Studying koans, like if you study koans, like if you open a book and study koans, or it is possible, I suppose, just to sort of approach them and study them. They certainly are having to do with wisdom or developing a correct view. Well, here comes Jan. There comes Janet. There's a place here and there's places over there. Are those places being saved or anything? No. No. This place is here or there. So studying koans is certainly having to do with insight or developing what we call right view or wisdom.

[01:20]

But in a situation like this, with actual people in the room and everything, Of course, there must also be the spirit of compassion for it to make sense. But we don't emphasize so much that side or particularly the various kinds of compassionate means, but the koan itself is a compassionate means or is an opportunity given out of compassion for insight. to help us develop a correct right view. And a right view is a vast topic, a wisdom is a vast topic, but in some ways there's two approaches to it, you might say, which I, in a sense of offering your practices,

[02:35]

Well, one approach is the approach of realizing emptiness or realizing the insubstantiality of all experience. In a sense, that is the kind of pivotal realization or the original insight in Mahayana Buddhism. realization of emptiness, understanding of emptiness. And sometimes, actually if you look at the history of Buddhism, it looks like as a way to understand emptiness, to have proper understanding of emptiness, the Buddha taught constructively or positively, the Buddha taught dependent co-arising,

[03:37]

how all our experience, our lives, our deaths, anyway, our experience, our life, arises codependently with all phenomena. And by studying this codependence, by studying cause and effect, we can come to the correct understanding of emptiness. And a realization of it, but a correct realization of it, I mentioned a few months ago, last summer actually, I mentioned about Gregory Bateson's teaching. I think his last book that he wrote was called Mind and Nature. But I think he said the subtitle of the book could be The Pattern Which Connects.

[04:41]

Mind and nature is also another way sort of to talk about this case. This case is called, isn't it called Mind and Environment? So his book is almost of the same title of this case we're studying. And so what is the pattern that connects mind and nature? But also in nature, out in the realm of objects, in the objective realm, what is the pattern that connects in everything in the universe that we can be aware of, what is the pattern that connects everything? So that's what his book was about, and it was about also developing certain scientific reasoning to help people study and look at the environment and to find and witness this pattern which connects everything. So the pattern that connects could be another name for interdependent or codependent arising.

[05:53]

However, in Zen, it looks like often, after a lot of instruction looks like it's given to emphasize this direct... a realization of emptiness by focusing very one-pointedly on something like a story or even a part of a story. And at the beginning of this class I asked you to study the koan, don't read the commentary, and just deal with what comes up moment by moment as you study just the basic story. And to just keep coming back to your basic experience, moment after moment, which comes in the form of, you know, forms, feelings, perceptions, various kinds of emotions and impulses, and consciousness.

[07:08]

These five skandhas, all these things, just to sort of be aware of them as they come up while studying the koan, or be aware of the koan as it comes up in these, as these experiences, either way you want to put it. And just only to take care of that. And as these things come up, again, to try to develop an attitude towards them of not clinging to them, not indulging in them, and not denying them. But just go straight ahead. Sometimes I draw a triangle. It has one corner of the triangle is called the middle way. Another corner of the triangle is called emptiness. Another corner of the triangle is called dependent co-arising. By studying dependent co-arising and emptiness, by studying dependent co-arising and realizing emptiness, by studying emptiness of dependent co-arising, we realize the middle way.

[08:14]

also sometimes presented as three dots. So in history of Buddhism, it looks like Buddhists first taught dependent co-arising and then taught the emptiness of dependent co-arising, first taught how things cause and affect each other, and then taught how the elements, because of that very cause and effect, all the elements in the process are themselves empty. So the process itself is not fixed and all the elements in the process and all the processes in the process are also independent. Therefore it's always changing and ungraspable. But still, just to review what we've been doing and what I recommended, it was first I talked about just focusing on the koan and in that sense asking you to be very thorough about that And with the hope that if you were able to do that, you would observe things start to shift and turn.

[09:15]

And last week, and maybe more than last week, I started talking about more of an overview of the process that goes on when studying anything, when training with koans or any kind of meditation instruction. This koan is... you know, a story about how to live your life. It's a story about how to understand your life, and it has a central instruction. And so the process of understanding this koan I talked about as a process, and I talked about a process or a pattern that connects all the different ways all the different approaches, all the different experiences that you'd have in studying a teaching like this or a story like this. And so that's, in a sense, a richer, a more magnificent, complicated presentation of this koan.

[10:23]

So the koan itself is also like this too, that it presents a very simple basic instruction and it also presents a process. And there are these two sides to studying Buddhism and there are these two sides of our life, that our life is very profound and simple. and to one point, and it's also extremely complicated. And the more you can realize how simple it is in focus, the more you realize how everything, all the complications are thrown into constellation. So that's kind of a review of this whole class. But also, it's a kind of reminding you about how to proceed forward in your study that you have these two sides of study, one that's very profound and one that's very all-embracing and complex, one that's one and one that's many.

[11:29]

And we have to balance these two in our study. Another thing which I... I just came to my mind is that, again, I said last week that part of study, well, part of growing up is that you need to be affirmed and then because of your affirmation you can move away from childish or childlike or immature dependence on that affirmation and go off on your own. And you can then, because of your security, submit yourself to some kind of training where you're not primarily, you're not first of all getting affirmation, you're more like getting feedback on whether you're learning something or not.

[12:32]

And so a lot of the feedback is, no. that you're not giving. But finally, there is a yes to the training, to the system or to the forms. There is a yes, finally. And after you sit with that for a while, then you come forth with your own creative expression, but it's a creative expression coming from discipline, not coming from just one-sidedly expressing yourself in terms of your independence. So part of our development is to get enough affirmation to independently, subjectively express ourselves. But we have to go beyond that.

[13:35]

and subject our subjective understanding and our subjective security to the environment and develop, you might say, an objective security. And then, quite naturally, we have to drop that too and again then express our disciplined, trained self subjectively. And then we need to balance what we've learned, what we've agreed with people on, and something that no one could ever agree with us on, because it's just new to us too, always new and fresh. We need to balance these two, and that's basically the end of the process, which this koan is also describing. And I also mentioned to you that part of the a dilemma in Buddhist training is that some people at certain phases of practice need to reiterate this earlier phase of their life in terms of their Buddhist training.

