Thank you very much, I was touched, I am touched by your effort to slow down, I've noticed it's quieter around here lately, thank you. And also, along this line I'd like to take this opportunity to say something else like that, that I've been wanting to say for about three months, but I thought I might say before I leave, in the summer, and that has to do with this tanh, how I get up and down from the tanh. To me, the tanh is an altar, like that one, and the buddhas sit on it, so to me it's hard to see people getting up and down from the tanh, stepping up on it, like it's a stair

[01:04]

or something, and we didn't used to do that, but I think the Jikido union got a lobby going or something, and then everybody started copying the Jikidos, because for a while the Jikidos were like sitting at the end of the tanh, backwards, and getting up, you know, turning around and getting up from the tanh, and they just said, it's too hard, so then they started stepping up from the tanh, and everybody thought that they could do it too. It's also, especially during Sesshin, quite risky to step up and down from this tanh, that's how you hurt your knees. The time most likely to hurt your knee is when it's bent and bearing weight, so getting up and down from this tanh in Sesshin is very risky, but aside from the danger for your knees, I just want to say that I'd like to ask you to not, you know, step up from

[02:06]

the tanh, and I'd like as a Jikido also not to step up from the tanh from the front, but step up at the ends. I give up a lot, sitting down and turning around, it's maybe too much, maybe too busy to do it, but the thought occurred to me, if I saw a monkey climb up on the altar there and walk around on it, it wouldn't bother me, or a kid, but to see the Buddhas that are sitting on the tanh, climb up on it, it just really jars me. So that's my request, my next request is, please don't step up and down from the tanh like that. I even saw somebody put their footsie right here on the old Buddha tanh here. What I have been doing and want to do more of today is trying to construct a web, a web

[03:29]

of relationships among adepts, but this web of relationships among adepts is a model of the web of relationships among those of us who are a little less adept, namely among all sentient beings, they're the web of relationships. And this awareness of this web of relationships is what we call Buddha, and Buddha is born from this web of relationships among living beings. And the Zen stories are model cases of relationships, so we can see how these people in the ancient times, how they worked on their relationships, how they worked on the near together. And I've not only been bringing up stories which show their relationships, but also talking

[04:38]

about who studied with who and things like that, because that's part of the relationship So also you can see threads running down through the relationships generation after generation. So I don't know where to hit it today, but yesterday we were talking about yin and yang. The brother of Da Wu, and they originally studied with, remember who they originally studied with? Bai Zhan, so they're disciples of Sekito's lineage, Seigen's lineage, the Seigen-Sekito

[05:48]

lineage, the Seigen-Sekito-Yaoshan lineage, they're disciples of that, but before that they were disciples of the Nangaku-Matsu-Bai Zhan lineage. So they started on one side of the Six Ancestors main line and then went over to the other side, primarily because Bai Zhan died. Bai Zhan died at 94, so the young Yuan Yan started studying with him when he was 14, 14 or 15 to the age of 35, and then he went to study with Yaoshan. One important fact is that while Yuan Yan was studying with Bai Zhan, his elder brother

[06:56]

Guishan was there, there was a monk named Guishan, actually his name wasn't Guishan yet, his name was Ling Yu at that time. So one of his elder Dharma brothers with Bai Zhan was Ling Yu, Guishan Ling Yu. So they studied together, probably for 20 years they studied together with Bai Zhan. In preparing for this talk today and for the first time the significance of that dawned on me, which you'll probably see in a little while. So going then on from Yuan Yan, or not really going on from him, but staying with him and talking about his main disciple, is Dongshan, the founder of what we call Soto Zen in China.

[08:03]

And he's the one who said about Yuan Yan, it's not the depth of his practice or the brilliance of his teaching, and so on. Something interesting out there? We hear a lot about Guishan. It's not those things that I revere in him, but rather that he never taught me anything directly. Also, as I will point out today and you've seen before, Dongshan already studied with another, he already had been able to study with a direct disciple of Matsu, Nanchuan.

[09:12]

Nanchuan recognized him when he was just a kid as a worthy vessel of Dharma. And he also got a chance to study with Guishan, Yuan Yan's Dharma brother and a disciple of Bai Zhan. So he studied with some very noted, some famous great Zen masters of China at that time, in the golden age of Zen. So that's why people ask me, why do you venerate this sort of humble, somewhat retarded Zen teacher? I can't go over all the early parts of Dongshan's life because they're too interesting and

[10:15]

I'll never get to the part I want to talk about. And you won't let me either, I'm sure, especially what I won't tell you. The part I'd like to talk about is leading up to his meeting with Yuan Yan. And so the time I'm tuning in on now is after he's met Nanchuan and so on and had various other interesting things happen to him and he is coming to visit Guishan and he goes

