So, it's in my beginner's mind. So this evening, the talk that I was reading and thinking about is entitled To Study Yourself. I think you're all pretty much familiar with that meditation instruction that was given by Dogen Zenji in his essay, The Genjo Koan. Genjo Kwan, meaning actualizing the fundamental point. Fundamental point, something that we talk about all the time in Zen, which is the teaching of thusness, or justice is it-ness. I've also been offering a class on Dongshan's poem, The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which is hard to talk about without constantly saying, justice is it, justice is it. So he talks a lot about justice is it. in a variety of ways. And so as one Zen teacher said, when someone asked him, why do you keep talking when justice is it?

[01:24]

And he said, well, if I didn't keep talking, there would be weeds growing at the monastery gate. So in some ways, a lot of the elaborations, dharmic elaborations, are engagements, ways to keep us engaged in these teachings, how to say things that are poetically interesting or perhaps architecture that's interesting, you know, our wonderful Zen clothing, which is interesting. All of these things are, you know, somewhat like bait to hold our interest, you know, keep them dangling before our eyes, because it's very easy for us to slip off of just this is it. You know, I mean, that's it? Yeah, kind of. So I'm going to talk about just this is it. And... And again, to repeat Dogen's famous statement, meditation instruction, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. And to study the self is to forget the self.

[02:25]

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things, myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. And no trace of realization remains. And this no trace continues endlessly. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. And when actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, Drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. So, at the beginning of the lecture, Suzuki Roshi's lecture, he says, to have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point.

[03:31]

We just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism. To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point. We just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism. Just this is it. And then he recites Dogen's teaching from the Genjo Koan that the purpose of Buddhism is to study ourselves, adding that in order to study ourselves, we will need some teaching, some guidelines, and some guides. I can remember an image I had many years ago about following my teacher, and I imagined him up ahead of me on kind of a steep mountain climb, somehow climbing a mountain. And he was ahead, and I was watching how he took hold of the next thing, you know, and how he moved his way up the hill. And my watching, I thought, was how I liked being taught.

[04:35]

I liked to watch. And then try it myself. And I remember thinking, you know, just let me watch you. Do not tug on my rope. You know, do not tug on my rope. So, you know, this is something that we all, I think, need to learn about ourselves. Do we like to be taught by being tugged on or pushed or, you know, yelled at or whatever? Or do we like to watch? Are we self-learners? Do we get more inspiration from learning somehow in our own style? So that's something to know about ourselves as well as studying the self. What kind of self have you got there? So as we know from Dongshan's poem, The Song of the Jewel Mera Samadhi, this teaching of dustness, of abiding in the true nature of reality, is being intimately communicated through the ages... by the buddhas and ancestors both through oral teachings and written teachings so these transmissions have taken place for centuries there's so much material now it's kind of hard almost unbearable to go into a bookstore and look at the section on buddhism which when i first began encountering buddhism back in in my youth in my 20s um i think there was one book on the bookshelf in jackson hall wyoming where i was living um

[05:57]

And it was in my beginner's mind. And then the rest of the books on that shelf were kind of like spirituality and Muktananda, you know, various yogis who were around in those days in California. So I did pick up that book because it looked kind of different. It wasn't pink. It wasn't some bright color. It didn't have like some kind of advertisement. It wasn't calling out to me. It was very plain and very nicely done. And even the paper. It was really nice. And I kind of remember just holding it and kind of admiring it as an object. This is kind of a nice object. I read a few pages and went like, whoa, I have no idea what he's talking about. And so it's nice that all these years later, I have a much warmer and closer feeling to that teacher and what he was trying to say to me long, long ago. So then Suzuki Roshi gives an example, this is about studying itself, of scientific study.

[06:57]

And he says that if we want to know something like what water is, then we need a laboratory and we need equipment and we need to study water and find out what its molecular components are and test it and boil it and freeze it and do all those kinds of things. But even if we do all of that, we still don't know what water is. We really can't say. And I think we know that if you just, you know, hang out in the tub or in the rain, we don't really know what it is. We're on the ice. You know, what is it? It's kind of a miracle. As are we. So it's the same for us trying to understand ourselves. You know, we have these texts and we have teachers and we have our fellow students and our many practices. But still, we don't know our own true nature until we realize that we are Buddha. That we are awake. So basically, Buddha is seeking Buddha. And as that other saying goes, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

[08:04]

Because that's not the Buddha. That's outside of yourself. That's some fantasy you're having. Let's leave out the kill him part. Seems like a little tender these days. Given what's going on. Terrible things going on right now. Trying to kill people. So don't kill the Buddha, just pass him by. Just say, you know, you can't be the Buddha because I'm the Buddha. You know, everything I see is from the eyes of Buddha. This is hard for us, hard for us to understand, but that's the teaching. So the main admonition that Roshi gives us at the beginning of this talk is about not attaching to either the teachings or to the teacher. And they're both very useful, but we have to remain independent. You know, in fact, he says that the purpose of the teacher is to help us to realize our independence. You know, just as Dongshan said after leaving his teacher, Yunyan, and awakening on seeing his own face in the water of a river that he was crossing.

