What I've been trying to talk about, this asheen, is the background of our existence, or the foreground of our existence. And, of course, that's the real subject matter of Buddhism, and it's by its nature and not by its non-nature. Not something we can actually talk about. In some ways it's too obvious to talk about. It's so obvious that...

[01:01]

It's not polite to talk about it. It's embarrassing to talk about it. That's also extremely contradictory. And we're also... Of course, you know, then we don't talk much about warm-hearted practice or love or wisdom, even though it's the wisdom sutras. Still, we don't talk about wisdom, so-and-so is wise or something. But actually, you are practicing wisdom. I'd like to discuss what wisdom might mean.

[02:15]

This is a pretty important word in our society or in your life, you know, it's one of those really big words, wisdom. And I bet you, none of you have, almost none of you have ever looked it up in the dictionary or thought much about what could it possibly mean. Wisdom. Wise, dumb. I've always liked in India, you know, in America, of course it's gone out of business, but, or at least it's not being published. Our big magazine was Life. And in India, the big fiction magazine is Wisdom. Wisdom is one of those words which means everything.

[03:21]

If you do look it up, it of course means to see, and it's related to vision and advice, the vice part. And it... but in addition to meaning to... it means both to see and what is seen. And it also has the meaning of to reproach, to reproach or to guard. or to watch out for or to look at or to guide or seer.

[04:24]

And it's the same, it seems to be the same word as Veda, Rig Veda, Sanskrit. I guess that means something like one who has seen or one who has known the known or the seen. I like the reproach part, though, because the sense of a seer, I think, the sense of wisdom is one who takes responsibility for what you see. And that's a question in practice. Where do you drop your line of responsibility? There's another one. A capability which I've been using, or capacity I've been using.

[05:40]

Capacity is another word that means both sides, you know, of things. It means... It comes from capable, which means something like your hand's full, or to take it with your hands, and from spacious, which has something to do with pace, or taking, or to open, to lie open. So it's to take with your hands and get everything that extends beyond your hands? Or where? Where does it end? Yesterday I was talking about, from one of your questions about Suzuki And maybe I was a little misleading when I said that saschins are as painful.

[06:57]

My saschins still, after 15 years or so, are as painful as a third saschin. I suppose physically that's true, but I found... But it's also not true that satsang is very difficult for me because my mind doesn't deteriorate. I found, and it was maybe pretty closely related to, stop being grimacing, making those faces. when I discovered a pace by which I could get through saschins. And that pace is closely.

[08:03]

Maybe that pace is the first step toward your mind not deteriorating. And you can do some experiments and try to deteriorate your mind if you want. One good way to experiment with mind deterioration is to start with self-praise. You just said today, I don't know, maybe... By the way, when I said to count, to follow your exhale only, I didn't mean the whole session. Several of you have asked me about that. No, I just meant to try it out. I can see you going through your work week next week gasping for your inhaler.

[09:08]

Why are you gasping? So, your experiment can be. I want you to really get into praising yourself. Think of something that you really do deserve praise for. Not just something you're making up, something you're pretty glad you did, you're pretty satisfied that you did it. And you can tell yourself, yes, I did that, that's not so bad. And you'll feel some warm feeling. And then you can add a little fuel to the fire. And you can think, yes, not only did I do that. Also, yes, I helped that person, etc.

[10:14]

And I said such and such, or I influenced such and such, and it came out all right, or whatever. And you'll feel better and better for a while, and then you'll start to deteriorate. And you'll notice that you aren't not so alert or you kind of stumble or actually you're getting kind of a cruddy, cruddy state of mind. You can see the same deterioration, you know, if you go, say you go to the beach, to Muir Beach or Stimson Beach, and you lie in the sun. It's really wonderful. The sun is so, like, soft hands. and it's dark, you face the sand, and very private. But two days, or three days, or ten days, you start to deteriorate. You can't do it, you know. Drugs are the only answer.

[11:17]

Ten days on the beach, you couldn't make it alone without a little help from your friends. So anyway, you can watch your mind deteriorate. Or the same thing, you know, you have some flesh and fantasy. some positive fantasy or some dreamy, as someone said, state of mind, and you feel pretty good, but if you notice, actually, the quality of your mind starts to deteriorate. So, frankly, you know, Sashins became possible for me when my mind, I no longer got tired or exasperated or impatient with Sashins. each period, or the end and the beginning and middle are just the same. So even though my legs hurt like hell, my mind didn't mind.

