This is the first in a series of, is it five classes? Yes. And for a while we've been studying case 67. And we're studying the verse which celebrates the case. So the case is, it's a koan, it's a Zen koan, but the actual case is a quotation from the Avatamsaka Sutra. And this quotation from the Avatamsaka Sutra is perhaps the most famous quotation from the whole scripture. which is, the Buddha says, now I see that all living beings, without exception, fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones.

[01:08]

But because of false conceptions and attachments, they do not realize it. So this is from the chapter on the manifestation of the Tathagata in that scripture. So the whole chapter is one of perhaps the most famous chapter, the most read chapter of this very large scripture. And this particular quote is perhaps the core of that chapter. So, You can sit up in front if you'd like to, Mari. You can sit in the back if you want to. Okay. So, basically, what the scripture is telling us is that each one of us, and this includes, by the way, rats and buffalo and mosquitoes and dogs,

[02:15]

Did Rasi come with us? No. And all animals, basically, possess the wisdom and virtues of the Buddhas, but if they have any attachments or false conceptions that they're holding to, then that makes it hard for them to realize this. If you hear this teaching and it makes sense to you and you appreciate it, that may be part of your motivation for practice. But realize it means that you actually understand how it's true. Not just for yourself, but for others. And not just for others, but yourself. So... What we need to do, of course, is just let go of all of our attachments and false conceptions, and then we will realize it, because it's right under our nose.

[03:30]

It's just that we can't see it if we have any attachments. And so our training, our meditative training and just our life together in the Sangha is to support us entering into the path of non-attachment so that we can realize what we really are, how we really are. So we've been, we, and then there's a verse in this case which celebrates this, this koan, and Could you write the verse on the blackboard, please, Andy? The verse of the... Of K67. Could you write it there? Kind of... Actually, you know, I think I'd like you just to write the last part of the verse.

[04:37]

starting with getting to the end of the mysterious subtlety, starting with that line, because if we write the beginning on, there might be some implication that we're going to discuss it, but we already discussed that, so we're just going to discuss the last part of this verse, if it's all right with you. Getting to the end of the mysterious subtlety. So, you know, one time a monk asked the Zen master, Zhao Zhou, what is the mystery within the mystery? And Zhao Zhou said, how long have you been mystified? And the monk said, I've been into this mystery for a long time. And Zhaozhou said, anybody but me might have been mystified to death.

[05:42]

And Dengshan wrote a little verse one time called The Seal in the Mystery, which says, quote, do not take the road, do not take to the road. But, If you return, you turn your back on your father." And the commentator on this case says, since it fills the cosmos, making a single entity, is there indeed a mysterious subtlety apart from and beyond the dust of turmoil? Is there indeed any before or behind turning towards or away? Even if Buddhas do not appear in the world, this does not cause any lessening. Even if Buddhas appear in the world, explaining and illustrating, this does not cause any increase. So the verse is,

[06:54]

Getting to the end of mysterious subtlety, who distinguishes turning towards and away? So today, you know, I was reading this line, Getting to the end of mysterious subtlety, Who distinguishes turning towards, in a way, I was reading these two lines, in a shopping mall. Actually, it was a discount mall. Kind of a high-quality discount mall, because it was in Napa Valley. Was it on the shopping cart? Was it on the shopping cart? Oh, you mean, was this verse on the shopping cart? No, no, no.

[07:57]

It was in my koan book. I was studying... Russo was doing the shopping? Russo was doing the shopping. And I was studying this verse in the discount mall. And I looked, and I saw... people going to and fro, walking before my eyes, going into stores and coming out. And I wondered, is there any turning towards or away here, you know? I meditated this way. Is there any turning towards or turning away in me as I see these women and a few men moving before my eyes? Are these people Buddhas in the shopping mall? Should they be shopping differently from the way they're shopping if they're Buddhas? Were some of them Buddhas and not others?

[09:04]

Did some of them fully possess it? Can I turn towards it? Can I turn away from it? This is a samadhi, okay? A samadhi of looking at the people of the world and wondering, is there any turning towards or away? At the end of this mystery, can you say where the Buddha is and isn't? There is an issue of realization here. Some people do not realize that it fills the entire cosmos and it's one entity. There's only one thing. Now, the one thing has the conventional and the ultimate right there.

[10:07]

In the conventional, people suffer. They feel separate. and so on. In the ultimate, there is no suffering, there are no people. These two are locked together and there's one entity throughout the entire cosmos. You can't escape it. But, do you enter into the samadhi of it? Are you in the samadhi or not? Or is it not even a matter of being in or out of the samadhi? Buddhas and ancestors come to pay the debt for what they said.

[11:29]

So for me, these first three lines are very nice meditation instruction, which I would recommend that I practice all the time. which is to watch beings appear and disappear, including myself, and wonder whether there's any way to turn towards or away from it, from the one entity, which flashes back and forth until we're completely enlightened between the conventional and the relative. between the conventional and the ultimate. Some people have not realized this teaching, but there's no more or less Buddha there than in those who do realize it.

