Now, with the black rain on the roof, if you can't hear me, please say so. Dogen has a poem, Black Rain on the Roof. A few black water bags. There's a story that Buddha saw Manjushri standing outside the gate. He said, hey, Manju, what you doing outside the gate? Come on in. Manjushri said, I don't see a thing out here. Why should I come in? Anyway, all these Zen stories are like, they don't amount to much. Someone said to me yesterday, Mary Kuno said to me yesterday, you're always talking about the same thing. She said, I had a lecture of yours in 1973, it's the same darn thing. That's not exactly what she said. She's not here? Oh, good.

[01:26]

But it's true, same house, the same house I'm talking about, but I'm always talking about different doors, different doors. The other day, Monju and Pugen came into my, I mean Aaron and Noah came into my bath. And first, they jumped in the bath with me. Yesterday, in fact, I saw quite a sight, coming across the bridge, two pink bottoms, high in the air, heads down, in front of the altar, across the bath bridge. I would have made a great cover for the wind bell. Start, yeah, the center fold, that's right. Fold out baby. Anyway, they're so pink, poor little cheeks, you know. I'm chanting something or other. We start Buddhism Yam. Anyway, they came in and I got in the bath. And a little while later, they came back. First, I believe,

[03:02]

Noah, I think, came back first. And he had his clothes on. I said, come on in, Noah. Noah said, I will not. No, he said. I'll get my sweater all wet. I said, all right. So he went running out. And then I think it was Aaron came in. I said, Aaron, come on in the tub. He said, I'll get my sweater all wet, but OK, I'll put my feet in. So he sat down and stuck both feet in. This is like Monju and Fugen. Monju says, I'm not coming in. I don't see a thing out here. Where? Can you hear?

[04:06]

Let's quit. If you really can't hear, you can move. I don't know. I can holler. Anyway, it's said that Monju, you know, the Bodhisattva of loving practice, When Buddha says, come inside, he just without a hesitation goes in. Just echoes Buddha's mind or Buddha's thought. Sometimes it comes out in us as people who say no to everything. You know, I've mentioned. Will you go to the movies? No. and people say yes to everything. Will you go to the movies? Yeah. But, well, I better not. I don't, not predicting Aaron and Noah's character. They will take turns, probably. But Noah was quite right. I'm not going in that water. I'll get my clothes all wet.

[05:39]

And Aaron was quite right. Oh, OK, if you ask, I'll put my feet in. A Chinese saying is that no matter how the great river twists and turns, it always, it still flows from the same source. And in Buddhism we are always talking about the source of your thinking. Return to the source of your thinking. But where is that source? It's not in time. It doesn't mean the beginning.

[06:52]

That's one. You know, I haven't said anything for the last few minutes, so... That's two. Come sit here. Maybe I can be a department store Santa Claus. You can all come sit on my lap. Ask me what you want for Christmas. This one story, you know, a monk sees his teacher and says, I'd like to see you, I have a problem. So he said to the student, I'll talk about it in lecture. So the next day, he got up to give lecture and he said, where's the student who has a problem? And the student, I come up here, the student came up and he shook him.

[09:22]

This student has a problem. Everybody noticed. This student has a problem. Then he bowed and he went out. That was the end of the lecture. I've told you already many times, haven't I, about the guy I met at Green Gulch after lecture? Who asked to speak to me? Didn't I tell you? I told you at Green. Did I tell you? No? So I told him I was too busy. I'd see him later that evening. We talked up in the hills. He said he'd been a raccoon for 500 years. Didn't I tell you that story?

[10:32]

Well, it happened. And I said, you have? He said, yes, I, somebody, I was a miwak shaman, he said. And someone asked me, does an enlightened person fall into cause and effect? And I said, no, an enlightened person doesn't fall into cause and effect. And for that I'd been a raccoon for 500 years. Could you say something? So I said, well, of course. I know the script. So I said, yeah, ask me. He said, does Enlightenment bother you? I said, no, Enlightenment is not blind to cause and effect. The guy asked me to give him a burial as a priest, even though I would find this raccoon's body. So we did. Again, if I tell you the story that way, you don't believe me. Probably. You probably don't believe me.

[12:00]

Don't be sure. You don't believe me. But if you read that poem about Bai Zhang and the fox, you sort of believe it. Or some of you sort of believe it. Or if we can't read this morning, through hundreds of past lives, da-da-da-da-da. You wonder, oh, my past lives. Or it talks about the various superpowers. A bodhisattva, folding his legs, floats through hills, ramparts, walls, glides through space, it says. walks on water like on dirt, knows the thoughts of others. But what is being described here? If you substituted the word Bodhisattva, you just left them blind. What is being described? And then it goes on to say,

[13:34]

to show you how to practice. A Bodhisattva, apart from paying attention to the knowledge of all modes, it says, this is what we read this morning, if you were paying attention, apart from paying attention to the knowledge of all modes or apart from paying attention I forget one other thing. The Bodhisattva does not fancy himself such and such. The Bodhisattva does not produce a will for knowing the thoughts of others or knowing a will for having psychic powers. This is again, where is the source? I said yesterday I'm trying to give you a new

[14:49]

Competency. We all, by our various proclivities and intelligence, have a different competence. And it may help to be smarter, brighter, more intelligent, or it may actually hinder you. Lama Govinda says somewhere, Buddhism is to teach you to be, he says something like a genius. This is not true in that I expect any of you to win the Nobel Prize, but there's a kind of truth to it. I'm struck reading recently, I've been trying to look at Western descriptions. descriptions of reality that have arisen in Western culture.

