Excuse me for extending your work period a while. I started out from Green Gulch, I think in time enough to make it, but the traffic was very heavy. I was asleep, so I don't know for sure, but the traffic was pretty... I woke up once. We are in line at the bridge. At Green Gulch this morning I had a Sashin lecture, at least afterwards, people said. That wasn't a public lecture, that was a Sashin lecture. Sashin in the city, for a Sashin in the city, you'll hear many things, of course.

[01:43]

I suppose there actually aren't any more sounds than sitting at Green Gulch, except we have more of a sensation of hearing things, because there are more noises of people. But in Sashin you can practice, in this Sashin you can hear the small voices of everything. Like in Zen we do, we carry beads like Buddhists do, but we don't usually do any mantra.

[02:49]

Sometimes we may, sometimes I may, but usually just the bead itself, without anything else. And every sound you hear or see actually can speak to you the same way. As you're sitting and your concentration deepens and you less and less have an object of your concentration, you can hear the voices of things without any interpretation. I don't mean that you hear them like speaking to you in some language or your mind gives

[03:51]

them some meaning, but just as they are, without even identifying them, they speak to us. Everything has a small voice. It's the language or speaking of the world itself, each in its own language. And to, as a conscious, semi-conscious, conscious effort, to notice that things do speak to you,

[04:54]

but don't try to interpret. Allow each thing its own language. Nothing has to be in English, nothing has to be in your own mental language. Just as it is, you can hear something. You can hear the language of our life. Your calm mind or concentrated mind will hear this language of each thing itself more and more. And I've been talking about a pivotal thought, and some of you who are just sitting in this session and have come from elsewhere don't know what I mean by that.

[05:57]

It's part of my effort to distinguish or give some definition to the details of our mental, emotional, of our life, which tend to slip by us, and which are ways of talking about, ways in our own familiar language of talking about samadhi or suchness, in ways that give us a direction for our path or a direction for our practice. Like there is a generic name for samadhi,

[07:20]

for table. And in Japanese they use taburu, for table, table, table. I forget my Japanese, but I think that all tables have specific names related to their purpose. So there's many kinds of tables, but each one has a different name. So when they're using our Western-type table, it becomes taburu, where you sit with chairs. They use our tabu, table for generic tables too, sometimes. And we have the same problem in practice. We have generic names for our feeling or thought or emotion, and then we have generic names like samadhi or suchness from Sanskrit

[08:35]

or some English version of Sanskrit or Chinese or Japanese. And matching these up to the many kinds of tables there actually are is, I think, necessary to give you the direction toward which everything speaks its own language. Every table has its own name, and you don't have any generic names. Like at Greengills today, someone asked me about feeling and thinking and the relationship of the two. Uninitiated Questions

[09:39]

People often ask me questions, uninitiated questions, and I feel badly in a way. Someone asked me after the talk, what is basic reality for Buddhism? So she meant, I think, in a Hobbesian or Lockean sense, is fundamental reality basically good or bad, or can you say something about it? So then she wanted to know if things are good or bad, if it's good but still there's good or bad, that kind of question. And from her point of view it's a serious question. I mean, she's come to Zen Center

[10:44]

and she wants to ask a question and she's been thinking about it. But from my point of view it's a casual question until I can see that she really, if she intends to devote her life or devote her life, you can't even say one year to that question, I can't really answer it. I can't, there's no... And if I say that's very casual, that's something maybe rude of me to say so. So anyway, people ask me, someone asks me, a different person asks me a question about thinking and emotion and things. I can't say, well, you should be practicing meditation more, because they probably think they do.

[11:45]

They probably are sitting several times a day, several times a week, I mean, and coming to lecture and their friends think they're practically a religious fanatic. They don't go to church just on Sunday. And yet, I can tell by the question that they're not initiated. They haven't done their homework. Your homework would be, you know, trying to match the words, emotion and feeling and thinking, and adding to, not just the words we currently use, but the words from pre-modern China and Japan and Europe, of the humors of heart and liver and etc., you know, the centers that they found in pre-modern medicine. And those centers, all in the realm of emotion,

[12:51]

are actually more specific and evocative and accurate, too, than our just saying feeling. So, to do your homework would be to sit, you know, and there's no definite boundaries between your feeling, your emotion, your thinking. Some things are clearly thinking. Some things are clearly feeling. Feeling. For example, for some reason, the lecture at Green Gulch also started late, and around 11 o'clock I looked at my watch and thought, I'm talking longer than usual. But I went on talking. And then I stopped and I went out.