[12:47]

And yet, there's a big difference in the conventional world between whether I'm practicing this samadhi or not. The samadhi on the inseparability of sentient beings and Buddhas If one enters such a samadhi, if one lives in such a samadhi, that's very different from not being in that samadhi in the conventional world. In the ultimate world, there's no difference between being in the samadhi and not being in the samadhi, between being a Buddha and a sentient being. This is the easy part.

[14:00]

Do you have any questions about these three lines of the verse? Yes, Brian? I have a question about what you just said. Is that okay? Yeah. So do you think that there's a significance to the fact that conventionally you can be in or out of the samadhi? Ultimately it doesn't matter. No, it's not that it ultimately doesn't matter. Ultimately there's no in or out? To say that it doesn't matter is a conventional statement. To say that it matters is a conventional statement. But there's no in or out in the ultimate. At the end of the mystery, there's no in or out of the mystery. So what's the significance for us then, living in this conventional reality? of people being in or out of that samadhi.

[15:03]

Yeah, so like, if you're out of the samadhi, then you go to the mall or whatever, and you think, what a greedy bunch of people, you know, or what a good-looking bunch of people, or what an ugly bunch of people, or half of them are ugly and half of them are rich. Or whatever, you know, you think various things. What's the difference between that and realizing that you can't... and not realizing that you can't, but entering into the question of whether you can turn towards it or away from it? What's the difference between being in that samadhi and being in natural, you know, undisciplined discriminations? What's the difference? Well, the difference would come from a discrimination. you would tell a difference by discrimination. And is there really any difference between these two things? Well, no. Not really. Conventionally, is there a difference between them? Yes.

[16:04]

Big difference. Conventionally. In one case, you like and dislike people. Some people think that people in that discount mall are great. Some people maybe think they're spiritually disadvantaged. They think that real people are in the monasteries. This is likes and dislikes. This is attachments and prejudices. And because of those, we can't see that there's no difference between being able to see and not being able to see. There's no difference between us and the other people in the Discount Mall, and also there's no difference between any of us and the Buddhas. So your question again is, what difference does it make whether you're in the samadhi of preference, ordinary preferences, or whether you're cultivating a mind

[17:09]

which is on the verge of having no preference. Does doing this practice of being on the verge of no difference sort of like get you ready to leap into the realm of no difference? Right? Is that sort of your question? Yeah, is there a significant difference? Is it really not just another preference? Or not even a preference, you might even say, well, actually, I don't even prefer to be in this samadhi where I'm actually seeing, where I'm actually wondering. When everybody I see, I wonder, is this turning away or turning towards? Is this face, looking at this face, is this turning away or turning towards the end of the mystery? Which is it? To ask that question, to say this is turning away or turning towards is just another preference. But to wonder, really openly wonder, What is this? Is this a Buddha land, perhaps, or not? That kind of wonder that entered in wholeheartedly is a samadhi.

[18:16]

And in the conventional world, it feels very different from being not in that samadhi, from being into saying this is a Buddha realm or not. If you say it is, that's very much like saying it isn't. Very similar. Equally dangerous, I would say. Maybe a little bit more dangerous to say that it's a Buddha land. Anyway, it's hard to say. But anyway, preferences and judgments like that, if you take them as real, this is the thing that's blocking us from understanding. Opening up to the possibility. Opening up to possibility. Opening up to anxiety. This is very different samadhi from running away from it. Very different. But does that very different state, which is like almost no preferences in that state, is that really different from the other one?

[19:20]

Well, no, it isn't. Does that one cause the realization that there's no difference? No, it doesn't. Nothing causes that there's no difference. The fact that there's no difference is reality. Nothing causes reality. Reality is how causes work. So nothing causes reality. That's the kind of thing reality is. So why should we enter into the samadhi? I don't answer white questions. Should we prefer the samadhi? You can prefer it if you want to, but that preference is not the samadhi. But still, even without, even preferring the samadhi, you might be able to trip, fall into it. But you could also go into the samadhi without preference, which is slightly better. You could go into the samadhi for my sake. Do it for me.

[20:22]

Not because you prefer it, but just because it would be very nice for you to do it for me, or to do it for Klaus. or whoever, you know. It actually would be helpful to everybody if you would enter the samadhi. And if you do it just to help us out, that's slightly better, I would say, in the realm of better and worse, than doing it because you prefer it, because preferring contradicts it. So without preference, enter into the samadhi. Megan? Is that a contradiction? Pardon? Is that a contradiction? Is what a contradiction? To say that it's better? No, I'm... Is that a preference? I mean, aren't you... Did I say it was better? Yes. Well, then if I say it's better, then that's just not the samadhi. Right? That's just... Okay? That's why I would say... Maybe I'd say it's less contradictory and more harmonious with the samadhi to enter it, to be in it, without preferring it.

