I have no report to make today. Just more of the same. Except that my daughter, Elizabeth, is extremely willful. I found out the other day that now that she knows, has found out how to stand up under any circumstance, she won't lie down. She's quite well... Sally was quite wise. Sally has a confidence to do things which she's not good at. And she'll try something, but when it's time to sleep or eat, she'll drop it. She doesn't mind failing or changing. This is Elizabeth. Before she could get up from sitting, but now she can get up from lying.

[01:03]

and she doesn't seem to like to fail. So I heard that the last few nights she won't lie down, she'll fall asleep hanging over her crib. And if you come in the room and try to put her down, she's absolutely exhausted, you don't have to stand up like a horse or something, you don't have to stomp. You pick her up and put her down. As soon as you get her horizontal, she screams bloody murder. and hollers for a long time and finally gets back up and falls asleep standing up. I don't know what to make of it. We treat her the same way, I think, at salad. You know, Lewis Thomas, I was told, you know, he wrote Lives of Yourself. He has an article, I'm told, in Atlantic Monthly, I haven't read it, about warts. And he says that the fact that you can get rid of warts by hypnotism, which if any of you have read Tom Sawyer,

[02:33]

Remember they get rid of them by frogs and rubbing, burying things? Burying a frog or something like that. I can remember reading that as a kid and realizing it must be, you know, you can do it that way and I've gotten rid of them. I never buried a frog or a toad but I decided they would go away and they went. But he says in this article that if you got all of the top doctors on the planet together to discuss it, no one would have any idea why that happens. And it surpasses, he says, I was told, he says, it surpasses everything known in medical science that you can get rid of a wart by hypnosis. Zazen, Tsukiroshi says, practice is not something to be applied to everyday life. Everyday life itself is the teaching. Everyday life itself is the teaching.

[04:35]

And this means dharma, the idea of dharma. And dharma is the most mysterious and elusive concept in Buddhism. And yet, it's probably better to call Buddhism dharmism than Buddhism. What is a dharma? Dharma means fact. But the three-dimensional world is not a fact from the point of view of Buddhism. The three-dimensional world is the outsider's view of something. If I see Leslie, I see her as three-dimensional. She has height and thickness and so forth. But she doesn't perceive herself as three-dimensional. She perceives herself as something other than three-dimensional. So this is also the idea of own being. So there's two

[06:06]

two stages of the realization of emptiness. First stage is that three-dimensional world is a mere concept. And if it's a mere concept, then you understand dharma, because you won't be hindered by a mere concept, obstructed by a mere concept. So first is unreality of three-dimensional world. And so, dharma. But then next is unreality of dharmas, non-existence of dharmas. And you can't know realm of dharma from the realm of dharma. Someone said to me today, I think today, for a fleeting moment they had some concentration and that concentration surprised them because they thought that

[07:43]

Concentration would be the world as we usually see it, minus distractions. But what this person noticed is that minus distractions meant it wasn't the world as we usually see it. Do you understand? And what this person tried to describe it as a texture. Maybe texture was different. But then it was lost. And even though it's very fleeting, you know, all of Buddhism is based on that this fleeting perception is reality, not usual perception. And it's not something that can be known by reductionist thinking or knowing greater from lesser, like in evolution. Monkeys produce people and dogs produce monkeys or

[08:46]

Something like that. From a monkey. Even though monkeys are pretty smart. Remember when one was down here? She was a baby monkey. It was quite cute. And I've read, I don't know, that monkeys up to about six months old, something like that, are smarter or as smart as babies. Human babies. The look in their eye is not as deep, but, I would say, but they learn skills by which you measure intelligence. They are about the same. But if you only knew monkeys and you imagined a very smart monkey, you might imagine lots of bananas, but you wouldn't imagine the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can't extrapolate from a monkey to New York City. Monkey's smart enough not to build New York City. And likewise in Buddhism it is considered from human ordinary existence you can't extrapolate what Buddha is like. But we have this fleeting taste.

