We waited for you to get back. Well, those two guys who followed me down from the city are gone at last. Finally, we're alone. But three more people are following me down today. Virginia is coming, I think, and Rene and Elizabeth for a few days. I spent the last, what is it, three days now? Two days? Three days? I have no idea, actually. I know it's more than one. Looking at the description of our financial situation, the accounting, it's very interesting, actually. We didn't

[01:34]

quite get done. They left me finally last night, a little before 2 a.m., with their final request, which is what they were working up to over three days, is they asked me to please come up with $20,000 to $30,000 a month for the next seven months. I slept well. That's what we're short. Fundamentally, you know, since I'm not really going to talk about our financial situation today, but to the extent that I've mentioned it, fundamentally we're in pretty good shape. But because we took about $150,000 out of reserves and potential reserves to build the restaurant, we're in a situation in which a business would be bankrupt because our liabilities daily liabilities exceed our daily current assets by about $100,000. People look at it and think, how do you do it? Anyway, it's, but it'll be all right.

[03:03]

That's all right. Don't worry. But looking at an accounting system is interesting. I'm pretty familiar with it, but still, I can spend three solid days, most of whatever it was, and just still sort of like a kind of chess Monopoly Go game. played in Through the Looking Glass, where the pieces actually are people, you know, like off with their heads, you know, like in Through the Looking Glass. So you get this picture of this description. Accounting is interesting. It accounts for, keeps track of everything that comes in, but also describes where it came from and what its uses are and how it's changing. You know, modern accounting is modern. It's made breakthroughs in recent decades in how to describe what's happening. And the description is extremely important. There's a great deal of description that's rather like Escher, you know, there's... Do you know Escher's work? There's outgoes, there's...

[04:31]

positive figures which are actually outgoes and when they become, no, anyway, there's figures that become positive in the books when they're disappearing. Like some of Escher's birds, you know, how they appear and disappear into the pattern. Anyway, you have to be able to think in terms of negative numbers and positive negative. in order to make the system work, but once you get it, the system is quite useful in trying to see where it's leading us, where the circumstances we've established are going. Anyway, I think We're not... I can almost promise we're not going to cut stipends this year. So I think that, on the whole, we'll do very... It'll seem okay. And... I mean, I'm... I think... I think we'll get through this next period pretty okay. And...

[06:01]

And if we do and everything works all right, we're fundamentally quite a good place. And I think we now definitely have more income than our operation once we get out from behind the eight ball, which has never been the case before. So we should be able to support ourselves within a year or so. Anyway, I'm talking about descriptions today. You know that Dokusan, Tokusan, Desha, very famous and fierce Zen master, his attendant, Hua, I don't know quite how to pronounce it, said to him,

[07:09]

where have all the sages of antiquity gone?" And he said, uh? What? And his attendant said, geez, I expected a flying tiger or flying dragon and I got a lame turtle. So, next morning, as Tokusan was getting out of the bath. His attendant gave him a cup of tea, and Deshan patted him. And Hoa said, the old man finally had a glimpse. Hmm, Tokusan, hmm? That's the whole story. I can remember saying Sukharshi various times. Mostly after much had happened. I'd say, did you realize all this was going to happen? Something, huh? I could never get him. I was practicing with him, I think I've told you, about five years, pretty continuously.

[08:38]

I mean, I was with him most of the time, in some way or other, or working for him, our Zen center. And I went to... He had brought me to Los Angeles with him to a meeting of some Japanese Zen people that came from Japan, some Los Angeles thing. Anyway, they wanted him to go to, so he brought me in. People kept wanting some way to relate to me in relationship to Suzuki Roshi. And they'd ask me, what am I doing, or am I going to be ordained, or, you know, I didn't, I didn't know. So I, flying back up in the airplane, I have been, I sat beside him. I think Kadagiri Roshi was with us. I don't know if anybody else was with us, I don't remember. Somebody else. Anyway, I was sitting beside Suzuki Roshi,

[09:42]

