I haven't told you the story about Ryutan for quite a while, have I? Ryutan and Tokusan, no? Tokusan, no, was... famous Zen master, who, as a young man, was rather unruly, and even as a teacher, rather unruly person. And he decided to... He studied the Diamond Sutra and considered himself a master of the Diamond Sutra. And he decided to put an end once and for all to those Zen guys in the South who were saying something like transmission outside the scriptures. So he got his Diamond Sutra and its commentaries, probably fairly bulky in those days, together and in a box, and he carried them

[01:26]

in his pack to going to southern China. On the way, he stopped at a roadside stand or noodle, you know, tea house type place, a kind of McDonald's for China. And he ordered a cake The cake, I guess in Japanese it's called tenjin, it means something like, the characters mean something like, to light up your mind, or to light mine. So anyway, he ordered this cake, you know. And the woman who ran the shop was, must have been a pretty alert person, and she looked him over and instead of responding, said, what's that in your... that big box, young fellow. And he said, this is the Diamond Sutra, I am master of the Diamond Sutra. Thinking, you know, she was just someone working in McDonald's. And she surprised him by saying, oh, doesn't the Diamond Sutra say, past mind is unattainable, ungrateful, present mind is unattainable.

[02:56]

future mind is unattainable. With what mind will you light up? With what mind will you take this cake? Now, Tokson didn't know what to say. He was smart enough to know he didn't know. Maybe he'd studied Nagarjuna's Four Keys. So he was able to know, he didn't know, which most of us aren't able to do. But being another well-known male chauvinist, he said to the woman, Are there any good Zen teachers around here? After she turned him around, So she said, you should go see Ryutan. So still rather cocky person, he went to see Ryutan. And ryu means dragon, like green gulch, so ryu zenji, green dragon zen temple, ryu.

[04:20]

And tan, I'm told, means something like lake or abyss. So he came to Rutan's temple and announced, I don't see any dragon or abyss. And suddenly Rutan appeared from somewhere and said, you are meeting Rutan in person. Again, Toksan didn't know what to say, what he meant in person. But they liked each other, so they talked for quite a while until it was dark. And, as you know the story probably, Toksan got up to leave and went out from the porch

[05:22]

out the door, and he said, it's pitch dark out here. So Rūtaṃ said, just a minute, and brought him a candle and handed it to him, and Rūtaṃ took it, and then Rūtaṃ blew it out. Of course, like all good Zen stories, you know how it ends. And Ryutan said, what did you realize? Because Toksan immediately bowed to him and so forth. And he said, I will... Toksan said, I will never doubt anything Zen masters say again. Remember that. That's the point of this story. Anyway, that's rather interesting. I will never doubt what Zen masters say again. So, this is all these aspects of the story. In person, you will never doubt and so forth. With what mind do you take this tea cake?

[06:50]

trying to defeat those people who talked about transmission outside the sutras. So, anyway, all these things I'm talking about. And our Western, you know, Our Western ideas, of course, influence us a lot, and the big emphasis in the West, in Western thinking, has been the distinction between mind and body. And you know, in Buddhism, this isn't very important. We're not so concerned with the distinction between mind and body. The emphasis is almost entirely, the concern is almost entirely on the difference between conditioned mind and unconditioned mind. And actually, unconditioned mind is identified with form, or you could say, the body, or space, or everything all at once. So anyway, the whole emphasis of much of Oriental thinking, in fact, not just Buddhism, is on

[08:17]

small mind and big mind, or pure mind and impure mind, contaminated mind, or conditioned mind and unconditioned mind. And this has not been much concern to Western philosophers, and only to some extent to religious teachers and to poets. But it's the main emphasis in Buddhism. that we are always talking about. Transmission outside the scriptures. And another concern of... Western thinking tends to diminish... I always hate to say something critical, you know, but I think it tends to diminish the world. Even Hegel and Kant, their philosophy still is trying to adjust the world to the mind. Mind and reality and reason are what Hegel identifies. Anyway, the Hegelian contradictions and dialectic is very exciting, I think, but the use that's made of it and the context of it

[09:46]

is to adjust the world to the mind, in the end to make the world more scientific. Maybe Kant's effort is to show how form is shaped by the mind or by thinking. Hegel creates more an identity between mind and thinking. And I think that without realizing it, most of our effort to understand Majamaka or Yogacara thinking of mind only or emptiness tends to fall along the lines in our Western thinking that Hegel or Kant are following. But what I've been talking about is how to make your social and physical and mental activities accessible to you. Haven't I been talking about that? How to make your mental and physical and social activities accessible to you. You know, we live in the midst of our activities. You live in the midst of everyone's activities.

