The last time we had a day of sitting here, I did not give a Dharma talk. And I wondered about this time, too, because it always seems good for us just to sit quietly for the day. And I wonder if there would be any benefit in me speaking to you. Or perhaps it would just be better to let you be quiet for the day. But I know that sometimes even on a quiet day of sitting, some people are sitting talking to themselves.

[01:17]

So I thought, if so, maybe I should get a word in too. If you're already encouraging yourself to sit completely still, with a unshakable faith that you are maintaining the essential working of the Buddha way, I don't need to say anything. But if you're doing anything besides that, maybe I should say that to you, which I just did. Finding our true place in the middle way, I believe, is possible.

[03:12]

But from everything I've seen and heard in terms of my own life and hearing from others and also hearing from the great teachers of the past, to understand the middle way is very difficult to find the balanced place between the biased tendencies of our mind in the midst of various extreme views is difficult. It requires our entire life effort If we hold back any of our heart or attention, we naturally veer off by habits of veering off.

[04:20]

This morning I told you a story during Zazen of a conversation between a teacher and disciple in China over a thousand years ago. And this teacher and disciple, the teacher's name is Stonehead, or you could also say on top of the rock, because he used to sit on top of a flat rock. So they called him on top of the rock or Stonehead. and his main disciple we know by the name Medicine Mountain or Yaoshan.

[05:46]

So when Yaoshan first came to visit Shirtou, He was already quite experienced in Buddhist studies. He was an expert on the precepts and had practiced the Buddhist precepts, according to his understanding, very thoroughly. But his understanding was not complete, and he did his best to following his understanding of Buddha's precepts, but somehow they weren't bringing him to the freedom he sought. And he heard about the Zen school and that there were actually realized teachers who had become free and who had a way of directly entering

[07:10]

the human mind and realizing what it was and becoming liberated from it, through it, by it. He went to see Stonehead and he told him about his background and what he had heard was possible through the teaching of the Zen school and asked Shurto to teach him And Shinto said, being just so won't do. Not being just so won't do either. Being neither just so nor not just so won't do it all.

[08:24]

How about you? This is instruction in the middle way. When we sit, We want to really be ourselves. I don't know if we want to be, but we must really be ourselves. But being ourselves is not being just so. And it's also not the opposite. And it's not both, and it's not neither. Where is our true self? How about you? The ungraspable middle way is being indicated by these words.

[09:35]

The way of perfect freedom is being pointed to by not pointing in any direction Not pointing away from here. Not pointing towards here. But somehow just sitting and watching the ten directions arrive on your life. Or arrive as your life. Watching past, present, and future arrive as your life. And then have a conversation about it. When the master Shirtou asked Yaoshan, asked Medicine Mountain, how about you, he couldn't say anything. And Shirtou said, there's no affinity here.

[10:43]

You should go see horse master, Matsu. Yaushan traveled and went to see the great horse master, Madsu. When he arrived, he introduced himself the same way and also told him that Shirtou had sent him. Master Ma said, I make him raise his eyebrows and blink. Sometimes I do not make him raise his eyebrows and blink. Sometimes raising the eyebrows and blinking is right.

[11:58]

Sometimes raising the eyebrows and blinking is not right. How about you? This time, Yaushan could hear the dharma rain falling? How about you? Can you hear it?

[13:00]

Are you listening? Zazen is listening. to the Dharma rain. Yaushan heard it and he bowed to horse master. And the horse master said, what have you realized that you now are bowing?

[14:08]

And Medicine Mountain said, when I was with Stonehead, I was like a mosquito trying to bite an iron bull. Horsemaster said, the truth you have realized is enough. Although you have realized it here with me now, your teacher is Stonehead. Medicine Mountain stayed with Horsemaster for two years and deepened his realization with this great teacher.

[15:13]

And then he returned to his original teacher, Stonehead, and continued to practice sitting with him, which led to the moment of this conversation where Stonehead said to Medicine Mountain while he was practicing zazen, what are you doing sitting here? And Medicine Mountain said, I'm not doing anything at all. And Stonehead said, then you're sitting idly. And Medicine Mountain said, if I were sitting idly, I would be doing something.

