Good evening. So I'm still at Tassajara and it's quite a wonderful place. For those of you who remember Lisa, who's often sitting in one of the squares in her chair in Massachusetts, she was just in my room. She has the job here of what's called Anja. So she's my Anja. I have two very wonderful helpers. One is a Jisha who carries the incense. G is incense. And no, I think it's carrier. Ko is incense. But anyway, so one person helps me with incense and ritual things. And Lisa, as my Anja, helps with... helping me get firewood and helping get hot water and helping take care of me in very many ways.

[01:06]

So it's really been wonderful to have her out of the square and actually here in real life together. So I thought I would just give you a little rundown of the Tassajara, what we do, you know, what's going on here. I showed you some slides a little while back. And I thought I'd just mention a little bit about the schedule that we follow, which at this point, since it's been well over a month, month and a half, it's becoming very much like that's our life. I mean, at first, it's all a little different, a little strange. You're not getting in your car and going somewhere or even thinking about going somewhere. So little by little, you begin to, you know, take on the size and proportions of the schedule here, of being with the other people here. We all converge at the same time. There are these soundscape that Tassajara calls us to the zendo in the morning and then to work meeting later on and so on. So today is the second day of what's called the Tassajara week.

[02:12]

And Tassajara week is not the week that you all are living, most of you anyway. In fact, most of us could not tell you what day of the week it is because we're not relating to the days of the week. Tassajara week has... It's kind of a little sandwich between two what's called personal days. So it's kind of like for a week, what you might think of as a weekend for us is called a personal day. So you get a personal day and then you have four days in between another personal day. So that's a Tassajara week. And so today's the second day of a Tassajara week. And tomorrow is going to also be a regular day. So these are called regular days when we have a set schedule, how people are sitting most of the morning. in this zendo and then in the afternoon they go to work for a few hours and they get to exercise and take a bath and have a little time to themselves and then we go back to the zendo for evening meal which I'm going to be going to a little before 6 and then we have a little break again and then one last sitting in the evening before bed so that's the regular pattern of the regular day and then every

[03:23]

tasks are a week there's also called a work day and then there's this personal day so the work day happens before the personal day and the work day is very interesting because we sleep a little later like 20 minutes and that's which feels huge like 20 minutes so sleeping a little more is really uh like feels like a reward you get this reward and then the work day is the morning which is done all in silence everyone goes to a work meeting There's no chatter. Everyone is given their work assignments, and then we all go off and do whatever it is that needs to be done. And then we have a dining room lunch instead of having our meals, which are regular days are in the Zendo or Yoki, which some of you may know, which is the monk's bowls that are wrapped in cloth. And it's a very wonderful thing once you learn it, how to open your bowls and fix the cloth and get your three bowls out. And then the servers come in and bring you a serving in each of your three bowls.

[04:25]

And then we eat in a certain, we chant and we eat in a certain pattern. And then we get hot water to clean our bowls and you wrap it all back up again. So at the end of each meal, no dishes to be done. Everything's done. You've, you've got your set of bowls and they're all ready for the next meal. So on work days, we have a dining room lunch. So we don't have the oreo key. And then I'm going to go back to work in the afternoon. And then that's followed by this personal day, which is quite exciting because you can do whatever you want. Like within the limits of we're in the valley and there's nowhere to go and you'd have a car and there's no stores. So within that, within the fact that we're here in the woods, we get to do things. that are like laundry that's exciting for most people certainly for me uh and take a hike which is nice and uh read or just rest there's some warm spaces around tasahara people can gather in the dining room is heated because thermal we have a this is a hot springs resort originally it's 100 year old hot springs resort so when tasahara became a monastery you know over the years we've

[05:40]

taken that hot water and plumbed it throughout Tassajara. So a lot of the cabins now have heat. Certainly didn't have it when I was here 30 years ago, but they do now. So some of these cabins now are warmed by the thermal. And the Zendo has heat that comes through the floors and these copper pipes. So that's kind of a nice thing that's been done. So the lights I have are from solar panels up on the mountain. So we're pretty much off the grid. You know, occasionally we have to use the generator, but mostly we have the use of the solar for the lights and the hot springs water for heat. So it feels good, you know, to be in a situation where you're not really using a lot of energy or, you know, taking what you need, basically, enough to be comfortable, but not, you know, it's not luxurious. But it is very nice. So that's... That's pretty much what we do. Oh, and then for the personal day, one of the very most exciting things for, I think, all of us is on personal day, we go to the Zendo still.

