Anybody who needs a copy? This I don't want anymore. So we have these stories. Some kind of transmission.

[01:18]

Transmission is always a family affair of some sort. Daddy or grandpa or grandma or somebody bought, discovered, started something new and it's being passed along. So what is it? I mean, one thing, we can come and study and just read these stories together. And they're fun. They're kind of interesting. They're provocative and so on. But the difference between this kind of story and the Dharma, the Dharmic text, is that the story has a self-reference and it always points the light back at itself. So as you read a story or as you hear a story, particularly in the Mahayana, particularly in the Zen school, it's illuminating the text itself.

[02:27]

It's illuminating what it is saying conceptually. What is it saying about concept? Two things are happening in the transmission. Remember, Buddha looks up one morning, sees an object of light called the morning star, and bingo, what does he say? Remember what he said? and all beings together with the Great Earth. Achieve enlightenment or just imagine all beings exactly as they are are enlightened or bingo, all at once I wake up and there is no separation between enlightenment and what I thought was the world. Something like that occurs. It's a little bit different from the way anybody else ever at least enunciated or articulated the way to see the world. And that's the message. Something in that message is being passed on. But what is it? What happens in the study of these texts, as we study the text itself,

[03:30]

What happens to our minds as we read a Buddhist text, particularly one like that, that talks about this phenomenon or this experience, quote, called waking up or enlightenment or revelation or unbinding. Even as we read the text, it's pointing out something. What is that? About the text itself, about you and the text coming up together and reading it. But we're not separate from it. You're not separate from the text. The text is just, there's just black ink on paper. Nothing is happening until that book is opened or until Ananda or someone spoke it. And we heard it and then conceptualized it and then later somebody wrote it down. But the thing is, as we've been talking from the beginning, if we get stuck in phenomena, including our conceptions of phenomena, it's a form of binding or bondage.

[04:33]

We get caught by names, we get caught. Yet, on the other hand, and there's always this other hand, why are we here? Why are we, why is there such a place as a Zen center or a tradition like Zen, if the world is paradise and everything is perfect just the way it is, all people are illumined, why would anybody in the world have to come to a place like this? If that were already the case for us, it seemed to be for Buddha. Well, he realized it and most of us don't. He realized at least we get the story. that somebody had a vision or an opening of something that we all feel we would like. How come we feel that we would want that story? What's wrong with our story that makes us dissatisfied and brings us together? Well, our story includes being dissatisfied.

[05:36]

Okay. So we're dissatisfied, therefore we're dissatisfied. Therefore, some of us want to do something about it. We might not be here because we're dissatisfied. So what is the other reason that brings us? What do we want to know from these stories? What is the story of the teaching being handed down, supposedly, according to this story? Enough credibility in at least the myth of this story that brings us all together to want to hear it. What is that? I'm asking myself this question because if this is the Garden of Eden, what would ever motivate me in the first place to want to know the answer to something if I'm already satisfied with my life? Yeah, but are you satisfied with your life? No. What about Shakyamuni? What happened to him? He was silent for a long time until he realized he had to open his mouth again, otherwise other beings wouldn't be liberated. But before that, I mean, what is that myth about? He saw people suffering and wanted to help them. Himself, too. So, the awakening to the fact that there's pain in the world, what is that pain essentially about?

[06:43]

Separation. Huh? Separation. Separation, yeah, but the separation comes with an affective sense that causes anxiety. That. Self? What's the phenomenon? You need a vehicle for practice. So if you don't have suffering, you don't have clinging, you don't have these problems, you have no vehicle for practice. In the heart of suffering itself, what is that suffering? Ignorance. Of what? As a reality, as an ultimate reality. How about impermanence? Things are changing and you can't hang on to it. Old age, sickness and death, right? Yeah, even, I mean, at what age do we leave the arms of our security and suddenly realize that everything is mortal on earth? Even if it's the garden of paradise, it can be a stable, I guess, but in this version it happens to be the other side. He's The highborn, you know, the prince, the one who's born with everything going for him, walks outside one day and the world changes.

[07:50]

He can no longer rest with it. So what is it? Is it that sense of unrest in us that brings us to ask these stories? And is it the answering of that unrest that is the transmission? Or the meaning of that, or the revelation of what that unrest is. Is that unrest the same as Buddha? Or is Buddha, or rest, something that is on the other side of some wall that we're going to, like a reservoir that we're going to tap into and that's going to finally quench the insatiable thirst for God? If you say that, you're positing duality. Would you go back to where you said, is that unrest the same as Buddha? Would you say a little more about that? Well, the question is, I think, I mean, my question is, if I'm satisfied with my conception of the world I make,

[08:56]

I see a world in a certain way. It pretty much conforms to my desires. I've got comfort. I've got all the physical things I need. Because unrest is very often started with people when they got to a place where the basic needs are satisfied. In other words, it takes a little bit of substance or leisure or something to suddenly raise the question of what? I'm unhappy with my existence in some way. There's something else on the other side of this that I can perceive and understand with my mind. There's something on the other side if I can tap through into that. So I begin to look for answers and there seems to be traditions. Every tradition seems to have that thirst, that question, and every tradition seems to have some answer for it, which has passed along. You think it's a thirst for permanence? that I don't want to die. Well, that's one of Buddha's questions.