[14:47]

In other words, they need affirmation, unconditional affirmation. And the same person also comes for conditional affirmation. And sometimes one day or in one conversation, they're asking for unconditional and conditional feedback. They want unconditional positive feedback, and they want conditional feedback. But conditional feedback means it could be positive, negative, or anyway, maybe completely unclear. And I mentioned also before that and I want to say one more time, is that in the process of this training and getting feedback on some kind of art or science or learning, moving from what you already know how to do to something which you're trying to find in relationship to somebody else,

[15:52]

And I look around the room and I see people who are not only have practiced Zen but have practiced martial arts and tea ceremony and science and music, painting, and all these arts and sciences. I think you probably have all experienced considerable suffering. Some of you also have been teachers in this. So there is frustration in moving a person from this what they already know how to do, to something which they may know how to do, but which they don't wish to do yet because it involves giving up something. And I've said this poem to you many times, the father's poem. It's not the mother's poem, it's the father's poem. which goes, this is a poem from my son Peter, who I have hurt a thousand times, whose large, invulnerable eyes have gazed in pain at my ragings, thin wrists and fingers hung in despair, pale and freckled back bent in defeat,

[17:19]

pillows soaked by my impatience and weakness. I have scarred your fragile confidence forever because when I needed to be strict you were there to be hurt and because I thought you knew you were beautiful your fair hair and bright eyes. But now I see that no one knows that about himself, but must be told and retold until it takes hold, because I think anything can be killed after a while, especially beauty. So I write this poem for life, for love, and for my son Peter, age ten, going on eleven. So when the father comes in to do the job or the teacher comes in to do the job of being strict, he should know whether or not this person knows they're beautiful.

[18:37]

If they don't know they're beautiful in some sense, you can't start being strict. If you're strictly strict with somebody, it's tricky. But he also was impatient, and you also have to keep track of whether you need to be strict or whether the person needs you to be strict. That's another part of it. So it's whether you need to be strict about some point of teaching or some form, whether you're doing it because you need to do it, or whether they really need to hear it. And how do you find out whether they need to hear it? It's pretty delicate. Do you need, do you know about this form already? Or do I need to tell you about it? I guess if you really, if you really, if you remember that the person is beautiful, maybe you can ask them that, rather than acting on what you need to say.

[19:52]

But it's a very delicate situation. It's maybe one safe way to play it is just stay on the mother side and just always give absolute unconditional affirmation. And then if it turns into a rut, you know, it turns into a rut. But it's a nice rut. It's not growing. People aren't growing, but at least they're not getting scarred. And eventually they'll get so sick of being beautiful that they'll get away from you and go find somebody who'll tell them, not that they're ugly, but anyway, that, you know, they're not learning whatever the thing is. And I say this partly because I feel in this room people at various stages, as I mentioned before, some people need affirmation, some people have had enough and are ready for discipline and are feeling frustrated and angry. Other people are kind of like, have gone through that enough so they're happy to be disciplined some more now.

[20:59]

They're not really so resistant. Other people, you know, you're all different places and I just want to say that again. And also if I can use that example which I used before of, you know, teaching a dog to fetch a stick. You throw the stick, the dog knows how to chase sticks, knows how to chase birds or whatever already. That's not what you're teaching them. And they bring it back, but because it's their stick, they don't bring it back all the way, because they don't want you to get confused and think it's yours. And then they want you to walk over and get their stick and throw their stick for them again, which is perfectly... Reasonable, and that's the way a lot of people want to practice Zen, too. And if you give a talk and you say something that's basically what they already think, they like that, and they go get it and they bring it back to you and they say, good, throw another one.

[22:06]

And you say, if you need to say another thing they like, they just keep going for it, bringing it back, saying, good, let's do that again. And they'll keep doing that for some time and that's fine. just keep saying stuff that people already know how to think, and basically are already thinking, but somehow, you know, the dog can't throw the stick themselves, and somebody else can say something that you, some people can say something that you already think in a way that you couldn't say it, but as soon as they say it, you feel really good to hear it. So you can exercise your brain and your thinking really nicely to have somebody kind of beautifully, in new and clever ways, and maybe bringing in from all over the world various kinds of poetry and philosophy, which basically is your thinking. And you feel better and better about yourself, which is fine. Just like the dog, you just keep throwing the stick, they just feel better and better. The more they run, they'll knock themselves out, doing what they already need to do over and over, which is, again, fine. but to get the dog to bring it to do this new thing of bringing the stick back to you and to get the person to completely change their attitude about everything which is the same thing as bringing the stick back then we have sometimes a little bit of a problem and it's on both sides of the story because um in the case of the dog if you throw the stick and you say and you mean for the dog to bring the stick all the way back uh

[23:34]

and you say, throwing the stick, excuse me, throwing the stick and the dog going to get it and bring it back to your body, it's on interest, that's one thing. But for you to throw the stick and you telling the dog basically to bring it to you, that's a new thing. But as soon as you talk, there's this kind of idea that maybe the other person, maybe you understand them, or maybe that they understand you. And that sets up this frustration. And someone told me just recently that there has been massive frustration for her in this class until recently. And I said, well, it's okay if it's not so frustrating. That isn't a bad sign, necessarily. And so I mean to, as much as possible, soothe any frustration you have with trying to understand this story and tell you that this is normal.

[24:39]

And there's some new people in the class now, which I'm not exactly trying to encourage you to take the class, but just to tell you that this class is not exactly... I maybe seem to be giving you information now, but basically the essence of this class is not giving you information exactly. It's asking you to do something that you've never done before. And it's not like I've done it before and now you have to do it before. Because when the trainer gets the dog to bring the stick back, they haven't done that before either. The first time it happens with that dog, it's new for them too. And it's confirming on both sides because there is now an authentic response because this doesn't happen by accident that the dog brings it back. It only happens because of actual understanding of what they're meaning to do. And both people, and it's not exactly like they're any service to each other either. They have this relationship and you can call it something swell if you want to, but anyway, there is this thing that happens which never happens before and doesn't happen under any other circumstance than this conversation which makes it possible for something really new and beyond conditioning to happen.

[26:01]

But it has these ingredients of trust between the people and also some frustration and some anger comes up, which one person said was the brother or perhaps even the father of murder, the kind of anger that comes up in this kind of training situation. But so far everybody in this class over all these years has never, has had enough, I don't know what, has never gotten so discouraged that they've actually, you know, that they have to murder anybody as a result of studying this, these stories. But people do get angry, really angry and frustrated Like there's one guy who's not here tonight who really got angry.