[21:25]

Does that make sense? Yes. It makes sense, but it just seems like you're preferring the opposite. There's no other way to get your point to me. It seems like there shouldn't be any better way. I take back that it's a better way. I would just say that It makes more sense. It's more... It's in accord with the samadhi that you would enter it. Not even by your own power and not by your preference. But enter it by your non-preference. Enter it by your unprejudiced heart. Use that to enter. Okay? That's how you enter it. If possible, that's the best way to enter it. But there's something left here, and that is, what's that got to do with realization?

[22:27]

Well, it doesn't cause realization, okay? And it's not better than the other states, because they're no different from realization either. These other states are not different from realization, these kind of like preferential states, they're not different from realization. They prefer themselves over something else, and they would prefer realization perhaps over non-realization, but they're not really different from realization. So, do these samadhis actually effect and cause the realization? No. So then again, if somebody said, well, why do them? I would say, off track. So we're kind of like, okay, no whys.

[23:30]

So how am I going to do? Well, do you want to do this samadhi or not? I'm recommending it, but not because... It's like realization and being in preference land is not like realization. It's just that being in the land of preferences, you block realization. And being in this thing, do you block realization by that? No. That doesn't block realization. It's exactly the same as realization. How about the other one? It's exactly the same too. They're both It's inseparable from realization. But one doesn't block it, and the other does. But the other one doesn't make realization happen. The other one is that you have been taken over by Buddha. You have been inhabited. You have been co-opted. You have lost yourself in the family of Buddha's

[24:37]

That's all. But that didn't make it happen. You didn't make it happen. Buddha didn't make it happen. But you and Buddha are now on the same team. Were you on the same team before? Yes. Were you fighting it? Yes. How were you fighting it? With attachments and preferences and judgments which you held to. When you give them up... You're not fighting anymore. Is that better? That's another judgment. Is it worse? That's another judgment. Is it in accord with the Buddhas? Yes. Have they successfully communed with you? Yes. Is there any difference between you and Buddha? Conventionally, yes. Is there a difference between the way you're different from Buddha now and the way you used to be different from Buddha? Yes. In the realm of conventionality, you're a different kind of different from Buddha than you were before.

[25:42]

Are you closer to Buddha than you were before? Yes. Is that closeness meaningful ultimately? No. Any feeling for it? No. So the samadhi somehow, even though it doesn't cause realization, it is realization itself, but so is everything else you ever thought. But these things we think don't cause the realization. They are the realization. And it doesn't mean that there aren't certain things we think which are really troublesome and really harmful. There are things. Some things are really bad. But their badness is not the reason why they're not realization. Their badness is that they are evil ways for the judgmental mind to work, harmful ways.

[26:47]

There are other ways which are not harmful. But neither one of them are more or less realization. This is at the end of the mystery. who can distinguish turning towards and away? Who? Now, you could take that as an acronym and say, who can distinguish? The world's honored one can distinguish. Take it that way. And so, you know, in that case, we make an exception. The world's honored one can distinguish. Otherwise, distinguishing is just, that's all it is, is turning towards and away. Okay? Buddhas and ancestors come to pay the debt for what they said. What debt did they say that they have to pay for? There's a time limit on this question. Yes.

[27:50]

Bodhisattva vow? Bodhisattva vow, it's a possibility. It's a good one. It's a good one. It's simply the mistake of speaking. Pardon? The mistake of speaking. The mistake of speaking, yeah. Teaching classes. Pardon? Teaching classes. That takes care of both of them right there. Yeah, those are two good possibilities. I just want to point out the reason I left it paper arts is because it was men that were doing most of the blabbing. There you go. It's the men that are really in debt here. But, you know, actually, the men were the ones who were blabbing to big groups. The women were also going around saying stuff like, sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them. So they were actually, you know, chattering away too.

[28:50]

It's just they didn't necessarily have big groups listening to their vowels. If it's any consolation, I think students are just as guilty as teachers. If that is a lot of consolation, thank you for your confession. Would anyone care to second this confession? Okay, this is the easy part. Now comes the little bit hard part. So, you have the old, ask old teacher Wang of Nanchuan. Okay, each person just eats one stalk of vegetable. So, this is a, you know, interpreted as a reference to a story, which you see there in the commentary. Nanchuan, the great Zen master Nanchuan, with another Zen master called Shashan, were working, picking bracken. You know what bracken is? What? It's a fern. Edible fern. They were picking these ferns for vegetables for their meals.