[10:12]

And again, practice of Sesshin is for you to confirm this fleeting taste. And I always encourage you that if you have fleeting taste and you continue practicing, eventually, if you don't fight it, your life will be characterized by this fleeting taste. But again, it's not something Realm of Dharma cannot be known from Realm of Dharma. So it's more, I don't know, four-dimensional or multi-dimensional. I say four-dimensional, but I mean when I said four-dimensional, multi-dimensional. more than changing just over time, not limited to time. So although I can say three-dimensional world is the perception of outsider, and you yourself don't perceive yourself as three-dimensional,

[11:41]

certainly not limited to such an idea, I will say that you can perceive other things, other people, from their own point of view. It's possible to perceive Leslie from Leslie's point of view, even though you are not Leslie, or nearly so. When you can do this, it's called Dharma-I. because it means you see the own being of things, the being without comparison. I said last night, make your own resolution. I mean, realize your own being. Own being doesn't mean soul, and we must deny existence of own being, or it doesn't work. But own being means to know yourself or to know something not relative to other things, not compared to other things, incomparable. So we say incomparable, the Buddha is incomparable. And when you know yourself

[13:03]

not related to other things, not compared to other things, incomparable, this entity can't be grasped. You can't say it exists. It's at best fleeting. So, and it can't be limited, as we say. Infinitude of space, we can say, as the Sutra says, infinitude of form, infinitude of beings. You can't put boundary. So, although we talk about own being, we say own being itself doesn't exist. It says a bodhisattva is of the highest intelligence because it does not swerve from own being. And what is own being? Non-existence. So, there's own being and non-existence. And both you have to cope with. You can't have one without the other. Someone asked a teacher, what is nirvana or enlightenment? And he said, seeing nothing. Seeing nothingness. And the monk said, isn't this seeing nothingness then a something? And he, the teacher said, no.

[14:37]

There is seeing but there is no something which is seeing. And the monk says, what is this seeing then? And the teacher says, objectless seeing is true seeing. This also means to see not own being because there's no comparison. So no comparison, there's no object. And it's what I mean by imageless practice. Or Dogen means by think non-thinking. He doesn't say don't think exactly, he says think non-thinking. It means objectless thinking, which you will get a taste of by your practice.

[15:39]

If you realize it's true, we can say that's a satori. If you realize incontrovertibly, with certitude, ah, that's true, we call this satori. And it's this that I mean when I say follow energy to follow the energy of the world. So, to learn from everyday life, practice is not something you apply to everyday life, but everyday life itself is the teaching, but it means everyday life from this point of own being, or dharma, or non-existence. So, studying a koan, the same four-dimensional effort, You want to study the koan thoroughly enough until, in effect, it crests. Does that make sense? It crests in you, like a wave crests in you. So the story, it becomes imbued, your life becomes imbued with that story, as if it happened to you. This is to understand something from its own point of view, not from your point of view.

[17:13]

Being able to give up, give up to your pain or humility or humbleness, willingness to patiently bear whatever comes, not fighting with things. So this is something you cannot explain in all these books written about dharma and they try to... You can't explain it, it's too fleeting. but maybe in the context of a Sashin and life at Tassajara, we can point out reality of this fleeting perception, which by its nature can't be grasped. So, how to... It's fleeting because you try to grasp it, because you know no other mode of existence except grasping it. Elizabeth is the kind of person she is not because of any grasping. She's done up till now, but now she's... we'll see what happens. She'll form some three-dimensional personality and view herself as an object. And she'll think it's subject. She'll get ego. I'll have to discipline her.

[18:45]

or she'll discipline me. I remember telling Sally once, I've told you before, telling Sally once when she was very little, that she'd better behave because I made her and she belonged to me. And she said, it's too late now, I belong to me. I had to concede, I give up. If she really understands she belongs to herself without comparison, this is the infinitude also of form, infinitude of beings. So we can talk about saving all beings. And what does it mean? It means to build temples for the Buddha or to sweep the hall. That's all. I was yesterday talking about

[19:49]

ordinary religion as giving some certitude by posing a transcendent existence beyond our usual existence, or more encompassing than our usual existence, and the confirmation of that by shamanic or shamanistic power, or yogic power. And this building right here is an example of shamanistic, shamanic power. Zen center is, I would say, you know, I wouldn't say it on the wind bell, but I would say it to you, you know. It's the power of your hara and your posture, you know. Zen is not related, limited to your posture, but your posture is very important. And if you sit like this, you won't get power here. You have to sit with your hips like that. And if you want to find out inside and outside of yourself, there's no outside. You must bring your breath and mind together.

