Do you hear me today? If so, please raise your hand or something. Our thinking is marked by various directions. You know the five skandhas are form, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness. And everything we perceive or

[02:25]

notice or in any way of knowledge can be classified according to these five. And mostly in this sasheen I've been emphasizing impulses, noticing your impulses, where they come from, etc. Of course, our attitudes or society, etc., don't just enter into our impulses alone. What you see as form is conditioned, and how you feel, the mood or atmosphere with which you perceive, is conditioned.

[03:28]

and the very act of perception is conditioned. How your brain or retina sorts information is conditioned. You will see different things if that conditioning is changed. The most fundamental change is when you perceive space rather than form. But anyway, this is Sachin. I've been emphasizing impulses. And you'll notice in your thinking that The ten directions are there. It's very difficult to have a thought which doesn't push you somewhere on to the next moment or to get something done. Very few of us can just, say, make a gassho, as if there was nothing else in the world to do except make a gassho, nothing to do but bring two hands together.

[04:52]

no other event precedes it, antecedes it, follows it. and nothing else is in your consciousness except your gassho. Usually our gassho is leading to the next thing. Some of us enter

[05:53]

Each moment some of us feel we have many paths and we choose reluctantly one of them late. And other people don't see so many paths and they right away are into the next thing. They see what comes next and this act isn't finished and they're into the next one. And our thinking has such marks, up or down or over there, and past, present and future. So you can begin to see these marks. And in zazen, in your breathing, it's almost impossible not to have some idea of your breathing. There's various kinds of breathing, you know, audible and rough, gasping, some kind of emotional breathing.

[07:27]

some restful, smooth breathing. And if you have to have an idea about your breathing, some movement toward smoother and smoother, finer and finer breathing, and a similar state of mind will be helpful. not a state of mind that jumps from one thought to the next or tends to sink out of sight or floats about, you know, topic to topic, rather uneasy and unstable. Your posture will help your mind and your breathing will help. So let yourself and zazen move towards smoother and smoother breathing and even mind, more and more even.

[08:54]

And when some impulse comes up, you can notice where it comes from. We're not, although we call ourselves students, we're not in college. This is not college or students like college students. college students are preparing to do something. And for us, this is already our career, our way of life. What I said yesterday was almost completely a commentary on the tense ox-herding picture. I'd like to try to comment more on what we think we're doing and what we actually are doing as members of a sangha.

[10:24]

the ox-herding verses for number ten. You know, number ten is... Number nine, there's various arrangements, but maybe most common is ten. And the ninth one is return to ground or origin. It's just a circle, or just nothing at all. Everything just is as it is, or there's emptiness. Next picture shows this funny fat guy with a staff carrying his possessions, who is sometimes identified with Maitreya. Maitreya means, actually, your vow. The coming Buddha is you in the form of your vow to save all sentient beings. Anyway, so this picture is identified with Maitreya. this old guy. And there's various verses, but they go something like... I'll just list the characteristic lines from the various verses.

[12:21]

A brushwood gate is firmly closed. No holy person, no saint or enlightened person can perceive him, can notice him. His illuminated nature is buried deep within him. He enters the marketplace carrying a hollowed-out gourd, carrying a hollowed-out gourd, and he visits freely the bars, fish stalls, to awaken drunkards to themselves. He enters the marketplace with bare feet and bare chest. His face is all dirty and his head is smeared with ash. And a laugh is streaming down his face like tears.

[13:53]

Sometimes his face shows the traits of the horse or donkey or ox. Sometimes he looks like an animal. Sometimes he speaks a Hunnish or some foreign language. And sometimes Chinese. Maybe sometimes English. He's of a foreign race. His staff, his iron staff, springs out of his sleeve like the wind. Withered, although he doesn't stoop to miracles, he causes withered trees to bloom. All the palace gates open, all the gates spring wide open. If you know, or because he knows, he knows

[15:48]

He's realized himself but is unknown to himself. Okay, those are the lines. These ten orchestrating pictures are pretty interesting and pretty rather ancient feeling. I don't know the origin exactly. There's probably some historical origin of the paintings and stories, but the story must be pretty old, I think. They tend to illustrate some various levels of enlightenment and stages of practice. in some ideal way, and last stage is, maybe represents highest stage of enlightenment and the most perfect realization of Sangha. Rather different from the traditional Buddhist, non-Zen idea of Sangha, which is some group of people who follow such and such number of precepts and live differently from other people.

