this session schedule is not so difficult. I think so. When you're only getting three or four hours sleep, even an extra ten minutes seems wonderful, but now we're getting six hours, if you go to bed quickly, five and a half. Anyway, two hours, at least two hours more than usual. and we have some shorter periods of zazen. One reason we changed the schedule a little is I think it's advantageous to sometimes

[01:03]

experiment a little. Eventually it will become maybe settled but while we can experiment maybe we should. And quite a number of new people have been having some trouble with their legs and some older people too. And my own feeling about the reason is that a few years ago not so many people sat well and so there was space for new people to try to adjust their legs or take various partial postures or move occasionally. But with each year I've watched, the more a larger percentage of people sit well, the faster everyone else sits well or sits in full lotus or quite still. In the first two or three years, we all sat just as much, but only one or two people sat full lotus and it took

[02:32]

the several years to learn to sit full lotus. Now people learn in a few months, often. And for new people, I think, particularly last Sashin, where there were quite a few people who had never sat a seven-day Sashin before, to be surrounded by a majority of people who have no difficulty, or it doesn't seem they have so much difficulty, makes you sit maybe too straight or too much at first for your legs. In Japan there's no question about it if you're in a monastery you don't move. But everyone has much more preparation before they come to the monastery. By the time you're there you don't move. But here we combine that preparation and monastic life. So maybe in the sessions here at Green Gulch in San Francisco, the schedule should be a little easier than at Tassajara. I don't think there's any easy way to tell people. Don't feel the pressure of people sitting on either side of you not moving. It's okay to move.

[04:01]

I'm not saying it's okay to move, by the way. If you can sit without moving, that's much better. But still, we need some space to try out our legs and get used to our legs and to be gentle and considerate to our legs, to not just force them. So in this session I want us to emphasize some intimacy. As I was speaking about getting up on the tan yesterday,

[05:14]

not stepping on the eating board with your foot and not just stepping up onto the time that kind of practice is actually a kind of intimacy intimacy with each thing and its differences instead of, you know, riding roughshod and with people we need that kind of patience to have intimacy with another person you need some patience, some detachment, not too much ego. So, with this schedule

[06:21]

rhythm and our work period. Maybe with work period we need a little more sleep. I'd like us to try to recognize things in each, each thing in its own realm. Like I noticed some of you when you hit with the stick, the first hit is quite good, but the noise is a little loud, so second hit you're not so good. I think the first hit you hear, that's too loud or it must hurt, so you ease up on the second hit. This kind of perception is rather constricted. If your body is hitting, your body should do it. You don't have a control tower up here, where eyes and ears are controlling. You should be able to do it almost with your eyes closed. Your body should do it. And if it's too hard or too easy, your body should know it, not your ear.

[07:46]

Don't pay any attention to the sound, unless someone screams or something. Your body has its own eyes and ears. Each thing has its own senses. So when you do something with your body or your arms, your arms should tell you about it, not your ears or eyes. So it should just be some movement once and then your body again, just a continuation without a checking up in between by your eyes or ears. That's what I mean by And I want to talk some more about this Blue Cliff Records case number five, which I'd like to try to make, see if I can say something useful about it for you. You know, CEPO,

[09:23]

says. Picking up a husk of millet. A husk of millet is supposed to be extremely tiny. If you pick up the whole earth, he says, it's like holding up a husk of milt. It's very much like Blake's to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower to hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. It's quite similar except in this story Seppo and Engo and

[10:51]

are trying to teach us how to teach Buddhism. Case number four, which I haven't spoken about, is about how not to teach Buddhism and the danger of form and expression. And this case is about how to teach Buddhism. We can say, he's saying, you know, the macrocosm and microcosm are the same, express one another. But I don't think that conveys... I don't think that conveys what Seppo is trying to say. Why would he...

[12:32]

What would he hold up a... speak about holding up a husk of millet? What would he do that for? It's talking about, of course, form arising from emptiness, the second principle. When you're creating form, how you express something, when you try to express something. I think all of you must have had some experience of having, you know, five minutes seem like an hour or a long time. Or looking at something and finding a kind of glow in it.