[12:28]

And you'll find, as you must have found, that when your mind deteriorates, then the discomfort signals are overwhelming. And the pain is always chipping away at your state of mind, that's true. But you can get to the point where your mind doesn't deteriorate and then sashim, just like everyday life. An undeteriorated state of mind, I would also say, is similar to merit. Actually, it's not an accumulation, it's more like returning to the source or This is how contradictory... if you let go or you drop away ideas, or instead of trying to improve things, improve a situation, you're able to let go of a situation.

[13:31]

The sense in many stories, Zen stories, of he resumed the source or he resumed the origin, sometimes means emptiness. That contradictory state of mind, because it's a contradictory idea, is actually the capacity for experience, or merit. To describe it as merit describes it as something, when it's actually more like the absence of something. But you do, it is good for other people. Now, to try to talk about responsibility for what you see, I want to talk about your being a representative.

[14:34]

I don't know if this is a good way to make sense of this, but you are a representative of man or woman. and you're a representative of Zen Center, you're a representative of the Midwest or someplace, Los Angeles, and you're a representative of the human race, etc. I suppose, in that sense, wisdom would be someone who's always aware that they're a representative of the, I don't know, sentient beings, or the capacity of human beings. So, when I said I loved Suzuki Yoshi, you know, that's true and just like that, but to express it more accurately, I was so glad and grateful that someone who was a good representative of the human race existed.

[15:46]

What a relief to find a few good representatives. Because usually one doesn't find such good representatives. Most people are so scared to be alive or qualified about being alive or not sure they really deserve to be human beings or other people don't like them or they don't like other people or something. They haven't got their walking papers yet. or approvals. It's okay to be a human person, you know. They haven't got those papers yet. They don't know where to apply. Most people are like that. Sikheshi knew where to apply and he was acknowledged by his teacher. as a good representative of the lineage and of the human race, the human dead heat, the human star.

[16:56]

Maybe it should be the human relay race. but also there's the feeling in someone like Suzuki Yoshi of reproach. And it's partly reprojection, partly it's you expect your teacher to expect of you what you expect of yourself. I think that's right. feel uneasy around your teacher, you know, because you know how you don't fulfill what you expect of yourself. And you project that he knows or she knows that, too, and probably he or she does.

[18:12]

So there's that sense of, in someone likes of that projection, of that person being a kind of mirror of what we feel our capacity is. And also it's not just a projection, there's somebody really there who is looking at you. So also there's some fear or reservation And if that makes you angry, you know, maybe your teacher will try to get you to diminish your expectations.

[19:17]

If you can handle such expectations, maybe your teacher will allow it to occur. It's some interplay, mostly from the student side. And also, you know, speaking about Sashin, pain, It's not just... It's true when I feel you should be able to go through what it is to be a human being, a representative of the human race, and what we experience in sickness and various kinds of agony.

[20:27]

Sugrivi, I remember saying, many people have had their heads cut off by a sword. You should be prepared for that. I think that's true. Don't think you're going to escape life, or escape a sword. Some of you may not escape a sword, or a disease, or someone called me this morning who... I had to call a hospital and they said, I said, is so-and-so in the hospital? And they said, we have no information on that patient, on such a patient. And I said, you have no information on such a patient? And they said, we have no information on such a patient.

[21:29]

And I said, you have no information? There's no one by that name in the hospital? She said, I didn't say we didn't have such a patient. I just said we have no information on such a patient. I said, oh, a no-info patient. Which I found out before actually, there was this no-info patient. And it's somebody who has been trying to contact me the last few days. I don't know them. I guess we have not met, but anyway, this person's been trying to contact me. And a few nights ago, someone came to the house he'd never met before and shot him through the head and through the stomach. Now he didn't, I don't know what the situations were, perhaps he's in some situation that expected it, but Jay, you know, was of course shot in the alley out here.

[22:38]

So he's had a couple operations and I guess he's going to survive, but talking with him it sounded like there was a bullet in his head, and he was very unable to sustain in reality. It wasn't confusion, but some kind of loss of energy. You don't know whether you'll escape a bullet or what, actually you don't. So, to my mind, Zen and Sashin is pretty easy. This is pain. The pain of Sashin is pain you can stop at any time by uncrossing your legs. It helps a little anyway. Or it's not really damaging you or not too much. It's not really a serious problem.

[23:45]

So some warrior feeling, warrior being one who can face the worst. Some warrior feeling. That's all. That you can faith things. Faith, faith. this wisdom to see. But the problem is, we can't see. You know, often seers in literature are blind people, not only because they're often quite alert, but also because of this play of to see, and you can't see.

