I can tell if I'm talking loudly enough about whether Tommy is fiddling with his hearing aids. I want to have a very practical discussion with you this morning, but as usual it'll get a little impractical somewhere along the way. Can you hear me, more or less? We've been talking about inside and outside in sashi. And I suppose it's a good thing to talk about religion in general. because all religions have some sense of this other place. I don't know, where God lives, or grace. Anyway, some reference to something unaccountable. And religious people tend to

[01:32]

take into consideration the unaccountable more than other people. And my own impression is that, practically speaking, it's very useful that people who don't leave some space for the unaccountable, things don't add up for them in the long run. So, we often say, you know, particularly in religion having it from the Orient and India and all the mystical schools of Christianity and Mohammedanism, Sufi, Sufism, they all say, don't seek outside yourself. Practically speaking, I'd like to try to figure out today, where is inside? We're not supposed to seek outside ourself. Where are we supposed to seek? What is inside? And we do mean popularly, just in common talk, we do have a feeling for inside.

[03:02]

Of course, inside the house, but we often say, inside me I feel, and inside you means what? I think this common way of speaking is worth looking at, very practical, but here we are in this room, you know. We're inside the room, I guess. I don't know what exactly difference there is between in here and out there, except the weather is slightly modified in here. And out there, I guess, we're inside the biosphere. And anyway, maybe we're always inside something, but anyway, we're inside this room. And then all of you, I guess, are inside yourselves.

[04:04]

I don't know. Is someone there? Knock, knock. Are you inside there? Anyway, what's inside there? I mean, what is inside there? It's just flesh doubled back on itself, a sort of loop. That's all. That's inside you, you know. So I guess you have a stomach and lungs, but is a lung just outside turned in? I mean, if a doctor takes a stethoscope or whatever, some thing, they have little cameras now on the ends of wires that can stick down in your lungs. If somebody sticks something down in your lungs and looks around, is it any different than putting it under your arm or in your mouth? Where exactly is this inside where you're supposed to seek? I mean, I'm not looking for something magical, just where is it? Where is it located?

[05:27]

I think you feel, if you could put a little cube – well, one of our students has a bullet in his stomach, he's at Tathagara now – but is that bullet, I guess the bullet's inside him, but it kind of makes the inside outside when it's in there. If you put a little, you know, I don't know what, cube in your stomach, you'd feel the cube wasn't really inside you. It was inside your stomach, but it wasn't in the inside you mean. That's just another kind of outside surrounded by the stomach. That's the stomach's outside, so then we could go into the lining of the stomach and then inside the lining, and where's the inside there? But the fact is, if you put things together Something happens by their being together. Like knowing how to build a good campfire or fireplace fire. If you put the logs in the right way, you can get a very hot fire in between, even with the incense burning too.

[06:56]

If you put the incense one way, it goes out, another way, the heat adds to the heat. So I would guess that really what we mean when we say inside is this kind of inside, this kind of relationship between two things that creates something, creates an inside that's not enterable. Do you see what I mean? If you enter it, it becomes an outside. It creates two insides, you might say. But I would say inside is what's not enterable. So you think of your inside as not enterable and now that doctors can go inside so easily, you have to think more, what do we mean by inside? So the inside which is not enterable. If you take two things with that inside, that's an inside, but then when you put that in it, it makes it an outside, but it makes two more insides. There are lots of possible insides. Is there only one outside, one big outside and many insides, or is there any outside at all?

[08:27]

Now, why I'm talking about this is partly because of a story about Joshu, but before, you know, the story about Joshu relates to two other stories. One is the two poems from the Sixth Patriarch, the story of the Sixth Patriarch, where the first poem, you know, practice is polishing the mirror and keeping the dust off it. But, you know, there is that side, and Sukhiroshi's teacher told him when he was a boy, to be like a mirror. When you're in a situation, just reflect it. And that's pretty good advice, particularly for a young person practicing, it gives you a sense of something, of letting circumstances speak for themselves. And the mirror, the simple image of a mirror is very closely related to the paramita of patience. And you'll be much more compassionate. So that's worth working with.

[09:59]

just a mirror. But then you find out your mirror distorts things quite a bit, you know, so you've got to change mirrors or polish it or get the dust off it or something. So that's where that idea comes from and it's a pretty good one, because you do know that, and you can very clearly see, that if you do such and such a kind of thing, you feel contaminated. You don't feel so good and you don't give such clear responses to situations and you feel uneasy. And you find by doing zazen that you feel purified. And zazen is very definitely, is a purification and has actually the elements of a purification ritual. you will feel washed clean. I mean, whether there's right or wrong or dirty or clean, you will feel washed clean. And, you know, in very, very simple terms, we do have to take care of things in this way. There's an apartment across the street, which some of you are familiar with, maybe wish you weren't.

