When you're back, talk. How is the old country? Welcome back. Hanshan, one of his poems says, that the cold cliffs, the deeper you enter,

[01:04]

the more beautiful it gets. But no, very few come along this path," he says. The clouds gather about, idle at the peak. A single monkey wails or cries on the mountaintop. What need, he says, do I have for any other companion? I get older and older, but still I retain the pearl of mind. He has another poem where he says, coming down the mountain,

[02:07]

the sun streams over the plants and over the grass and trees. Farther down I come to a dark gloomy place covered with vines and creepers. Inside are many tigers And when they see me, their fur stands up, stands on end. And I, without even a knife, don't I gasp with fear? This pearl of mind means ordinary mind, but not secure mind. I thought of Hanshan's poems the last time I went out of here, because it was so wild and woolly up on the mountain. Now, as many times as I've gone over that road, and so many times in bad weather,

[03:37]

Still, if you're here at civilized Tassajar, relatively civilized Tassajar, it seems quite safe to me. And even I, as familiar as I am in knowing what the weather's like, I forget what it's like elsewhere. And particularly last time, since it was One of the worst times I've ever gone over the road, it seems to have melted and frozen and snowed on top and frozen and snowed on top and so forth. So certain parts of this slope going upward, quite unusual. And on the way out I felt, what am I believing? This isn't worth it. What possibly could I have to do in San Francisco that's worth it since we skidded toward the edge? I was driving to make it worse so I could find out what it was like.

[04:51]

But to practice you, the ordinary mind or pearl of mind, to practice you, don't cut yourself off from this kind of wild place. You must be able to enter, even aghast with fear, as Han Shang says, facing the tigers. Our Shusho, our new Shusho, our Sovan, gave a very clear, good talk yesterday, I thought. And she made the point of how, when we stop comparing ourself,

[06:17]

good or bad, which is actually a way to separate ourselves. We join others more, but also we become more independent, more independent. To compare yourself to others, it's also a way to remain dependent on others. There's a poem, kind of saying in Zen. The blue mountain is the father of the white cloud. White cloud is the son of the blue mountain. All day long, each depends on the other. but neither is dependent on the other. Or each depends and is independent, blue mountain and white cloud.

[07:24]

Blue Mountain is parent of White Cloud and White Cloud is child of Blue Mountain. And then we, you know, in practice the teacher withdraws emotional support from the student, but doesn't withdraw acceptance. And this is a difficult point for some of you, and the more emotional you are, the more difficult it is for me. Some of you I can't withdraw emotional support from. If I do, you become quite angry or rather disaffiliated. But this practice, you know, you must find it out for yourself completely. You can only proceed through your own wrongs. You remember in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, where Tsukiyoshi says, somebody sent him.

[09:04]

He sent someone a calendar. He used to give us these calendars that he would arrive in great quantity from Japan. And there was a page for every day, 365 pages. And each day had some saying. And I believe someone wrote him and said, already it's only the first day of the year and the calendar says, Already, the year has barely begun and already you have made a mistake. And you know, Dogen says that flowers fall with our attachment or detachment. Weeds grow with our attachment or detachment. You can say it either way. No matter what you do, flowers fall and weeds grow. But weeds and flowers are included in each other. When I was in the city, I have

[10:21]

very old friend of mine, some of you have met. I was in the merchant marine with him, working on a ship, you know. Now he's head of Rolling Stone Records, and Rolling Stone, you know, group. And one of his groups is Peter Tosh, a reggae, kind of innovative reggae singer, who's very good. So, this friend of mine's name is Earl, and he claims I introduced him to popular music. I'm not so sure I did him a good turn, but before I met him he only was interested in classical music. But nowadays I don't, virtually don't ever listen to the radio, or watch television and so forth. And I don't know any of the popular music except what I hear coming from my daughter's room. But when he is in town I go to see what's going on. I go with him to the performance of whatever it is.