[27:09]

But he was really studying effectively when I talked to him. I heard about it by rumor, you know, and he came to see me in the city and he told me how he was studying and it really sounded good. He was like really turning. And he was turning like a good share of the day. He was like turning and being turned by the stir and he couldn't get a hold of anything. And it was really, it was really, he was really, he was really cooking. And he was really angry. But once you're angry, the funny thing is, once you're angry with the story, the only thing that can get you to, you know, to soothe your anger is the story, basically. It's what's going to make, because you're, you know, It's the solution, too. So that was a long kind of review, introduction, whatever.

[28:19]

And there's a... A number of things in this story which we haven't gone into. You know, last week we went quite a bit into what does this mean, this business about where are you from, U-Province and all that. That U-Province, and somebody said, who was it? Anyway, U-Province is where you're from, or the city, the city class. U-Province is where you come from, and it says at the end, from now on you'll see on your own. and new problems is where you're going back to. So this story is a circle. It's like wisdom and compassion are a circle. The ancestors were compassionate enough to live like this and have these stories happen and now these stories come to us which make it enable us to understand their lives.

[29:20]

And then this compassion leads to the insight and the insight hopefully will lead to even deeper compassion, so that you will be able to live a life that will make stories, which then other people can use and will enable them. Whether there'll be stories which will be among the many stories that you people will live, whether there'll be stories which will get in the top hundred for the 20th century, I don't know. but there's millions of stories. These are just the, these are just favorite hundred of this guy. Once people start commenting on your stories and stuff, then it makes it, you know, more attractive to other people to get on the bandwagon, you know, and sort of trip in there too, because then they get famous for commenting on famous stories. So there's, there's a certain political thing happening here too. Basically, uh, That's what we talked about last time, the cycle.

[30:25]

Now, there's a couple other things in here in the story which we... I don't know if it's... I think we cleared them up or talked about them, but one of them is this thing of do you have any particular way of guidance? And he says, to say that I have anything in particular would not be accurate. And to say that I don't have anything in particular wouldn't be accurate either. So, again, the new people... Did the new people read the story before you came in here? Did you read the story before you came in here, Steve? Anybody not even read the story yet? You didn't? Okay, well, basically what happened in this story was this monk came and the teacher told him to do this meditation called reversing his thinking.

[31:34]

And he did. And by reversing his thinking he was able to disentangle himself from objects. He became disentangled from objects. And when you become disentangled from objects, you might say, at least when you become first or partially disentangled from objects, you might say that you can't find anything anymore. Because what we usually mean by finding something is that we find an object and we get a hold of it. So I find Cynthia and I got her. I grasped her with my mind, I grasped the object with my mind. That's what we usually mean by something existing for us. And as soon as we grasp something with our... as soon as something's an object, we don't just grasp it usually, we also send out this special little thing we can do with our mind, this special little invisible thing which goes out and makes the thing

[32:40]

like a mountain. It makes it like, you know, like, you can't walk through it, you can't walk around it, you know, it's like, it's majorly there. It is so, as soon as the mind grasps, we can make things into real solid, solid, existent things. We can do that, all of us. If we can't do that, we'd have to learn how. Because if we can't do it, we're not, we can't, we can't participate in ordinary society. And some people do have mostly, it's mostly due to organic disease, some people do have that problem and therefore they have to be like kept in a very small space and given a lot of special care, otherwise they'll walk into windows and stuff like that, or if they're big they'll walk over small people and stuff like that. So you have to protect them and the environment if they can't get that down. Somehow that's part of getting along in the world is to actually project this reality, this substance onto objects. Because everybody else is doing it, so you have to too, it's part of the deal.

[33:47]

And we learn that. So when you disentangle from grasping objects, when you stop grasping objects, you also stop grasping this projection of existence onto them that they're the way you think they are. So you can say, I can't find anything at all. And that's what this monk was able to do, which is a kind of realization of emptiness. that he attained. But by saying, but by giving that answer, which he says in the story, I haven't, when I get here, when I get to this place of reversing my mind, I can't find anything at all. Following the instructions you've given, I've now disentangled myself from the environment. And the teacher said, when you get there, do you, are there so many things existing? And he says, actually no, I can't find anything. But the teacher's opinion of that answer was that he had attained disentanglement, but he had not thoroughly attained disentanglement because he was still entangled in disentanglement.

[34:59]

The first mystery is disentanglement. Disentanglement is mysterious because here you are living with everybody, just as usual, seeing their faces, hearing them, whatever, and yet, mysteriously, they're not existing. They're not existing because they're not objects. And they're not objects means you're not projecting existence onto them, even though you're also not projecting non-existence onto them. Which is why sometimes... people teach first dependent core arising, then emptiness, so that you wouldn't project non-existence onto things. So you wouldn't fall into that trap and say, well, these people don't exist. Therefore, you know, so what? No, that wouldn't work either. So, like I said before, you'd get in trouble.

[36:04]

You'd be hospitalized or institutionalized or anyway, kicked out if you kind of held on to that understanding. So without clinging to that exists or doesn't exist, naturally that's the realization of disentanglement. But he was still a little bit stuck in disentanglement. That's why he gave that answer, apparently. The second mystery is to be disentangled from disentanglement. In other words, to be able to be stuck or to be able to, not stuck necessarily, but to be able to look and act just like you were stuck. In other words, deal with things as though they were objects. Be completely normal. However, the next, there's one more mystery, and that is to even be disentangled at a very subtle level of your consciousness from the concept, or the idea of disentanglement from disentanglement. So he got the first one, he didn't get the second two mysteries.

[37:06]

So we talked about that already, and... I guess you probably understand that, right? I mean, it sounds very lofty, but maybe it's not intellectually that difficult to get. Two and three are kind of close, in a way, because both of those are still entangled. Is that right? Two and three are kind of close. The second and third mystery are kind of close. Yeah, I mean... Yeah, this whole thing is very close. This whole thing is very close. All the stuff is very close. It's all in the same space. And it's all not located, too. So there's no distance between these things, and also there's no, like, there's no location. It's all close, it's all, it's basically, this is all happening in the same place. It's called the mind. It's very close. Very cozy. And, uh... So that's one of the nice things about it is this stuff is very close at hand.

