Hundreds of years ago, actually over a thousand years ago, a man given the title of national teacher, disciple of the Sixth Patriarch, called Echu, called his disciple Ocean, saying, Ocean, and his disciple said, And he said again, Ocean, and his disciple said, Yes, teacher. And the third time he called, Ocean, O-S-H-I-N. And again his disciple said, Yes, teacher. And then Echu said, All this time I thought I was

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transgressing on you, and now I find you are transgressing on me." Anyway, this is a very famous, old story. And last time I was here – actually, a time before last, I think, two Sundays ago – can you hear in the back? Not so well. I was only talking about last Sunday. Last Sunday. No, the Sunday before last. I talked about the truth, and today it seems I will talk about the function of truth, or truthfulness. But we'll see what I talk about, I don't know for sure. the other day during Sashi, which just finished, a Friday night, I talked about another goan in which Uman says, everyone has a light but when you look at it, it's dark and dim.

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Where is your light? Where is everyone's light? Anyway, there's much more to the story than that, but I talked about that story. And one person in the sesshin left the sesshin. He was sitting one night. And mostly during the Sashin he'd been quite sleepy and sitting rather restlessly. And one evening when we have late sitting, after I leave and the older people leave, you can leave, period, but you can also stay on. And suddenly, during that period, he felt very straight and completely awake. And anyway, he was sitting. And suddenly he thought, it must be late. I'd better go home. So he got up and started home. Going up the street to where he lived, he passed me.

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going back to the zendo. And he said to me, he's not supposed to speak during Sashin, but he said, oh, I should go back to the zendo. I said, no, no, do whatever you need to do. Afterwards he thought, need? What did he mean? And in the zendo he thought, Why am I leaving? I'm so wide awake." Oh well, it must be late, so he went home. When he got to his house, he said, you know, I was sitting in the Zendo and I don't know why I left and then I met me, met Abbott on the road, and I thought, I said I should go back, and I didn't, and his wife said, well, you still can go back, and he sat down and had a cigarette. And then he thought. The koan I just told you came to his mind. The national teacher called three times, and he thought, oh my God, I was called three times.

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why don't you stay?" And then, on the street, when I saw the abbot, I thought, why don't I stay? And then my wife told me to stay. So he sat down and got his books out and read about this koan. Okay.

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I'm sorry there's not more seats, but maybe on the platform in the back is the easiest, since you have a baby in your arms. I don't see any seats anywhere else. Right there on the edge you can sit, or on the bench. Anybody else that comes in can't come in. That's not so. Anyway, so he heard the call, actually, even though he didn't stay in the zendo. He heard himself being called and he understood something about that koan. The national teacher Echu calls his disciple Ocean three times. And it's very close in meaning to

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the koan I told you I was talking about in Sashin with Uman, about everyone has a light which is shining. And this is how actually a koan or Zen story penetrates us, particularly during Sashin we find it happening. It takes many forms, you know, meeting someone in the street, having a cigarette, and it comes up in the form of another story that you don't even remember you had read, maybe. A poem from that same commentary is a candle in the golden palace reflects in a thousand mirrors. The mountain responds to the temple bell." Or another poem by Tufu that I like very much. For some reason it makes me feel, reminds me of living at Tassahara and at a monastery in Japan. It's

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Again, it's dark and dim at Bamboo Grove Monastery. In the distance, very faintly, you can hear the temple bell. The name of this poem is Departing Monk. In the distance you can hear the temple faintly, the temple bell. you carry the setting sun on your bamboo hat." Returning, you carry the setting sun on your bamboo hat. Entering and disappear into the green mountains. Now I should say something about a culture which makes a story like this clearer. Let's imagine that Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg and Wendell Berry, three poets, or you can take Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot, whichever poets you'd rather identify with, and

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there they decide to go out and have a drink on Market Street or on, I don't know, Union Street or someplace, where there's a bar and music. And they go into the bar and they say, which one of us is the better-known poet? Let's find out. By which which singers and which musicians say our poems. And they've just picked any bar, you know, not a poet's bar. So they go in and on the jukebox first someone plays Gary Snyder's poem being sung, I don't know by who. And next the ... so he says, I, I'm the best known. And the next the musicians play and sing one of Allen Ginsberg's poems. And then some, since I'm really talking about the Tang dynasty, some dancing girl comes out and sings three of Wendell Berry's poems, or Wallace Stevens. And Berry says, ha ha. Of course, if you know Wendell Berry, he wouldn't say ha ha.