[11:30]

A man who was a postman lived there, and he was drunk quite a bit, and the apartment became more and more a fire danger, and the Neighborhood Foundation asked him if they could help him clean his apartment, and he said no, And it seemed like such a fire danger it went on for several months and it was, for example, when his refrigerator stopped, didn't work, he just put another one in front of the old one. It's amazing to me, actually, that there aren't more apartments like that. So many people, particularly alcoholics, don't take care of themselves or can't take care of themselves. Maybe there are, and no one dares go in them. Anyway, finally, under some pressure to let us, let the Neighbourhood Foundation clean his apartment, he moved, or disappeared, or went somewhere else. And he couldn't cope with it himself, so he left his stuff.

[12:52]

He took some stuff, took a little bit of stuff. Anyway, so a number of people from the Neighborhood Foundation and Zen Center went in and cleaned it. I went and looked. The plaster was so dirty, I guess they couldn't clean it, it fell off the wall and the windows had never been opened, but the strongest example of what that's like is Underneath the rubbish there were two decomposed rats that had just never been moved, just died underneath. The apartment was too much even for the rats. And the new refrigerator, and I'm not particularly weak-stomached, but the new refrigerator I had to shut very rapidly. I convulsively started to gag.

[14:19]

and the roach eggs were just coating the inside. Anyway, if you don't polish your mirror, if you stop washing your face, things get bad pretty quickly. If you stop picking up after yourself, you know. I did it recently next door, I let my mail accumulate And I couldn't go through it. And when I had some things, stacks of papers people gave me to look at, I'd put it down. And I finally couldn't get into the room. And I couldn't deal with it, because it got so big that I never had time to deal with it. If I didn't have time to deal with that stack, I certainly didn't have time to deal with that stack. So finally, the other day I had to stay up all night and sort. Two or three of us worked on it. And we got it. It's starting again now. Anyway, very quickly, if you don't clean up or if you don't do something, and I think many of us find that we start zazen because we are looking for something to polish a mirror, to somehow

[15:54]

purify or straighten out or put into some order our physical and emotional life. Our body feels, I don't know, smudged and our emotions seem kind of messy too. So if you do Zazen, you feel much better, and you can understand where this idea of wiping the mirror comes from, and it's something I think worth practicing with. But the Sixth Patriarch's poem, you know, wipes the mirror out, and his poem is... probably he never wrote it, but anyway... in the story. He says, where's this mirror? Where is this mirror? And where's the dust? He says, there's no mirror and no dust and no polishing needed. This is commonly held to be a deeper understanding of Buddhism. And it's true, isn't the mirror itself a kind of dust?

[17:28]

If you're trying to eliminate dust, what do you not eliminate? What of your personality? And as you get more into practice, even though Zazen is a purifying experience, you begin to say, well, are my thoughts contaminating or are they not contaminating? Which emotion is doing what? So as I said in Sashi, when you're following your breath and you get distracted and you start storyline thinking and you're involved in the story, something comes back and reminds you to follow your breathing. But where does this which reminds you to follow your breathing come from? Where does the storyline come from? When you examine it, there's no chicken before the egg. Yes, you did remind yourself, but the reminding was the reminder. So the reminder reminded you.

[18:56]

or the breathing breathed you, or who's doing it, you know? So you can see where the poem comes from. There's a mirror, there's no mirror and no dust, no origin. But, Joseph, when he was asked by someone He was sweeping Matsochi in the morning and someone said, a pretty good question, where does the dust come from? And Joshu said, it comes from outside. I suppose if he was zenny, more zenny, he would have said, there's no dust. What does? Perhaps discriminating or something. But Joshu was famous for reaching people in their home territory, not setting up some lofty path, but reaching people in their home territory instead of him. So Joshu just said it comes from outside and the

[20:25]

the person who asked him said, why in this, in such a good monastery, is there dust? And Joshu said, there goes another one. Maybe some dust in the sunlight Then there's another story of Joshu. You know, Joshu's name was the … usually people have the name of a mountain or the location where they are, and so in that sense my name would be Tassajara or something like that. But Joshu's name was the name of a city, so there are a number of stories based on people asking about Joshu's name as a city. And someone asked, Joshu. Where is the path? And Joshu said, in Joshu, where is the path? Some implication of the city. Where is the path? And Joshu said, outside the gate. Outside the gate. Just a simple answer. There's probably some path outside the gate. And then he said again, where is the great

[21:56]

path." And he said, the main expressway runs through the capital city. Now this capital city or great path is the same as he means, there goes another one, or as he means the dust comes from outside. So this is the outside inside we are talking about. Same way we've been talking about hands, I said, you have a left, left, my right hand, right hand and my left hand. And they're separate. But as we discussed, actually, first of all, where does your hand end? The dictionary says it ends there, but that's the palm and that's the back of your hand and that's your wrist, but it doesn't really end there.