[11:17]

to Guishan and he says, recently I heard about the National Teacher Zheng's teaching. National Teacher Zheng is a disciple of the Sixth Ancestor also. He wasn't, I don't think, I think he wasn't alive at that time anymore, but anyway, one of the Sixth Ancestor's disciples was a National Teacher and the Emperor recognized him as a National Teacher. His name was Zheng, Nanyang Zheng. And he had a teaching about the teaching of inanimate or insentient, non-living beings. So, I, Dongshan, I, Liangzhe, don't understand his teaching, Teacher Guishan, could you please

[12:30]

help me with it? And, something there? You're talking about Guishan, Nanchuan? Dongshan's now gone to Guishan, okay, and he says, I've heard about this teaching of the National Teacher. So he's asking Guishan about the teaching of the National Teacher. And, so Guishan says, okay, well, can you remember this teaching or the story about this teaching? And, Liangzhe says, Dongshan, Liangzhe says, yeah, I can remember it. And Guishan says, well, please, let's hear it. So, then he says, well, a monk came to the National Teacher and says, can you tell me what is the mind of the ancient Buddhas? And the National Teacher said, walls, tiles, and pebbles.

[13:38]

What is the mind of the ancient Buddhas? National Teacher said, walls, tiles, and pebbles. The monk said, well, can they expound the Dharma? He said, aren't those insentient beings? Aren't those non-sentient things? And the National Teacher said, yeah. He said, well, can they expound the Dharma? And he said, they expound the Dharma constantly, incandescently, and ceaselessly. And the monk said, why can't I hear them? And the National Teacher said, although you yourself don't hear them, don't hinder that which does hear them.

[14:53]

And the monk said to the Teacher, who can hear it? The Teacher said, the saints can hear it. Remember the other day we were talking about the saints? That's one of the reasons why the Dharma is inconceivable. It's because the saints, it's from the introspection of the saints. There's a clue there. The Teacher said, the saints can hear it. The monk said, do you hear it? The Teacher said, no. The monk said, if you don't hear it, how do you know that insentient beings can teach? The National Teacher said, it's lucky that I don't hear them.

[16:05]

If I did, I would be equal to the saints, and you wouldn't be able to hear my teaching. The monk said, then living beings have no part in it? The Teacher said, my teaching is for the sake of living beings. The monk said, after sentient beings hear it, hear your teaching, then what? That's like the question. After his intimacy, then what? The National Teacher said, they ain't sentient beings anymore. Guess what they are? So that's the story.

[17:14]

Well, that's not the whole thing. Then the monk said, dear National Teacher, what sutra did you get this from anyway? And the National Teacher said, well certainly, if the words I'm saying don't accord with the scriptures, I wouldn't be a gentleman. He said, haven't you heard of the Tamsaka Sutra, where it says, lands teach, beings teach, all things in ten directions teach? So that's the end of the story that Lian-Jie recited to Guishan. So this is a short story about what, just by coincidence, I've been talking about this week. Hearing and Life, living beings and hearing in Dharma.

[18:18]

So just by coincidence, here it is, right in order, just at the right moment. So after Dung-Shan, Lian-Jie recited this story, Guishan said, I have that teaching here too. But it's rare that I meet someone who can receive it. Lian-Jie said, well, let's have it. I mean, teach me, please. And Guishan went, do you understand?

[19:28]

And Lian-Jie said, no, please explain more. And Guishan said, the mouth that came from my mother and father will never explain it to you. The translation would be, words will not explain it. So the young monk said, do you have some contemporaries that I could talk to about this? Anybody else that studied with Baizhang at the same time as you? And Guishan said, well, as a matter of fact, yes, there is a guy that I studied with that I think you could respect.

[20:41]

He lives down in Hunan. He lives in a stone grotto, there's a hole down in a certain section of Hunan, you'll find a row of stone grottos, and he lives in there. His name is Cloudy Cliffs. I think you might be able to respect him. And Lian-Jie said, what kind of a guy is he? I said, well, when we parted last, he said to me, you two are Dharma brothers, right? But also Guishan is a little older. Guishan is about the same age as Yun-Yuan's blood brother, Dao-Wu. Dao-Wu is about nine, ten years older than him.

[21:45]

He said, after I leave, is there some way I can serve you, some way I can help you? And he said, yeah, don't leak. And he said, if I do that, will I then not violate your teaching? And Guishan said to Yun-Yuan, just don't tell anybody where I am. So that was Guishan's description of Yun-Yuan, and I guess Lian-Jie liked it because he traveled down south a little further to visit Yun-Yuan. When he got to Yun-Yuan, finally he found him and he said,

[22:55]

I'd like to talk to you about this teaching of the insentient beings. So he said to Yun-Yuan, he said, who can hear the teaching of the inanimate? And Yun-Yuan said, the inanimate can hear it. And Deng-Shan said, do you hear it? And Yun-Yuan said, if I could hear it, then you would not be able to hear my teaching. And Yun-Yuan said, Lian-Jie said, why don't I hear it? And Deng-Shan raised his whisk and said, do you hear it?

