We moved the August machine from Green Gulch to San Francisco to avoid the sounds of construction. Can you hear me all right over in the construction area? Can you hear me all right over there by the noise? Hm? No? Yes? Maybe? What? What? Yeah, maybe it would help. It's hard to close those windows sometimes. Does that help? Want to close the other one?

[01:05]

What? Hot? It gets hot. It gets hot. This is initiation by fire. Yeah, that's a little quieter in here anyway. So now I wanted to stoke up Stoke up the fire again. And I again mention that I have been trying to talk about this realm, this practice realm, which we call upright sitting. You want a cushion, Claire? You can sit up there if you want. You don't have to sit on the floor. You can sit on the cushion if you're more comfortable. Did he go away? So again, I would like to talk about this realm of upright sitting and to talk about it in a new way today.

[02:24]

But first, I feel I want to review the other way again. Someone said to me yesterday, my reality is changing. And I thought, yes, my reality is changing too. When I give you talks and when I come to the Zendo during Sashin, day after day, you may think, oh, he just does that same thing day after day. which is true in a sense, but also my reality is changing all the time. I'm wondering about my understanding of the great matter of birth and death.

[03:29]

My understanding or my reality is changing, and during Sashin it changes faster than usual. Is your reality changing during Sashim? Your body's changing? Your breath is changing? Your mind, your understanding changing? Mine is too. And I wonder, you know, I have some idea of what to present during the Dharma talks, but still, when I arrive here, everything changes. And I wonder, should I do what I planned? If it's noisy outside and I was planning to talk about something subtle, maybe I think I should forget it because I have to yell to be heard. So my reality is changing. Do you know what the one great matter is?

[04:34]

In Zen, we speak of the one great matter, the one great thing, the one great thing for which all Buddhas appear in the world. They appear in the world to open, to show, to awaken, and to enter. Buddha's wisdom and vision. They appear, all Buddhas appear in the world for one reason, to open the teaching to people, to open the teaching of Buddha's wisdom, to show Buddha's wisdom, to help people understand Buddha's wisdom, and to help people enter into the practice of Buddha's way.

[05:40]

This is the one great matter. The practice of upright sitting is our very important practice for clarifying and understanding this one great matter. And as I mentioned before, and I'll say again, that Deng Shan, the founder of Soto Zen in China, asked a monk once, what is the most painful thing in the world? And the monk said, hell is the most painful thing. And Deng Shan said, not so. To wear this robe and yet not clarify

[06:43]

the one great matter is the most painful thing. And again, a few generations later in that lineage of practice, there was a Chinese monk, and his name was Kung An. In the morning, we chant his name. Doan Kanshi. And his attendant for many years was a monk named Liangshan. Liangshan's job was to take care of the teacher's robe and bowl. When the teacher was going to go up and give a talk, the attendant brought the robe and gave it to the teacher.

[07:48]

As the teacher received the robe, he said, what's the business beneath this patch robe? The monk, Liangshan, said nothing. And the teacher said, to study the Buddha way, and yet not reach this realm, is most painful. To study the Buddha way and not reach the realm of upright sitting is most painful. To study the Buddha way and not reach the realm of clarifying the one great matter is most painful. That's what he meant. And then he said to the student, to his attendant, he said, now you ask me. And the attendant said, what is the business beneath the patch robe?

[08:53]

And the teacher said, intimacy. I told the story wrong when I said the teacher said intimacy, intimacy. Actually, the teacher just said intimacy. At that time, the attendant, Yangshan, was awakened and broke into tears. And his tears made his own robe wet. And the teacher said, what have you seen that you now are crying and bowing in gratitude? And Liangshan said, excuse me.

[10:05]

So the attendant was awakened. and with tears of gratitude on his robe, did full bows. And then the teacher said, now that you have had a great awakening, can you express it? And the attendant said, he could express it. And the teacher, Tung An, said, what is the business beneath the patch robe, and the attendant said, intimacy. And the teacher said, intimacy, intimacy. The first intimacy by fire, the second intimacy by water.

