I will trace the truth of my titanic words. to mention that to you, uh, in the classes, or, you know, maybe a million or whatever, if you feel, uh, moving in a way that you should have yourself participating in it, put me to stop

[01:18]

If you stop it a little bit, you have a new chance to be reaffirmed to what's going on. Or if I say something, you may feel like you're the only one who is not with it, but probably with one person, if you feel it out of it, probably you have a limited picture of it too. What would that mean? Please, for a timeout. Rather, if you have a question, you'd like us to stop with that.

[02:27]

And then you stop. But then you might want us to stop the night after asking questions about how they were going rather than maybe contact. Can I make it? Today I'd like to talk about the poem study. The music poem. The poem is part of the Zen tradition. I mean, I wish y'all know that. But there's a different way to use them. In some sense, probably each. But there's two more very broad pieces.

[03:33]

There's a different . Some sort of . Maybe use koans the way Rinzai people, and some Rinzai people may use them the way Dogen did. But there is this broad difference in the way of approaching two koans to such an extent that you may have heard, they say, in Soto you don't have koans, you don't use koans, you don't practice with koans. You've heard that, haven't you? In Rinzai you have koans, in Soto you don't. And some Soto Zen teachers say, we don't use koans. And some Soto Zen teachers also criticize the use of koans. Have you all heard about that pretty much? No. You haven't heard about that? No.

[04:38]

So, you know, these days, and also... In the past, some Soto Zen teachers criticized using kolons, and some Rinzai teachers feel that Soto not using kolons are missing a big opportunity. The criticism of the Soto Zen people? Well, one criticism that wasn't exactly a criticism, but Katagiri Roshi one time said, Don't study Rinzai Zen. After you study it, you won't be able to practice Soto Zen. And there's a little bit of what do you call it? How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Perry? That's an American song. That's an American song. How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Perry? Do you understand?

[05:41]

So some American soldiers went over to Paris during the First World War and when they came back they didn't want to go back to the farm. So what do they mean by that? Well, part of it is that it's not just the cons that people are criticizing but the systematic use of them and be systems a special systems at work tend to on they may tend to from draw power to them and so a colon system can become a kind of a power power base it can become a power base for a hierarchy It becomes a way of certifying who's a teacher and who's not, and also who can certify teachers by those who are in charge of the colon system or whatever system it is.

[06:47]

So one of the criticisms is of using the stories in such a way that they become an object of greed, studying it for certification, and also using it in a powerful way. And once you see the power of the system, there is a nice power of the system. The system in some sense has a certain answer to the koan. And then also there's ways of checking that even when they get the right answer, there's ways of checking it. And those are also standard. Sometimes they don't need to be checked because the teacher and the student are so intimate that really the teacher doesn't need to use it. But in some cases where there isn't intimacy, you can still use the checking place.

[07:55]

So as you may know, there actually are books out which tell the right answers to the koans. Some people publish those books, and they actually had them in a bookstore a while ago. But I don't think that book had the checking, you know, had the teacher's version of the book with the checks on the phone. And, um, I remember another time I was talking, I was giving Katagiri Roshi a ride to the airport and we had just done a kind of a seminar with a Tibetan teacher and I said to him that I really enjoy listening to the Tibetan teacher because I studied the Abhidharma Kosha for a long time. So when people would ask his teacher questions that he would answer, I would always hear him, I would always hear his question coming from the Abhidharma Kosha. So a lot of Tibetan teachers, especially of the Galutpa school, they get trained in Abu Dhabi Kosha for a long time, so they answer a lot of philosophical, psychological questions in terms of that system.

[09:11]

Anyway, I always enjoyed studying it, and I enjoyed hearing, having studied it, understanding where his countries were coming from. And Kadiburashi said, yeah, but Dogenzenji warned against systems. So there's a criticism of systems per se, even aside what is the power element of it. So that's part of it. But one of the main problems of the power element is that this is right answer business. When there's a right answer, it tends, in some sense, for some people, having a right answer tends to thwart their learning ability. They sense there's a right answer, and part of their brain turns off. I think that happens at Tassajara, too, all over the system. I think, for some people, I represent the system, and therefore, they sense I have the right answer, and they don't want to say the wrong answer. So then, why would you want to say the wrong answer?

[10:18]

So that's okay. But then part of the brain closes down, so the wrong answer part of the brain closes down, which might be the creative part of the brain. Who knows? And somebody just sent me a newspaper, a New York Times article about this woman who does research, and she said that when they did tests on people, I forgot what it was, but anyway, If they told them that this was an answer to such and such a problem, they learned it much better than if they told them it was the answer. Those who were told it was the answer and those who were told that it was an answer learned it about as well. But the ones who had learned that it was an answer could apply it better to their life, and they had a more creative response to it. And I would just broadly say... I think someone said last night that... Was it, Mark, that Christianity, in some sense, is getting a limp beat?

[11:27]

Did you say that, Mark? Losing his strength? Huh? Yeah. I think that, in some sense, you could say that Christianity in America, anyway, is getting weaker. But American religion is not getting weaker. And I'm of the school... I find it appealing to think that we have a kind of American religion and that it's not really Christianity. Christianity, as you may know, I want to call it suppressed Gnosticism. At least it suppressed all Christian Gnosticism. Gnosticism means a couple of things. One is it means that you have a kind of knowledge that liberates you. There's a kind of knowledge that can liberate you rather than you're liberated by the sacraments of the church and so on or by faith. Another thing about Gnosticism is Gnosticism, generally speaking, their God is not a creator God.

[12:32]

Their God is a God that you can relate to and become intimate with. And the thing between you and God is actually in the creating world. So not to sustain the world as a block between you and God, whereas what the Church decided to say was that the world was created by God, so the world is God. The world is now blocking you. The world is creation. by God. And Gnosticism is a different point of view. It got kind of squashed. But in America, I think the American people like Gnosticism. They like a kind of knowledge that would set you free. And also American people, I think, there's more of a tendency to think that God is something you can relate to, and also that the world in between you and God. And in schools, although the Christian church may be any weaker, American religion is very strong.