[09:05]

You know, his teacher had said to him when he asked him, if someone asked me who you are or what you were or what I remember of you, what should I say? And Dongshan's teacher said, just this person, or just this is it. That very famous response. So even though Dongshan heard that from his teacher, he still felt confused. He didn't get it. He had, as it says in the Transmission of Light, he still had doubts. So then as he's crossing the water, he sees his own face, and he writes a poem after having this experience of awakening. He says, don't seek from others or you'll be estranged from yourself. I now go on alone everywhere I encounter it. I now go on alone everywhere I encounter it. I am not it. It now is me. One must understand in this way to merge with being as is.

[10:12]

Just this is it. Don't seek from others or you'll be estranged from yourself. I now go on alone, and everywhere I encounter it. I am not it. It now is me. One must understand in this way, to merge with being as is. So then Roshi talks about how Rinzai, Linji in Chinese, Rinzai in Japanese, who's the founding ancestor of the Rinzai school of Zen, tells us there are four ways that he uses to teach his students. The first way is he talks to the student about themselves. And I think that's pretty familiar. I often find myself talking to the student about themselves, which seems to be what they want to talk to me about, about their conflicts, about their love affairs, about their sadness, about their parents. You know, so we do. We spend a lot of time talking about what they think of as themselves. And then he says, the second way I talk to students is to talk about the teaching.

[11:18]

talk about the Buddhist teaching, sort of directional, trying to help orient the student into their life as a part of how the teaching might help. So you offer the teaching. The third way is he gives his own interpretation, Rinzai, of both the disciple and the teaching. So he might say, well, that kind of applies to you, or I can see how this works for you, or maybe you have those qualities and so on. So kind of intimate. And then the fourth way is is he gives his disciples no instruction at all. He says nothing. So the best teaching seems to be this last one. If we become attached to our true nature, or what we imagine to be an insight into our true nature, then we are already on the wrong path. When the student isn't aware of their Buddha nature, Suzuki Roshi says, they already have everything. But when they become aware of who they truly are and think that what they are aware of is themselves, that is a big mistake.

[12:26]

So if you think you're Buddha, even though you are, that's a big mistake. Because you might think you know what Buddha is. And nobody does. Nobody does. It's a quality. Buddha's a quality. It's not a person. So what is that quality that we all have, that awakened quality? That's really what we're trying to understand. And it's like a clear crystal. We see through it, but we don't see it. We can't see that quality. We can see the world with that quality, with the eyes of awakening. So I think I may have told you that during the years that I studied the Japanese tea ceremony, there were probably... Two times that my teacher said something that sounded positive about my turn at making tea. And I remember very well finishing the tea and you go to after you finish tea, you go to the door. There's a sliding door in her tea room.

[13:30]

You go to the door and then you turn back towards the others, your fellow students and the teacher. And you thank everyone for letting you make tea. and thank the teacher for teaching and so on. And there was one time when my teacher, my lovely teacher, said, very nice, Fusan. And I just remember like, could you say that again? Can I record that? It was just like magic. I just felt like pixie dust had been sprinkled on me. It's like, very nice tea, Fusan. And I think it's the fact that this praise was so rare. that it has such a big impact and was doubly motivating. You know, I really wanted to do well after she'd said I'd done well. You know, it's like, okay, now I really want to do well. So tea ceremony, as you slowly learn, isn't about the person making tea. You know, it's about the event itself.

[14:33]

It's about all of the things you've been taught and the season. the flowers of the seasons, a scroll that has come down through centuries from a saying of some Zen master or some awakened ancestor or the Buddha. There's a scroll hanging in the tea room. There's incense. It's been made another centuries-old formula for making incense. There's boiling water. There's beautiful bright green tea. If I think I alone made tea, well, nice tea, Busan, if I think that I'm forgetting about the entire world and all of the moving parts that made that bowl of tea possible. You know, the plantations in Japan and the warmth of the spring and the summer rains and all of that. The potters, the pottery, the tea house architects and the history of tea and my beloved teacher. You know, it's truly a miracle. Everything we do is like that.

[15:34]

Everything we're taught, we have these gratitude. for our teachers and for what they've learned and how they transmit that to us, you know. The teaching of Dasnas has been intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, so keep it well. So, just like the entirety of our lives here on Earth, it truly is a non-repeating universe, you know. This is kind of like a very wide and all-inclusive study. is what Suzuki Roshi is talking about. You know, studying the self as all of it, as the whole of it. You know, not forgetting that you are nothing less than the whole of it. You know, to study Buddhism without looking through the widest possible lens of our everyday life is like trying to study the ocean in a glass of salt water. You know, it's just like, hmm, it doesn't give you much information. So then Roshi says, this very touching story about the time that he was a young monk at Aheji.