[29:56]

Nanchuan picked up a stalk and said, this is a fine offering. Shashan said, he... you know, quotes, he wouldn't take notice of a feast of a hundred delicacies, let alone this. Nantuan said, even so, everyone should taste it before they realize. Is this skill and means? You have double skill and means here. We have Nantuan's story plus Tiantong Hongzhi is bringing the story up to celebrate this case. I can see this is just too much for you. So maybe next year we could discuss this. Too hard, huh? Too hard.

[30:59]

It's too hard. Let's go on to something easy. At the end of the commentary it says, I say today there are seven people. How about that? Now these guys weren't born for nothing. We have the great sutras, but now Zen masters appear to say stuff like that. I say today there are seven people. You can work on that for a while. So if no one else has any bright comments, we can go to the next case. Do you have a bright comment? No, I just don't. Do you have a dark comment? Any dark comments? What does bracken taste like? Well, it depends on what you do with it after you pick it. If you just pick it and eat it, it's poisonous.

[31:59]

You have to leach it. In what? What do you leach it in? You know what you leach it in, Maya? You have to leach it in something. What? Does anybody know how to leach it? Water? No, not water. Something else. Huh? Maybe lye or bracken. I mean, salt. Salt or maybe vinegar. I don't know. You have to put it in something to draw it. Otherwise, it's poisonous. And then you can, like, you can make, what do you call it? What do they call it? Ratatouille? Ratatouille. Ratatouille would be fine, but it's called, at the Japanese restaurants, they call it... Pickles. No, not pickles. Tempura. Tempura, yeah, tempura. It's very good tempura. We have bracken growing up in the hills of Tassajara and Suzukoshi. Sometimes when he... time we'd go pick it and then come down and tempura it for us we had it a few times we also had tempura uh but it's a maple maple maple flower blossoms they're very good too and also tempura uh yucca flowers are good they're very good see tempura is one way to do it but you have to bleach it first and uh what does it taste like it tastes like lotuses

[33:16]

This guy over here? He is. Describe it. One of the people in the story, Nanchuan, there's a story about his death which says that when Nanchuan was about to die, a monk asked him, Master, where will you be in a hundred years? And Nanchuan said, I'll be an ox at the base of this mountain. The monk said, may I follow you there as an ox? Yes. And Nanchuan said, if you do, you must follow me with a single blade of grass in your mouth. It's like a one taste. Seems to be related to this, doesn't it?

[34:26]

And then the commentator brings this up. Ming An of Dayang. Ming An of Dayang is the 43rd ancestor in the lineage of this temple. And he said, don't go on the path of mind and don't sit effortlessly, don't sit in effortless nothingness. When detached from existence and non-existence, and we've been studying at Tassajara and City Center in Sashim we just did about the middle way, you know, of avoiding grasping the extreme of existence. and the extreme of non-existence, which is the extreme of eternalism and annihilationism. So avoiding these extremes, heaven and earth are wide open and empty. That's why Nantuan said everyone should eat a stalk of vegetable.

[35:39]

If you try to get another stalk, you go to hell as fast as an arrow shot. So the commentator is suggesting that this instruction of non-chuan is an instruction about how to avoid the extremes of existence and non-existence which is quite similar to what we were talking about before. Turning towards and away. It is really here or it isn't. Mostly that's what people are into is It exists, really, or it doesn't. But we do that because we hope that such grasping will be the end of our suffering, rather than stay in the middle and not grasp existence or non-existence.

[36:49]

And again, that's a samadhi when you enter into that. But it's a samadhi where you don't grasp either extreme. A very subtle samadhi. Potentially. Kind of a dark color. A dark comment. Yes? Yes? Somehow, the time that you've been sitting there, I've been thinking of, this is all about suffering. Yes. And the qualities, the qualities of suffering. This is about the quality of suffering, yeah. Suffering, or conscious suffering. Yes. And I think maybe... Maybe this is not relevant, what I'm saying, but somehow the Catholic priests in the past, they flatulated themselves because they were trying to grasp non-existence.

[38:04]

They realized they had to be present and not shun suffering, but they went to the extreme of creating suffering instead of... Being present for the suffering there is, but it's very difficult not to create suffering. Yes. You are present to suffer. Yes, right. So this is the extreme of self-mortification, where you tune in your suffering yourself, rather than face the suffering which is given to you. like the kids who now, you know, cut their skin and stuff like that and mortify themselves as a way to distract themselves from the suffering which is being delivered to them by reality. When we have attachment, then we suffer naturally in relationship to that attachment.

[39:11]

But rather than face that suffering that comes with our ignorance, we'd rather create another kind of suffering, which seems to be easier to face. And in a way, it is easier to face. Well, the endorphins kick in. The endorphins kick in. The endorphins kick in if you're... They do, huh? There's something satisfying about the fact that you can predict it. You can predict it, right. Some sense of control, right. And then the other extreme is to indulge in sense pleasures. Someone gave me a birthday present of a portable CD player and some Frank Sinatra CDs to go in it. Oh, Tom, I didn't recognize you.

