This morning, Mark… I guess Mark wasn't at the meeting last night because he's… Is that right? Because he's still… Mayanja, your magician, your director, is still recovering from the flu. Anyway, he came in this morning before Zazen and said, I heard when you asked for any comments on the food, Annie got a standing ovation, or something like that. So maybe we need some other process to find out if you have any views on the food. It was nice for Annie to get such a response, and I think that the food is pretty good, very good. What I'd like to ask you to do is, if any of you have comments on the food, that you send me a note on a very small piece of paper, maybe an inch by an inch. Whatever you can get on that, I will read. And if it says brown rice

[01:25]

less sugar or whatever in your name. Or you might say, let's have a meeting devoted just to discussing our diet, which if enough people ask that, we can do that. Otherwise, I'll just read whatever you say. I also thought our discussion last night, too, about the guest membership was very interesting, because even though some of you feel okay about it, at the same time you may feel some reservation too, which is similar to what the guests will feel. To me, our discussion last night was not only representative of what we feel, but also of what many guests will feel. And it brought up for me the much wider question of the difficulty we have in understanding initiation.

[02:54]

And in realizing, I think that the only way you know someone or know anything is through what I would call initiation. That you may think a guest came down here by, just because we are open to the public, they came down here. and you may identify with such a person because you yourself came to Zen by some chance, but if you were more sensitive to the idea, I would say the reality of initiation, you would have realized you came here, and that guest very, very likely came here through an initiative process. But generations, I would say several generations of intellectuals and bourgeoisie have been alienated from the idea of initiation or sacrament. I would say the biological and sociological or bio-social fact of initiation.

[04:16]

We have this idea of public, you know, the public. I don't know if there's any such thing as the public or the people. I remember Gerard Stern saying to Huey Newton, Why is it every time I hear it's for the people or the people I feel left out? Huey gave a rather complicated answer, but still, when we say, the people, often it makes us feel left out. And I think the people and the public, both Western, you know, I think ideas characteristic of Western culture, very similar, are generalizations at a level of abstraction such that really they come to be just manipulated by a few people. Gregory Bateson

[05:43]

in a letter he wrote to the regents, he is a regent, you know, of the University of California, in a letter he wrote to the regents, he said that when education separates, something like this, he said, when education separates or destroys the pattern which connects items, there's no learning or something like that. And he identifies, so Gregory identifies, the pattern which connects with mind in nature, what he calls mind in nature. Mind in nature is... It's a question everyone's asking. Imago Mundi, you know, that Olson uses, or cosmic consciousness, or... the collective unconscious or even the public or the people or dharmakaya. Jung separates

[07:16]

the world into, according to Gregory, to kritura, creature, world, and pleroma, meaning the sentient world and the insentient world. But it's, I would say, characteristic of Jung, in order to put forth the idea of a collective unconscious, which I think is rather, to me, rather useless idea. He simplifies the idea of pleroma, which I believe is virtually a synonym for sunyata, meaning fullness or plentitude, or the body of Christ. The body of the world is found in the body of Christ, or in Buddhism we'd say the body of you. Or holy communion is based on this idea. the Eucharist, the body of Christ is in the wine and the bread body of blood. And Rambo's poems, you know, Rambo's illuminations could easily be called initiations, I think. Illuminations is those initiations or illuminations or by

[08:50]

which you illuminate yourself. He says, the budding, the violet and budding forest. In the violet and budding forest, the Eucharist tells me it's spring. In his first poem, you know, of illuminations, after the deluge or after the flood, he says He says something like, let's see, how does it go? After the flood, after the deluge has subsided, a rabbit, a hare stops and a hare stops in the clover and swaying flowers and through

[09:54]

A spider's web worships the sky arch, the rainbow. All the precious stones go into hiding and flowers are already turning about. And he ends, ends the poem saying, after The deluge, the rain, the storm subsides. All the stones that hide and flowers that open, unbearable, unbearable. The queen or sorcerer who lights her fire in an earthen pot, made me think of Mrs. Suzuki, I mean Mrs. Nakamura, who lights her fire in an earthen pot.