[06:47]

Every day we go to the Zendo in the morning. And personal day, we sit one period. And then we always do service. So there's chanting. And then after service, we get to change our clothes into whatever we're going to wear for the personal day. And go into the kitchen and make a bag lunch. And bag lunch at Tassajara is like this extravaganza. The kitchen is completely full of, you know, fresh bread and cheese and pickles and olives and all the fixings and salad making and dressing. And then there's a whole counter that's covered with cookies. pudding just you can really pig out in your bag lunch people bring these enormous containers for their bag lunch uh and uh no so that's that's kind of a big exciting thing so we make our bag lunch and put those aside for some people make two because they eat one right away and they have another one for later um so that's

[07:52]

That's sort of the, there's a lot of treats. I was thinking about that, that one of the things about doing monastic training is that there is this kind of austerity in the sense that we're not socializing so much and we are doing a lot of seated meditation and ritual and, you know, really being inwardly focused. So that's really the core of the monastic curriculum. You know, it's really studying the self, as Dogen said, study the Buddha way, study the self. So that's the main. That's the main. And because that's pretty, it gives you energy, but at the same time, it takes a lot of energy. So that's why these four days and then a day off, four days and a day off, because you really do put a lot of energy into the training, into the practice day. So then there's always these little rewards just around the corner. There's a bag lunch just around the corner. There's a tea treat or something. So it feels like there's a nice balance between asking yourself to do something that's rather challenging.

[08:59]

Zen is not kind of a simple thing. It's a little bit like athletics where there's something where you're really challenging yourself physically, energetically, and psychologically. And then there's this... These rewards that are built in. So I'm really appreciating the pattern of that and how it's very sustainable. Elisa is doing really great, by the way. She's she, you know, the first few weeks was challenging. Someone once said you have to you do a shakedown cruise in the beginning. You kind of get all the off. Little loose nuts and bolts start to tighten up on you so that you can actually maintain the energetic needs that you have in doing this practice. And everybody's really come through that. So they all have gone through there. This is too hard. And I don't know if I want to be here. And I listened to a lot of people telling me that. And I said, well, just wait a little while. Give it a little more time. And right at this point, we're about halfway through and people are really steady. You know, there's very, very few absences.

[10:01]

People are really there. It's been very inspiring for me. I'm quite inspired by this gathering with these folks. And it's a nice age spread. Some folks are in their 60s, and, you know, I'm 70. So I'm feeling like I'm, you know, on the upper end. And then there's some young folks here who are also doing well. And there's a lot of mutual support. So, yeah. Yeah. That's Tassahara. And what else did I want to say? Oh, so then we also do, there's three sashims. These days, we used to have one sashim at the end when I was a student here. But now there's three. And there are five-day sashims each month. There's one we did in October. And then there's another one that's coming up in November on the... 15th in November. And then we'll have one at the end in December. So those are kind of another major kind of intensification of the meditation experience for people.

[11:06]

And then for me, it's an intensification of having to talk about meditation and Buddhism and so on. So I do a lot of my free time. My personal days are spent really working on meditation. talks for these sessions, which is fine, because I really love studying the Dharma. And I'm very happy to be given that kind of time to just focus on what it is I might, what might hopefully would be useful for people. So we will have, and session is a Japanese word that means touching the heart, mind, touching the heart, mind. It's really about, you know, there's a word in Japanese that I'm, that I was reading about on the row. And so in order to learn something, the understanding the Buddha had about how we learn things is the first thing is we hear. There's a kind of wisdom called hearing. So you hear the Dharma. You hear the teaching. It catches your attention. And so hearing is just one example. It's sensory. Maybe you see something. You see a Buddha figure, an image, or a building, beautiful, a tea house, or maybe you went to Japan.