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She must be mistaken to have sung my poems when she could have sung yours, Gary. Now, there's very little likelihood that that would happen on Mission Street or Market Street. But in China, of the Tang Dynasty, such a thing actually happened. Three poets went to a bar. And they had such a little contest. And the poems of those great poets, Tu Fu and Li Po and Po Chui, were on everyone's lips, you know. Everyone said them. Ministers, you know, government officials, street walkers. Everybody, when they wanted to express something, would say, of these poems, their poems. This is a much more highly tuned society than our society. I've talked with you other times about the effect of having no

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not storing money and wealth in paper, and so you store it in crafts and art, and the effect of everyone playing music and everyone writing poems, and the effect of the great... how that makes poets and government officials and everyone accountable to each other. Now, another aspect. the degree to which everyone knew the poems, you know. We were in the zendo, particularly, you know, during Sashin you notice it, but in the zendo when you sit at your cushion you bow, and opposite you, and then you bow to your cushion first, and then you turn around and bow into the room and sit down backwards. And the person opposite you, even though they're meditating and concentrating, it may be even the middle of a period, if they're actually concentrating and they don't have much in their mind, they can feel you bow and you'll see them bow across the way, even though they can't see you.

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they can hear you coming in, etc., too, but it's by feel as much as by some discriminating sensing. And then when you get up from bowing, from sitting, again you bow and the person across, when you bow, the person to your right and left bows, because you bow, the person directly opposite you bows, but the person directly opposite the person responding to you does not bow, and the person, etc. So, everyone doesn't respond. The responding bows, you draw a line somewhere. If you didn't, there'd be a very rapid ripple effect and everyone in the room would be bowing, you know, and you couldn't stop bowing pretty soon. There'd be a tangled mass of people in the middle of the room, all convulsively trying to bow to each other, you know. Crawling across the floor, bowing. And everybody responding. And such a bow would travel a thousand miles. Across the society, people would pick up the bow. Very rapidly.

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So we must draw a line somewhere, so only the person directly opposite you bows, and to your right and left. But even though you don't bow, the bow is there, and actually passed throughout the room. We felt it, maybe. In like manner, As I talked about in Sashin, a joke, you know, if somebody in Boston thinks of something very funny, very funny, it can't be an ordinary joke. An ordinary joke will travel three or four people, but a very good joke will travel throughout the country very rapidly. but at least among people who know each other. So it may be limited geographically, you know, to New England and not to reach the South. But people who see each other a lot, it will pass, and my guess is that you could, I don't know if any studies have ever been done on it, but you could pass it, like the game of telephone, faster than television.

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But to pass it, it has to be a very highly tuned joke, you know, or comment. So, for a society to know Tufu's poems or Pochuhi's poems, it has to be a society very highly tuned. You know, probably everybody writes poetry so they know when a really good poem or a good joke comes by. So it's clearer to people in a story like this, hearing a story like this in a country where, like China at that time, where there were continuous people across the country and you could see how rapidly what was highly tuned passed. And we can see it in Zen Center too, we live together in three places.

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something that, you know, and we can experiment with it a little bit because we live together, you can say something and very rapidly everyone knows. Some things get distorted and some things the telephone works, the human telephone works very accurately. In fact, it may get improved as it goes. It becomes simplified and more clarified. So, a poem like, The candle is reflected in the golden palace. The candle is reflected in a thousand mirrors. The mountain responds to the temple bell. Or the poem, The monk carries the setting sun on his head. Or Dogen saying, Under the still moon, the mountain moves. This kind of understanding,

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you know, is easier to grasp, the power of truthfulness is easier to grasp if you live in a culture so much more highly tuned than ours which uses such, excuse me, but gross media, you know, as television and radio. Last time I talked about television, somebody who makes television programs was in the room, and I had to say, which if you're here, I'll say, I think television is okay, but I'm talking about another kind of attunement which still functions, you know, too. The commentary on Taisho, on this koan about the national teacher, has some other similar examples. A government official goes up to Hechu and says, you have been living on this mountain for many, many years. Now, mountain means temple and mountain means solitude, so even