[11:21]

The first intimacy by yourself. The first intimacy by renouncing everything. The first intimacy comes by inter-psychic work, by working on yourself alone, by abandoning all human sentiment, by abandoning all your sentiments, by renouncing all your orientations, by giving up everything and just trusting your experience without holding on to anything.

[12:27]

Trusting your psychic experience, working on yourself, becoming intimate with yourself, settling on yourself. And this is initiation, I say, by fire. Initiation by the criteria of not moving away from yourself. I say that in this story, that attendant was doing his own work. He was intimate with himself. So when the teacher asked him to ask the teacher the question back, when the teacher said intimacy, he could wake up because he had completely settled himself on himself and therefore he forgot himself.

[13:30]

And when he forgot himself, when he heard the teacher's word, intimacy, he could wake up. When he forgot his own face, he could wake up to his face before his parents were born then when he was awakened the teacher asked him can you express it and he expressed it and the teacher thought this is the second initiation initiation by water initiation when you express your forgotten self. When you put your forgotten self to work and someone else sees it, someone else recognizes it, this completes the process of Zen training, these two initiations.

[14:42]

In the first initiation, you go by faith. You trust this experience is all you need to work with. And you follow this experience all the way. You don't try to use anything but what's happening to you. You don't care about other people. You don't care about other people's practice. You only work on your own experience, which includes your perceptions of other people. But it's your perceptions that you're trusting, not the other people. You trust everything to your breathing, to your posture, to your pain. You renounce everything else but what's happening to you. and you forget yourself. You trust everything to birth and death, and you forget birth and death.

[15:55]

And when you forget birth and death, then when birth and death is presented to you, you understand it. And you can express your understanding. And if you express your understanding with another, that other if she's doing her work, can see you. And you can see someone seeing you. And they can see you seeing them see you. This is water initiation. Someone told me a story about when she was sick.

[17:02]

She was so sick. She was so sick, she thought, well, I'm so sick, I can't practice Zen. That's it for Zen. And she got sicker, and finally she got so sick that she realized, I can't practice Zen. All I've got left, my only resource, is my breath. is my breathing." And then she thought, hey, maybe that's Zen. When we're healthier, we think we have some other resource besides our breath, something fancier that we could use to practice Zen, koans or all kinds of interesting things we could do. It's true, we have everything. We have to renounce it all. Otherwise, everything will be useless to us.

[18:06]

So in order to enter Zen practice, in order to enter upright sitting, we have to give up all of our human stuff. And just our breath is not a human stuff. Breath is not human. Breath is just life. Just life is all we have. We just concentrate on life. We just give our complete trust to the one thing, our life, our breath. We have nothing else. And this is fiery. And if you can do that, then you get tested even more. If you can concentrate on this, then you get twice as big a room to spin straw into gold. Someone told me that in the late afternoon, this experience, this living body becomes like an overwhelming roar.

[19:22]

How can you trust an overwhelming roar when you're sitting? I'm not arguing with some people who talk about sitting in a nice, peaceful place. I have no argument with them. All I'm saying is that for me, the question is, what are you going to do when it's an overwhelming roar? What are you going to do when you're in a wind tunnel of hot, poisonous air? then how are you going to practice? Will you be able to trust that? When the great white wave comes crashing in on you, will you be able to trust it? When you can't hold on to any life rafts or ropes, when nobody can help you, what are you going to do? Well, I'm suggesting that you trust it.

[20:34]

And you trust it all the way. Not a little. If you trust it a little, it's the same as trusting it not much at all. If you reach a little bit for something, it won't work. You have to be thoroughgoing in this trust of what's happening to you. If not much is happening to you, like if it's a nice, if it's not a roar, but like a murmur, a pleasant, cool murmur, if you don't trust that, you'll feel all right. Or if you trust it a little bit, you'll feel all right. But when it's an overwhelming roar, then you can see that a little bit of not trusting will throw you for a loop. Just a little bit of not trusting will rip you apart. That's what wind tunnels are for. Wind tunnels are to test your body and mind to test the body of the craft to see if there's anything extra sticking on there that doesn't have structural integrity.

