Question about how to deal with feelings. Did I understand the first element of feelings internally? Well your feelings aren't outside yourself, you know, so there's no other way to deal with them than internally. But that point aside, when you're practicing and you're full of anger, then anger is the context of your practice. It's your environment. So you're practicing your, whatever it is, breath counting, or your koan, or your shikantaza, within that context of anger.

[01:04]

You know, you have to kind of calm yourself. There is a difference between saying, don't do that as teaching, and don't do that as dumping, you see. So here again, it's a matter of appropriateness. If your mind is buzzing to such an extent that you cannot see the box to which you put the lid, you know, then you're going to come forth and dump. That may be a learning experience. You may feel better afterwards, but the other person feels terrible. But the point is that it's again, a matter of zazen, you see, so that you are practicing

[02:25]

that way of peace, as peace, and you will be able eventually to cut that tape, or at least quiet it down to the point where don't do that is really appropriate. And when it is something that is simply offensive, or critical of you, you can take it as something that you can learn from. One of the first things Mr. Bly said to me was, when people say to you that you did something wrong there, and you knew you didn't do anything wrong there, you can accept it because you know you did something wrong over here. So, being criticized

[03:28]

is very useful. Very useful. You know, just to quote Shino-sensei again, you know, he said to me last year, when I meet a student in Doksan, I am meeting my own master. So, this is, the student is one of the 10,000 things that are confronting him. This is the only way. Only way. And so, somehow, this spirit must be integrated with the resolute understanding of what is appropriate here and what is not appropriate here, so that you can conform when it is appropriate

[04:30]

to say something, and it is not just. So, I call it maturity. How to do Zazen when you knock on your cushion? Yes. Someone once said that maturity is movement. And so, I'm coming back to that in terms of how to do Zazen. I think the practice away from one's cushion is the practice of attention to the touch, or attention to what's happening, rather than attention to oneself. I'm trying not to pay attention to the fact that my foot is asleep while I'm talking to you, and giving you as full attention as I can.

[05:35]

I've got a chair, look. But really, it's... It's a matter of giving your attention to that one thing. The Japanese have a very interesting use of the word samadhi. It's entered into secular language, zam-mai. So, there are all kinds of zam-mai. Automotive zam, automotive repair zam-mai, you know. Cooking zam-mai. All kinds of zam-mai. Childcare zam-mai, and so on. All kinds of them.

[06:38]

That is, I think, the practice of Zen in daily life. Now, this is true in recreation, it's true in sex, it's true in all kinds of daily activities. Forgetting yourself in the act of uniting with the matter at hand. You really have to forget yourself. And that's what the good work person is. A person who forgets the self. And in the various so-called Zen arts, you are just mixing, just mixing back to nothing. It's interesting to read writings by athletes, because they touch upon the things that we are talking about in Zen.

[07:48]

Just catching the ball. Just running. Not conscious of lifting the leg at all. No sense of self-care at all. Or the musician, finding the music is playing the music. This is the devotion to the task. Yes? I was attending to the fact that I couldn't really... I was attending to myself. What was I attending to? I was attending to the pain in my legs, which was a very serious distraction at that moment. So that's an indication, you see. That is an imperfect world. We say better than we do.

[08:58]

If I had continued to try to express myself to you, I would have come to an end. It's like John Bukstaven, Daishin, the former monk at UCLA, said in a piece that we published in Blind Donkey. If you're climbing a mountain and you get a stone in your shoe, you have to stop and take the stone out of your shoe before you can continue on. Otherwise, a few yards further on, you'll have such a pain in your foot that you won't be able to walk any further. And you won't be able to devote yourself to your task at all. So please understand that this is not a black and white matter. And this is why we practice. We practice, doesn't it?

[10:08]

If the telephone is ringing and your child is screaming and someone comes to the door, then you have to get things in order before you can talk with devotion to the person who comes to the door. Otherwise, you'll get drowned out. So, we must understand that my words are intended to touch the point, but circumstances always enter in. And we must simply do the best we can, in those circumstances, to forget the self, to devote ourselves to God. That's it. Somebody quick, like a woman came by. Yes?