[10:02]

Is the thirst for permanence or eternity, and the other thirst is for what? Annihilation. Annihilation, exactly. I don't want to be here. Get me the hell off this earth. It's suffering. This is a mutual eating society. Everything is feeding on everything else, like it or not. There's got to be a better way. That kind of feeling, which we can snap into sometimes. Because something can happen in these stories. I mean, even among us in this room, by getting into the great inquiry with the spirit, we can actually redefine the parameters of our understanding as we go along. So that's what these guys are doing. It seems to me, you start with Buddha, who has this revelation. He passes it on silently with a flower to Kashyapa. Just picks up the flower after all of this. Doesn't even try to put it in the words. At least the myth is, in our heritage, is that the first thing is the gesture.

[11:09]

The gesture of reality. Here it is. In a single flower, the universe blooms. Then the next guy... gets it from Kashyapa, and he gets it orally. Now this, in other words, you might say there's a spirit, as I see it, and then that spirit kind of takes shape in the second generation, Kashyapa. The third generation opens it up. So, did you say that it was annihilation? that is being transmitted? Is that right? No, I'm saying, what is it that motivates us to ask the questions and bring us together to want to know what these guys know? What was it that brought them together? Suffering, yes, you could say. The Four Noble Truths seems to be a nice model of definition of something like that. Because we crave a symptom of something else, we look for a cure and we find that we're insatiable in some way, we're dissatisfied basically in some way, yes.

[12:12]

And someone seems to have found, or some more than one, maybe different traditions, an answer to that, a medicine for that kind of suffering. And this person called Buddha says that I'm not discovering it for the first time. It's been going on since time out of mind. Remember, I just redefine or rediscover. Actually, sometimes it means redefine the path. And the path, in our tradition at least, in what these books, is kind of deconstructing the fact that you have some kind of thing you can hang on to. That you must have something to hang on to, to hear, to understand, to project, to deal with, called a conventional world. That's one side of it. That conventional world, however, isn't permanent. It has no ultimate substance that you can get hold of in any place. Yet it is the way things function. So we're caught in that duality and that's man's kind of dilemma or humankind's kind of dilemma.

[13:19]

And what do we do with it? So here's a tradition of somebody who said, I discovered that all beings are already free of that anxiety. At least this is my reading. And I want to pass that on to you. You're already happy. Come on, give me a break. Already happy, you've got to be kidding. I'm going to be happy tomorrow. But when I get what you got, I'm going to be happy. So you teach me what you got so that I can get happy. But I can't step into his skin. There's not a single thing in this interdependent nebulous network that I can exchange with you other than these concepts. I can't step into your body. I can't feel your subjectivity at all other than the way you project it and say it. And so for each of us. So there is an absolute separateness experienced at the same time that we feel. Back and forth.

[14:21]

Now I got it, now I don't. Now I see it, now I can't. And it seems that these dialogues in here are both conferring power, yes, the world exists in such and such a way, and taking it away in other form and emptiness. But don't get attached to these teachings. See how this is a story about something that you can't ultimately get hold of. Now speak. Do something. Live in the world. And that's Zen pushing it right immediately to act in some way. So, you know, he's talking, you get it in the cook dish, but he, I mean, Keizan Jokin, his voice says he is exhorting the monks in his teacher's monastery to awake right now with these stories, with grasping and letting go of what is understood in the same story. Pagan, you said you can't get a hold of it. Does it have a hold of you? Well, we can change the predicates around in the subject.

[15:28]

And I suppose you could say both. You could say that as the world-honored one, that is, in my total subjectivity, I can only understand what this is because of everything else out there. And I read everything else out there according to my own personal history. My world is different from your world. Although we call a table a table, we experience it somewhat differently. So how many worlds? Is there such a thing as the world? How could there be the world that on changes in a universe of dependent core rising and constant and permanence? How can there be the world? Or is this one of these individual flashes of... Nature is recognizing itself and being articulated as nature, trees, pebbles, sky, Buddhas, devils, as us. That's a possibility. In which case, then, each person understands he or she is the World Honour when no one can ever step into your shoes.

[16:38]

And when you can ever experience the world, the world, what you call the world, will ever be experienced except uniquely. Doesn't one of these stories say that doesn't one of these that we already read say that Mahakasyapa is going to walk in your sandalwood? Yeah. But the thing that we feel at the same time is that there's this thing called one mind. that what Buddha experienced, and what Mahakasyapa experienced, and what Ananda experienced, and what Rumi experienced, and what Shams experienced, and Lord knows what Nietzsche experienced, and name it, was a kind of opening or a unified state of consciousness. But I think that particular idea is subject to some critical analysis. It may be analogous to falling in love.

[17:44]

I mean, I guess that breaks through all cultural barriers. People are attracted suddenly to one another. It wakes them up in a new way to the whole world loves the lover, right? The whole world changes, at least for the time that you are captivated by one another. You do shift the perspective. The paradigm shifts, at least for a while. I want to give myself up to you because you are the beloved and I love you so much. And that analogy is used in spiritual practice for loving God or Buddha or the world itself. But how do we finally come to hear these teachings and concepts that say, let go of me. Now that you have me and see me, let go. Then what? So I think these stories go back and forth with that question, and I don't know that we ever get to the bottom of what they're talking about, but maybe we could raise our own sensitivity to this question.

[18:52]

So tonight is Shona Washu, as we call him. I would like to also follow along in the... I think it's pretty interesting, the two different translations. Who has a quote translation? I do. I read a paragraph or so, and then maybe also hear a paragraph. I'll start with the first one. Shana Vasu asks, Ananda, what is the fundamental, uncreated essence of all things? What does it say in the quote? He asked Ananda, what kind of thing is the original unborn nature of all things? See, there's a little difference here. Essence is a tricky word in Buddhist Madhyamaka practice because the things that are kind of essences, you can't find a final essence of something. So I like that, the thing is what?