[21:11]

Breath is the, as Zoukioshi calls it, swinging door. It's conscious and unconscious. It's mind and body's activity. Simple trick, it's a very simple trick, but very difficult to do, to bring your monkey mind together with your breathing. All the time, day and night. You know, you may lose it sometime, but you know. you don't have to make any effort to go back to it even though you might get distracted as soon as you notice you're distracted your breath pierces everything you're just taking care of some school or company or something like that. I wouldn't say that's shamanistic power. But this Zen Center came out of our mutual relationship. And the purpose of shamanistic power is shamanic power, is well-being of the community, you know, help of some individual.

[22:36]

verifying higher truths or something like that. So by our mutual relationship we create such a place. And in the summer many people come wandering through here. Sometimes I think the most wonderful thing we do is tatsahara guest season. Because so many people have a different point of view. feel they much better than we are. Sometimes they may not like us, but very often they have much more ideal feeling of human nature from us than we deserve. But they understand the direction, even if we don't fulfill it, they understand direction of our effort. They don't maybe know how hard the effort is to succeed, but direction itself is refreshing. There's no way you could plan. Tsukuroshi could come to America and say, I'll start a small Zen group and soon we will own Greenbelch in Tassajara and have various buildings. You can't make that kind of plan.

[23:59]

Tsukiyoshi says somewhere, in talking about the koan of the dream, the teacher who said, I have a dream, would you interpret it for me? He says, some superpower or yogic power is actually the good relationship of teacher and disciple. And shaman is trying to establish this kind of relationship, really, no matter what the style, with the people he lives with. Zen style is just to sweep together, but to no dharma realm when we sweep. There is no dust that's disturbed. Nothing is disturbed. One dharma does not affect another dharma. Everything is in its own place, no matter what you do. So we can follow. It may sound contradictory, but so we can follow energy of the world. You can follow your own energy. Energy is not a perfect word, but you can start with that.

[25:27]

follow, just simple thing, you, your own self's breath, or working, to know simple task of sweeping, or cooking, or gardening, cleaning, is dharma, is the teaching itself. If you have this dharma eye, And the more you have a feeling for this, the more you want to say to people, come on over. Not because it's so great, exactly. But it's such a relief from the struggle we see most people going through. But there's no easy way to say, come on over, except we can do Tassar guest season, or make a building, or restaurant, or whatever we are finding our own way in doing.

[26:47]

So a mystic element of dharma is just fact of existence, but fact of existence, not related or compared. And to see that, you must have seen. Three-dimensional world is mere concept, or your ego is mere concept, unsupported anywhere, no basis, unrelated. uncompared. To understand this, which the sutras are hinting so strongly at, gives you tremendous freedom. So Zen and Buddhism as a whole is basically teaching of Dharma. Of Dharma I realized by your still sitting and your mental practice or koan practice.

[28:20]

to turn your thinking over. Sutras are just a big koan. The idea of dharma is a koan. So you start to use the word dharma. But you can't... If someone asked you to define dharma, you'd have a pretty difficult time, unless you just use dictionary. that kind of definition won't make any sense. By your non-existence, you demonstrate dark by not interfering, by everything in its own place. In this way, in this way, we give In the Paramitas we give without any idea of a gift or receiver, or we're patient without any idea of anything to bear.

[29:34]

Do you understand what I'm talking about? If you say no, I'll be disappointed. If you say yes, I'll be more disappointed. Better not to say anything, but just be ready. Everything is the teaching. Everything is the Dharma. Everything is Buddha.

[31:02]

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