I'm a little tired. Is that too loud? I'm a little tired this morning. I got back from Tassajara at six o'clock this morning. I would have arrived earlier, but one of the students drove the green truck off the road, so we couldn't get by. And they had a... I guess what happened is they had a load of sand and gravel for laying a cement floor, and nobody's hurt, anyway, for laying a cement floor in the barn. And there's several places in the road which are bad, and there's one place where, as you go around a kind of corner going down a very steep part, there's a kind of, well, the road's fallen away, you know, right in the corner. And if you're driving a car, you just go right over it, if you're too close. You really shouldn't be that close, but anyway, you go right over it. But with a load of sand and gravel, the back wheels just got stuck there, and the more they tried to get it off, it went, and the time we tried to drive out, it looked like one of those disaster posters, this big truck sticking up in the night, you know, up in the air. And we could just barely couldn't make it, you know.

[01:28]

One wheel was up, and we could drive between the edge of the hill. But the bumper hit the aerial and the windshield, so we lowered the aerial, but we couldn't lower the windshield. So then we took the bumper off, which took an hour or so to get tools. I was determined to get here. I don't know why. So there we were at midnight. And of course two bolts were bent or rusted shut and we couldn't get them off. So Reb hacksawed one off. And the last one we didn't decide not to do, Reb just grabbed the bumper and... And the Tassajara people all tried to stop him because they thought he was going to destroy the truck. So, we are all sitting in the car behind listening to rock. Watching, wondering what to do. Anyway, we got it off and then we drove and it was quite close because from the back it seems solid, but when you touch the side of it, the whole truck sort of rocked, right? So, we were going by and we really had, you know, like that much, we brushed the tire twice and to back up and then we squeezed through. Anyway, so, I finally made it and I have nothing to say.

[02:59]

The Blue Cliff Records I want to talk about today is number 18, I guess, Hekigan Roku, case number 18. And on the one hand, it's quite a simple story, fairly easy to understand. On the other, it's rather complicated story. It involves, it's really about, on one hand it's about how you talk to politicians and the government and political people and things like that, and most of the stories center on it, in the case itself, and what Suzuki Roshi talked about it, or about what so-and-so said to an emperor. And the gist of it is you don't say much at all to an emperor. Mostly you say, I don't know, or, you know. But the I don't know is very Zen.

[04:36]

But on one side, which is harder to understand, I think, it really means, I don't know. It really means that you don't teach the emperor anything. But it also means that he should understand. Anyway, the story is... Anyway, the main subject is an un-tiered monument. Un-tiered, you know, various tiers, layers. An un-tiered monument is hard to see, difficult to see indeed. So that's basically the story. The background is One of the Tang Dynasty emperors, who was kind of a bad guy, appointed a kokushi, which is an imperial tutor on Buddhism and also a teacher for the nation on Buddhism. And this man, Roshi, made a point of emphasizing that he'd

[06:03]

been again at his temple 40 years before he accepted the emperor's request. Of course, it's pretty difficult to refuse the emperor's request. You don't have that option, exactly. So he went to the capital and, as the story goes, I guess he was quite ill and about to die. emperor tactfully wanted to ask him how to take care of his burial proceedings. But you don't want to say, what about next week, what should we do? So to be tactful he said, A hundred years hence, what thing can I do for you?" And the teacher, the tutor said, a simple untiered mound will do. And anyway, he said, a simple untiered mound will do.

[07:32]

The emperor says, well, what shape monument do you want? And the tutor rested a while and didn't say anything, and then said, do you understand? Of course, the point of the story is the emperor didn't understand anything. Maybe he did. So when he didn't understand, he said, go see my law-qualified disciple, which means a disciple who's been acknowledged and also appointed successor in a public ceremony. And he says, go see my law-qualified disciple, Tangen, and Ask him, he knows my heart thoroughly and he can answer for you." So after he died, the emperor sent for Tangen and said, what about this? What did he mean, an untiered mound?