[19:54]

A thing. What is an uncreated thing? Excuse me, Dagon, if somebody in here has another count of a blueish gray Toyota pickup truck, the lights are on. Not here. Too bad. Thank you. Yeah. Now, at that moment, what happened to Shana Washa? Gathe, gathe. Gathe. For a moment, Shona Walsh is wiped out. Who takes Shona Walsh's place? John or, what's the image? Truck. Something in my mind is, I'm talking about the Shona Walsh and then I see a truck out there. But what sees Shona Walsh and what sees the truck? What is that? That mind, see that's mind. always imaging, but from moment to moment, boom, boom, boom, totally focused.

[20:57]

We all heard it. We all got the message. Nothing was left out. It was perfectly understood, made an answer, and then returned to this. And this is what we're doing all the time, even in Narasasana. We know that in Narasasana, our mind is constantly doing this. We call it distracted. Distracted from what, is my question. Okay. From the idea of... Well, maybe. Ananda pointed to the corner of Shanavasu's vest. That's also in this okesa. There's a robe here. Shanavasu asked, what is the basic essence of the enlightenment of the Buddhas? What is the basic essence and what does it say? What kind of thing is the original nature of the Buddha's awakening? Here's the very question we're asking tonight. What is this thing you're original, what is this thing you're passing along?

[22:01]

So Ananda grabbed the corner of Shona Vashda's vest and tugged on it. This is a real Zen story. Hands on, huh? What is the original teaching? What is the essence of Buddha? Grabs the corner of his vest. Sarvasu was then enlightened. Unlike us, somebody grabs us. Hey! Hey! And somebody comes through the door. Somebody switches the plan suddenly. The unexpected happens. That's what the teaching of our life, life jumps. That is the teaching of suddenly, boom. Of course, in Zen, this is really, really emphasized. Now he says he was enlightened. See, this is, you know, every story has a presumption behind it. The presumption behind it is that we're interested in knowing what enlightenment is about as readers. Keep your study, otherwise we won't pick it up, right? Pick up a mystery story. You want to find out, you're interested in a mystery.

[23:04]

You want to find out what it's about. You have your audience. It takes two to tango. So here's the material he's offering us. And I want to know something about enlightenment. Here's the word, enlightenment, waking up. Oh, good. I'm going to find out now. Before this is done, I'm going to find out these marks on the page. Oh, wait a minute. These marks on the page, and who's reading these marks on the page, are telling me something about this consciousness itself and others constantly doing this game. Let's read on. In Sanskrit, shanavasu means natural clothing. What does it mean? Natural clothing. It's actually, I heard, a robe of hemp. Woven hemp. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? When Shonavasa was born, he came wearing clothing. In summer, it was because it became cool clothing, and in winter, it became warm clothing. When he was inspired to leave society, his ordinary clothing spontaneously turned into a mendicant's vestment.

[24:06]

I guess that would be the case. Well, here it is in our Indian... love of mythologizing the story. We talked about last week the possibilities of all this being exactly so, but I think we can also look at it as metaphor and be comfortable within our scientific, rational minds. Although I always find that interesting, this whole aspect of the teachings will disappear once you get into the Chinese, of course we won't, but once you get into the Chinese ancestors, all this kind of supernaturalism almost like the occult is happening, disappears. This is a typical Indian way of engaging us in something that I call cosmic poetry, in which it engages the higher mind, the more imaginative side of ourselves. Okay. Does somebody want to read the next paragraph?

[25:08]

Shana Vasu did not just happen to be born this way. Samagasa did not just happen to be born this way in his present lifetime. When he was a merchant in a past life, he gave a hundred Buddhas a thousand feet of felt, and ever since then he wore natural clothing in every life. Usually, people refer to the interval between giving up present existence and before reaching future existence by the term intermediate existence. During that time, they wear no clothing. Shanavasu is also the name of an Indian plant called nine-branched beauty. When a saint is born, this plant grows on clear ground. When Shana Vasa was born, this plant grew. And that is why he was named Shana Vasa. Is that your question? Yeah. On the cookie it goes, during this time, the intermediate period, they had absolutely no clothes. And then you went on to something else. And this one he says, in the present case of Shana Vasa, he wore clothes even during the intermediate period.

[26:13]

Whoa. That's true. Yes, but they didn't have that in... No, it's not there. No, it's not. The sentence that says that Shana Vasu wore clothes in the intermediate period, that sentence is not in here. He says during that time there were no clothing. Yeah, that part he got. But the second... But that was the whole point. Usually in the bardo state you're naked, right? Except for him. But he came armed with what? He went through the bardo wrapped up in the dharma. Lucky. Brigitte Bardot. [...] Mix it. Here. You know, I was talking last night to Stephen Batchelor.

[27:19]

You know, Stephen Batchelor says he no longer holds with reincarnation theories. So, in Tibetan, and he's trained in Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Korean, and he's fluent in Tibetan, that, of course, he is a kind of non-persona Christ. Because if you don't hold with the doctrine of reincarnation then of course that undermines the whole religious political system so you really have to hold to it but of course it's a really old way of looking at the world and the Japanese believe this I think I don't know about the Chinese today the Japanese actually believe at least when I was in Japan that they were that they were reborn again and again and again and I remember when I first went there I said I don't belong here you know No, you live once. Get all the gusts, though. You can't remember that one. Excuse me, back on. Excuse me for cutting you late.