[40:17]

Hi. And so I was listening to the CDs at a beautiful lake in Northern California. And I thought, it's very difficult to listen to this music at this lake and not indulge in sensual pleasure. To stay balanced, listening to this music, very difficult. So turn it off, close your eyes, and then there's the anxiety again. Now, can you turn the music back on and not lose track of the anxiety of this world? Pretty difficult. When somebody loves you. It's not necessarily self-mortification to press the, you know, stop button.

[41:30]

Not necessarily self-mortification. Still, you know, there you are. It's okay. So, who's going to press that button? Which way is it going to go on? And who's going to stay present with the middle way, pressing that button? So anyway, the Buddha was a self-flagellator in a way for a long time, and he found it didn't work, so he stopped that way. And then somebody brought him some nice little drink, brought him a nice snack, which was pretty good, and he managed somehow to take this food, this sustenance, and have a nice seat under a beautiful tree. He managed to sit there with this food running through him. And it worked out pretty well. Didn't sort of flip over to the other side. And then he could enter into the samadhi we're talking about. The samadhi at the end of the mystery with wondering, is this turning towards or away?

[42:34]

But what's this? So what is this stock of is this stock of vegetable we're talking? Is this like the stock of one taste? Is that what it is? Is it like the middle way? Just a nice vegetable treat. And it has, what taste does it have? It has the taste. You have that taste in your mouth right now? Kathleen and then Emmanuel and then Sometimes I get exhausted holding the anxiety while enjoying the indulgence, and it feels very good to enjoy the indulgence. It does? I get exhausted sometimes holding, being, with the awareness of the suffering, as well as the taste of the experience of the rest.

[43:38]

Yeah. I can understand. It's possible that you're... Well, it's possible that you have a double-tiring thing going on here. Look, a lifesaver. It's fat-free, too, by the way. Do you understand, Kathleen? Jeez, this is great. Do you understand? Is somebody trying to figure out what's going on here? That gets very tiring. So if you're going to like, you're going to try to hold the anxiety? No, it's not holding, it's the experience. You're going to try to experience the anxiety?

[44:41]

What are you going to do? You're in the experience? So what's tiring about that? I suppose. That's the lifesaver. I didn't put this here, you know, I just... What else is down here? Okay, what's the next question? What is Buddha? Buddha is a lifesaver. Would anyone like a lifesaver? Can I toss it to you? Well, he tried. Emmanuel? When you say about it's neither existence nor non-existence, is that the same place as no preference and no judgment? Say it again.

[45:43]

When you say about this space about neither existence nor non-existence, is that the same space as no preference and no judgment? I guess so. Yeah. But no, it's not no preference and no judgment. No, no, no. I take it back. It's not that. Because no preference and no judgment is non-existence. Yeah. I mean, if you mean like really no preference and no judgment, like they're gone, then that's non-existence. So, you want to try again? You can give them one more try on that one. Well, it just tells me then that... wondering, my thought was thinking in those terms of preference, lack of preference and lack of judgment as being what you were talking about, and now I see that it isn't. Lack of is a little bit different than no.

[46:46]

Kind of like a lack of judgment and a lack of preference. A little bit different from no judgment and No preference. You know what I mean? Kind of like, well, you know, we got some judgment here, but not that much. Or, you know, kind of like, we have some judgment here, but we can't remember whose judgment it is. We have some preferences here, but I don't remember if it's mine or yours. Which one of us likes this thing again? Without, you know, not faking it. But being so unattached that you really don't know whose body is whose, kind of like. It's like we cross our legs, you know? One of the advantages of full lotus is that when you sit here for a while, and especially if you switch them, you don't know which one's on top after a while. Which means you don't know which one's hurting. I'm just kidding.

[47:50]

This can gradually extend to you don't know who's hurting. Yes, Linda? Merging. What about merging? Merging. Yeah, merging. Merging isn't. Merging isn't. Merging is leaning. Merging is leaning. So that sounds like merging when you don't know whose is whose. Right, because that's how it used to be, you know? I mean, I remember going out for dinner, and whenever they wanted, I'd have that, too. That's just being a mom. That's just being a mom? Well, yeah, it's good, but it's leaning. It's a good leaning. It's good, but it's leaning. So... You talk about existence and neither existence or non-existence by saying sort of like you did with Brian's question earlier by saying many things around it because I just don't get it.

[49:15]

Maybe I'll get sort of an intuitive sense of what it is. That's a whole bunch of stuff. I've read that phrase many times and it's always sort of It's like this wall that I smashed my nose against. You want me to say a lot of words? How many do you want? Huh? Do you want, like, just keep talking until you're enlightened? Is that what you want? Huh? What? But is that what you want, is basically me to keep talking until you get it? Until you have perfect understanding? I've been talking for quite a while now, you know. You've known me for a year or so, and I've been babbling ever since. When the words are many, they harm practice. Okay, and you want one, right? Yes. Okay. Emmanuel, I did my best when I found this lifesaver, because, you know, I didn't put it there, but I found it.

