Thank you. looking over this mind. I think this talk this morning will be kind of a bird talk. I've recited often a children's poem called How to Paint a Portrait of a Bird.

[01:02]

If you want to paint a portrait of a bird, get a canvas and put it outside under a tree. sit down next to the tree and wait for the bird to come. Oh, I forgot one part. Take a canvas and then on the canvas paint a cage. And paint the door of the cage open. and inside the cage. Paint some things to attract the bird. Paint something pretty, something beautiful.

[02:18]

something simple and something useful for the bird. And then take the canvas out and put it next to the tree and sit down next to the tree and wait for the bird to come. And the longness or shortness of your waiting time has no rapport with the quality of the painting. Sometimes you may have to wait for years Don't worry.

[03:23]

When the bird comes, if the bird comes, at that time, observe the most profound silence. When the bird enters the cage, close the cage door with your paintbrush. And then paint the bars of the cage away. And the poem doesn't say this, but you can also paint those things that you put in there to attract the bird, you can paint those away too.

[04:29]

So then all you've got left is a bird. Maybe even without the little perch that it was on. Just a bird in space. And then underneath the bird's feet, you might paint a branch. And then put some leaves on the branch. And then paint the sky blue. You can put some clouds up there. And you can let the clouds enjoy the sky if you want. You can put some insects in the air and let them shimmer a little bit with the summer heat. And put some flowers and some hills and everything out there for the bird to live. and then wait for the bird to sing.

[05:39]

And if the bird sings, then that's a good sign. If the bird doesn't sing, it's not a good sign. If the bird does sing, it's a sign that you can sign your name. So then you can sign your name to the painting. I don't know where each of us is in the process of this story. In one sense, we're all in all parts of the process all the time. So don't worry about where you seem to be. It's actually on something you maybe go through again and again.

[06:42]

But basically, sitting for five days or for 40 minutes is an opportunity to attract yourself into the cage into some form. And when you manage to get yourself to inhabit the form, then you can paint the form away. You can let the bird out of the cage. But as I mentioned in the animal-releasing ceremony I went to, when the bird gets out of the cage, it may not be able to stand being outside the cage for very long, so it's good to start painting something back in, a new world for the bird to live in.

[07:53]

And many Zen stories are about painting this world back in, like the ones I told yesterday about Dharma eyes breaking down the superintendent and Dharma eyes releasing the lordly mountain from the chains of consciousness. These people were already able to enter the cage and paint the cage away But we need help to make a new world to live in, to get our walking papers, so to speak. As Suzuki Roshi used to say, Zazen is a kind of tenderizer, a meat tenderizer, a mind tenderizer.

[09:06]

So usually, towards the end of sesshin, when I adjust people's backs, they're softer than at the beginning. I don't mean to make you feel bad, but this is only a five-day sesshin. So most people are not as tenderized as they would be after seven. Yesterday was Thursday, and I thought it was the sixth day, and I wondered why I didn't feel like the sixth day. Even though it was the day before the last day, I'm just now getting tender. When I feel, when my body starts getting tender, also my energy starts flowing more freely, I feel more energetic. So maybe fortunately for you, the session's ending now. But it's also kind of sad because the last couple days after you get softened up, it's easy then, you're ready for, you know, to play a new game.

[10:19]

Or another way to look at this is our body becomes kind of, we kind of like chew up our body. Our body gets kind of chewed up by all the struggle we go through to sit here. And it's kind of like chewed up rice. It's all digested and it's broken down and turns into energy. And it's available for, you know, whatever you want, whatever, whatever. So it's like the void after you paint the cage away. And I might mention to you that you shouldn't expect, if you have this feeling of dropping some things, you shouldn't expect to walk out of Sashin and not have anything. We can't go too long without something to perch on. The digested rice can't wait too long before going into the cells and warming them up and making the muscles want to move.

[11:40]

So this energy is not going to wait for us. So as it starts coming and becoming available, then you need to give it, you need to paint a new playground for it. Some people have told me, some people have sort of digested themselves and told me some uses they put their energy to. One person painted a land of excitement, a childlike land of excitement. He was re-invited back into nature and he decided to go back and play in the trees and the grass and the leaves again like he did when he was a little boy.