[13:39]

Mormonism, Pentecostal, Seventh-day Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesses, they're gradually taking over the world. Of all the missionary activity, except for the Munis, it's all going from America out, except for Buddhism in. And Buddhism, in some ways, especially Zen, especially Soto Zen and Rinzai Zen, in some ways have a lot in common with these American religions. Christianity, in some ways, can be weaker. In these churches that I mentioned, a lot of them say that they're Christian churches. But if you look at their doctrines, they're not Christian. They're just smart, saying they're Christians so that they don't get busted by the government or by the other Christian churches. Because, you know, in some places in the world, people can use Christianity to beat you up.

[14:40]

Like, you know, in America. If you don't like somebody, and the way they are a Christian and the way they aren't a Christian, you can beat them up and say, the reason why you beat them up is because they're not a good Christian or because they're not a Christian at all. And then people say, well, okay. I guess if it's for that reason, it wasn't just random violence. You know, it's for a wholesome reason. Pardon? Pardon? Pardon? Are they religious, like the Mormons? They're not Christian. I think they're very religious. Yeah, definitely. I mean, they're into salvation, they're into freedom, they're into, you know... But I'm just saying that a lot of these religions also don't have systems. Like, I forgot to mention Southern Baptists.

[15:41]

Southern Baptists also aren't really Christian in a lot of ways. But anyway... By not having a system, you let the people in your church have access to creativity and revelation. And the revelation can be ongoing rather than set. People like to have fresh revelations. And the birth of these churches... were by people who had revelations and also had a bunch of revelations. And the Mormons are still having revelations. They don't change policies there, you know. Like when they decided to let black people in, they didn't change a policy, they just had a revelation. When they decided to abandon polygamy, they had a revelation, and so on. So, because there's not a heavy-duty system, you could have ongoing revelation. I think that's also part of the reason why systems are not so good, because they inhibit revelation and creativity. And they also tend towards fundamentalism, in the sense that fundamentalism is like when you start taking the imaginative poetic quality of your faith, of your religion, literally.

[17:00]

you lose track of the fact that this is this is poetry it's called on your poetry but if the corns get put into a system and you lose track of that they become literal and you get right and wrong and also power but when you when you get tuned into that system it's very hard then to go back to a practice that doesn't have that kind of systematic quality and all the power of that system That's why it's hard to go back to Soto-Santa to rinse that. Or if there's any system of graded initiations, called like graded initiations, it's hard to go back to a life of just being kind of like a farmer. Farmer monk, you know, just following his schedule and stuff like that with no gaining idea. Kind of bland and so on. I heard somebody typify the history of Soto Zen in Japan as characterized in terms of its ongoing relationship with Rinzai, in terms of the way it detracted to and reformed from using koans.

[18:28]

Or another way to talk about it is, you know, in the funeral samadhi, although it doesn't say so, if you look at it, you notice the number five appears there? There's a lot of fives in that. There's five fives. And then there's five fives plus there's five times five, and then there's five times five times five. There's 125 plays on those five fives. But basically there's five, and although Dengshan doesn't say that there's five, there are five. He doesn't say that these five are like five different dimensions of the whole philosophical system. He would say that. But in fact, by bringing up those five, he offered the seeds for the building of the five-fold philosophical system on the various dimensions of enlightenment, which are called five ranks.

[19:41]

Have you heard of the five ranks? Go eat. Go eat. Five ranks. Go eat. Five ranks. He didn't say there's five ranks in here, but he showed them. And then later, I think one of his dear disciples pointed out that there are five ranks. And his disciple was, you know, Sao Shan. Dong Shan and Sao Shan. and that's how you make . They reversed it. in China, or . So Deng Xiaon's disciple kind of systematized, drew out these elements of these five relationships between, sometimes they say the five ranks or the five relationships between relative and absolute.

[20:55]

Sometimes they say five relationships between vassal and lordy. Or to do the teacher. Okay, you heard of those? Five ranks. So then, based on these five ranks, they made up what's called a five gody colon. So it's the public manifestation of these five ranks. So then it became a system of study. And at the end of the Rinzai koan system, they studied those koans. So the Soto Zen teachers, the Rinzai masters, several hundred years later, borrowed these five ranks. Soto's, you know, to some extent, the Soto Zen people, you know, gave away their five francs. Then later they said, can we have them back?

[21:58]

Now let me see how powerful they are. It's like, you know, I used to put my clothes in Goodwill, and then my friends would put them on, and it looks really good on me. Oh, jeez, can I have them back now? Ever heard that happen? People were like, geez, that's beautiful. Something like that happened to Soto Zen. So then Soto Zen started studying these five ranks. I mean, at various points in history of Soto Zen, some teachers studied the five ranks. And then all the months ago, you're happy because you've got the great five ranks. You're all smart, and you still have relationship with relative and absolute. We're all kind of... We understand enlightenment, finally, and we can lecture on it. And the lay people think we're really smart and give us more money and buy us better robes and stuff, throw us more temples. And the Rinzai people don't have all the power anymore because, you know, blah, blah, blah. Yes, yes, yes?

[23:02]

I don't know what they are. What are they? You want to know what they are? Okay. You don't know what they are? What are they for? What are they for? Yeah. Yeah, well, see, now you want to know. I found clear he came to Zen Center one time, and he started teaching the five ranks with the students, and he realized they didn't know about it. He said, hey, what are you doing? How come you don't teach people that? And actually not, but occasionally there's classes that are in the five ranks, right? Some of you people probably took them. Now Mel did one a lot. So he was very popular there for a few weeks. Because, you know, oh boy, five ranks. Rosie's going to take that class. What'd you say? Years ago. Yeah, really. So anyway. The five ranks, so, you know, the reason, but at times when in Soto Zen, some people say, when the people are really into studying the five ranks, the practice goes, they're practicing these settings.

[24:09]

When Zen monks become really philosophically, you know, sharp, start spending a lot of time on learning and doctrine and system, their practice goes bad. That's what people say. And then they say, oops, no more. Stop studying the five ranks. Put them away. Put them back in the closet. Don't study it. Rosie said, before you put them away, tell me what they are. And so, I don't know, maybe we can study the five ranks. You want to? I don't know the name. I don't know the name. The names have sacred power. I'll tell you one. I'll tell you two of them. The relative in the absolute and the absolute in the relative. In the middle of the relative is the absolute.