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in the middle of a city, a temple is called a mountain. And solitude means freedom from possessions. It doesn't mean you are in the desert, you know, or in the mountains, actually. It means wherever you are, you are free from possessions. So, because you don't desire everything around you, you are free, you have solitude. So, he is saying something like, you have been living in solitude, or practicing, for many years. It's a rather astute question, actually. What kind of training have you done, this government official asks. You've been living on this mountain many years. And Echu calls to a young boy.

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At that time, many times, people 12 or 13 would go into monasteries and work there. It was like sending someone to prep school. They might become a monk or might not. He called this young boy and he patted him and said, if you are this, say you are this. Directly say you are this. If you are that, straightaway say you are that. Don't be deceived by anyone. Don't be deceived by people at any time. If you are this, say you are this. If you are that, say you are that. Don't be deceived by people at any time. This is very interesting because he means that to think it's necessary to hide something, so you don't, if you are this, say you are directly this, you have some feeling that people are dangerous or you must defend yourself or hide something, so you're not always open, means you are deceived by people. If you are this, say you are this, directly. If you are that, say you are that, directly.

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Don't be deceived by people and assemble yourself. So truthfulness, first of all, is to just open yourself. If you are this, say you are this. If you are that, say you are that. Another similar story. A samurai asked a Zen monk, what is the secret of Zen?" And the samurai, the monk said, what is your name? And he said, Murashige. And the monk said, oh Murashige. And the monk said, yes? He said, where is the secret? The monk said, where is the secret there? So again, the national teacher calls Ocean and Ocean says, yes, teacher, and he calls again and he says, yes, teacher, etc. Now, I think it's Gregory Bateson who made the statement, the map is not the territory. The map is not the territory. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

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the sutras are not the truth. Of course, Dogen says, painted tea cakes are edible. He means the sutra is the truth. Don't be confused by the finger is the moon. The finger is the moon. So we can confuse things. So he says, the map is not the territory. That's true. Your words or our description or the poem is not the territory. But at the same time, if you want someone to find Tassajara, you must give them a map. And you should know by your discriminating awareness, I can say, whether the person you're talking to is a sailor

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a hiker or a driver. And if he's a driver, you must give him a road map. If he's a sailor, you must give him a map which shows the waterways. And if he's a hiker, a map which shows the mountain paths. None of the maps are the territory, but the map must be true. So they're playing with this kind of idea. you know. Echu says, all this time I thought I was transgressing on you by calling, you know. And he says, Mumon comments on this story, how grandmotherly Echu is to call three times. Once is more than enough, you know. Pushing the cow's head down to eat, you know. Usually we call only once, But three times, he calls, his tongue will melt in his mouth," says Mumon. And then he says, you know, all this time I thought I was transgressing on you and here you are transgressing on me. It means the map is not the territory, you know. Do you understand? But at the same time, you don't

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The territory we can call absolute truth and the map we can call relative truth. So, calling out and responding is mirror mind, you know. Or, if you are this, just say you are this. If you are that, just say you are that. Kyoshige? Yes! That means non-duality. Subject and object are gone. The bows pass a thousand miles. Let me give you another example. I've talked to you several times now about pivotal thought. I don't think I should explain it again, even though all of you don't know what I mean, but briefly, by pivotal thought, I mean, among the reasons you give yourself for doing something, which is the reason which you can't remove? If you remove that reason, you won't do it, but the other reasons you could remove. Now, related to that,

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is the maps we give ourselves. How do we describe our practice to ourselves, note our practice? Some of our practice can't be noted. There's no map, there's no way to make a map of it if you transgress on it. And some of our experience we shouldn't, it's better not to make a map of, to note. And some we note. Again, in the sasheen, somebody sitting in the sasheen said to me, something I said in lecture about practice, they had tried out, you know, and I was impressed that they understood it and they were trying it out. And they said,