[12:09]

I don't know. Whatever it is that somehow your senses come in contact with the Dharma. So that kind of flows through you. It doesn't really stick around, but it's something that actually has an impact in terms of, you know, oh, yeah, I remember that. But you haven't really invested much of yourself in it yet. So the second kind of learning is called Chintamai Prajna, or the learning that comes from studying. And so this word that I saw in a book by Okumar Roshi... called Living by Vow, is that study in Japanese, the word is narao, which means to become intimate with. So, you know, when I hear study, I think, oh, yeah, reading books and going to the library and that kind of study like we did in college, those of us who did college or high school or whatever, whatever we were doing where we were given books to study and take tests and that. That's not the study of this kind of learning. It's the study of like, you know, holding a cup. and drinking tea or feeling the cold wind you know as you take a hike up in the hills it's the study of coming in contact with right now all the leaves are starting to turn gold you know very this last week things have really changed and so we're beginning fall is beginning to really dominate that at night is very cold there's still a little warmth during the day but we can sort of feel that winter's coming that's naral that's study like studying intimacy

[13:34]

with your experiences, whichever kind of experience you're having, you begin to learn from. So you begin to see what works best in terms of keeping your body warm, what works best in terms of, you know, being on time to things, because there are all of these offerings of encounters for intimacy, both with yourself and with the other people who are here. Every time we pass each other, we stop and bow. which is another kind, that's intimacy. So I think it's a really a wonderful way of thinking about study and Zen as it really is about becoming intimate with everything you do that, you know, washing dishes and cutting carrots and making your bag lunch, you know, like it's, there's something very, very moving about this touching the heart mind, which is this idea of seshing, the word seshing, touching the heart mind. So that's intimacy. So let's see.

[14:35]

And not to forget that we're looking at the transmission of light. I did look through the next chapter, and this is kind of a heavy-duty one. These last ones have been quite strong in a lot of ways, really emphasizing the ultimate truth, you know, the vastness and the spaciousness and the inconceivability of our life, you know, that side of the Dharma. that kind of leaves you just awestruck. Like the night sky here is pretty awesome. You just walk outside and there's these stars that are on your face. So it's not like where I live. They're very far away. And the city lights kind of keep everything really dull. But here, things are quite vivid. Right now, the moon is becoming, you know, it's getting big again. So we're having that light coming into the valley, which is quite wonderful. So these chapters have that kind of feeling of calling on that awe, that awesomeness of life that I know we all feel at times, we all see, but this is sort of like cranking that open, you know, giving ourselves more of a kind of connection or intimacy with what's awesome for us being alive.

[15:54]

So... This chapter, chapter 50, is in Japanese, Secho Chikan is how we chant it in the service. In Chinese, his name is Jirjian. And I'm sorry, again, I don't know how to pronounce Chinese, but it's Jirjian. And so he was the teacher. This chapter 50 is the teacher of Rujing. who is Dogen's teacher. So we're getting very close to Dogen now. We're just one generation away from Dogen's trip to China. So we're still looking at Chinese teachers, Chinese masters. So I thought I would read the Enlightenment story about Zhejiang, which is kind of interesting. I mean, it's a little hard to grok, but there's some commentary too. So one day, in an address, Zen master Zongzhi, who's the last chapter, chapter 49, Quoted, Buddha had a secret saying.

[16:56]

Buddha had a secret saying. Kashapa, Buddha's disciple, didn't conceal it. Buddha had a secret saying, but Kashapa didn't conceal the secret saying. Hearing this, Jirjayan suddenly realized the mystic meaning. He wept as he stood there, unconsciously blurting out, why haven't we heard this before? So he's hearing something that really impacts him. It's kind of like, what did he hear? I read that a few times ago. What did he hear? But somehow he was ready. He was just on simmer, and then it went to boil. This is that moment when he had a transformation. So hearing this, Zhijian suddenly realized the mystic meaning, and he wept as he stood there, unconsciously blurting out, why haven't we heard this before? After the lecture, Jong-Dur summoned Jur-Dian and asked him why he kept crying in the teaching hall.

[18:01]

Why are you weeping? That happens a lot, actually, here. People, all of a sudden, somebody's in the corner, and they're just sobbing. You know, you don't really know. They seem okay, but after a while, they calm down, and then a couple days later, somebody else in the other corner is sobbing, and, you know, that goes on. That went on the first month quite a bit, and not so much anymore. I think much of that relief was, of whatever that old holding that people bring in here, you know, that they've been holding onto for so long, you know, their whole lives, in most cases, for all of us. And then there's that kind of, like, just get it out, you know, get it out. And so there's a lot of crying that goes on. So after the lecture, Jong-Gur summons Jojian and asks him why he had been weeping in the teaching hall. Jojian said, Buddha had a secret saying, but Kshapa didn't conceal it. So he repeats the same thing. Jong-Jir gave him approval and said, you must be the one that Yun-Ju predicted long ago. So that's not giving us a lot, but I did read on and I had some things to share with you about that.

