I think it might be helpful if I told you a little bit about the various concerns. And I mean concerns in the sense of like a business concern. Not that I'm worried most of the time, But I have these various kind of concerns at this time, and I thought maybe if I told you about them, that would help you in this class, because those various concerns come to play pretty much wherever I am. So let's see, one concern is that we have this practice period here at Green Gulch that just started.

[01:03]

And so, and then that brings up some concerns. Klaus, would you come here for a second, please? Would you come here, please? Klaus is also one of my concerns. Would you please come here, Klaus? This is Klaus. He's an old friend of mine. He was once head monk here. And he comes to visit every now and then since that time. And here's a really nice picture of you and me. Don't you look handsome? Oh, man. I didn't know who that was. I think I just got out of bed in the afternoon. It was 1994, I don't see that anymore. Different days. Thank you. You're welcome. You used to be such a good-looking fellow.

[02:09]

So there's a practice period. And in the practice period, the first thing we did in the practice period, in a sense, was we had a precept ceremony. So part of the context of all this is the bodhisattva precept. And understanding what that context is and what kind of a container that context, what kind of a container the precepts make for a practice, that one concern I have is to, you know, bring that forth for people to be aware of. And also to practice on a daily basis, practice reflection on how the precept practice is going, which means practice confession of any kind of karmic activity that we might get involved in.

[03:16]

Karmic activity means, as I mentioned on Sunday, what do I mean by karmic activity? Closed. Yeah, that belief, the activity which arises, dependent on that belief. It's not just that the belief itself in an independent existence that's just a misconception. That's not karma. But activity which arises independent on that is what we mean by karma. So we have all probably at some time in the past and actually on multiple occasions for a very long time in the past activity has arisen in our neighborhood dependent on this belief, on this misconception of an inherent existence.

[04:19]

So part of the practice, which is the background of all these different types of study, which I'm going to mention to you, is the daily and maybe more than maybe frequently being aware that there is some tendency around here to believe in inherent existence and for activity to arise based on that belief. And we confess this karma even though we don't even know the full extent of it, necessarily, until we're really kind of clear of it. We have some inkling of it, and for some of us even the inkling is very moving or very touching or very shaking. full extent of it is wonderful to know because we understand how it works. So that's one thing. The other thing is that based on receiving the precepts and practicing confession, which means receiving the precepts and admitting how we sometimes fall short of it,

[05:30]

that practice of confession and receiving the precepts, receiving the precepts and confession, that ongoing practice, in that context we can enter into the practice of the life of mental stabilization. We can enter into the practice of calm, being calm in the onslaught of, in the storm of conception that we live in. The storm of erroneous conception and also sometimes valid conception. But anyway, lots of conceptions and whatever kind of conceptions there are, there's some tendency of our mind to grasp them. So part of Zen meditation is to try to meet whatever is coming, either as direct perception or as conceptual cognition, to meet these things with no mind, to meet these things without grasping them.

[06:38]

This is a stabilization practice, and it also sets up the ability to understand, because if we don't grasp these things in our mind and calm down, we have a chance to look and see more accurately their nature, their dependent co-arising. So the precepts, confession practice, understanding that's the context for stabilization, and also then to work on stabilization practice. So I will be talking this fall in this class and in relationship to the sittings that we have here, and also in Berkeley there's a class on stabilization and insight. And in the city center when we're talking about psychology also I bring in this practice. So this practice is an ongoing thing which I'm concerned with, and I'd like you to know I'm concerned with, that whether you're going to pick up on this or not is an individual matter, but I will be talking about this

[07:47]

So I'll be talking about the precepts. Even when I'm not talking about the precepts, they're the context for me talking about the practice of not grasping anything in mind. And another thing that's part of what's going on is this ongoing study of the nature of consciousness. for the psychology class, which also bears on these previous two topics and bears on this class and different types of consciousness. That's another element of what I'm concerned with and which I'll bring up. And then another element is this class. And how does koan study relate to precepts? How does it relate to meditation? And how does it relate to the study of the mind? And how does the nature of mind relate to studying koan stories?

[08:52]

I might have forgotten some things, but there's all this stuff going on for me in these various settings. And then of course you can throw into the mix ceremonies for hungry ghosts and things like that, just to color it in a little bit. So these stories, these Zen stories, they're available to us to use and relate to in many ways. And as I mentioned in some previous classes, these stories may be just stories.

[10:04]

In other words, it may be that there's nothing, I shouldn't say nothing, but that they don't stand for some kind of like concrete independent event from themselves. And yet these stories have been used in various ways for centuries. They are stories which purport to be about There are stories about an ancient time. There are stories about ancient people. They are a story of ancientness. They're actually stories that there was an ancient time and there were ancient people and that these ancient people were enlightened, some of them, and that their interactions were at a certain time when the interactions among these ancient enlightened beings with other beings was the context in which enlightenment was propagated.

[11:17]

Or, in some cases, these are stories which purport to be about enlightened beings that got together and dramatized their mutual enlightenment. and developed it further through their interaction. So part of what these stories are about is, I mean part of what these stories are putting forth is that there have been enlightened ancestors and they did interact and that was Maybe that was that. And then later, when people looked back at these stories, or looked at these stories, which again were not necessarily about anything that did happen, but stories that were very interesting to look at as a possibility that human beings could be that way.

