I suppose we could say very simply that religion supplies an explanation for what we don't know about. Can you hear me in the back? And I don't mean by saying religion supplies an explanation for what we don't know about, to slight religion. It's pretty obvious there's more to this than we can say. So there's a question whether we need to explain this more that we can't comprehend. And I would say today that there are two kinds of religion. Buddhism is one kind and most others are of the other kind.

[01:30]

If we know there's more to this than we can explain, then any religion may be true. Christianity, Judaism, whatever religion you want, Mohammedanism, they may be true. Because we can't know for sure whether they're true or false. We certainly know there's more than we can explain. So, for example, the Christian explanation may be correct. Buddhism doesn't say it's not correct. We just don't know whether it's correct or not. But these kind of religions depend on revelation. somehow telling you, or some vision. Anyway, they come from the side of God. They're revealed to you, because they're not an explanation you yourself can reach. But Buddhism is from the side of man, and the practice always points at man. It's not from the side of God. So if we have

[03:07]

various religions by revelation. The problem, Buddhism presents, is how are we going to confirm one or the other? Which one is the right explanation? Well, first of all, Buddhism says, you know, we don't even have to ask that kind of question. Where did it all come from? That's not a question it's necessary to ask, supposedly said the Buddha, or not necessary at least to answer. If you have some answer you have to be able to find it here. So Buddhism is There are two sides. One side is Buddhism is the attempt to see how far out we can go. And Buddhist logic is an attempt to look at, really, not so much logic as the logic of how the mind works, how we think, and to demonstrate that logic has its limits.

[04:37]

So, built into Buddhist logic is the sense of the limits of the logic and then some kind of leap. If these are the limits, then it must be such a leap. So even Buddhist logic comes back to experience, the limits of your experience, the capacity of your experience. And there are many ways in Buddhism, you know. There's a school called Vijnana-vada. I guess that's right? Who knows how to pronounce it? I think it's vinyana, but whenever I say vinyana, it sounds like vinyana is good enough for me. In Zen, vinyana is not quite good enough for us. Anyway, in the vinyana system, there are eight knowledges.

[06:03]

fifty-one consciousnesses, eleven physiological or physical phenomena, some number of relational, I forget, and six unconditioned Anyway, it adds up to one hundred dharmas. But in Zen practice, we're not so concerned with all these, and anyway, this system just shows that if you take all the many ways you can divide things, even if you want to discriminate, we can show that you can discriminate things into types of consciousness, physical phenomena, types of knowledge, etc. with that system and even unconditioned, you know, space itself, unconditioned dharmas, six of them. But even with this kind of distinction you end up still with non-dual identity, unconditioned side. So Zen just emphasizes the unconditioned side.

[07:31]

the sameness of all dharmas. In San Francisco we're beginning, yesterday we began a Sashin, seven day Sashin. And so naturally we were speaking about zazen. Zazen arises when we say, if we want to know, want to know is not right, We have some intuition of our limits and some wider sense of being, and we have some yearning for this feeling. So, if you can't accept some explanation

[09:05]

The way Buddhism has developed is zazen, a way to find out the limits of our being or the lack of limits of our being. Nowadays Christianity and Buddhism are coming together in a way they never have before and I'm told that the Vatican, maybe two hundred or more years ago, realized that Buddhism was going to have an enormous impact on the West and began a systematic study of Buddhism at that time. And what's becoming clear, I think, is that Buddhism and Christianity, and I use Christianity for just as an example of all revealed religions, Christianity and Buddhism are not competitive religions. One is from the side of man and the other is from the side of God. So you can practice Zen or practice Buddhism and see how far from the side of man we can go in realizing the reality or nature of our existence.