[50:22]

And the reason why I found it, I don't know how long I found it, and it was a lifesaver, and I showed it to Kathleen. I mean, that was pretty good, don't you think? LAUGHTER I mean, that wasn't really like existence or non-existence, was it? That wasn't really existence or non-existence, was it? It wasn't like, this is it, is it? This isn't it, is it? This isn't really the lifesaver, is it? But it is a lifesaver, too, isn't it? This is not existence or non-existence. Can't you see that? And see, I didn't set this up, you know, even as an example. It just... That's the way it is. It's like they're popping up. Do you want more examples? Huh? What? Sometimes I'm just thick-headed, I guess. Yeah, right. Oh, not necessarily thick-headed, but maybe just, you know, you want another enlightenment. I didn't like that enlightenment.

[51:24]

Give me another one. Okay, now can we go to the next case? Yeah, no, you can't. Okay, now Elena's got her hand up. Emmanuel and Elena are dominating the class, which I appreciate. Doesn't anybody else want to say anything before we talk to Elena and Emmanuel some more? Stuart, thank you so much. Fortunately, there's several lifesavers in this package. Thank you. You're welcome. How many are there? Seven or several? Several. Wait a second. Wait a second. How many have I passed out so far? Huh? Three? I passed out three. Okay, here's four. Here's five. Why don't you come up and get it on my throat?

[52:25]

I might hit Gordon in the face. Here's five. How about another one over here? Okay, would you take one to Emmanuel? He's really on a roll tonight. That's six. And... Okay, give one. Okay, that's seven. So those are the seven people. You know, and I'm really happy because that was one of the most difficult parts of all the colon books so far. And, you know, we now understand who the seven people are. You'll have to start your own class. Also, Elenia, you brought those into class. I didn't bring these into class. They were given to me by you-know-who.

[53:25]

But still, you know, there's... Don't... What do you call it? Don't sink into effortless... Nothingness. Okay? Please. You know, work on this. Work. But not, you know, not by you doing it. You're just a hard worker. So work. You know, it's just the way you are. It's not something you do. It's not you in the work. But there is work happening. Okay? It just says, it's not your work. Do you understand? Can you enter into that samadhi, that hardworking samadhi? The samadhi called the middle way. Enter the samadhi of the middle way, where you avoid existence and non-existence. Where you avoid turning towards and away, you know, this is it, this is not it.

[54:39]

Pat? I was going to say, we need to invite Frank Sinatra, because he's famous for I'll do it my way. Okay, well, maybe next class we'll have Frank here with us. Unless he can come right now. What's your name again? Kelly. Kelly. And I forget your name over there. Yeah. Andy, I'm curious what you might think of the idea that the ox that he's suggesting he would be by putting a blade grasp. Well, let me step back a second. Perhaps it's not really related to this one directly in terms of the one vegetable, but the idea being he says, I will become an ox and follow you down. And this master fellow is saying, don't just act like an ox.

[55:42]

Put a blade of grass in your mouth so that I know you really are an ox at that point. What do I think of that explanation? Well, I guess... I would be curious, but more or less, I'm just offering that. If you want to tell me what you think, sure. Well, I think it's a great explanation. Because it's like the difference between... What was the saying between them? What's the difference between the Buddhists and the ordinary people? Hopefully there's no difference. But maybe one has a blade of grass in its mouth. And it's a single blade of grass. So yeah, I'd say that's a good explanation. But I'd prefer you instruct me on that a little bit. Thank you very much.

[56:51]

You're welcome. Did you injure yourself, Megan? Yes. What? Yes, I sprained my ankle. Carol? I was thinking about the blade of grass thing. Yes. So, and if He was just following the teacher, and that was his only goal. He might be a little blind to his own being. So if he's following the teacher with a dead grass in his mouth, he has to also have his own being. Taste his own being.

[57:54]

This is the blade of grass with which the sanctuary is built. This is the blade of grass with which the Buddha builds the sanctuary, Susan says. Case four of this text. Roberta? I found that image very beautiful. Very profound, because to me it says that one blade of grass, that you just do one thing, but that you also just do it as yourself. That's what I got out of it, because, you know, that's what an ox eats. It's just a natural food, and this grass doesn't say to eat toast or cream cheese or something that he needs, or something that another animal eats. It says to me, just do one thing, but do it as yourself. Elena?

[59:19]

Yes, I was thinking, if you fully experience hurt, but you no longer experience it as my hurt, it's just hurt, is that a pathological 3% realization, or is that enlightenment for me? I think it's the end of suffering. And I think that enlightenment entails even greater understanding than that, but I think that is in itself the end of suffering right there, which you just described. Now, if you... We could go on to maybe say other things that might come along with letting pain just be pain.