[28:20]

But there's a great truck. We know. We are. Everything. It was blue. What's your name? Our grades, but the lights were off. You know the name of the truck? Mazda. [...] Doris, is that a Schönewasserwagen? What? The car, is it a Schönewasserwagen? Prior to the arising of self-knowledge, that is, prior to arising within consciousness, or as consciousness within consciousness, there's no sense of self. at all, but self and object to consciousness arising together and arising as story together.

[29:42]

And if you notice from moment to moment, consciousness would then seem to be an adaptation, as if consciousness is like space itself, but you can mold it. and adapt it. One way you adapt it, of course, is linguistically or through imagery. From moment to moment, the stories move about among us. The consciousness changes, boom, according to whatever story is being picked up. And every story that's picked up is also reified or supported by what we call the names of phenomena, things, stuff, so we can pass on these stories. But what this is telling us is that while the story is necessary, the story is about the transparency and emptiness of the story. Can you live with that? Can you live with what's obvious? I mean, our stories are going to pass pretty fast. And nobody's going to remember him 100 years from now.

[30:43]

Any of you? Anything about you? Do you know why I came to this class? Why? I really wanted to hear your story. It is the same old story. I wanted to hear it from Pat himself. I'll tell it someday. This is my story. This is your story. Okay. Okay. You're docking me. Yeah, I am. I can't tell my story. You get my story every time I sit down here. I get your story every time you sit down. You don't get the definition of the story, but we get the abstract. The other night I saw this show of abstract photographs. of just common reflected surfaces without naming them. He said, he's not going to tell us the names, but you're going to shoot these beautiful pictures, glorious stuff. I mean, and of course, when you finally named it, when you put it into a framework, you understood, then all at once, you could just feel your mind go, oh yeah, that's what that is.

[31:49]

But until you had the name for it, it was just this color and amazing formations that you never quite imagined before and so on. See, these stories that we're reading, you're all kind of like conjecture in a way, where it's all open to interpretation. But, like, they're all dead, you know, but you're alive. But what is it open to interpretation? Yeah, I was going to say, is there something that isn't being interpreted right now? Well, everything's open to interpretation except these people that we're reading about, they're not here anymore. Well, is that true? In a way. Because we're not here to talk about it. Well, I would say that the story is, yes, that voice that you're using is here talking to you. And you, by reading this, is that voice talking to ourselves about what this is. To be you, in this moment, trying to understand this.

[32:50]

We're talking about that phenomenon. That's what the transmission is about, that face-to-face. Right now, all the Buddhas of the past and the future and so on are meeting in this room face-to-face, telling each other a story. Always doing that. I think that's what this is about. I think that's how we live our life as Buddhas. We're doing it right now. But in the class, we're concerned with the translation of a text. But in a real class... which is Tuesday night. On Tuesday night, great transformations happen. You didn't know that. You didn't know that you were all brought here by a special messenger that would transform our consciousness, but we won't know it, see, until later. Okay. Later we'll see who was shown at Washington. Jackie. Now here's a very interesting, and Sal will appreciate this, he was in the womb for six years before birth.

[33:53]

Yes. A lot of other women do too. Yeah. What's that? I rationalized that without even trying. I mean, I just sort of started rationalizing it when I read it. What? In what way? Yeah. Oh, this woman who was, whatever you call it, a menopause, she didn't have, she didn't, she lost her period, and so she thought she was in the womb for six years, and then she suddenly had a baby. It was just conscious like that, you know? I just thought they made it up. Well, that's more likely, but that just, it just sort of, I didn't try to rationalize it, just there it was. The number six is interesting, you know? Mm-hmm. Because it's, at least in the astrological model, any pi of 12, 12 lunations in a circle, that is 12, the 12 is always about the 12 lunations in a solar year.

[34:54]

That's where we get the number 12. When you go from 1 to 7, and say that 1 starts with Aries or something, and 7 is the opposite, is the complete... Equinox or solstice, that point. The six points leading up to it, the sixth point is very important because that's the point where you have to work to make it manifest into harmony in case, and so on. So six is a really interesting number. I don't know what the Indians mean by it exactly. And he doesn't have a note on it. But why six years? Why not 26 years? Anyway, maybe it's just their idea of a long time. Go on, please. Whoever's reading. In the past. In the past, the Buddha had pointed to a forest and said, In this wood, a mendicant named Sanavasa will turn the wheel of the sublime teaching a hundred years after my death.

[35:56]

As it turned out, Sanavasa was born there a century later, eventually received the bequest of Ananda and stayed in this forest. Turning the wheel of the teaching, he overcame a fire dragon. fire dragon submitted to him and offered him this forest. This was indeed in accordance with the prediction of the Buddha. Well, we know from the sutras and so on that in the Mahayana and also the Theravada, only a Buddha can predict a Buddha. Does that mean that we can't predict a Buddha? Aren't we all Buddhas? Well, there's the question. If we can't, who's going to? Do we have to predict that? Why? You see, Maitreya is always waiting. There's always a Buddha coming. We could spend the whole evening talking about that particular... So you're just predicting that someone's coming, not that who it is.

[36:59]

Isn't there something that you have to have a prediction to be realized as a Buddha? Yeah, you have to be predicted centuries or eons before and go through all this. This was the idea of the path in India that you'd have to go through lifetime after lifetime to be predicted that one day this would happen. It was part of your karma. And it seems that they, you know, at least because these are Chinese translations that in some ways they've absorbed part of that mythology, but... I don't think the Chinese wholly subscribe to that. And certainly the Japanese do, though. Okay. Originally, however, Shana Vasya was a sorcerer from the Himalaya mountains. I love that part. He's kind of like Milarepa was a sorcerer from the Himalayas. Maybe that's the same old myth. They start out with black magic, you know, using it, their power. They got a lot of power and they're using it. They're kind of the neighborhood hood that gets big.

