Let me first say something about why I'm having this lecture taped and why I don't usually. Of course, it doesn't make any difference whether So my talk is taped or listened to or not listened to. Can you hear me all right in the back? Doesn't make any difference. And I don't notice the tape recorder at all, except when

[01:04]

when whoever's taping is changing the tape and then I worry about them because they're wanting to get every word. So I don't know what I should say really important things if I could think of something important to say. So they don't get every word or should I pause breathing deeply. But I don't like the transcriptions when they're done. This big mass of things I have to look at, oh God, it's terrible. Somebody has to look at it, or maybe no one has to look at it. So it's a nuisance. But Bill Lane and Yvonne are going to do the wind bell someday. They both say they have no time, but we have to do it, I guess, sometime. So I must put something in it, I suppose, and I'm never going to write anything. So, anyway, we'll see what happens. I tried to tape the... Well, no, I didn't. I gave the...

[02:34]

Sesshin lectures and didn't tape them. And then afterwards I, you know, I stopped taping the Sesshin lectures. First I didn't stop taping the lectures, and then I stopped taping, and I just taped Sesshin lectures. Then I stopped taping Sesshin lectures and just taped the lecture after Sesshin, where sometimes I tried to synopsize, bring everyone up to date who wasn't at the Sesshin on what we talked about. But then that's become pretty difficult to do, too, because in this last Sashin, for instance, I talked about things which I just couldn't talk about in front of a general audience at Greenbelt, because they weren't part of the Sashin and the concentration of the Sashin, and so they weren't what I was talking about was not accessible to them, and so in that sense the teaching separated them from me and from the people in the Sashin and from their own experience. And when we talk about Buddhism it shouldn't separate people, so I couldn't talk about

[03:53]

Oh, I forgot to tell Dan to erase the tape, Bill. The one at the Green Ghost Lecture last Sunday, or whenever it was. And also, taping implies that what I'm saying has some meaning, some value, outside this context. Maybe it does. Some people say it does. I'm dubious, but anyway. Whether it does or not, again, doesn't affect our talking. However, so much nowadays is in the media that it's rather important to deal with the point of does it have any value outside this context, because we are always thinking about our life outside a particular context and always tending to generalise. In the days when books were copied out by hand or printed by hand block,

[05:29]

to have, as there are many stories. So-and-so carried the Diamond Sutra around and became master of the Diamond Sutra. Well, he was lucky to have one book. There weren't many books. And so he, whoever it was, could study over and over and over again, memorizing and reading. In this sense, the Diamond Sutra is not a commodity, it's some text. Even that text, as in all the Zen stories it occurs, usually it's thrown away or burned or something. But still, the book has some value, obviously. But nowadays, with so many books, so many magazines, so many things we couldn't possibly physically read. I mentioned to several of you the trail of Zen Center's activity and my activity, like one of those banana slugs trail. It made me think of the garbage dumped off the coast of New York.

[06:52]

which has gelatinized, I don't know how far out it is, and it's rolling back in toward New York. I don't know, I think it's several miles thick, and they don't know how to stop it exactly. Maybe they'll bomb it or something. Maybe they'll put Bill Lane out there and he'll fight it back. He goes under, and it comes. It's all these magazines and pieces of paper. If I look at each one, it's quite wonderful and interesting and important, but somehow it gets lost in this big gelatinous mass that's always coming at me. We can't distinguish the particular anymore in such a gelatinous mass, you know. And there's some danger of Buddhism becoming a commodity – you know, my teaching, Sukhirishi's teaching becoming a commodity. And the people thinking, oh, if I get the wind bell or if I get a book of lectures, now I understand Buddhism. And people may decide they intimately understand a book.

[08:17]

which if Suzuki Roshi was in front of him, he would laugh, you know, and they may be teaching in some city from zen mind, beginner's mind. So Suzuki Roshi asked me, you know, not to publish any of his lectures without making sure they I would say, pierced the particular without their being presented in a way which was harmless to, which worked in some general context. You know, I want you to pierce the particular. I don't want some And as I've talked about before, some good book robs the disciple of their own chance to be out on the limb of teaching. And, you know, I don't have much idea of being a teacher.

[09:44]

Suzuki Roshi, I think, didn't either. There are other teachers, very good teachers, who have a sense of general responsibility for Buddhism in America or with people. But my feeling is very particular, and I don't think Some people say to me, you know, people outside Zen Center, oh, you must have a terrible job because you have to live up to the expectations of all these people. Or anyway, some idea like that. Or you can't be what all of these people want you to be. I say, what do you mean, I can't? No, I don't say that.