[24:09]

Lian-Jie said, no. And Yun-Yuan said, if you don't even hear my teaching, how do you think you're going to be able to hear the teaching of the inanimate? And Lian-Jie said, what sutra did you get this from? And Yun-Yuan said, haven't you heard in the Amitabha Sutra where it says, rivers, birds, trees, groves, all invoke the Buddha's name and teaching? At that time, Lian-Jie had some insight. Sometimes they say he had some insight, sometimes they say he had a great awakening. I think it's better to say he had some insight, because a little later on he's going to have

[25:14]

a great awakening. But this was a real nice start. This is one of the cases where you see Deng-Shan, he had a little trouble getting it. It took him a little while. He had to travel and work pretty hard to get this one, but still got it from Yun-Yuan, who wasn't so quick in that lifetime. So he had an awakening at that time. And then he said that phrase, that famous old thing, Oh, how great, how wonderful. The teaching of the inanimate is inconceivable. If you listen with your ears, you won't hear.

[26:18]

When you hear with sound with your eyes, then you know. And Yun-Yuan said, good. So Deng-Shan stayed there for a while with him. Now what I've realized today, which I don't know why I didn't realize it before, I've given talks about this story many times. I like this story. I like all three of them. There's three stories, right? I like them a lot for many reasons. Also you see here now, the disciple of the sixth ancestor gives his teaching and it keeps working its way down through time, through various people.

[27:21]

And here the story ends, the three-part story ends now with Deng-Shan being able to use it with the aid of the teaching of three teachers plus the inanimate and two sutras and got some awakening. But what I couldn't believe before is that he would go from Guishan over to Yun-Yuan and then Yun-Yuan would do this thing again. Do you hear it? And I was sort of popping joke that they didn't have telegrams. So did Guishan send a messenger head fast on a horse to tell Yun-Yuan that he was coming and what to say? But then I realized today, they probably were friends for 20 years. And what did they talk about? Talked about this kind of story, you know. And Bai Zhang taught Guishan and Yun-Yuan about this.

[28:25]

So they both had the story. And so the fact that they would do almost the same thing is not so amazing considering how close they were. And again, you see this, what do you call it, double team, right? This team teaching kind of thing. Like we saw with Yaoshan. Sekhito sends Yaoshan over to Matsu. So you get it from one side and then you get it from another side. The triangulation helps. When I used to study the Abhidharmakosha, when I first started studying it, I found it very helpful to read secondary material and then I would get two or three translations of the same little section. If I read it the first time and understood it, that would rarely happen. Although that's fine, it doesn't sink in as deeply as not getting it and then reading it again and again from several different angles and then it starts to sink in and start to become part of you.

[29:31]

It's also okay just to go over something again and again, but getting it from different angles is... and at different times, it's very useful. So here anyway is an example of that and it never dawned on me that they were really close and that they worked on a story together for many years maybe. So it wasn't so amazing that he would travel and get a pretty similar response from them. So part of what's being said here is, like I mentioned yesterday, the Blue Jays and Yashan and I are speaking words to reveal that which isn't words. And like I said this morning, heard melodies are sweet,

[30:33]

but those unheard are sweeter. Therefore ye soft pipes, play on. Not to the sensual ear, but more endeared. Pipe to the spirit, ditties of no tone. The person who's teaching about the teaching of the inanimate beings, that person can't hear them. The person who can hear them can't teach you. If they can hear it, if they can hear it, then you won't be able to hear their teaching. The National teacher is saying this, Guishan's teacher is saying this,

[31:35]

Yunyan is saying this. They've got kind of a party line going there. And it's also a party line in the sense that remember when we used to have party lines? A party line used to be that you'd have a telephone and then several people had a telephone so you could pick up your telephone and somebody else would be using it and your neighbor or something would be on the phone plus also you couldn't call until they were done. And there would be sometimes arguments. You'd get on line and say, get off the phone, I've got to make a call! It's a party line. And party line also means like everybody studying with Baijiang sort of they get this understanding of these koans or something and that's the understanding of that line. So Dogen understands koans this way, people understand them that way. So different schools have different understandings of these stories. So Yang Jie got the understanding of this teaching

[32:38]

through the sixth ancestor, his disciple, then over to Baijiang but then across through Baijiang but also down through Guishan. So these lineages converge and he gets this party line from these two lineages about this teaching and they all kind of agree. Now in one sense I don't like it, I don't like that, that everybody agrees or got this kind of school understanding of the story. It seems too set. But on the other hand I do like it because I think we should settle these matters together so that we aren't sort of walking around with different ideas about these things. I think it's okay to have different ideas but then I think we should work out on that. What is the difference? Not just let the differences sit there but work on them together. And maybe we'll never agree but maybe we will if we work on them together. So I don't like the idea of a party line