[25:13]

Got any relatives? In the middle of those relatives is the absolute. Absolute also, the word for absolute is this word. Is it correct? Unbiased. And that's also related to the color of the study. In the middle of the biased, in the middle of the relative, in the middle of the limited, is the unlimited unbiased correct. So after generations of being balanced and unbiased, we're temporarily biased. In what way are we biased? We're biased towards life. We're biased towards, I don't know what, Buddhism maybe.

[26:16]

We have, now we're in a biased situation. We have a slight, we have some slight preference for Soto's or Rinzai's or something. But for a long time we, you know, we weren't biased. So right, but right in our, still, right in our biased relative existence, right in that, there is the unbiased. Or as you say, right in the middle of light, there's darkness. in the Jomera Samaritan, light needs a relative or discriminating consciousness. Right in the middle of discriminating consciousness is non-discriminating consciousness. Okay? The other one is, right in the middle of the unbiased, there's the biased. So right in the darkness, there's light. but lightened, in this case, the relative. So right in the middle of the biased, right in the middle of the unbiased, the correct is the biased.

[27:25]

So even in the middle of the unbiased, there's a bias. Right in the middle of emptiness, for example, which is kind of unbiased, there's a bias. Those are the first two. And the next three, you have to raise your hand for it again, yes? So how often they're called ranks? And it's for ranking people, right? Yeah, well, partly because it's for ranking people, yeah. Let's see, who understands it? If people haven't heard it yet, of course, don't understand, so they're low-ranked. That's what you want to know about. In a sense, they go one, two, three, four, five. So they're ranks, but they're ranks of one thing. You could also say they're aspects or dimensions that enlighten them. In a sense, yeah. Usually people first understand emptiness of form, right?

[28:32]

That's the usual thing, right? Because you know about form, right? color, you know, touches on, or feelings, or emotions. You know about those, right? Or your name, your address, that kind of thing. So first of all, you find out the emptiness of your address and your name. That's, you find the unbiased and then you look at your biases. That's what you do first for most people. Then you find that in emptiness, there's form. That's usually the next thing. But first of all, you have to understand emptiness and have some access to emptiness before you can see the form of the emptiness. So most people know more about form than they do about emptiness. Keep walking down the street. Some psychologists say more like emptiness than form, so they may have to like understand form. Oh, there's a form here. Oh, great. Okay, I'll sit down here. Or you know, oh, you follow the schedule, since there's a form of emptiness.

[29:33]

So usually it's in that order. But actually, they're simultaneous. And after the last one, you come back to the first one. Just like the Buddha does the beginning practices, not because he needs to, but because he's Buddha. Does that make sense? Nope. You'd probably be nodding your head yes if it did. So if I spent more time on this, we could spend the rest of the practice period on this, but you'd really get into the five ranks and the practice would be shocked, probably. Because, you know, you wouldn't want to just sit. You'd be sitting and thinking about the five ranks and being brilliant. So after studying fiberically, it's hard to like self-disabled. That's why some self-disabled people criticize studying the system of the colons. Because people I saw, once you sense the power of the system, it's hard to take some technology and just set it aside once you see it.

[30:42]

Yes? Are there some components that would be very helpful for understanding one aspect of one of those five ranks more than any other? The five ranks are the five ranks. You have to just study the issue of the relative and absolute absolute. Those are the five ranks. So you ask me, are some colons, would some colons go into one of those ranks? No, I just haven't understood how many of these go-e colons. Go-e colons mean that you take the go-e as a colon. You study the five ranks. That's your colon. It's a colon system, right? So then, within the colon system, after you studied these classical stories, going through them in a certain order and got the right answer and so on, then you study the go-e colons. And then you say the precepts, actually, the bodhisattva precepts, after finishing the colon system, and then you get initiated into the teacher's understanding of the precepts of the system.

[31:58]

So it has the strength of the system and the weakness of the system. And did you understand what I say the weaknesses of systems are? Does that make sense? They inhibit creativity. They tend towards being taken literally. They can impede revelation. They undermine non-dual practice. They can't do all that. They promote gaining an idea. And they also promote using the system for a goal. And so... And that's contradictory to non-dual practice. Non-dual practice, you don't use the practice to get enlightened. You practice as enlightened, and you're enlightened as practice. You don't do anything to get things. You're not into gaining anymore.

[33:01]

You're into realization. And Again, part of the American Zen history is that D.T. Suzuki was very influential in introducing Zen to the West, especially to America and Europe through English. He was a very good writer and a person with a lot of charisma. And he taught Zen. What's Zen? He made people think Zen was really neat. Zen is just immediate realization, a direct method of living the Buddhist life, not using any means in an immediate way, not relying on magical explanations, rituals, and that kind of stuff. And then he introduced the koan system as the main practice. So this was a big problem for D.T. Suzuki, because his whole presentation was conflicted by studying this wonderful, immediate, sudden practice, sudden, non-dual practice, which some people think was totally cool.

[34:13]

And you've got to use these co-ons to get it. which just throws you right back into dualism and delusion. You know, making practice into instruments which are used to cause some effect in the students so that they'll have satoran. So that's kind of a problem. And that's a lot of us came to Zen either with that impression or were surrounded by other people who had that impression. And for a long time, that's all the people knew about. They didn't know anything about Shoto Zen. They didn't know anything about sitting. All they knew about was koans and the wonderful behavior of Zen monks. They put the crack in about people. And gradually they started playing about sitting. So now there's a lot of people sitting, but still the koan thing, This idea of using co-ons to get an effect and also the systematic power of co-ons is still looming and it's still a problem for us because it has been for self-existing people for a long time now.