[16:39]

Some of you may have visited there. It's an extraordinarily beautiful place way up in the mountains. These giant cryptomeria trees on the grounds, which are very much like our redwoods, same family as the redwood trees. So you have this wonderful, beautiful, ancient buildings that are underneath this... in the shade of these giant redwood trees. And then there are also the addition of these black-robed, shaved-headed monks walking around quietly and doing all the things they do to take care of the guests and take care of the temple and the grounds and so on. It's quite a wonderful thing to visit Ehiji. So that was the Zen training temple that Dogen founded. and that most of the monks train at, Eheji, or Sojiji, the other temple, Soto Zen temple in Japan. So when Suzuki Roshi was there as a student, he said he didn't notice anything special about practicing at Eheji.

[17:47]

You know, in the morning they got up really early and they went to Zazen, and they went to Zazen quite a few more times during the day, and they had their meals, formal meals in the Zendo, and they read sutras, and You know, that was what they were doing. He said the monastic life wasn't unusual at all. It was the people coming from outside to visit, like us, who were unusual. And I know I've heard that same thing from people who, when I was living at Green Gulch, would say, they come into Green Gulch and say, oh, it's so peaceful here, and it's so wonderful. And I would think, it's true. It is wonderful. It is peaceful. But there's more going on here that you don't know about, you know, like staff meetings and arguments around, you know, how to prepare certain kinds of food and people not getting along and losing things and breaking things and all kinds of stuff, you know, like the real world. But it doesn't, you know, when you first come in, all you feel is that atmosphere of this is a very special place, which it is. And AHA is a very special place.

[18:50]

And it's not, you know, it's not. And it is. So. Years later, when Suzuki Roshi went back to Eheji to visit, he said he was moved to tears. He said tears were just flowing out of his eyes and his nose and his mouth. He was just crying at hearing the temple bells and hearing the monks chanting the sutras. And he proposes that it's that way with everything, that we ourselves are doing. Whatever we're doing isn't very special. It's just, you know, making a pie or... Walking with a friend, whatever. Like, who, me? Buddha? You know? So this is the challenge we have. How to see our ordinary, you know, daily life as the life of an awakened being. And how do we remember that? How do we get a glimpse of that? And then remember what we saw. So the point being made that whatever we're doing is already the present moment and the only moment.

[19:51]

Each thing we're doing, like right now, is the present, you know, and the only. And we are already Buddha, whether we know it or not. So these are just facts. This is the present. You know, we are Buddha. And whatever we're doing is the work of Buddha. Okay. And whether we receive any encouragement or not, you know. It doesn't matter because encouragement is just medicine for those times when we're feeling discouraged. But when our spirits are good, we don't need medicine. Medicine, he says, should not become our food. So we shouldn't make the teachings and the teacher and the life in the monastery the food. The food is ourselves growing into greater and greater awareness of who we are and what we're here to do. in this world, how we're here to be generous and kind and thoughtful and concentrated and to be of help to suffering beings.

[20:55]

That's why we're here. That's what Buddhists do. So at the end of the talk, Roshi says that of Rinzai's four ways of practice, the perfect one is not to give the student any interpretation of themselves nor any encouragement. So what we have to discover is outside of the teacher or the teaching. I can kind of feel it when I was saying that. I kind of feel that in my stomach. It's like, that's right. You have to find it for yourself. Self do it. Like little kids will say that. Me do it. We have to do it ourselves. We have to convince ourselves. No one else will ever convince us that we're okay. That we are awake. They can't. We'll just keep blocking. So it's up to us. It's up to us to penetrate. Whatever it is that's blocking us from knowing who we really are.

[21:57]

So we have to discover what we are outside of this clothing that we've chosen to dress ourselves in, our identity. I don't know how you all feel, but I've been meeting a lot of new people recently. here at Enso Village. So there's a lot of this kind of like, well, where did you go to school? And where'd you grow up? And what did you do before you got here? Because people are somewhat older than the average group of folks at Green Gulch, they have lots of stories to tell about who they are and what they've done and where they lived and how many children they had and how many grandchildren they have and where their houses were. I mean, just it's extraordinary, actually. And, you know, as I said, because they've lived a long time, There's a lot on their resume. But that's, you know, that's lovely. And it's the clothing that they wear in terms of who they think they are. So, you know, and I know that when I'm talking about those very things where I went to school, where I grew up, I can feel it.

[23:00]

I can feel like that's not even close. That has nothing to do with me sitting here right now. Those are just some old stories that I have said so many times. that they have no fiber left in them. They're just kind of worn out. So the purpose of our talking with our teachers is to help us correct whatever misunderstandings we still have about ourselves, about who we think we are. Teachers are great. Therapists are great. It's really great to bring this stuff out in front, to really begin to look at these things that make us feel a little bit awkward or a little odd. You know, that's not quite right. So how can I figure out what's right? What's right? And he says that to talk about ourselves, about all of our parts, is to know that what we are not. So when we talk about all of our parts, all the things we have ever said about ourselves, helps us discover what we are not.