[60:30]

Or when there's pain, there's just pain. And that might make us feel that we're talking about enlightenment, not just the end of suffering. But so far, I think that would be not pathological. Because you'd be... You wouldn't be dissociating from the pain. You'd be letting... you'd be so much with the pain that there would just be the pain. You wouldn't be indulging in self-mortification and you wouldn't be indulging in addiction to sense desire. And we could also say, we could interpret what you're saying as that you also wouldn't be grasping that the pain existed or did not exist. You wouldn't grasp that the pain was eternal or that the pain could be annihilated.

[61:35]

So you would realize the middle way. And so we can go on from there to fill out perhaps the enlightened mind But this is pretty much a good start so far. And all of you have some pain, so there you are. You can work on that. You can work on relating to your pain in this balanced way, trying to learn how to do that. See if you can do it even while eating delicious vegetables. See if you can do it even while hearing the beautiful sound of the bell in the morning during meditation. See if you can do it even while sitting upright in the middle of your suffering. See if you can be intimate with your pain.

[62:39]

Completely intimate with it. And as I've been saying over and over, in order to be intimate with this pain, We have to be giving ourselves great love. And we have to be giving others great love. And we have to be feeling that others are giving us great love. We need to feel very supportive of ourselves and others. We need to be very patient with ourselves and others. and we need to feel that others are being very patient with us. We need to be very generous with ourselves and others and actually feel that others are being generous with us. We need to practice the precepts very carefully towards ourselves, towards others, and understand how they're practicing the precepts with us.

[63:44]

We need to be enthusiastic about this practice and realize that We are supported by very enthusiastic beings. And we need to be concentrated so that all the time we're concentrated on this middle way. No matter what happens, nothing jumps outside of this practice. It's always one practice, 24 hours a day, always the same practice. So we're always concentrated with this practice and this practice is always concentrated on us. There's no question in my mind that this practice is always concentrated on us when I'm always concentrated on it. If I slip, then I feel like the middle way slips. Funny.

[64:46]

impossible, but it seems like that. The middle way has lost me, or I've lost the middle way. I'd like to ask you to take a moment in honor of this wonderful case and the wonderful scripture that it celebrates and the wonderful practice of the middle way, the samadhi of the middle way that's being talked about here. And think about what your intention is in terms of practice. Does this case now inspire you to take on a practice? A, you know, kind of a practice that's kind of like a practice that will include your whole life and that your life will include.

[65:53]

That your life will include and will include your life. Some kind of practice like that. Can you think about a practice like that? And does it make sense then to commit yourself to such a practice? How can you tell yourself about that kind of practice? How you doing? Did you come up with the practice yet? No one wants to be the first to say yes. I got one, two. I didn't. You didn't yet? Well, rather than spend the rest of time waiting for everybody to join the middle way, I'll just leave you with this.

[67:05]

Think about, please think about it between now and next week and see if you can, like, take a piece of paper and put it in front of you and write down on the piece of paper You wouldn't need very many words, but you could fill the whole piece of paper, but I don't think you need the whole piece to state your commitment vis-à-vis the practice that's being indicated here. There's various simple ways to put it. Non-attachment's nice because it includes not attaching to the extremes, which take us away from the middle way. Or... The middle way. I vow to practice the middle way. I don't know if you're up to say that, but to practice the middle way is also to practice non-attachment. Non-seeking is also to practice the middle way. I don't seek anything other than what's being presented. And so on. Or the other ways, many other ways we talked about it tonight.

[68:06]

But is there some practice here or do you have some other practice that you feel addresses this teaching that we are what we need to be if we would simply not be attached to anything, and let go of our prejudices, we would realize what we really are. And that's all we need to do in terms of realization. And then after that, we can go to work. We can go to work, continuing the practices which we have been doing all along. But I'm actually asking you to do that. I'm asking you to actually write down what your practice is and bring it to class next week. You don't have to read it or anything, but just bring it to class on a piece of paper.

[69:12]

And if you don't want to waste a piece of paper, I have some scratch paper I could give you. which is just going to get recycled anyway. So if you need any paper, I can give you a piece of paper. And if that's too much, if you want to do it just in your head or in your heart, that's fine too. But I actually would like you to take this on because otherwise I feel we're missing an opportunity that this case is offering us to commit ourselves to the practice which will make this case realized in this world. Okay? Okay. Is there anything else about this case you'd like to bring up? This may not be very important, but I just wanted to note that I came to class without any lifesavers, and then I had some lifesavers, and I gave them away. And I like that practice.