[38:04]

Kind of the mafiosa daddy, maybe. And then they get religion, see? After becoming a disciple, Anandi asked, what is the fundamental uncreated essence of all things? What is the unborn? So we're in what realm? Form or emptiness, we're talking. Emptiness. Yeah, we're talking about the ungraspability of everything. This is in fact something that no one but Shana Vashu would ever ask. It's hard to believe that. Yeah, that's silly too. The fundamental uncreated essence. The fundamental uncreated essence. What's that line there? What kind of thing is the original unborn nature of all things? So what is that last line? The fundamental essence, Shana Vashu. What's that? Correspondence? He says, then the sentence is after that. This is in fact something that no one but Anuvasha... No, it's truly a question no one had ever asked. He alone asked it. There is no one who is not born with this original unborn nature of all things, but no one knows it and no one asks about it.

[39:11]

That's a little better than I think. The fundamental uncreated essence of all things is in everyone. It's a little different. Particularly as we talked about Dogen saying you don't have it in you. It's not something you have. There's not a you and there's a have. There is an inseparability. You are it. Or it is you. Nor do they ask. Okay. Why is it called the uncreated essence? Now he's going to tell us. So all things are born from it. The essence has no producer. So it is called the uncreated essence. Therefore everything is fundamentally uncreated. Mountains are not mountains, rivers are not rivers. This is why Ananda pointed to the corner of Shonavasa's vest. This is the first time he grabbed him, right? Second time he points. No, first time he points. Second time he grabs, okay. This vest is called the Kashaya.

[40:15]

Kashaya. Kashaya. What's that? Kesa? Yeah, Kesa. Kesa, yeah. In Sanskrit, Kashaya. This means, and this is interesting, this is really interesting, indefinite color. You know, usually it's the kind of reddish-brown, almost like it, why did I see that? It was color under the tree that was... Somebody said, Suzuki Rishi said, fawn leaf color. Oh yeah, that's good, fawn leaf color. It means unborn color. Because unleaf is kind of like faded, isn't it? Well, you know what they did in India, right? They went and picked up all the rags and Wasn't it saffron coated? And then they washed them, and then they actually did the colors by different sects they belonged to, as I understand it. But this, by the time it gets to Japan and China, the whole idea is that the robe is, what is the color? That's a question you should ask in Shosan. What is the color of your robe? That used to be a fundamental question you'd ask at Tasa.

[41:20]

What is the color of your robe? Brown? But what is the uncreated essence? Through all things that are born from it, the essence has no producer, so it is called uncreated. This vessel is called the Kashyap. Indefinite color means unborn color. Actually, it is not to be seen in terms of color. Yet, in one sense, the subjective and objective experiences of all beings, from Buddhas to insects, are all colored. Okay. All things are the painted rice cake. Just as we were saying earlier, we're painting this picture. They're painting this picture with us right now. We're painting a picture here of something called the Buddha, or called liberation, or called freedom, or called happiness. But this is not colored for seed by ordinary senses, so there's no world to transcend, no enlightenment to realize.

[42:25]

So again, he moves back and forth from form to emptiness. If that's true, if that's true what you're saying, sir, but this is not the color perceiver. These are not the words. I should not color these words with my meanings. These are the words. Don't color it. Let it go. Understand it now. Okay. Goodbye. Even though he understood this, Shanavasu went on to ask, what is the fundamental essence of enlightenment? if that's suddenly waking up, the Buddha. Although there's never been any mistake in this, unless you find out that you have it. What does he say? Even though we are not confused in this matter from since ages ago, if we do not realize its existence one time, we will be vainly obstructed by our eyes. That's the outline. Although there has never been any mistake in this, unless you find out that you have it, you will be uselessly hindered by your eyes. Have it again, you see, have it. It's a little more, there's a self that's possessing, or holding, it sounds like.

[43:32]

Okay. This is why Shonobasu asked the question, to clarify the source of all Buddhas. Well, I think that's what the transmission is about, how we clarify the source. But, Again, if the world is beginningless, it says beginningless and endless in some sense, how can there be a source? Yeah, well, I do. Your face suggested that you knew me. My face misled you. But the world beginningless and endless is one thing. Buddhas or enlightenment, either one of the beginningless and endless is another thing. But it is, is it? If there's no world, if there's no world, what would be the use for there to be a Buddha?

[44:38]

There would be no Buddhas. It's not that there's no world. There's a... Excuse me. Is this about a truck? Yes. We know. They're not here. They're not here. Thank you, Sona Vassa. This is the night the truck and light are on. Yeah, it does. The lights are on. That's the third tug of the vest. The lights are on. It is our truck. It's all about enlightenment. Who left the lights on? Here we're trying to turn the lights on, and out there they're trying to turn them off. I told you something would happen on Tuesday night. Tell them, don't turn them off. Are we in the vehicle or not? Well... That's, are we in the vehicle or not? That's a small vehicle.

[45:45]

You went on to ask anyway, what's the fundamental essence? Although there's never been any mistake in this, unless you find out that you have it and so on. Okay. But we don't believe it. Well, I think you guys, or he has it. He definitely does. But anyway, he has it, he doesn't. But I don't have it. I'm not it. Can't be me. Tag, you're it. You gotta step out. You gotta practice. Because that's what Reb's always teaching. Make a quarry, come out and say something. Expose yourself. Express yourself. That's that, right? And then you get a response. The inquiry, mind, and response come up together. We chant that. And what's one of those? Precious mirror. Precious mirror. So they're always coming. I'm losing my voice. I've got all this Novocaine in my face that's just worn off from a tooth replacement. No.