[38:11]

You have it with you all the time. It's no extra burden to take it with you in the car. You don't have to worry about getting ahead of it or behind it. In fact, you only need to worry about getting ahead of it in your imagination, or getting behind it in your imagination, or getting behind it because you're lazy and you'd rather do something else than keep track of yourself. In other words, you'd like to get entangled in objects and so on. But again, if you get entangled in objects and you study the entanglement, that will naturally lead you to realizing the emptiness of the objects. So it's okay to get entangled as long as you're aware of how you're entangled and how that works. So, anyway, he said, I don't find anything at all, and the teacher didn't like that answer too much.

[39:27]

So he said, well, that's good for the stage of faith. In other words, you have followed the instructions, basically, to the letter, and you've been successful. And I call that the stage of faith. You've attained that. He actually has entered into... He's had an awakening experience, this monk has. And we talked about that before, too, that he is... He's at the entry. He's around the entry point to the actual Buddha way. And what some people translate it as, you know, he's made partial excursions at the frontier. Or another translation was he's loitering around the entrance. But he actually has entered in. He's actually in the entrance to the real practice.

[40:30]

Real practice starts when you actually have seen, understood what the self is. Namely, you've understood that the self is not the self you thought you had. You give up your belief in an independently existing self. This is called stream entry. You enter the stream of the way. You become, you know, in a class society, you become a high-class person. You become a noble person because you realize you don't have anything. There's a tea expression, which I've calligraphed a few times on some people's rocks, which is, Buji kore kini.

[41:32]

Buji means, bu means there is many, and ji means things. Nothing, or having nothing. This is a noble person. People who don't have anything are really fine. That's a spirit of, one of those kind of spirit of tea. And this spirit is that you study tea for a long time, you discipline yourself, you give up your way of doing tea to the tradition, and after a while you don't have anything. There's just a tea tradition as you don't have anything anymore. This is a really good tea teacher. There's just a tea ceremony. We had a tea teacher here who went back to Japan, Nakamura Sensei, and... Some pretty nice people came to tea ceremony. Even I weren't. But I had no skills, so I didn't have any problems.

[42:37]

I didn't have anything to give up. But some people came who were like piano players and ballet dancers. So the piano players, when they came to do the tea and pick up the tea whisk and the bowl and stuff, they would kind of go... you know this great they had a you know what do you call it they had a way of attacking is that what you call the attack they had a way they had a way not in the tea room give that up also you walk in the tea room the ballet the dancers they had a way it was really something that's not tea so it was hard for them they had to give up ballet dancing give up you know piano playing and give up I don't know what. I had to give something up too, but it wasn't an art. So, you know, then after you give it up, you don't have anything. Then you enter.

[43:39]

So he attained this. But somehow, without bringing your old junk back, you have to sort of do something, too, besides just have nothing. And that's the step he couldn't make, because he was still kind of stuck in not having anything. So he says, do you have any particular instruction or not? And the teacher says, . He gave up U-Province when he came to the teacher. Okay? Then he gave up, and then he gave up, yeah, he gave up, and he thoroughly gave up his thinking about, he gave up you province when he came to see the teacher. Then he gave up thinking about you province when he followed the instruction. Teacher said, do you think of you province? Thinking of you province means, like I said before, the way your mind works is that you always think of you province.

[44:41]

Did I say that here? Mm-hmm. Wherever you come from, your thinking is, you always think of where you've been before. You never think of anything new. Thinking always operates on something that's dead. It operates on dead experience. There is live experience, but live experience is not thought of. Before we think of anything, we make sure it's dead. And the way we make sure it's dead is that we We look around in our catalog, which is dead, a possible, you know, what possible candidates among our dead, among our past experiences, things that have already happened that are no longer happening. We look among them, which are concepts, for a reasonable facsimile of what just happened. We try to find the best we can.

[45:44]

Sometimes other people say, as we grow up, no, that's too far off. And we say, okay, try something else. And pretty soon they say, that's good. That was blue, yes. Now some people say, no, it was aquamarine. Depends on the people you hang out with. Your society will depend on your family and so on. But anyway, finally you work out a pretty good deal with everybody and then you just go right ahead and pretty much you just, something happens, okay, you want to think about it, you look at the stuff that's already happened, that you've got, you know, all these, like, concepts for, you say, well, this happened. So you always think of you, province. That's why it's nice to say, he should confess. Because you always are thinking of you, province. In two senses. One sense is you're always, at the conscious level, At the knowing level, you're thinking of you province in terms of thinking is always in terms of a past experience. The other way you're thinking of you province is in a more subtle, almost subconscious way, as you're thinking of your origins.

[46:50]

You province is where you were born, but it also symbolizes everything that ever happened to you. So you're always thinking of you province in both of these senses. You're both yearning for and thinking back to this place where you came from, which is before you thought, And you're also, but you can't, you don't know that. You're yearning for that. You want to go back to that, because that's a good place, the place where you don't think. And it's going on right now, that's why you continue to yearn for it always. And also you're thinking of new problems in terms of all your thinking is about past experience. It's not really about past experience, but it's in terms of experience that's already been catalogued as concepts. So he left U-Province to come, but he was always thinking about it. Then the teacher gave him this instruction of turning his thinking away from U-Province, turn it around. U-Province is not the mind that thinks. That's not in U-Province. That's not in your origin.

[47:57]

And that's not in the experiences that happened to you since you left home. So he's saying, basically, stop thinking of you, province. And the way to stop thinking of you, province, is to reverse your thinking, turn it away from you, province, and look at the mind that thinks. The monk left you, province, and also stopped thinking about you, province, and he did it very thoroughly, enough to have entry. But he didn't do it thoroughly enough to come forth with some creative expression, like the national teacher did, who didn't just say, when I get here, I find nothing. He said, when I get here, I find nothing, but then something happens. And what is it? Blue mountains fill my eyes. What Shakespeare says, what is it? To die, to sleep, to dream, there's the rub. If you die

[49:03]

Then you dream. After you die, something comes up. The monk somehow didn't, I don't know what, but he couldn't see this thing coming up. And what comes up has to do with this, to say I don't have any further instruction wouldn't be right, to say I do have any further instruction wouldn't be right. He's at the frontiers, you know, and he's checking, and the teacher says, you're at the frontiers, you've attained the stage of faith. But before I go further into that, do you want to play this one out some more? Go ahead. What I was just chewing on was the evidence for his question. Do you have something particular? I was trying to get there, how he got there. Well, the teacher is saying, you know, you've come this far, you've come this far, but you haven't taken the next step.