[10:51]

I actually don't think about it. And if I did think about it, I can't imagine how to think about it. It would be so generalized. I must take care of my own practice, my own particular situation. And sometimes, actually, it seems to run counter to what you may think of me, or the teaching, the teaching should be, but I can't worry about it. I must trust always the particular. I guess that's enough to say. So I feel just like you except on your faces I often see some future or some idea of living forever. I don't see on so many faces that you know you will die.

[13:17]

An interesting story I read the other day of studies with blind children, and they always said that blind babies would... that babies learn to smile by mimicking their mother. But now they've discovered blind babies smile at their mother. The mother comes over and looks in, and the baby smiles. Maybe a smile. It's an unusual, strange idea to think that everything is imitation. Where would it have begun? Where would the first smile have come? The cosmic smile. Maybe the smile has gotten by nuzzling and encouraging the baby. Anyway, the story in this is blind babies' faces are very, according to this study, very impassive. They don't show much feeling one way or the other about liking or disliking or wanting something, but their hands show it, and they found... they had to study and film

[14:52]

they would film the babies and the mothers and then study the film frame by frame. They found they had to film the baby's hands, because the baby's hands would reach out or want something and would be very expressive of what they wanted or were feeling. And one baby named Robbie, anyway, in the study, reaffirmed what, I guess, Piaget calls object permanence, when a baby realises that... object permanence. And this blind baby... blind babies, I guess, often have sound-making toys, and this blind baby, named Robbie, had lost its sound-making toy, and they were filming it, and at some point they

[15:56]

the baby realized it must be at the place where they left it. So it went back to the place where it figured out how to go back and realized the objective world is permanent in that sense. If they put it there, unless someone's moved it, it's probably still sitting there. So Robbie crawled over and found it. And they showed this They took this film to France and showed it to Piaget, who was very... I don't know if he's still alive. Is he still alive? Anyway, he was a very old man at the time, and they showed him the film. And when it came to the point where Robbie It dawned on Rabi, it must be in the place. Piaget shouted and threw his beret up in the air and burst into tears. This recognition of object permanence was demonstrated by this blind baby. And yet, you know, Rinzai, Lin Chi said,

[17:16]

The Dharma is not in words. It is neither subject to causation nor dependent on conditions. The Dharma is not in words. It is neither subject to causation nor dependent on conditions. You know, sometimes if you're at night time, maybe you feel it more at night time. The world is yours. You look out at stars or lighted, lit houses and you feel. a peculiar identification with night stars or lit houses. Almost as if with so many people asleep, crowding the ownership, you can feel your ownership or profound identification with the world, if most people are asleep.

[18:45]

You sometimes worry. Scientists say the world is going to end in a hundred million years, and you feel some shot of anxiety, because the world is going to end in a hundred million years, as if that had anything to do with anything, except that you think it should always be there. You can't imagine not always being there. You want the night sky, you know, with lit houses. You always have to be there. And so many people feel, we can't have been born for nothing. It must go on, or there must be life after death. I don't understand why people think this. Why do you want to think it? It may be so, but why do you want to think it? Why do you need to think it? We feel some, maybe at that time, you know, looking at night sky, some being sphere, some identification with it.

[20:19]

It may be closely related to feeling of object permanence, you know, of Piaget. And when you go out on the street, you must have quite a bit of trust, you know, already. You know, unless you're a completely nervous wreck, that when you cross the street, the several drivers coming down at you, they don't intend to kill you. They're not wild men at the wheel bearing down on you. They could be. And probably almost everyone at the wheel of any car coming toward you has sometimes thought of barreling through the intersection and doing you in, or someone. But you trust they've put that thought aside for the moment they're approaching the corner where you're crossing the street. This is another example of object permanence, or our trust in that things will go on a certain way, that things will be ordinary. So, underlying our many investigations, we have some

[21:54]

more than trust, belief, that we can cross the street, that we can live, that it all will go on. And yet Buddhism will end, they say, various periods, last 500-year period and so forth. So if Buddhism will end, so will world systems end and the earth end and night sky. And yet, Lin Chi said, really probably quoting from Lankavatara Sutra or the Malakirti Sutra, said, Dharma is not in words. It is not subject to causation nor dependent on conditions. The last time I talked with you, I believe, I talked about someone who had an experience