I said to him as we were landing in San Francisco, I said, could I describe myself as your disciple? He said, yes. But other than that, he almost never would answer any question like that. If I said, could I describe you, he'd say, huh? I think I told you, didn't I, about Sylvan, my nephew, sort of, my Virginia's nephew, who, you know, I think I said he was one whit less energetic. More energetic, he could pass through walls and trees. He asked his father the other day,

[10:44]

Who steers earthquakes? And some other person, I know their little daughter, who's two years old, was sitting on a, was sitting, having her diapers changed. Don't you have your diapers changed, though, at two years old? Anyway, she was having her diapers changed. And she said to her mother, where is God? And her mother said, well, God is up in heaven. And the little girl looked, you know, around the room and sort of out the window and said, where? And the mother said, well, sort of up there in the sky, you know. So the little girl looked some more, you know, what, you know? And then the mother tried to get more sophisticated. She said, well, actually, God is everywhere. The little girl looked all the way up. And said, well he's not here in my nice clean changing table. Anyway, I think that's quite good, you know, he's not here in my nice clean changing table. Who steers earthquakes?

[12:10]

I think I said, that may seem like a child's question to us, but at the same time not much different than who created the world, which people take very seriously. But I suppose if a Christian should answer, God steers earthquakes, or maybe he lets earthquakes on their own and he steers other things. At that level, you know, it's pretty difficult for a non-theistic Buddhist to make sense of that kind of description. But Thomas Merton says that if you have any experience of Christianity or of prayer, God, you know somebody's there, you know somebody's listening. That sense of prayer may be closer, you know, experientially, to us. At that point, I think we... That kind of description is closer to our experience. I think if you, doing zazen, or practicing, you may have a sense of someone listening, or you listening to yourself. You beginning to be able to listen to yourself.

[13:38]

Paramatma means the way things are, the actual nature of the dharmas, the true nature of the dharmas. And to be able to listen, you know, to be able to listen in the present, and if I put my stick down like that, I'm emphasizing me. If I put my stick down, you know, like that, I'm emphasizing the nature of the stick, the wood. So, that kind of, it's like I was saying the other day, here you can hear the tin roof. You can hear the wood. Everything partakes of everything else. You hear your ear. Everything is enfolded, co-emergent, as we say. Not innate, but co-emergent. So if you pay attention to the present, pay attention in the present, you won't

[15:13]

It's pretty difficult to listen with ego in your observations. You won't be able to pay attention in the present. If you can pay attention in the present, ego as a description tends to lessen. And if you pay attention to the present, paying attention in the present, leads you to paying attention, in a sense, to change our description slightly, to the present. And paying attention to the present, time and space disappear, no past and future. The tracks have led to this point, but where are the tracks, what state the tracks pass through, Wyoming or wherever, is not important. But we are definitely on tracks led to this point.

[16:40]

descriptions are to be able to… You know, I don't think you fully realize, we fully realize, anyone fully realizes how convincing descriptions are and how difficult it is to get around them. Look how long it took for Columbus to act on the observation that ships settle below the horizon with the lower part disappearing first. I mean, once you've got it, it's obvious that the world is round, but it took centuries for Western, for the European world, for it to dawn on them or set on them that the world is round. But anybody now can go sit on a dock of the bay and watch a ship settle. So, I mean, it's either round or sort of curved or something. It's an inverted saucer, perhaps. There may be still an edge out there, but at least... But there's other things you can observe. Once you've got the idea, it might be round,

[18:09]

but to get the idea that it's round and be able to not only think it as a possibility, but act on it. That's really what's important, to act on it. You know, Michael Van Walt. None of you have met Michael Van Walt, but Pat met Michael Van Walt. But he's Dutch. Dutch. He speaks virtually without an accent. He's been in America for a few years. Grew up speaking English, so he seems like an American. But he's Dutch and he's a lawyer. And he organized the whole trip of His Holiness the Dalai Lama around America. And he did an extremely good job. I'm somewhat aware of how difficult that is to do. I've seen Bill Graham at work. And he did it tremendously well done. It's a very difficult thing to do. Anyway, he, I don't know how old he is now, maybe 30. When he was 12, he read Lost Horizons. Shangri-La, all that. Maybe, must have read Lost Horizons. Anyway, he read it.