[46:48]

No. So he was greatly enlightened by something tugged on. Okay, woke him up. Somebody comes to the door and wakes him up. But then we think enlightenment should last forever. Once the light is on, it should remain on. Isn't that, do we have that kind of image? Doesn't that work that way for these people? I don't think so. Really? That's not Dogen's understanding. that once the light is on, of course, the light is always coming on because every moment is replacing the moment before, in both physicality and in meditation processes. So in that sense, you know, you're always redefining yourself, constantly redefining what you and who you are, in the response with you in the so-called you and environment, the pinnacle of rising event. Which I keep saying Dogen calls divine, although he doesn't use that word.

[47:54]

He calls it Buddha. Did Hakuen, was he the one who said he had like 17 enlightenment experiences in his life? That was more than that. A lot though. But it was a definite number. Yeah. So it wasn't like he was enlightened and then forever. It was like... Yeah. Periods in between. See, there is no question, I think, in any of our minds that there is a realm or... at least a moment of something dropping away. They usually call them scales in front of our eyes. We think that's the way we usually conceive the world. We use those words. We see something we've never seen before. It's more as if the mind opens and it does it spontaneously. You can't volitionally make it happen. I just get the impression that these ancestors live in that kind of world all the time, but it's always opening up like that. Well, that may well be so, but what if the sensitivity is just that we all are doing that, but the practice is to become more and more sensitive.

[48:59]

That's what's always the case. I mean, that's another way of looking at it, throwing light on it. Becoming more and more sensitive? Yeah, to the fact that from moment to moment, consciousness, we're constantly redefining ourselves. And we have a certain affect, affect about that consciousness of who we are. If change in the external environment happens faster than the affect can handle it, we freak out a bit, we panic. We're scared we're losing, we're being stripped of our identity. That is our... the kind of psychophysical holding on of what we consider to be ourselves, for good reason. If you can't hold on to it, in some sense you lose your mind. It's different from dropping body and mind and losing your mind. Dropping body and mind, I think, means that you step totally into the workings of the conventional world. But you see, The emptiness of that whole affair.

[50:01]

So you're not bound by it in the same way anymore. Whereas losing your mind is you can't read it. You can't read the signs anymore. You do see they're empty, but they don't make any sense to you. That's why I think in these practices we need to study precepts, we need to do meditation, we need to get really grounded. When that flash happens and it kind of blows away our usual grabbing mechanism, you can freak out. Somebody asked Trungpa Rinpoche, what is the distinguishing affective mark of a bodhisattva? And he said, without any hesitation, panic, of course. Panic. Panic. Wow. My personal experience is sort of like that. I've been reading some of my journal writing in the past several years, and I wrote some really impressive stuff five, six years ago. I guess what I'm trying to say is we all have these little mini enlightenment episodes in our lives, all of us, and then What I have trouble with is how do we lose them?

[51:07]

You know, I lose mine. But notice the way you're expressing it. I have had... There's an assumption... But I said we. Okay, we. No, I'm not talking about ego here. I'm talking about an assumption that there is a being that has an experience versus then just raw experience being the being and that is constantly changing. So we say, I had that experience several years ago. Looking back, thinking about that experience, you're reinventing a story in your mind about an experience you once had. There was only an experience and the experience passed away. It left a mark, it left seeds, there's causation. But then to feel that throughout there is this being to whom it is happening. rather than a series of experiences as if consciousness is a mirror, and you are the mirror of those experiences. But some of these are regression. It's like the self meets the environment, and the way the self relates to it appears to be a regression from what it has already previously understood.

[52:20]

And that's what I, you know... You're getting old, Jackie. Do you regress? We're going to end up, you know, like George Willard. All of us. We're going to end up like this. Or we're going to end up, you know, eventually a bag of garbage. So, yeah, we are going to, we are going to disintegrate. Yeah. Well, we could get hit by a car instead. Yeah, but anyway. Don't say you're fat again, it's like a heart attack. So, but the interesting thing in what you say is, I had this experience and now it seems, you see, there's a judgment, there's a jury, there's a self that's in for the trial. You used to have these experiences and now you're not having them or you are regressing. But who is it?

[53:23]

See, in the experience itself, is that that who drops away. Body and mind drops away. There's only pure experience. That's why we practice. Have you noticed the world keeps coming back? I mean, Buddhism has been around 2,500 years and the world is even worse than it used to be. Maybe. We always say that. It wasn't so great. The dinosaur is probably being chased about. But anyway, we are here as a consciousness defining something. We've even spent part of our life getting together tonight to try to understand something that's important to us. Reading a story and reflecting on what the hell is it saying to me? What is this practice that they're passing along? I want to know that. You want to know that. If there's anything to know, and I think in some ways they're saying, you already know it.

[54:26]

I already know it. You don't know that you know it. My job is to wake up to know what you already know. And you go, oh my God, so simple. Something like that. And then you forget it the next day. The next day you're going, I don't like these pancakes. That's the moment. The truck has arrived. Shona Walsh has arrived. I don't like pancakes. Last night I was living on Soma, glory and bliss. This morning the pancakes stink. You should have a pancake salad. The pancake chef is here. You attached your pancakes. Three hours on a very tiny border. No pancakes, I'm trying.