[09:00]

And Thangan said, south of Cho and north of Than, the land is full of gold, something like that. And then he said, underneath the formless tree, a public, it's literally translated a public association boat or ferry, the sea is calm and clear. Then Setso, who does most of the introductory words to these, interpolates a whole bunch of things about the sound of one hand clapping, the pilgrim staff, etc. There are a lot of stories involving I don't know. The most famous one is the emperor asks Bodhidharma,

[10:04]

Who are you?" And Bodhidharma says, first of all, the emperor says, you know, I built all these temples and bought green gulch, etc., and have I achieved any merit? And Bodhidharma says, no merit. So then the emperor says, who are you anyway? And Bodhidharma says, I don't know. So the emperor was fooled again. Another story similar about Bodhidharma is somebody says, who stands before you? Bodhidharma says, I don't know. And another one is supposedly a Brahman asked Buddha, what is the teaching of unstated you know, something or other, Buddhism, and Buddha doesn't say anything and then the Brahman bows and says, �Thank you very much.

[11:21]

Anyway, this kind of answer is easy to get fooled by because it sounds like you can answer any question with, you know, silence. But to be attached to silence too much is also to build a big monument. And to think that the emperor should understand the silence, to think, well, the emperor is a dummy, you know, because he doesn't understand what he means when he's silent. also to build a big monument to Buddhism, because the emperor not understanding is also okay. Actually, not understanding is okay. So he says, under the formless tree, the ferry boat is resting in the shade.

[12:30]

What he means here is, there's a, you know, in the Parinirvana Sutra there's the image of the ferry boat which has all kinds of people, you know, the wise and the foolish. being carried through life, and they don't realize they're under the formless tree, the Absolute, all the time protected, you know. So here he says they're wise or foolish, it doesn't make any difference if they're happy underneath the tree, it doesn't make any difference if they know the tree's there in the shade. The monument, what we're talking about, I should explain what the usual tiered monument is. Usually for Buddhists you build a, you know, you have a big, depends on how rich and famous you are, important, the size of the stones, you know.

[13:40]

the famous cemetery in Japan at Koyasan, the esoteric mountain for Shingon Tantric Buddhism. The stones are huge for these big shoguns and guys. And the first stone is a big square one, which represents Earth, I guess. And the next one is round. I don't know. That's maybe water. I don't remember. And the next one is shaped like that. I can't go any higher, I'll start down here again. It goes like that, and then the next one is a half-moon, I guess, and then a flame, bindu or point sits on the top. Anyway, they stand for Buddha nature, emptiness and fire and water and earth and air. But when Roshi talked about this, He specifically said that for a Zen Master there should be an untiered mound, a simple mound. And he drew little pictures on the blackboard of these two. The Zen Master has just simple stone. So, what he's saying to the Emperor is just

[15:01]

a simple stone will do. But he's also saying the whole, we don't need a monument, the whole world, the whole universe is my monument. There's no need to have any specific monument. And north of Cho, no, south of Cho and north of Tan, are two rivers between which most of the Tang Dynasty existed, I guess, and anyway, it's where most of the Zen temples were. So it means the whole universe. Also, it means that, anyway, the south of Shou, anyway, the waters of the Sho River flow northward and the waters of the Tan River flow south. That's another sort of little thing he's saying.

[16:12]

Anyway, I think this is pretty easy to understand, what we mean by not speaking or silence. But it's much harder, of course, to actually live in this way. not to be attached to this understanding. It's also okay to say something. If you're always silent, you'll get beat up probably, if you have a good teacher. So we should say something. The image used a lot is the ocean. And like Suzuki Roshi, if you ask Suzuki Roshi, in various times, quite often, somehow, I don't think anyone, I can't remember, I don't remember anybody directly asking him who he was, but he felt, he often said something like, he was a cloud, or he felt like a cloud.