[23:25]

told me that everything is separate. Things don't impinge on each other. And this time in Sachine, someone who's had quite a bit of doubt and was, you know, not so intentionally was willing anyway to bring their doubt out. And in practice, you should bring your doubt out, not cover it up and make everything okay. Find out, you know, about your doubt. Anyway, this person found out about their doubt, and still didn't know what to do, and was thinking of coming to Tassajara and didn't, and then ended up in this session, this recent session, almost against their will, and sitting

[24:52]

in a very particular way, and finding the particularity of sitting was so important to them, just how their back, how to adjust their posture, you know. And they were greatly relieved when I or someone, the Tantra, adjusted their posture. And they concentrated in Sashin on their posture. and on being alone. And at some point they felt suddenly rooted, completely rooted. So rooted they could almost pass out of their body into the earth or their past

[26:10]

unshakably rooted. And now, when I see this person, they may be engaged in whatever activity they're engaged in, and yet how can I... I can't express it exactly, but It's like they're in possession of their own space, a kind of column of space. And even though they're completely engaged, you know, their eyes twinkle. Like the, you know, Tiger Cliff stories. You're hanging by your teeth or by your little finger or something, and there's, you know, a mess of tigers below you and a flower, that kind of story. You are there, subject to conditions, dependent on causation. How the hell you got there, I don't know, but anyway, subject to causation. And yet, you can't pick a flower.

[27:41]

In this sense, particularity is detachment, is freedom from subject and object. This moment, when Rinzai uses this moment, he means very particular. Time and space, like Dogen says, time and space are one, very particular, glued together. Have you ever been on a train or a subway? It happens in Japan often, and it sometimes happens on the New York subway, I guess, where all the doors are open and you can see 15 or 20 cars, all in the spaces, weaving. Another interesting space.

[29:09]

The second kind of encounter is there's physical evidence, I don't know what, a burned mark in the grassy field or something. The third kind of encounter is contact. Some little guy grabs you. That's Zen, when some little guy grabs you. Close encounters of the third kind. So you may have some knowledge or some experience, but you really can't tell whether it's a dream or not, like childhood memory. It's all mind stuff, you know. Was it, did I dream it, or did it really happen? But physical evidence, you know. we can see it on a person. And third would be continuous contact, always residing in this space I'm talking about today.

[31:05]

which is expressed by Dogen Rinzai, saying, the dharma is not, in words, neither subject to causation nor dependent on condition. So you might, as a practice, take Because your whole body must become conscious before you can relax. You might take some particular point of your body. I don't care. Take your pick. And identify it as you. And wake up in the morning instead of feeling, well, I feel pretty good today except my back is a little tight, or my shoulder's a little tight, or something like that. But you wake up in the morning and you say, how are you back? Or how are you knee? Or thigh? Or pick some obscure unnameable part that only you can point to. Like pin the tail on the donkey. And find out if you can

[32:35]

Is that just stuff, or can it be consciousness? Before you can know the space, the ordinary space... I should talk about ordinary sometimes, what we mean by ordinary life. Ordinary is just what you usually encounter. Actually, ordinary life is... ordinary. Is eyesight ordinary? Is making babies ordinary? What do you usually encounter? Your future, your plans? Concentration will steal your future. Do you know that? We're rather afraid of concentration because it will steal your future. It will give you a continuous present, but it will steal your future.

[34:00]

you know, can know yourself, be conscious throughout your body. You can't let go, you can't leap shamanistically, shamanistic leap. In poetry or in each moment, in writing, drawing, expressing yourself in Zen in each moment. Rinzai. Then she ended his lecture with a shout. And then he said, The day will never come for those of you without faith. Those of you without enough faith will never understand. You can't concentrate without trust. You can't leap without trust.

[35:31]

a trust which has, you know, explored being-sphere and object permanence and profound identification with the always-there, and discarded it. So you have no refuge but the particular. Then your concentration and trust will let you leap into ordinary present, continuous present. So this isn't magic, like ceremony has some magic. Just the power of the context itself, power of exactness, but not exactness having some symbolic magic, some extrapolatable magic, but very exact, very particular. It seems incongruous, but very particular and detached.

[37:00]

Anyway, this is the world Zen is trying to introduce you to. Avalokiteshvara. Someone said, Avalokiteshvara divided into many parts so it could know each other. Gorf, I guess. Remember Gorf? Gorf fragmented into all of us. So we can know each other. Make the leap into real friendship. Not afraid of parents, or someone out there, or something, or the future, or correction. but the ability to take your chances with your friend. Who is your friend? Why not the person next to you? What's wrong with that? The particular is very demanding, not escapable. Thousand-fathom wall.

[38:38]

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