[33:39]

but I do actually like the idea of settling dharma because I really think that that's kind of where it's at. To settle the dharma together, two living beings working together to exhaustively study some teaching until they both really have the same understanding, until they really can agree on some point of dharma. And sometimes when they're different at the beginning that's the best thing to use. If you already agree then there's no work to do together. And maybe you really don't agree but if you disagree then you've got something to work on. So that's what seems to be here is that we have some agreement among these different teachers and then they can use each other. That's another advantage of it you see. If we have a group of people here that have settled some dharma together when a new person comes in then they can come and ask me about it and I can say,

[34:39]

I don't want to talk about it, go talk to him. And he can say, I've got a headache, go talk to her. And she can say, you should talk to the abbot. And they get the same teaching in these different ways and it's pretty nice. To some extent, I don't mean to be critical of Zen Center, but to some extent people come in here and they talk to that person and that person says, well you should do it this way and they go talk to the next person and they say, no you should do it that way. And that's okay in a sense but why aren't these people settling the dharma with each other? And maybe that, I think part of it is that it used to be around Zen Center because a lot of people came to Zen Center from books that guest students would come in and they'd walk down, they'd go in a small kitchen and say, quats! And the older students would say, really? Or they'd be making their peanut butter sandwich

[35:51]

and they'd say, what's the sound of one piece of bread? And the older students would say, we don't talk like that here. This is not the way. We talk about the newspaper and movies here. Which is true, but I think because people coming from books and it sounds so weird to be talking Zen, right? From the books. But then I think we sort of put the kibosh on dharma talk too strongly and then people sort of felt like, well you really can't talk about dharma here in a small kitchen. But in the early days of Zen Center, we did. We did sit around the coffee table and the breakfast table and we talked about dharma. But then somewhere as we got more sophisticated, somewhere along the line we kind of said, well you're not supposed to talk about dharma in public. Or nowhere actually, except in lectures. But then everybody was too scared. So basically there was no discussion.

[36:53]

There was just lectures and nobody understood them because they couldn't talk about them. So I really encourage you people to, as much as you want, no more than you want, talk about the dharmas and find some way to do it that doesn't, you know, I think if you just talk about it, and then you can guide the new students. They want to talk about it. They're even willing to talk about it in this ridiculous way, right out of the books. But rather than sort of saying, well that's not the way, and then have them sort of shut up then, show them the way. Show them the way to talk about dharma by talking to them about it. Don't refer them to some practice leader or something like that or some other Zen group. Talk to them about it. Their heart is pure as gold, you know. That's why they're willing to be so, like they're willing to be like this, Nyanja, you know. Imagine a guest student comes and walks in this small kitchen

[37:56]

and says, I want to talk about the kitchen of inanimate beings. This is really sweet. But, you know, I think we shouldn't discourage them. Even though we were discouraged. Don't take it out on the next generation. Yes. In the interest of settling and understanding, I love those threes too, but... Oh no. Haven't you heard? In the such and such sutra it says you say and? And then you can say yet. And... Big thing I don't get in there, which is

[38:57]

if all those great old guys can't hear it at all, how do they point to it? What did they say when they were asked that question? They said if they were asked if they could hear it and they said, no, if I could hear it, I couldn't teach. You wouldn't be able to hear it. Also they asked your question. How can you be teaching about it? How can you know that they hear if you don't hear it? And they didn't answer that question, they just said, it's lucky that I don't, because if I did, you wouldn't be able to hear my teaching. They didn't explain, did they? Right, did you notice that? They asked that question. Where do you get off telling me that these things teach this and you don't hear it yourself?

[40:00]

That's normal. I mean, that makes sense, doesn't it? What are you giving a lecture about these things teaching and you're saying that they are doing it and you don't hear it? And you say, if I did hear it, I wouldn't be able to teach you. So how is that? How is that? So we're talking about something that a melody that the ear cannot hear but the eye can hear. We're talking about a melody that is no tone to my spirit. Okay? So, rationally, I would say, their spirit hears it, their ear doesn't. If their ear had heard it, they wouldn't be able to teach it. But their spirit heard it and they have confidence. They have faith. They're speaking from faith.