[17:59]

And so the cloud, when cloud is talked about in Buddhism, it means, of course, that it's formless and doesn't have much form and it just floats around. And also that it has a cloud you can't say where it is. From your point of view, the cloud is up there. From somebody else's point of view, it's over that building. And from an airplane's point of view, it's down there. You can't say where a cloud is. A cloud exists everywhere. A cloud could loop the loop. It's completely free from being defined from this point of view or that point of view. A cloud usually means form. And then we talk about rain, or dharma rain, which means function, which the rain isn't silent exactly, you know, the rain is rain, so we need to have some function, some expression. But the ocean is particularly liked in Buddhism because it absorbs all the rain without overflowing.

[19:35]

and all the rivers which come into it lose their names when they come into it. And there's some idea that the ocean rejects dead bodies. I don't know quite why. Maybe salt water rejects dead bodies. I don't know. Anyway, it means that it rejects dead karma, rejects karma. And it has tides that are regular. Anyway, there's a whole list of reasons why the ocean is considered this big, vast, formless thing. But the ocean really doesn't, you know, it is nameless. So how you practice, I don't know. Really, I don't know. is pretty difficult. I mean, I don't know as a way of communicating about Buddhism, but also completely letting go of knowing, completely. We usually think the emperor should have understood what Bodhidharma meant, but that's to build a big monument to Buddhism. Actually, there's no need for the emperor to understand.

[20:58]

The Tenth Bhumi, Claude's favorite list of items in the Buddhist canon, in the Buddhist canon, excuse me. Anyway, the Tenth Bhumi is the stage of the assembling of the Dharma clouds and It's very interesting because it talks about, you know, all of these other stages are about progressively getting emptier and nowhere at all. And until finally by the eighth stage you don't have your own body, you act through all bodies. Finally your expression is not your expression, it's just the sun exists, the sun exists, you don't have to also be the sun. Anyway, the Tenth Bhumi is interesting because suddenly it talks about doing lots of things. It says you can juggle the world systems, you can reverse their order, you can set them up backwards or forwards or upside down, you can reduce them all into a little mote of dust, then you can make them gigantic again.

[22:43]

all without changing the hair on a single person's head, all the mountains remain the same size, you know, all the time you can do all this. This is our practice as we talk about trying to save all sentient beings or practice with all sentient beings, this kind of effort we could make, we should make, impossible or not, this idea, kind of ideas, the infinite extension of your practice is cosmic Buddha in this sense. but also it means that your practice does extend this far. Anyway, this gives us another side to accepting everything as it is. Usually, you know, I don't know in a way means you know, you can't explain. When you explain, it's already, you've limited it. Explain your practice or try to explain what a flower is. A flower is just a flower, you know. It is totally itself. It doesn't have to teach or be anything. But also, I don't know means

[24:10]

that you accept everything just as it is. You know, the Vietnam War, even. Nixon and McGovern, etc. The emperor. And you don't have to say anything to the emperor. He's under the formless tree of the absolute, you know. So it sounds like your practice is to you know, accept everything as it is, that, well, that's the way it is, so it's okay, you know, and you have to adjust to it. And that's true, and that is our practice. And to be able to release, to do that, really to recognize that things can be as they are, you don't have to change them. To really recognize that is a big change in you. It doesn't change anything, but it's some big change. It means, too, to recognize that there's no thinker behind the thought. As I said in Tassajara, Descartes said, what, I think before I am. Before I am? I think, therefore I am. I was being very Western. Anyway, what's interesting about that is he adds I.

[25:39]

I think." So naturally you have to have at the other end of the equation, you have to have, I am. But Buddhism would say, thinking, therefore thinking. It sounds very Zen, doesn't it? Anyway, you can find a thought, that's true, but you can't find anybody thinking it. So, then again there's many stories about There's a straw fire, right? And when the straw's gone, the fire's gone. Consciousness is there when a situation or conditions produce consciousness, but what's consciousness like the fire when the wood's gone? So how to be without wood or straw? How to be without karma which consumes you, puts you in a non-human realm? So accepting things as they are means to accept whatever you are, whatever your thinking is, whatever your fears are, as yourself. It means accepting the Vietnam War as yourself, accepting what this world that you, people very much like you, exactly like you, have created.