[17:17]

In this one, he, this old man, lives the same as other people. He can be a drunkard or fishmonger, butcher. Those are professions you weren't supposed to be in Buddhism. You know, earliest form of... earliest representation of a zazen posture, you may know, you may have seen the picture, it's rather widely published, from Mohenjo-daro, about 3000 B.C., I think, of a person sitting in zazen posture, but he has a ox mask on with horns. Have you seen that, all of you? Anyway, it's earliest known picture of Sazen posture, I believe. And he has, it's either an ox sitting or it's a man with an ox face and... And drinking gourd. He's carrying a hollowed out gourd.

[18:45]

The commentary says this is sometimes used for drinking, but actually, hollowed-out gourd represents in traditional culture something very ancient, and I don't... this is my own guess, actually, own understanding. When you look, a hollowed-out gourd is found throughout, the hollow gourd, is found throughout all, almost all that I know about primitive societies, early societies. I don't think we should say primitive. And it's not a wild plant. It's a plant that's been cultivated. And it's not native to most of the parts of the world where it occurs. And so the seed just doesn't float to another continent or blow on the wind and land, because if it lands it won't grow unless there's a farmer there to plant it and take care of it, because it's not a wild plant. And the hollowed-out gourd seems to have been maybe the earliest drinking cup.

[20:08]

and may have been the earliest musical instrument. Anyway, its very early use is, I think, for music and for drinking. And I would guess it was connected with soma, the drinking of some magical liquid which was psychedelic. and represented that. Of course, a drinking cup in China and Japan also represents that, because sake is not considered alcohol in the same way. It's considered alcohol if you drink too much, but if you drink just a little, it's considered some religious drink. And all of the Shinto shrines, which are the most basic form of nature religion, maybe, that still exists in a sophisticated form in the world. All of the Shinto shrines have stacked around it great kegs of sake, tons of sake, I mean walls of sake. And also, anyway, so this gourd, by the way,

[21:33]

you know, the pipes of pan, you know, those kind of reed pipes, an early musical instrument? They've been discovered throughout the world, too, with almost, and in many cases, identical pitches. You know, like .0027 or something, if you figure it out mathematically, the pitch is so identical that it's impossible not to think that there was very wide spread of culture by canoes and such like in Neolithic times. Gary Snyder feels this very strongly. He feels Buddhism is a sophisticated version of Neolithic culture and religion. something like that. I'd have to check with him exactly what he thinks, but something like that. Harry was saying, again, Harry Roberts was saying, how the Indians on the California coast have canoes. There are many legends among the Indians in California about

[22:53]

someone coming across the Pacific. And they have canoes, which are used in calm waters, which have a great thing on the front, which is only useful in waves, big waves. And they have what they call the heart of the canoe. In the center they have this hump in the heart of the canoe, which they always make. The canoe isn't right if they don't make this heart. No one knows what it's for, but they've discovered that early canoes in the Orient had this hump and it was for a bamboo mast to sit on. The bamboo fit over it and you had a mast. So all I'm saying is that this kind of story, these poems of the tense, ox-herding picture. We can see here how they are saying, you should be free of society, outside society. Your sangha should be outside a particular society. You should be of a foreign race. You should speak Hunnish or some foreign language. You carry this drinking gourd, which I think is symbolic of some widespread ancient culture. And your face is dirty.