[21:39]

That's not part of the basic unit. And if the flow is mild, a lot of stuff can hold on. But as the flow increases, then only the essential thing will hold on. Your essential nature will never be ripped off you And when you are subjected to this intolerable, overwhelming roar, there is one who is not the least bit disturbed by this. Your basic integrity, your basic constitution is not even vibrated by this. There is one who is not overwhelmed, who is completely quiet and peaceful and released in the midst of this storm.

[22:51]

It's not that we sit some quiet, peaceful place, although that's fine. We have such places occasionally. Sometimes late at night, the city's quiet. Or on certain national holidays, everybody leaves town. The streets are abandoned, the zendo's quiet, and you're out of town too. Sometimes at Tassajara, it's quiet. Sometimes at Gringosch, it's quiet. That's okay. I don't mind. But anyway, if you sit still, even though the neighborhood may seem quiet, a roar will come. A cosmic roar will come to see if you believe in the one who's never disturbed by this fiery roar.

[24:06]

An inner peace that can never be disturbed. How do you find the inner peace? By renouncing everything. By demonstrating that you don't need to hold on to anything to make yourself feel peaceful and serene, stable, The more you can acknowledge the roar, the more you can acknowledge these crushing waves of experience, the more you admit them, the more you accept them, the more you realize the one who is not bothered by them at all. The more you try to manipulate them, to get rid of them, the farther you get from the one who doesn't care about them at all.

[25:16]

The more you accept your face grimacing from the pain, the more you accept your face grimacing from the pain, the more you feel the face that is constantly smiling. It's not that you don't grimace from pain. It's not that pain doesn't hurt. Pain hurts. It's supposed to. That's what it is. But somebody is not afraid of it. Somebody is just feeling compassion for it. And that one never gets scared of the pain and never goes away and never comes back. Simply always with us. the more we accept our pain and the more we accept that we want to get away from our pain, the more we accept the mind that's running away from pain and the pain, the more we accept the mind that's worried about what's going to happen next.

[26:26]

In other words, the more we accept this mind of before and after, the more you accept that mind and all this trouble it causes you, the more the mind of not before and after dawns on this world. Again, this is initiation by fire. This is changing completely our human orientation, renouncing everything with the faith that this is the practice of Buddha. And if you get scared, just touch the ground and see if the earth supports you. If you get scared, just put your mudra against your abdomen nice and cozy gentle and soft and see if really there's anything to worry about. Are you willing, are we willing to actually live in this moment and forget about past and future?

[27:43]

do you actually believe that if you take care of this, you will be able to enter the Buddha way? And that from there, from after entering Buddha's way, you will then know what to do with the world. Do you trust that? If you do trust it completely, I guarantee you will enter Buddha's way. And after you enter, After you enter that place, you will realize a mind of not before and after. You will understand birth and death. as nothing at all. You will realize a self which has forgotten itself. And that self which has forgotten itself will know what to do next. And it will do wonderful, excuse me for saying, magical, compassionate acts.

[28:45]

It all depends on whether you're willing to be intimate with your basic experience and drop everything else. Everybody wants to know what to do. Everybody wants to know, well, what would you do after you're enlightened? What's right? What's wrong? Everybody wants to know. Fine. But I say, first of all, Enter the way. First of all, forget yourself. And then see what that forgotten self will do. And how do you forget yourself? By admitting your crummy, little, petty, small, painful self. Or huge painful self. Or hugely arrogant painful self. Admit who you are and you will find this forgotten self. And the forgotten self knows what to do. What does it do?