[10:57]

will not tell us what she knows, nor what we do not know. To me, this whole poem is quite characteristic of initiation, or, you know, the next poem, dawn. The first occurrence, walking along the path, in the white shimmering, a flower tells me its name. Or to make sacred, is to find a single purpose for something. This altar has a single purpose, or to locate something, non-comparative location. Rambo also, one part I like particularly of that poem, says, I forget the first part. Anyway, oh, a door slams, a door slams and a boy comes out and waves his arms and all the weather vanes and steeplecocks understand. Again, I am

[12:24]

putting this poem forth and what I'm talking about as an initiatory process or reality which is fundamental to this world, to recognize the patterns which join. Gregory is very interested in, will we have an ecological religion? And he means something, I think he means anyway, something which It gets rid of such ideas as public or private or rights. You know, the idea of rights is the opposite of initiation. A flower doesn't have a right to live. A flower, if it lives in a particular place, in particular soil, with water and so forth, it may live, but it has no right to live separate from the patterns which connect it to everything. And we have a very hard time dealing with being excluded, and in fact we are excluded. If you can't deal with being excluded, you can't deal with enlightenment, or Buddha, or patriarchs, or unsullied mind, or sullied mind, or the initiation process by which we know things.

[13:50]

If you're going to become aware of an Absolute, to understand an Absolute, it's necessary to begin to create an Absolute, to practice with the ability to hold something. Again, whether it's Buddhaghosa's access sign or taking this altar. As something sacred, so it is dedicated to only one purpose. And when you clean the zendo, which we would change, you don't even with the broom go by. You can sweep this up to there or push the broom through, but we can go this way and then back. We don't have to go across here. You may think this is silly, you know. This is just space like any space. It is just space like any space. But as the Diamond Sutra we are reading this morning says, the spot of earth on which you read this sutra is such-and-such. Or Castaneda trying to find his spot, you know? But in Buddhism, when I spread my Zagut, this is the Bodhi Mandala. It's shaped like a mandala, you know? It means we can make any spot the spot of illumination. But this is rather a little obvious for Zen, you know? People who get into Zen a little more get rid of that mandala and you just have a square. So it's a little more secret, you know?

[15:18]

or just one solid piece of cloth, but it still means the same thing. This spot which you make, it's a kind... it's, again, initiation or illumination. And what I'm trying to awaken you to is the sensitivity of vision which points toward yourself, so you can begin to follow the vision which points toward yourself. the pattern which connects. Last time I talked, I was going to talk about violins. Because, again, I'm trying to give you a sense of dharmakaya, of the pattern which connects, or mind in nature, or everything is mind. Or Dogen says, Buddha nature is mountains and rivers and the great earth, and the great earth is sun, moon and stars. So we say, everything is mind or your mind should become clear, but the next step after the mind has become clear, Daoí and his book says, but the clear mind is mountains and rivers and

[16:35]

Joshu says, he's asked, what is Buddha? Meaning, what is awakeness? What is to be awake? He says, three pounds of flax. Something very exact. Three pounds of flax. This is also initiation. It's not a generalization. Or Philip. I don't know what Philip meant when he wrote it, but he says, A, B, C, D. Or Uman says, it's not included in the six—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. We're talking again, as Gregory says, not about quantity but number or pattern. If you talk quantity, as Gregory says, there's no such quantity as three gallons of water. You can have three apples, you know, but you can't have three gallons because it's always something different. or talking about a crab. You know, he uses the example of identifying a crab. How is a crab similar to us? So some student says, well, it's symmetrical. And we're symmetrical. But then you look more carefully and you see, well, but one claw is bigger than the other, so it's not symmetrical. But if you look more carefully, you see, well, it's bigger, but the parts are the same. The pattern is the same.

[18:03]

And so you can see how a crab is related to a lobster is related to us. So, to awaken that eye which sees the patterns which connect, or as I often say, how this space joins us, not separates us. But first you must be joined to yourself. You know, you may enjoy very much, I try to think, What is a common time when many of us feel completely here? And the thing that comes up, I think, that it struck me that a lot of people, a time when a lot of people feel completely where they are is when they're on the beach in the sun. nor lying out here even on the grass in the sun. There's something sensuous about and complete about, for many people, about lying in the sun. You don't want to go anywhere else. But, of course, intellectually you can say, you can feel that any time.