[24:57]

So, by background, I have some reservation about expressing things this way, but I'll do it anyway. There's light and dark, you know. There's A, you know, A plus B, and then there must be C. To say something, there must be a background or a contrast. If you have an object, it creates space. There can't be an object without space. If you had an object without space, you'd have a solid iron wall. So there has to be some boundary, or you can't say it's an object. We wouldn't be here if there was no boundary for us to move around in. So there are lots of boundaries.

[26:07]

Someone said that an atom is a curved space, locked into itself, so things can't pass through it. I don't know about that, but... Anyway, we have lots of boundaries, all kinds of boundaries, which allow us to have these interrelationships of poison oak and blood vessel, in such light. But what is the background? If we pose the object and then pose space, what's the background of the object in space? Or, you know, if you think about of outer space?

[27:10]

Is its fundamental nature darkness? Because the light is something from the sun? No, I'm not trying to say anything scientific. I'm just giving you some suggestion in a direction I want, in this direction. If there's the sun, the sun is some object, so maybe it has a beginning and an end, and there's light. So the light may have a beginning and end. So what's before light? Darkness? Maybe darkness. But if you go out in outer space, there's nothing but light, I think. I don't know exactly, but probably nothing but light. You have to get behind an object to find darkness. You have to get in the shadow of the earth to find darkness. So actually, you can say darkness is the fundamental, but it takes two objects to make darkness, the sun and something else.

[28:24]

So is the fundamental stuff darkness or light? Maybe light is everywhere. Or maybe even if there's darkness, there's something everywhere. Or is there an everywhere? Where is everywhere? Or I was talking about hands yesterday. You have two hands which you see as separate. But your hands are of course joined, right here. They're always joined. Your hands are not separate at all. Two hands clapping. So, you know, but where does your hand end? This is, according to the dictionary, it ends there.

[29:31]

But hand, we call that the hand, but yet, Where does it end? So your hands are always joined. There's only one hand. One big hand which had some problem and drooped to make my body. And drooped. A hand that drooped. Yet we experience it as separate. And we can pick up things, which we can't do so easily with the other ends of the hands. So, we think that our hands are separate, but they're joined. And we think the object is separate, but is it separate?

[30:34]

Or your hand, is your hand really separate from mine, or is your hand also joined to mine, the same way these two hands are joined? So, the hands are separate, and yet their background, say, is that they're not separate. Then, my body is separate, but what's the background of my body? Some darkness something you can't see You know, from my window upstairs, I can watch the shadows of the clothes in the line going up and down the building, racing up, and the clothes are going like that, and the shadows went up and down the side of the building.

[32:21]

I guess I'm separate from the shadow. I can't go racing up the side of the building trying to chase it. And I guess the clothes are separate from the shadow. But to me, there is related... my own seeing is that they're as related as my two hands are always related. I don't have any problem with them being separate. This is, of course, what Mr. Yellow Dragon was trying to express when he said, Garuda and dragon, he's identifying with the dragon which is slithering along. You don't see the dragon. They see a red-striped snake, you don't see the dragon. He said, what about a Garuda?

[33:23]

And then he changes, you don't see the Garuda. He said, the Garuda will eat him. He said, well, I'll be well fed. In that story, this is the dragon and this is the Garuda. The Garuda is the left hand and the dragon is the right hand. This is the man without measurement, that you can't measure, which means also an undeteriorated state of mind. So, you'll see the many ways your mind, as you practice Sashin, you'll stop giving up You'll stop trying to gain something or accomplish something and you'll just notice what causes your mind to deteriorate.

[34:26]

Thinking, self-praise, you know. In fact, most kinds of thinking cause your mind to deteriorate. And this is another way of saying leaking. Your state of mind will deteriorate. And you will be able to find out, if you're sensitive enough, what kind of thinking doesn't cause your mind to deteriorate. What kind of happening in your sasheen allows that accumulative feeling state of mind where it's almost too much, you can't face it and you think of anything to break the spell. Break the spell. the heat you feel. Too much, you're afraid you'll burn up your friends, burn up yourself.

[35:29]

So anyway, you see what causes your mind to deteriorate. And what doesn't? And you'll find the kind of thinking which doesn't cause your mind to deteriorate is very powerful thinking, very compassionate thinking. Thinking like, you know, maybe someone said to me, if there's only a finite number of ways your hands can meet, if there's only a finite number of ways teacher and disciple can meet, That's true. And that's also all been figured out, but I won't explain it to you. I'd rather you figured it out. But there are only certain kinds of questions that can be asked, certain kinds of answers, answers which use things, etc., answered. And certain ways in which there are real problems, even though I would say

[36:42]

the teacher-disciple relationship is the most open relationship you can have. Still, there's only certain possibilities. And your skill, in a way, as a student, is to discover those possibilities and make use in the story of Joshu, again, about the dust.