[27:41]

But it's difficult for us to do that because we have the feeling we're shirking our responsibility. But anyway, at first we start with that kind of outer practice. And we have to know that our outer practice or battle or whatever is the same as our inner practice or battle. If you have one or the other, you get into what we call a non-human realm. where your karma consumes you. Most of us have, most of us can't practice really, can't really let go to, I don't know, because they're protecting some You know, we all have a special idea of wanting the world to be a certain way. It's nearly impossible to give up that idea. No matter what you do, you want the world to be a certain way. You can't really accept it as it is, you know. And we also want ourselves to be in harmony with the world in some way. Through, you know, like in harmony with the stars or with our Buddha nature or with our friends or with IBM or something, you know.

[29:09]

It's very hard for us to give up that desire to want to be in harmony with things. But also, what we're probably protecting most of all is the hope that eventually we'll be acknowledged as a special person. Someone will find out we're actually special. And even if you give up wanting to be somebody famous or something, still you think eventually people will say, he attained the big E, enlightenment. So as long as you have some idea that you're going to get the big E up there sometime, and everyone will know you're a great teacher and you've got the truth in your pocket. That's being consumed in a non-human realm. So to our practice to

[30:29]

is to try to accept things as they are and accept ourself as it is, whatever it is, schizophrenic or afraid or upset or whatever. But the other thing that the Tenth Bhumi points out is that accepting things as they are means there's no you to interfere with anything. So that's the inner practice for the outer practice of accepting things as they are. It also means there's no you to interfere, nothing added. You don't add anything to things. So normally, why it's so difficult to accept things as they are is because we want them to be a certain way. So we're always adding a little of this plus me, you know, you or something. So when you can accept, when there's no you that interferes with anything, then you can actually work with everything. So this is again the tenth bhumi, what the tenth bhumi talks about. When you actually, when there's no you, when you can accept things as they are. Accepting things as they are means working with everything.

[32:01]

This is another way of looking at the famous story about the flag. Is the flag, you know, the two monks are arguing about the flag and one says it's the wind and the other says it's, what, the flag? The flag's moving and it says, no, the wind is moving? Yes. And the teacher says the mind is moving. So we think this means that everything is mind, but it also means that you can work with everything, that everything is changing, the flag is changing, and the wind is changing, you're changing. So accepting things as they are actually means to work with everything, to work with ending the Vietnam War. but it's not, so I don't know is rather big, it's like the ocean which the rivers all lose their names in. This is, I think this kind of subtlety in our practice is difficult because we use words like I talked about last week, practicing like trying to be mindful and then we find when we're mindful it actually stops our activity.

[33:35]

because we're judging in our mindfulness, this is good or this is bad. So really how to feel even some dignity as a human being and not discriminate, just to do whatever you are doing and just notice it without saying this is good or bad, we feel we have to improve ourselves or we can't respect ourselves. So how to give up that? is pretty difficult. It's in this area that your practice begins to work or doesn't work. Practice is interesting. We talk about secret body or mind or speech, and that means to hear in a different way. You begin to actually hear what people are saying to you, what your teacher is saying to you. First you just, it's words and it makes sense, but you don't really hear all the time what's being said, whether something's being said or not, whether there's silence or no silence, you hear everything.

[35:02]

In a way, as you notice, you meet some little kid and immediately the little kid... Some little kids you meet and you can't speak with them. And some little kids you just meet and immediately they can hear you. You know, they respond in some way. But for practice, how do we begin to hear each other? Actually hear what we're saying to each other? How we're accepting each other? So, to go back to the un-teared monument, Suzuki Roshi, we worked on Suzuki Roshi's

[36:06]

Well, not exactly grave, but where his ashes will go. And it'll be four stones set in the ground, and with the bottom just dirt, so the ashes disappear into the dirt. And as he said, he wants just a simple mound. And he picked a very inconspicuous place. He didn't pick the top of a hill, as usual for important teachers. He picked a rather just ordinary little place. It's hard even to get some space there because it's trees and slopes, but it's very quiet too. It's a very silent place. You can't hear almost at all either of the, either the stream, it's like two, actually it's one stream, but it goes around like that. And from here you can hear this stream, and from here you can hear this stream. But at this little place, right below the edge, you can't hear anything. It's very silent. No, no. Maybe I don't know.