[24:04]

We are not all those things. In other words, in Dogen's words, To study the self is to forget the self. To forget about ourselves as a bunch of words, a bunch of stories. And to remember no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no Buddha. Justice is it. Roshi then pivots, as did our ancestor Dogen, from to forget the self to... being actualized by myriad things. So study the Buddha way, study the self, study the self, forget the self, forget the self, and be actualized by myriad things, such as the sound of the wind in the trees or the sound of the monks chanting in gratitude for their evening meal. So these are the things that actualize us, that bring us into the present, bring us to the place where we are.

[25:07]

And so although the temporal expressions that we make about the world are not it, they also are it. It's always surprising. It's always this pivot. Suzuki Roshi, all of these guys, all of these readings, they tell you, well, it's not that, and they say, well, it also is that. You know, you're never going to get away with just get one side of anything. You're just going to get the other side, the balancing side. So he's saying that we're not all that stuff that we talk about. But at the same time, we are that stuff because that's the stuff that we're made of. And the stuff that we're being made of, you know, like right now, is it too. The thing is, it's just it for a very short period of time. You know, for the smallest particle of time, there it is, you know, the present moment. But it doesn't stay it for very long. You know, as soon as the present moment has passed, it is no longer it.

[26:08]

And there's a new it that is taking its place. So we know this, but we can't grab it. We can't get a hold of it. We can't make anything out of it. We just keep on moving with the stream and the flow of activities and of, you know, like our language is a stream and flow of words one after the other and somehow, you know, somehow making some kind of pattern. At least we think so. I imagine there's a pattern to these sequence of words and that the purpose of them, the pattern is to communicate to the pattern that you all have and being able to hopefully understand. words and so on so we have worked out a kind of uh you know an agreement this relative truth is our agreement about how to stay kind of in a in a in a relational way to the objects of the world and to each other if it were just like justice is it present moment present moment present moment we couldn't function we would be um you know like

[27:12]

I don't know. Can't even imagine. We'd just be stuck on repeat. Like records used to get stuck. So that's not happening, apparently. What is happening is more of a flow. A flow of present moments. One moves in, another moves out. Another one comes in, another one comes out. And so on. And it's rather quickly that it's happening. You can't really put your finger on the present moment. However, you can kind of get a sense of it. When I say present moment, maybe kind of feeling for what that means. Like right now, we talk like that. But then it's already gone. So it is and isn't just this is it. Both is and isn't just this is it. So I think the trickiest part of trying to stay with the present is how quickly it's replaced by the new present. While we... in our rather slow manner of living, are still clinging to something that has already passed.

[28:14]

We have this miraculous ability to remember, for a little while anyway, something that's just happened. So we kind of hold on to the tail. Like, you know, it's as though we have a tail that we drag along with us. And we can kind of stay in touch with the tail as it passes through time. So clinging, you know, we cling to... Both our successes and our failures. We get really caught in something that just happened. And then we remember it. And maybe remember it as something not so good that just happened. Or maybe something great that just happened. Either way, we want to hold it. We want to hold on to it. Just think about it for a while. Maybe take a picture of it and make a scrapbook or whatever. I don't want to lose this. Somehow I want to hold it. So that grasping, as you know, is a big source of our suffering. So, as I mentioned to you last week, there was this young man who really impressed me, who was riding in the Tour de France. He's a really good sprinter.

[29:16]

And he won this very important stage of the race. And it was so exciting. And everyone was rooting for him. And, you know, he's getting older. And, you know, by the time they're in their late 30s, they're kind of out of the game. So he's getting up there. And he won this very mountainous stage of the race. And it was exciting. And, you know, he got kind of a record. He broke a record. And then someone interviewed him, and I was really impressed because when they asked him, he didn't just go, yeah, I'm the greatest, you know. He wasn't holding on to that success he just had. Instead, he said, you know, this reminds me of completing these Nintendo games when I was young. At the end of it, after I finished all of the ones, you know, I mastered the last stage of Nintendo, I remember thinking, now what? Now what? And so he had that same thought after receiving this trophy, this award. Now what? I can't stop there.

[30:16]

You don't get to stop when you get the Academy Award. You've got a minute to say thank you to everybody, and then you go off stage. You can take it home. You can put it somewhere. But now what? Now what do I do? Am I living for that? And can I go on living, whether that happens or not, whether there's an award or not, whether my tea teacher says, very nice, Busan, do I just go on making tea? So Roshi says that when we are attached to some temporal transient expression of our true nature, then we need to talk about Buddhism, or else we may think that that temporal expression is it. whether it's a bicycle trophy or some moment of mental clarity on the sixth day of a sesheen. It's like, oh, I think I got it.

[31:17]

I think she's got it. We do think that. We think we got it because it seems so obvious that this must be it. This is just so nice. It's so nice. And I'm not so bothered by things that usually bother me and so on and so forth. have quite often run into a student during a break, during a session or something, and they're out there staring at the lawn like they've never seen the lawn before. And it's like, yeah, it's really nice, isn't it? It's like, yeah, where's it been? So, you know, these are kind of like revelations that folks have when they quiet themselves enough and when they kind of, you know, hold internal space for a while, long enough. that when you look out through the window again, it's like miraculous, you know. I don't know if you're familiar with the 10 ox-herding pictures. It could be something we could go over when I come back.