[12:29]

people found it very interesting and encouraging to think about and talk about and retell these stories of these ancestors. And then telling these stories and discussing these stories became a practice. And then also there are stories about the people getting together and telling stories to each other and interacting about the stories, and some of these became also new stories, which people found encouraging, and then they told those stories. Then in a later phase in the history of the use of these stories, it may be the case that this discussion of the stories among the practitioners of the lineage of people who felt related to the people in the stories, that this discussion deteriorated.

[13:50]

And that deteriorated because the discussion became just discussion. In other words, it became too discursive and too intellectual. And then there was an attempt to make the study and discussion of these stories not so discursive. Although the stories themselves are not, strictly speaking, discursive. But the mind can deal with them in a discursive way. And if it's just discursive, things can deteriorate. So I would say, you know, the stories are about, a lot of the stories are about things that happened in the Tang Dynasty from like, you know, most of them from about the 700s, 800s, and 900s.

[15:08]

These stories became, discussing these stories became prevalent probably in the 900s and 10-hundreds. And then the recognition of the deterioration of the discussion of these stories happened in the 10-hundreds and 11-hundreds and 12-hundreds. Just generally. I may be a little off there. And the revision or the the reformation of this way of dealing with these stories within the tradition, within the Zen tradition, the Zen tradition in which these are stories about our ancestors, and we think that talking about stories of our ancestors is a good thing for us to do. But the way we're doing it is getting off. So we'd like now to study these cases in a meditative context.

[16:10]

So then what I feel happened is that a way of practice which is more, in some sense, predates Zen in China, starts to become more emphasized. And that way of practice is the way of practice of developing mental stabilization for the study of the cases so that the contemplation of the case or the discussion of the cases becomes more contemplative. There's still discussion, but the discussion is given more support in terms of being conducted in a meditative context. So rather than just tell these stories in the group setting or teachers giving talks about them and interpretations of them, the students interacting with the presentation of these stories are encouraged to be in a meditative practice while they're receiving these teachings about these stories.

[17:31]

And with this point of view, I've been wondering now, what's the point of using these Zen stories as topics of concentration or topics of meditation to be penetrated, rather than just use any phenomena as a topic or an object of contemplation? Because any object, which when penetrated, will reveal the Dharma. And... So two basic answers that I give that come to my mind are, one, that not necessarily I believe this, but just comes to my mind, is that there are many things to study, many objects to study in the context of calm and then penetrate and see the Dharma in them, but that the Dharma stories, both of the ancient Buddhas and the Zen masters, offer some unique opportunities or some unique

[18:42]

aspects that some things in daily life don't. So it might be worthwhile to look at these stories about the activity of awakening. These are not just stories about the dependent core arising of consciousness, which is also an interesting topic, or even stories about the dependent core arising of material entities, or social institutions, or monastic forms. Many things can be studied and penetrated in Dharma doors. Anything can be a Dharma door. But now, because of the history of Zen and finding oneself in the Zen lineage, these topics are available. So perhaps they should be studied. There's something which you may find appealing about them as topics of study. The other reason is that the Zen school feels some family obligation to keep this tradition alive, both by retelling the stories and by understanding them.

[19:55]

It's kind of like there's a uniquely wonderful thing about understanding your spouse or your children. But you probably don't just understand them as a Buddhist, you want to understand everybody. But certain particular relationships offer certain kinds of information about, you know, what we can learn. So to make a long story come to a conclusion temporarily, I would like to I would like you to bring concentration practice together with your study of these cases. So in that sense this class is a bigger class, a bigger class in the sense of it's more extended

[20:58]

than you might have thought, or than maybe it has been for some of you, but I'm actually requesting that you bring a meditation practice, a stabilization practice together with the study of these cases. And if that doesn't work for you, if you don't have time to do that, I can understand. Because it's even hard enough just to come to this class, not to mention to study these cases outside of class, not to mention to develop concentration, not to mention to bring the concentration together with this study. But that's actually what I think is the way to make this the most meaningful study of these cases. And this study includes not just the cases as they appear today, but also the whole history that I just told you is also part of understanding what these cases are.

[22:05]

It also involves understanding the relationship between the words of these cases and their reference. and the relationship between words and objects, all that's involved here. So that's another element that I forgot, and that is I'm studying the Samdhi Nirmacana scripture with a group of priests, and that scripture is partly drawing our attention to the the deep misconception that subjects, that consciousnesses, which are subjects, because consciousnesses have objects, that these subjects which have objects, there is a deep misconception that the subject which has the object is separate from the object which the subject possesses. And this sutra is

[23:09]

particularly concerned with curing the disease of subjects that have objects and think that the objects that they have are separate from themselves. That's another major thread that's running through my life and my study and bears in this situation. Okay? So that gives you some kind of... It's a very complicated situation, but it's a complicated situation. There is such a world that you're being exposed to here. And as our discussions occur, these things are going to fly up in the room, you know, and people are going to ask questions, and these kinds of issues are going to be raised. So... So I'm trying to give you a sense of the breadth of the conversation. In some sense this is the most complicated situation because some of the other contexts we don't bring up the colons.