[35:21]

What are we going to do about it? No one is going to denial and sort of tell it to aren't your co-ons. So we're studying it. In fact, I brought this co-on up, K-56, which I thought presented to physicians. Uncle Mie, in a sense, presents the instrumentalist position. The Dungshan presents, I would say, more like the way Dogenzenji used koans. Because Dogenzenji did use koans a lot. Almost every fascicle, Shogun Glanzo starts with a koan. And then he unsystematically reads the koan. And in a way, he misreads the koan. He creatively reads the koan. And that's the character of most prophets, is they creatively, critically, read text. They read it upside down, sideways, backwards, inside out, and wrong. If you always read the text right, then there's no new revelation.

[36:28]

Right? Because it's the right way. And Plato got very upset with Homer, because Homer got Greek history wrong. He got it wrong. I mean, Plato should know, right? He's a smart wrestler. But the way Homer got it wrong was more interesting than right. And the way Joseph Smith got Christianity wrong was pretty interesting. Pretty interesting guy. The way he misunderstood the scriptures. Joseph Smith, you know what I mean? He's a guy who, he's the prophet of the Mormons. Kind of misunderstood the Bible in this way. Judith? Well, you thought of that. Well, only the question.

[37:31]

Well, Jessica, do you have, you said he fell on the green ocean, I was living. Yeah. Right, but I don't study it systematically. All right, if you go through the book straight through it, I don't know a koan system. And I've heard some rumors that some people think I shouldn't be teaching because I didn't go through the koan system. But Dolenzinger didn't go through the koan system either. And guess what else could he? I don't know. And yet he got the key and went, oh. Matter of fact, the first one, didn't he? And what did he do? His Godfather sat there. Just like you. Did you have your hand raised, David? Yeah, how did you study yourself? How did I study yourself? Well, by reading them and discussing them with teachers, but also mostly in my Koan classes.

[38:34]

So there's, like, a historical background. Did you study commentaries? Well, I study everywhere I can find something. Like, I study Dogen, see what Dogen has to say about... I watch how Dogen reads the koan. So I look in the Book of Records and see how the Book of Records reads the story about Mu, right? It doesn't dawn up with an inch. And then I watch how Dogen does it. And I watch how it is in Book of Serenity. But then I misread what Dogen said and misunderstand it and misinterpret it and then come up with my own thing. And then I go to class and people come up with their own thing. But sometimes they feel intimidated to come up with their own thing because they think I got the right answer. So you know what I'm saying? So the calling just kind of a basis? The calling, yeah. The entire phenomenal world is a basis upon which we realize the emptiness of the phenomenal world. And the emptiness is the basis on which we realize the phenomenal world.

[39:41]

But couldn't you say that there is something to go on the way it's traditionally, the way it was presented originally, and maybe well to understand that? Well, the way it was presented originally was that something happened. It was actually an event. So that's the koan. Yeah, right? Then the koans were collected, which is the history of Zen, right? Zen history is all these koans. Then people went to the history, pulled out the favorite koans, and made collections. Then they wrote commentaries. Still there's no koan system there. There's just various teachers commenting on various stories of various teachers. Then at some point somebody comes together and there's a system of study out of these collections of stories and commentaries. So that happens. But every element in the process is useful and interesting. It isn't like there's some leaf or some tree out there that's not interesting.

[40:48]

There's not some commentary. The stupidest commentary in the world on any koan is still interesting. All this stuff's interesting, and I'm interested in almost every thing about this stuff. I love those stories or something. There's something about those stories. Maybe in those stories I see some light. Maybe some other people see some light. When your eyes look under the words and your mind contemplates the words of these stories, are such that the language of the words maybe draws us into the liberating process of the mind. And Dogen's approach to koans is more like language is actually the way thought liberates itself. So as you watch your mind engage the language, you watch your mind entering the process of liberation.

[41:55]

Rather than do the right answer there, the way your mind's working is the unfoldment of enlightenment through these stories. So that's the way he approaches it, is to demonstrate his approach to reading and his approach to thinking about the language and how the language then unthinks him. That's it. So one thing I think I suggested with yourself, but also the way that there's true news calls, but just not systematically. Yeah, not systematically, right. That's the right way, which is more helpful. Right. He uses the koans. Dharma, if you watch, again, if you watch the teaching of the Heart City, and we'll watch the teaching of Nagarjuna, you can often see Nagarjuna, when you see Dogen dealing with his koans, I often feel like Nagarjuna is dealing with his koans.

[43:02]

Right. But the dialectic of perfect wisdom, the logic of perfect wisdom starts to be expressed in the way Dogen works with his stories. And also another historical issue is that when Dogen was interested in corn before he came back from China, he brought corn back with him. So he was already interested in corn. But also, a lot of his early students had been trained in Rinzai. And part of their training, I think, was coming from a Chinese Zen minister who didn't live that long before Dogen, Da Hui. Before Da Hui. Da Hui is a disciple of, what's his name? Yuran Wu. Yuran Wu, this guy who compiled the commentary and the booklet records. His disciple then made a system out of the record and other collections.

[44:04]

And some Rinzai people came and educated some Japanese monks, taught them some systematic translation of Koen. Dogen ran into these people who had been exposed to Rinzai's name. So a lot of his talks, I think, are addressed to these students and their understanding of Koen. So part of this is he's interested in Koen anyway. He thinks they're useful anyway. at ways of unfolding great drama. But also, he's speaking to a certain group of people who have been exposed to Rinzai. He's trying to dislodge them from their system. We, being on the planet now, are in the process of studying historically to try to find out actually what went on at that time. I didn't say that anyway, that was a quote.

[45:21]

Katagiri Roshi said that, but there's something to it in a sense that you've got to be careful if you sort of like, if you up the ante and you do something more powerful, it's hard to come back to something less powerful. That's what he was kind of saying. But of course, some people, like Galen just went to Hawaii to study koas in a systematic way with Robert Akin Roshi, right? So she may or may not come back. Or if she comes back, she may find sometimes and depressingly boring. But, you know, I'm just saying that that's what Kanagiri Raja said, and I think there's some merit to it. Just like it's hard to study Buddhist, once you study the Abhidharma, in some ways it's hard to read sutras, because sutras are just like, you know, Buddha's just talking away, blah, blah, blah, blah. What's it all about? Whereas the Abhidharma tells you the structure of his teaching. And so it's in some way, there's a more powerful approach to Buddhist teaching to have it all laid out to you and categorized, because otherwise, Buddhist sometimes contradicts himself and says different things at different times. And it's kind of, you know, troublesome sometimes to deal with the actual teacher rather than a systematic presentation of the teacher.