[32:17]

They're great. They're really good. And in one of the ox-herding pictures, there's just an open circle with nothing in it. So the... the Oxford or the boy has had an experience of vast emptiness, nothing holy. You know, the self is gone. No clinging to self, no clinging to future or past, just presence, just presence. There's no imagery there. And that used to be the last picture of the Oxford pictures. I think it's number eight. And then some century later, they added picture number nine, which was this open circle with a, branch with with buds you know open with blossoms all over the spring branch so the one side of the mirror is dark and then when you turn the mirror the other way you look out the window you see all of the spring or summer or winter something is amazing is happening there you know in the mirror so um so that was a an important very important addition

[33:27]

to the 10 ox burning pictures. And like I said, if you'd like, we could look at those. They're quite good. And because they're illustrations, I think they're really helpful for us in understanding the spiritual quest, which is what they're illustrating. So by talking about what our body is and what our mind is, then we are less likely to make a mistake about it and less likely to leave out all the other aspects of this world from which our body and our mind are being made. So that's enough about it and not it. And I was thinking that I would like to hear from you what you'd like to offer for conversation this evening. And I also to mention that next Sunday is my last time here until October the 6th when I return from my travels. And I'm hoping you all will decide you'd like to meet, whatever number of you would like to do that.

[34:29]

I think there has been... Now, one of you who's been helping with, I think, Kakuon, you've been helping to put together a little list of names. So if people can hear about that again, then perhaps you all can connect with each other about what you want to do on Sunday at 5. Or you can, next week, you could... We could decide together what you'd like to do and how many of you would like to do it. I think a number of people would like to keep meeting. I just heard from a friend who is part of a group, and they meet without the teacher, and they talk about the precepts. And they've been doing that for quite some time, and they really enjoy it. So they've been going through Rev. Anderson's book about the precepts, Upright Sitting. And there are other things that are possible, but I think that's a really nice thing for you all to have a chance to just express yourselves and talk about whatever it is that you're interested in discussing together.

[35:31]

So right now, I'd be interested in talking with you and seeing what's on your minds. And Karina, can I go on calorie? Yeah, great. Thank you. Yeah, I'll review. There you are. Good evening, Pusensei. Good evening, Sangha. I was wondering if you could tell me there exists a sutra or book of modern interpretation of the ox herding pictures. Hmm. What did I use? It is a book. of the ox herding pictures. Anyone know offhand? Okay, I have it somewhere.

[36:33]

Why don't I find it and then I'll send you the information. Thank you, thank you. You're welcome. Oh, and it would be so lovely to study the ox herding pictures. I participated in a session where that was the topic, and you showed us those beautiful cartoons, and I'd love to see those again. Yeah. Oh, great. Good. Well, they're really lovely. Actually, the gentleman who drew those cartoons, I think it was 30 years ago, he was in a class at Zen Center. with Michael Wenger, who's also here at Enso Village. And he, this man, it turns out, is here in Enso Village. So we were on some little gab, some little online thingy. And I mentioned the, for some reason, I mentioned the oxidating pictures and some artists who'd drawn them. And he said, oh, that was me. I was like, oh my God, how fabulous. So I had wanted to get his permission to use them as a kind of part of our children's program because they're wonderful artists.

[37:34]

to express and explain the development of a child, how they go from this kind of innocence, so-called innocent stage, to really coming to full maturity with gifts bestowing hands, as we say. The last picture is the old man with a bag of toys playing with the kids, you know, which is, in the best of all worlds, that's where we end up, right? Or old women, or whatever, neutral. So I'd be happy to go through the oxidating pictures. Really, it's a lovely study. So if you all want to do that, we can do that when we get through with Suzuki Rishi, which is a little away still, but not much longer. Thank you. You're welcome. How about studying the self? Anything come to mind there? You have a pretty good handle on yourself.

[38:39]

Everyone smiles. Nope. Hey, Dean. Yes. I was just getting ready to say good morning, but it's not morning. So good afternoon. Good afternoon. This isn't really a question, but it is. You sometimes will say something in such a way that I want to remember exactly how it's said because I feel it means something. I feel it is something that deserves to be in my notes to remember app on my phone. Is there a way? I used to have a link where I could go back and watch because this group is recorded. Is there any way to find that link again? Because, I mean, I could ask you the exact words you said after medicine should not become our food.

[39:45]

And by the time I wrote medicine should not become our food, I had forgotten the next part. So if there's a link somewhere that the one I have doesn't work any longer, so... if they're being recorded, so. Yeah, they are. And I think if you, I think, I don't know, maybe, Kakwan, you know better than I do because I'm not really tracking that. I think if you put my name in as a search, the Zen Seta website, that the whole thing comes up. It's like measles, all these talks and dated. Isn't that true, Kakwan, that they're there? Sorry, I was muted. So I I know that if we search in the the media players, so I think it's a specific app where you'll find all of the San Francisco Zen Center videos.

