I felt that during the whole session you've been quite quiet but as I said yesterday before dinner I felt even a deeper quiet, deeper stillness in the whole group. As far as I know it was very quiet here and very still. So maybe, maybe we've found our seat. If you have settled into a steady immobile sitting position and found your

[01:01]

seat, then it may now be time to turn around at your seat and enter the way. At the point of entering the way, one actually does take a different direction even though one had been intending to follow the Buddha way, at the point of entry you actually reverse your position and you have this, what I mentioned the other day, what's called a rift in your lineage, a

[02:03]

severing of your past lineage and you switch from being in the school of rough individualism to the path of the Buddha. In the case I, the story I brought up yesterday, I'd like to bring up again and go a little deeper into case 32 of the book of Serenity. It's about Yangshan teaching quite a good yogi monk, very good, very good monk.

[03:06]

Yangshan is the disciple of Guishan and Guishan is the disciple of Baizhang and Baizhang is the disciple of Matsu. They called Yangshan little Shakyamuni and the Shakyamuni is teaching, is reaching across the centuries through Vasubandhu and Prajnatara, Bodhidharma to

[04:10]

Yangshan to Dogen, can't hear? Was that recent or all the way along? All the way along? But that way is not so bad? Okay, well if I start talking loudly, it's not because I'm angry, okay? I'm not angry, okay? This is just talking loudly. So a monk came to see little Shakyamuni, Yangshan, do you know who Yangshan's teacher is over there? Guishan. Guishan.

[05:10]

Guishan. And who is Guishan's teacher? Baizhang. Who? Baizhang. Baizhang. And who is Baizhang's teacher? Matsu. Hey. And who is Matsu's teacher? That's right. Who is Matsu's teacher? Nanyue Huairang. Huairang. Say Huairang. Huairang. And who is Huairang's teacher? Eno or Huaineng, okay? So you got them all in there. Huaineng to Huairang to Matsu to Baizhang to Guishan to little Shakyamuni.

[06:12]

So a monk comes to see little Shakyamuni and he's asked, where are you from? And the monk says, I'm from Yu Province. Yangshan says, do you think of that place? The monk says, I always think of it. Yangshan says, the thinker is the mind. The thought of is the environment. Therein are mountains, rivers, lands, buildings, towers, halls, chambers, people, animals and so forth. Now, reverse your thought to think of the thinking mind. Reverse your thought to think of Manas. And it goes dot, dot.

[07:18]

And then he says, are there so many things there? And dot, dot. We don't know how much time there is between when they have dot, dot. The monk said, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all. Yangshan said, this is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of person. The monk said, don't you have any particular way of guidance? Don't you have any other particular way of guidance? Yangshan said, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate.

[08:19]

Based on your insight, you get only one mystery. So you can take the seat. You have a seat and you can wear the robe. After this, see on your own. So he asked the monk, do you think of that place? And the monk said, I always think of it. Now, if he had asked the monk, do you always think of it? And the monk had said, no. He would have been able to come up with some strong point to get him out of that. But this monk was able to speak the truth and say, I always think of it.

[09:23]

In other words, when he said, do you think of it? He's saying, do you have manas? Do you have the mind, the transformation of mind, which is always thinking? The monk said, yes. He understood that he was always thinking of where he comes from. Where we come from is all the causes and conditions leading to our present concept that we're thinking of. The commentator says about this monk saying, I always think of that. He said, true words. You should repent. And the repentance is reverse your mind and think of that mind which thinks.

[10:30]

The mind which thinks is the mind which is generating defilement, generating self-clinging. The repentance is to admit that you're thinking that way and turn around and look at the process of defilement. Which the monk did. And we don't know how long he did it. Could have been a minute, a second, or quite a few years. At some point, he's face to face with little Shakyamuni again.

[11:36]

And Yangshan says, when you get to this place of reversing your mind, are there so many things there? And the monk said, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all. Now, this is quite an attainment. And...