[24:22]

and your face shows the traits of animals, ox, horse, donkey, and you are rather naked So to be free of society, to be free of the conditions of your particular society, means you can recreate your society. When you do something, you recreate it, because you're starting from zero. You can be a fishmonger, or you can be a Zen teacher, or you can be a businessman, or professor, or whatever. And the idea is not so much to participate in society, to find some place in it, but to recreate society, whatever society you're in. And by that process of recreation, other people can recreate it. But by that process, society will improve, with some feeling like that. If you can be free of society, but then do the forms of it,

[25:53]

This being free of it and yet doing it is the way society slowly improves. So this 10th oxfording picture shows highest form of enlightenment and most ideal form of Sangha. And this idea of Sangha is rather new in the West. we come from a rather different tradition. Not so different, but a little different. And it will be interesting to see what you men and women of the Sangha, what happens in our society, because you are part of a historical situation. Jim asked yesterday about... talked about history. And, of course, there are many useful purposes for history, but Buddhist understanding of history is rather... includes this understanding too, which is that history is usually an abstraction of unique and

[27:22]

repetitive events, repetitive both in sequence and simultaneous. And from the unique and simultaneously or sequentially repetitive events, you create some pattern suggesting some meaning. But any such abstraction leaves out millions of events. The only… So if you tried to write a history which included all events and left no events out, it would be you yourself. You yourself now are history with no events left out. So you are the sum total of history and you yourself are participating in that and change history by each action. like a quartz stone. In one light it may look like a dull stone, and you turn it and it flashes. And your individual history can lead to your being a bum or a Buddha. Same events, you know. If you turn it this way, people say, he did this and he had a nervous breakdown and then he was drinking a great deal and

[28:46]

Then he flunked out of the university and then he practiced zazen and became a Buddha. Or he practiced zazen and failed. Anyway, same history can produce a bum or a Buddha. And so each moment you are recreating the sum total of history. It's maybe a Buddhist view of history. That's the view of the Lotus Sutra. Pride of the monkey is drowned in the rapid stream. The auctioneer Anyway, there's some poem that starts, Voice of Monkey is drowned in the rapid stream. If you understand the Lotus Sutra, the sound of the market auctioneer, the color of the ridgeline of mountains, etc., list various things, are all the voice of the Dharma.

[30:16]

Still, some abstraction from the sum total may be useful. So today I'm talking a little bit about history. I'd like to say a little bit about colleges and monasteries and things like that. Have I ever talked with you about colleges and universities? No? Recently I talked with someone about it. But the university, you know, as an institution, is older than any nation state. And so when the free speech movement

[31:25]

and the recent college disturbances came close to destroying the university, and may have destroyed the university. We don't know. It may be just a small problem and it may represent some big change. It's one of the most significant events in Western history. And the free speech movement is interesting, because it didn't have anything to do with politics, particularly. But it became the starting point for much radical left politics. And Berkeley is, by many radical people, considered the heartbeat of Western radical politics. I hope radical politics are in better shape than Berkeley. Anyway. Universities are ... this is so complicated, I don't know if I want to get into it. Universities have traditionally been the preserve of a small group of people, rather maybe an elite group of people, or at least a different group of people than others in the society.

[33:03]

The university got greedy and professors wanted some actual social power. And when you have universities inviting large amounts of government money into their system, and you have professors like Kissinger taking political positions, you have not just advisors, you have situation which will destroy the university. And when you start trying to educate many, many people who don't, who that's not their intention, in other words, when the university, which is supposedly a community of professional scholars, becomes a status, I'm glad so many people went to college, you know, actually, because you can It's changed our society. So many people are conversant with things. But at the same time, mostly a college-type education is not designed for hundreds of thousands of people. It's not designed for 25,000 people in the whole United States, let alone 25,000 people at Berkeley.