[55:28]

The world is a pancake. Experience the world as something that is delicious and we want to eat it. What's wrong with not liking pancakes? No, no, nothing. It feels like it was an example of losing self. No, no. Because it's mundane. No, it's just that you feel you're in an expanded state. What I'm saying is, he asked the question, well, don't they live in this constant expanded state? Well, maybe they do, but maybe that constantly expanded state is not a state different from the moment-to-moment changes that consciousness are adapting to, but... the realization of that and adapting one's behavior or way of relating to the world according to that disposition rather than the normal disposition, which is, I am having that experience, and it's different from the experience I had last week, and so on.

[56:29]

Wait, isn't it actually the constantly expanded state, the state of an arhat, and they maintain it by, like, avoiding intrusions of all kinds? Yeah, I think you can probably find a state of mind that's peaceful and finally, you know, but... What about the least like and dislike in our mind is lost in confusion? You see, I think that there is jhana states that we can practice and reach, absorption states that are very blissful and so on, but eventually you have to come... Buddha did. You know, he went to... What was his name? Was there... Huh? Anyway, the one who taught him like nirvikalpa samadhi, neither perceiver nor the perceived, the dropping away of consciousness, the total absorption of the separate sense self. And yet phenomena doesn't, but you kind of really sink into kind of almost what we call a trance.

[57:30]

Mind isn't generating for some reason the same kind of neurological responses. I mean, they put these people under scientific scrutiny, you know, so it's got to be so that different areas in the brain are shut down and different areas are excited and so on, so the state of consciousness changes. But then, Buddha functioned in the world. I mean, we're not, you know, we're not autistic or something. We go out and function normally in the world. The world and the functioning is not... I mean, it's changing all the time. What if that change, as Dogen says, birth and death, is already Buddha? I read a Kasaravan summary book called The Buddha's Teaching of Totality, which is by Y.N. Uzum, which I really recommend. Yeah, the Abhidhamasaka book. It's a great... but there was a metaphor in there and I probably won't capture the whole thing but it was like gold gold was poured into these statues made into statues of lions and the gold was a metaphor for the absolute or Buddha and the lions was the conventional or you know discriminative perception yeah and so a lot of times when we talk about you know we're buying Buddha but you know sometimes it's

[59:02]

you know, you're really expanded, and the next time it's, I don't like, um, well, I don't like that either. Now the gold's in the shape of, you know, a real expanded thing. Now the gold's in the shape of, I don't like my friends. But it's still the same. But, you know, Buddha. See, that consciousness is, I think, what they call the Tathagatagarbha. Like, okay, Madhyamaka says you can't get hold of anything ultimately, but at the same time there's this sense of something that you just mentioned. It's all gold, it's all changing. So we have that sense. So maybe that's also true. Maybe the Tathagatagarbha, the Madhyamaka, the mind-only school, as we move, as the experience is moving from state to state, one will now become paramount, then another aspect of experience becomes paramount. Yes, there is an underlying pure state called Buddha, which is undefinable, indefinable, unfindable, and so on.

[60:10]

It sounds very much like the classic examples or illustrations of God or the Godhead or something, or Brahma. And that feels conscious that something is gold and precious. Brahman is all things being manifested. We play in all the parts of God, you know, that's the Indian, the Hindu point of view. And that seems very, you know, a lot of people practice a whole lifetime of happiness with that, that story. Then there is no story that you can hold on to. And then there is, yes there is, underneath there is the unstained consciousness itself, which cannot be defined, which cannot be found, and all of that. But that would also be considered to be lacking inherent existence? Well, whatever it is, we'll consider it. Thank you for saying that. We'll consider it. We'll name it. We'll try to shape it with our concepts. And we'll know that we're doing that out of whole cloth and we can't get to the bottom of the cloth which we make it up.

[61:16]

When that becomes an experience and we know that we can drop the stories as we learn them. As we take a step, we need the step, we need the story, then we leave the boat, go to the next, cross the next street, we leave the boat, cross the next one. But most of us, I don't know about most of us, I probably stopped doing that when I was about 15, you know, in some way. Kind of caught on an image of the world that I really wanted to maintain. And then built on that, you know. And got out of high school. well maybe we can just finish this this is why the buddhas have appeared in the world one after the other and why the zen masters have taught generation after generation this is 18 although there has never been anything to give to anyone or anything to receive from anyone it is necessary to experience this as intimately as feeling the nose on your own face can't be said better or more clearly

[62:20]

what we've been talking about. Zen study demands that you investigate and awaken on your own. After awakening, you should meet others who are also enlightened. That's Tuesday night, obviously. If you do not meet anyone enlightened, you will just become obsessive and cannot be called a Zen seeker. Interesting what Cook says. Read that. I can't find where you are. If you do not meet a person... Well, it says, when you are enlightened, you should meet a person who is a true teacher. And if you do not meet a person, you will be like a bodiless spirit, vainly dependent on grasses and adhering to trees. Well, what that means, of course, different kind of appearances of things. And that's a kind of madness. You see, what's so interesting is that it is cultural because, you know, a woman came to me, she's an 80-year-old woman, and she said, when I was six years old, I went to my mother and I said, we're never born, Mommy. And she said, yeah, yeah, sure, run along and play, strange little girl.

[63:26]

And a little bit older, they would have given her some Prozac or something, you know, and sent her to see a psychiatrist. It would have happened in India. They'd put a garland around her neck, worship her as Shakti or Shiva or something, and then say, go out and play, or go to school now, or go sweep the steps. So you get confirmed. But this young woman, when she was young, this girl, for the next 12 years she was so depressed, she wanted to kill herself. They took away her light. Saturn eats his children. No, that's not true. Oh, how much baloney that is. So we've all bought that game. I think we all had that sense of being eternal, the brightness of our life. And slowly we hide it behind something. So we have that feeling that we are light and that there is something like eternal light in us. There's no doubt about us having that feeling. Anyway, it's getting too late.