[19:06]

So Yun-Ju, who is said to have predicted him, so I look back and try to find, who's Yun-Ju that predicted that this was going to be... this guy was going to arrive. Well, Yeonju is way back there. He was in chapter, let's see, months ago. So he was a disciple of Dongshan. So that's quite a ways back, many generations before. So Dongshan, who's the founder of Soto Zen, this was his disciple, Yeonju. And... So Dungju has this interesting connection with Dongshan. He's his student. So he's learning from Dongshan the Soto way, Soto way of understanding reality, you know, Ji and Ri, and how you work with those two factors of what we are. We're this ultimate truth and we are this relative truth, you know, just our everyday common sense talking away like I'm doing right now. This is relative truth. is whenever you're hearing words, you're in the relative world where things are relational.

[20:12]

They're about relationships. The night sky is a different kind of relationship. Each of us has this kind of private, right? I can't really tell you what it's like for me to look at the stars. And you can't tell me, but we can both go, wow. We can share the wow when we see things that are awesome like that. So Yunzhu is taking a walk with Dongshan. So again, this is a few chapters back. And as they're crossing a river together, Dongshan asks him, is the water deep or shallow? Trick Zen question, no doubt. Is the water deep or shallow? Nyungju said, not wet. Not wet. It's kind of leaping. And then Dongshan says, how coarse. What a coarse man you are. And so Yunju says, well, please, you then say, teacher. You don't like my answer. You say. And Dongshan says, not dry.

[21:14]

So what Kezon's telling us is going on here, kind of makes some sense, is that Dongshan, who's our founder of Soto Zen, does not violate conventional meaning. He's not saying the water is not wet. I mean, the water is wet. You know, he's not using conventional language to trick people or to fool around with meaning. He's being very straightforward. If he says something, it's not secret. Like in the beginning of this story, it's not concealed. He's not trying to trick you with some fancy, you know, using words in order to fool people or to trick them. It's just like, here, here's what's happening right now. Here's what's right here. The water's wet. So he's catching this young monk in being tricky, not dry. So, I mean, he says, anyway, the other way around. The young monk said, not wet. And Dongshan says, not dry. The water is wet.

[22:19]

So, you know, it's like roses are red, violets are blue. That's not, we're not trying to play with people, with the language. And also in Zen, there's the saying, the elbow doesn't bend backwards. which struck me. I heard that really early on in my time at Zen 70. I thought, well, that's really true. That would be not a good thing if your elbow bends backward. So somehow it has to do with the law, like following the law of gravity, of the way the body's made. We're not trying to break the law. We're not trying to come up with some magical thing where we can... disappear or something, you know, or turn our head around, you know. It's more like this is what we are. This is how we are. Let's work with this. Let's work with elbows that don't bend backwards and with water that's wet. You know, let's just deal with in the relative world on its own terms and then take care of it. You know, find a way to take care of it. So, you know, in other words, Zen teaching stories, like the koans that you're probably familiar with,

[23:23]

They're not just some nonsensical tricks that are being played that have no purpose to them. They're not purposeless. They really do have a purpose. And the purpose is to try and help humans to awaken. Awaken from their delusional, dreaming, obsessive thinking, discursive noise that runs through our heads, all of our heads, much of the time. You know, I think I've mentioned the saying of looking at the moon through ivy. It's like there's the ultimate truth, but we're looking through ivy. We see the moon through ivy, and that's our discursive minds. They're always kind of taking over, you know, taking too much space, not letting us actually see the full moon. So, you know, awakening is really awakening. to the ultimate truth. We're already awake to the relative truth. We've been educated to the relative truth. We were taught from when we were very little. You know, it's so, I was remembering, it's interesting, I was remembering just a little while ago when I was looking at these, actually I was looking at the banner that you saw that Abbas Fu Schrader will be here at five or something.

[24:34]

I was looking at that and I thought, you know, I remember learning letters and I had this flashback of sitting on one of those little chairs, because I was little, and looking at this flip chart that the teacher had put up of, some of you are probably my age, Dick and Jane, you know, and I was being taught how to read. And it said, see, Dick, run. I was like, oh, my God, I can remember the thrill of learning to read, that there was something so magical about having those things words begin to become my speech, become something that I actually knew how to say. But then I was learning how to read. It's kind of amazing. So anyway, that's what koans are like. They're really trying to help us learn how to read the things we've forgotten, you know, the things that we knew as children, the things that we've got two little ones here.