[40:47]

You can search there and you'll find these recordings. But I do remember and I was trying to look that up right now. I do remember that there was an issue with that link because there should just be a link we could go to. that would I'm checking, I'm checking it right now. But there was a link we could go to that would list all of them. And okay, so it's not it's not listing all of them exactly, but you'll be able to see Fusanga session. So let me pull this up here. And then Foo, I'll send it to you. And we can copy and paste it into the chat if you'd like. I don't have access. to be able to send to everyone. But here is the link. But once you're in this page, the Dharma app is what it's called. And I think you can even download it on your phone. Then one of the options up top, you'll see one of the links you can click on is Fusanga Sessions.

[41:52]

So they should all be there, I believe. Did you send that as a... Do you put that thing you just sent me, Kakuan, into the chat? I did, yes, but I didn't send it. I sent it to Zendo Events. Let me send it to you here. Oh, there it is. Okay. Now, what I do is copy that link. I'm so sorry. Copy that link and then put it to everybody and then paste it. No. Why is this not just the simplest thing? All right. Here we go. All right. I will work on this. Maybe for next week we can figure out how to do that. I can't seem to copy it into everybody.

[42:55]

Oh, copy. Maybe I'll try that. Copy. Paste. It'll be the 22nd. What's that? One other thing that I experienced was I go to the calendar from the SF Zen Center. And if you go into calendar, it does say the previous sessions. And you click on it. It says Sunday gathering with you, Boo. And you click on that. And then when you click on the previous sessions, all the sessions come up. they're not up to date like the most recent one is 6 30 june 30th oh you know so it takes a while for them to come up but you could see them all okay it does yeah i think there's about there will be about one week to two weeks delay so i yeah essentially uh for example the one for last week seven seven

[44:01]

was just uploaded today. So it may be sometime next week when it'll be seen publicly. There we go. There you go. You did it. Yeah. Yep. And that's that same link that you're talking about. That is the link that I just shared. So this is the same link where if you go to the San Francisco Zen Center. Oh, is it not? Is it working? Let's see if it works. No, it's saying playlist not found on my end for some reason. But the link before did work. Yeah, that's the same message I got. But you can go to app.sfzc.org, which is pretty darn easy to remember. And that will get you to the recording, so maybe somewhere in that. Yeah, and we've had... issues with this link before. It looks like they fixed it, but not completely.

[45:06]

Oh, I just found it. Now, what I did is I went to the app.sfzc.org and you'll see one, two, three, four, five menu items along the top and the very last one on the right is Foo Sangha Sessions. That's the easiest way to find it. Yeah, I would say so as well. This was supposed to be the link directly to it, but for some reason it's working sometimes, but it's not working all the time, at least on my end. But if you go to that app, you should be able to see it, find it pretty easily. Yeah, and you don't even need to... You can do it on your... computer or your phone or your ipad or whatever yep thanks thank you thank you all of you um as far as the sentence about the food um when when our spirits are good we don't need any medicine medicine Suzuki Rishi says should not become our food so whether we receive encouragement or not encouragement is just medicine for when we're feeling discouraged when our spirits are good we don't need any medicine

[46:25]

Medicine should not become our food. I had thought you had said something, or I interpreted it as that there was something that all that we needed, I don't know, the way it was worded, it sounded to me like that It should not become our food because our food is our life, or our food is our awareness, or our food is... Your true self. Yeah. Yeah, discovering who you really are. That's the actual food that you can actually eat that will nourish you, and you'll grow from that food. The other kind of food, like going to retreat and wearing robes and reading texts and all that, is... can be very external to us. We can feel frustrated, like we're doing all this stuff.

[47:25]

I'm on my exercise program. I'm eating lots of vitamins. We do all these things to try and make ourselves healthy. But really, the healthy part is when we find out who we really are. So that's a lot more subtle, and it's a lot quieter. You've got to kind of listen. That's why meditation is so nice, because you can kind of listen in to the the stuff going on here, this sort of distracts us from, you know, just the quiet, quiet and, and presence. It's always there. I just really appreciated the way you said it because it was so simple and it was so succinct. And it was, to me, it was, it was, oh yeah, that's right. It was a sort of just a spot on thing. And the fewer words, the, easier for me. Thank you. I kind of went like that, didn't it? Went from here to there. That's gone. Oh, well. It's all right.

[48:29]

That's what it's supposed to do. That's why I don't care about it. I really love it in that moment. And then Zoom, it's gone. And it's like, okay, well, and if I get it written down, that's great. I can put it in my notes to remember. And if I don't get it, I'll just wait for the next thing. Or the next thing will pop up at some point. Thank you. You're welcome. All of my books have these little colored post-its, you know, all the, every one of my books is full of the, why did I put that? I have no idea, but I read something. I think, Oh, that's so good. And I put a post in there. Oh, that's really good. I put a post in there, but you know, it's just sort of an exercise in futility because you can't keep it. I can't keep it. That inspiration has to come again from, you know, Next time or the next book or the next visit, something, something fresh. I noticed my notes to remember. I almost never go back and look at them except when I'm having a conversation with someone.