[12:38]

See... Now, I'd like to use my and your imagination to inquire into what might have happened or what might happen to someone who hears the instruction, reverse your mind, reverse your thought, and think back to the mind that thinks. What might happen if you tried to enact that instruction of studying the function of the mind? The function of manas, the always thinking mind. Maybe I'll start with the more happy stories. The stories of what happens if you're at your seat, if you're still. Now...

[13:59]

Turning around and looking and considering how is thinking, how is the thinking going when your mind is still and quiet? Now, you might see something. You might be looking at something. The wall. Perhaps a shadow on the wall. A light reflecting off the floor. The sound of the rain. Maybe these are things you could be thinking about. When your mind is still...

[15:16]

I shouldn't say when your mind is still. But when you're sitting still, the willingness to sit still is already renouncing worldly affairs. But further, to be willing to look at what you're thinking rather than just ride around on your thoughts, to, as I said last night, to let go of your thoughts, to give your thoughts to Buddha, to donate your thoughts to science. Give your thoughts over for study. Every thought, let it be given to study. Let it be offered up to be considered and be thought of and watched. Rather than just let it go unattended, buzzing around.

[16:21]

Now, some of you may think, I have to go Christmas shopping. I have to think about this stuff. Some of you are not interested in Christmas shopping, so you may feel like, well, at least I have to go shopping for a present for my teacher for New Year's. I have to think of this stuff. Not just think of it and not just study it, but follow it through and take it to some conclusion, so that the thoughts can achieve fruit. That's called holding on to your thoughts and using them to take you where they're going. And they will. Relinquishing means leaving behind. Leaving behind for study. Put them aside. Set all your thoughts aside. It doesn't mean get rid of them. It just means set them aside. You know, dedicate means to set aside. Set aside for some ritual purpose.

[17:30]

Set your thoughts aside, but then after you set them aside, set them aside for study. In other words, bring them up in front to look at and scientifically investigate your thoughts. Not by doing anything. Just stay still and quiet. That is relinquishing your thoughts. Then the thoughts are appearing and disappearing as usual, but now you're not pursuing them. Now, there's no activity on the object. It's just the object. Just appearing. There's no comment. There's no gain. There's no loss. There's no good. There's no bad. There's just the reflection of light on the floor.

[18:32]

There's just the sound of the rain entering the ear. There's just the sound of open your eyes. In other words, turning your mind around and studying your thinking is your mind being like a wall. This is what it means to cease the movements of the conscious mind. The mind is conscious and it's conscious of objects. Ceasing the movement means there's just awareness of objects. That's it. There's just awareness of walking. There's just awareness of listening. There's just awareness of touching.

[19:33]

There's just awareness of smelling. There's just awareness of all these kinds of concepts. And that's it. Things are still happening. Things are still appearing and disappearing. However, that's it. The mind is not jumping around the object anymore. The mind is like a wall. When you let your mind be like a wall like that, you have renounced the world and you can enter the way. You can walk around this monastery from here to there and just be going along with worldly affairs. Or you can be walking from here to there and you're walking, just be walking and have left the world. Making this switch is to separate from the lineage of the world

[20:45]

and to turn around at your seat and enter the way. Again, this is not a theoretical turning. It's not just something you think about. You do it where you are and you have gotten to where you are and you actually are willing to be there and then where you actually are. Then you turn there. You don't just think about walking around and letting the walking just be the walking. While you're actually walking and not ahead of yourself or behind yourself, there you turn. The other one doesn't count. Although some wonderful things can happen, some wonderful insights can happen even when you're not at your seat. The story that I told you about Hakuin and Chodo was about a monk who had an insight not at his seat and Hakuin pushed him unskillfully and hurt him.