[25:34]

One's three and the other one's one and a half. And it is so great to watch them learning, you know, how they are putting words together. The girl, the girl's the older one. She's already pretty smart in talking. But the little boy is just picking up words like. There's a bulldozer here, and he's definitely fascinated by trucks. He has to spend his time up in the trucks. So he goes up and sits in the trucks. So he goes, dozer, that's one of his big words, dozer, dozer. And he'll say it over and over and over again. So it's really fascinating to see how we've all been brought into the relative truth, the relative use of language, and we're so good at it. But then, you know, remembering back to when It was just dozer, that's all. There was no, there weren't any other necessary, there weren't any propositions or verbs or anything else. You didn't need anything. You just had this one word that said it all. We know exactly what he's talking about.

[26:37]

And he wants to go up there and sit in the dozer. That's his favorite thing in the whole world. He's quite a little guy. Anyway, so the effort of these stories is to try and help us to awaken to the ineffable, inconceivable amazement of what the children are seeing when they're not crying because there's something that's gotten upset. They get upset very quickly, too, and then they get over it very quickly. So they're pretty labile. They're moving around really fast emotionally and in terms of the growth of their intellect, just like we all do, and how we can help to grow ourselves spiritually. Now it's our turn to grow ourselves into thoughtful humans, you know, who use language in a thoughtful way, who are honest, who don't use language to deceive. You know, not trying to fool people or, you know, all the ways that we know people can be very unkind and very cruel and very selfish and hoarding. And, you know, it's really painful.

[27:37]

I'm getting really a lot of pain watching the news and especially here. You know, unfortunately, I have. access to the world because of my position. I'm in meetings and stuff, and so I'm hearing about things that are going on. I check out the headlines every now and then. I go, this is so painful. It's so painful how humans can behave toward each other when they're not kind and they're not generous and they're not awake. And that's the reason, you know, I mean, there is a reason that they're behaving that way. It's because they're not awake. They're delusional. And that's kind of the excuse. They're ignorant. And, you know, it's kind of a lame excuse, but that is the reason. There's just this ignorance about who they really are and what they're missing by being hateful. So anyway, so Yunju... Minju, back there again, Dongshan student, had predicted that this student in the future would be a worthy disciple of Dongshan.

[28:42]

And that turns out to be this person, Zhejiang, whose chapter we're looking at now. So he's the future. He's the future of Soto Zen. He's got it. He's a worthy successor, is how they talk about it. So Zhejiang has some very interesting qualities. He lived out in the woods by himself, and animals didn't hurt him. He was kind of one of those kind of special humans that can walk around and not be bothered by wild animals. They didn't hurt him. And he had his awakening in the night, in the dark. So that's unusual, too. And then he had this surprising response to his teacher that took place at the beginning of the chapter when he just starts crying. When the teacher says Buddha had a secret saying and Kashyapa didn't conceal it. So... The rest of this chapter has something to do with that saying. And as Kezan, the author of Transmission of Light, tells us that there's a story from a sutra called the Nirvana Sutra, which I don't know, I've never read that, or I don't know if it's even translated in English.

[29:52]

But they're quoting from the Nirvana Sutra, where it says that, Kashapa said to the Buddha, according to what you say, the Buddhas have secret sayings. But that's not true. Because the Buddhas only have some esoteric sayings, but not secret. So esoteric means a little hard to understand or challenging to understand, but not secret. You have to work for it. It's not so obvious, but it's not a secret. It's not hidden. For example, again, this is from the Nirvana Sutra. In the case of a magician's robot, like a puppet, although people see it move, They don't see what makes it move. Buddha's teaching is different. It lets everyone see and know all. There's nothing hidden. So Buddha praises Kashyapa and says, that's very good, Kashyapa. As you say, the Buddha has no secret canon. And why? Like the full moon appearing in the autumn sky, clear and unobscured, which everyone can see, so are the words of the Buddha.