[46:27]

So that kind of thing. But it's not absolute, it's just a tendency to be careful of. But you already studied Rinzai, so it's no problem for you to come to Soto. Well, I studied Rinzai five years before I had you, but we didn't kind of work very well. You know, I didn't see, like, the calling study as a system or a concept. Did you? I just proposed what's new or what's the sound at one hand, and I said I was working. And it was a very good base for my practice, because it's very powerful, very intense. And for my part, there was no fatal relief whatsoever. You know, I was, there was a complete lack. So what happened when I started with Rinzai, pretty much at the beginning, I had to do part of the inside, actually, that re-glazed this paper. It was just a fact. Sorry. that, you know, I realized that, for all, they, you know, doubt about it. And that's, that's, that's why I kept learning the world. I've never been faithful.

[47:27]

That came later when I came up here and, you know, combated the whole thing in different ways. For me, this way was just excellent because I don't think without faith it would be needed. Well, okay, so that's your story, all right? That's my story. Okay, so another possible story is that somebody studies Soto Zen and has faith but no insight, then they go to Rinzai and have some insight, and then they say, I don't want to go back to Soto because I got insight studying these koans. And if a person did that, they might have been captured by their insight. That's a danger for somebody. You say, well, that sounds okay, because if you were just practicing that faith before, wouldn't it be great to have insight? Well, yeah, but then to attach to the medium, if you thought there was something that gave it to you, and to attach to it, that's a danger. So your system, that's just a danger that's warned, you know, to be careful of if you don't get into a dualistic approach to practice.

[48:30]

However, this story we're talking about for Uncle Mi and Dongshan's approach, Uncle Mi is the approach of you start as an ordinary person and you practice cultivation and you become a sage, okay? And if there's a system in between there, that's kind of what we're concerned with. But that's the way a lot of people practice, is that they start from ordinariness and work towards sagement. This is very common. And again, the Buddha did not teach a system like that, but Abhidharma looked at what the Buddha taught, and they pulled out a system like that, and they said he taught five paths. They see he was teaching a graded path to enlightenment. They go these stages. Path of equipment, path of preparation, path of insight, path of meditation, and path beyond training. They saw that path in his teaching. But he didn't say that path, but it was there. He could see it. And that's the graded path of cultivation from ordinary to sage.

[49:37]

But in the introduction to this case, the Soto Zen teacher who who commented on this case 56, he said something like, nothing's worse than falling into sagehood. How does that go? Better to be sunk forever than to seek liberation of the saints. Nope. The risk of always having a little stupid. Yeah, that's why I encourage you to do that. Probably someone else who feels like that too, sometimes. There's probably somebody else who feels like that too. Do you want me to do a real census before then? How many people feel a little stupid?

[50:39]

Yes. I have a sense that anyone, whether they're studying Buddhism or they, you know, just somewhere falling to a spiritual path, that we all get the insight. You know, we all have just little moments of enlightenment. But that's all they are. and you know they're wonderful and then life goes on right so I don't know I feel like there's something dangerous about You know, that there is something that goes from this to this. Right.

[51:41]

That's what that's saying. It's saying, better to be sung forever than to seek liberation of the saints. Better to be like, just like, totally stupid. like you may feel right now, than to seek the liberation of the saints, to go up this ladder to sainthood. Better to just stay down than to do that, okay? That's it. And also in case, it's not in this book, but one of the famous meetings is between Sagan Gyoshi Dayosho and Daikon Eno Dayosho. Sagan goes to Daikon and says, how can I avoid falling into steps and stages? often I avoid falling into a practice which kind of is trying to go boom, [...] boom. So it's not that there's not steps or stages. There is a pattern of cultivation. We don't deny that. Even if the Buddha didn't systematically say it, it is a fact that people sort of go through that, and there's dangers in it, okay?

[52:46]

There's dangers in going up ladders, right? You could fall down. And also, worse than that, you can be mean to other people who are climbing a ladder with you and trying to get ahead of you and stuff like that. Some people say that they have better ladders than you, things like that. Anyway, there's dangers in ladders. But Buddha still, for some people, he taught ladders. He taught steps. Because they needed it. Because they wanted to go ordinary to save. So he let them do that. And he even talks that way by himself sometimes. All right? But one of the things that happened also in Buddhism, and in Zen particularly noted for this, is to be careful not to fall into this progressive program of commotions. All right? So that's why Seigen Gyoshi says to Sikszentmihalyi, how can I avoid falling into these stages? And Sikszentmihalyi says, well, what have you been practicing? And he says, I haven't even been practicing the portable circuits.

[53:51]

I haven't been doing the most basic Buddhist teaching. I haven't started doing those. In other words, he just sunk. He's just like, I'm just a 10 monk. I don't even know anything about Buddhism. All I want to know is how to avoid, you know, knowing anything about Buddhism. Because, you know, I'm in a monastery and you're a big teacher and, you know, here I am and I want to be careful that I don't, you know, like, you know, get elevated just by hanging around. So he says, OK, what have you been practicing? He said, I haven't even started, basically. He said, well, if you haven't even been practicing portable truths, oh, no, he said, well, what steps and stages have you fallen into? And he again says, well, if I haven't even started practicing portable truths, what stages could I have fallen into? So the point is, don't follow the statements. Don't follow the steps. Don't get hung up on progressing through a system. But one of the ways to get hung up on progressing through a system is to avoid the system.

[54:53]

So if you're totally afraid of hearing about the up-and-down approach, and every time I mention it, you point your ears. Then you're already falling into steps of stages. You've fallen into the stage of not hearing about the system. That's kind of a special stage. That's actually super advanced. It's like, I can't even hear what Buddhists teach. How can you be open to powerful information and not grasping it? So, Susan asks, well, which is better, Uncle Mee's approach or Dungshan's approach? And as I said in New Zealand, it's not really that one's better than the other, although the commentator says it's better to be nobody than to get hung up by doing somebody. Better to have no attainment than to have a practice that you're seeking attainment. And yet, it's not really better, okay?