[34:26]

So all these people do it, but none of them are... a very small percentage are going to become professional scholars. So you have... 99% of the population of universities no longer respected the institution. And you also have... It's also that not only did they not respect the university, but they... respect the institution, but they also didn't... I think there was a general rebellion against its role of producing an elite. This brings up so many questions, you know. I suspect some of you don't like elites. And I think we don't have to like or dislike them, but they're a fact of life. Anyplace you look, except in very, very small units, you have the production of elites. Again, talking to Harry, among all the Indians, there's a sense of high family.

[35:56]

And there's no avoidance of it, because people will be attracted to similarities. So intelligent people will be attracted to very intelligent people. And dumb unattractive people will be attracted to attractive people. And if they're smart enough, they'll marry attractive people. So pretty soon. Pretty soon, within a few generations, you'll get the production of people who are rather more intelligent and rather more attractive than other people. If this is used coercively, you have a great problem in society, but it happens. No. You yourself, you will choose someone who's as intelligent and beautiful as possible, I bet. And so you're creating an elite when you do that. And also societies have almost always, again, except in very...aside from elite, they also attempt to embody an elite or embody a particular person with the attributes of the society. So no matter, you know, maybe in a New England village with a town meeting, this doesn't happen, or in small villages in Europe.

[37:30]

No matter how we draw up the Constitution of the United States and create a president, this president will be embodied as a king or emperor in people's emotional sense of the Nixon or Ford or whoever representing the society. So there's no way that such a person won't get a lot of power, whether it's Chairman Mao or Stalin or the Japanese emperor. you always have in society is the embodiment, the tendency for the society to embody one person with its attributes. These are rather important because Buddhism has survived a long time as an institution. Maybe it's the oldest. And it has very developed ways of dealing with the problem of elites and the embodiment of tradition, and which the main example is transmission.

[38:54]

how to survive that embodiment and how it can be useful to other people. Mostly, when you're embodied in such a way, it destroys you. That's what I was expressing when you see someone like Jerry Brown, Governor-elect Brown. By the way, he's spoken to a number of people I know about how much he liked being here and coming to Tassajara and so on. So universities are supposed to be a group of scholars who are self-governing, and as an institution it's self-governing, so it's separate from separate from society and from the national government. And university has its origins in both Alexandria, very early universities, and also in monasteries.

[40:22]

maybe the kind of way we're studying and living together is the origin of universities, as a way of life, as a self-governing way of life. And our country was founded partly because of this problem. You know, Henry VIII wanted to get married to someone else, and the Catholic Church wouldn't allow him to. So he destroyed Catholicism in monasteries in England, and Cromwell and the other Protestant leaders destroyed monasticism. And so state and... This is very brief. State and church got very mixed up, so people came to America to get rid of, to have again separation of church and state, which had existed up until the Protestant Reformation.

[41:40]

The Catholic Church had been not only separate from the state, it had been more universal than the state. It was international, and property was owned internationally. And as a member of a sangha, you are more international. People come to San Francisco to see Buddhism from other parts of the world and from this San Francisco is rather considered a Buddhist city. They may be right. So Zen Center exists not by economic power or military power, which is the main basis of a society, but exists by this old tradition of self-governing communities, which was established in our Constitution and by which we exist. If we had to exist by economic power,

[43:07]

we couldn't exist in the same way. Zen Center exists because of this tradition. And the church is the most protected institution within our constitution. So you actually exist and are having your life based not on economic power, but on this ancient tradition. Anyway, monasteries almost disappeared in the West, but the university, which preceded the forming of national states, survived national states and survived several, two major religious changes, and survived the

[44:40]

French Revolution and change into recent modern states and survived up until today. Maybe they'll continue. But what I'm suggesting to you is that a community such as ours actually touches into very ancient tradition going very, very far back in our society. preceding society as a practice and institutionally having a long history in our society. And it may be that there's a significant shift going on now from universities as the prime continuer of traditions, because universities maybe have lost their way. Universities rather took over the job of international, historical, cultural continuity. And even when universities became national, still, they were rather international, too, in character. I think it's significant that Bill Thompson, William Erwin Thompson, who's a historian, has called the community he started, Lindisfarne.