[19:32]

And he thought it was fabulous. And he wrote a letter to his holiness, the Dalai Lama, when he was 12 years old, saying he wanted, I don't know, to help the problems Tibet had at the time, or do something. He just wrote a letter. The book really moved him. It seemed real to him that he wanted to do something about it. So he felt some kind of truth in it. Somebody wrote him back, Denzin, they're all, all of the disciples of the Solemnists are named Denzin, because his name is Denzin, Denzin. So Denzin Getchi wrote him back. And they corresponded for a while, and then I guess his, Michael Van Walt's father was in the diplomatic service or something. When he was 17 or so, his father was in India or Hong Kong or something. And Michael had a chance to go to India, to where Alina Sidal and I were staying, and Denzin Getsi came to meet him. And they were very surprised, because Denzin Getsi was about 21.

[20:53]

And Michael van Waalt had thought he'd been writing to this old llama, you know, with a wispy beard. Here's this kid, you know. And Denzen Getschi had thought he was writing to this sort of Dutch middle-aged man, you know. And he was this 17-year-old. They'd started corresponding when he was 12. So, anyway, it led to Michael van Waalt taking care of His Holiness's a European tour about four years ago, something like that. And then this American. And when I introduced Michael Van Walt to Lama Govinda, and when Lama Govinda were talking, they almost immediately hit on the fact that Lama Govinda also started studying Tibetan Buddhism from reading The Lost Horizons. He read The Lost Horizons and he thought, this is fabulous, and he started studying Look at that. Anyway, Columbus not only spotted this and observed the present without any description other than his observation and acted on it too. He sought thoroughly enough to act on it and to some extent I think we're all here

[22:22]

because, to some extent, we were able to act on the way we felt the world to be. So your description is... You know, we do have to look... I mean, all of human history, virtually, we could say, is a bunch of descriptions. Every government is to try a description on. It's no more than trying our accounting form onto Zen Center as a description. to try to allow us to make decisions about it. All the various forms of government are attempts at describing society, whether it's the divinity of monarchs or, you know, our democracy or whatever. There are kinds of power somewhere or other. They're all descriptions. Or all of philosophy is a description. Attempts of people to describe. In the Western world, turning again on the idea of reality speaks and that sort of mythopoetic, ecstatic dance of Christianity, it may be a very good description. But Buddhism, in a sense, is not... You can't call Buddhism exactly a description.

[23:50]

I mean, Buddhism is much more a posture, though please don't passively depend on the posture to do it for you, because this posture has to be as thorough as the tin roof, the air, the posture. It's all posture without position. The Dharmakaya is posture without position, bounderless posture. So you can't depend on this posture, but this posture is wisdom itself. It's not a communication. There's no meaning, there's not two levels. We have meaning when you have two levels, but, you know, what is the meaning of someone's face? Well, you know, I can see you and I can remember your face quite easily, but if I was to try to describe your face accurately to somebody else, it'd take me a couple of hours, you know, that was kind of thin and these cheap bones and, you know. To actually transfer it into another level, is very difficult. Koans are a story which you are to transform into muscles, if you like, into your body. And the answer is in another level. The answer isn't in the level in which the koan is given. So people, I remember somebody asking,

[25:21]

Achina Roshi, what is the meaning of the Raksu? He said, the meaning of the Raksu is the wearing of it. That's all. So, as I say, Buddhism is a teaching school based on yoga, and yoga is the oldest teaching I know of. It goes back thousands of years. We know of several thousand years before Buddha and before Christ. But in the same sense, to assume the posture... You know, there are many paintings of representations of Christ. To assume that posture would not be considered to be Christ. You know, the posture is more part of a story, or it has some meaning. It's a communication, you know. It's a mudra in the sense that the mudra is a communication. But in Buddhism, the posture itself is it. There's no other description.

