of plants and animals, but you think that they actually exist, then you'll be susceptible to burnout. But if you don't really understand what they appear to be, then you're protected from burnout, so you have much more energy to do the work. So that's what Buddhism can help these people do the work, which we would like them to do. And they can help us... by giving us information so we can verify our principle that, you know, the world isn't what we think it is. And we can get data for, you know, to study so we can be thorough about our thinking. So in that way we help each other. It isn't that this work is more important than that work, but that each of us has to do our work and... Our work, someone asked one of our question and answer recently, they said, you know, this teaching was given in another country and so on and so forth, but now we're in America and we have our own cultural situation.

[68:56]

Can we have this realization without understanding our own culture and our own society? And I said, no. And then the question and answer ended, and I think some people thought, I said, no, it wouldn't be possible to attain this realization in this culture. But you must find yourself, you know, your salmon, your thinking is a product, is totally in the context of this society, of this language, the way language is working here. We have to understand that that's what it means to thoroughly study your thinking, is to study it in the situation. So we have to do that thorough study of where we're coming from. That's U Province. Yes. The salmon is not a salmon, and therefore it is a salmon. I can reason with that over a period of a few minutes, and it makes good sense to me, and that's great.

[70:00]

What obstacle do I have from being able to realize that instantaneously about each thing that I deal with, each action, each sense perception that I receive? What obstacle is there to that? Well, there's, say, one, two, three. Basically, there's three obstacles. obstacles or obstructions. One is karmic obstructions, namely your inability to concentrate on your thinking or whatever is happening to you by various habits of distraction and whatever else, overeating, undereating, oversleeping, undersleeping, working too hard, not working hard enough, all that kind of action-oriented stuff that has residual effects. In the Heart Sutra it says, what does it say? When there's no... What is it? I can't remember. When the mind is no hindrance... When the mind is no hindrance, no fears exist.

[71:03]

Without any hindrance, no fears exist. Hindrance refers, in that case, what it says actually in the Heart Sutra is when there's no obstructions of klesha, of defilement, and no obstruction of the knowable. And they don't mention the first obstruction, which is karmic obstruction. the heart sutra is pitched at the level of where you're supposed to already be beyond karmic obstructions in other words you're supposed to be concentrating on the heart sutra and listening to the heart sutra so obviously you're not like totally like spaced out distracted like you know intoxicated you're listening to the heart sutra so you're taking care of that one at least for the moment so the karmic one is taken care of sort of by just everyday kind of proper actions yeah like everyday concentrating on what you're doing, you know, and, you know, being responsible for what's happening and not being distracted by all kinds of unwholesomeness. And the next obstruction is the obstruction of defilement, which means the basic defilement is this attribution of, you know, a self to the situation.

[72:15]

So, which we do. You know, thinking that what you're thinking, there's something outside yourself, that that's really outside yourself. I've slowed up because I had my concept of salmon that I had to get rid of, which took a while for me to think about, and if I got rid of my concept of self, then I wouldn't have to worry about my concept of salmon, my concept of Walter. Yeah, and not get rid of, but if you understood that your sense of self was born of all this stuff, and that actually they're inseparable, That would be to remove the obstruction of the defilements. And the other one would be to more subtly remove the obstruction just of the fact of knowing things. That's another obstruction to remove. Those are the things that stop us from realizing that what appears before us is just our thinking. I'm just not sure I got the last one yet.

[73:21]

The knowing things, obstruction. It's possible for me to... Just by knowing something, just by being aware, just by knowing something, there is an obstruction. And I can do that even after I have realized that myself is just something that has been built up from all these... thoughts that I've had previously? Yes, even after you're liberated from your belief in yourself and see that yourself is not something that's independent of everything else, as a matter of fact, even after you understand that yourself is entirely due to kindness of everyone else, and even though you realize yourself is born from what isn't you, and you really see that and understand that through your whole body, still there is residing in us a deep habit associated just with the ability to have objective knowledge, being able to know something, there still is a seed of obstruction due to that, which is like this third mystery.

[74:28]

Even having the concept of practice, the slightest attitude like that, there's still a little bit of that, and that can be removed also. And to remove that one, it would be to go through the third mystery. Yes. Which is called thoroughly circulating the light. Yes. I'm wondering how emotions fit in this whole process, and if emotional response is just an entanglement. I've seen an entanglement. No, emotions are just on the list of things that are in the environment. Emotions are just something that you think is an object. Emotions are something you think about. Emotions are what you think about. I mean, one of the things you think about is emotions.

[75:33]

You think, oh, hate, or attachment, or confusion. Does that make sense? Doesn't look like it. Not really. I mean, I guess I have a lot of questions about this. Like, I mean, a lot of things are going through my head, like wondering if the only, if as human beings, like the only path to enlightenment is through the mind, entirely through the mind. And I was thinking of like, of like, dark transmission and wondering if that was just through the mind, or if there's some type of, like, some type of, like, sensory, I don't know, perceptions, or when someone's born and people already know that they're like the Dharma heir, like, what is that? Like, what is the mind of this little boy doing? You know, what has he woken up with?

[76:33]

Or, I don't really understand that connection of, I don't know if I'm making sense. Yeah, you're making sense. And so we'll talk about that someday. There's a case about this. Okay, so... So... There it is, Case 32. I feel like it's well established in the community and it will live in the hearts of Zen students and it will pop up again and again in this community for some period of time. So I feel we can go on to Case 33 and we'll work on that for a while. And there are copies of it, where? The cookies.

[77:34]

Case 33. There will be copies on this table here after class, which you can come and get, or you can get a book. And so we'll start, you can study Case 33. But again, I would suggest that you study it the same way. Of course, new people don't know how to study it, so anyway, just read the story. Only read the story and the verse. Don't read the commentary. Just a story in the verse, read it, and just work with that for starters. Don't do anything else but work with the story. Case 33, until next week.

[78:08]

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