[14:04]

or seeing some larger pattern in things. And we feel some aesthetic satisfaction if you're watching, say, a stream or plants. Not just seeing the plants, you suddenly see some way the plants have some order or pattern or mudra. So in a way he's speaking about how we see the mudra in things, how with an eye, you know, your two eyes see things from the outside, this way and this way, so you can get a feeling of its depth. But the eye of Buddhism should see things from all points of view at once or from inside. When you have that kind of vision, this sashin is a kind of mudra or something, mantra. When you can see that kind of pattern in events of the day,

[15:31]

You know what's going to happen to a student or what's going to happen in our society. You know, I don't mean some magic power or something exact, but clearly you can see the mudra maybe, in everything. So Setpo is saying something like this. And he says, throw this tiny husk of millet down in front of you and you won't be able to find it. And, of course, it will just look like dust, you know? You won't be able to find it amongst the other dirt or straw or whatever. Or, if you throw the whole world down, you know, it is, you know, everything all at once. And you can't find it either. It's like, he says, looking for a lacquered pail in a dark room.

[17:03]

So then he says, beat the drum and let's all look everywhere. And this is like some way of saying how futile it is and also saying this is what we're doing in Zen because before I lecture you always beat the drum and everyone gathers and we discuss Buddhism. So we are trying to find some way to express this unapproachable black or pale. And it's necessary to do so to teach Buddhism. What's extraordinary to me is how someone like Seppo has the nerve or

[18:11]

what's more, the confidence to think that he can say, picking up the whole world is like something the size or like holding a husk of a millet seed. How he expects anyone to really understand that is amazing to me. And yet, Engo understood it and Setcho and Suzuki Roshi and we, you know, maybe understand it. So, in the introduction angle and expresses this kind of feeling, that in order to make the teaching in this great secular world, in order to make the teaching serviceable, we must have a man of perfect, a person of perfect personality. In other words, we need someone like Seppo.

[19:41]

or you. The fact that Seppo can hold it up is the answer to this question. The question he's posing, Seppo's posing, how to make this as Engle points out, how to make this teaching serviceable. So in a way it's like the millet seed husk is holding up seppu. So this millet husk is holding up seppu and saying this is how to make the teaching serviceable, to see with the eye of Buddha. How a millet seed is a lacquered pail.

[20:46]

So it's also a kind of response to the feeling we have. How do you make this teaching accessible to people? And the emphasis in Zen is not to give many people a mantra or some kind of accessible practice, but to create someone like Seppo, So the next part is, but to create someone like Sepo, when a man is about to be put to death, there should not be, there must not be roaming eyes or hesitating hands and feet. Enlightenment must be instantaneous. So, such a perfect personality, to create such a perfect personality, it must be like this and it must be able to. One must be able to be like this. So then Ingo goes on to say,

[22:45]

For example, and here he's trying to say what, how you teach. For example, to create someone like Seppo, to teach somebody, guidance and temperament or circumstances must be one. Positive and negative methods must be unrestricted. Form and reality must not be two. Expedient, expedience and the real must not be separated, must be together. When you're ready to put aside provision, the first principle, the second principle is there. But if you discard the second principle altogether, you can't teach anyone. A day like

[24:18]

Yesterday can't be helped. For a teacher a day like yesterday can't be helped. Today again my transgressions fill the heavens. But if you are enlightened you won't be misled by me. you won't attach to what I say. But if you haven't reached that stage you will have to put yourself in the mouth of the tiger and you will lose life and body. So again, this kind of Zen anecdote and philosophy. Again, always, because Zen is the patriarchal school, always the millet seed is, husk is holding up seppu, holding up each patriarch.

[25:44]

only in the actions of a perfect personality, by which you know how not to be misled, can we understand Buddhism, can we express this lacquered veil. So guidance and temperament or circumstances must be in accord. Suzuki Roshi says this is like hitting a bell. Every bell, actually every spot on a bell is different

[26:57]

and particularly these handmade bowl bells. And if you just use the same kind of gesture for each bell, you'll get a kind of rinky-dink sound, a clink. You'll hear the clink of the wood. Somehow you have to, when you hit a bell, have to be able to enter into the bell's already ready-to-be-vibrating space. So almost there's no sign of, no sound of contact. You know, once the bell is going, you can actually enter into the space of it and increase the amplification. But you should be able to do that while it looks like it's sitting still. Actually, it's still reverberating from yesterday, but you can't hear it. So each time you hit a bell, it must be in accord with the bell. So each time a teacher teaches, it must be in accord with the student and the circumstances of that moment.