[30:00]

It just responds to the call. It just responds to what the world tells it it wants. World wants milk? Give it some milk. World wants a shout? Shout. World wants a walk? Take a walk. World wants you to be quiet? Shut up. World wants you to do a back flip? Do a back flip. World wants you to read a book? Read a book. World wants some blood? Give him some blood. It doesn't matter. You can do it. Because you forgot yourself. So everybody wants to know, what would Buddha do if Buddha was sitting in this room with us? What kind of a talk would he give? Would he give a talk? Would he even come in this room with us? Would he even be a he? What color would he be? How tall would he be? Everybody wants to know. Or at least if they don't want to know that, they want to know how someone of us would be if we were Buddha.

[31:00]

Would they be acting like one of us? We'd like to know. Would Buddha be sitting in meditation? Or would Buddha be out in the street doing construction work? Or would Buddha be down passing out bread? What would Buddha be doing? Everybody wants to know. Well, I say... Find Buddha and see what Buddha does. And in order to find Buddha, Buddha said, give up everything and you'll find Buddha. You'll meet me when you forget about everything. And you forget about everything when you admit everything. We're willing to forget about everything maybe, but we don't want to admit everything. Everybody's willing to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. So when I was coming out of Tassajara a while ago, I was listening to the radio, and I got on one of these evangelist programs, and I heard this song, and it went something like, it was a song which went something like, one of the lines I liked was, Well, would Jesus wear a Rolex on his TV evangelist show?

[32:18]

Would Jesus wear a Rolex... on a TV evangelist show. These guys are making big money, right? Send your money in, keep this show going. And some of them apparently are wearing Rolexes and driving big cars. So somebody else wrote a song about that. Because they think, now look, you know Jesus. Jesus isn't selfish. Jesus isn't possessive. Now, if Jesus got a lot of money from his show, would he be buying himself nice Rolexes? So we think, well, maybe not. He'd have like one of these Casio, right? Or maybe even cat seals are too fancy. You can get watches for like $3.95. Mickey Mouse? What do you mean, Mickey Mouse? Would this wear a Mickey Mouse watch? No. Would this wear a Jewish watch? Do the hard work. Become Buddha. Forget about the easy work of imagining what you would do if you were a good person. Or imagining what a good person would do.

[33:23]

And seeing if you want to do that. Once you're Buddha, you don't have to imagine anymore. You do what you want. Because what you want is what everybody needs. And that's what you want. And that's what they need. And it all works out. But you have to do the hard work called being a human being first. It's dirty work. One of my friends told me about one of his teachers, a Buddhist teacher who has So my father-in-law was going to get me one of these $30 Rolexes.

[34:39]

But my mother-in-law thought, even though it only cost $30, he still shouldn't be wearing a watch that looks like a Rolex because he's a priest. I didn't argue. Because really, you know, there's a point to that. I'm cozying up to a little bit more about what the water initiation is like. I'm sort of topping off the presentation of the fire initiation, grinding it in a little bit more, partly because, to tell you the truth, I don't know if all of us have completely finished the fire initiation. Some of you have been coming to see me and I've been asking you if you are completely intimate with yourselves, if you've completely settled with yourself, if you've actually renounced everything, abandoned all human sentiment, and are completely settled with yourself and forgotten yourself.

[35:51]

And so far nobody has said that the process is over. And I say to them, please, When it's finished, come back and show me." Now, I guess, in a sense, I have just divulged the contents of Doksans. And I'm sorry about that. But I just want everybody to know that nobody's way ahead of the rest of us. We're all cozying down to the place of complete thoroughness, complete intimacy with our own body and breath. We're actually, all of us, I say, from my sense, because we're all quite close to finishing the job.

[36:52]

But that last little bit, to give up everything And to trust completely. That last little bit is kind of hard. That little gap to close it is kind of hard. And we may not all finish it in the next few days. But that's what I'm saying. Let's finish the job. And when you finish the job, I'd like to see you. And I'll be scared to meet you. Because I've got to be there too then. But I'm trying. I'm trying to give up everything. I'm trying to be completely at one with my own experience. I'm trying. I'm wondering, have I got there yet? And that's why I say my reality is changing. Every day I think, well, maybe I didn't, maybe this isn't, I'm wondering, am I really right here? And there's a devil in my ear which says, no, you're not.