[37:29]

Another monument for Suzuki Roshi is his garden. He worked on his garden almost exclusively down there. He didn't do anything else practically except work on his garden. And for him that was the most important thing to do at Tassajara, was to make that garden. So the main subject of this story is, to see an untiered mound is difficult indeed, which means, you know, to want to see, to want to see what the silence means, you know, to want to see the untiered mound is what blinds you to it. Anyway, we'll have some simple mound with a stone on it for Suzuki Roshi. Do you want, should we talk about anything?

[38:56]

Well, the human realm, being a human is to be able to work with your karma, to be completely caught by your karma. Like Dr. Kunze always liked to talk about the devas, where everything is really fantastic. I mean, it's just total sexual delight for millions of years, right? And everything's, there's no bad things, right? Everything's just all the pleasure you can imagine without anything. But you have no choice in such a situation until your karma for staying there runs out. So to be caught in that way is a non-human realm. That's it. Yeah? I don't know. I'm sorry, that's too easy to answer that way. She said, does Suzuki Roshi working in the garden mean many levels of

[40:27]

working in the garden. And I took the easy way out and said, I don't know. And anyway, I think he was just working in the garden. Actually, you know, he enjoyed working in the garden, but he didn't do much else except, you know, of course, give lectures and doksan, go to zazen. Maybe so. Yeah. I was walking down the street one day, and there was some glass. I said, well, you know, it's a bad thing that little kids have to play in this area and there's glass in the street. Then I wondered, I said, why is there glass there? How did it get there? And I remember reading somewhere that there was somebody's individual card, card, somebody's general card. So then what responsibility do I have?

[41:32]

and someone else walking ahead of me without any legs for me to come along and do this thing. My whole responsibility I have is to be able to support those people who are in my neighborhood. What responsibility do I have? Simple as that. Well, for the practice period students, I read a section from the Surangama Sutra and it says that, I guess he was a bodhisattva then and he became a Buddha, I can't remember exactly, but anyway, he was back there, way back before Buddha. thousands of years or something, he carried people's groceries home from the supermarket and he picked up every piece of glass and he built bridges and when a Buddha was going to be late for supper he cleared the road, you know. Until one of the Buddhas said to him, clear your own mind ground. Then he understood in some other way, etc.

[42:55]

But I don't, I mean, you know, without being philosophical about that kind of thing, actually we know what to do. You know, if you're in your house and there's some broken glass, you don't worry too much about how it got there. You pick it up, particularly if there's a kid around or something. The street is your house too. So you just naturally pick up the glass if you can. you can get in trouble when you start picking up a cigarette wrapper that someone's just thrown down and you pick it up in front of them. I've done that, you know, I nearly get clubbed. It's very funny. But, you know, you can't pick up all the broken glass in the world, you can try. So, I don't know, I mean for a while you can practice that way, doing whatever anybody asks you to do. picking up broken glass, helping in any way, knocking on doors and saying, here I am, I'm your servant, what shall I do? I mean, you know, I don't think we really go that far, but you can have that attitude. But at some point you have to have some priority and pick up some of the glass and do some of the things you need to do.

[44:20]

But how to find out, there's no philosophical or theological answer. Someone's drowning, you just pull them out and you don't, there's no big chalkboard up in heaven, somebody says, that's a good one for him, you know. And you just do it and you just, whatever it is, you just do it. Sometimes we'll go too far, we'll do too much that way and we find we don't have time to do anything else except pick up class. So then you go, but that's a kind of practical problem of somebody who practices of how to help people. The most important thing is really to give up your own idea of development and practice to help other people. But what we mean by help is, you know, you can't say. Thank you very much.

[45:42]

you

[45:49]

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