[13:54]

But I forgot when I looked at my watch. We'd started late. And when I left the lecture hall, the Zendo, I talked exactly the usual time I talk. So, an example like this, my thinking and maybe my feeling for the time are different. You can see a difference there, but often it's very difficult to know where to draw the line. Oh, that's a thought and that's a feeling. That's an emotion. Emotion. How do we use the word emotion in contrast to feeling? Does my stomach have a feeling? Does some awareness extend from my heart or my breathing or my lungs? Is awareness or consciousness different from thinking and feeling? So, sitting, you become intimate with a new kind of language,

[15:03]

a direct reception of thinking, direct reception of the occasion of your consciousness without giving it a name, of thinking or feeling or liver or something. And then from there you may say, Oh, why give it a name? Why do we distinguish feeling from thinking? And then you'll find occasions when you do want to concentrate or you notice a predominance which you'd call feeling or thinking. With this kind of homework or zazen work, you'd ask a different question about thinking and feeling and such

[16:07]

if you were asking a question. This is the kind of initiation Harry Roberts meant that I told you last night. Oh, you want to study Indian ways with me? Please ask me later. Please ask me again. And when you have six flowers, when you find six different flowers... Now, I don't know exactly how Indians would use such a story, but in Zen, such a story is... Sometimes I feel a little aggressive because it puts you on the spot and makes you feel, God, I'd fail that one, you know. Or you feel set up, you know. Someone sets you up. But at the same time, the purpose of such a story is to make you more alert and also to indicate another kind of consciousness or awareness

[17:12]

which doesn't take one step away, which knows how to look at home. Hear that voice? And such initiations aren't just when you get to your teacher, you know, you're asking to accept you. But societies are strung throughout society, like jewels, I've said today. There are many societies, you know, upper class and middle class and lower class and working class and professional class and rich people and poor people and academic class, educated people.

[18:14]

But there's also a class of people on the path or a class or society of people who trust each other. A class of people who are careful or careless. There are many strings of people in our society. And as a child, as a child, when you first start to take a step or talk, you're moving out into the world. And what I am today calling the further, like a noun, not an adjective. Instead of calling it other, other separates it too much from us, but just say further. The further which I'm saying speaks to us. Which,

[19:22]

as you come to know the various, know the use of the words that we tack on to, based on to our direct experience and calling this emotion and this thought. Yeah. When you can know where those words come from by coming to them from the other side, then you are able to allow each thing to speak its own language with you. So as a child walks or talks, these are great events, I think, in each person's life. And later, I think if you remember clearly

[20:24]

something that happened to you when you were young, it was usually a moment of challenge when you first crossed the street by yourself or a little Ivan at Green Gulch, now he doesn't live in the city, he makes a point of saying very soon after you get there that he could walk, he would walk by himself from the dining room to his house. And I caught him one day crossing the parking lot. And parking lots are, you know, not so clear as a street, it's kind of obscure that it's a road, it looks like a field. So I was a little nervous or worried about him because I saw him heading for the parking lot, awfully tiny and new to Green Gulch. And yet he came out from between the cars and I almost ruffled his feathers. Almost trying to be casual

[21:27]

so no one would notice that he was on unfamiliar territory. And I said, Ivan something like that. And he went straight across. And he's going into the further, which we go into by books when some novel or poem opens up to us. The world that is created, you know. And this process of going into the further, what is further from us, you know. We may have some insight nowadays that some narrow situation or some occasion comes up and we sense that we're excluding something from our consciousness or excluding some person or people from our consciousness

[22:31]

or from our consideration or excluding something of ourself too, of course. And we have some insight and then we feel some exhilaration and some understanding and everything has a new perspective like seeing everything with light on an additional side. And then after you explore that you suddenly find yourself narrow again and some new insight is needed. This process goes on throughout our lives. We never reach some status or special place of understanding. Everything is changing and our mind is changing and even thinking the same thing twice is new. It's different from thinking it once. So our mind is always new. When you let it speak its own language

[23:39]

or you hear everything in its own language and this process becomes more difficult as you get older even though the challenge may not be as great as when you first walk. But then you have these giant examples about you walking. When you get your age you don't have any obvious examples around you. And only by your good karma or your use of your karma will you find out a teacher or a friend and these jewels of societies or lineage of people strung through our society. You know if you read the newspaper you get such an experimental view of our society. The daily down. But there are many people

[24:48]

among the children who throw the stones. There are also wonderful children trying to, worried about the nature of urban society of their own ghettoized situation who want deeply and earnestly to do something about it. You have to by your state of mind find out these people. Be the kind of person that you will, those people will, you'll walking through the park those are the people who will trust you. Or walking through your life. So your friends you find yourself if you practice Buddhism you find your path. Becomes people.