[46:08]

He feels the universities have died, and he wanted a new type of community of scholars and students based on practice. And the name Lindisfarne is the name of an Irish monastery which preserved culture during the Middle Ages. So we actually may be seeing a shift from a society based on economic power and a society in which culture is carried by academicians and professors to more carried by craftsmen and by people who practice Maybe this is a return to the more ancient tradition, actually. I'm not saying, you know, it's happening, going to happen or will predominate or anything like that, but I'm saying that something like this is in process right now and it affects us.

[47:35]

it may become main thing and it may just be a short historical interlude. Anyway, we are part of, socially and personally, we are part of a tradition that's found in our language and in the assumptions of the forms of society we live in.

[48:44]

Those are carried by architecture in many ways, not just language. Gardens. So all of this comes up in the fourth skanda, impulses. And again I'm emphasizing the degree to which you are doing things with others, with history, with each other, whether you like it or not, and the totally at one with role that doing with others has in Buddhism.

[49:52]

This may throw some light on why initiation is such an essential part of practice. Dogen went so far as to say, all Buddhas are those who have been initiated. And it's interesting to be free of society, to be able to recreate your society, to be a source person in that sense, to be able to start from zero, is also to be initiated, to do something with your society or do something with others, which means a profound giving up of yourself. You already have done it.

[51:21]

it's very important that you acknowledge it. But some of us don't actually want to ever turn ourselves over to anyone else. The ability to do this is probably the primary secret in all cultural transmission and in Buddhism. Without that you're some isolated anachronism, and who just get along without really ever knowing anything but an inescapable Sunday afternoon. By going along with another person, what I mean is Usually we'll say, we'll go to the movies with someone. If we also want to go to the same movie, that's not going along with someone. To go along with someone means you'll go to a movie you don't want to go to, that they want to go to. In Buddhism, you can say, well, all right, we're all practicing Buddhism, we have the same goal, enlightenment or practice or something.

[52:54]

We don't, from our own history, we don't have the same goal. Only from Buddha do we have the same goal. From your own history, what you think enlightenment is, or being with someone else, or practice, is entirely separate or different for each one of you. So to know our similarity of goal, our deep goal, requires being able to give up your own goals. If you can do it for a moment, truly do it for a flash, you can then have some cosmic flexibility. to follow your own way, to follow someone else's way, to speak Hunnish, to speak Chinese, etc. Some of us are still shopping around for the ideal person or group of people to throw our lot in with.

[54:09]

I don't know if you'll find such an ideal group of people. Your karma has already chosen for you. Anyway, this willingness is the meaning of initiation. By your own power or decision alone you can't attain anything. Your power or decision must reside in some larger framework, which is what we're trying to

[55:46]

talk about here in the Sashim, how to begin. How to begin, just simply begin Zazen. How to get out of our usual treadways. And we begin by knowing something so well, we know everything. Knowing Green Gulch Valley or Tassajara or life around Page Street so well, by that we know everything. Knowing your own impulses and consciousness so well,

[57:11]

that you can be free of it. Is there something you'd like to talk about? Excuse all the history. Some part of that? Without converting the Force? When we're talking or thinking, I thought you meant, considering that the heart is what we are talking today, is the Force also involved?

[58:21]

I can only joke about it, I'm sorry. I was going to say, he's neighing everything you say. Anyway, that's a good question. That is a wonderful question. Which do you hit, the cart or the horse? Please enjoy. Do you mean yesterday's and today's lectures, or any lecture? Yesterday's and today's lecture. What do you find, this kind of talking, confusing or interesting, helpful? Tempting. Tempting. How is it tempting? It's pretty easy to deal with the world.