[24:18]

So the colon class in some sense is the one that brings everything together. So it's hard that way. And also something I want to say to the new people, and that is it may already have occurred in this past half an hour that you think you don't understand what's just been said, and you think maybe you're the only one in the room who doesn't understand. And a lot of people in this class think that they're the only one who doesn't understand. Maybe sometimes there's 10 people in the room who think they don't understand that they're the only one. But usually there's 10 or 30 who don't understand and think they don't. But I think if you don't understand, you can kind of like pat yourself on the back and say, I'm not the only one. There's a whole bunch of us. And another rule, not rule, but sort of, what do you call it, a privilege, which I offer to you, is if you feel that you're being left behind,

[25:26]

You can go like this or something. Just stop this conversation and we can stop what we're doing and re-include you because if you're in touch with being left behind, that's a real important feeling to recognize and tell us about. It doesn't really slow us down. It reconnects the groups. Sometimes you don't understand because you feel like, I don't understand, but I feel totally included. You don't feel left behind. You feel comfortable not understanding. Other times you feel not understanding and you feel like you're drifting away. Your energy is dropping. You're not able to make an effort. Sometimes you're making a lot of effort and really up while you don't understand. Other times you feel left behind. At those times I welcome you to stop the show and tell us about what's going on. It often helps the whole group. It's sort of like the canary in the mind shaft kind of thing. Which also happens sometimes is that we have the windows shut and we're all sort of becoming execrated, but no one has the energy to say anything.

[26:34]

And finally someone says, could we have the windows open? And everybody says, oh yeah, that's it. But tonight we have the windows open, but if you need more air, let us know. So, yes, Susan? How to what? The basic thing, the basic meditation instruction in Zen is, what am I going to say? Huh? Sit upright? Yeah. What? Don't elaborate. Whatever comes, meet whatever comes. Meet whatever comes. Whatever comes, meet it. With no mind. That's the basic instruction.

[27:40]

What no mind means, with no conceptual mind, which means that the mind, there is a generation of concepts going on constantly, for most people, probably for most of us, but the meditation practice is to meet this presentation of images without grasping them. That's the instruction, basically. So is that any different from co-op, for integrating the story with meditation? The stories are coming to you. The stories are concept, [...] image, image, image, word, word, word. These stories are heavy-duty conceptual exposure. And so the way of studying them is to... is not to... You can leave the class if you want to, but that's not the way to study these things. Running away from it doesn't help, because then you get into a much more elusive conceptual network called, I escaped concepts...

[28:45]

You know, I'm free of concepts. There aren't any concepts around here. This is a much trickier conceptual world to live in. But it's better to stay in the conceptual soup and then just see if you can ride the waves, as I said this morning, to see if you can sit upright in the middle of all this conceptual flux without attaching to any of it. Someone said we row again. Someone said... She said, Rev Anderson. Oh, I was in Sacramento on Saturday. She said, Rev Anderson, I went to one of your talks one time and I got a real bad headache because I was trying to grasp what you were saying. But this time I just let the stuff wash over me and I feel fine. So either let all that I'm saying, all that everybody else is saying, all the koans, just let these words wash over, I wouldn't even say you, just let them wash over this sensitive tissue of your body-mind surface.

[29:55]

Just let all this stuff wash over and see if you can let that wash over you without grasping. Reading Buddhist scriptures, you're not supposed to be reading them to get stuff out of the scripture. You read the scriptures so that by reading them word after word without trying to get anything, you enter into samadhi. You enter into stabilization by reading word after word with no gaining idea. Usually when people read, They may get into trying to grasp these things. Then it doesn't produce calm. And some scriptures are very conducive to come because they keep frustrating your attempt to get anything. Like they sometimes have long lists of names. So, you know, for a while you may think, well, soon I will be the expert on bodhisattva names because I've just read 700 of them and pretty soon, you know, and if I memorize them, I would be like, you know, the local font of bodhisattva names.

[31:00]

But you get over that and you just start reading the name and you enter into the samadhi of the name sutra. So these koans too, if you can listen, if you can participate wholeheartedly in the discussion without grasping, not hold back and withdraw and not grasp because then you're grasping drug you don't even know it. but wholeheartedly engaged without grasping. This is what you're trying to learn, and that would be trying to meditate while we're discussing or while you're reading. So you read the text, and if you don't understand it, you accept that. But don't understand means probably, unless there's somebody there sitting next to you while you're reading saying to you, you do not understand, you do not understand, unless you're like reading the text and saying what it means and somebody's saying no, It's probably you that's reading it and you that think that what's happening here is called not understanding. Okay? And that not understanding, quotes, is your concept of what's going on while you're reading.

[32:09]

That make sense? So that's what a lot of people say. They read these cases outside of the class and then this concept arises in their mind while they're reading them. I don't understand this case. And sometimes they go to class and then this concept arises, I do understand this case. And they like that. And sometimes they come to class and they say, I didn't understand before I came and I understand less now that I'm here. These are concepts. Perfectly good little concepts that happen to you while you're studying this material. The meditation is not to grasp those. What I mean is that the attainment of the meditation is not grasping those things. But there's a training at not grasping what I'm saying right now, for example. There's a training, and in the training, you may still be grasping. And then you confess that you're grasping. And by that process of confession, you gradually learn how to not grasp.