[23:00]

And your hands are separate but actually they're connected through your heart, you know, or through your body. So it's really one hand with, as I said, a droop. But we tend to treat things as separate. We treat our hands as separate, so there's that koan, what is the sound of one hand. Well, what is one hand? What is two hands? What is separateness? What are our boundaries? What the poem of the Sixth Patriarch emphasizes, as we can say, it emphasizes that everything is inside, everything is interior. And when you put anything in that inside, it's outside. There's no mirror, etc. The inside that you can't enter is where there's no mirror, where there's no

[24:26]

dust, etc. But Joshu is making another point, which is, everything you are already inside is inside, or you are already in the inside. Everything is inside the inside. So, inside is outside, inside is entering itself. Pretty good. Inside is entering itself. This all, maybe I'm still hung up on what my grandfather told me, you know, when I was young. He said that I, as I've mentioned a few times, he told me when I was quite, this is my first big mystery, he told me that if I got up early enough He said, if I got up early enough I could find the squigamumzee swallow itself. And I could barely say the word squigamumzee. And I used to think about that. How exactly did it swallow itself? Did its lips turn?

[26:00]

Anyway, I was quite interested in the idea. Swallow itself, and then what would you have? Maybe I've been getting up early ever since, looking around the Zen Dojo. Anyway, what is this inside or outside that we can't locate? I think you can see that in the usual sense, inside and outside are not different, and night and daytime are not different. And there's actually a number of koans based on the realization that inside and outside are not different.

[27:03]

but we still have this inside that you can't enter. Or maybe that's the same thing as saying an inside which is always entered. So you really come to, when you look at your two hands and see that they're separate and yet they're joined, it becomes questionable what separate means. what boundaries are. Temporary kind of arrangement. So the way we use our hands, there's only a certain number of ways our hands can go together, and the way we use them is important, but rather expedient distinction. Fundamental thing is that your hands are joined. even though we tend not to notice that. And we further tend not to notice the way everything is joint. Even though it looks separate, everything is joint. Dogen says, if you examine everything carefully, you'll see there is nothing which isn't a common life, that everything lives in common. And of course,

[28:38]

distillation of this is the sangha or monastic life as a practice for a while. But as well as saying everything is in common there's also dharma time or the sense of a dharma and in the sense of a dharma each thing has its own own blaze of glory. And it doesn't overlap on other things. So there's dharma, the sense of dharma, and at the same time everything in common. Now, this inside which you can't enter or which is always entered and which there's no outside of is another way of saying it. This inside which there's no outside of is what Dogen means by, in Zenki, inner dynamic activity. Life and death are just examples of inner dynamic activity.

[30:05]

Because there is a sense in interdynamic activity of practice, of when the fire is working and when the logs are too far apart. In the same way you can check your practice by noticing the deterioration of your mind by too much practice. No. The example I gave is, if you're doing what I suggested people do in the sasheen, is for a short time follow their exhales because what I wanted you to do is to follow your exhales and notice how fine your breath becomes in the exhale. When your attitude, your attention is on the exhale and doesn't shift to the inhale. The inhale, of course, will come of its own as long as you're going to stay alive. And so you don't need to shift your attitude to your

[31:35]

your attention to your inhale. And if you shift your attention to your inhale, you don't see the fineness of your breath, usually, because your mind moves too quickly. You can, though, when you really can follow your breath, and this is the practice of following your breath, is you actually follow your breath, your mind doesn't lead so your breath can change and become itself and your mind goes with it. When you're counting your breath, it's a little different practice. But you're not really following your breath when your mind sets up a rhythm and expects the inhale to come. Your mind has to not expect the inhale to come when you're following your breath in that practice. kind of test of that I was suggesting, that you just follow your exhales. And you'll see how fine your breathing becomes. And you'll begin to notice, if you can do that for several breaths, a change in the quality and tone or color or space of your inner experience.

[32:55]

And as soon as your mind goes back to the storyline, you notice there isn't any improvement in the quality or tone or change in the quality or tone of your mind so much. Your emotions may come and go according to your storyline, but that spacious feeling which is so wonderful, it goes away. So what you see if you do zazen is that Return to the storyline is kind of a deterioration, and the more you get involved in the storyline, the more your mind gets flaky. So practice it. First news, mind doesn't deteriorate. Eventually, even involved in storylines or activity of the day, their mind never loses that... At first, it's just a sense of your inhaling and exhaling. your sense of your physical reality in place. Because even with insight or some realization, realization is just an outline or shadow until it fills your body. And you have to stand still for it. You have to find out how to let it permeate your activity and your body.

