Good evening. Thirty-eight years ago, Sunday, I flew to San Francisco and wound up staying at San Francisco Zen Center ever since. I had come to climb in the Sierras and to do a seven-day sashim, and I knew that I might stay, and I did. Sometimes I think about when I was first here and when I'm here now as two different eyes. So that's what I want to talk about today is dual tracking. We have two eyes which gives us depth perception because of the overlap of the images you can see in depth perception. Well, if we just had one eye,

[01:02]

or those animals that have an eye on each side, that their fields don't overlap. They have to go like this all the time. Pigeons are always going like this so they can get depth perception. There are different kinds of depth perception. There's seeing the world through intellect, seeing the world through emotion. And the parallax between them makes depth. There's another lecture going on out there. In the Lotus Sutra it says only a Buddha together with a Buddha can fathom the reality of all existence. Two Buddhas are more than one because they have depth between them, seeing you can see behind me and I can see behind you.

[02:13]

There's a wider field. And we're all stuck with our habits to some extent. And that's one visual field, but then trying to see things fresh in each moment is another. A student of mine recently went to Japan and he just graduated from college and the first thing he wanted to do was to go study in Japan. not something I particularly recommended he do, but he wanted to do it, so fine. So he wrote me, all I can say is that it's nice to know that my shadow will follow me all the way across the ocean. I feel like I'm finally seeing, giving Dogenzen a chance here in Japan.

[03:19]

I don't know if I ever did that when I was back in San Francisco. keeping a light heart about it all and trying to not fall into the serious Zen student trap. Serious, uptight, angry. Japan's got enough of them already. How are you doing in San Francisco? Health, family? Wishing you well here from the Misty Mountains and many thanks. I wrote him back. first by quoting Ryu Jing, Duncan's teacher. Ryu Jing wrote, The footprints of the Tathagata can actually be seen today. The room in which Laman Vimalakirti dwelt still exists.

[04:24]

The foundation stones of the Jetavana monastery remain as well. But when one goes to sacred place remains such as these and measures them, he finds them sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, sometimes extended, and sometimes contracted. Their dimensions cannot be fixed. This is a manifestation of the Russian vitality of the Buddha Dharma itself. Enjoy your travels, Michael. And then he wrote back. And now we study the ruins of Dogen and Ru Jing. Not to say that there's no Dogen and no Ru Jing, but that to use your words, what's foreground and what's background changed quite a lot. Even then, there's still stuff missing from the picture and other stuff added to it. I think this is why I needed to return to my intentions of study again and again and again. because I find myself objectifying the learning process.

[05:25]

I run them back right on. Objectifying the learning process. Sometimes people would sense they really want a priest training or an objective training of Buddhism. so they can get everything in there and they'll know it's all been covered. And there's some point to it, I don't mean to put it down. But that's not what learning's about. Learning's about when you're in the midst of a program and there's a question. Learning's about when you have two perspectives on the same thing and watch it move and shift. Learning's about when you try to objectify things and nail it down, and it wiggles away. As my friend did in Japan, noticed that he kept on trying to nail it down, to objectify it, to grab it, to hold it.

[06:40]

But the world doesn't get... doesn't do that. It keeps... slipping out of our hands. To not try to get a hold of it is not right either. Because then you're satisfied with no effort. It's the middle of your effort, seeing where your attachment is in the middle of your effort as you try, seeing what you want as you try to do the way. This is sort of related to agriculture. In agriculture we try to develop the seed that it becomes reliable and it will sprout forth good food and produce.

[07:52]

But with the cultivated seeds you have to have some wild seeds thrown in to give it vitality. Otherwise it gets run down. That's why Bodhidharma is our wild seed of Zen. And the wild seed cultivates. It tries to cultivate himself. He stood nine years facing a wall. But he didn't throw out the vitality with the... the refinement. Now my friend said something about angry and uptight and that Japan has enough of it.

[08:56]

It's not about Japan, it's about we all have enough of that. We can all be uptight about our study because it's serious. And we're serious and therefore we can be angry because we're serious. if we're serious we can be frustrated and to know our frustration is a great thing. To try and fail is a great thing. To try and succeed is maybe you don't learn as much. But who wants to try to fail? Well, There's a line in a Bob Dylan song which says, there's no success like failure, and failure is no success at all.

[09:58]

But this idea of dual tracking, of seeing things from different perspectives in order to get a depth of understanding, is useful. if there's a question you could go either way the concept of the near enemy is in the for Brahma Vaharas there's the near enemy there's the good attribute and there's something that looks like the good attribute but it's its near enemy so for instance compassion Well, compassion is good. But if you feel sorry for somebody and feel superior in a compassionate way, that's its near enemy. Or in the

[11:16]

most important of the four Brahma Vaharas is while the near enemy is not caring and the good quality is to be even-minded but the near enemy of Being even-minded is not caring. It's not that you don't care. It's just that you don't fall apart if you don't get what you want. As if we could get what we wanted. I don't know if you're like me. Even what I want isn't what I want. So if I think that I'm going to be frustrated, That's normative for me.