[64:31]

Should we finish it? You may think, no, it should be clear from the story of Shana Basu that you should not waste your life. You should not just be a spontaneous naturalist. I like that. What does it say? Do not vainly express naturalistic views. What's a naturalistic view? Well, if my life just comes naturally, I mean, this is the other side of it. Why practice if we're always... Conventionality. Huh? Conventionality is naturalist. What? Conventionality? Well... Going upstream then, isn't it? Doing what comes naturally, people say. I'm just doing what comes naturally. This isn't a pocket thousand. Huh? This isn't a pocket thousand. As a sorcerer, wizard? There's a use of the word natural. Do not vainly express naturalistic views or put your own individual views first. That'd be a very good point there. It's in India, though, isn't it? Well, but this is... Yeah, this is Kazan talking about something for a long time.

[65:32]

That's a very good point. I mean, there was a time when the Zen, you know, school in China and the Taoist school were not happy with each other at all. But in Japan, was there an issue about Daoism? Not so much in Japan, but I think, I don't know, but that's a good point. Maybe it refers to Daoism. I like that. Yeah. Okay, where are we? You may think that Buddhism is just for special people, and you are not fit for it. But such ideas are the worst kind of folly. Yeah, there you go. Who among the ancients was not immortal? Whose personality was not influenced by social and material values? Once they studied Zen, however, they penetrated all the way through. There may have been differences in periods of true, imitative, and decadent Buddhism in India, China, and Japan, yet there have been plenty of saints and sages who realized the fruits of Buddhism. Since you have the same faculties as the ancients, so wherever you are, you are still human beings.

[66:35]

Your physical and mental elements are no different from those of Kashyapa and Ananda, so why should you be different from the ancients with respect to enlightenment? It is only by failure to find out the truth and master the way that you lose the human body in vain without ever realizing what you have in yourself. Ananda took Kashyapa as his teacher because he learned that he should not waste his life, and for this reason he also accepted Sanabhasa as a disciple. Thus the way was transmitted from teacher to apprentice. The treasury of the eye of truth and the ineffable mind of the nirvana communicated in this way are no different from when the Buddha was in the world. Therefore... Shakiba? Yeah, go ahead. and therefore do not regret that you were not born in the land of the Buddha's birthplace, and do not lament that you have not met the Buddha living in the world. In the past, you planted seeds of virtue and formed a affinity of wisdom. It is because of this that you have gathered here in this congregation. This is indeed like standing shoulder to shoulder with Kashyapa, sitting knee to knee with Ananda.

[67:40]

So while we may be hosts and guests for a day, you will be Buddhas and Zen masters all your lives. Do not get stuck in objects of sense. Do not pass the days and nights in vain. Work on the way carefully. Reach the ultimate point to which the ancients penetrated and receive the seal of enlightenment and directions for the future and the present day. I have another verse to clarify the present story. The silksmith's river on a mountain miles high. Piercing rocks, sweeping clouds, it surges forth. Scattering clouds, sending flowers flying in profusion. The length of white silk is absolutely free of dust. The length of white silk, of course, is the mind free of all dust. It's interesting because in this poem, it kind of harkens to Shenui's poem with... The mirror. Yeah. But it's already free of dust.

[68:43]

And the source of this river, the unfindable, ungraspableness of mind. Okay. Any questions to finish up with? Could you finish later where he says that about... greatest folly or something? Because here Cook says, such a view is truly the stupidest of stupid views. Actually, I don't know. So maybe host and guest for a day? Well, I think host and guest refers to principle and function. in Chinese, the host and the guest. In the five ranks of tozan-ryokai, there's the guest within the host, the host within the guest, the guest and the host, and just the guest and the guest and the host and the host.

[69:43]

The ultimate and the relative or the conventional. Now you emphasize one, now you emphasize the other, now they're together. And they also refer, of course, as we know from are chanting in the morning that guests and hosts refer to one of the, two of the hexagrams in the yin. So you might want to look them up sometime and see what it says. Interesting. I have a historical question. Historical question? Okay. I was reading the introduction in the cook, and I got the impression that There was this early separation into two lines in Sotozen, and one is Eheiji and one is Sojoji. And our line is Sojoji because we have Keizan in it, right? Is that right? Well, Keizan also went back to Eheiji, too. Oh, okay. So... I guess the first question is, did that split continue?

[70:46]

I mean, the impression I got from this was that there was that separation. It did for quite a while, but Kaizen, excuse me, not anymore at all. I don't think so. We can look at Andy's chart. There's just Soto Zen. I mean, it was Kaizen that took Dogen Zen and made it into what they called Soto Zen and propagated the church. Mm-hmm. And his teacher was Tetsugikat, who fell into bad favor with at least half of the monks at Eheji and was kicked out like Richard Baker. So this happened with Dogen. This happened with almost every single sangha you can think of through time is there's always at some point a sizzle, a break. Almost always. And why? Because we settle into some particular idea of what we got the truth, and they don't. Which is true.

[71:52]

I thought I got the sense in this that those two branches continued all the way. That's not so. Well, at least I've got two disciples. No, not that. Well, there's not two sort of churches today. Within, well, they said within one's soul. I don't think so. You could ask Brett. I don't think so. Okay, that's more than likely.

[72:16]

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