[33:11]

Which is another big dynamic in Zen teaching, is that Zen teaching is supposed to be about a sudden teaching. But I just told you about a meditation practice that develops gradually from the instruction of don't grasp anything in your mind, Don't grasp any of this river of concepts. Sit in the middle of the river of concepts without grasping, but realistically speaking, we haven't got there yet. So we're going to do this practice and do this practice and gradually we'll become more skillful at not grasping this flow of imagery. And we gradually become more aware of how turbulent things are when we do grasp, and we gradually get some experience of what it's like when you don't grasp, and we also get experience of what it's like when you try to trick yourself and space out as a way of trying to not grasp.

[34:15]

like some people did, just like space out, like that story of the guy who pulled the... I won't get into that one, but anyway. There's various tricks you can try to do. You can make up these conceptual games about how to avoid grasping concepts and grasp that concept about how to not grasp concepts and then pull yourself. But, you know, we can help you with that sometimes if you tell us about it. Does that give you some idea? So you're training at basically not grasping any of these images that you walk through. The image, you know, like there's Green Gulch, there's San Francisco, there's these people, all this stuff, there's all your thoughts, there's your teaching, all this stuff's coming at you nonstop throughout the day and night. We're trying to develop a way to sit upright in the middle of it without grasping any of it. and confess from now when we notice that we are grasping, and watch to see what happens when you do grasp, and how, what kind of turbulences are created by that.

[35:29]

Okay? Michael? Is there a place for using, for instance, the memory of maybe a turning point in story, in the koan, in meditation practice, Yes. So that's what I'm saying. That's what I was saying earlier is that why use a turning point in the story rather than just like your breath or some non-storyline type of object. And so in Cohen's study we're considering that maybe among the many objects of meditation that you can develop concentration with that some particular kernel, or sometimes we say the eye of the case, would be a particularly good thing, an object of concentration. That's why in one koan system they choose mu. And mu is an important word in a famous story, right?

[36:34]

The story, does a dog have Buddha nature? And the teacher says mu. In Japanese and in Chinese, the teacher says wu. So then when people heard that story and discussed it and then later started to use that story as a topic of concentration, they often picked that one word out of the whole story and just focused on that word. So they understand the whole story, plus they also had heard commentaries on the story, but encapsulated in that one word, wu or mu, is the whole story. And alternative versions of the story, which you've heard, commentaries and interpretations of the story are all vibrating around the central word. And actually the entire universe is vibrating around that central word, and that's what's happening around everything. And that's what you get to see when you meditate on one thing and stabilize your mind and then look at what it is.

[37:39]

You get to see that the entire universe bears on that thing. So in call and practice, we often do pick one word that the pivotal word called huato, the head word, which is often the first word, the last word in the sentence, but sometimes the middle word. Anyway, and shobo genzo is the eye, treasury of Dharma eyes. The eyes are the eyes of the stories in the collection of essays. And some stories have more than one eye. So yes, you can use a kernel of the story as a point of focus, as an object of concentration, and then that becomes a door into the penetration of the story. Okay? Now, the word koan, by the way, the word koan or gungan originally meant a public case or

[39:14]

a decision of a magistrate. The magistrate would hear a case in court in China, and then the magistrate would say to the court reporter, he would write this thing out and say, here's what's going on on this case. It would be the judge's decision about the case. And so it's a public case or the brief that the judge gives down from the bench. It actually means bench, literally. It refers to the bench that the judge sits on and came to mean the judge's decision. And then this, and in China now, they have on the side of police cars, it says gunan, but it's a different character. Instead of saying public cases, it says public safety on the police cars. But it has the same character, gun, instead of this other character, which means bench.

[40:22]

It says safety. Anyway, the gunan originally meant that, but then it's come to mean these old stories. So now we have an old story before us, and this old story just happens to be rather complicated. And there's a commentary on it. And again, there's a tradition to, number one, collect these stories, write poems about them, and then make interpretations and comments on them. All that's part of the tradition. So with all that going on, then there's also the direct confrontation with the story, and not even that, the direct confrontation with just a tiny part of the story. So I'm caught between two approaches to these stories. One is to get into the tradition of the commentating on it, and the other is to get into the meditation on the core of it.

[41:29]

And it seems In one sense, the appropriate thing to do would be to get into the core of it right away. But there's some reason to actually get into the commentary, because having some intellectual understanding, which you then don't use, about the story is sometimes helpful. Because if you don't have an intellectual understanding which you don't use on the story, then you probably have some other intellectual understanding which you come up with on your own. I don't think so. If you do think about the story, you're going to use your intellectual understanding. I would say you'd be more likely to use it

[42:41]

because you haven't been encouraged not to use it. So here we can develop together an intellectual understanding which then you are being asked not to use. And you know specifically what not to use. And we all together don't use it. Because we read the commentary to get it. But of course, you could still go right ahead and use the commentary, if you wish. But that's what we're trying to not do. Yes? You talked about the context of the stories you're looking at. But you haven't said anything about the form of the stories. It strikes me they're not narrative, they're not both the dialogue. I'm just wondering, is there something inherent in that form? that's transmitted into the content?