[10:35]

and this may confirm or not confirm a particular explanation of a religion. But there's no reason you can't have this. I think we'll have some combination. Maybe Hinduism is a kind of combination of how far man can go in meeting this explanation. So it makes the explanation much more real. In Zen there's a second side which is similar to the side of God, which is, when you have gone as far as you can go, you realize I don't know how to express it exactly, but free of a particular viewpoint you see how Buddha is all viewpoints at once. So it becomes possible to explain Buddhism from the point of view of Buddha. So it is almost like from the point of view of God. And many of the sutras are like this.

[12:14]

And it depends on your state of mind how you read them. Sometimes you can read them and they're pretty boring, even though they're talking about rays of light emitting, you know, and jewels and extraordinary situations. This is the attempt of someone at this cusp to push it all out there. you know, as much as language, straining language in our ability to explain anything, to give some feeling. And if you're in a state of mind to receive this, you can be reading in every sentence, wow! And the next two or three words are another extraordinary feeling. So bodhisattva then, bodhisattva means sometimes we can say vow being, one who has taken a vow to save all beings endlessly and not to become Buddha. So bodhisattva is as far as you can go, and Buddha is from the other side, by Rochana Buddha.

[13:37]

some almost unimagined conception, unimaginable conception. So bodhisattva also means rapture, one who is in rapture. Bodhisattva, suchness of enlightenment, means also blissed-out person. So zazen is this dropping away, as Dogen says, dropping away of mind and body. And one stage of what it's replaced with is some blissful, deeply blissful feeling. So tangible, it's tasty, it's wonderful to do zazen.

[14:57]

delicious, wonderful, extraordinary feeling. And we approach it in strange ways. Some people I see here, for example, have the secret eye of practice. Secret eye is too mysterious to say, so I can say, the profound willingness to continue. For me it means the same thing. The profound willingness to continue, despite the day-to-day, moment-by-moment, gritty, valueless experience. You know, maybe even it feels good for a while, and then we sometimes waver and wonder what it's all about and what we're doing. But some people, they don't even care about or are given up on it feeling good at all, and they just continue their gritty life.

[16:26]

But if they at the same time have a profound willingness to continue, there's no partial suicide. Many of us are sort of partial suicides. We have in the back of our mind always, why is it so lousy? Or why can't it be better? This is a kind of partial suicide. feeling like it could be better or you could get out of it or opt out or escape. But this secret eye of practice is awakened when you, no matter what it's like, no matter how bad or boring or meaningless or valueless it is, you have this profound willingness to continue. This is very similar to the bodhisattva vow So in the midst of loneliness you find, as I said yesterday, aloneness. And aloneness and loneliness are very different. Aloneness is the same as things just as they are. You're able to sit in utter aloneness.

[17:55]

So sasheen comes too from this experience. Willing to do without, willingness to continue, profound willingness to continue. And here too we come to the sameness of dharmas, the sameness of everything. Because with this profound willingness to continue, you give up hope. You don't need hope anymore. You don't care. So, when you see something, it doesn't sound right to say it, but it's the same as anything else. When you have this utter aloneness, you find, strangely, you're not separated from anything. With loneliness, you're separated. There's some poem. Taking hold, astray in emptiness. Letting go, origin resumed. The music stopped. No shadow is touched. Outside are

[19:26]

It doesn't say outside, it says, my door, the moon, I in the sky, something like that. Now this is an attempt to say the sameness of dharma, or this entry through aloneness, giving up hope. This kind of concentration can't be found in ordinary activity, or it's very difficult to find it in ordinary activity. Azazen is the most profound way Buddhism has discovered to realize this concentration, which is ready for anything. Objectless concentration. So, the concentration

[20:28]

on something or in something is not the concentration we mean by zazen or samadhi, but a subjectless, objectless concentration. Now that's why Baso twisted Yakujo's nose when he said the geese flew away. You know, Yakujo, you know in the story, Yakujo, Baso says, what is it? Yakujo says, it's geese. And Baso says, where have they gone? And he said they flew away. Now this little way is not so different from gone, gone, gone beyond. What is the difference? Sometimes to answer a question, to indicate, return to emptiness, you walk out of a room or you roll up your teacher's bowing mat the next day after he did that.