[70:15]

Now for me, if I, considering my commitment, which is along the lines that I've just been talking about, in terms of my practice, my practice is like, you know, along the lines of what we're talking about, by coincidence. And, but part of my practice is that I feel, you know, part of the debt is for me to, I feel some debt And I feel some... I want to study Zen texts, so I'm studying this book here. Somehow I think it's a good idea. So that's why I'm going through these cases with you. So this going on to the next case for me is not going to be a change in my practice. And yet, I still want to study this case. It's not going to change my practice particularly, but my practice will change when I start studying this case. you know, it'll be exactly the same and yet it'll be manifesting partly in terms of studying this case.

[71:38]

All right? So, but I'd like you also to have to come to this case and have a practice that you are committed to as you study the case and sort of have that practice be the context in which you study this case and see how this case works with your practice and how your practice works with this case. This next case, case 68. Okay, so case 68, it's a case that is about, the name of the case is Joshon's swinging the sword. And Joshon, it's okay if Andy erases that beautiful verse now? Can you let go of it? Okay, would you wipe it off please, Andy? Okay. And Jashan is the title person in this next case.

[72:50]

Could you write across the board, horizontally, Jashan, Dungshan, no, down a little lower, in the middle, Jashan, and you have to have space for three, Shershuang, and Dongshan. Okay, this is a name of three Zen masters. Okay, and Dongshan's teacher is Yunyuan. You draw Yunyuan above Dongshan. And Shershuang's teacher is what, Andy? That's okay.

[73:51]

It's okay. Shershuang's teacher is... Where are you, Shershuang? Shershuang, Shershuang. Oh, Shershuang's teacher is Dawu. And Jiaxuan's teacher is the boatman. Why don't you write the boatman? Yeah. Why don't you write the boatman? Boat monk. Boat monk. Okay. And those three guys, their teacher is Jiaxuan. So this case, and there's other cases like this in the book, but this case is a case for us to get a feeling, a kind of family feeling about this. You see, we descend directly from the Yunyan, the Yaoshan Yunyan, Dongshan lineage. Our lineage comes down through there.

[74:53]

But this next case gives us a chance to study the kind of family feeling of related lineages because they all come from Yaoshan. So this is a chance for, if you want to, in your studies, you might check out Jashan is in this case, Shishan is in this case, Dongshan is in this case. They're all in this case. But also, you could maybe do some research on Yanyan, Dawu, and the Bodhmukh. and also on Yashan. If you have time, over the next, probably, maybe we'll spend two weeks on this case, or three weeks, I don't know. I think we'll spend more than one week. But anyway, this is something where you might find very helpful to study all seven of these people. And you may notice, if you study them, there's something very intimate about them. There's something, there's a certain flavor among all these seven people. Are those the seven people?

[75:58]

I think we found out who the seven people are. This is another seven people. This is the magnificent seven. Actually, this is actually the low-key seven. Actually, this is the like indirect seven. Actually, this is like the super strict, they won't tell you anything seven. Actually, you find out who these seven are. But they're very closely related. I think it's very nice to sort of get a feeling for this group. And in the next case, you'll find that the three lower, the three contemporaries there, all three of these people born almost the same year. Jia Shan, Cher Shuang, and Deng Shan, it's all born about 807. So they're born, you know, they all went to preschool together. And then something happened and they went off and studied with different masters. But anyway, there they are.

[77:01]

So that might be part of what you can feel for this case, is that the case is very, very varied. But it comes out of kind of like a family, you know? It's like things that happen in a family. These people are doing the practice, the same practice that we're talking about in the previous case. They're all about living beings who are practicing non-attachment. That's what it's about. But this story shows you, you know, the way it happens in a family. You know? In families you don't go around, it's usually... reciting scriptures. You know, you may try, but it doesn't work very well in those times. But this is like a family of people who are practicing like that. So I would suggest if you have time, do some research and study all seven of them and see if you can get a feeling for the group and then study the case.

[78:03]

and see how the case is kind of like, the way the kind of people, the kind of family feeling, the family style. The term that we often use in Zen for the type of teaching we do is the wind of the house, the house wind. And wind means, house means our house, you know, our family house or our school. And the wind means style or deportment or the breeze, the feeling of the school. Yes? Well, we have this one around, 68. Yeah, how many people need a copy of 68? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. I have enough. I have 25 copies up here. I think that will take care of it. More than a number of people raised their hands, so there's a copy here. This is your brother.

[79:08]

How do you do, brother? Thanks for coming. Thanks for letting your sister come. Can I keep letting her come? He has to. There you go. Just one class. He got it fast, didn't he? Well, there it is. How do you... How is it... when getting rid of the dust to see Buddha? Okay? What? How is it when getting rid of the dust to see Buddha? Or, literally, the order that getting rid of dust, seeing Buddha, time, how is it?

[80:09]

At the time of getting rid of the dust to see Buddha, how is it? This is the question for this case. Okay? So there's the question. You can work on that. If you want to see what the answer these people gave, it's in the book. We can talk about it, but what's your answer? Okay? Thanks for the lifesavers. And please take care of the practical stuff.

[80:47]

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