[34:27]

It's rather subtle. So one way of sensing your practice is, in Sashin you notice it, the pain gets worse when your mind deteriorates. And when you're not, when your mind remains calm in the pain, the pain eventually goes away, or isn't so troublesome. So you learn how to notice when your mind deteriorates, and eventually that's a good clue for the path, where the capital city is. How to note things like that. Well, the same is true of this sense of interdynamic activity, but it's rather more subtle.

[35:30]

But there is a real sense for us when we practice of when the inside is there and when it's all outside. As soon as you shift to seeing things from outside, you notice a kind of decay again of your state of mind. Now, this is what is meant by seeking things outside yourself. When you think this outside exists, even using Buddhist practice, zazen, as something to depend on, is to seek outside yourself. But where is this inside that you can't enter? You can put the stethoscope inside you, or some medical equipment, but the inside you can't enter, or the inside which there's no outside of, when you have a sense of that, there's this sense of what Dogen calls, inner dynamic activity. In a simple, very simple sense, you can say it's like the firewood, when it's there, together there's a fire.

[37:04]

So it means making conscious this common life, this common life we have with everyone and with everything. And when there's that sense, there's enormous power in your activity, how your mojo is really working. Without much effort, things are accomplished. This ultimately means non-doing. And we know from every religion and from simple experience that there is something unexplainable or unaccountable or magical here. Just the simple fact of two people being able to produce a third person is extraordinary. But as I've said before, there's this same fertility in everything. When you have a sense of this inner dynamic activity and you don't see things as outside anymore, when you know, when your mind is deteriorated to the point which actually your practice is rather developed when you have this sense of everything as inside, it's very clear when you've lost touch

[38:34]

And that inside isn't inside here, that inside is everywhere. So we have Joshu's story. Where does the dust come from? Asking Joshu. And Joshu says, sweetly, it comes from outside. Very simple answer. And the man says, in this nice clean monastery, why does dust arise? very profound question, actually. And Joshu just says, there goes another one. But Joshu means

[39:35]

the inside, of which there's no outside, or we're always inside. Where can you locate this inside or outside? Just because you're folded back on yourself doesn't make your stomach an inside. But the inside of this inner dynamic activity, the fundamental nature of the suchness of the universe, is inner dynamic activity, and you yourself are in the midst of that and participating in it. You can get some kind of mind-blowing experience just by, as I said this once to you a year or two ago, imagining everything is your stomach. Just for a while, try out. Just try experimenting with your attitudes. Try experimenting with this which is in front of you is not outside of you, as if you were reaching into your own mouth or something. Excuse the expression. You'll find you treat things differently. So your hands are separate, you know, but they're joined through your body. And actually, everything shares this common life, which some religions

[41:09]

you know, a tribute to some revealed explanation. And in Zen we try to reach it by our own absorption, until we can see There's no outside to the universe, no outside to anything. The whole idea of separate and together, or inside and outside, if you examine them closely, they're useful, expedient distinctions, but reality slips through them. You cannot explain everything if you explain things only by the separateness. And by Zen practice you have some intimation of this at various times. And eventually, when you're able to give up the attempt to explain things to yourself, to ascribe meanings to things, it's no longer an intimation but your own inner dynamic activity. And you can see clearly what happens to you when you're

[42:42]

begin to view things as outside or threatening, that's the kind of deterioration of your state of mind. And when you're able to view things both as separate, and at the same time have a sense of not subject and object, but this inner dynamic relationship of which there's no outside. Outside is where? Is Joshu means. So Dogen says, inner dynamic activity is like bending your arm, raising one finger.

[43:50]

So, again, the story I told you, Joshu asked, I don't see ... Joshu means city and there's a famous bridge. Someone comes and says to Joshu, what is ... I came to see the famous bridge but I only see a wooden plank, meaning I don't see anything special. And Joshu says, you may not see the wooden plank You may see the wooden plank, but you don't see the stone bridge. And the monk says, what is the stone bridge? He took the bait. And Joshu says, asses cross, horses cross, donkeys cross over, horses cross over. Again, he's trying to express this, not just the outside world is there, but this sense of inner dynamic activity. Maybe in some religions it's called grace. Not something you can discount by some Freudian explanation or

[45:48]

Too many human beings for too many centuries have been noticing this. How to account for the unaccountable? So, as someone said to me recently, if you look carefully, you know, the wind moves the trees, but Maybe the trees move the wind. Who does what? Where is the original source? When you give up those kind of categories of where is the original source, you enter this world of inner dynamic activity, which you know very directly and powerfully how to participate with everything without ambivalence. because you recognize everything as your home. You always have that wonderful feeling of being home. So we're home. Home free. Holly-holly. But as Suzuki Roshi always said,

[47:18]

you should be ready to leave. Okay?

[47:22]

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