[49:33]

And then something will come up and it's like, oh, yeah, there's that. So it was very disappointing for me when I accidentally, I didn't delete my notes to remember. But what I did is I put my phone in my pocket without closing it. So all my notes to remember over the last few years disappeared. And so I'm starting a new notes to remember. So I'm sure they'll all make the rounds again. Well, good luck with that. Hi, Michael. Hello. I was wondering, could you speak a little bit to the transition or progression that occurs between the study of self and forgetting the self?

[50:36]

Is there a transformation that's happening and what does that look like? Yeah, I think it's pretty subtle. And I think you may notice that you don't think about yourself so much. I meet with a lot of people, and a lot of people really talk about themselves most of the time. It's really about what they did or what they want to do or how they feel about themselves or what they think about themselves. And after a while, sometimes the students, after they've been around for a while, start talking about the Dharma. They start being interested. Tell me something about these Four Noble Truths or tell me something about the, you know, and it's like you can sort of feel the shift. You know, sometimes they'll say to them, well, when you first got here, you kept telling me all about your stuff and where you went to school and yada, yada, you know, and you were going to, I did this and I did that and I did. And now you're talking about, well, we have a farm and we grow vegetables and we cook preparing food and

[51:45]

You know, we live in community. So going from the I, focus on the I, or I, me, and mine, to us, and to our sense of ourselves as a community, as a collection of beings, that we're part of that, like this collection of beings. Each of us is, we don't have a collection of beings if we're not all here. You know, this makes the Sangha is each of us being present. So that's the shift. You know, from sometimes I say to the when they're when they're I feel like they're ready to hear it is that, you know, you're going to have to get over yourself at some point. Because that's this just a waste of time. You're just wasting time, you know, get more interested in how to grow good vegetables or how to make a good soup or how to, you know, how to fix a saw or, you know, learn something, learn something. Kuan Yin has a thousand arms, and each one is a talent, is a skill that has been learned.

[52:46]

So do that. Learn a thousand arms, a thousand arms worth of skills. And then if somebody needs something, you got it. I know how to do that. I know how to change a tire. So I think that just learning to train ourselves to be of service, I think, is how you get over yourself. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. So it's not like... The realization might come from just the awareness of the fixation on the small self. And as soon as that awareness is held with some constant practice, then... you burn out on it. You realize how hung up you are in this identification with what you're thinking you are.

[53:53]

Yes, yes. And that's such a relief when you let that drop. There's a wonderful poem in the Enlightened Women Poetry from the Pali Canon. I forget exactly the whole poem. I used to know it by her. But this woman, she's just carrying the burden of her life and her struggles. And finally she goes up on a mountain and she sits on a rock and the wind blows her robe away. She's free. All that burden that she's been carrying just blows away in the wind. And she knows it. I think we know it when some of that excess baggage you know, gets lost in transit. I don't know where it went, and I don't need it anymore. I really don't, you know. So I think you start to feel younger and younger rather than older and older. You regain some interest in life and in showing up.

[55:00]

The question came up regarding kind of a contemporary take on the Oxford pictures. And I remember reading Joko Beck's book a number of years ago. I think it was, what's it called? Everyday Zen or something like that. But in there, she talks about, and she really lays it out very... There's a... very definitive regression where she's talking about the stages of practice. So she makes reference to the pre-path where we seem to be just really caught up in this notion of who we are, this small self like we were talking about.

[56:04]

And then Through years of practice, and she actually, if I remember correctly, talks about the number of years that evolved in this transformation. In the fifth or sixth stage of practice, there's just experiential life. And so presence, just, you know, just constant, just presence in your life, experiential. And to the point where it's even hard to go back to the earlier stages, the pre-path where, you know, we're so caught up in, you know,

[57:05]

delusion and his notions of who we are. Well, the reason we go back, or the reason we don't abandon that knowing of our deluded selves is that we need to know that in order to help others. You know, we don't want to turn away from the suffering of the world. And the best way to be of help is that you understand what suffering is all about, because you've been doing that. quite a while so you can be a really a great resource to people if you've gone through depression if you've gone through loss if you're grieving and all those things that we all are have gone through in our lives become resources for when we meet someone else who's just entering into terrible grief or loss or confusion or whatever so you know Turning away and touching are both wrong. It's like a massive fire. So we want to sit in the middle of the fire. The bodhisattvas are cool.