[16:25]

Stonehead said, you say you're not doing anything. What are you not doing? Medicine Mountain said, even the 10,000 sages don't know what I'm not doing. Stonehead was very happy with his student's answer and spoke a poem in celebration. We have been going along together.

[17:47]

from the start. But I still don't know his name. go along together like this, just according to circumstances. Even the 10,000 sages don't know him. How could hasty, careless people know? Sitting here today with a body and a mind, taking care of your posture.

[20:34]

Are you ready? Are you ready to not do anything at all? use all your doing to sit. Do your sitting, do your breathing, do your thinking. This is not Zazen. It's just doing things. But if you completely engage your doing in this way, if you're completely engaged in what you're doing, you have a chance, you have the opportunity to be ready to understand what it is to not do anything at all.

[21:48]

If you take responsibility for all the things you do moment by moment, throughout the day you're in the right position to understand what it means to not be so and to not be not so and to not be both and not to be neither. One Buddhist scholar looking over what he considered to be similar developments in the history of Buddhism, namely the Vajrayana and Zen, said that the Vajrayana practitioners sit and recite the mantra of Avalokiteshvara, OM MANE PADME OM.

[22:57]

And by sitting and chanting this mantra, they realize, they bring the compassion of Avalokiteshvara into realization as their body and mind. But he said the Soto school of Zen just sits still, silently. with the same aspiration that the compassion of Avalokiteshvara will fill our entire body and mind. That stillness and silence is the opportunity we offer to infinite compassion.

[24:02]

Actually, if you look more closely at Vajrayana, you find out that they also have a practice just like that of the Soto school, a silent, still to welcome. To welcome this one that we've been traveling along with from the beginning but we don't know her name. We go together along the path according to circumstances, according with circumstances, According to circumstances, whatever they are.

[26:06]

According with circumstances, whatever they are. Stillness is not my idea of stillness. And it's not the opposite either. But all of us sit here with some idea of stillness and what is not stillness. Stillness is the complete reversal of all human tendencies.

[27:27]

It is the complete perfect reversal of your thinking. The complete reversal of your thinking is complete stillness. It's a reversal without moving at all. It's a change which has no characteristics. It has been accomplished by all Buddhas. And this accomplishment is an accomplishment that depends on nothing.

[28:40]

To follow a path that depends on nothing, to practice a way that you cannot do, to be involved in actions that are completely useless, is what the ancestors are indicating. There are stories of people who practice the way and realize a truth without using anything to realize it.

[30:13]

The stories are about people who have names and who live in places just like us. And so when the normal human mind looks at these stories, we think that the realization depended on those circumstances. But the realization is not the circumstances. It is the according with the circumstances. And the according with circumstances is always the same middle way. To not have circumstances to accord with would be a mark. You'd be depending on not having circumstances. To be in circumstances without depending on them is the middle way.

[31:30]

For me, the New Yorker magazine is kind of my I Ching, my book of changes. Sometimes I just open it. I pick an issue at random and open it at random. So last night when I was thinking about my talk today, I actually was going through some old ones to put them in storage, and I grabbed one from, I think, 1983. It's an issue that has a story by John McPhee about the Swiss Army in it, part two. And I think the cartoon just before the article was two men sitting in an office, and one of them says to the other one, one looks like a publisher and the other one's like an author, right?

[33:10]

And the publisher says to the author, who has a beard and looks a little bit like Henry David Thoreau, he says, bunny rabbit stories like everything else Mr. Heinecker move along with the times and in the cartoon before that one Two men are standing on a busy street in New York and one of them says to the other, what are you clinging to these days? And the cartoon before that has a man walking along the street and he has one of those, you know, bubbles over his head for his thoughts so you can see what he's thinking.

[34:19]

And it's a round circle, pretty round. not perfectly round, and it's black or dark gray with little dark gray bubbles, smaller dark gray bubbles going from his head up to the big bubble. And he's got a deep frown on his face. You see the side of his face and there's a line going down. from his mouth towards his chin. He looks real depressed, having this dark circle over his head. And then he walks a little further, and there's another picture over his head. And this time, in the circle, there is a little bit of a, looks like a tiny bit of, the sun is rising in the circle, a little bit of sunrise, a little bit of sun coming up. in the circle and the line starts tilting up slightly and then the sunrise goes further and the sun's pretty up out of the dark and the picture is lightening up and the line goes higher across his cheek to a slightly above level

[35:39]

And then the next picture is the sun is like fully shining in the middle of the picture and the whole circle is bright. And then the line from his mouth goes up way high into a full-fledged grin. And he walks a little further and the sun starts to go down a little bit. He's still grinning, pretty much the same, a slight decrease in the grin. And then the sun starts to set, and the grin, again, comes down a little bit more, but still he's kind of like, well, you know, still riding on the high a little bit. And then the sun sets, and it goes black again, and his, again, the line goes down. into pretty much the same sad, grumpy look that he had when it was black before. This is called going along according to circumstances.