[11:12]

The idea of stopping or ending karma. Ah, good point. It doesn't sound like some kind of annihilation. Yes. No, no, you can't end karma. You can't end karma. There's no such thing. What is karma? Simply cause and effect. See? Now, all this talk about purifying past karma is a matter of cutting our ties to karma. If you imagine that you are in the center, you are a spear, say, carrying all your past and all your future into that spear. And you're at the very center, and that spear is somehow moving in time. Okay. At any given time, a circumstance will appear.

[12:21]

Inevitably, you will draw upon some past incident or influence to deal with this present circumstance, or to choose your option of action. You cannot act outside that spear. I cannot bear a child, my beard will not get brown again, and so on. So, I cannot change any of that. At the same time, just because my mother beat on me when I was a kid, doesn't mean I'm going to beat on my kid. Even the victim of countless beatings, freed from that connection,

[13:31]

free from that compulsion which arises from that connection, can choose any one of a number of different influences from the past to act compassionately in a certain circumstance. Because everybody has had millions and millions of these influences, all different times, so that it is a very, very subtle kind of network behind it. And if we are tranquil and free, and at ease with ourselves, then naturally we will, from the past to the present, identify the appropriate option for the future. It seems to me that's the way karma works.

[14:32]

Now, karma, of course, is a matter of time. So, these past things that push on us, and these unresolved matters that are continually festering and making themselves felt in unhealthy ways, are going to compel us to take an action that is not appropriate to the circumstance, but rather is expressive of something in the past. But if we are cut from that, then inspiration can rise in this moment, which has nothing to do with time. Just rise here, and we can say, I will do this, I will not do that. Just as much misunderstanding about karma as there is about the self.

[15:41]

And Hyakujo's fox, you know, case two of the mumonka, is very useful as a teaching. The enlightened person does not evade the law of cause and effect. The old man in the story was reborn 500 times as a fox, because he said that the enlightened person does not fall under the law of cause and effect. Rather complicated koan, you know, because all the teachings of early Buddhism tell us that we must be purified of past karma, so that there is no residue left over to be reborn. So what was the old man's mistake, and why was he reborn 500 times as a fox?

[16:50]

So all these are koan points. Very useful, and really understanding karma as a function of true insight. We used to have, we don't need them anymore, but we used to have wide-eyed young things come to our door and say, I don't know why I came here, my karma brought me here. Actually, in that sense, there is no such thing as karma, no such thing as cause and effect. Another question? When the...

[17:56]

Yeah, when the bottom falls out. Yes. Then what? Well, then you might have breakfast. It depends on the second point. See, the point is that we might be looking at one of two things here. We might be looking at the dark night of the soul, at what James called the sick soul. Where the essential emptiness is horrific, terrifying. It's what David called the valley of the shadow of death.

[18:57]

And this is a kind of religious experience that for some people precedes true insight. Some people withdraw at this point. But David Hume saw into the emptiness of all things, and he stepped back and took a profound solace in a good game of backgammon with his friends. It's too bad, because that is one's great chance. No matter how fearful it is, and no matter how lacking in sustenance, how dry and hopeless it seems, it's very important to keep in touch with the teacher, and to keep on with the practice, and go right to the path. That's the dark night possibility, in what you say. The other possibility is that it's realization itself, and there's no problem. Everything is fine.

[20:03]

That is to say, you have a peep into the true nature of things, and you know where to go from there on, to deepen and clarify. Who asked the question? Oh, I see. Okay. Even after that peep, is there no more dark night at all? Depends on the peep. You know, sometimes it's only the barest glimpse, in which case it may be that you need to re-experience it. But generally, it's like Yasutani Roshi used to say, rubbing a clear place in a piece of frosted glass.

[21:09]

You look through that clear place, and that's essential nature, all right, but you need to clean up the rest of that frosted part, and maybe push out the glass itself. Zen is really unique in that religious experience is the beginning of practice. You begin with that peep, and then you can clarify and deepen your insight. All right. Those are my brief papers. Thank you very much, everybody.

[21:56]

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