[21:48]

The present story is a story of a monk who is at his seat and did turn around, really at his seat. But there's another story which I told you the other night, I'll tell you again, about Fa Yen, as they say, breaking down Superintendent Tzu. This man is a Zen master, this Superintendent Tzu. He was a Zen master before he... Well, I don't know if he was a Zen master before. He was enough of a priest to get to be superintendent of the big monastery that Fa Yen was a teacher of. And he became a Zen master because of this story. So Fa Yen called him one time and he said, How long have you been at this monastery? And the superintendent said,

[22:54]

Three years. He said, How come you never come and talk to me? He said, Oh, well, can you still hear me over there? Well, I had... I had entry, I got initiated with Ching Lin, Master Ching Lin. And Fa Yen said, Well, at what words did you get entry? At what words, what were the initiatory words that you heard from Ching Lin? He said, Well, I said to him, I asked him, What's Buddha? That's what it says in the Blue Cliff Record. He says, What's Buddha? In the Book of Serenity, he said, What is the student's self? What is the student's self? And

[23:54]

Ching Lin said, The fire god comes seeking fire. And Fa Yen said, Oh, well, that's great. Great teaching. But I'm a little bit afraid that you might not have understood. Could you tell me more? And Superintendent Tso says, Yeah, well, it's like the fire god coming seeking fire. The fire god is in the realm of, in the domain of fire and seeking, seeking himself in his own domain. And it's like the self, the student, the realm of the student is the realm of the self. And yet, yet, he's still seeking the self in his own domain.

[24:57]

And Fa Yen said, Oh, that's what I thought. You don't understand. The superintendent contained his anger and left. Left the monastery and crossed the river. Fa Yen said to his attendant, If that monk turns around and comes back, he can be saved. If he doesn't turn around and come back, he cannot be saved. And so as he was walking along, as the superintendent was walking along, he thought to himself, Hmm, Fa Yen is a teacher of quite a few people. Maybe he has some point. Perhaps I should give him another chance.

[26:05]

So he did turn around and go back. And he came to Fa Yen and apologized. And Fa Yen said, I forgive you, sweetheart. Ask me the same question you asked Ching Lin. So he said, What is a student's self? And Fa Yen said, The fire god comes seeking fire. The superintendent was greatly relieved. What's the difference between the two stories, the two times? I would say, in the language of this last few days, I would say the difference is that in the previous case, he was, what do you say, following after words,

[27:07]

pursuing speech. He had an intellectual understanding. Dogen says, So, how was it that he was not enlightened the first time and fell into the mind road of intellectual understanding? And how was it that he was greatly enlightened the second time, shedding the nest of cliché? Well, there's the answer. The first time, he was on the mind road. He was on the road of the mind, going forward on the road of mind, using his mind to understand this teaching that the teacher gave him. And he understood very nicely and had entry. He had mind entry. But,

[28:08]

we need to cut the mind road. And the way you cut the mind road is to turn around and look at the mind. On the road, he turned around and came back. He renounced his thinking. He renounced his understanding. He renounced his spiritual attainment. Which had become another object which he was grabbing. Therefore, he could hear the Dharma. The monk in this case did renounce worldly affairs. He did turn around and he saw no existence at all.

[29:10]

His mind was still and he did turn around and he didn't see anything existing at all. So, again, one way to understand this is that things are appearing but there's no activity around the things. Not even the activity of saying this sound of the rain exists. The silence of no sound of rain does not exist. There's just the sound of rain. But another thing that may happen is that actually the object that you lose the object, the object that you lose the illusion of the object and you actually don't see anything existing at all.

[30:13]

However, when you don't see anything existing at all then that no object is an object which you again can then switch back into activating the mind around not seeing an object. This is just a little bit subtle. So, let's go over this again. And actually there's a story about Yangshan. Yangshan actually had an experience like this. One night he was meditating in front of the monk's hall

[31:21]

and he didn't see the mountains. By the way, Yangshan means you know, in all of the mountains. He didn't see the mountains, rivers, buildings, people, even his own body. All was like space. The next morning he reported to his teacher. What's his teacher's name? Guishan. Yeah, he reported to Guishan. And Guishan said, I reached this state when I was with Baijong. This is just the achievement of melting illumination which dissolves illusions. Later on, when you are teaching, there can be no one who surpasses this.