[12:44]

In the middle of the night, I don't know if my wife said this or if I heard it from someplace else, but I heard pretty distinctively, and I can't remember which word it was, but it was something like, brew or simmer. I think the word was brew though, even though it was a verb, kind of brew. Cook yourself in it. Steep yourself in it. Just immerse yourself in it. Let yourself cook. That's what I felt like it was. So then it wasn't time to get up.

[14:02]

I didn't feel like getting up yet. So I just stayed in bed awake for a while, and I just cooked in it. I don't know what it is. We call it emptiness, but I don't know what it is. And you know nobody knows what it is. We don't know what it is and nobody knows more than we do. But we live in it. We live in digested rice and digested vegetables. That's where we live. And nobody knows the full extent of digestion So again, I don't know where you see yourself in this process, but we must speak.

[15:25]

They say that when you feel tenderized and flexible and like you've let go of something, You may feel like there's nothing you can say which really describes this digested rice. Nothing you can say which describes the cage being taken away. Like we say, the meaning is not in the words. Just to relegate it, to depict it in literary form is to relegate it to defilement. But even though the meaning is not in the words, and even though to depict it in, if you try to depict it, it relegates it to defilement.

[16:31]

Don't try to, don't depict it. Just express yourself. That's why questions are good, because when you express yourself by a question, you express yourself without making a statement. You express yourself with a word, but you don't depict it. You don't assert it. Therefore, it doesn't get squished down into the words. The words are just expressive. You're just responding to it. You got life, you got some digested food, you got a composted cage, and you respond to that. But express yourself, if possible, without asserting anything.

[17:35]

without squishing it into some other, you know, box. Just express yourself. No, that's not necessarily easy, but anyway, we must respond to this, we must express ourselves. So that's what these stories are about. Meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the arrival of energy. You bring your energy forward, there's some response. And I just want to make clear that, you know, I'm not saying that I'm inside or outside the cage myself.

[18:53]

To say where I am would be a cage. I'm also not going to avoid saying where I am. That would be also being in a cage. We're free of any position in this process, therefore we can take positions, like you can take the position of student or teacher. So here's one of the great images of Zen, which is found in case 16 of the book Blue Cliff Record. The name of the case is Jing Ching's Person in the Weeds. It would be easier to find for me if they were titled, Jing Ching's Pecking In and Pecking Out. Because he taught, he made famous this image of the chick in the egg and the chick in the hen outside simultaneously pecking in and pecking out.

[20:06]

he had this teaching and the monk came to see him. And the monk said, I'm pecking out. I asked the teacher to please peck in. And Jing Ching said, can you live or not? And the monk said, if I weren't alive, I'd be laughed at by people. Jing Ching said, you are still a person in the weeds. Now, the monk said, rightly so, I'm pecking out.

[21:31]

Please peck in. The teacher did peck in by asking the question, can you live or not? The monk said, if I weren't alive, I'd be a laughing stock. And the teacher said, I don't approve this." Now some people feel that, and probably Ching Ching did too, this monk's question in the first place was quite good. And then when he said, can you live or not? And he said, if I weren't alive, I'd be a laughingstock. Actually, it's a pretty good answer. But you're a person, you too are a person in the reeds, means you're still hung up.

[22:43]

I don't approve it. But what they say about this, what some people say about this anyway, is that even though the monk's original question and his response to the sect, his later response was good, with a person, with a teacher like Jing Ching, he can't help but talk like this. They say it's like when you strike a flint with a stone, sparks come off. So even though this interaction between them was

[23:47]

was wonderful and had life. Still, the kind of life it had is that when the monks peck, when the monks struck the teacher, the teacher, the flash of light that came off the teacher was, I don't approve of you. I don't know what you think about that. Maybe you might think, Well, isn't the teacher under control? I mean, if the teacher thinks that was a good response, can't the teacher say, well, that's good. I approve of you. Nobody's in control of this, of the void. Nobody's in control of this energy.

[24:51]

It works a certain way. When you take a stone, a flintstone, and you hit another stone on it, it makes a spark. It isn't like the stone thinks, oh geez, if I make a spark now, these people are going to get upset. The mind here is like the mind, what do we say, sometimes characterized as the mind of a scarecrow. Put a match to a scarecrow, it may catch on fire. However, if it's been raining for several days, it won't. The scarecrow does not think anything, whether you put the match to it or not. It burns or it doesn't, according to conditions. The Zen student who says, you know, then I'd be a laughing stock, can't help but have those words strike.