[43:47]

If you say they're not narratives, then I would say that we need to work until you can see that they're narratives. So what is your definition of a narrative? Well, my simple definition right now would be a one-story pillar relaying a story. and outlined that in their form, not necessarily having two characters interacting in a dialogue. I mean, I can see they fit in for one narrative style, but it strikes me that most of these are all interactions in dialogue form. Yes, but are you saying that you don't see how these dialogues are narratives? No, I see that they're narratives. It strikes me, though, that they are all dialogues, and perhaps there's something in the fact that they are dialogues. Oh, I see. Is that what you're saying? Yes. So you can see that they're narratives, but you're wondering how come they're so often dialogues. Yes. Okay, so what do you think?

[44:51]

What's the, you know... Buddha meetings. Buddha meetings, yes. That there's something about the bodhisattva tradition that has something to do with self and other, that has something to do with that it's not only that, and actually that these narrations need to be social, they need to be communal, but they are narrations about communication. So that's another reason which one could give for why the Zen school meditates on these stories rather than meditating on colors, on images of bodhisattvas, on the breath. Not exactly rather than, but why... Because Zen people also meditate on all of their stuff, too. But there's almost no other tradition where the people meditate on social records.

[46:02]

So another reason why it may be important to meditate on these stories is because then this Chinese form of Buddhism is making this strong emphasis on not that you attain some great state of samadhi and you attain some great insight, but rather that you have insight into your relationship with others. and that your insight into your relationship with others is such that it's really something that happens with you and somebody else. So you're meditating on a story about an interaction, and you need to do it in such a way that it's an interactive and social event, your meditation is, which is another reason for having the class. So these are meditation objects which are highlighting the narrative and the social communal practice of Zen, or that Zen is that kind of thing.

[47:19]

And that Zen is saying, to some extent, that's what a bodhisattva life is. It is not the way you practice, it's the way we are practicing. So in a group like this, I welcome any ideas that can arise to make this a social event, an event where you feel the communal group practice. So it isn't in the form of me speaking to an audience, but it's more something that we do together. And so in the Buddhist discourses, early ones, it looks like the Buddha is giving talks to the group. And in the Zen stories, the teacher talking to the student almost evaporates in some cases.

[48:26]

And that's sort of the goal, is to finally, the teacher disappears. The student hides the teacher. But we don't get rid of the teacher to hide the teacher. We get rid of the teacher in the dialogue. We achieve equality and a group event. So that's another reason why these stories may be good topics They keep reminding us. That's the kind of meditation we're talking about, not a meditation that you do and I do, but the meditation that we're doing. I'm just thinking that maybe the Kuan tradition is not so unique to the Zen school, if one could consider the Tibetan tradition of debate as a form of Kuan practice.

[49:33]

The debate forum is the way colon studies should be, in a way. That would be a good way to study colons. But the debates, the topic of the debates is very seldom a story about two Tibetan people debating. That's the difference. But the interactive thing... That's what the Zen stories are about. They're about debates. I agree. But still, one could say, like, in both situations, the material is, as you say, it's concepts. Like, you have concepts, and then people actively engage in the concepts. Right. So that's part of the reason why I said at the beginning, Why do we need these stories? Because the Tibetans meditate on concepts. They don't meditate on these stories. Why do we need these stories?

[50:36]

Well, anyway, we need them because we're in the Zen tradition. And they don't need them because they're in the Tibetan tradition. But in both cases, you're meditating on concepts. In Zen, the concepts are the family thing. And family is very important in Tibetan Buddhism, too, but they don't approach it by these stories. And... But in both cases, they're trying to penetrate the relationship between subject and object. Same practice, really. It's just this special quality of these stories. And I had some question about, you know, I had some doubts about it. whether it really makes sense for us to be looking at stories of Chinese people interacting hundreds of years ago, whether that really is helpful, or whether we should just, you know, talk about, for example, debate about what's going on right now with our own experience and not use the stories as the pretext for discussing our present experience.

[51:38]

So I'm somewhat in doubt about this whole thing. which means I'm in doubt about how to proceed. Pardon? What is the alternative? The alternative? Well, you can just practice the precepts, and then you can simply do the practice I just mentioned to Susan. Each moment you have an opportunity to meet whatever happens without any kind of idea to select or control your experience. Just deal with what's happening. Deal with the conflicts of your mind. When they come, say, thank you for this late-breaking concept, this late-breaking conflict, this new twist on my karma. Thank you very much. This is what I'm working with, and now it's gone. And, man, that was, yeah, there wasn't so much grasping there and there was a little there.

[52:45]

Did you get that? So you practice not grasping what's coming and you can do that practice. You don't have to, like, bring Zen stories into the flow. You can stay out of this soup if you want to and then just deal with everything that you'd have in your life if you didn't come to this class or look at the stories. You still have plenty to work with. And if it's Zen instruction, it would be the same meditation. You can do the same meditation. If you leave Dream Gulch and go to a Christian monastery and they start telling you stories about the Desert Fathers or something, those concepts are coming at you. Same practice. So this practice applies to anything. And this is just a special diet that this class offers. But you don't have to deal with this diet. It's not necessary. You can practice Zen without studying these old stories. The early Zen people did not study these stories.