[55:58]

Somebody gives you an instruction in your life, better to not get any attainment than to try to get attainment. But then if you think that he's saying that better, then you're saying that he's into seeking sainthood. Understand? If I say, you know, better to be totally deluded than to be seeking, you know, sagehood. If I say that, and then you think I'm saying that that's better than seeking sagehood, okay? Then you're saying that I need to seek sagehood because I'm trying to give you the better way. Okay? I'm telling you it's better, but I'm telling you it's better in the sense of nothing's better. Better to be the worst than to get into better and worse. Better to be worse without being into better and worse than to be into better and worse. No, is that better? Well, no, it's not better. So Dung Shand approach isn't better than Uncle Mi's approach.

[57:05]

It's just different. And it has a lot going for it. Because it's non-dual. Is non-dual better than dualistic practice? Well, from a dualistic point of view, Some people would think non-dual practice is better than dualistic practice, right? Because dualistic practice, only by non-dual practice can you attain enlightenment. You can't attain enlightenment by dualistic practice because dualistic practice is diluted. So then someone might think, well, non-dual practice is better than dualistic practice. But that's dualistic, right? The non-dual point of view is not that dualistic practice is better than non-dual, or non-dual better than dual. The non-dual approach is not to prefer anything over anything. The non-dual approach is unconditional love. No matter what's happening, you give it your full, you know, to the best of your ability, your full devotion and attention, no matter what it is.

[58:10]

Whether it's Rinzai, Soto, or Mormonism, or Catholicism, or Mennonite, whatever. You give total attention to what's manifesting before your face. You don't know what that is. You study it. Is that better? No. And you don't prefer that either. So sometimes you wind up preferring things. So Zazen practice... So Dogen's approach to the koans is to teach what he means by zazen. So zazen practice is a non-preferential way of living. You don't prefer enlightenment over delusion. And you don't hate delusion. And you don't prefer delusion. But still, if you're in a deluded state, you still have some confidence.

[59:13]

So here you are, you know, in poverty, but you don't forget that you're Buddha's child. Because you are. Because Buddha said you are. And he made no exceptions about that. No exceptions. Everybody is Buddha's child. Buddha sees all beings fully possess everything Buddha's got, except good fallenness, steps and stages. Mark? In that point of my preferences, I'd say it's only my preferences or what control my life. Yeah. In part of my preferences, what control is that? What controls it? This thing has been controlling all along. Dependent core rising. Various conditions. There is no free will. Except as an illusion. But there is freedom. We are constantly propped up by the causal nexus of the universe, each of us.

[60:19]

We can never be ever other than what we are. But if we understand what we are, we can be totally liberated all the time. We are determined. We are determined to be an organism that's always involved in picking and choosing. Abhidharma system says one of the dharmas that's always present in your mind is decision. You're always deciding. The mind is constantly deciding. Every moment, decide, [...] decide. It's our mental nature to be deciding. That is also our pain. So we need to develop a practice which doesn't choose. namely a practice which just sits in the middle of being a choosing being. We need to develop practice which has no alternative to being a person that's always trying to pick and choose. And that is no free will.

[61:29]

No free will. And by that no free will, in the middle of being somebody who's totally concerned with free will, we realize freedom. from being a person who's concerned with free will, or from being a nihilist who says, I don't care, which is a lie, in terms of our actual psychological process. So when it says, the way is easy to set the picking and choosing, one response is, yeah, so the way's hard. Because everybody's picking and choosing. The other response is, find out some way that you can not pick and choose in this way. And that would be, I choose, okay, to give up choice and just to be a person who's picking and choosing and having a hard time. That's the way that's easy. This is simple. And weaning ourselves from total absorption and decision-making to total absorption and to the samadhi of the way we are, that's kind of hard.

[62:30]

But once we're a fully person who's move into decision-making, then the car is quite, you know, quite free, quite easy. What time is it? Oh, jeez, how are you guys getting nervous? Tired? Overheated? Brooks. So you said that, well, two questions. One, that nihilism is a lie given our psychological process. Yeah. It's not really honest. Not really honest. Well, in some sense nihilism is saying that there isn't anything. There's nothing in nihilism. You're saying that, actually, do you think things matter? Well, you do. But when one of the concerns, and people are so hassled by, who are so traumatized and panicked about, one of the philosophical, what do you call it, one of the philosophical responses to our trauma is nihilism.

[63:47]

It's sort of, it's okay, nothing matters. I'm cool. I don't care. Whatever. Whatever. There's nothing anyway. There's no consequences of this. I can do whatever I want. But we don't feel like that. We actually do feel like there's consequences. But that's so traumatic that we try to mesmerize ourselves in thinking that there is no consequences. Nihilism is, you know, wrong view. Nihilism is saying that there aren't any consequences of what you do that really matter to you. The second question was that you said Dogen's style is to see your mind engaging Your thought engaging with the koan. And also, to interact with the koan in such a way as to demonstrate what his zazen practice does when it meets the koan.

[64:52]

So Dogan is showing, if you're sitting zazen and you read koan, this is what you say. I'm sitting zazen, I read the koan, and here's what I have to say. In my state of just sitting, when I read these stories, these words come. So as he has, what is it, as it also says in the Jumar Samadhi, although it's not fabricated, it's not about speech. So in Zazen, you enter into an unfabricated state, into an unmade way of relating to your life. And actually, you start dependently choralizing, so she. You enter into dependent core arising, and dependent core arising is not fabricated. Dependent core arising is the process of fabrication. The process of fabrication is not fabricated. You enter into the way things are happening, and that way of being, although you're not making anything up, it can talk sometimes. And Dogen talked about it. A lot of bodhisattvas are very talkative.