[26:02]

If those words have a certain kind of energy, when they hit, they will have an effect. Just like right now I'm talking and some people are sleeping. I can't... Nothing I can do about that. It isn't that I planned it that way. I'm not trying to, like, be very, you know, sleep-inducing. It's just that's what happens. I talk, they sleep. Right? It's magic. It's not under my control. And when I see them sleep, I can't help but think they're sleeping. Or I can't help but copy them and go to sleep myself. It's cause and effect. Put energy in the bloodstream, people start wiggling.

[27:04]

People walk in and out of the hall. If I put myself in your place, or in the place of many people, I would imagine that what you think is... Well, you know that sometimes when people are talking, someone says, you say, well, can you live or not? And the person says, well, if I wasn't alive, I'd be a laughing stock. And then you're supposed to think, well, that's a good answer, and say, that's a good answer, and then congratulations. But what if that thought doesn't come? What if you go to the funeral and you go up to the body and everybody's sobbing and you go up there and you don't know tears come? You say, well, I guess I'm a monster. I'm weird.

[28:16]

I should be crying now. Today is a memorial day for Suzuki Roshi and I thought, well, if I tell stories about Suzuki Roshi, The crowd will love it. They love those stories about Suzuki Roshi. I thought, no, I'm not going to try to please him. But here I am, and now I'm being flooded by thoughts of Suzuki Roshi. Like, for example, one time he walked into the Zendo. Before we had Zen Center and City Center, we were over in Japantown. He walked into the Zendo and stepped inside the door and bowed. And then a Zen student came in from behind him and gave him a little peck. He ran into him. And he hit him from the back and knocked him forward.

[29:17]

And then his elbow came up as he went forward. See, it's like this, right? He gets hit from the back, his elbow goes back, and he gives the guy an elbow right in the chest. And the guy goes... And somebody else is watching and thinks, wow. So surprised, a sweet, kind Suzuki Roshi elbowing this guy in the chest. Cause and effect, you know. Now, was there kind of like a little, was there that in there? Maybe so. Anyway, that can happen too. You have a Zen master's mind, you have a bad Zen student, put them together and you get an elbow. But maybe not. Maybe it's like he doesn't even think that. Maybe it's just a physical reaction, just... But the other monk's watching and thinking, oh, is he mean or what? Well, I don't know. And one time when he was sick, I went to visit him.

[30:22]

And then after I went to visit him, I went into my room. And I stood in front of my, opening my drawer. And that drawer had a mirror behind it. I looked in the mirror. And I started crying. And I looked in there and I said, why are you crying? It didn't make sense, you know. I wasn't feeling sad, but I was crying. And I was crying because he was dying. But I wasn't sad. Now I'm sad and I'm crying and it makes sense, but that time it didn't work, but it happened. Who understands how this works? This is, I think, a story that happened. He didn't approve this guy, even though this guy deserved approval. He deserved approval. He was a good answer. But rather, they say, rather than clapping for the thoroughbred, he just hit it another time.

[31:25]

Pow! And not because he thinks, oh, I think I should hit it another time and not just clap. It's because something made his arm move. It's not that you're sitting outside saying, well, it's pecking, so I should probably peck back. It's not like that. You don't even know what's inside there. But you hear it, so you peck back. Or maybe you don't. And it pecks again. And pretty soon you think, well, knock, knock, knock, knock. OK, knock, knock. So Chongqing, a lot of these old Zen teachers, there were so many Zen teachers in those days that maybe because there were so many and Zen was flourishing so well, each Zen teacher had to have his or her own kind of like hallmark kind of like thing, you know.

[32:52]

So they like really worked on one point. And Chongqing was this chicken, chicken pecking back and forth. That was kind of his famous thing, just like, Dharma Eye's thing was, arrow points meeting, just to get this perfect alignment and meeting kind of thing. Zeroing in on that very subtle difference between the same thing being said over and over. So Chongqing even taught his people. He said, in general, foot travelers, that means a monk, must have simultaneous pecking in and pecking out I. You have to have the I of pecking in and pecking out simultaneously. And you must also have the simultaneous pecking in and pecking I function.