[37:44]

Someone says to Joshu, Where does the dust come from? And he said, It comes from outside. And the monk said, Why in such a nice, clean monastery, or in a good monastery, is there dust? does dust appear? And he, of course, said, there goes another one. Now, this is very interesting. I think this story is interesting, and if not more truly typical Zen story than the Sixth Patriarch, you know, It's interesting, I would say that there's a kind of... The levels you go through in your attempt to realize Zen practice, or something like those poems.

[38:58]

First there's a mirror and you're trying to polish it, trying to keep the dust off it. or you're trying to do zazen by rubbing a tile, hitting a horse. But at some point you find out that to depend on zazen is the same as to seek outside yourself. So, there's a second stage, which is the second poem, which is there's no mirror and no dust and nowhere for anything to alight. But third stage is like Yoshi. Where does the dust come from? It comes from outside. Why is there dust? Oh, there goes another one.

[40:06]

One deals with the, shall we say... I don't know if you can... I can't say this exactly, but one deals with the outside as inside and the other, Joshi's, deals with the inside as outside. When he says, there goes another one, he's thinking maybe at his stomach. They come from outside, but this is very good story, very accurate story, very good way to answer such a question. Just simply, anyone can understand it. Where does the dust come from? It comes from outside. But only someone whose eye is open can understand what he means.

[41:18]

Inside and outside, boundaries. What is the background of our existence? Or foreground of our existence? where our hands are joined. The sound of one hand. You know, you have something very obvious.

[43:15]

You have different necks. Some of you have long necks. Some of you have fat necks. Some of you have red necks. Some of you have bumpy necks. But my own experience of my neck and your experience of your neck are identical. When you wash your neck and I wash my neck, there isn't much difference. So this ability to stop treating your hands as separate, always, and also recognize that it's one hand, always joined.

[44:18]

And it's a rather crude example, but... That ability is something... It's a kind of secret. That you want to tell everyone, but you can't tell everyone. You can't find the opportunity when they'll listen. So what a teacher does is always waiting for the opportunity when they'll listen, when their throat chakra opens up, when their mind has not deteriorated for one year or two years.

[45:38]

and there's some aroused receptivity. And then there's often nothing to tell, often a refusal to tell. There's some Zen stories. There's a famous one. He comes in, he's going to some family's house where someone's died. He walks in, He hits the coffin. I won't say alive, I won't say dead. And the other guy is attended. He says, what did you mean? I won't say. I won't say. So, he got... This man, Dawu, got mad at him. Dawu said, after they were leaving. It's interesting.

[46:42]

It's very interesting that he could get so excited about it. And he was so excited about it, he said, you don't tell me I'm going to hit you. He said, even if you hit me, I won't tell you. Pop! Bleeding down. So, I won't say, I won't say. So, he said, the teacher said to his disciple, after he was bleeding, you know, he said, you better get out of here, or the director of the monastery is going to be rather angry when he finds out about it. So, the head of the abbot helped his disciple and hid him, escaped, because the other monks would have been quite upset and would have, of course, taken some action. So, he went somewhere else. And later he understood. Horses cross.

[48:03]

Donkeys cross. How do you treat things in this way? Not intellectually. What did he mean? What kind of person? with Joshua. Can we understand what kind of person Joshua was, saying, horses cross, donkeys cross? There goes another one.

[49:07]

when your state of mind no longer deteriorates, which is what you're learning how to do in Sashin, why pain is so useful. Find out how not to have your mind deteriorate. you can begin to take responsibility for everything you see, or know – this is wisdom – to know, know everything you see, as yourself. to know how to make use of its separateness, to know how to make use of your left hand and right hand.

[51:01]

To make use of its separateness, instead of bemoaning separateness, how to make use of separateness. Can you see yourself as 64? left hands and right hands thrown up into the universe on a black cushion. Maybe when I look around the Zendo I see one hand after another, no head, just a big hand on each cushion.

[52:07]

We can rearrange it and put a face on it if you want. Yeah. Well, the rest of this session, not so much time to go.

[53:17]

Let's sit with our state of mind. Be gentle with your state of mind and yet extremely firm with your state of mind. that subtle guide of when it deteriorates and when it doesn't deteriorate, not when you feel good or bad, because too much good deteriorates it, too much bad deteriorates it. Find out how it deteriorates. experience your life as a free-for-all.

[54:22]

Not a fight. Kind of abandoned. I don't know. Discipline? We have some discipline. Kind of abandoned. As if everything may shift in front of you. It will be snatched up away from you. Or it may all dissolve.

[55:10]

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