[41:01]

They're not speaking from phenomena. They're not speaking from consciousness. They're speaking from knowledge. Knowledge is not consciousness. Right? Got it. And if they did have consciousness of it, they wouldn't be able to help us. But then why do they divide themselves into two like that? What's that? Knowledge is the last set of terms we use. The eye that can hear it and the eye that can't. Or I can't hear it, but my sight can hear it. Why do we divide things in terms of those things which change and those things which are immutable? Why do we do that? The area that changes divides them. Consciousness divides them. But as I also said at some point,

[42:04]

the immutable knowledge, the basic karmic consciousness, basic fundamental ignorance itself is the immutable knowledge of the Buddhas. They're not really two, but the mind splits them. The monks asking the question from the point of view of the mind that splits them. And from that point of view, the part that would hear the way you're talking about, if that heard it, that would hinder actually the coming forth from a place that doesn't hear through the ears. So we don't spend much time with that one. In other words, we don't try to hear the far with the near organ. We hear the near with the near. And this is a story about a monk who heard the near with the near and pursued the near with the near and became adept at the near. You don't use the near to hear the far. You become adept at the near

[43:07]

and simultaneously you become adept at the far. But the far is what is speaking in this case. The far is what's saying stuff like if I could hear it, I wouldn't be able to teach you. Or if I could hear it, I'd be a saint. In other words, if I could hear... I'd be a saint mean I would have a teaching which is based on conceivability, which is based on consciousness. Okay? No? What's a saint? A saint is somebody whose teaching comes from their consciousness rather than from knowledge. Like, you know, you see... you see... you see something, you know.

[44:11]

Have you heard of makyo? Have you heard of makyo? Makyo means you know, subtle or wondrous illusions, you know, or subtle or wondrous images. Sometimes you can... when you're meditating, for example, you might see a Buddha or something or you might hear some, you know, and the Buddha might say something really wonderful to you that sounds exactly like a sutra. And you think, you know, that you understand something. This is an example of consciousness, the state of consciousness. Or you feel... you feel really, really good. You know? You feel just great. And you think that that shows that you understand Buddhism. And it's so wonderful that you mistake the phenomena for, you know, for the Dharma. But you can't hear the Dharma. You can't see the Dharma. It has no marks. That's what they say.

[45:13]

But sometimes what you actually can see and what does have marks is so beautiful, so wonderful, you think this must be it. That's consciousness. That's hearing in sentient beings. Or it's kind of like... I mean, just imagine if you were sitting there in meditation and you heard in sentient beings expounding the Dharma. You know? It would be hard not to go for it. But if you did, that would, you know, that would be... then you would have trouble. Then you would have trouble teaching others about what the Dharma is. Because you'd be coming from something which is just a concocted thing, you know? When I heard about Koans, I thought that you understood what the Koan meant that you'd be enlightened. And so I came here and hung out and stuff and I didn't understand all those words or everything. And then I started

[46:14]

to understand the vocabulary of the Koans and started to understand what they mean. And... a little bit. But it seems to me whenever I hear these stories or figure anything out that they all come down to be some explanation of duality or how something's not understandable this way or through your part or whatever it is or in sentient beings think that it's all basically the same formula. And you kind of figure out what that is. And it seems like also understanding that with your heart is the basis of the teaching. But... so... the point I'm trying to make is that in a way I don't really understand what the stories are about because in a way it's like we just say the same thing over and over and over again from a different point of view. And... is the saying of it over and over again like eventually it will hit you in the head and you'll go oh yeah. Because the point is not understanding it intellectually but understanding it with your body

[47:15]

or with something else. Do you understand what I'm getting at? I think so. So my response is it's like yesterday I was talking about Yun Yan practiced for 20 years with a great teacher. And he was working hard the whole time saying things over and over again talking to Dao Wu talking to Guishan talking to all these other great monks that were there. They were discussing Dharma all the time. You know, they didn't have much else to do. And yet it didn't hit him in the head so to speak or in the heart or whatever. Still, what I'm suggesting is you keep working at this stuff. You keep trying to figure koans out or you figure out that you don't figure out koans. You study the words or you don't study the words. You keep trying your best to carve your little Buddha. And everything you put forth everything you put forth it's kind of like I said to someone the other day it's like Buddhism is kind of like

[48:15]

a matching grant thing. You put your thing forward and the rest of the universe meets you. But it's not one to one. What? Yeah, well that's a problem. That's part of the problem that you face. But it's not like one to one or two to one. You get much more back than you put out. It's like incalculably you're incalculably met. Excuse me I shouldn't say you get much more than you put back. Sometimes you might even get much, much less than you put back. The point is anyway there's a response. And you just keep doing your practice like this and the conditions the right conditions will occur. This is our fate. And when the conditions occur then it hits you some place. And then you get to have an awakening

[49:16]

onto what you know what it is. But then as someone said well then what? You know and then what? Then what? Guess what? Then what? Then you keep doing the same thing. You keep carving little dragons. But you feel kind of kind of like what do you feel like? Kind of like well now I know I'll never stop carving these dragons. Or I can even less believe that I'll stop carving these dragons. But now I'm not carving these dragons in order to get some confirmation anymore. I'm carving these dragons because I got confirmation. And some people who have no confirmation that they know about up here or in here they practice just as sincerely as those who have had confirmation. And some people who have had confirmation this is a very sad story for a while anyway they can't stand