[50:07]

So he's saying, well, can you show me the next step? Do you have some particular way to show me the next step? Can you see how this conversation is going back and forth on both sides of the instruction? We're scouting around the frontier. We're loitering around the frontier. Sometimes we move back. in front of it, sometimes we move onto it, sometimes we move forward from it. We're around the frontier now, I hope, or somewhere, I don't know where we are on the frontier, we're at various distances from the frontier in this room. Yes? So, at the beginning there was an instruction, there was a very clear instruction and he followed it and something happened. Yes. There's apparently no further instruction that can be given verbally. No, he didn't say that. He said to say, I don't have any, wouldn't be accurate. But to say, I do have, wouldn't be accurate either.

[51:08]

So this is a little bit different. Earlier there was a particular instruction. And you could say that he had it or didn't have it then. You could say he did have it. Or you could say he didn't have it. In some sense you could say he didn't have it. If you tell the person to reverse their thinking, in some sense you don't have a particular instruction unless they understand you. If they do understand you, then you'd have a particular instruction. But after they do this, to say that you have a particular instruction, or don't, wouldn't be right. Now why is that so, or how is it so that at that point, earlier he did have a particular instruction, and he did, and the monk did it, and he was successful, and now he's in a place which is a little bit different? There's no objects. So the situation now is that there's no objects. So why is it that when there's no objects, That you don't really have particular instruction for the person, but also it's not that you don't have particular instruction for the person.

[52:10]

Because that's in the realm of objects. What? Because that's in the realm of objects to have or not have those instructions. Yes, that's right. And also, there's a little bit more to it, though. So in the realm of objects is that the woulder would not have its instruction. Partiality. What? Partiality. What's partiality? To say when he doesn't see anything at all, he's stopped turning. When you say partiality, you mean like biased? Right. Taking one side or the other side. So to say I have something or not is resting in the same place of partiality that he has when he's stopped turning. So by saying I don't have something to give, I do not have something to give, means that the teacher is still turning. The teacher is still turning. And what else? There's more. There's no specific dharma by which Buddha is realized. There's that. He has to let go. And the fact... See on your own.

[53:11]

And this connects to see on your own. So there's no dharma by which... There's impartiality, which means... And there's no dharma by which you do it. But that also means there's no dharma by which you don't do it. And also that means it's not that there isn't a dharma by which you do it. Because if there wasn't one, that would also be partial. So, yes? The teaching arises in the direction in which he casts his eyes. Right, that's true too. And the direction he casts his eyes just is not partial at that moment, it just happens to be the way he's casting it. And whatever he sees there is a particular instruction, but that's not a particular instruction, that just happens to be the way he casts his eyes. And you're always, when you realize the truth, you always use whatever is there, but it doesn't depend on that. It doesn't depend on that, but it also doesn't depend on not that. So you use it without depending on it, just like you use whatever comes up

[54:16]

without clinging, without indulging or denying. It happens, but you handle it in this way that's not particularly having it or not having it. And so he says, to say that I have it or not have it wouldn't be accurate. When the national teacher got to the same place, he said, blue mountains fill my eyes. He realized Dharma at that time, but it wasn't by using that that he realized it. But to not use it and to say there's nothing there when the Blue Mountains filled his eyes, that wouldn't have been right either. And also the teacher, by saying this, gave an instruction. But it wasn't a particular instruction. But it wasn't not a particular instruction either because It was a particular instruction in a sense, but it wasn't. Can you see how it both was and was not a particular instruction and was neither?

[55:19]

It really wasn't and it really... It was. But to say it was isn't right either. I just said it, but that's not true. Because it wasn't. You see the dynamic, how they have this... It is contradictory. It's a contradictory reality. In that space, you see how contradictory truth is, that you're always getting particular instructions, and since you're always getting particular instructions, they must not be particular instructions. But they must be, because if they weren't, they wouldn't be there at that particular place and time. But they're not. This is the way it resonates. The middle way is like that. It's balanced. It takes both sides and neither sides and it's hard to stay there. So the teacher was there talking like that and saying, you, you don't want to be here? Okay. But still you're doing pretty well. Now from now on you're going to have to see this. From now on you're going to have to witness this.

[56:23]

But I just set it up. But I didn't set it up. You're going to have to be like that now. And someone said, do we know what happened to this monk afterwards? And I don't know. It doesn't say down at the bottom, and he lived happily ever after. Here were his students. I don't know what happened to this guy. He may be one of these other people we know about, but I don't know. Usually they say the guy's name if you can find out more about him. Usually. But not always. What's the double gate? Double gate? Where's that? In the avid sayings, to say that I have anything which if you're not, will not be accurate, he shoots through the double gate. No, that's what I just said. Double gate. The double gate, you know, these two extremes, right? I have it and I don't have it. You put it through it. These are extremes, but also you can put them in front of you and then double bury it. If you pass through them, they're gates.

[57:24]

If you don't take these extremes, then they turn into gates. Every time you don't grab an extreme, you've just successfully gone through the gate of that extreme. Congratulations. Which, you know, I don't know how many times... I wouldn't suggest keeping track, but anyway. One does get credit for that in some way. Merit. Yes? So is this the point of creation, when something that never was before is now this? Yes. As you go through the tapes now, this is creation? This is creation, right. And he wants the monk to be more creative. This monk is stalling on the creativity business, whereas the national teacher didn't. So the national teacher gives three mysteries. Okay? And the national teacher... The analogy here is, in the Lotus Sutra, it speaks of the robe, the seat, the robe, and the room.

[58:35]

When you have a room, and the Buddha comes, or somebody comes to your room, you're sitting in your room, they come to see you. In your seat, you have your clothes on, you have your Buddha's robe on, and you're sitting in your room. This monk didn't have a room. Creativity is means, is means, compassion. You offer some way other than just nothing to people. And you use whatever comes up because you have no particular instruction, but you always have particularly what's available at that moment. You offer them what's appropriate at that moment. It's particular, but it wasn't, it didn't have to be that, but it was. And the reason for it being compassion is that it was that way. But because it was that way, it was compassion or it was compassion because it was that way and it didn't depend on being that way. That's why it was really compassion.