[19:26]

lying on your cabin floor, taking a nap or sleeping, you can feel, there's no place in the world I'd rather be. Just poured onto the floor or on your cushion, you can feel. Completely, there's no place, no place other than this. But sometimes, in fact, we can say that, we do feel we'd rather be somewhere else. And I think for a lot of people, their Zazen brings home how they'd rather be someone else other than who they are. And you know, as I said to someone recently, when a person comes to Zen Center, two people come to Zen Center, you and your projected personality. where you want to be taken seriously, or who you want to be taken seriously as, or for whom it... where you see your identity, or for whom your identity, what happens to you, counts. And sometimes both of those people want to practice Zen. I don't know if that's good or bad, I haven't thought about that one enough.

[20:50]

But often one of them wants to practice Zen and one doesn't. Usually it's the projected personality that wants to practice Zen, but when you get here in the cushion you find you, yourself, doesn't want to. And sometimes it's the other. The projected personality doesn't want to, but your body does. I think Ed Satterson's a good example of that. Hi, Ed. His projected personality, which he keeps looking at, says, what the hell am I doing here? But his body keeps staying here. So we, of course, want to bring those two together, figure those two out, relax about those two. And the best effort we can make in this is, I think,

[21:51]

Give up and meet. I think you can use this, as I've mentioned to several of you, as a kind of temporary mantra. Give up and meet. In every circumstance which your mind identifies as a circumstance, you allow it to trigger the phrase, give up and meet. You just give up and meet. So what is the difference between when we are lying in the sun and when we are not or when we feel comfortable and when we don't? I think we can say maybe the sun has something to do it or the sun in us has something to do it. And when that sun is rising in us, you will feel completely there. When you're sitting zazen and that sun is rising in you, you will feel completely there. And you know, as I say, that we don't get up because the sun gets up, and the sun doesn't get up because we get up. We get up because we get up, and the sun gets up, gets up, because it, you know, got up.

[23:13]

So our sun can come up, you know. But again, this is a process of initiation or illumination or knowing... You know, you cannot... You know, when... I work with a lot of people, pretty closely. Assistants and andhras and jishas and directors and so forth, you know. Various positions where I can actually work with someone. And we're all faced with a world of immense complexity and detail. And if we imagined it as a kind of topography, you know, crystal-like topography, some people don't get in beyond the first layer and they feel exhausted and tired and they don't even notice what's next. And it's usually, always, people whose own patterns, whose own projected personality or personalities engross so much of their time.

[24:27]

or they have so many suppositions that they actually don't see, don't connect with the patterns. I'm using patterns just as something to say, you know, as three pounds of flax. The more you are empty, the more you become mountains and rivers and great earth, sun, moon and stars is Buddha nature. So for us practicing Buddhism sun coming up in us is the sun coming up in everything, in dharmakaya, in the pleroma, in body or communion or Eucharist. In knowing how we make sacred or find an absolute And you don't have that sensitive ability to know what is meant by absolute. As Suzuki Roshi says and Dogen says, the Genjo Koan is, everything is Buddha nature. Everything is a koan. Everything is Buddha nature. Everything is... So, everything is Buddha nature is the fundamental koan, is the Genjo Koan.

[25:57]

This is question of dharmakaya or sun coming up in everything. But your own mental and physical and spiritual I won't be awake until you can sit still or hold an absolute. Also sacrament means to make a vow, to dedicate something to one thing again. So to make a vow, to identify completely with Bodhicitta, or the vow to be saved by all beings, or to save all beings, or to know, to take in this physical world, this altar or an altar, and say, that's dedicated to bowing to Buddha, and only when I'm in that The only thing I'll do in that space is bow to Buddha. The ability to do that and always retain that opens your mind to what we mean by the Absolute. If you can't do that, if everything's relative, oh, that's just any old space. That's also true, but you should be able to observe it as always sacred before you say,

[27:20]

but you should be initiated into its sacredness before you say, oh, that's any old space. As Gregory again says in his talk, Mind and Nature, the student, particularly meeting with hippie students, he talks about a hippie audience that he'd met with, anything you put down as, you know, a statement like, it's number and not quantity, or to make this sacred, you immediately meet with anything that's not presented as relative is some authoritarian trip and is rejected. And such people, as Gregory presents them, can't deal with being excluded. If you can't deal with being excluded, you can't deal with your mind or Nagarjuna's four keys to know that you don't know, or to actually change your life when you see there is no self.