[36:46]

Now you may think, oh, if you're a Buddha, when the sun sets you keep smiling. And that's right. Buddha keeps smiling when the sun sets and keeps smiling when the sun rises. Buddha is smiling all the time. But the Buddha way is to accord with the circumstances, and the circumstances are like that picture. It's not that you go from the sun in the dark and the face stays the same. It's not like that. but by according to those circumstances each step of the way in the cycle there is stillness there is compassion there is willingness to be in these circumstances down to

[37:58]

the minuteness of your cheeks and the tears of sadness or happiness running down your face over the crevices in your cheeks. And to sit still and quiet in the middle of these storms in the middle of these karmic storms allows compassion for these karmic storms to fully manifest. I know you already know about this, but I'm not sure if we're completely settled on this or if we don't waver a little bit now and then in our realization of this.

[39:12]

An unwaveringness, unshakableness in the midst of waveriness and shakiness. We're starting a practice period today and people have come from all over the country and Canada and Germany and I don't know where else to do this practice period.

[40:22]

And people are crowded into various cubby holes around Green Gulch. the housing for the practitioners is not spacious and luxurious. And I think in order to put up with such accommodations, these people must be interested in something, to put aside a time in their life to just sit and work quietly and concentratedly in a completely useless way. I'm not sure what each person is aspiring to, but it's pretty impressive that people will arrange their lives to do something so useless from the worldly point of view.

[41:39]

Anyway, I'm holding up the banner of reversing your thinking, turning around and going in a completely different way, which is not even the opposite. It's so different. A reversal that you cannot figure out, that even the 10,000 sages don't know. And yet, it is the great joy of our tradition. Even this flag I'm holding up, you can hardly see. You can only see my hand. I don't even know what the name of this flag is, but I hold it up with my whole heart. And I sit under it and ask you to sit under it too, with all Buddhas.

[42:51]

Let universal compassion inhabit your body and mind, starting with your willingness to be yourself today, moment by moment. free of knowing and not knowing, thinking and not thinking, free of the thinking you're doing right now, free of the not thinking you're doing right now. And then as it says here, the Buddhas, the Buddhas, what do they do? The Buddhas extend their compassion to us freely without limit and we are able to attain Buddhahood.

[44:04]

Where are these Buddhas who are going to extend their compassion to us so that we can attain Buddhahood? Where are they? I say they're right here with us right now, flowing along with cause and condition, flowing along with circumstances. They're not the slightest bit away from us. They're not the slightest bit different from us. They're not the slightest bit the same as us. You can't grasp them. You can't get away from them. And these are the Buddhas who will extend their compassion to us and allow us to be free of karma and attain the way. Question is, are we ready for it? Are we here to receive this? Or are we a little bit someplace else where the Buddhas are not coming?

[45:12]

What's it like to flow along with circumstances and to accord with them minutely without getting stuck in them? What's it like to sit without getting stuck in sitting and move without getting stuck in moving? What's it like to not get stuck without even any way to tell that you're not stuck? What's it like to be free without any way of telling that you're free and yet to be certain and have no doubt? It's not like anything and it's not different from this.

[46:27]

Do you doubt that? Or do you have no doubt? And if you have doubt, do you have the faith to sit still in your doubt, to not move from your doubt? Do you have the faith that by not moving from your doubt, you will attain the way? And if you don't have the faith that sitting still and not running away from your doubt is attaining a way, can you notice that that lack of being willing to sit in your doubt is causing you further misery?

[47:56]

Can you see that? If you can see that, that may encourage you to give sitting still a try, or not even a try, a chance. Under all circumstances, no matter how active you seem to be, give sitting still a chance. Whooping cranes are endangered species. Did you know that? Well, some people say they are endangered species.