[30:59]

They're open and clear, pure and without obscurity. Ignorant people don't understand the teachings, so they say that it's a secret. I think that's familiar to me anyway. It's like I don't understand something. I think it's a secret or it's a trick. Like I felt that way about trigonometry. This is a secret. This is a trick and it's evil trick because I don't get it. I still have no idea what an algorithm is. So anyway, so not understanding. Sometimes we say, well, there must be something wrong with that. You know, because I don't get it. So ignorant people don't understand. So they say it's a secret. The wise understand and they don't call it a secret. So that's what the Ravana Sutra says. So then this chapter goes on to use examples of using words without getting confused about the words themselves. So we've heard this again and again about not mistaking the finger pointing at the moon. Like the word moon and that thing are not the same.

[32:01]

They're different things. order of existence altogether. Words, when I learned to read, magic, that was magic. But that was not dick running. That was the word, dick running, see, see dick running. Those are words, but we confuse the words for dick running, right? Or for the moon. We get very, we get very confused. Words take over and we kind of don't even need, we don't need dick running and we don't need the moon. We can just talk about them. without having anything like that anywhere around. So they give an example of the word fire. You can say the word fire, and it doesn't burn your mouth. I think that was really cute. And nor does your mouth get wet when you say the word water. And in this way, we should know that actual fire and actual water are in reality. They are not words. So... And then it says, you can speak all day without anything sticking to your teeth or your lips, and you will not have spoken a single word.

[33:01]

You know, I noticed that when I'm giving these lectures, I started to realize that part of what I'm doing when I'm preparing a lecture is like I'm kind of weaving. I'm doing this little weaving of words. You know, I'm weaving. Oh, and I put that word together with that word, and then I make a paragraph, and then I make another paragraph connected to that paragraph, and sort of like, and then I read through it and make sure it all makes some kind of sense. And then that's my little weaving that I take in to the lecture when I'm going to give the lecture. And then I spend the whole time just taking it apart, you know, word by word. I just give them all this little weaving. I disassemble it until I get to the very end. And that's it. That's it. That's my talk. And I thought, this is interesting because, you know, it is true that whatever I say at the beginning disappears. As soon as I've said those words, they're gone. And then I'm just saying these words. And then these words haven't happened yet. So it's just like this, it's kind of like I'm thinking right now about an ear of corn. You're just eating along there on the words you happen to be saying. And then those ones are gone and those aren't here.

[34:04]

And you're just basically somehow we're able to follow along as if, you know, we're understanding what just was said. But I know perfectly well from asking people after a Dharma talk, if I wasn't there, I'll say, well, what did, you know, what did Reb talk about? And they go, well, I don't know. I'm not quite sure. It was really a good talk, you know, and I think, oh, yeah, I feel that way, too. I hear a talk and I'm like, what was that about? I don't know. I don't really know. But it was good. I enjoyed it while it lasted. You know, while I was eating that corn, it was really tasty. That experience of this is shrutamaya. This is listening to the Dharma, hearing the Dharma. It's very yummy to hear the Dharma. It makes us happy. But we're not studying it. We're not creating it. We're not putting it into our own cells yet. That takes the kind of effort. So the word fire doesn't burn your mouth, and the word water doesn't make your lips wet.

[35:05]

And you can speak all day without anything sticking to your teeth or to your lips. And yet, ancestor Yashan says, don't eliminate words. He says, I use words to reveal the unspoken to you. So the Dharma is in words. And this great ancestor, Yashon, is saying, I use words in order to reveal the unspoken to you, that which originally has no eyes or ears or mouth to speak. And they call him the old geezer. The old geezer we met back in chapter 46, whose face is unknown. The old geezer is the original face, or before you're born, there's this kind of presence. Reality has already happened. You know, before we came along, reality was already doing quite nicely, you know, making stars and planets and all kinds of stuff. And out we popped briefly. You know, here we are. It's very strange, mysterious thing that's going on here, you know. And so here we are. And yet we're coming. We're born from the old geezer that has no face.

[36:08]

It has no arms or legs or voice or words and so on. That's the ultimate truth. Inconceivable. I like it, the old geezer. I think that's a good name for inconceivability. And then it says, therefore, you should know there's something that not only is speechless, but doesn't even have a mouth. Indeed, not only has it no mouth, it has no eyes either and no physical elements. It has no sense faculties. And fundamentally, there is not the slightest thing to it. And yet that is so. It's not void. And it's not nothingness. It means that even though you see things and you hear sounds, it's not the eyes that are seeing. It's not the ears that are hearing. This is the way the faceless one is. So you might think about that a little bit. Is it your eyes that are seeing? Just having eyes is all you need for seeing. There's a lot more seems to be going on there, right? Or just your ears are hearing, you know?