[50:16]

being confirmed and they stop carving dragons. But you just said it's a sad story. Who wants us to carve these dragons? Or who what makes us do it? Who does? Who does? Who wants us to? And also I do. Who and I do. And a few other people around here do too. I'm not going to ask why you do it. Is it that... In this case you can say why. Is it that there isn't anything else to do? Job security. Is it that there isn't anything else to do? Is there not anything else to do? Besides carving dragons? Yeah, there's nothing else to do but there is

[51:17]

people do still have the choice about whether to feel like they're carving dragons or not. Some people think that they're really doing the real dragon. Some other people say I ain't going to carve dragons because they ain't the real dragon. So, there's three choices. One is work on the near. The other one is I'm going to work on the far and not the near. And the other one is I'm not going to work on the near if it's not the far. Or I'll only work on those sections of the near which are guaranteed to bring in the far in a way that I'll understand it. And someone would say well, how about working on the near in a way that the far will give you more but you won't understand it. There's another way. Well, okay, work on the near and the far will give you something but it won't give you as much as if you work on the near just for the near's sake. Believing that that

[52:18]

also simultaneously is the only way to work on the far. So, there's all these different possibilities and the ancestors, the Buddhist ancestors will use any means possible to suck people in. And if, you know, if you got them on the line and they won't do the near and they only will do the far and you say okay, well, then do the far. Here, walk around with this. Or, let's see, you can be a Doan. Well, you know, whatever they'll go for. I mean, you don't actually have the far to give them. I remember in the early days at Zen Center to be a Doan was the far. You know, Suzuki Roshi was there and the one he said, you know, he said,

[53:19]

would you hit the Mokugyo today? That was the far. You see, at first at Zen Center, Suzuki Roshi hit the Mokugyo and the bell. He did the bells, offered the incense, did the bows, and did the chanting. So, there was altar here, they had a bowing mat here, bells here and the Mokugyo there and the voice here. So he'd go, So, if you were allowed to hit the Mokugyo, if he gave you the Mokugyo, that was the far. Right? That was what people were going for. That was the most available far we had at the time. People went for it. And it makes, it changed. If you were going to service, like, if you don't like service in those days, if I didn't like service, and I didn't, because the near part of service was not that

[54:21]

interesting to me. I didn't particularly like it. I kind of thought those old, we used to have the Roman stuff, you know, Romanized Japanese, and the Japanese characters and the English on the early Sutra cards, of the Heart Sutra. I used to like to look at the characters, but that's all I liked. I didn't like saying kanji. I would prefer to be reading a book about Zen or telling the truth, which I usually would do. If I can sneak out, which was very easy to do, I didn't have to sneak, just walk out the door, over to your house across the street, and read about Wong Bo or something. That's what I usually did, except during Sashin, you really couldn't get out because they had breakfast afterwards or something, so I would stay. But, when I got to Hitamokugyo, well that was, that's what you call makyo. That's what you call consciousness. In other words, my consciousness became the Pure Land, because I

[55:22]

was now basically the same as Suzuki Roshi. And I wasn't the only one who enjoyed reading about this consciousness kind of enlightenment. We all did. And the new students who come still do. That's why they want to talk about this stuff. Because they think the near is, they think certain sections of the near are the far. That's why they have so much energy for talking about this stuff. Well, it's not true, but that's what got them here. Do you understand? So, if they want to talk about that section of the near, which is called Zen Stories, which they think is the far, that's why they want to talk about it, talk to them about it. And little by little they'll understand that that's the near too. They have to study it, understand what the words mean, stuff like that, get better and better at it, and that's their card dragon. And they can't actually hear the far, because nobody can hear the far except these dirty saints. And they

[56:24]

do hear the far, but it's a special, you know, it's a very special case, and they can't teach. So it's lucky if you don't meet one of those critters. You talk about this the same way the Christians seem to talk about Greece. Yeah, it's pretty much the same, except it's from a different section of reality. No, it's basically the same thing. Again, grace, grace is grace, and yet, we're also saying, like the Christians also say, it's grace, and yet somehow, you can't get it, and yet somehow, if you practice, grace likes you more, or something, I don't know what, not really, grace likes everybody equally, right? And yet, it seems to happen to some people and not others, because

[57:24]

somehow, yet, the conditions have to be there for grace, too. So, you can't exactly make it happen, but you can, you know, you can spend your life not exactly making it happen, but you can spend your life carving dragons. Which doesn't make it happen, and yet, it celebrates the fact that it may happen any minute, and when it happens, you'll continue to do the same thing you're doing now. Because basically, you're carving dragons, you're just celebrating the fact that grace comes equally to everybody, and has no preference, and that's what Buddha is, and that actually means that Buddha has come into all of us equally. That's what carving the dragons means. So, although grace doesn't dawn on you at this time, the teaching is, whether it's the love of Jesus, or whether it's the pure body of Buddha, it lives in pollution of our life. It is