[28:31]

So, anyway. Sometimes I want to get through this idea of initiation or specificity, through to you, you know. But it's You know, maybe too fast, but slowly you are getting it. And you get it as it applies to your practice, but you don't see its extension. You know, let's take... How do you find out what those people, the mass, the lumpen, public, or whatever we call this generalization, mean, want, know, vote for, but there's no real way to find out. My own observation is, except through a process of initiation, and when you disguise that process by some kind of democratic vote, you actually put the initiated into power.

[30:09]

Now talking with people I know in Washington, one of them, turn off the tape recorder, Greg, because it's probably what I should have talked about when I gave the talk with Jerry Needleman the other day. As Gregory points out, public education in our country, which was based on religious freedom, public education separates everyone from initiation. I've even talked with people who say, well, in college we make an effort to see that the students don't get connected with any one teacher. We try to keep them all separated from any pattern that works with their children in an initiatory way. And these Greek kids all went to school together, learned Greek, and so forth. And Catherine, being Greek, tells me – wherever you are, back there – tells me there's some problems with that, because you end up thinking you're better than others, and then you find out you're not. Or, you know, you're better, but then you just run the restaurants in town, or something. Which all the kids I'm talking about in school did run the restaurants in town.

[31:39]

But ever so, they still had a common initiated process, or a common process based on initiation, that allowed them to work together and without any effort, you know, run the school. And this happens to America. It happens right now. Virginia and Rene are trying to get the unions to approve of the Pacific Hall project, and it's entirely a process of initiation to get them to approve it. The facts are one thing, but there's a process of initiation and acceptance and so forth. It's not based on this project has a right. You know, you think the dollar, or loans, or the 5% or 9% you pay for a housing loan, a loan in a private house. As I've said before, to the extent to which I understand money, this is done by the government to give the public the sense of, you know, an artificial sense of money, and to give the public some illusion that they have financial power, when the real cost of the money is much higher than that and the government backs up.

[33:02]

Or if you really want to make a loan, you have to have your money in the bank. You know, the Rockefellers control a bank just because all the Rockefellers have to do is deposit all their money in one bank, and then they control the bank, because they're the largest depositor. And they say, if you don't do this, we withdraw our money. The bank says, well, all right. And then the bank That bank will buy the stocks of insurance companies and be the largest holder of insurance companies, and the insurance companies have to do what the Rockefellers say. It's very simple. But this is, you know, the way initiation works. And if you pretend it doesn't work, you're in trouble. If you want some world in which you know things, know the world other than through initiation, you will just be used. So all of this outburst is related to the interesting

[34:18]

attention I feel between a community like ours attempting to not only know the sun rising in us through initiation or the relationship between each of us through initiation and the willingness to be excluded and our relationship to people and how this symphony or the resources of Zen Center and society act and our relationships to visitors and guests, how the various ideas we have and our society has, what kind of educational process we're in by creating a somewhat different form, which, although the forms will necessarily have to be in the vocabularies available, the content

[35:19]

may be different, is different, I think, and will begin to come across two people. So if we do a bakery, it's the same form as any business, but I think the content is some difference, that the reality is the people and not the pastries and the bakery will come across two people. So the koan, the story of Uman, and it's not contained in six or beyond six. The introductory word says, he sees the action of birth. Or what does the sky say? The sky says storms and seasons and What does the earth say? The creation of many things. So the commentary says he sees, the enlightened person, sees the essence of the seasons or the activity of creation. This is to see the patterns which join or mind in nature. This is

[36:49]

a pretty good way to express dharmakaya or to get yourself awakened, alerted to the vision that points toward you. Or, to go back to the violins, trying to give you, again, some sense of it. I use the image of of dream mind, where there's no foreground and background. Everything in a dream is pattern. There's no, this is unimportant and this is important. You can't separate one thing out as unimportant. And this vision, where you do not see foreground and background and you see everything of equal importance, is the closest description I can give you of enlightened mind. So again, to the violin. A violin is interesting, you know. Actually, this idea occurred to me listening to Philip reading Wallace Stevens. A violin points both ways, you know. It points this way and it points to you, too. Talking to John Burney, he has a violin lurking somewhere in his room. Where are you, John? There you are. Which he described, you know, how sensuous it feels, this

[38:16]