[37:09]

It's like... It goes way deep, you know, hearing goes way inside to the whole mechanism of thought and the whole mechanism of, you know, associating sounds with words and so on. So there's a lot going on there. It's not just your ears or not just your eyes. That would be hardly any, that'd be like a banana slug or something. It's just like very little information needed. You just kind of move along really slowly And that's just the kind of life. But we have it very complex. We're really complicated. So the faceless one represents the non-dual nature of reality itself. Reality itself has no eyes or ears or nose or tongue or face that's separate from the universe. Reality itself is the universe. It doesn't have things. None of those things are separate. They're all of a... I don't want to say of a piece because it's not pieces.

[38:12]

It's just the whole universe. The whole thing is happening together with all of this. Whatever's appearing is just appearing from there, from the old geezer. The geezer has whiskers now and then, or he laughs, or he grows a beard or whatever. But there's qualities that appear out of this vastness. It's like, yeah, it's amazing. words don't reach it words can't reach how amazing it is you know so our coming into being as a body and a mind is the doing of the faceless one of the old geezer meaning emptiness as dependent core rising you know we all arise together at every moment you know we all arise together we have this brief little you know momentary arrival and then the next momentary arrival the next one and it's just there we go All day long throughout our lives, just arising, getting up, eating some food, going to bed, talking to our friends, you know, that's it.

[39:19]

It's very simple, very basic. If we don't get too confused, if we really can stay, one of the nice things about here is so simple. There's not just many choices. I don't choose what to eat. It just comes. I'm happy when it's something I like and I just eat it. If it's something I don't particularly like, it doesn't matter. I'm going to eat it because it's food. It's really about food here. It's not about preferences. And the same thing with the weather. I don't have a choice about the weather. Today was kind of nice. It wasn't so cold. Yesterday was... So, you know, it's really you deal with it. You meet it and you bring whatever you can of yourself to the situation that you're in. So then he says, our coming into being as a body and mind is the doing of the faceless one. And yet when you get to such a place in which the senses stop and the world appears to cease, this kind of certain kind of meditations, you can feel as though it got very quiet.

[40:24]

For a while, you can get very quiet, very still. It's very pleasant. It's considered one of the highest forms of bliss, when you basically have ceased having all kinds of noise running through your head. And still, even then, still there's something that cannot be destroyed. And when you know this, it's neither emptiness or existence. It's not light or dark. And therefore, it is impossible to say that one is either deluded or enlightened. So in that place of calm, you know, like when the water's calm, you can't really say that that's better than that. You know, you're not into that. You're not into discriminating between, oh, that person is better looking than that person and I like them better. You're just not into that. You're not creating that kind of splitting. You're not splitting things into better and worse, you know, liking and not liking. So that's a discursive thing. So this is getting below the water and liking. You can't call it Buddhahood.

[41:27]

You can't call it truth. It is just a bright, clear light. A bright, clear light. That's awareness itself. Not the light of fire or of water. It's just empty, clear, and bright. Just clear awareness. So that's the faceless awareness. And you're all doing it. You all have that right now. That's what the knower knows the things that you're doing. observing or thinking about that's coming because there's something there that just knows it's not about the object that it knows it's about the knower you know awareness itself before you add aware of awareness itself before it's aware of some object So Kezon goes on to say that when the three disasters, boy, they're coming, aren't they, of flood and fire and hurricanes arise and the world is destroyed, this thing is not destroyed. This thing does not change.

[42:28]

Therefore, even the Buddhas can do nothing about it, and neither can the Zen ancestors. Nobody can mess with it. It can't be changed. So this is the instruction they're going to give for entering into an intimate experience of what these teachings are talking about, about to give us some instruction. So what he says is, for the time being, close your eyes. And where the breath ends and this body ends and there is no house to protect you. All function is unnecessary and you are like the blue sky without clouds. or like the ocean without waves, and then you'll be somewhat in accord with the faceless one. When you're very quiet, very calm, you're not being disturbed, you're not engaging with anything. You know, you're just okay. Things are okay. At this point, there's nothing you can do, and yet there is light.