[33:55]

Only then can you be called a Zen monk. It's like when the mother hen wants to peck in, the chick must peck out. And when the chick wants to peck out, the mother hen must peck in. So there's an I of pecking out and pecking in, and there's a function of pecking out, pecking in simultaneously. And in simultaneity, there's no time to think. It's like scarecrow, mechanical. You're under control of the universe. Play your part. If you're tender, you sit and pulverize your body into pulp and let it turn into energy.

[35:06]

then you're available for this very high-speed reality that we live in, and you can open up and you can work with what's coming to you. You can sit down beside it and not bid it come or go. You can go with it. You can let it come with you. That's a big part of our sitting. We don't mean for the sitting to hurt, but It seems to be useful to not run away from the pain, and not running away from the pain tenderizes us, digests us. We become ourselves and we forget ourselves. If we don't run away from what's happening, we forget ourselves. It is our self, our usual self, that thinks, I got to run away from this guy or this girl. I got to run away from this pain or this pleasure.

[36:09]

It's that self that's got to get away from this or get away from that or go towards this or go to that. When you don't run away anymore from what's happening, you also forget about the self. I just said that." That's all. The meaning is not in those words, but it comes to meet that energy. It uses that opportunity which I provided by saying that. I want your help. to understand what the I of pecking in and pecking out is, and what the function of simultaneous pecking in and pecking out is.

[37:16]

I expect that it'll take another several years to clarify this. I'll try to take care of my health. I hope you try to take care of yours so that you live long enough to learn how to be like a scarecrow. Another word they have for it is a deerscare. Do you know what a deerscare is? In Japan they have like, well there's many kinds of deerscares, but in Japan they have these like bamboo tube that has water running like in a stream and the water runs into the tube and when the water fills the tube, the tube tilts back and the water pours out and then it falls back. So it goes and water fills up and it goes up again, drips the water out and it goes back down.

[38:36]

It scares the deer away. It's like that. Somebody pecks at you and pecks at you until you fill up and then you pour out and you go whack. It's just a mechanical thing, you know. You're just at the service. You're just providing your body and mind to be something that will respond. But again, if you remember yourself, then you think, well, I'm not going to fill up with water. Or you think, well, I'm not going to let them burn me, or whatever. But when you forget yourself, you're at the disposal of circumstances, and you can serve this wonderful function. And you can be this wonderful function. My question is, what's the difference between the I and the function? I don't understand that so well. And then there's a stories about this, more stories about this, okay, go a little deeper here.

[39:40]

So after Chongqing gave this explanation about you monks, you need to have the I and the function of the pecking in and pecking out simultaneously, okay, then a monk came up and said, When the mother hen breaks in and the chick breaks out, from the standpoint of the teacher, what does that amount to? The monk asked, Jing Ching. And Jing Ching said, do you know what he said? Right. And it was Chinese, too. English translation, good news. Good news. Then the monk said, when the chick breaks out and the mother breaks in, from the standpoint of the student, what does that amount to? And Jing Ching said, revealing his face. From this we see that they did have a device for simultaneously pecking in and pecking out in Jing Ching's school.

[40:50]

The monk in this case was also a guest in his house and understood Jing Ching's household affairs. Therefore, he questioned him like this, I am breaking in, I ask the teacher, I am trying to break out, I ask the teacher to break in. Within the Dungsan school, our school, this is called using phenomena to illustrate your condition. using what's happening, some phenomena, to illustrate your condition. How so? When the chick breaks out and the mother breaks in, naturally, they're perfectly simultaneous. Jingjing also does this well. We could say that his fists and feet are coordinated. His mind and eye illuminate each other And the other answered immediately by saying, Can you live or not?

[42:17]

The monk does well. He also knows how to change with circumstances. So, a Rinzai teacher heard about Jing Ching's teaching and said, Nanyuan taught the assembly, saying, in various places, they only have the I of simultaneous breaking in and breaking out, but they don't have the function of simultaneously breaking in and breaking out. A monk came forward and said, what is the function of simultaneous breaking in and breaking out? And Nanyuan said, an adept does not break in Breaking in and breaking out are both at once error. The monk said, this is still unclear to me.