[32:24]

Maybe I shouldn't have brought that story up. Here's another one. Hold that one in disbelief or something. Set that aside. Put that on the shelf. Here's another one. One day Yangshan presented his understanding to Guishan. He said, If you have me see for myself, in other words, if you want to know how I see for myself, at this point there is no state of completion and nothing cut off either. And Guishan said, according to your point of view, there is still some object, still some phenomena. You haven't yet got away from mind and objects. Yangshan said, since there is no complete state and where there is still mind and objects, since there is no complete state,

[33:36]

where is there still mind and objects? And Guishan said, just now, didn't you make such an interpretation? Yangshan said, yes. And Guishan said, if so, then this is completely the mind of If so, then this is completely mind and objects. How can you say that there are none? He said, at this point there is no state of completion and nothing cut off either. And Guishan said, still, according to your point, there is still mind and objects. And he said, how can there be mind and objects if there is not even a state of completion? Not even a state of completion.

[34:39]

How can there be mind and objects? He said, didn't just now you make that interpretation or that discrimination? If so, there is still mind and objects. Yangshan got it. This is verse 27 of the Third Big Thirty. Indeed, one who on account of one's grasping were to place something before herself saying this is mere concept will not stop at meerness. Mere concept is not even a state of completion. Do you understand? A state of completion would be as though you said, well, that's a state of completion. But take a state of completion, not even a state of completion. It's just a concept. I just attain something

[35:41]

and it's not even a state of attainment. And it doesn't cut anything off. Still, if you place that there, now, on account of one's grasping, if you bring this to Guishan to show him what you're interpreting, you put it there and it's still not mere concept. The mind still hasn't terminated in mere concept. So, Yangshan was in a good position to catch this monk because he himself had had the similar insight and been caught. So this monk was the same situation. He did the instruction. He reversed the mind and he saw, he saw, that there's no objects. That there aren't really objects out there. These are just

[36:42]

mere concepts. Even his realization wasn't a state of completion. He didn't even have an insight to report. He didn't see anything existing at all. But by not seeing anything exist at all, he had something out there called nothing existing at all. ... But he did get to the point of nothing existing at all. He did follow the instructions. In other words, he actually did see objects without pursuing them. He actually did see a sight and let it just be a sight. He accomplished, I mean,

[37:46]

that was accomplished. However, he then, in order to grasp what he accomplished, he made it into something else and by grasping it, he activated his mind again and slipped back into worldly affairs. It's just that now, the object, instead of being a worldly object, was a spiritual attainment. So, Yangshan says to him, ... This is right for the stage of faith, but not yet right for the stage of a person or a human being. And the Chinese character for faith here is the radical of a person

[38:48]

with the radical for the word. The stage of faith is entry. The person used the word to enter. He was a stream enterer. He reversed his thought on the words of Yangshan. The person turned around and entered. However, after he entered, he grasped his entry and stopped walking. The Chinese character for person looks like somebody walking. Yangshan's instructions are instructions for entry, but also they're instructions about how, after entering, to go to work. The monk couldn't go to work after he entered because

[39:48]

he took his entry and put it before himself in order to have his attainment. But he did get one mystery. He got his seat and he got his robe, but he didn't yet get his room where he could work, where he could save sentient beings. He realized emptiness, but then the mind took

[40:50]

emptiness and put it in front of him. And so he was temporarily halted in his great path. So what's it like when you don't halt? And that's where we're starting to go now. The next thing would be to consider what would it be like to be still, to look at things with a reversed mind, to look at things with the mind renounced, to watch, to renounce thinking, in other words, just to study thinking rather than go along with it. What would that be like? Well, we just talked about that. And then, after entering that realm, what would it be like not to then bring that out

[41:54]

and make that into an object and go forward? But before doing that, we should maybe tell some not so successful stories. Stories of what one does when one has one's seat, when one hears the instruction of studying the thinking mind. Thinking mind is going on. Unless you're exception to Vasubandhu and Yangshan, even though you found your seat, you are always thinking. You're always thinking of where you come from. So, if you want to relinquish your thinking, if you want to renounce worldly affairs, well, then go ahead and renounce them.