[11:09]

Nixon, he lives in the midst of his actions. Even before he was caught, he lived in the midst of his actions. We live in the midst of everyone's actions, actually. We live in the midst of our actions, and we live in the midst of everyone's actions. Like my example of the bowing. If we don't draw a line, who bows on this side and there, everyone's truth would be found. The information passes very quickly. You know, when you're concerned in physics with a field, a field is too flat an idea, I don't know, we don't have any word for it, but a field that I would describe as stretching inward in all directions. reaching, stretching inward in all directions. Such a field, you know, the particles in such a field, like in quantum physics, all partake of the field. And what's very mysterious about it is no one can figure out how all that information gets transferred. How does the particle know the field? We can't grasp the mechanics of it.

[12:39]

how everywhere gets here. But we know everywhere gets here, you know. As I said, quoting, you can't disturb a... What's it? Stir a star without disturbing a flower, or something like that. So how does everywhere get here? Or how do we make accessible to us Everyone's action. Or how do we make accessible to us not reality adjusted to mind, but mind adjusted to reality? The Oriental thinking is to adjust your mind to reality, not to adjust reality to your mind. And the best example I can think of for that is Someone was telling me that they, as a writer, when they are writing, they are always asking themselves the question, what is there that they are describing?

[14:09]

This is really, again, the same question Hegel and Kant are asking. What is there? What is there? What is reality? What is there? How is it related to our definitions of it? Because we are constantly making definitions. Now, if you want to practice Zen, what we're trying to get each other to do is drop comparative definitions. I am to begin non-comparing definitions. Maybe locating is better. Kyozan and Sancho,

[15:11]

case in the Blue Cliff Record, Kyozan meets Sancho and says, Kyozan knows Sancho very well, but he meets Sancho. And they're playing, maybe. So Kyozan says, what is your name? And Sancho says, Eijaku. Eijaku is actually Kyozan's nickname. So Kyo-san meets Sancho and says, what is your name? And Sancho says, Eijaku. And Kyo-san says, that's my name, I'm Eijaku. So Sancho says, oh okay, I'm Ine. It's as if Tommy said to me, what is your name? And Tommy's name is Isan. Tommy said to me, met me on the stairs, and greeting me, he said, what is your name? And I said, Isan. He said, no, my name is Isan. And I'd say, oh, OK, my name is Zentatsu. That's all. That's famous Zen dialogue. Nonsense.

[16:24]

So this author is asking, what is there when she writes? And she's wondering, what is the gap? What is the gap between what's there and what she's describing? So, like Kyozan and Sancho, what are we meeting or what do the five skandhas... are they the limits of our definition? What's beyond the five skandhas? Is something beyond the five skandhas? Form, feeling, perceptions, impulses, consciousness. Well, if you've tried to write something or if you... I think, paint something, or... You know, sometimes in a movie, too, when you describe it, you describe it the best you can, and the situation, whatever, people or activity or mountain,

[18:14]

And there's not necessarily some gap, because when you come back to it again, you would describe it a little differently. Or as you write your novel, or play, or whatever it is, actually, each scene opens up that initial scene. Each scene that you write is a further turning of what that original we can say what that original description was. So each scene closes that gap. Do you see what I mean? And if you go to a good movie or read a good book, you see a scene, and then the whole movie, after the whole movie, that's the opening scene, you have a different feeling for it. So at any one moment, the five skandhas, or to be everything just as it is, doesn't mean that reality is limited to that moment. Everywhere is here, but how do we make accessible everywhere? Now, if you're practicing... Now, Dharmakaya Buddha,

[19:45]

And Sambhogakaya Buddha are big definitions, maybe, beyond Nirmanakaya Buddha or beyond your person. It's a wider sense of definition than Kyozan or Sancho. And it's not just a matter of, you know, there's a particle, you know, like in physics again, They can guess that because of such and such and such and such, there must be a particle there. Because they can see that something's funny here, so it must mean there's something over there. Dharmakaya is not extrapolated in such a way philosophically. It's actually your practice, too. Everything in Buddhism comes out of practice. Whatever you read in Buddhism, you only can see it, really. You only understand Buddhism when you see all of Buddhism as practice. Then the far-out and mundane aspects of the sutras will make sense. Then there is transmission. So the activity of