[43:22]

Nanyuan said, what are you in doubt about? The monk said, error. Nanyuan hit him, pecked him. The monk did not agree. So Nanyuan picked him out of the hall. Now, Jing Ching says you've got to have the I and function. Nanyuan says some people have the I but not the function. The monk comes forward and says, what is the function? Nanyuan says breaking in and breaking out are both errors. So remember again, when we look for the I and function of breaking in and breaking out, remember breaking in and breaking out are both error. In other words, if you offer yourself, if you offer your life freely to be used by circumstances, then again, don't then make the circumstances another fixed situation.

[44:41]

If you make yourself available for pecking in and pecking out, remember that then making pecking in and pecking out a form will again be an error. So the monk had a doubt. And he said, what's your doubt about? And the monk said, error. And he hit him, but the monk couldn't flow. He didn't agree with the peck. This The other pecks are okay, but not this one. This peck is too much. I've had it. I'm out of here. Adieu, senor. So this monk traveled, like they did in those days, and he went to visit our friend Yunmen at his place. And he told about this conversation he had with Nanyuan. And a monk who was just standing nearby said, did Nanyaran's staff break as he was chasing you out with it?

[45:48]

When the monk heard that question, he woke up. You never know who's going to peck you. But if you keep telling your story, you can get help. So after he was awoken, of course, as often happens, he went back to Nanyuan to say he was sorry and thank him for his part in his practice. And also, as often happens, because these guys were walking, right? By the time he got back to Nanyuan, Nanyuan was dead However, there was his successor, another friend of ours named Feng Shui. Not Shui Feng, but Feng Shui. Feng Shui is a cloud cave.

[46:52]

I mean, wind cave. He's a guy in, you know, if you raise a speck of dust, and also the one about the the seal of the iron bull. So he went to see Shui Fung. And as soon as he bowed to Shui Fung, Shui Fung said, Aren't you the monk who was asking our late teacher about the simultaneous pecking in and pecking out? And the monk said, That's right. And Shui Fung said, What was your understanding at that time? Feng Shui said, you have understood. You have understood. At first, it was as if I were walking in the light of a lamp.

[48:01]

Why did Feng Shui immediately tell him, you have understood? Did he fool you? Come on. Tell. What's the answer? Yeah. You're fooled, too? Oh, sweet. Here's a verse on this case, if you have a moment. So here's a verse celebrating this story. The ancient Buddhas have a family style. That's the first line of the verse. This is one of those nice poems where the first line tells the whole story.

[49:13]

There's more. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven more lines. But the first one completes the whole thing. Just take that one line. The ancient Buddhas had a family style. Through that one line, You can open up the whole universe and see all the Zen teachers. They all had a family style. And you see all these wonderful stories and all those monasteries and all those mountains and all those wonderful vegetarian lunches. and all those monks sitting, sitting, sitting peacefully in those mountains and walking around in those valleys and through those streams and holding hands and walking together and chanting together and having just a ball.

[50:32]

All that's in that one line. They all have a family style. This is one story of one family style. Can you see the family style? Innumerable, infinite family styles, but each one is a style. Each one is a person, or a person and a person, wearing clothes or not wearing clothes, like a recent new yorker cartoon has these two kind of heavyset middle-aged men sitting at a kind of card table and they're pretty much nude and they got cigars in their hand and one says to the other one i didn't know there were any places left where you could smoke cigars nude

[51:37]

Anyway, at various moments during this session, whether you know it or not, you have been out of the cage. And I've been there with you, so it's been weird. But that's the way it is when you're out of the cage. At the same time that we're out of the cage of the family style, And the family style is in order for you to get out of the cage of the family style. We also love and are devoted to the family style and do not violate it, hopefully. But maybe we did. And I'm sorry if I violated our ancestors' intent in any way. But I'm not sorry to escape from it and not depend on it and find our own new way our own living way outside the shell.

[53:00]

And I thank you all for tenderizing yourselves so sincerely by devoting yourself to sitting and as one person said, this session has really good vibes. So anyway, thank you very much for doing whatever 90% of the session, and I hope we can finish it. And I hope you can brew yourself, make yourself into a good cup of tea and drink it, and enjoy walking the path with all sentient beings.

[53:47]

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