He taught a mozzarella, an unsurpassed and a trading and perfect dharma, is rarely met with even a hundred thousand million coppers, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept I vow to taste the truth of the Takajuku's works. Good evening. As you can see, there's been some confusion already, before the talk even. I had to use the short verse, little booklet, which you didn't get, but I got one. Everyone has one? I was preparing myself to come down to talk with you, and I could not remember the small verse that precedes the opening of the talk.

[01:04]

I just could not. And it's going to be like that for the rest of the night. Because while it could be put down as an old man's vagaries, at a certain age you forget things, more comes under the heading of tonight's subject, which I can't apologize for because I am 93 years old, and old age, sickness, and death is something that I am beginning to begin to have some connection with. So let me just get that out of the way and see if I can say something that makes it but makes it possible for you to consider the possibilities of someday sitting in my seat. We are supposed, when we make a Buddhist talk, to urge others to follow.

[02:10]

So, this talk began a few years ago, after I had given another talk, and I suddenly found myself blurting out What am I going to do with the rest of my life? There was no other reason I could see for me to say that at that particular time. People sort of got on my case. What do you have to worry about that for? You're retired. You don't have to pay any attention to that. They've all told you you're retired. They'd like you to go away and not make a fuss. What was this business of what am you going to do the rest of your life? And then they said, oh, so you can't do anything, you know, getting real philosophical. So I let it go at that. But then there came, not too long ago, an intensification of the old age sickness and death. I discovered that I had a heart condition, which I had never heard of before.

[03:16]

I had a very strong heart, the doctors tell me. But I have two faulty valves. Well, that was takedown. Also, I've been treated, not very successfully, for a condition of nervous confusion, including balancing. And in one case, ran at full speed down the hall past the lavatories and slammed my head into the wall. And... Poor John had another job to do, and he filled in the hole. But I suddenly realized that I could have died at that point. I could have broken my neck, or I could have been somehow seriously disabilitated so that I would be, you know, forever in a plastic ass. And then there was a time when I had a miniature, what do they call those? Yeah.

[04:17]

The GIA, the two-minute stroke, which I didn't know anything about. And so this question of old age, sickness, and death is becoming very personal to me. So now I still have the question two years later, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? I haven't seen it made this complete circle. Then I had the fortunate opportunity to attend the film. Did you bring in the butterfly, the dying bell of the butterfly? Thank you very much, because he was, for that time, one of my teachers. Many of you may have seen the film when it was out. An unusual man, in one way. He was successful in France, a writer. with the family, with the mistress, all the things that you have in life, make it right. Excuse me.

[05:18]

And he one day had a severe stroke. Probably there was only one other like it. It turned him off completely. And the only thing that he could do, that his physical motion on his own willfulness, was blink his eyes. That's all he could do. The rest of the time he was taken care of by attendants and by machines. So here is this writer, completely at the mercy of everything outside himself that he can't do anything about. And he devises a way of signaling with closing his left eye once for yes and two for no. And you go to visit him and you give it a board and you speak the letters. And he replies with blinks. And in that way, He communicated and in that way he also wrote a book. Not a book about his case, but a book which he had been under contract for.

[06:22]

He had a deadline to meet. So I thought at the time, just a few weeks ago, that man did something while he was completely immobilized You could do something and not be completely immobilized. What is it that you could do? Well, I follow the schedule. I've always done that. I do work I can do, which is less and less because of the nervous condition. But I don't have the feeling that I am doing something. You know, go up and make the beds on the third floor. Yes, sir. That's not what I'm talking about. I've always had a purpose to everything that I did in my life as a Christian, as a humanist, as a Marxist, and for the first X number of years as a Buddhist. I have done something I want to do that I can do and that other people either would like me to do or are somehow benefited by it.

[07:32]

There has to be a tripod. And so... The other thing is that I've been a writer all my life, but I can no longer write by hand, never could write by hand legibly, and now cannot even type. And you'd say that someone who started talking in public at age five should be able to talk into a tape. And I find now that my talking ability... My impromptu talking ability, my prepared talking ability is worsening. Some of you have already noted it. Some of you shopper people. What is wrong with Lou? He comes up to you and he says these absolutely foolish things. They didn't start out as foolish things.

[08:33]

I had a legitimate question. I had an article in the New York Times I wanted to share with someone. And it happened. It didn't come out that way. So if I am going to spend my life sitting, what am I going to do it for? Do it for all sentient beings forever. That is the philosophical statement. But what is the... What is it? What sense do I have that what I am doing is what they say I'm doing? David, for instance, will tell me all kinds of things. I will accept his understanding, but I cannot keep up with a man. I have difficulty. But I have one out which I want to share with you tonight.

[09:34]

He wrote Jijiu Samai, self-receiving and self-employing samadhi. That title threw me for many years. Also, if you read Dogen, you see there are times when he is so enthusiastic and excited about what he wants to tell you, that he has this absolutely Chinese opera style. But if you get through it, you get down to what he's talking about. So I'm not going to present this to you as a subject of your examination or of anything that you should remember after you leave here, but to give you a taste of the language that it has inspired in me. edited out the fancy introduction.