[58:24]

wrapped by our confusion, that's where it lives. So our carving dragons celebrates our inherent nature, celebrates the Buddha nature, which is abiding only in us, which is working through us. So it's kind of like, it makes life into this wonderful religious party, even though it doesn't cause grace. In some ways, it's better than grace, because you carve dragons before and after the appearance of grace, just like you eat before and after grace. Same thing. When the Buddha went back to teaching, there was a legend, he was not hearing the far anymore. He was not hearing the far anymore. He never heard the far, with his ears. You can hear

[59:30]

the far with your heart. It's okay. You can hear the far with your eyes. It's okay. You can't hear it, but you have to do it with some other organ in your ear. That's all. And Abhidharma clearly says, if you hear with your ears, that's how consciousness works. You hear with your ear and so on. Yeah, that's what they're speaking from, their heart, their faith. Your faith hears, your faith is the hearing of the far. And you speak from your faith. And it's real words, they come right out there. And you're talking about that which has no words and can't be heard with the ear. After this

[60:32]

little, this little awakening that Deng Shan had with Yuen Yan, a little bit later, Deng Shan said to Hung Gan, he said, I still have some residual karma, some residual habits, which have not been exhausted. And Hung Gan said, what have you been doing? And Deng Shan said, I haven't even been practicing the Four Noble Truths. Remember that? So this is he didn't make that up probably. He probably heard about this teaching about Se Gen. This is the conversation between Se Gen and the Sixth Ancestor. He's doing the same practice. He doesn't even practice the Four Noble Truths. This connects with the Dharma

[61:33]

which is not the extinction of suffering, which is not the extinction of passions, but the Dharma which is that passions never really were there in the first place, and therefore suffering was never there in the first place. Therefore we don't even study the Four Noble Truths. Of course we study the Four Noble Truths. We have Abhidharma class. We study them. We study Upadana Panchaskandha's Dukkha. We study that. We study, we study, we study. Don't we? Yes, we do. But this is not studying the Four Noble Truths, because we also, as disciples of Buddha, understand that the Dharma means the passion, the craving, which causes the clinging, which causes the suffering. It was always extinct. It never even arose. Okay? This is Dungshan's understanding. This is how to not fall into steps and stages in that lineage. Okay? And then Arjuna says to

[62:33]

Dungshan, are you joyful? And he said, it wouldn't be true to say I'm not joyful. It's kind of like finding a bright pearl in a pile of shit. this sound familiar? It's Tagadagarbha. The pearl, the jewel, the seed of the jewel, the seed of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in shit. That's to not even start to practice the Four Noble Truths. That's different from, again, the new students come to Zen Center and some say, well, what's this hard scripture stuff about I have eyes, I have ears? That's fine, right? But what you don't like is when they say, when they're in a small kitchen and they say, you know, I don't have eyes, I don't have ears. That's not quite right. Or there's no suffering, there's no origination, there's no causation, there's no path, so

[63:34]

there's no Buddhism, there's no practice. This is not the right understanding. The child understanding would be there is practice and there is Buddhism and there are eyes, and then a misunderstanding when you hear the hard scripture is that to take it literally the other way, but it's not that way. When you say you don't practice four noble truths, of course you do practice them, of course you study them, but it means you don't really believe in suffering. You don't really believe you have to do something, and that means you believe in the jewel in the shit. So it's not that there isn't any eyes, he says that there's a jewel in the shit. There's a difference though, do you see the difference? One is silly and the other one is sillier. One is a silliness which you can put aside, the other is a silliness which I hope you'll never put aside. Which you'll always be willing to practice. As Norman

[64:39]

Fisher says, you'll always be willing to be a sucker for. Never grow up. Yeah, never grow up. Always have this spirit that you first had when you came to Zen Center, or even before you came. When you first thought of coming to Zen Center, some people here thought of coming to Zen Center and waited 20 years before they came. That first thought, that beginner's mind. And one more story. This is a bug, yes? How do you like shit surrounded by a jewel? Is that okay for you? Shit surrounded by a jewel? It's fine. That's shit. Yeah, just that image. Yeah, it's a pretty shitty image. It's fine. Okay, so then, uh, uh, Dengxian said to Liang Jie, um, well,

[65:42]

there's two different translations. One is, uh, if I want to, one is, if I want to meet my true self, what should I do? Another one is, if I want to meet you, what should I do? If I want to meet maybe my true teacher, or, you know, if I want to meet you, my true nature, my true teacher, or you true teacher, um, what should I do? And, uh, Yuen Yuen said, again, there's two translations, or one translation is, inquire of the messenger. No, inquire of the inner messenger. Um, and, uh, another translation which I thought was interesting, which actually