[58:08]

They're chill, and they're in the fire. They're in the flames of suffering, of all of this going on around us, as we know, so much suffering going on around us. And we're not going to leave that. We're not going to go find a nice place in New Zealand or something. We're going to stay... where suffering beings are. So, yeah, I think that's familiar, what you were talking about. And I think if we do do the oxygen pictures, that will be part of the sequence that we look at there. Also Dongshan's Five Ranks, if you want to look into that, there's a book called Dongshan's Five Ranks, The Keys to Enlightenment, which I've been using for a class on Monday nights. It's wonderful. The five ranks are very helpful. And then Dogen says, don't get stuck on that either. Don't make it into a system. Oh, yeah, I'm ranked number three. Oh, now that's who you are. So you keep kind of making another little wall of yourself, a little ball of self-clinging.

[59:15]

So we want to just keep, let it go, let it go. No trace, Dogen says, no trace. And no trace continues endlessly. That's the feeling of the selflessness. continues endlessly. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Hello, Tim. Hi. This concept of studying self is one of my favorite topics. And it really reminds me of when I was trying to think of how to phrase this. Two of my favorite people to model myself after, your own self being one, Bhikkhu Bodhi, because I go to...

[60:23]

he has zoom events uh guided meditation and and pseudo study and then um ayasanta chitta who's uh teravan bhikkhuni who has a little micro monastery in san rafel now and i became friends with her years ago and she's she studied in the achan cha tradition in england with ayana nabody and uh Maybe I'll get the chance to introduce the two of you someday in person. You'd really like her. But something that they do, Bikkabody will even make jokes about it. The Theravadan tradition, their robes are pieced together. They're supposed to be resembling, you know, people just sewed together rags. And that's the robes that they wear. So they, you know, they don't sew them out of a pattern of, you know, neatly, they're neat, but they're patched together by design.

[61:26]

But each of them, both Bhikkavoti and Ayasanta Chita, will wear robes that are some completely oddball color, you know, like a red robe or a dark brown robe. But I'm aware that Ayasanta Chita does that, but Bhikkavoti will actually make jokes about it. You know, I just grabbed this whole thing out of the closet kind of a thing. And for me, that's an embodiment of not having self for me. But they're funny about it, too. So I just thought I'd share that something. I never asked them about it, but I just have observed it over years that... They do that. They're wearing this strange hodgepodge because they have an inner robe and an outer robe, and they're always completely mismatched.

[62:30]

This is one of those, but it's Japanese version. It's totally perfect. It's completely mismatched, but totally perfect. Yeah, right. So there's cultural manifestations. It's the same concept. Yeah. When I was a new student, one of the older students, do you all know David Chadwick's name? It's kind of a... Sorry, no. Wild fox then. Anyway, David's a total hoot. He was one of the Suzuki brushies early. Yeah, yeah. Early disciples, and he's just... amazing human being. So David came over to a place where I was visiting some folks, and he was going through this big bag of stuff. He had one of those book bags, and it was full of stuff, and he kept throwing stuff out. And he took this rock suit out of the bag and threw it across the room. And I was like, oh my God.

[63:33]

It was kind of like breaking the Holy Grail or something. I just felt this shock. And then I thought, maybe like you, it's like... Oh, I think he's teaching me something very similar to what's going on in this talk. Don't identify with the cloth or the ritual or the what. You know, try to find out how to use these things as liberative techniques to help people. You know, now maybe you got to be careful because sometimes, you know, unlike you and me, it might not be helpful. It might turn someone away. Yeah. Right. So you kind of got to know your audience. a little bit before you do some strong medicine. There's a story, Hakon, who's a very famous Zen teacher and had lots of enlightened disciples, was kind of a shouter and a yeller and a hitter. He's from the Rinzai side of Zen. And one of the young men that he thought was ready, I think he yelled at him or something, and the young man lost his mind.

[64:40]

And never regained his sanity. And Hakuin wrote about that to his credit. And he said, that was the greatest mistake that I made in not knowing my student. And they were not ready for that kind of hard hit on their ego, on their costume. So I think we need to really be careful. I just think it, you know, I love those stories, too. I like the wild fox spirit. I'm really drawn to it. And I also appreciate the kind of just quiet, respectful, old school, you know, okay, everybody sit down, we'll ring the bell, and then you do this, and you do that. There's something about the balance between those two ways that's really important. Yeah, I'm really into that traditional style too, but the people I'm drawn to, You have to admit, you're not completely mainstream, Fu.

[65:42]

What does that make you people? I'm so far out there, I can't even mention it. Yeah, I've been wondering. And I'm delighted. Well, the thing I like about you is that you're not rigidly locked into traditional concepts. You're moving. in and out of it and blending it all together. And that's, that's what I, that's why I'm here. Well, I'm glad you're here and I'm glad you appreciate what is basically a combination of, I forget things. And so I make them up and how much I love this teaching. I want to respect it, you know, with all my heart. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, lovely ones. Anyone else have a thing to say or a story to tell or need anything?

[66:50]

Oh, how lovely. Okay. Well, then in that case, please feel free to unmute and say goodnight from wherever you are. Thank you so much, Fu. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome, Jerry. Good night. Take care. Welcome to Jerry. It's a new face for me. Thank you very much. Good night. Yes, have a good night, a good morning. Good night. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Singapore. Good morning. Bye. Bye-bye.

[67:44]

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