[59:42]

If it's compassion and it has to be that way, then it's not really compassion because it depends on that and that person can't use it everywhere. I wondered several times why he gets stuck in that point. I mean, why he has problems with that part of Blue Mountains filling the eyes, or he gets stuck in that nothing. I mean, because it's in that story, is that something that happens often in the process, or why are they pointing it out? Well, the reason for it is that he didn't actually completely thoroughly finish the job. Some old habits are still floating around there, stopping him. He hasn't used his insight yet thoroughly enough. We don't know the time scale in this story. But even after insight, you still have to take that insight and kind of like shine it around all over the place.

[60:46]

And the national teacher, maybe when the national teacher first had that insight, he might have said also something like, I don't find anything at all. But that poem he wrote might have been after he used that insight on himself for a long time and through a lot of relationships. So this monk could have finished the whole story, but he didn't. And so the first time, and this might have been the first time for that monk, In fact, there's still some residual habits there such that, you know, you can't actually take that next step and be creative and be compassionate and find a skillful way to put this into effect for people. To put it into effect for the teacher, poor teacher, you know, who's waiting for you to show this latest thing. You know, the emptiness is, you know, emptiness is... Emptiness isn't a thing, you know, but still it's kind of the same old story over and over, you know, okay, emptiness, this is empty, that's empty.

[61:57]

But then after that, all this new stuff comes, stuff that's never been seen before, new opportunities, which each of you then can offer the world. It really helped me a lot that that's where emptiness is for. It kind of made a lot of sense to me. That's what emptiness is for. Because of emptiness, you can be like that. And you can be that way quite boldly, as a matter of fact. You can boldly be you in this world because of emptiness. You can strut around and fill your body and mind with itself, in all its color or lack of color, whatever your style. And then you really start living because of emptiness. But all the while we have been living, our life has been coming to us because of our insubstantiality. That's what makes it possible for us to be free. If we were something set, we'd be stuck.

[62:59]

We'd have to be little machines. And we wouldn't be able to be as wild and unpredictable as we actually are. But if we don't realize that emptiness, we somehow can't appreciate what, you know, what... you know, what we are, which is really, you know, quite unprecedented moment by moment. Yes? Is this like a dying, a being born over and over and over? Yes, it is. So, the first dying is dying of your affirmed self. Dying of your confidence which comes from basic, which we need as human beings. We have a confidence which comes from love, from unconditional love, which, you know, this thing of you are fantastic and you're just like me. And you think, you look at her and you think, or him or whatever, and you think, yeah, you're fantastic and you're just like me.

[64:03]

That's why you're fantastic, in fact. Because you're just like me. People think like that. They don't like to admit it, but this is part of what we need. And then, based on that confidence, we can go out in the world and try stuff. And again, we'll be somewhat successful and somewhat unsuccessful. But if we then go back from every lack of success for more affirmation and just stay in that cycle, we don't grow much because basically we're deciding what success is and what failure is on our own and it gets to be a rut. That's why we seldom think it's a happy story when Ralph stays home with his mom until he's 40. Although some pretty creative people have done that. But usually they also are very sick And that, in fact, that is a kind of sickness to stay home with mom until you're 40.

[65:05]

And mom's kind of sick about it too, usually. But if there's sickness, then there can be creativity. That's what I've observed. If there's not sickness, then the sickness is hidden. And the sickness then is manifested as the person not ever leaving home. You know, they have a job sometimes, you know. They go out that far. try that, and that kind of works out. But basically, they're not really doing their real job. They're just doing a safe job that sort of goes along with staying at home. At a certain point, anyway, you get out of that, and you get bounced around. Now, there's one way of getting bounced around, just get bounced around. The other way is to get bounced around in a programmatic bouncing around, like learn an art, learn a science, learn some discipline. Then it's not totally random. However, it's tricky because some people in those schools have problems. You know, they need to be strict for themselves and all that kind of stuff. They are impatient. They want their students to learn this soon so that they'll be famous.

[66:08]

I mean, wouldn't that be great to have, I mean, if you have great students, then people think you're pretty great too, right? So learn this stuff soon. Yes. Linda. Linda. I'm not sure I understand the second mystery, because if he's stuck in the first mystery, isn't it similar to that person that was sick, you know, walks into walls, and if he actually isn't seeing objects, does he need to be confined in a small place? No, it's not like that. So if he's really in the second mystery, he can look at regular things. No, the thing of the person who runs into walls hasn't attained any mystery. That's not a mystery. The mystery is not that you think that things don't exist. That's just the opposite of what most people think. That's worse than regular delusion. That's not the mystery. This guy can walk around and talk and stuff as usual. He's a perfectly healthy, normal person. He's not attached to non-existence of things.

[67:13]

He practices the precepts and all that stuff. He's a good person. What is the second mystery then? No, it's the first mystery. Second mystery is to be able to be creative. I thought that was the third. No, the third is to be, you know, is to be thoroughly, unconditionally creative. To have no obstruction to your creativeness, even in your, like, deep subconscious understanding. So the blue eyes filling the eyes, the blue mountains filling the eyes, we don't know whether that's the second or third mystery or... We don't know because we weren't living in the Tang Dynasty and we're not Yangshan. But Yangshan says it's the third, so we have to deal with that. He says that he respects the National Teacher. He thinks the National Teacher got him all with that statement. He may know more about the National Teacher, too. He may have other dialogues by which he knows that the National Teacher thoroughly rooted out the deepest levels of habit by which we believe that such a thing is possible. So, for example, when you're first free of disentanglement, you are relieved, you are happy with that, and that's great.

[68:23]

However, you still may not have died of that and really released yourself from the school of discipline. You may not have realized your full wildness and spontaneous creative individuality. That's the next stage. That's the second. But still, in that realm of working that out, there's a process of cleansing or development too, where the subtleties there then will show whether you've eliminated even subconscious things, which the person looks very creative, but the form of creativity may show that there's still some subtle clinging. Yes? Wasn't this particular aspect of, in this case, disgusting young men's two sicknesses, Yes. In case 13, case 11, where they talk about young men's two sicknesses, which are really young men's five sicknesses, they talk about these different levels of circulating the light completely through the body, completely through your consciousness.

[69:30]

The three mysteries are another way to talk about the same thing, of how to thoroughly circulate the, you know, the total energy of your life through your mind, so there's no camping out in realization anymore. So you could study those together and discuss those together. Martha? I was just wondering, back to the case, when Yangshan says at the end of Mountains and Rivers and all that, he says, are there so many things there? And the monk replied, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all. And Yangshan, by the fact of that answer, then says you've only reached the first stage. Yes. If the monk had said something like, blue mountains fill my eyes... Yangshan might have said something different.