[53:48]

They didn't have any. That was not their practice. They worked on just their body and their breath and stuff like that. They more related to the Buddha in the early Zen days, or our early ancestors. They were meditating on the Buddha. But little by little, the Zen stories got more interesting to them than the Buddha stories, partly because they were so communal. The Buddha stories are great, but they lack the communal quality. The Buddha's like the big daddy up on the hill, telling us what to do, you know? Walk around the Buddha, you know? And that thing of, there's the great Buddha, you know, go visit the great Buddha, that's in the background of Buddhism. Zen people knew about that. So when they went to see the teacher, they knew that this teacher could be seen as the big Buddha. And they play with that. Sometimes they walk around the teacher. Sometimes they say, I'm not going to walk around you.

[54:49]

And the teacher says, how come you're not walking around me? I'm the Buddha. Okay? And there's some stories about Buddha like that too. Some people are disrespectful of Buddha, but not very many. There's a lot of Zen stories about people punching Zen masters, and very few stories about a nice, lively interaction between disrespectful disciples of the Buddha. And also, we do not have the Buddha saying too many times, there is not anywhere in India a teacher of Buddha Dharma. Now, the Mahayana Sutra says that he did say that kind of stuff. But if you look in the Theravada literature, he doesn't say that off. That point is not made very strongly by him. In all of India, there is no teacher of Buddhadharma. But in Zen, you have people saying stuff like that, which is very interesting, which is part of the reason why then people said, our stories are really interesting.

[55:49]

Let's look at them. Not to say we don't look. They still studied the stories of Buddha. but they somehow couldn't patch up their own stories because their own stories were so creative. And everybody thought they were, you know, people were telling stories about Buddha and making these huge, huge, huge statues of Buddha and beautiful paintings of Buddha and huge Buddhist statues. They're doing all that. But really what they were talking about more was the stories about their own people, their own teachers, and the interactions between their own teachers and their own students somehow were more engaging. so it became popular. But if it doesn't appeal to you at this time in your practice, don't feel that you're obliged or really missing out at this point to not be studying this stuff. It may be too much. It's possible. Okay? Anything else at this time? Okay, so this first case we're starting with is like, you know, a big one, so...

[56:52]

I'm glad I did. kind of prepared you, because this case is a case where Matt has quite a bit to say. Yes? I was just going to say, you said you don't really know how to proceed. I think like we're going to start proceeding, and maybe it would just be good to keep looking at how we're proceeding, so we don't get lost. That's what I mean by, you know, stop the train. If you feel like you're getting lost and the train's like just storming through the town and you're not able to get on, stop the train anytime you want. And if you don't go like this and the train doesn't stop, stand up, you know, jump up and down, get it to stop. You're welcome to do that anytime. Because this is a social event. about studying a social event. And it's a social event, but it's possible to be in a social event and also be present and stable.

[58:02]

It is possible. And that's probably what the debate tradition is about, is can you debate with somebody with energy and still stay present so you can hear what the person's saying and hear what you're saying? So it's like, can you be active and still be, like, concentrated? So can we be active, interacting, concentrated, social, and studying these cases? This is the great challenge of this study. And the answer is yes, we can, and the answer is we slip sometimes. Sometimes we get caught up in what's going on, and so that happens. All of it. Okay, so let's see. We're going to study now case 76. How many people do not have a copy of this case? Okay, so count off.

[59:05]

Just say a number, and then don't say two numbers. One, two, three, four, five. 27 we need. Huh? Thirty? Thirty? Okay. So the people who don't live at Green Gulch, I have, you can pick up a class, I have twelve people who don't live at Green Gulch, so you can have them first, and people who do live at Green Gulch who don't have them can get them tomorrow. Is that okay? Maybe there's just twelve people who don't live at Green Gulch that don't have it, we'll see.

[60:08]

So the case is, pardon? And one that lives at Green College. Quite a few that don't live at Green College do have them. Yeah. But some that live at Green College don't have them. Right, Lynn? Right. What do you got there, Lynn? Glasses. Now, in your hand, what do you have? What? In your hand, your other hand, what do you have? I have an empty hand. What do you have in your lap? This book does not belong to me. Whose is it? It was on the table back there. Would you like to borrow it for the practice during this class? Well, yes. That would be very nice. Will you return it at the class social? You mean this very evening? No, the whole series. Would you like to borrow it? Would you return it at the end? Yes, I will. Okay, so you can use that one. You don't need one. Are there any more back there, extra ones? Diane, are there more back there? Okay, so anybody that doesn't live here who would like to have this book or this class, you may use it.

[61:12]

for this class, and then return it when class is over, okay? You can have the whole book. Huh? If you live here, same. Yeah. I mean, those books are for you to use for the class. Just return them so the people in the next class can use them, that's all. Yeah, so I'm just saying that then the other people who don't live here come up and I'll give you a copy, so maybe we have enough then for you. Okay, so the case is kind of short, so you don't really need the whole thing to go over this case. You can memorize it right now. So this is a Zen person, a Zen disciple, a Buddha. His name was Choshan, which means Head Mountain. Huh?