[66:42]

helped, this is another example of triangulation, was inquire of the chamberlain. And, chamberlain is, uh, various meanings of it. One, it would be an attendant in the bedroom of a, you know, aristocrat or a king or something, a queen, usually a male, but then sometimes it got elevated to being an important figure in court. But the basic idea is that it's an intermediary or a liaison or communicator between the host and the guests, between the monarch and the courtiers or vassals or vessels. So, inquire of the messenger of the chamber. Inquire of the messenger in the chamber. Inquire of the messenger in the cauldron. The

[67:45]

messenger between the host and the guest in the cauldron. Inquire of the messenger between the Dharma body and the shit. There's a time for inquire There's I'm inquiring right now . That's a pun. Because he's both asking gong shan , and he's both asking yuen yuen . Plus he's looking at him So same thing, and Nguyen said, well, what do you hear? So I thought I might stop there with ... look, not to stay in the cauldron, don't just stay in the chamber, the inner chamber, the inner room. Also in that inner room, inquire of the messenger, the messenger between the pure Dharma body

[68:57]

and our defiled consciousness. The basic affliction of ignorance itself is the immutable knowledge of Buddha and yet they can be discriminated, but there's a messenger between them, ask the messenger. Ask the one who separates them, who is willing to carry messages back and forth, who is willing to uphold the separation, which we're saying is an illusion. This is a very tender exercise, it has the inquiring spirit, the arrival of energy, it's inner, and it's between these two aspects, whichever they want, so it's a very cozy situation.

[70:03]

The one who separates them or the one who connects them? The word, you know, like the word cleavage, you know what cleavage means? What does cleavage mean? Huh? It's a split. It's a split? But what else is it? It's a place they meet, like the cleavage of a woman's breasts, it's a place where the breasts meet, but it's also where they separate. Like the word buckle, it means to buckle, but it also means to break apart. It's like that. It's where they're separated, it's where they meet. So the messenger is where they meet and the messenger also upholds the separation. If you say, I love you Alan, you can say to me, speak for yourself. Oh no, if I'm conveying a message for somebody, you know, you say, Gail loves you Alan, you can say, well what about you? You don't have to go for the separation, but there is one.

[71:12]

This is called the basic affliction of ignorance. The messenger is the basic affliction of ignorance. So sometimes the chamberlain is the butler and the butler is always the expert. Yeah, go talk to him. Anyway, it's a very intimate situation between these two. They're separated and they're one. There's unity there and there's separation. There's two, there's difference and there's unity. And inside there, inside your own heart, inside your own experience, is this thing going on, this oneness of your deluded mind, of your karmic consciousness and non-discriminating wisdom. They're inseparable. And actually the contents of non-discriminating wisdom is shit, is defiled consciousness. That's the only thing it has to work with. That's all there is in the world. That's the only things that there are, just illusions.

[72:15]

And non-discriminating consciousness is never hungry. It always has delusions to feed on. And when we're in the world of delusion, sometimes we have kind of a hard time. And we can try to figure out how to get out of it and sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn't. But sometimes depressed people, or even undepressed people, go up to other depressed people and start talking about the Dharma. And something... And they start carving dragons together. And something... something happens.

[73:21]

Not exactly right away. But miraculously, things change and you realize that the depression was really... that's what it was, that's all it was. And then actually, this is the stuff. This is what Buddhas have. This is the immutable knowledge of the Buddha. But you have to get in there and work with it. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to happen. Even though it's by grace. I don't know why that is. You know, I thanked you for slowing down, and I was also going to say, I thank you for slowing down now,

[74:42]

but there's a lot of other things I want to thank you about, but probably, you know, tomorrow or something I'll have a chance to thank you. Like maybe we're going to have a meeting tomorrow night, and then I could thank you for all the other things that you've done. You know, not only did you slow down, but you speeded up so that you could slow down. Thanks for that too. And thanks for climbing up in the tans and, you know, shocking me so that I could ask you to give it up. Because this is something I could ask of you. And it's not easy for me to ask something of you, but I should. It's my job. And it's your job too. But anyway, there's a lot of other things I could thank you for. I could thank you for coming down here this practice period, and sitting all this time, and, you know, doing really a great job. But I wasn't going to thank you because I was going to thank you tomorrow.

[75:46]

But then I just realized that's really stupid, because there might not be tomorrow, or I might forget it. Or I might feel, oh, I'm dragging too much attention on myself. I shouldn't be the one who's thanking you. Get somebody else to. But anyway, thank you. Thank you.

[76:53]

Thank you. Thank you.

[77:40]

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