[21:56]

Baso came in to give a lecture like this, and just as he was about to start, Yakujo rolled up his bowing mat. So it meant, go, your lecture is over. And Baso said, why did you do that? And Yakujo said, yesterday you made my nose hurt. Baso said, but where was your mind? And Yakujo says, today it doesn't hurt anymore. And Baso said, you have understood the matter at hand thoroughly. Someone else, some other poet tries to express it by saying, lifting a hand, a stone lantern announces the dawn. Emptiness suddenly nods its enormous head.

[23:46]

This is oneness within oneness that I talked about last Sunday. Not just everything is one, but oneness within oneness, the sameness of dharmas. This is not the ordinary state of mind. but it is also the ordinary state of mind. And to find this out, to reach as far as we can go, we do zazen. And we try to accept everything as it is, in each occasion,

[24:56]

on education with this willingness to continue. Not distracted by various forms. If they look more and more negative and terrible, it doesn't affect our willingness to continue. Finally, suddenly, your mind won't be disturbed by anything anymore. The willingness to continue has finally released you to just continue. I don't know how to say it. So again, we do zazen. And what I'm suggesting to the people sitting in the city

[26:00]

is utter aloneness throughout the sashi. Non-discrimination is also the sameness of dharmas. Utter aloneness is the sameness of dharmas. In this way you will see the purity of everything as it is. A story I like, I told yesterday, is about Muso and his attendant monk going to a ferry boat. And they got in the boat and it was quite full and they couldn't take any more people. It was already tippy.

[27:08]

And suddenly, as they were about to push off, a drunken samurai, or warrior of some sort, rowdy of some sort, came down the dock, insisted on getting in, and jumped into the boat, and they went off. And it was quite tipping and dangerous. So this drunken rowdy person said, throw the old priest out. And Muso didn't say anything. And he kept cursing him, throw that old priest out of the boat, worthless, black-robed priest. And his attendant was no slouch, and he wanted to throw this guy out of the boat, Muso. And then, according to the story, the monk, I mean this samurai, had an iron fan. I don't know what an iron fan is and what use it would be. Anyway, he had an iron fan and he whopped this guy over the head, whopped Muso on the head and his head began to bleed and almost the jishya could not restrain himself. But Muso said something like this,

[28:41]

a beater and beat. There's some poem associated with the story, but he said something like this poem. Beater and beat. Mere players in a game, ephemeral as a dream. So they got to the other side and got out. And this rowdy samurai, rushed up to Muso and bowed, prostrated himself and asked to become his disciple. All this kind of thing happens. So in this situation we're not to understand it as Muso is just extremely patient and whatever happened he would have just sat there and allowed himself to be beaten over the head. He might have done that too, but that's not the point of this story. The point of this story is, he understood the samurai completely. And he knew just what to do. And he understood it because of what I'm trying to express, the sameness of darkness. Dogen always says,

[30:12]

It doesn't mean this has an identity, it means the identity of enlightenment. You can translate one of Dogen's statements, enlightenment is to be identified by all things. In this identity, this sameness, this utter aloneness, aloneness meeting aloneness, teki teki There's another word in Daito-Kuji used for a doksan or sanzen, meaning shouken. And shouken means to really meet. This really meeting is the sameness of darkness. Actual non-discrimination. So you're not surprised by what happens. when emptiness nods its enormous head. Robert Duncan was here the other day and he said, when we fight Vietnam, when we fight terror, we become more terrible than the terror.

[31:42]

to meet terror, you have to become even more terrible to defeat terror. And as we see, America has become like the Germany in many ways we feared at one time. So we need some more profound way than just beater and beating. Enemies become more and more alike. So think of that when you feel some strong entity. Realize you're becoming more and more alike. So we need to find some more profound way of meeting everything. In the end you need your absolute sincerity. You can't do so then.