[62:16]

Head. Shoshan. And he said to his group, if you attain at the first phrase, you will be a teacher of Buddhas and ancestors. If you attain at the second phrase, you will be a teacher of humans and gods. If you attain at the third phrase, you cannot even save yourself. A monk asked, at which phrase did you attain? And Shoshan said, the moon sets, midnight going through the marketplace. That's the case. Have you memorized it? Huh? Jeremy's got it. You got it, Bert?

[63:18]

No. So you want to try it again? So you can start it out and I'll help you. What's his name? Shoshan. Would you stand up so they can hear you better? If you can't at the first phrase, you will be a picture of... Well, take a guess. Buddha. Buddha is... Right. That's one down. If you can't at the second phrase, you will be a picture of God and man. Humans. Right. Two. If you can't at the third phrase, you can't be a picture.

[64:20]

Right, he got those three. Then what happened? Right. And what did he say? That's pretty close, isn't it? Yeah. You guys have to have this rehearsed. We did this back in the Tang Dynasty. Except I was the monk and he was Zhoushan. Anybody else like to recite it? Courtney, could you recite it, please? Huh? Huh? You did?

[65:21]

Well, good for you. Please stand up and recite the case. I'll hold it up for you. Shosham said to the assembly, contain first frame. It would be a picture of Rudraganand Prachin. If you attain at the second frame, you'll be a teacher of God and the ancestors. Humans. Humans? Humans and God. And if you attain at the third frame, you cannot even save yourself. Right. And the monk asks, and I think what phrase did you use? Yes.

[66:22]

Yes. Correct. Would anyone else like to recite it? Mary, would you please recite it? Could you say it louder, please? You teach. You will be a teacher.

[67:25]

Yes. Yes. Correct. And what phrase did you attain? Yeah. All right. Moonsets, midnights, midnight... Moonsets, midnight, something about the marketplace. Thank you.

[68:30]

So, would someone else like to... Is anybody getting bored reciting this stuff? Huh? Anybody bored reciting? Well, please stand up and recite. Yeah, well, that's how things get interesting. Please stand up, Klaus, and recite. of doing that God came at that place to behave himself. And one time at Shoshan, at one place, a Jew came and shook my thumbs and said, Moon, thank you. Good night. Good morning. It's hard to do. We could, yes. Probably we will someday.

[69:38]

I just wanted to basically let you know that if you're going to meditate on the case, you sort of have to memorize it. So it should be something that you can remember anytime you want to, and actually that you're kind of than spend some time thinking about. Now, I don't know if you feel ready to guess where you think the key point of the story would be for you. Where would you like, if you're going to focus on this story, where would you focus, do you think? Midnight. Huh? Midnight? Who said midnight? Okay, you said midnight. What's your name again? Pam. Huh? Pam. Pam? Okay, so Pam says midnight. The word phrase? Oh, yeah. What phrase is he talking about? So for you, the word what phrase would be what you'd focus on? Okay. Klaus? I would just say the last statement.

[70:43]

You do the whole thing? Yes. That would be the focus for you. Mia? Do you think first of all the word which? Which? And the last part through. Through. The word which for the word through should be your choices. And the interesting one is can't save yourself. Can't save yourself. How come you guys like that one so much? Can you say what touches you about that? Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah. I'll find out about it tomorrow. This is happening in space. It's still a great thing. You can't fix it. You can't fix it. I see a beanie with her hand raised.

[72:02]

What would it be? I was going to say the last, if you stand at the third phrase and come out, you can say we got this. You do the whole sentence? Yeah, because I think the fact that the third phrase is significant. Okay. Pardon? I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Yes? I'm interested in the word attain. Attain. In the Heart Sutra, there's nothing to attain. Uh-huh. May I? The moon sets. Gordon? I'm with Maya. I was just curious about patriarch versus ancestor. Are we just being hasty here? I don't know if we're just being PC, but that would be PC.

[73:05]

I think... Huh? What phrase would I use? I hesitate to say because I'm afraid I would influence you unduly. And even that might be too much of an influence. but I'd rather not say because I want you to experiment with your... I don't want you to mix my thing in with your choice, but I would suggest that you decide whether you'd like to think about and ponder and contemplate this story and what is the actual image that you're going to be working with to ponder.

[74:13]

I'd like you to think about that. Okay? And I'd like to not tell you which I think is the best one to use or which one I think is best for me. I feel a loss. You feel a loss about anything? I'm not hearing your equal as well. You feel a loss? I'm kidding. It's coming in. And for the sake of my heart, it's non-dairy. But it's delicious. It has mushrooms on it. And it has... And there's... There's basil.

[75:19]

And the basil has been chopped up in little pieces and mixed in with other things, but there's no cheese in with it, so it's not the ordinary pesto, but kind of like pesto without cheese. And it also has... Not avocados, but artichokes. And it has broccoli. And it has... And it has lots of peppers on it. Lots of jalapeno peppers. And as Pat said, it is available in the marketplace. at midnight. And it's made with a crust that's thin and has not made with butter, somehow.