[65:54]

It has to do with their vow. I vow to talk in order to save all sentient beings. And I'm going to stop if they ask me to stop. Eric? Eric, I wasn't really prepared on the last thing you said about accepting that we decide. I mean, were you saying that we need to practice non-deciding? Did you mean that in a practical sense? Well, okay, so I read the Abhidharma question. It says there are five or sometimes ten factors which are present in every state of consciousness, and one of them is adverting decision. Okay, so that makes me think, oh, so at every moment we're on some basis decided, okay? And then I practice Zen for a number of years, and people come and talk to me about decision-making, and I finally realize that decision is an illusion. Although it's an illusion which we constantly revolve in, really a decision is an illusion.

[66:58]

And that's why people have such a hard time. Because if you decide to do something, what people have a problem with is they think they have to work up to making decisions. They have to go through a decision-making process. But before you make your decision, the decision hasn't been made. Right? Well, let me get that. Take your time. Anyway, I say that before you made your decision, it hasn't been made. So like, for example, let's say that before you leave the room, let's say you might make the decision to leave the room before you leave the room. You might say, I made the decision to leave the room. But then you don't leave the room. So does that decision count? Say, well, yeah, sort of. Then you leave the room. You say, well, I didn't decide to leave the room.

[67:58]

That doesn't count that you left the room? This is one line you can go on. Or I decided to go to Chicago. Then I don't go to Chicago. In other words, I changed my mind. I decided not to go to Chicago. But also some people say, I decided to go to Chicago. They never change their mind to go to Chicago. They just don't go. Well, you know, when you go to Chicago, you decide to go to Chicago. When you decide to raise your arm, you decide. Most people's decisions have to do with actions. That's primarily about actions like action of the mind to pay attention to something or patience to something else. That's what the base point is. And then built up on that are karmic acts. You decide to do them, but deciding to do them before they happen is really an illusion. What really is a decision is when you do it. But before you do it, the decision hasn't been made. And people agonize over this all the time, and a lot of times they make decisions, they take them back, make them and take them back, change into something else, and they finally just do something.

[68:59]

That's when a decision is made, but when it actually happens, there's no decision other than the actual, and you don't have to prepare for it at all. Still, it's a decision, but the decision-making process is what people agonize over. When you do something, you suffer the consequences or the benefits. That's it. But the decision thing, if you watch how it works, it's much more comfortable. But this is just an example of a practical way of dealing with this. The practice that I suggest when you deal with is a practice of just what? Just sitting. Just sitting means that you are the person you are right now with the decision you're making right now. And with the illusion of further decisions you need to make in the future. You are that person and you have no sense of alternative to being such a deluded person. you realize you have no alternative to being a stupid person. That's not particularly enlightening, to have no alternative to being a stupid person, but it does send you forward on the path of enlightenment.

[70:09]

That no alternative to being a person who's totally into alternatives, it sends you forward. Steve? The mode of just sitting is that at the moment that you are making a decision And let's say, let's take your scenario. Instead of saying, how can it not be that way? Let's take it that it is that way. All right? That you are making a decision and you prefer the decision you're making. Let's take that one, okay? If you have no alternative to that and you're willing to be that person, okay, you are free. And in a sense, by having no alternative to whatever you're into,

[71:13]

That's not preferential. So your meditation practice, which you're doing at the same time as being this person who's into preference, your meditation practice is non-preferential. So you realize non-preference in the midst of being a person, a limited person, who is preferential, who does pick and choose according to preferences. And if you say you don't, you know, Okay, you don't, but let's take the case where you do have preferences, which basically might be always. How could you have a practice which is non-preferential by being willing to be such a person? That's what we mean by what he called generations of nobility. It means generations of non-preference, temporarily falling into preference. In other words, in our time-space life, we live in preference. We can't help it. But we also have the ability to practice a way which doesn't prefer to be other than a person who has preferences.

[72:21]

And I was talking this weekend to people, what happens if your ability to make preferences was taken away? What happened to your practice? You know, I kind of worry, if I have Alzheimer's, how can I continue to practice? My hope is that if I develop a strong, non-preferential practice, in the middle of my current life of preferences, picking and choosing, that that kind of practice can carry through even when I even lose my brain ability to make preferences. That the ability to totally be a person who has these problems of, for example, preference can carry over to being a person who's not like that. That's what I think practice can do for us. It can help us now while we're this kind of a creature, and it can help us later when we're a different kind of creature. If we should ever happen to fall into, you know, a state where we didn't have preferences, it might be such a state. Which is, you know, somebody might say it better or worse, but the point is that what happens when that one switches back to the other one?

[73:28]

How are we going to have a practice that carries us through all the different permutations that are possible for our psycholinguistic systems? And I think this non-preferential practice and just sitting is it. And that non-preferential practice also, it studies everything. So, you know, you're interested in all aspects of lifetime. You're interested in all aspects of human existence. You're interested in all religions. Everything, you know, everything's inconsistent. And in the meantime, everything is interesting to you while you're also a perfectist. I prefer studying Buddhism more than something else. But my practice keeps me open and interested in things that I'm less interested in. And gradually your practice will make you almost have trouble being more interested in the best Buddhism than the worst Christianity.

[74:30]

Because you'll be, actually, you'll have to adopt our traditional law. Our traditional law. But I've also talked to people about this weekend. Is it time, or are you just getting along? I'm just thinking, sort of, what we're not. OK. Dr. George, stand up. Everybody want to stand up? Yeah. I don't say something this weekend, you know, when you have Alzheimer's and your kids come to visit, you don't know that they're your kids. You know, the kids get upset. But if you start practicing loving everybody now, when your kids come to visit, you'll love them. But that won't matter so much. And if you only love some kids, when your kids come to visit, you might not be nice to them. So, start practicing loving everybody to Alzheimer's, you know, protection. And also, it's Buddhism, too. Everybody is your kid, you know. Everybody is your baby.

[75:35]

Because everybody is somebody's baby, and it could be yours. Yeah, well, that too. Mommy, mommy. Okay, so that's a horrible thing. So again, you get two approaches to Cohen's study. One, I told you the approach to Cohen's study is Zazen. You practice Zazen. Well, you know, he wrote me some letters about his study, Cohen, and aside from the dangers of the system, It sounds like, still, in some ways, what really goes on is the system allowed two people to get together their intervention through what can be entered. So any excuse for that's OK. The danger of saying, well, we're getting together and getting together to study a co-op system.