[33:22]

for very long without absolute sincerity. You can't find objectless, subjectless concentration without absolute sincerity, the profound willingness just to continue no matter how bad or good it is. If it gets too bad we want to stop, if it gets pretty good we think we've accomplished something. very difficult to continue for many generations. Maybe it won't be so difficult for this generation. The novelty of it is, and satisfaction of it is, very useful. But when we find out that most of the knowable usefulness is realized in the first few years, eventually people will drift away from it. But the profound usefulness is only after ten or twenty years. Yakujo was Vassa's attendant for twenty years. Until they really met. Really meeting a person is easiest way, deepest way to really meet everything.

[34:52]

If your teacher is good, you won't be fooled by meeting halfway. Often you think, I have met this mountain, or this sunset, or this man or woman. But, you know, you didn't have someone you were meeting trying to trick you, like your teacher will. When you try to meet your teacher, he or she will step back one step, or a hundred steps, or aside or try to bore you or discourage you until it completely springs from you and you can meet anything from utter aloneness the willingness to be completely alone by which you'll find out you're not separated from anything. That's your idea of separation

[36:19]

When you see there's no such thing other than aloneness, you'll find out what's together or oneness is. What that poet meant by suddenly the void nods its enormous head. So, I encourage you to just do Zazen, but with the power of, what can I say today, revelation, the power of revelation.

[37:33]

Again, a poet tried to express this difference by contrasting a mild spring day with the wintry moon high in the sky, and from the deep pond I don't mean exactly anticipation in your zazen, but a wide and open or unexpected feeling. So you don't ever do zazen with an expected feeling. I expect it will be just another period of zazen. So you enter everything, particularly zazen, with the feeling of not knowing what to expect. And it's not easy. It's very difficult to over and over again come to zazen and not know what to expect

[39:04]

You obviously know what to expect after 10 years. 14,000 hours on the cushion. More than a TWA pilot has flight time. And you didn't get anywhere. The last five years, no UFOs. I'm, for many of you, just sleepiness. Sometimes I make fun of sleepiness, but I don't want to knock. Today I want to be positive about sleepiness. It's quite a skill to sleep sitting up. Not everyone can do it. If you said to someone, please sit straight up over there and fall sound asleep, they couldn't imagine it was possible and soon they would fall over.

[40:28]

So it's pretty hard to do tailored fashion. You're sitting like this. You can't fall asleep quite so easily. But the wonderful stability of this posture is proved by how thoroughly we can sleep. And how alert you can be in it. As I've often said, the new student, wide awake, you can sneak up on and hit with as big an iron fan as you've got. But an older student can be sound asleep, but you can't sneak up on him. I'll get about that far away. Some masters of it are here in this room. And then there's ones who sit straight up without swaying and are sound asleep. And they open one eye.

[41:44]

So to just do sadhana, say for ten years only, and still be able, maybe after two or three years of forgetting about it and it being a habit, still being able to come to Zazen with that feeling of not knowing what to expect, and next period, not knowing what to expect. And it's interesting, the freshness to be able to do this, even without any results, without anything happening, comes upon us after a while. And then we can be awake, usually, and there's no any particular effort in having this feeling of not knowing what to expect. And it enlivens our work and our relationships and our life. And our mind gets some equanimity. Our personality and mind get some stability that's always very even. If you know such a person, they're always quite even.

[43:22]

Not so mad, not so sad. Twenty-four hours without gap. This is Hyakujo and Basojin. There was a gap when, the commentary said, someone other than his parents had hold of his nose, or the nose Hyakujo's parents gave him. was in someone else's possession. This means some gap in his practice. They flew away. Some gap. With utter aloneness, you know, there's no flying away. No partial suicide. So it does take some extraordinary a person, not in terms of talent, but in willingness to stay with practice until you find

[44:53]

you actually have realized subjectless, objectless existence. And the stone lantern announces the dawn, stone maiden speaks various statements, Zen Thank you. Okay.

[46:12]

Okay.

[47:01]

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