[48:59]

There aren't very many left. And I think one of their migration routes is through the center of the country, like going through Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee and Missouri and Texas. And a whooping crane was born in a zoo in Texas, I think, or was given to a zoo in Texas. A female whooping crane. Since she was born in Texas, she was called Tex. And after she was born, she was cared for by one of the zookeepers. And whooping cranes are one of these species that they imprint on the first thing they see.

[50:03]

So she imprinted on this guy that took care of her. And then later, when she was mature, they tried to get her to mate. with a male whooping crane, but she was not interested in male whooping cranes. She only liked male humans. I don't know what happened, but for some reason or other, she was transferred to a whooping crane development center in Wisconsin. And the man who was in charge of that project of trying to get whooping cranes to reproduce received her, received texts. And as part of the way of getting the reproductive thing going, he knew a lot about whooping cranes and realized that the way female whooping cranes work is that the

[51:15]

the egg descends from the ovaries down into the fallopian tube in response to the mating dance of the male whooping crane. I don't know how tall whooping cranes are, but some cranes get to be a height of about 55 inches. So cranes, when they're standing, are quite big. So what this trainer did is he he learned the mating dance of the of the whooping crane, and I don't remember exactly if he dressed up a little bit with wings and stuff. I think maybe he did get something like wings and so on, feathers and a little hat and so on. And he did the appropriate dance, which is what gets the female to get up and dance.

[52:20]

And when she's dancing, the egg comes down. So he did the dance, and he learned it well enough so that she did get up and dance with him. And then when she started dancing, they knew that the egg was coming down, so then they took the sperm from a male whooping crane. and artificially inseminated her. And then she went into pregnancy, which I think for whooping cranes is quite long. I don't remember exactly how long it is, but it's a long time, like months and months. And then she delivered this egg, whooping crane egg, which are also quite big. But the egg didn't reach maturity. I believe the first attempt, the shell was too thin to survive. So they didn't get a young whooping crane out of the deal.

[53:21]

And then I think it happens once a year that you have this opportunity, this mating cycle can happen. So he had to wait for another year before he could do this again. And then the next year again he did the same mating pattern and she got up and danced again and they went through the same process. And again there was some problem. that it didn't reach completion. And then he waited another year and did it again. And again it was unsuccessful. I think, I'm not sure I have this right, and each time there's different reasons, but I don't remember them. Someday I'll devote an entire lecture to this and give you all the details, because the details are important. But you can imagine the details of working closely with the animal for months to try to help her deliver the baby successfully. And then again, for some reason or other, this man, this biologist or whatever he was, zoologist, couldn't devote this, give the time to this mating process and so took a year off.

[54:37]

And then he came back one more year. And he decided this year to really give himself completely to what was necessary. And actually, in a normal mating situation, the male actually stays with the female during the whole time, doesn't just impregnate her and then split. He actually stays with her and helps her through the process, brings her food and stuff like that during this pregnancy period. So what this man did was he built a nest that would house her and him, a small hut with a place for her to sleep. And he was a writer, so a place for him for his typewriter and stuff. And he actually moved in with her and lived with her for the whole pregnancy and didn't go off doing his human things for that time. And he brought her food and stuff like that when she needed it. And this attention, I think part of what they attributed to unsuccessful previous times was that she got nervous.

[55:47]

She was nervous and insecure being by herself during this time. They're used to having the one who, you know, does the dance be there. So he stayed with her. And this time the egg was delivered successfully and the the egg brought to term and the baby sprouted and lived. This is called going along together like this according to or according with circumstances. Even the 10,000 sages don't know his name. How could hasty, careless people understand? This is the kind of devotion and thoroughness that's required to just sit still, to realize what that means throughout the day.

[56:55]

A day like this, a day when we're moving around working and eating together, a willingness to give ourselves completely to what's happening, to what's being asked for. This is not easy to give up your life for a bird, but it may be what's appropriate. Only you can witness what's happening for yourself and accord with it Hopefully you can do that and meet somebody else who can do that. According to the circumstances is called sitting still. It's called not doing anything at all. It's called the middle way.

[58:02]

Please, honored followers of Zen, If you want to study the mystery, don't waste time.

[58:18]

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