[59:51]

Can you hear what he's saying? No. I guess he says, in short, that the way I've been talking yesterday and today is rather tempting. because it maybe is interesting and it also seems to be maybe an easy or easier way to deal with the world in historical, intellectual terms like that. Is that right? I don't know. For me it's not very important, you know, that kind of... the way I've been talking today and yesterday, but I think if we don't have some sketchy idea of the framework that we exist in, that this actually is a church, that when you're talking about the ten ox-herding pictures, you're talking about a person in society who usually, because he's a

[61:18]

possessor of the sacred, he has to live a different life than other people. The Catholic priest doesn't get married, etc., etc. The Protestant minister, a rabbi, is supposed to be honest and lead some kind of different life. And yet we have this tenth Oxfording picture where this guy is all dirty, doing anything he pleases, it looks like. And you, whether you know it or not, are pretty deeply, even if you left

[62:22]

after lecture, pretty deeply going to be impressed, imprinted with the way of life of sangha. And when you've reduced your life to some kinds of essentials and you have a sense of practice, this will inform what you do the rest of your life. And we have various ideas of, well, a religious person or a priest or a practicer or guru or whatever is such and such. Those ideas are very conditioned by our society and by our popular image of the Orient.

[63:26]

So it may be difficult for you to have a sense of how we exist in society, how the Sangha exists in society, what it means to be free of society and yet exist in society, and what our own tradition of historical cultural continuity via monastic and university institutions is. how those forms actually influence our form. So since we're talking about attitudes, I've been trying to talk about various basic attitudes that appear in our mind

[64:38]

and also which appear in the life that you're leading now. And the more you're familiar with this life and with Zen Center, the more you'll see them appearing. And in the life you can anticipate. So when we are There's a kind of craft here involved, because when you are trying to confront your attitudes and be free of them, if you don't have some idea of the historical relativity of attitudes and the consequences of that, you actually will not confront the most basic attitudes, the ones you'd most fear, or you take for granted, like air. For example, this is very simple, but talking about initiation again. You know, there's a poem by an Irish

[66:06]

monk that was written on the side of an illuminated manuscript which Samuel Barber has set to music. And they're quite beautiful. There's a whole series of them. One of them has the line, alone I came into the world and alone I shall go from it. Alone I came into the world and alone I shall go from it. Well, he didn't exactly come into the world alone. At least his mother was there. And somebody was there to receive him and take care of him for some time. But why do we have that feeling? What do we mean by alone? Are you alone when you come into the world? At what level of your consciousness do you experience being alone? And what do you mean by being together? Standing next to someone? Holding hands? Leaving a womb? Dying? At least he uses the verb, in the English translation anyway, alone I came into the world and alone I shall go from it. Go is without reference.

[67:30]

How we come with someone, how we do something with someone, how we meet someone, is very fundamental to practice, but to our life. But most of us have no idea of the realm in which meeting actually occurs. So we can say something, alone I came into the world. And you obviously did not come into the world alone. Maybe Jesus did, I guess. No, he had the virgin conception that he was a... Anyway, that's still not alone. And the ideas of crossing a threshold, you notice in that poem of the tenth, ox-herding picture over and over again, thatched gate, doors. Doors and gates appears all the way through it. And when you face your own boundaries or doors or barriers or gates, you have a profound reluctance to cross the threshold, which is true of all societies, all men and women of all societies.

[69:08]

And to face how alone we are, crossing that boundary, how our practice rises from us alone, is the only way we find out how we actually meet other people, how we actually know other people. Again, contradiction is very close to reality. 99% for all of your attempts to be with someone else are in the wrong realm. It's by your ability to be alone you meet other people. And it's at this point that initiation occurs. the recognition of how we actually are with others, inseparably, with all things. But our ideas about these things, alone or together or possible ways of living, completely clog up our ability to experience things directly.

[70:53]

So I'm just trying to stir things up a bit. Our practice, though, is just to sit, as Suzuki Roshi did, as Dogen did, as Bankei did, Joshu did. until we recognize our actual nature. It's rather difficult. We always want it to be something else. or to make something of it.

[72:02]

giving up knowing on your cushion, you may have a glimmer of how to practice.

[72:39]

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