And it points into you. It's a physical object of the world which points into you and out. And you, we can say, play it, but... Do you see how I'm using the violin as another example of no foreground and no background? Everything you see, the flower, everything points into you and out. The sun rises in you and rises in everything. So this artistic ability, maybe, like a poet or a painter or a musician, to make everything sing or to make everything point in and out. When you see a flower you feel it pointing in and out. This is everything is mind or Dharmakaya Buddha. And that which perceives it we call Sambhogakaya Buddha. And nirmanakaya buddha is what everyone else sees, this activity, from the point of view of everyone else. So everything we do, how we do the guest season, how we do the bakery, or how we sit on our cushion, or lie on the beach,

[39:47]

It's this activity of no exterior, no external world, everything as practice. Everything is Buddha nature. This koan, fundamental koan that you must resolve, everything is Buddha nature. And it's through this initiatory process or process of illumination or realization, through difference, that we will be saved by all sentient beings and save all sentient beings and a whole everything we can call sentient. The spiral, again, Gregory points out, how except for whirlpools in wind and water, the spiral always means something alive. Every time you find it in a stone or a plant, it means something has grown and the pattern has maintained itself, the proportions have maintained itself. So spiral is used always for spiritual growth in every religion, every culture that I know

[41:24]

And, as many of you know, when our energy is rising in us, it sometimes, often, initially takes a spiral. And if that spiral is interrupted, you jerk and shake. And if you can contain it, you begin real still sitting. And your energy covers everything. I can remember sitting having lunch on the steps of a building at Berkeley when I worked there, and just looking at a tree. And the tree was growing this way and growing this way.

[42:44]

And at that side it came to a wall, and I sat there several days, actually, just looking at it, and it came to a wall and moved and went to... And I thought, that tree can't do that unless it's conscious. Now, it may be different in that it can't... the left branch doesn't know what the right branch is doing, maybe it doesn't centralize consciousness. But it's very interesting, in meditation we want, the third stage, Da Hui mentions it, after you recognize your mind becomes clear, you're no longer ambivalent, then you see mind as everything, or everything as mind, and then you no longer watch over it, you no longer watch over it. So the plant no longer watches over it, it's maybe a very enlightened being. So this was my perception, that you could only call that consciousness, that it moved and went around without touching. And since I've read about how plants will move toward something and you'll take it away from there, it's never reached that point. If you take it away and the plant will move over toward something else. And it seems that plants have a consciousness or a different pace

[44:13]

of consciousness than we do. I don't give this as an example that stones have consciousness. As Rimbaud says, after the deluge the precious, maybe wet, jewel-like stones, the precious stones hide and the flowers turn around. And he also says this is unbearable. The Queen, our sorcerer, who lights her fire in the earthen pot, won't tell us what she knows or what we don't know. So it makes me think of Nakamura Sensei and, again, Dersu Uzala, who couldn't fit in living in the city. I don't mean that stones have consciousness in the same way, but that we are unwise to separate ourselves off from the world as some kind of conscious being, and it's much wiser to view everything as conscious, much more useful. Then you may, like a sangha, find Maitreya appear in a glorious blaze of light from foxes

[45:37]

rear end. Have I waxed incoherent? Do you know what I'm talking about? you feel the sun coming up in everything. So you are exactly where you are, and always joined with everything. And it's an activity of activity, like playing the violin, like making this spot, you know, like saying the sutra. This is why it always says in the sutras, if you take but three lines of this sutra, this is this initiatory process I'm talking about, not just making donations or something. It means making this spot, making this sacred, making yourself sacred by the vow, through the vow.

[46:56]

through each thing, one thing at a time, non-comparative location, through giving up and meeting, through offering yourself, through dedicating yourself to one purpose, moment after moment. That three pounds of flax is Buddha, is to be awake. This is how Buddhism understands it. And this theme that I've been talking about in the language of Time magazine is laced through all of the koans, all of Dogen's statements about Buddha nature and so forth. And I think if we ignore it, you know, we don't have any idea of government. We get involved in such, you know, purely mental ideas as rights. I don't mean we should take away people's rights. You know, everybody gets... But that our rights, you know,

[48:26]

Act not through generalizations and abstractions but through initiation, through illumination. And I want each of you to do it because everyone needs you so much. I seldom confess how much I want you to do it.

[49:06]

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