[70:36]

Yangshan might have said, Oh, we got one here. Get out of here fast. Who knows, he would have had his thing to say. And they would have been better dance partners, I think, you know. It would have been a more glorious story. But in some ways, not as useful, because we wouldn't have seen some of the structure that's involved in what would happen if he had taken three steps at once in the story. By him taking the first step only... and Yangshan explaining what he did, and then dialoguing a little bit with him there, I think we see a little bit more detail of the process here, which is quite nice, actually. That's why the story both shows a sudden possibility and also a gradual stepwise process at the same time. But he could have also said, when I get here... you know, I can't find anything at all.

[71:39]

And Yangshan could have said the same... That could have been a complete expression too, but it's unlikely that you would say that, I think. My experience is that people who talk like that, I mean, usually they're pretty sincere, and that is different from... It's different than using something that just came up. If you really are there and you really have not got stuck in the first step, you really are impressed... by something and you really do have something to express about that. So you really, it's kind of hard to say, to take that side of the things, it's more like nothing exists and now isn't it fantastic that something does? Like Wittgenstein says, the real amazing thing is that there is anything at all. The fact that there's nothing is pretty far out and a big relief. But even more wonderful is that on top of that there's nothing, there is something.

[72:40]

I mean, that there is is really more amazing than that there isn't. But we're into that there is, so we have to realize that there isn't. And then you can realize how fantastic it is that there is. And when you come from there, you can't not say anything about it. But when you first get there, You can't not say anything about that either because it's such a big relief. It's such a relief that there isn't anything. It's such a relief that nothing really happens. It's a relief. It's wonderful. But when you thoroughly get there, then something else hits you. And you've got to talk about that, especially when Yangshan's talking to you and asking you, is there anything there or not? Let's have it. Is there what? Huh? He could have said that. He could have said, teacher, guess what? You're here. And Yangshan might have had something interesting to say, but that wasn't the story. And that's why... This monk is just a monk. Rather than one of these famous superstars that in one jump did the whole thing.

[73:44]

Yes? I assume that this story, which is very metaphoric, is also out of real time. And in this action, through this whole process, starting at the beginning and going all the way to the blue mountains in the eyes, it keeps getting repeated, that we keep moving up and out of thought and then back into what the thought puts you. It's like back to new problems. Yes. That's going out too. We have that here too, yes. Huh? What did you say? All the time. All the time. All the time. There really isn't time. We call that the present, which is all we really have, and that's nothing at all. Yes? I was wondering when you spoke with the man who was four, you had to stay at home. Yeah.

[74:45]

You know about those guys? Yeah. I'm just wondering how that idea of that being sick relates to more traditional cultures where you stay with your family your whole life? You notice I didn't say the woman stays home because she can stay home to take care of her father, right? In a lot of societies, the girl stays home to take care of her parents. That's different. By the guy staying home, I pictured this guy that stays home for his mother to keep taking care of him and saying, Ralph, you're a good boy. Have a nice day at work. That's not a traditional society. That only happens, I think, in America. Maybe it's happening in Europe, too. Actually, there's a story about that. It happens in Russia, too, in the upper middle class. Have you ever read the book called Oblomov? It's about one of these guys that stayed home and somebody took care of him until he was 40. So anyway, in the middle class world, which happens in Europe, and I don't think it happens in China, but maybe it does there too now, and happens quite a bit in America, you have these boys who stay home until their mother just keeps taking care of them until the mother dies.

[75:58]

It's not traditional society. In traditional society, the man takes over the house. He becomes the father. The father, you know, moves out or into the, you know, some back place. And the son becomes, he does stay home. And the daughters leave. And the mother stays there. But he's not, if he takes over the house, he's not like staying home. He has to then, he often goes away and gets trained to some place. And some real training and comes back home to take over the family business. Or his father trains him. at the family business as part of that process. He doesn't just stay with his mom, you know. Now there is a tendency, you know, which also happens, is that when the father, or whatever the figure is, when the training principal tries to take the babies away, the mothers often say, you know, don't take them. You know, that's part of the deal. When I was a younger person, I had a younger daughter, and I read about Gurdjieff his father used to get up early in the morning and throw him in cold water.

[77:02]

And he said, because of that, I could do all the difficult things I was able to do in my life. So when my daughter was a little girl, I picked her up out of bed and took her and put her in cold water. No, you didn't. I did. Gurdjieff said, for sons, yeah. Gurdjieff said, he said, when my father did it, my mother and my grandma used to scream, you know, not to take me out of my warm bed and throw me in this cold water. So my wife also screamed and my daughter. She screamed mostly, you are so stupid. And my daughter screamed too, just like Gurdjieff screamed. But that didn't stop me. Then also sometimes I'd bring her to the bathroom, you know, and she'd come to the bathroom, she'd spread her legs and get both feet on the door jamb like that. This is part of the process, you know.

[78:09]

And others usually don't like tape that gets blown into cold water. That's the other side, you know. I gave up. And you see what I've got? Totally undisciplined. Watch out. But maybe those few times were enough. I don't know. I did do it a few times. It was great. I recommend it. Highly. Presently. Presently. Presently what? To do it presently. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So I think anyway, the image I have is just staying in this cocoon, staying basically in the situation of getting this unconditional support, which we need. But if you take it too long, it becomes a kind of, you become basically a person who is in captive of fear for the rest of your, most of your life.

[79:12]

Usually that's what you find these people. I had a friend, I had a friend actually, he was a wonderful guy. Actually, he's a big guy. His name's Harvey Feldman. He was really a good shot in basketball and also played football with me. And he actually, he's a bartender and he has a bar and he's a big tough guy and he bounces people out of his bar himself and so on. But he cannot get more than six miles from his mother. And you've never been able to get more than six miles from your mother. And it's a, you know, it's a sickness, this situation. It's phobic if it's more than six miles away. So, but the girls usually don't have that problem so much because it's just, because they're not usually home having their mother take care of them until they're 40. They usually are home taking care of their mother or father, which is, that's a discipline in itself.