[76:40]

It's kind of a wholesome thing to talk about, cyber systematic quality. I just feel like the corns are waiting for them to get together and be close. It's a way to attune. Well, what are we talking about? We ain't talking about corns. What do you think? This is an opportunity for us to use. So in some ways, I feel like, you know, the dignity of being together is starting a corns immediately. We can turn the dial and have it not be a corns. Whatever it is, when we're intimate, then the drama is real. So when you interact with yourself, practice these out there, so you take intimacy with yourself to your story, then your story comes open, and then your commentary comes. You take it with yourself, that you want to make a call on, and then you show the red book comes up. So he loved these coins. He studied it thoroughly.

[77:41]

And you see the result of his study. The result of his dog impact was interacting with the stories. But there's not a system there. He'd lived longer, and he wanted to. And if he went back to the coins, he probably would probably crash his previous hunter there, in a sense. And he would turn around again, because he creates. let go of the packaging and a new version of the story comes out. If we make a system out of writing, I think it would be more than annoying. It would be too deep pain for nothing to do. And I think it would warrant that much if you read more of your transliterators from that.

[78:42]

I hope not. I think some of you don't because we really hate Channing himself. We're having insight left and right. He might be attaching to it. Forget those other ones. This is the good one. Those of you who are barely in China, you're probably not in the same way. Pollard, he shots you, you know. You wouldn't want service at the end, probably. Now, if you're not even a type of attainment, then you could have to play attainment for a service. Breakfast, no beer. Soji, or whatever. What's my son? There's nothing it does to the world. It makes everything, you know, guess what, gianjo corn.

[79:50]

You know, gianjo corn means, it comes from a story where when Mark came and asked a teacher about a corn, the teacher said, gianjo corn, the Chinese. It means the colon is solved. We got it. It's over. It's finished. So the colon means the colon is finished. You get it? The colon is solved. The colon of your life is solved. That's the beginning of the colon here. That means whatever's happening, the colon is solved. All right. That's more like Doja's approach. The colon is solved now. Go to work. Okay. But I hope I didn't put anybody or any system of thought enough. I hope I didn't put Dungshan above them. I don't really do that. But anyway, those who emphasize Dungshan's way, I think they wouldn't put Dungshan's way, they wouldn't put their way ahead of them.

[80:58]

It might be there's someone who might say Uncle Mee's way. He might put Uncle Mee's way above another, I don't know, But even if you do a way that is emphasizing that this way is better than another way, if you become intimate with it, then your Zaza manifest, and you become free of the brain. But we're going to see that what's happening in all our libraries, even from our self-righteousness and sectarianism, and most people who've actually legitimized sectarianism, except for us. Well, you can see it that way. But to me, in some ways, it's more elevated to sink down to a level of city airways bay.

[82:00]

That's more like, you know, not getting into step-to-day. Doesn't it sound bad to be practicing a way that doesn't put your weight above on you? So that's really more calling in step-to-day. But that's what I hope, that's what Doug Sean's willing to do. He's calling in all step-to-day, just temporarily. Temporarily. That's doing it. Temporarily. Pretty soon it will all be over. And it'll start again. Couldn't you also just say that having no alternative to your way, whatever that is, and doing it wholeheartedly with the way? Yes. You can say that. That's true. That's definitely true. And when you're really wholehearted about your way, you know, at the moment of being wholehearted about your way, you do not have any energy for making your way better than other ways. Unless your way is the way of making the way. That was your practice. You have to secure your practice over all of your practice.

[83:04]

But still, the whole heart doesn't do anything. Your self is thrown into the process. There's no dualism. So you can't judge and gauge. In other words, I'm going to continue to study prologging myself in the classes. I love to study them. We have wonderful classes, and not just humanity. And I have studied just humanity, but in a little bit, but I didn't like it. But not because it's not good, but I didn't like it. You know, White Castle and Hermitage are not worse than McDonald's. Or White and McDonald's are not worse than Philistines and all that. But I like Philistines better than the Philistines. But I don't go to Philistines. Because I like not going to Philistines anymore anymore. But I don't think it's better than not going to Philistines.

[84:06]

Now some people think it's better than you're not going to Philistines, and they are going to Philistines. Right? You know about those people. But they aren't better, they aren't worse than the people. Don't make them better than you. They aren't. They aren't better either. That's not the point. Point is, do you give your complete attention to what's happened to you? And you're on a zen plane and you're not ready to call on, so apply that prejudice to call on when you come up. Obviously we kept saying that, I don't like it here. So that's kind of clear about what I think about how this case applies to Cohen. It's very important, very important. They are part of our tradition, but it's a different way when they are about . And then also, each person will think about Cohen. This is my thing about Cohen.

[85:07]

And now you have Europe . Each of you has to . Okay? Did you have an . A lot of years ago, I think 1967, who was on the way to . They mentioned that . So your church didn't study anything like that. So your church may have made up his own personal report. He might have read, you know, a long time. I'm like, I don't know.

[86:15]

Because the last few years, right now, I don't know what to do. Or I can say, that's not true. But before, he would never, he wasn't bad at why, he always saved that thought. as a result of also B.T.C. leukemia. People came to Pasahara and they had been nothing but Soto Zen because they came a lot of them. So people used to practice Soto Zen.

[87:15]

They used to have more of those chromatic. They would run the road. After some sessions, in places where they do systematic study, sometimes the teacher announces that a certain number of people were enlightened. What? I said, well, I'll stand on the first roll and the picture. That is a type of tap in West Hazel. I think maybe over Japan took place. Have I seen it? Yeah. Richard Davis, we don't know you. Yes.

[88:16]

And you said that. Did you actually just say this? Right. Right. Right. And sometimes the people, the person didn't know. But he also said that the enlightened experience is the main point of the view is that they're encouraging it to practice. But afterwards, you can get more enthusiastic. So in other words, those kinds of enlightening experiences are conversion experiences. You can do the dishes. You can do the dishes. You can do the dishes. Some people are going to do the dishes. Anyway, it's... Anyway, it's...

[89:32]

There's something about a message.

[89:44]

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