[37:55]

And I think, are you telling the truth? I'm not even supposed to be looking at you in the first place, so who cares what you said? Another one's saying, even so, maybe you're thinking it. And there's one who's not a devil who says, come on now, what's the truth? Are you really here? I want to be. Okay, well then go to work. Okay. Do what you have to do. Cozying up on this. Okay? We're all close. We're a little bit away, or some of us are a hair's breadth away. We're just a hair's breadth away. Just a hair's breadth away. But as you know, a hair's breadth difference is like the distance between heaven and earth.

[39:06]

A hair's breadth difference, how does it go, the attunement, how does it go? What? A hair's breadth difference and we fail to accord with the proper attunement, is that how it goes? A hair's breadth deviation and we fail to accord with the proper attunement. Tough stuff. But anyway, that's the stuff. Get down there and find that hair's breadth deviation. That hair's breadth difference. That's what we should be looking at. And if it's more than a hair's breadth, okay. Then it's whatever it is. It's just a difference between you and yourself. It's nothing you can't work with. That's why I like Zen, because when I grew up in the Christian tradition, it was kind of like I'm here and Jesus was like way out there, you know, and I couldn't even figure out how to get there except by walking in the air. All these miracles I couldn't relate to.

[40:12]

But in the Zen stories, it seemed like the difference between way i was and the way these wonderful bodhisattvas was was the difference between this a clenched fist and an open hand it's not that you know it's kind of the same thing right it's still the hand and just collect this to this and then back like that it's not that far away it's just kind of like open it you know it's possible even though sometimes difficult give it to me i don't want to give it to me okay Here it is. Hey, that feels good. Ah, that's what I like. It's not that far away, but it's a big difference, isn't it? But it's just a hair's breadth away. Dylan, I want you to have your feet on the ground before we enter this water, okay? It's like this. We're on an island, all right?

[41:13]

We're on an island. in the middle of the ocean. And there's some other islands out in the ocean, all right? As a matter of fact, there are innumerable islands out in the ocean. On every island, there's a living being. And on your island, on my island, we have to just be on the island so completely that we actually forget we're on the island and we fall into the water. And then we swim through the water to the other islands. Start with one. This water that you fall into, however, is the water of death. It's the water of death of your face, of yourself. It's the water of the forgotten self. And we naturally will fall into that water if we just completely concentrate on the island. My first practice period at Tassajara, again, I'm sorry to say this.

[42:21]

This is kind of like a little bit praising myself. But anyway, my first practice period at Tassajara, one of my first or second work assignments was to do some plumbing work. I didn't know much about plumbing, but I got assigned to it anyway. And I got assigned to the job with another man. His name was Jim McGuire. There were two Jim McGuires in that practice period. one young one and one older one. So the younger one, younger McGuire and I, went up to work on this pipe, which had broken in the floods. There were some big white waves that came crashing down in Tassajara and blew the water pipes apart. So the water was not coming in Tassajara, it was going all over the hills. So we went up and we fixed the pipe, he and I. And we went on, we fixed one place it broke, and then we went on to fix another place it broke. But before, or about the time we got to the next place it broke, I don't remember exactly, I said to him, let's go back and fix the pipe that we already fixed.

[43:32]

In other words, I knew, and I think he knew too, that we didn't really fix it. We just sort of fixed it. We just mostly fixed it. We just kind of fixed it. We didn't actually do what we had to do. We weren't feeling all that guilty or anything about it. We just noticed that we didn't do the job. So we decided to go back and do it. And we went back, and we did it. We did it all the way, just like we knew we should do. We didn't overdo it. We gave up underdoing it. We got intimate with the job and with each other. Then a couple days later, he was introducing himself to the community, and he said how happy he was to be at Tassajara for the practice period.

[44:37]

And then he said that the other day when he was working with this other guy fixing a pipe This thing happened. And he was very encouraged by the way we fixed the pipe. And then I understood a little bit more about what it means to be intimate with the pipe. It's getting late, and I want to open up this water initiation business, but I really can't do too much. But I want to just tell you a basic story that I'm going to use to look into this realm.