[26:49]

hearing that bird, hearing your ear, hearing the air, hearing the wood of the building, hearing your friend. And I think if you're subtle enough, you'll notice that your zazen is different. I think you'll notice that your zazen is different according to who sits next to you. And your Sleep is different if there's someone sleeping in the same room with you. Did we also hear other people hearing? So what are you hearing right now? Samadhi means, you know, to hear, we could say samadhi means to hear without the coding, coding, coding of ego. Or to hear without even seeing arising and stopping of form. To hear without description.

[28:22]

And the meaning is very close to organic. We can stretch it a bit. Organic is a form that does something through itself. And it's particularly related to music. An organ is something which produces music. But your stomach is something. It's a form which does work. And the org part and erg part is a unit of work. But that's close to the idea of Dharma, you know, which is a kind of coding actually. And luckily things are coded because we cannot, our mind can't cope with things that aren't coded. In other words, if you give somebody a whole bunch of information, This is up and down, that's on and off, and this is left and right, and that's... At a certain point, you can't remember it. But if you group them, these three are this, and that's this, and this combination is that, a person can remember quite a bit. So language is a kind of coding system, which is a retrieval system, which is...

[30:02]

gauged to the way our mind works. It's a description. H2O is a description. And it's a change in level. When you have... You've got a bunch of molecules... atoms barreling about, you know, shall we say. But they don't just barrel about, they all change level into molecules. And when we have a molecule, say, H2O, We can... It begins to have a particularity which makes it different from others, but it still retains the non-dimensional. You know, it becomes three-dimensional, but it retains the non-dimensional or boundaryless, shall we say, description or lack of description too, and it's still all atoms. You know, right now you're What is it? 98% water. And we make a big fuss about the remaining 2%. We don't usually refer to each other as bags of water. That's all you bags of water get out to the work meeting. Slosh, slosh, slosh. We have a certain level of

[31:26]

organization or description. I mean, description isn't just Columbus, you know, our mental description, it's actual stuff, the form. Form is emptiness. Form is description. I'm trying to put these in other words, form is kind of, you know, but description, same thing. Time and space are simply descriptions. They have no reality in the boundaryless world. They are simply meh. The doctor doesn't know what's going on, he barely, you know. Or even worse, the psychiatrist should know how he or she is in the care of a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist doesn't know what's going on. Just barely do we have any idea what's going on. Our descriptions are, I mean, our descriptions are, I mean, we're less than puny, you know, in the face of this event.

[32:30]

Now you're going to get with it. In Buddhism, it's not through more descriptions. We're here alone, and it's hard to be alone. I think in the first month or year or so you're here, you have all kinds of these other descriptions that come up that have force as they link with your description. Someone's in trouble, someone needs you, such and such has to be done, problems you see that are necessary to do something about. It's all real, but it's all in the realm of descriptions. We also have to be able to see around descriptions. The heart alone, I know that. That poem, you know, that's on edge of a manuscript and illuminated, you know, one of those manuscript monks, fussed with all day. They'd get bored, they'd write little poems, and someone collected some of the poems on the edge, you know. But, you know, you get tired of putting gold leaf on something, you know. And one of them is, the partner, remember, is alone in my little cell, alone, all alone,

[34:05]

in my little cell. Alone I came into the world and alone I shall go from it." Now, of course, we didn't exactly come into the world alone. I've said many times, you know, usually your mother was there. But in some other sense, you know, you were alone. You know, your mother was there, but you had to do it. And I think even if you get married or something like that, it's a decision that is quite mutual usually, these days, supposed to be, still you have to come to it alone. And, you know, it's one of those obvious contradictory truths, but still true. that only through this settling yourself in your aloneness and the ability to sustain it can you have mutuality. You have to be awfully alone. Columbus had to be awfully alone. Though you could probably find historical antecedents in his

[35:27]

what happened to him that allowed him to see it. But still he had to be alone in some way to draw his own conclusion about that boat going over the rim. And be sure enough that they weren't falling into a pit of dragons, that he himself would get in a boat. He thought he was going to India, you know. So that was his description, he was going to India. Finding the passage to India. Leif Erikson, you know, he thought he ran into a big island. because he came, he or someone like him came also pretty definitely to this American, so-called American continent. But while you're sitting here, you bags of water, with your particular tremendously complex molecular and material flow. At the same time, passing right through, there's vast spaces, you know, you're actually, if you're 98% water, you're 99.999% vacancy, voidness, spaces between all of the molecules. And passing between that, there's billions of cosmic rays and molecules and particles, particles of various kinds are passing through you.