[28:16]

And the background here is this. The background of this is, on the one hand, not being that kind of Zen student who is so interested in emptiness that he's no longer spontaneous. There is some kind of calculation or carefulness in everything he does. You feel his mind moving with his body. But his body doesn't have its own mind. Caught too much in the first principle. Retreating to practice, you know. Too much. But it also means not to take that mudra which we can feel sometimes like in a Buddhist ceremony where it's more clear sometimes and being caught by those kind of whisks and sticks and chanting and ceremonial Buddhist life.

[29:44]

And a more maybe subtle problem, which is, if you do Zazen enough, and maybe this is one of the real criticism, not too much. So if you do Zazen enough, you have quite a taste for things before they take form. And not existing on that moment when you can't say form or emptiness or anything. So in that case, you know, expression can become a kind of drama. And teaching Zen can become some technique, sometimes positive method, sometimes negative method. I've talked enough about those two methods, most of you know, I think. So that's the, you know, stink of Zen that many teachers talk about. Particularly you have in dramatic, you know,

[31:18]

stories of this kind. If your anger, you know, you don't feel anger anymore, but sometimes anger is called for, is your anger play-acting? You know, it's actually a kind of problem for people. How to be really angry when you're not angry? Sometimes we are angry or sad or perturbed, hungry, you know. How to be hungry, you know. How to eat something without discriminating, without overeating. without having too many rules. So guidance and temperament must be in accord.

[32:50]

Positive and negative methods must not be, must be unrestricted. It means that you have had enough experience, you know, that you have had enough discipline or control of yourself, that you no longer need to rein yourself in. And until you know how to control yourself, you can't trust yourself completely enough to not control yourself to not rein yourself in to just do everything absolutely as you wish without fear so this means positive and negative methods must be unrestricted spontaneously are completely in the world of form responding in any kind of mean or mundane situation or wonderful situation and sometimes more unmoved by the coming and going of things

[34:18]

And form and reality must not be two. Again, it's this background I spoke about. That your expression is not something contrived. That you're not comparing the kind of mind which compares this to this. then his anger isn't real anger. So from emptiness, what comes? Not something you've thought of, but something comes that you do or make. It means more than just zazen and the first principle. and more other, maybe something different than the creative activity of someone who's never known zazen. And expedience. And the real must be together.

[35:55]

This he means, Engo means here that there actually are never two choices in this flow of events in the three worlds of past, present and future. There aren't two aspects, just each time there's only one thing to do. How to know that one thing to do and not to be you know contrived or caught in some decision this or that when you have that eye of seeing the mudra of each thing there's no choice you know each thing and he expresses it in this the flow of events of past present and future there's only one thing to do in each case, in every case. So expedient and the real must be together. So we must be able to act in any kind of circumstance. This is, you know, everyday practice.

[37:20]

How do we have everyday practice? This is Hekiganroku's answer. So, Ngo says, scattering wheat and rice all over the courtyard, he says, a day like yesterday can't be helped. And even today, again, my transgressions fill the heavens. But if you're not, but if you are enlightened, he means if you have your eye open, you won't attach too much to what I say. You won't underrate my, each of our pure function. You'll see through my transgressions. If you don't, you'll be caught by everything, says Ingo. You'll have to be in the mouth of the tiger.

[38:48]

Anyway, in this way, that's enough for today, I think. In this way, by this kind of example, Zen teachers have tried to make us alert to the many pitfalls in our practice, in our simple Zazen practice, by which we tend to give things form and stray. How do we give things form? How do we act effortlessly, without caution? And yet how do we not get caught by the forms we try to give things or exist in. What is this being? So to this Manjushree

[40:30]

We just don't think. That represents wisdom or Buddha. But with our body we express something. And to each other we express something. It doesn't matter exactly how. But in each circumstances we are, we express, we are that single opportunity of that moment. of which there is no alternative. And whenever we speak about Buddhism, usually we're not talking, it's interesting if you read the Perfection of Wisdom, the Prajnaparamita literature, they often say, not such and such is the perfection of wisdom,

[42:00]

But they say such and such is the development of the perfection of wisdom. To exist without support is the development of the perfection of wisdom. So for our practice, it's not necessary to dance around in glass shoes on the exact point of reality. but to develop that confidence to take things to accept the reality of things just as you find them without qualification not worrying about whether it's right that 50% is the development of the perfection of wisdom I think you understand what I'm saying.

[43:30]

To be continued...

[43:39]

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