[11:49]

So it's quite exciting, you know, and you can shout and cheer and things and it makes the singer get excited and the singer dances all over the stage and so forth. It's rather a lot of fun, you know. Everybody builds up to it and the room is packed and there's a big line of people waiting to get in. He's singing, legalize it, and smoking grass on stage. And everybody's banging away. One line he has that I like is, stand up or feed worm. No, stand up, you're going to feed worm. That's pretty good. You better stand up or you're going to feed worm, or even if you stand up, you're going to feed worm, so you might as well stand up. Stand up, you're going to feed worm. Anyway, it's rather exciting and fun.

[13:15]

But always afterwards I feel, I don't know, it's too exciting maybe for me. I wouldn't want my lectures, for instance, to be so exciting. I want there to be not much difference between coming in to lecture and going out. We all want some pin-up, you know. That's what this going to Peter Tosh made me think of. We all want some pin-up, you know, some exciting evening or movie you can identify with the plot or the people or characters or something. Anyway, we want some pin-up. And listening to the music on the radio, it always amazes me. Almost any place you turn the dial are love songs. You know, people can't fall in love that much, you know. But somehow they want to hear about it all the time, you know. I think our mental scenery is, it's so stagnant. We want any kind of change, and we imagine change as

[14:47]

possible through another person or through falling in love or through some plot. So we're always creating some kind of pin-up. And I don't think we should put it down. You know, it's just the way it is. It's like whether we speak good English or bad English. Bad English is the way people speak, it's okay. Most people don't speak such good English, but good English is necessary to control bad English. Like some idea of good behavior controls bad behavior. Bad behavior would be terrible if there was no idea of good behavior. So this kind of popular song, sometimes it's drivel, you know,

[16:11]

But if you're falling in love, it sounds quite true. Oh yes, finally I know the meaning of that drivel. And practices like that too. You find the significance of it by your investment in it. But so many pin-ups and so many popular songs and so much need to change our... some deep desire to change our mental scenery. I think we... you see that that's what we do and then we get a better pin-up, that's all. I think what you want is the best pin-up. And you can imagine what I think is the best pin-up. Buddha is the best pin-up. If you can find a pin-up that will never let you down, we can call it Buddha. So you can make use of this desire to change your mental scene.

[17:37]

But don't invest it in a pin-up that will let you down. But most of our thinking, you know, it's... I think probably people had more space, mental space. I don't know what else to say, what to call it. when they had some belief in God or there was some authority, mental authority. And now I think most people need to give themselves mental authority by explanations. And wisdom is better understood as a function of behaviour than as a function of understanding or mind. What you share with the plants and the mountains is behavior, not understanding. The Daoists, Daoism is rather different from Zen. Daoism emphasizes, magical Daoism I'm talking about, emphasizes the unity of us and the cosmos.

[19:02]

your spleen and the planets and so forth, all are united. And what you eat and it's all worked out in a system. That's maybe pretty useful. But the main people in Taoism, of course, Chuang Tzu others, they emphasize just meditation, not all these special systems. But Zen, you know, Zen doesn't emphasize the interrelatedness as much as it emphasizes the independence, that you already include everything And you don't have to be adjusting yourself to all worrying about diet and planets and organs and so forth. You are already included. So if we don't have God or faith, you know, you have some kind of explanation.

[20:22]

by which you organize your consciousness. And those of you who are good at explanations, you may be quite a physical, alert person, but if your physicalness and alertness is covered by explanation, it's not the physicalness and alertness we emphasize in Zen. And the better your explanation, or the more you need an explanation for your own safety. You can't go into the wild place where there's no explanation, no safety. The more you need an explanation or the more you are good at explanations, the more unlikely it is that you will understand Zen. Zen doesn't have much to do with brains, you know, or talent. or even very developed or sophisticated personality. Very sophisticated, developed personality is, in fact, more likely not to understand Zen. They are quite… such a person is quite sure of themselves. Catherine yesterday mentioned

[21:46]