[36:57]

Even, there's quite a few Carmel radio stations passing through. You know, there's voices and music and all kinds of stuff passing through as well as all kinds of stuff that gets... the earth is bombarded with all the time. And you have tremendously redundant physical systems which keep readjusting. Even your DNA gets mixed up. There's ways that built in the DNA to straighten it out. And all these particles that are bombarding you all the time mess up all the kind of... the description necessary for you to be healthy the particular... the particulate relationship within your own body and your body has all of these things that keep adjusting it all the time. You know, at a level of intelligence and subtlety that is far beyond our mental ability, our conceptual And when you do try to observe it, you know, with electron microscopes and so forth, you're not observing observables, you're observing observations. I mean, it's sort of like, I would get a picture of Judy here, and then next moment I see Judy in the kitchen, and the next moment she's taking care of the children. There's no in-between. So I'm not seeing an observable, I'm seeing a series of observations. And it looks like she's in the kitchen.

[38:33]

And then I try to tie a story together, but it's not even anything we can... We know, at the most fundamental level, we know anything about, except by being it. We are it, but when we try to externalize it, describe it, we at best know observation. And when you know observations, you're talking about psychology. Or you're talking about an observer. So the more particular you get, you know, the more particular you get, H2O and then bags of water and then skin and bones and all those things, the more different we get from each other and trees and stuff like that. And the more competency has something to do with it. Competency as an expression or measure of particularity.

[39:34]

Our capacity, you know, our mental and physical capacity is, I would say, virtually unlimited, but our competency is limited. You have competency to read a large amount of material, or to sit zazen, or to understand what your friend says to you, or to be able to listen even. Most of us don't know how to listen. We don't listen and receive. Because Buddhism is trying to teach you a different kind of competency. I'm trying to teach you a different kind of competency, a competency which is not based on your description. I'm trying to get you to let go of description, to be able to observe without description. You know, and if you open the Sutras, this is what I talked about when I was here last time, really, to pay attention. To pay attention is a price. to give attention, to accept attention. And so this is another version or a continuation of what I said when I was here before.

[41:06]

Maybe I should talk about something different, but I feel the language doesn't allow me to tell you how important that is, this mental and physical continuity, this being able to observe without description, without coding. And it's so obvious, so embedded in our and what we take for granted, that it's very difficult to say it in a way that conveys importance, I feel. But if you open the sutras anywhere, you open any book on Buddhism, basically this is what they're talking about. The descriptions that lead to greed, hate, and delusion. to describe yourself in such a way that you have problems or create aching illusions. How to observe without description. How to find practice, mental continuity. And information or knowledge, many of us see it as a kind of ornament or possession.

[42:32]

But for Buddhism, it's just a way of knowing. Knowledge is not a possession, but a mode of knowing. It's not to know the world is round, but to set out and act in the world as if it was round, as Columbus did. Founding us, sort of. Some of us. leaving all of us here, actually. None of us were here. It sounds like I'm about ready to stop. I get my signals everywhere. Why do I wouldn't want to? question your description. So I should probably stop to give you the feeling that you were right on. You probably were. Or maybe your legs are hurting, you're saying, maybe if I hint.

[43:52]

Anyway, we can stop now because this can be continued. Namo'valokiteshvaraya Namo'valokiteshvaraya Om Namah Shivaya Om Namah Shivaya Namah Shivaya

[45:23]

Since the things are numberless, I am the saviour. His words are inexhaustible, I love to put an end to them. When my words are boundless, I love to answer them. Love that weighs unsurpassable, I love to think. By the way, I will talk tomorrow. I don't know.

[46:50]

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