[42:55]

But it's not so easy. Like I said, dot, dot, dot, the space between when Yangshan said renounce worldly affairs, or reverse your thinking, and when he said to the monk, now, are there so many things there? That might have been a long time. So, if you hear this instruction and are practicing it, it might be a long time before you are able to really put it into effect. Or before it goes into effect. And there's various things which will contribute here. One of the things is that you may lose your seat again. You may get excited and resist being where you are. And then, what you'll do is, actually, you'll probably become very successful then, because when you're not at your seat, you can dream up success very easily. The other thing is, you could stay at your seat

[44:10]

and study this, but study relinquishing in a way that's not relinquishing. In other words, have a method in mind about how you're going to reverse your thought. That's not relinquishing your thoughts. That's not reversing your thoughts. That's the usual way. And most people try that for a while. It's worse than usual kinds of ways of using your mind. But, when I hear people tell stories about this kind of intellectual attempt to reverse the mind, I know that they're trying. So, they haven't really relinquished, but they're trying to put in to effect the instruction on relinquishing. Another thing which I noticed is, if you do this, if you have this willingness,

[45:13]

you may be able, although not to stop the mind going in its usual direction, you may be able to notice the difference between when the thoughts just appear and there's no activation around them, and when there is activation, and you may notice the energetic difference when the thought arises and the words around it get to it, and when the thought or the object appears and it's left just being that thought. You may notice that as you do things around the thoughts, in other words, as you pursue or cough or pant or sigh around the word, you may notice that you're becoming an exhausted fish. You may notice that you're becoming a sluggish duck. And you may notice that that energy depletion or inflation happens around the way you're activating your mind around the object. And again,

[46:14]

if you're at your seat, you can feel that that leakage. You can feel that outflow or that inflation. You're one step of defilement away from there's one step of defilement that's still going on in relation... but interspersed among the thinking going on at the usual direction, there's a few breaks there where you catch yourself, not at the very moment because if you catch yourself at the very moment, it's reversed, but you catch yourself after doing it for a while, and you can notice that you have been doing it and you can remember what you did. So that's a break at that time in the usual flow and it's a reversal, a small reversal, although it's a reversal in the sense of confession of being off track for a while. When you're not actually doing it at all, then there's no inflow or outflow. The...

[47:15]

the energy which operates the mind is basically coming from your food at that point, when you just see an object. You don't gain or lose any energy at that time in relationship to the way you're looking at the object. However, you are losing some energy in terms of metabolism. You can't keep this up indefinitely, even though the mind is effortless. The mind of this reverse mind is effortless. It doesn't tire you. The other one tires you. The other one burns out. And this one, you can keep doing this one until you run out of, you know, what I call blood sugar levels. So you have to eat some in order to do this practice. So I'm just going to forecast

[48:25]

a little bit about what it's like when you don't get stuck in this attainment. And then, little by little, I'll get into more and more about what it's like when you take your seat, reverse your mind, and then don't take that and make that into something before yourself and just go forward from there. So, this is a story, this is a poem written by a disciple of Fa Yen. The guy who broke down Superintendent Tzu. Old Dharma Eye. He was, some monk said to him, said to Fa Yen, What's it like

[49:30]

when there is a drop of water from the fountain at Hui Nung's temple? And Fa Yen said, It's a drop of water from the fountain at Hui Nung's temple. Another monk was standing around in the area at that time. His name was, his name was Shao. He heard this interchange and woke up. Later he became national teacher, Da Shao. He wrote a poem about that overhearing Fa Yen. He wrote a poem. He said, Crossing the summit of the mystic peak, it's not the human world. Outside the mind,