The person, you know, no matter how hard you try, you find out the limitations of your ambition, you find out someone is better than you. But there are some people who don't find anyone better than them. They either limit their field of comparison pretty carefully or they just are really smart or really talented. Such a person finds it very difficult to practice because nothing gets them outside their personality. A person with a puny personality, not powerful personality, a person with a puny personality who gets outside it is much more likely to understand Zen than a person with a powerful personality. The point of samadhi, mindfulness, mindfulness is samadhi seen from the outside, but the point of these things, mindfulness or samadhi, is to get outside your personality, to be able to drop morality, drop

[23:11]

explanations, drop authority, drop God. It may be very drowsy, idyllic or lazy life. You know left, the politics of the left you know are very moral. There's so much suffering in the world and we must do something, you know This is very coercive and not so good for them Because you should be able to laze about to not worry about the world Basho conveys this feeling in a poem where he says something like cloud of flowers, or flowers like a cloud. Maybe he's under a blossoming tree. A cloud of flowers. A temple bell. Is it Dueno or Asakusa? He doesn't even know where it came from. And many of Ryokan's poems are like that. One is

[24:40]

Waking in my grass hut, the sound of hail on the bamboo grove, or my heart is happy on a spring day when the birds flock together and play. this kind of poem, it's so simple and just an observation, but all a kind of moral concern about the problems of the world and what you have to do or you can't relax a minute or something will go wrong. You know, for me, you know, Now, zazen is still my way of practice, but it's also my great vacation. For me, at least, it's the most pleasant thing to do. And feeling of zazen all the time in my life, even though, as you know, I have too many things to do.

[26:03]

Still, at the same time, it doesn't matter. I'm not worried about a starving world. At the same time, I may try to do something about it. I really am not worried. So you may try, and most of us try to say, oh, God will take care of the world, or some authority will take care of the world, or we get involved in some moral thing. If people would only live right, the world would be okay. If they would work out their fields of elixir or cinnabar or something like that, it would be okay. or if they lived and made different decisions. This is all a kind of distancing. It gives you some dependence, some explanation or God. You can never relax.

[27:17]

And Zen, unfortunately, doesn't give you some god to depend on or some system to depend on. If you do such and such or adjust your diet or something, everything will be okay. Strictly speaking, Taoists are not supposed to eat grains or a whole mess of things or just mostly liquids. But in Zen we don't have... we give you as little as possible, any system or god or authority, because we want you to find real independence. So to stop comparing not only makes you realize how we are joined, it also allows you to finally be independent. Because comparison is really a kind of dependence, a form of dependence.

[28:25]

So you stop comparing yourself to the world or comparing yourself to people. How does your own breath become enough for such an active person as you are? I don't know. If it becomes enough, you'll find out the secret of Zen. You'll find out inner breath. Inner breath, that's our vitality itself. And by that inner breath you will know how to act and how to eat and how to behave. And this inner breath is, you know, we can say one form of it is, one description of it is home leaving. Meaning leaving the whole world to

[29:58]

It's okay, it doesn't matter. It's a big, vast perspective. You'll do something on every occasion that you can but you don't worry about it. So you can come here for a while, see if you can let the world do without you for a while. It was not doing so well with you, you know, and it can probably do pretty well without you. And you can even do well without yourself, to forget yourself, to forget, you know. It's a kind of, you know, drowsiness almost. should be just a form of behaviour. And to see through language, to see if you can look at things without language. Suddenly, I think if you can, there are more dimensions in what you see. You see almost like you can see around things.

[31:24]

When you hear a voice, it's voice meeting voice, or center meeting center, like you're speaking in a hall at this great distance, but not a distance which separates. My voice reaches to every corner of this room. We trap ourselves. Our culture seems sometimes designed to trap us in a very narrow experience, a very dependent experience, an experience you can always check up on. But if you need a pin-up,

[32:52]

Now use Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. This wild mountain, even though it's probably not so bad today, this cold mountain, this wild place of tigers, So there are many pictures of Zen teachers, supposedly Zen teachers, drowsily sleeping on tiger. It might as well be a rock. The Zen teacher doesn't know what it is. this attitude, this feeling. Without this, we make ourselves suffer. I don't think we help anyone to worry so much.

[33:58]

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