[43:30]

Not the light of the sun or the moon. The whole sky is the moon. The whole world is the sun. So there is nowhere left that doesn't already shine. You don't have to add any light to the day. You don't have to add any moonlight to the night. It's already complete. Things are already as they are. Perfect. So this is because the Buddha Dharma fills the whole universe. There is nowhere it doesn't reach. If you try to reach it, how can you fail? There's no way you can fail. Everything you do, everything you touch is the Dharma, is the hearing of the Dharma, is the study of the Dharma, is the becoming. That's the third step. You hear it, you study it, and then you become it. It becomes your way of seeing and your way of being in the world. And yet it is a pity that although they lack nothing, people wander so much in delusion. And once they've been deluded by their perceptions, their misperceptions of the world, it's such a pity that people wander around in delusion when this beautiful world is right there.

[44:41]

You can't fail. You can't possibly miss. And yet still, the dreamers, the dreamers, you know, that's us. We're dreaming. So this is what we're trying to do is snap out of it. Snap out of our dreaming. An ancient said, studying the way is like drilling for fire. Don't stop when you see smoke. If you linger at the sign of smoke and you rest there, this is like stopping at some warmth. Oh, there's some warmth. You should go on until you hit fire. And when you do, when you use all your strength at one stretch, you will get fire. You will get fire. Because that's what you are. You are fire. The dragon. The true dragon. Experiencing this realm doesn't depend on meditation or on clam talk. I think clam talk is the way clams talk. So I guess I couldn't find it anywhere. But I think clams and you're talking about clam talk, which is just like that. It doesn't depend on meditation or on clam talk.

[45:43]

What is this principle of the secret saying not concealed? What is this principle? So this is Kazon. He's his little capping verse at the end of each chapter. We could call it the indestructible, imminent body. That body is empty, clear, and luminous. So this whole chapter has been about ultimate truth or ultimate reality and how to kind of open ourselves through these words. You know, these words are really nice and challenging. You know, they do sound a little bit secret. I think that's kind of the point when you're exposed to this kind of talk and it feels like, wow, you know, this is kind of... I can't quite make connection with this. And that's part of the way this language works. It's like it's just a little bit out of reach, kind of getting you to stretch, getting all of us to try to find a way to understand. And it helps to go over it again. And I find it really been helpful to me to read these chapters. I read it years ago, and I read it again. Now I'm reading them again.

[46:44]

And each time something new sort of appears that I hadn't noticed before or that I hadn't had a feeling about. I mean, a lot more feelings about some of the poetry of this text. And so that's that. And I would love to just bring you all on if you like. And whatever you I've got a few more minutes before I have to go off to dinner. Dinner's at six. It's now 547. Oh, I got to go really soon. So let me just open the gallery. Yeah, there you are. Great. Oh, there you are. There you are. Hello. Hello. Hello. Just going to glance around. I hope you don't mind. It's good to see you all. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, what I can offer is for you to unmute.

[47:45]

I mean, unmute. Yeah, unmute and say goodbye because I have to go. So if you'd like to do that. And then the next time I'll be back, and I hope you all can come. I'll be back online again on the 20th of this month. And then again on the 4th of December before I'm gone for a month. And then back in February, getting ready to step down from my position. So... I wanted to let you know with all this talk about the moon, it might be a nice place to see it. There's a super blood moon eclipse. I think it's Tuesday night. And so the moon is really bright orange-red. I think it's here, it's around 2, 15 or 3 in the morning. It lasts for about 80 or 90 minutes. Who knows? There might be something else to look at besides the stars. And I think it's Monday night.

[48:48]

I think it's Tuesday morning at around 2 o'clock Pacific time. You know, we got some rain coming. I hope it's not then. Oh, that's right. Up here, we've got this, I think, coming in. Tomorrow's supposed to rain. Maybe it'll be clear by the time that. That'd be great. I hope so. I just wanted to let you know. It's all the chatter about the moon. Thank you. Thank you, Dean. All right, everybody. Wonderful to see you. I hope you're all well and moonstruck. And I will look to see you again. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone. Bye, Sangha. Bye, everyone. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Yeah. Off to gruel. So you said enjoy it.

[49:48]

Yeah, I'll try. They make these really, they don't know how to do vegetables here, I got to tell you. I mean, after being at Green Gulch where they're right out of the fields, these guys are slimy. They serve slimy vegetables. It's just horrifying. But I don't mention it to anyone. Enjoy the slimy vegetables. Thanks, Paul. I'll save some for you.

[50:14]

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