[21:12]

Now I'm talking about definitions again. And we're always making, as you know, we have an interior dialogue and exterior dialogue. I've talked about this quite a bit, haven't I? And you're always doing what you do in your interior dialogue, hiding certain aspects of yourself from yourself, which come out if you do saschinte. You do that, you make everyone you meet. act in your dialogue, act in your play. So, of course, we want to get out of this, free from this dialogue. And, as I said, bring the interior and exterior dialogue closer together. And it's very much like a dream. Now, again, a koan A koan is also very much like a dream. We think, to try to give you a sense of what I mean by that, if I could take my dream and without any analysis just give it to you and you could dream it, that would be like a koan. A dream uniting interior and exterior definitions.

[22:37]

So most of us, we try to get access to our dream by analyzing it. In Zen, the dreaming itself is our access to it. So I've talked about Zen stories and how they are like passing a dream without the intermediary step of analysis to another person and they dream it. or like when you dream. In a dream, everything is of equal importance. Background and foreground, and it's one continuum. And this is very much like Big Mind, what we mean by Big Mind. In your dream, as you know, there's almost a substance As I've said, almost a substance of house and person and space. It's not just objects in space. Everything is your balance, your dream mind. This is also close to the sensation of everywhere is here, or Dharmakaya Buddha.

[24:07]

This same person who was talking to me about their writing had three dreams which I thought were quite interesting. In the first dream, I come to their door and knock on the door, and they open the door, and they're quite disturbed to see me because their house is a complete mess. You know, everything is in a mess. and hasn't been cleaned and there's a jumble of stuff and kids around and stuff and they didn't want me to come in. The next dream they had a few days later, again I come to the door and this time I ask, I say, you must come with me to the Bronx Zoo to meet my ghosts. And the person is terrified to meet my ghosts and go with me to the Bronx Zoo. But I take them by the arm and take them to the Bronx Zoo. And I bring them at the Bronx Zoo. I say, now you must enter this room. You don't have to enter this room. And if you enter this room, you can go through it without seeing my ghosts.

[25:42]

But what I would prefer is you to enter the room and go through it and see my ghost." So the person enters the room. They said it was the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to them. But somehow they entered the room, went through it and saw my ghost. Okay, that was that dream. The third dream, I come, again, I come and knock on their door again. And this time, no one has quite gotten up, and the whole household is again in a turmoil, and everybody's in their pajamas and so forth. And, again, she is quite startled to see me at the door, and doesn't want me to come in. But this time, it dawns on her that she's meeting me, that she doesn't have to be concerned with her house and the mess, but it took three dreams for her to get it, that it's not just me meeting her, she's also meeting me. This is also the meaning of Dogen saying, if your teacher says that frogs and earthworms are the Buddha,

[27:13]

you must drop all your previous ideas and realize that frogs and earthworms are the Buddha. Or sometimes, whatever your teacher says, you are to say, Hai. Hai means in Japanese, yes. Actually, it means, I hear you. And that's quite good. You know, if you find to most things you're saying, No. When anything comes up, you find yourself saying no. Your first reaction is resistance. Please practice yes. Practice saying yes. Just try it on. Try on saying yes to everything. And after trying on that for a while, then try on just I hear you. As Brother David described, obedience in Christianity, in Catholicism, means to listen or to hear. So I hear you. Okay. Now, a friend of mine was driving across the country with their crazy brother, and they left San Francisco, and the brother couldn't hold a job, and he'd completely flipped out, and was in a terrible and unpleasant state of mind.

[28:39]

And during the first part of the trip, they talked about how to... Maybe he should see a psychiatrist, or was it good to go back and stay with his family, and so on and so forth. And the crazy brother was going along with it, you know. But at the same time, he was trying to draw the sane brother into his crazy world. You know, naturally, Who knows which is which, actually? So the crazy brother is trying to draw him into his sane, his crazy world, and sane brother is trying to draw him into his sane world, and each is trying to draw each other into the crazy brother one, and by Ohio, you know, both brothers were completely, you know, and the world thinks strange creatures are coming by the windows, and so on and so forth, right? This friend of mine, it took him several weeks to recover from the trip. He was so relieved to leave his brother in the East. He couldn't handle it. Maybe a stranger, but your own brother, you know, it's too similar. But you can't blame the... We're all just trying to draw each other into each other's world.

[30:02]

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