[25:55]

Friend after friend by your way seeking mind your path becomes friends like jewels that help you, that express things, sides of you express things so you don't have to. And a person who is someone else's enemy somehow if you're on the path you find the side of them that comes out with you is you know a Dharma friend. So there are preceding getting to the Indian teacher that Harry Roberts presented before you meet and even ask this question there is the homework of initiation or the homework of knowing that six flowers are around you. There's the homework of way seeking mind

[27:02]

which has led you to the great yes or the great no. Cavafy quite right in his poem which I've told some of you many times his poem is there comes a time when in everyone's life when they must make the great yes or the great no. And there are some who when this opportunity comes come out with the great yes and they go on to realize themselves. And there are those who come out with the great no and when challenged will reaffirm it no and go on to confusion and defeat. The great point of this poem is the sadness that the person who makes the great no

[28:05]

will reaffirm it unfortunately it's not a situation where you can say no and say oh well that was a mistake I think I'll say yes. Life is too fast each moment is too fast. You must be ready for yes. When you say no more and more reinforced. It doesn't mean you can't turn around but it's more you're more and more in a blind alley. So initiation is this kind of process and then

[29:07]

when you say yes the practice and the examples of teaching and teachers are to get you to be more alert. So I'm here I'm trying to you know there you are thinking and you have many reasons and things in your mind. What I'm suggesting is that in each situation there is one reason which is the pivotal reason. The example I gave is you're making dinner for someone and you think I'm making it because I found fresh food or because I want to please them or I want them to be grateful to me

[30:08]

or whatever the reason. And you may lose sight of the fact that you are making it because we have to eat. A very simple example. But if you lose sight of that we're making it because you have to eat and whether the food is what you wanted from the store or not or whether it pleases the person isn't it is rather insignificant. When you lose the pivotal reason the other reasons become like demons to disturb you and make you anxious unbalance you till more and more you are quite confused and don't know in any situation why you're really doing it. That I'm doing it to please that person. More and more becomes stronger. Until whether that person is pleased or not the whole world hangs on so that no

[31:09]

a kind of no is reinforced. People have without knowing the pivotal thought don't have much character don't have any toughness. It doesn't it looks like toughness but because you know when things are off base you don't have to be tough. It may look like tough but so many things you don't worry about because you know they're secondary. You experience them as secondary. So by practicing Zazen you know and by deepening your concentration you can stay with the calmness of your mind the pivotal thought. Now the next step

[32:14]

of this pivotal thought is the ability to and I don't know this is a little difficult to explain Okay. You know not calling the world out there other but calling it further. What is your contact with the further? How do we describe the further? What name do we give it? What relationship to it do we have? Someone used the word ambition recently to me. What are my or Zazen centers ambitions? They meant for society or I don't know something like that. And ambition didn't work so well. Ambition means to amble around or to go around

[33:16]

you know. Maybe responsibility is more accurate. And when you take the first step into the world or speak into the world or read into the world this is you could call this ambition. You could call it following the some example and you could call it responsibility. Responsibility means to promise in return the spawn part is libation or ritual and to re is to do it again that you re-promise by some vow or ritual. You re-promise. So

[34:18]

at some point we recognize this decision that is upon us that we must the further is we must to develop our changing mind always new mind also is you know our how can I say it's actually always widening our consciousness and that widening we can call we is also the same as responsibility to promise in return when you walk out into the world your parents require you to have be responsible to them in some way and the further you go the more you find out it's there's a responsibility involved. So we can say

[35:19]

instead of ambition where what are our responsibilities where do our responsibilities end you know just this country all sentient beings all life on the planet Star Wars other districts and we can say all sentient beings but you don't experience all sentient beings it doesn't have any meaning you experience your family and friends and more a little wider than that our neighborhood maybe like going from infancy to teenager maybe as a teenager you would if people had a party at your house you would try to

[36:20]

get everyone to leave pretty early or not to smash the furniture or something like that because you'd feel some responsibility but you wouldn't maybe be so careful at someone else's house but not actually you'll find most people find they feel the same responsibility at their friend's house because they care for their friends and their friend's parents so there's no difference your house or your friend's house and then maybe that extends to a nightclub so we're always finding our widening awareness of the further is also responsibility and also caring or friendliness all right

[37:24]

now back to pivotal thought concomitant with pivotal thought the calmness of mind which allows you to stay with something is not quite this mechanical but a visual awareness of the total situation that you're in if you're with some people it amuses me to try to describe something like this it's sounds a little