[45:45]

And also, before I say about the story, I want to also say that when I hear in the Hokyo-zame, when it says, the meaning is not in the words, but it responds to the inquiring impulse. I'm talking, you're listening, the meaning is not in these words. But the meaning will come forth if you bring and I bring. I'm bringing my inquiring impulse, I'm bringing my energy to these stories. If you bring your energy and I bring my energy, as we bring our inquiring impulse to these words, the meaning is not in the words, but the meaning comes forth. It responds to our inquiry. When I describe the realm of not before and after, when I describe what the forgotten self can do in this world, when I talk about that, that's not the meaning. But my energy coming there to talk about it, and your energy coming to meet it and to inquire as to what it is, that brings the meaning out.

[46:52]

This is my excuse for saying all this. So here's the story. I don't know if you're beyond your tolerance level now. Are you? On the verge? On the verge on the verge but well okay now she says talk to lunch so if I talk shorter than that I'll be letting up easy right what that's true okay so here's the story I'll just tell you the story and the story is one story but I would break the story up into two parts There was a great teacher named Yangshan who lived in China. And he asked a monk, where are you from? And the monk said, from Yu province.

[47:57]

Yangshan said, do you think of that place that you're from? And the monk said, I always think of it. So I would stop the story right there and say, if that guy's telling the truth, that is what is called becoming intimate with yourself. That's initiation by fire. Then Yangshan says, the thinker is the mind and the thought of is the environment. The ability to think of things is the mind, and that which is thought of is the environment. Therein, therein means in the environment, there are mountains, rivers, land masses, buildings, towers, halls, chambers, people, animals, mice, cockroaches,

[49:13]

everything and so on and so on roaring roaring roaring crashing white waves everything's there in the environment you can think of all of that okay then yangshan said reverse your thought and think of that which thinks of this stuff This is further instruction in initiation by fire. And then he says, are there so many things there? And the monk says, when I get here, I don't see any existence at all.

[50:20]

And Yangshan says, this is right for the stage of faith. This is right for the stage of faith. In other words, this is the results of trusting completely what's happening to you. This is the result of initiation by fire. This is, I don't see anything at all. In other words, you forgot your face. This is the self of a body and mind that's dropped off. And then Yangshan says, but not yet right for the stage of a person. And the Chinese character for person goes like this. If you see my arm here, the Chinese character for person is like this. It looks like a person walking, sort of. This is a character for person. But it also means that if you take this away, it falls down. The character for person means that what a person is, it's a relational unit.

[51:26]

Person is not a thing by itself. That's what a person is. So, when he said, I don't see anything at all. In other words, I forgot myself. That's right for the first stage. But it's not yet right for the person, for the relational being. In other words, you have not yet had initiation by water. So now the monk tries to have initiation by water. And he says... Do you have any further particular guidance for me? And Yangshan said, to say that I have anything in particular or not would be inaccurate. Based on your insight, you only get one mystery. You can take a seat and wear the robe.

[52:30]

After this, you'll see the rest on your own." So that's the story. And I would say what this story is about is this monk achieved the stage of faith. He demonstrates the results of initiation by fire. But he and Yangshan can't do the water initiation. This is an example of a failed water initiation. after the fire initiation. I'd like to talk about that in more detail, and I'll also tell you some stories about successful water initiations. And again, when I tell you these stories about successful fire initiations or unsuccessful fire initiations, when I tell you stories about successful and unsuccessful water initiations, the meaning's not in the words. But if we bring our energy to these stories, the meaning can be realized.

[53:32]

Maybe. In the meantime, please fix your pipes. The way you know how to do it. Next is lunch. Please eat your lunch. and wash your bowls the way you know how to eat and how to wash. And if you don't do it all the way, try again. There will be dinner. I believe that, I trust there will be dinner. Thank you for tolerating this roar. May our intention...

[54:31]

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