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This person said, this practice, say, practice A that you suggested, is it the same as practice B, which he'd already been doing and found similar? So he said, is this practice A the same as practice B? When he asked the question, it's an equivocal question and he wasn't practicing practice A by asking the question. So, what would be better to say is something like, last night I practiced practice A. The other day I practiced practice B." There's no equivocal statement there. That is a true statement. Yesterday I practiced A, the other day I practiced B. And it also says that he feels some relationship. Or he could say, I practiced A and sometimes I practice

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of B, or you could say, last night I practiced A and I practiced B and found them the same. That's also a true statement. And it also, I might say, tomorrow when you practice A and B they will be different. Now, it seems like a small point, but you can ask yourself how often do you note your experience to yourself in ways that are equivocal? So one thing we do in practice is to take some period of time, six months or a year, and say, I will try to note my experience to myself only in ways that are true. So, you wouldn't say, is practice A the same as practice B? You just say what you know. If you are this, you say this, if you are that, you say directly that. Ocean? Yes. This is the function of truth or truthfulness.

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How in yourself do you note your own experience to yourself? If you always note it in some equivocal way, so you need someone to respond, or you need some reassurance, or you describe yourself, my practice is not so good, or I did this and that, so there's something missing. Just you can say, my practice is this. Tomorrow my practice may be that." This effort to find a true way to note yourself, to yourself, is a way of getting a map. That map is not the territory, but that map should be true. This is part of the meaning of this koan, National Teacher Calls Three Times. And in the other story, Uman says about the light which is shining from another place, he says, the light is shining from your feet, continuously from of old, from ancient times, and yet when you try to

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Look at it, it's dark and dim, beyond seeing and knowing." How do we recognize someone's light? How do we see the light? Another place he says, people come and go, excuse me, you come and go by daylight. you discriminate a people by daylight. But what if it's midnight and there is no sun and no moon and no lamplight? It will be all right if it's a familiar place, of course. But if you don't even know where you are, how can you even take hold of something, take hold of anything? if it's midnight and there's no sun or moon or lamplight. He means, how will you find the light when people are corrupt, when we are so corruptible? And as I said before,

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I'm talking about the four holy truths here. Again, let me say it. The four holy truths are there's suffering, a cause of suffering, an end of suffering, and a path. And I think the key to bringing that home to yourself is to recognize that we are corruptible. You are corruptible, I am corruptible, we are corruptible. you know, how much we eat, what we desire. For example, I think one that is apparent to us recently is the blackout. I love the fact that that magician predicted the headline. Did you read that? I love things like the Bermuda Triangle, which you can't explain. It makes life more interesting to have something like that. Anyway, there was the big blackout in New York, and the effect of it was the opposite, or different, from the first blackout, where the crime rate supposedly was very low, and like in a state of emergency

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wartime, people are often very helpful to each other. At this time, as you must have read in the newspaper, there was miles and miles of looting. Many streets, blocks and blocks, were looted. And they arrested maybe nearly 4,000 people. And everyone did it, you know, not everyone, but especially in poor neighborhoods, old people and young people and all kinds of people, you know, looted. And they, I'm told, I didn't see it, but they were on television, etc. So we think the crime problem, you know, is some drug addict or crook, you know. But if the lights go out, if it's midnight and there's no light, no sun, no lamplight, everybody, not everybody, but many people are corruptible. Someone said, I'm ashamed that we people, that we do this. Someone else said, the people are hungry. And I'm told that on television

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they showed exactly where, a picture, where all the power lines from going into New York converge. So, who needs an atomic bomb, you know, if you want to cause a revolution? Just turn out the lights, stop the gasoline, you know, organized like Captain Crunch. So, as I said, talking about that a few weeks ago, our society is extremely vulnerable. So, the question one poses is, what, you know, and the four truths pose. We are corruptible, you can see it, you know, when the lights go out.

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And the next one is there's a cause of that corruption, self, or greed, hate, and delusion. And the third is there's an end to suffering means there's a cause of perfectibility also. If we are corruptible, we are also perfectible. And the fourth the path, you know. Right views and right thoughts and right speech and right conduct and right livelihood and right, what is it, mindfulness? Effort, right? Effort and right mindfulness and right I always get it mixed up with the six paramitas, but I think I got it right that time. And this, again, as we talked, at mindfulness it's turned, excuse me, at livelihood, right livelihood, mindfulness is turned inside out. First it's right views and right, you can see, right views, the intention to save all sentient beings.