[50:34]

there are no things. The monk in this story got that far. Crossing the mystic peak, crossing the summit of the mystic peak, it's not the human world. When you take your seat and reverse your mind, this is not the human world. The human world, this is the mind like a wall. The human world is not the mind like a wall. But again, this mind like a wall, which is not the human world, it's just the entry. It's just an entry. We don't want to stay there. And when you're not in this human world, when the mind is reversed,

[51:36]

there are no things outside the mind. When the mind is reversed, there is nothing out there anymore. Even though there's objects, they have no way to be out there. You have to activate the mind in order to have them out there. In order to have them outside, you have to get excited. You have to pursue them in order for them to be out there. If you don't pursue them, they're not out there. If you do pursue them, they're out there. Your pursuit makes them outside. You drop the pursuit, there's nothing out there. This is not the human world, they say. They say. This is also not the Buddha way. This is the gate to the Buddha way. The gate to the Buddha way is to relinquish the human world and cross the mystic peak and stop pursuing the objects

[52:38]

and therefore have them stop running away and be outside. Okay? So here's the whole poem. Crossing the mystic peak. It's not the human world. Outside the mind there are no things. So Yangshan got that far and this monk in the story got that far. But Shao's enlightenment was deeper and he says one more line. Filling the eyes are blue mountains. This is the stage of the person. This is going back to work. You know, we say in our English translation

[53:39]

something like that. Do we say form is emptiness? Emptiness is emptiness. Emptiness is form. That's okay. But really a clumsier translation which has more of the impact is this form is this very form immediately this very form is the essence of emptiness. Form is emptiness. This form is the essence of emptiness. Once you've reversed your mind and there's no objects which are out there anymore and therefore not in here anymore those objects that aren't out there anymore those objects are the essence of not out there. Want to know what not out there means?

[54:40]

Those objects are the essence of not out there. What's the essence of not being separated from other beings? Other beings. What's the essence of going beyond the human world? Blue mountains fill your eyes. Or the eyes are are filling with blue mountains. So I've been trying not to get ahead of where we are. To not speak about somebody else's practice. And so I felt that I was what I'm talking about so far

[55:45]

is pretty close to where you are. So I'm not rushing you or anything but if you'd move ahead in your practice then we could talk about more of this story. And it won't be just abstract. Intellectual presentation that might have something to do with you. So your job is to continue to find your seat and stay at your seat. And be aware of and think of that thinking mind that's going on. Study that thinking mind. See how it works. See how it runs. See how it has outflows and inflows.

[56:47]

Don't try to increase or decrease the outflows or inflows. That's just more outflows and inflows. Just be quiet and clearly aware of how your thinking is going. This is already renouncing worldly affairs and the renunciation can go deeper and deeper until we can see more clearly how our thinking is going and enter the world of Buddha and leave behind the world of self. And then we can talk about how not to camp out in the world of Buddha. There are no official campsites on the path. No camping. Fires are allowed

[57:54]

but no camping. There's fires around the path all the time. It's like it's like a what is called it's a tunnel through fire but no camping allowed. However there is camping outside before the path as you may know. However when you camp there what do you call it? Deities come out of the forest and trash you and say wouldn't you rather like move along here a little bit break up camp and turn around and enter another world? We're going to keep hassling you until you do. And one other thing is that you know crossing the mystic peak

[58:58]

reversing your thought to think of the thinking mind studying the functioning of Manas this this is entering into you know meditation on the function of Kanjizai Bosatsu. This is entering the compassion which has for its object the nature of existence and the functioning of the self. Studying the thinking is also again to study how thinking creates the self how it seems to exist how it seems to function. And after entering the Buddhist path the self has been left behind but now the self that has been left behind can be used to help people.

[59:59]

The left behind self is a docile gentle useful self. It isn't the self which says you can't leave me behind you can't bring me along whatever you need from the self it will be then. Kanjizai Bosatsu Kanjizai Bosatsu We are intention equally and straight every being.

[60:53]

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