[10:47]

It's in here. This is what I would have done once all out of my head. I never worked with notes. Ah, here we are. Self-receiving and employing samadhi. When even for a moment you express the Buddha seal in the three actions of sitting upright in samadhi, the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha seal and the entire sky turns into enlightenment. Because of this, all Buddhas in the original source increase anew their magnificence.

[11:50]

At this time, all things realize correct awakening. Myriad objects partake of the Buddha body and sitting upright under the Buddha tree, you immediately leap beyond the boundaries of awakening. At this moment, you turn into an unsurpassably great Dharma wheel and expound the profound wisdom ultimate and uncoordinated and unconditioned. Because such broad awakening resonates both to you and helps you inconceivably, you will in zazen unmistakably drop away body and mind, cutting off the various defiled thoughts and views and raise up the Buddha action in innumerable practice places. Because earth, grass, trees, walls, tiles, and pebbles all engage in Buddha activity, those who receive the benefit of wind and water caused by them are inconceivably helped by the Buddha's guidance.

[13:12]

Those who receive these fire and water benefits spread the Buddha's guidance based on original awakening. Because of this, all who live with you and speak with you will claim endless Buddha virtue and will unroll widely inside and outside of the entire universe the endless, unremittingly unthinkable, unnameable Buddha Dharma. Now, when I first read that, I didn't read it, I heard it being read in a sashim or something. And it goes along, and all of a sudden I say, find myself saying, I know that. Tiles, pebbles, wind, water, all of these things I have known as a child. And this is how these people, Buddhists, and are talking about something that I know about.

[14:14]

Now that was something of a shock because there was no Buddhism anywhere near our house. But what there was, was a child who, forbidden to play with other children alone out by himself, had begun to practice Shazam All children practice Zaza at certain times in their life. Anytime you see, they don't have perfect posse, but they sit Zaza and you watch them. So here was this child who by, I would love to have played baseball with the other kids. Don't get me wrong. I did not like that I had subjected to this, but I made the best of it. And I sat there and I had a relationship with the stones and the pebbles and the wind and the rain, and the tiger wasps and the beetles.

[15:18]

And so it was not too much to be surprised by their reappearance in my life through a rather difficult passage in Dogen. I don't understand what Dogen is saying. Don't get me wrong. I'm not teaching it to me. But I understand from place here and place there, place next, that I know he's right because I've been there. So it would be possible, I guess, to answer my own question. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Because here I have the example of a man seriously deprived of all the sensory abilities and communications. I'm losing parts of them. Old people lose them more, some more, some less. It would allow me to do something I can do which has in it evidently some efficacious power that I'm not too aware of.

[16:26]

I recognize it. And... For instance, I didn't think I was going to be able to come down here tonight, because I got in one of my confused states of balance, where I, even with the cane and my walker, I could not present myself in a steady, down-to-earth presentation. I've also found it difficult to read some of what was in the timing. I feel my voice beginning to disassociate itself from being this way to being this way. After some of the experience I've had was falling down, I have to count that in. But all of a sudden, at the same time,

[17:33]

I think I'm better off in my understanding and my feeling of self, which is a strange word to put into a Buddhist discussion, myself. But something in me feels much better than it has for years because evidently something that I came across in The readings night, when I first came, it put me in a direction that I really, really wanted to go. And that's in a responsibility that Zen Center did not lay on me. They did not say, come here and practice with us and then go out and do this for that.

[18:42]

It's something I have not done years that I've been practicing here. Because I didn't know about it. I knew that I had had some strange thing. The source of my childhood understanding came from a God-seeing experience, which again, many, many children have. And that made it possible for me to talk to the stones and the pebbles, tiger wasps and things like that. But none of that ever came into my life in a functional way to help me in my life. And if the accidents and the possibility of accidents at the beginning of losing my speech continuity are so, then they have to be thankful what contributions they are making.

[19:47]

Right now, as I say, I am like a cat that got caught in the appendix that we had. It can't live, but it was really, it was a front loader. Let's see if I can find one small statement. Here's a place, here the way unfolds. The boundary of realization is not distinct, for the realization comes forth simultaneously with the mastery of Buddha Dharma.

[20:51]

Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your consciousness. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be distinctly apparent. Its appearance is beyond our knowledge. The other side of my life was taken with concern, not for the saving of just people, but the saving of the whole world and the whole universe. And if I find a way back into what I've just discovered, I will tell you about it if I'm still here. I would say to those of you who are new at this, not to be frightened off about Buddhism, by some of the things you read in Buddhism.

[21:57]

They really have fantastic books, this thing. Which I used to read when I was your age. But I hope I demonstrated this evening, inside something like this, there is something for you. and where you learn to the skill, where you learn the skill to find your way into the Buddha Dharma, not just as something that's lectured at you or that attracts you by its magnificence or anything, unless you find your way in, it's just a talk. And this is a time when people are asked, do you have any questions? And fortunately we don't, so thank you very much. May our intention equally be sent to every began place with the truth.

[23:11]

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