[76:22]

Huh? You don't? There you go. Olive oil. So that's my dream pizza. And you can put that in your lofts. Okay, so do you have a sense of how to proceed, Matt? Yes. If you wish, how to proceed with this case. And also, would someone please do some research in the Diamond Sutra? I asked my attendant if she found the quote that's in the commentary here. There's a quote from the Diamond Sutra in this commentary, and I asked her if she found it, and she hasn't found it yet. So would you help her find it? There's a quote in the commentary from the Diamond Suture. It looks like a composite. I can find parts of it here and there. But the particular part I'd like you to find, which I wasn't able to find at all, is the business about in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end.

[77:27]

See if you can find that in the Diamond Sutra. I'd appreciate it if you could find it. I couldn't. And if you can't find it, then it's possible that it was some other translation other than the one that come down to us. I mean, you know, another Chinese translation. So would some of you look for the Diamond Sutra to see if you can find this quotation? Well, actually, this quotation, it says that it began with Baizhang based on the Diamond Sutra. And Baizhang was said the words of the teacher. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So you don't have to find it. You're not going to. It's bhajan. Bhaijan said this, and it's not a quote. It is a quote of bhajan, but he's not quoting the Diamond Sutra. That's right. So you can read the commentary if you wish.

[78:29]

I don't recommend it. but you're welcome to read it. What I recommend is that you see what your mind can come up with when you meditate on these images that this story offers you. The ancients, the person who compiled this record, studied the case, he may have read some commentaries, but it's fairly likely he did not read any commentary, that he just studied the case, he meditated on the case, and then he appreciated what he saw in the case, and he wrote the verse. That's tian tong. The person who wrote the verse collected the cases. So probably he studied this case, meditated on this case, was encouraged by this case, spent his good meditation time on this case, and was able to write that poem based on his insights. So I guess what I'm asking you is to approach the case as though there hadn't been a commentary written yet, and even before you make your commentary, first try to penetrate the case.

[79:41]

And it may be that our discussions in later classes will help you penetrate it, but you may be able to penetrate it before you hear anything about what the three phrases are, or anything like that. Is it already too abstract for this person to connect to of the line, in the way that you're asking people to choose an image of a line? Would that already be, like, Oh, I see. The line, the third face line and the mid... I think so, yeah. I think that's exactly what discursive thinking is, is to go from the first line to some other line and make a connection there. That's sort of... I have a question. That's what discursive is, is to go back and forth between those two things. So that would be discursive, yeah. So that would be not the right path. If you stop there, it would be all right. But anyway, that's an example of what you shouldn't do. That was my question.

[80:45]

But you could do that and then stop there. Oh, you could do that and stop there? That would be the end of your career. Oh. And that would be the last discursive thought that you ever got involved with. And then that one... Then that would be no longer discursive. Right, that would just be image. But if you have an image... When you have an image and you have another image and you connect the two, that's discursive thinking. Or you have an image and an image and you go back and forth between them. Discursive thinking means basically running back and forth, literally. To put it, that's also running back and forth. Any kind of composition you make there with the imagery is discursive thought. Images appearing with no manipulation or elaboration, that's the practice. So they can both appear together? Well, if they appear together, that's one. Or they can appear sequentially, concept, concept, concept. But to take this concept and connect it to that concept is discursive thinking, or to combine them, to separate them, that's discursive thinking.

[81:53]

Once the composition is made, you have a new concept called this new composite. Just to leave that alone, then you're meeting with no mind again. So, yes. You know, you could read the colon and have an overall image of the colon. It could be one image, the whole colon. It's possible to have a complex image like that, that's stable, and that dependently co-arises, and it's the whole story. It's like you hear a story and suddenly you laugh when you get it. And you didn't laugh until a certain point and then suddenly the whole thing falls together for you.

[82:56]

That's one event, one cognitive event of that image. But if you're going to ponder it then later, rather than go over the whole thing, you might just pick the laugh or that feeling that you got when you got it. So there may be some aspect of it that is more convenient for you to think of, and the whole story comes back when you think of it. So that's why for some people, midnight or moonset is like, for them, that maybe coagulates the whole thing. For somebody else, can't save yourself is the crux of the pivotal term. It's like the leader of the whole thing, in a way. And everything else falls into place around that for some people. But the whole story, you wouldn't have picked that probably.

[83:57]

If you were just walking down the street, you wouldn't necessarily have chosen midnight if it wasn't that midnight in that story. But in that story, midnight may be particularly important to you. But otherwise, midnight may not be that important. You might just sleep through it. But probably some of you may never sleep through midnight again. As a matter of fact, some of you may wake up at midnight tonight. It could happen. Okay, so in honor of Lynn's request, could we recite the case together? Xu Chang said to the assembly, if you had came at the first race, you would be a teacher of religious dynamics. If you attain the second praise, you will be a teacher of humans and gods.

[85:01]

If you attain the third praise, you will not need to save yourself. Among the castes of heaven, you attain. Fr. Donald said, The real success, midnight, going through the heart of the place. And one other translation of this could be, after the moon sets at midnight, one penetrates through the city. Another translation. Okay, so I'll see you next week. Happy meditation practice. I hope you feel able to do that.

[85:56]

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