[80:12]

they discipline you, you know, by saying, not that way, not that way. Can't you read my mind, you fool? And that's a discipline. And it's traditional, too. But the question is, are these people qualified teachers? And you have to figure that out for yourself. Usually it's hard because they think, although they unconditionally love you, they also can never understand that you've grown up. It's hard for them. Yeah. I'm just wondering how you go about telling the difference or telling when someone is beyond the stage of needing that and into the state of needing to discipline. I'm thinking about children and how do you go putting your daughter in a cold water space How do you know?

[81:17]

Well, you don't. It's trial and error. But basically, if you haven't told this person that they're beautiful, then it's too soon. If you don't have that feeling for them, and they don't know you have that feeling for them, then it's probably too soon to discipline them. Or, if you have that feeling for them and you know that other people have conveyed that to them, so you know that they came from a situation where they've received that, and you can tell by looking at them, you feel, and you feel that for them yourself, then you can try. But you may find out in the process you were wrong, and you've got to back off. They need to do that more. That's part of the background of Zen practice.

[82:20]

And that's part of why, you know, I don't want to scare people, but that's why some Zen teachers say that, you know, you've got to be pretty healthy to practice Zen, and also pretty old. It probably doesn't scare the older members of the group. the feeling that confidence takes quite a few years. But I don't think that putting a child in cold water is maybe discipline, but it's not exactly discipline. It's more like giving them a challenge. Discipline is more like something it should be, I think, that you actually enter into it. It's more like a feedback thing where you're changing your values. It's not like you change your values to say somebody else thinks cold water is good or something. You just have to deal with it. It's a different kind of thing. And that kind of exposure to difficulty is different than a training course.

[83:22]

And usually what a lot of parents do is they force their kids to study the piano and things like that and the kids don't want to do it. So it's not like this. They never give up. It doesn't happen at that age. And they learn some skills just because they're doing it for some other purpose. I think that the way this works is that the person who has confidence voluntarily subjects themselves, voluntarily gives up their thing. Not to please somebody else, but because they see a model that they want to become. They want to become a piano player. They want to become a tea master. They want to become a painter. They want to become a Zen teacher. And because they saw an artist and they thought, I want to be like that. That's different than putting a kid in cold water. Like I had a paper route when I was a kid. And it was very good for me as a fairly young boy to get up.

[84:26]

you know, three in the morning and walk for miles in the freezing cold and deliver papers. It was really good for me. But it wasn't something that I had to give up anything for. It was just a difficulty that I encountered, which developed, I think, something, some strength and confidence. But I didn't have to give up my trip. It was just part of that thing of being supported and going out and trying something and being supported and going and trying something. It was a different model than going in and giving up my idea and changing my way of thinking. And, you know, that I got in sports, of learning how to do things in different, you know, learning how to do things in different ways than I could imagine and getting feedback that way. And again, I voluntarily did that as a training in itself to change me. I didn't do the paper route for that reason. Does that make sense? But still, when you're in a teaching position, you don't know. And sometimes you find out that you didn't give a person as much as they could have taken.

[85:29]

And sometimes you find that you gave them too much. And sometimes you find out that you were being strict for your own needs and being impatient for your own needs. And sometimes you find out that you're too soft. The most horrible thing to me would be that I would... not only damage a person's confidence, but worse than that, that I would damage a person's sense of autonomy, and that they would give up their integrity in the face of authority. That's the thing I worry about most, which makes it hard for me sometimes to be strict and put my foot down in some cases. Like I maybe told you an example of somebody here was going to take a trip. Did I tell you that example? had this opportunity to take this, somebody in this community, I think I can say it, somebody in this community had this great opportunity to go to Europe, an all-expense-paid trip to Europe. And, you know, who would turn that down, right? Not only that, but to a nice part of Europe, at a nice time of year, to be with nice people, you know, just total bliss, basically.

[86:39]

So how could he turn it down? So he didn't. He said, great. And he started to figure out how to do it. And he came and mentioned to me that he wanted to do it, sort of, or he was considering it. What did I think? Fortunately, he asked me about it so I could see how I felt about it. My initial reaction was, no way. But fortunately, I had a few hours to think about it. And I kept thinking, no way, no way, no way. And finally, after thinking about it for eight hours, I said, I don't want you to do it. And I felt terrible because I thought, well, Here, I don't want him to do this and this thing. But I didn't. And I, you know, I did not want him to do it. I did not think it would be good for him to do it. Even though it would be a wonderful thing to do. I told him that. But I was afraid that me telling him that would mean that he would, like, not go because I told him not to. But if I didn't tell him, that would have been a lie. Because that's how I really felt. I didn't want to go. Mm-hmm. That's really tough.

[87:45]

Unfortunately, or fortunately, he did not go. I was hoping that he would go because then I got to express myself and I got to see that I didn't crush him. But what happened was something more wonderful, is that he didn't get crushed, but he himself looked back himself and he saw that he did not want to go. And he did not want to go for almost exactly the reasons for why I didn't want to go. And I didn't tell him all the reasons. He thought of some ones that I didn't tell him. He saw how it would screw up his life if he went. It was a free trip there, but coming back, his life would have been a total mess when he got back. There's a lot of stuff he wanted to do during that time when he would be away. And he knew that, and he was planning on it, but this thing, you know... He just couldn't remember what he was doing. And anyway, it was a happy ending, and I was afraid that he wouldn't go.

[88:47]

A lot of times when I see something happening at Zen Center, I see everything going in a certain way, and I see this is going to happen, but I don't like it. Then I feel like, hey, I can say, you know, I don't like this, because I know it's going to happen anyway, so I'm not going to get blamed for stopping it. But if it's like teetering, you know, and then I say something and it pushes it over that way, then I feel I'm worried because I don't want expressing myself in some sense to be influential. I want expressing myself to wake people up to what they want to do. But it's tricky. It seems like cold water can take many forms, so getting stuck and just putting somebody in cold water, just by doing something because that's what the real thing is. You want some cold water now?

[89:48]

Those little feet in the doorway. She was big enough so that her feet could straddle a door. What did that lift? And she was strong enough so I couldn't actually push her through. Anyway, this class, we have these series of classes. This is some number of classes that just happened. And now another class is going to start. I think it's a six-week class, is it? Another six weeks. We're going to start next week. So if you want to come back for another six weeks, I'll be here. And there's a little bit more on this case. But then I think maybe one more week is enough. And then we go to case 33. But although I'm going to In the koan class, go ahead to case 33, I think, this meditation of reversing thinking, I intend to keep bringing up through the practice period.

[91:06]

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