[38:27]

crazy if you're with some people here at a table with a lot of people at a restaurant at your house someone's house and you're there and the people and the table and whatever it's happening right or this room and you're in it and the surround is around you right but just as you can sustain through a situation of work or conversation or study the pivotal reason a succession of reasons a succession of reasons I guess good enough of why you're doing something that mind which can do that as if

[39:29]

when a person's in front of you and you talk to a person that person fills your consciousness it's like they're outside of you and they're also completely inside of you and you don't waver from that maybe it comes in another focus a little bit like static or stations but it mostly stays with you so you're speaking to the person inside you and outside you your calm mind doesn't need language anymore in the usual sense so the person speaks to you in as their own language the bead has no mantra attached just the bead so the person fills your senses just the person and the situation

[40:33]

you're in the situation fills your senses an example I gave today which might be of use to you is if now I don't know anything about archery or darts or tennis you know I should I think I should start a new life and become an amateur athlete I don't know why I think that I've never in my life turned to the green pages in the newspaper and my assistant Bill always turns to the green pages and many good friends of mine turn to the green pages I think it's wonderful such a it's the only place where there's good news and where the world goes on, you know and people keep track of it and it makes sense so I feel something I'm doing

[41:34]

I must have I feel narrow I must start a new life where I turn to the green pages first it's only recently that I even started reading newspapers it takes me time I have to go slowly so I don't know how to teach if you asked me to teach archery the Zen way I wouldn't know how to do it but I would guess that what you do I mean from my experience with Zen how I would teach it if I had to you might you might lose every contest but here's how I would teach it I would say there's the target over there and there here's you your arrow and don't worry about the target and don't worry about yourself or the arrow just visualize the trajectory from you from the arrow to the target

[42:35]

like you could visualize a hole in space and then just shoot the arrow down that hole now practicing meditation you begin to you know like juggling you don't look at any one ball but you're concentrated if you look at one ball you'll drop it but if you take the balls away the concentration is still there very simple example object plus concentration but that concentration can in a much wider multi-dimensional sense be there so as your mind can sustain more than a visual image a vision of sound sight the trajectory also the person is there like that in space or the situation is there

[43:35]

for you when you can sustain a situation like that in your consciousness not by some effort to do it but I'm suggesting in this session an effort to allow it to happen to allow things to speak in their own language their the situation will have a calmness in it you're being able to sustain that in your own consciousness everyone will experience the room and the table and the conversation differently believe it or not it will be so so another example of the further is developing the ability to be home you know wherever the six flowers are to know

[44:40]

the further through responsibility through being able to promise in return without that you can't really know something until you're willing to take responsibility for what you know to promise in return you can't really know something and to care also friendliness or caring and not just some neutral feeling but you actually care about the person in front of you the situation in front of you all sentient beings little by little you get to all sentient beings you keep finding those that you leave out or exclude you begin to find I care about the green pages and it gets wider wider it's also mechanical to say it like that and joy too

[45:43]

as your consciousness that you'll feel when you are settled in Zazen and Sashin is quite blissful feeling quite calm extended feeling that so we know the further that we know the so called other by our friendliness and our caring and our joy through joy through concentration or bliss it's knowledge bliss is knowledge suchness we say suchness suchness means Tathagata suchness is realization suchness itself is realization your object this mind mind as suchness itself and

[46:48]

the ability to first stage pivotal thought second stage to have a vision of whatever you're doing it's also related to the phrase I tried to use a while ago the mind of initiation which I think I also ought to define mind of initiation means how I'm using it in other these terms it's just for example your some poem or novel has been hasn't caught you or Shakespeare or something you know William Carlos Williams or Pound or Elliot for some reason hasn't come across to you or Kabir and at some point you read some poem just a few words of a

[47:53]

particular poem one line it arouses you it initiates you into the other poem into that poem and to the other all the work of the person opens up from those lines that's the mind of initiation which is aroused or ready for the great yes ready for initiation that the mind of initiation is the mind which sees holes which by seeing something senses opens you up to the whole work of the man of the person so the mind of initiation is also the mind which I can say there's a kind of vision of the whole in this way by practice we find out

[48:54]

the further the six flowers our relationships with people the unity of our great being very practical really you know not some scientific or it's all neutral but by your friendliness by your joy by your responsibility by your ability to promise in return the calmness of your mind which hears the language of each thing itself this is how we practice Zen how we find out our true life and how in this Sashin by extending your effort

[49:54]

to much as you can and extending your effort to allow everything its own language you can find out a great deal in the next ah five days five and a half days please don't hesitate please don't turn away from that trajectory you have a trajectory now through seven days go right into that trajectory and see it clearly and it will get wider and wider your intention

[51:07]

is your aim your unambivalent intention which even if you waver you come back to it keep coming back to it

[51:22]

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