[12:23]

So to see the two ends of everything. Because for some people, being compassionate is being superior. and that's not where true compassion is. For other people, being compassionate means if somebody's depressed, you get depressed. That's not compassion either, that's self-indulgence. real compassion is listening to somebody and understanding from the inside where they're coming from and not at first judging it either way just saying oh that hurts I understand that and that's the primary thing to understand that it hurts and that someone is suffering

[13:55]

not telling them they shouldn't suffer. I guess they don't understand Buddhism. So this objectification is a bad habit. But in itself, there's nothing wrong with trying to objectify, to try to make it as big as possible, knowing that you're always going to fail, knowing that everything is particular. Just this. Not this or that. So my friend in Japan probably won't be in Japan for 38 years.

[15:09]

Who knows, he might. But hopefully each moment he can open up to see what's going on right now. To see from the perspective of how we usually see things and the perspective of what's going on right now. Many Zen students get to a point where everything is drab. They think it's all a repetition. They want something fresh. That's an important point to reach. Because that's where you realize that your idea of control leads to a drab life.

[16:23]

Dual tracking is a little bit related to karma. Before one starts karma, we have to feel like we're either victims or we're in control. That's not what karma is about. Karma is about participating with things, being both affected by it and affecting. That's dual tracking, seeing how you're affected and how you're being affected and how you're affected. I sat down tonight and I was in my lecture world thinking about all the things I wanted to say and then I opened my eyes and saw all of you.

[17:38]

It's quite amazing. All of you have come to practice and to find out who you are. It's great, great. And you don't have to go to Japan either. But going to Japan is good too. You said that the person who arrived 38 years ago and the person today are two different people, two different eyes.

[18:44]

How are they different? Well, sometimes I don't think they're different at all. And sometimes I think that they're very different. I think both are true. Those are the two eyes. Two eyes which sees continuity and sees discontinuity. Sometimes people think Zen is about continuity, but it's as much about discontinuity as about continuity. Does that make sense? Well, that's good. You said something about the emotional eye and the intellectual eye. Can those both meet each other? Well, they interact with each other.

[19:48]

And they should be in contact with each other. and communication. Otherwise, you're cut off from the vital part of who you are. Sometimes emotions get a bad rap in Zen, but emotions are just as important as anything else. They're sometimes a little bit more slippery Okay, one more and we're out of here. I was here a year ago and when I was here, I left and I felt that I had a practice and I found after some time that I had lost a lot of vitality in my practice and since then I found

[20:55]

let go of trying to control my practice in the world. My senior got some vitality back. And coming back here, it sort of feels like, in a way, I feel some sense of repression. I don't attribute that to your minds or you guys, my fellows here. I take responsibility for that. But I'm curious about the level of repression. The role of repression is in practice. Well, the role of repression among people is we often feel that repression comes from the outside. And so it does, but it's often coming from the inside. You can't control yourself, so you'll go to a community which will tell you what to do. The role of discipline is important, and it's not repression.

[22:06]

It's about seeing what pushes your buttons and realizing that repression is not just from the outside, it's from the inside. Repression from the outside is easy to get away from. Repression from the inside is much more difficult. because it follows you as the shadow followed him across to the ocean. So it's often easy to live by ourselves because other people are so difficult to live with. But they find that about us. So dealing with other people, other people's wants and our own wants and finding out a way which harmony can be produced is much more challenging when you live with people. But that's a good question that you've raised.

[23:11]

Where is real repression? And where is laziness? Sometimes you can be lazy and not see the repression that's all around you. You just live a lazy life. But when you try to do something, you try to use effort, and yet use it in a gentle way, then you can find out where repression is. In the temple, of course, we're given difficult jobs. Like Eno's a difficult job because it brings up everybody's repression, bad father visions. Luckily our new Eno takes it lightly. Because it's not about what he wants done, it's about him

[24:16]

Communicating and showing the way that the temple is run. The expectations. Why do these people all have expectations about me? Because they think you're Buddha. Or that you can grow into being Buddha. So we take turns having authority in the temple. And we take turns being sometimes not energetic enough and sometimes a little bit repressive. But they're all in us. They're all in the dual tracking. If you think you're not somebody else, then I think you're diminishing yourself, even if that which you don't want to be is distasteful.

[25:27]

Anyhow, on a lighter note, have a wonderful evening and thank you for coming.

[25:40]

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