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and right thoughts, how that is manifested in your thoughts, and right speech and right conduct. And these become pivots for the truth, how you conduct yourself, your vow, your thinking, how you are pivots for the truth. Samadhi is translated sometimes as trance, or your concentration, or trance. is a pivot for the truth, when you experience yourself truly. And at livelihood it means opening yourself up to the expectations of others, opening yourself up to the mindfulness of others, not just your own right speech and conduct, thoughts. So, I've gone over this in various ways recently, several times, but this is the practice of truthfulness. That people are perfectible and you have that responsibility if your truth is highly tuned.

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your practice can't be just good enough for you, it must be good enough for everybody. That if it's not good enough for everybody, it's not good enough for you. And we don't understand how clearly the candle in the Golden Palace reflects in a thousand mirrors, how rapidly a joke can pass through a culture. If it's a true, you know, joke, true statement. And how rapidly Suzuki Roshi coming here, small little Japanese priest living in a Kafkaesque tower on Bush Street and Laguna, and only sitting zazen every morning

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and now how far the truth of his life has reached so many people. And I don't think we should make an excuse for looting, you know, by saying, Oh, rich people embezzle, or the people are hungry. It's not a matter of I don't think. It's a matter of social disorganization, social responsibility. It's a matter of the kind of society we have. And you can't avoid that responsibility of the kind of society we have. When you see that the candle reflects in a thousand mirrors or the bough travels a thousand How this first koan means, at midnight, how do you see someone's light? How do you see the light of some looter or some criminal? You know, the commentary again on one of these stories says, you must wear the iron collar with no hole. It means that the criminal wears an iron collar in those days. It's not a bad idea, actually.

[46:35]

I think it might be better than sending people to jail. With all of what happens in jail, just take some person who committed armed robbery, or several times, three times, we have no Australia to send people to, you know, or planetoid. Just put a big, from maybe space technology, hardened steel heavy collar. which you couldn't torch off or saw easily. And they could be quite free to walk around the city, one month or something. I think it's better than jail. You'd be so embarrassed in front of your friends, you know. Maybe it'd become a status symbol, you know. And after you're on parole, you have to come and check up. You may think I'm being inhuman, but we are responsible to our peers, to each other. This is how we have to develop social responsibility. So, this koan says, you must wear an iron collar with no hole. You know, that's very difficult to get over your head. It means

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the whole universe is an iron collar with no hole. And when you see the candle in a thousand mirrors, when you see the power of truthfulness, the function of truthfulness, how it functions in yourself, pivotal thought, you know, true articulation, expression of what you are doing. If it is this, say directly, it is this. When it's midnight, how do you see someone's light? How do you respond to the corruptibility of our of yourself. Anyway, this is the meaning of this story. The national teacher calls three times, Ocean? Yes, teacher. Ocean? Yes, teacher. Ocean? Yes, teacher. Here I thought I was transgressing on you all this time and you are transgressing on

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By methods like this, for more than a thousand years, Zen has been trying to teach one person to another truthfulness. The power of truthfulness, the practice of truthfulness, inside and out. How non-duality or emptiness means truthfulness. Practically speaking, it means truthfulness. Not some philosophical idea, it means truthfulness. And in such a society, you'll have more and more phenomena like the poets. A good poem passes everywhere. And nowadays, truthfulness will reach so much more accurately and distantly than something that's off. It takes so much effort to push something that's off.

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Don't be deceived by people, so that you dissemble. Don't just say, if it's this, it's this, if it's that, if I am that, straight away you say, I am that. This is the training. Echu said, he received in solitude over many years. The Bamboo Grove Monastery is dark and dim. Faintly, you can hear the distant temple bell. Leaving the sun, you carry the sun on your bamboo hat, disappearing into the green mountains.

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or under the motionless moon, the mountain moves. Truth is like that. The mountain responds to the temple bell. This is the teaching of Buddhism.

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