[16:08]

and Spinoza, Leibniz. Can you hear me? No? The rain's more interesting. I think last year we found it helps if all of the shoji are closed, because most of the sound is the overhang. Anyway, I should probably stop in a minute.

[21:42]

Anyway, I started to say Spinoza, Leibniz and a recent contemporary physicist named David Bohm have come quite close to what I feel is Buddhism. And if they I guess I have to say that the difference I see is probably that they didn't have anything like Zazen. That may be rather, perhaps, kind of Buddhist arrogance to say so, but... Anyway, that's my feeling. And David Bohm's idea of implicate order and explicate order is

[23:04]

pretty good. Yesterday I used organ. I talked about organ as that which does something on its own. So we can talk about organic vegetables. Vegetables that you leave alone. And we can talk about, we could say it's solid from here as I said, but solid from here doesn't give the freedom of possibility in language that emptiness does. Where is the source? I have been reading about how Einstein described his own thinking. It's very much like the kind of thinking I'm talking about. The thinking of what shall I say, using David Bohm, the implicate order, where you're not using structures, meta-structures, things that are one step removed. If you think in language, basically you're just talking to yourself. If you think in words, you're just talking to yourself. Words arise from thinking, otherwise we wouldn't have words, right? So what is the thinking that's before words?

[24:37]

This thinking is the kind of thinking we're talking about. Dogen calls it thinking non-thinking. Words are removed. And zazen, through zazen, we're trying to give you the trust in your thinking in the sense that I say we don't get up because the sun gets up. We get up because we get up. The sun gets up because the sun gets up. Not I think therefore I am but I think therefore I think or I walk therefore I walk. I am doesn't mean anything in Buddhism. Dogen says we are not studying the who of who thinks. I walk therefore I walk. If you see something On the hill, you can assume the hill sees you or someone on the hill could see you. But we call a superpower, you know, to be invisible. The shadow knows. Remember the shadow? He had the cloak of invisibility and he could see you but you couldn't see him. Is that a superpower? It would be very odd.

[26:06]

Actually, if all of us could see each other, but no one could... It wouldn't work. If each of us could see the other, but no one could see you, then no one... But if that was true for everybody, the black rain on the roof, you couldn't hear a thing, you couldn't see a thing. But we call it a superpower. But when you see something, are you seeing something? When someone sees you, are they seeing you? What is this heavenly ear of the superpower? heavenly eye. We're already exhibiting superpowers. I see you, you see me. Einstein says that when he was 12 years old I'm using Einstein because he's, you know, the most typical genius for us. I mean, when we think of genius, I think most people think of Einstein, or many people might. When he was 12, a thought occurred to him. Basically, can I trust my thought?

[27:29]

Is thought always about something or is thought something itself? Is thought part of the universe? I think, therefore I think. And he decided to trust his thought, in effect. He got a great pleasure out of thinking, a kind of almost sensual pleasure out of thinking. For some reason, I would say that that's what separated him from other people. There were a lot of mathematicians who were much better at mathematics than he. A lot of people probably smarter than he. But he had this, at 12 years old, he had this decision to trust his thinking. So at that point, he decided to imagine he was pursuing an electron, an electric wave. Most of us don't decide that at 12. But he decided to do that. And in trying to imagine himself pursuing this electric wave, he basically got the germ of the theory of relativity. He basically felt it out, not thinking in words. A kind of, he said, maybe visual, maybe muscular, he said. But that's how we actually, that's the thinking Buddhism is talking about. I said one day that sometimes I try to imagine you as a Zen teacher. Can I say that to you? Hmm? No? But I do. Sometimes you come to Doksan and I say,

[28:55]

I try to imagine you as a Zen teacher, a little white wispy beard or whatever. But sometimes I try it and I can't do it. I try it on again as a Zen teacher and I can't do it. But I trust that imagination. How do you get to the point where your thinking is part of the world in that sense? Not when you're thinking in words. Not when you're thinking in ego structures. You know, with the coding, greed, hate and delusion. But how do you get to trust this language which you can't make clear? And some of you are practicing Zen and you keep wanting to make it clear. You want to get it into some meaning. You want to make it a possession that's useful to you. one of the kind of phrases, gathas, that's completely one statement, but for the sake of our mind, outfolded, is perceiving the infinite mind of enlightenment, perceiving the infinite mind of enlightenment, for that reason and in that way,

[30:26]

I continually remind myself. I mean, just mind of enlightenment or infinite mind would be enough, but for the sake of our mental structure we outfold it into, I perceive the infinite mind of enlightenment and for that reason, and in that way, I continually remind myself. This is the process of beginning to trust your thinking, as you trust your blood, as you trust your shoulder, as you trust the ground. But a trust, I don't mean a trust in which there's security. Most of you want to find some meaning, or put it into words, or make it clear, because you want security, and there's no security. I can also say when you step, you don't know that the ground is going to be there. To practice Buddhism really you have to get so you can always live without security. You never are going to understand Buddhism in such a way that you can give a lecture like this knowing you know what you're talking about. Let's quit now while we're ahead or behind. It's always out there in that beam of light with Einstein.

[31:54]

And sometimes, though, the one who I couldn't imagine as a Zen teacher comes back in a month later and I say, wow, look at that Zen teacher. I mean, not this minute, but I can imagine him. And that's a little joke, but imagination is a kind of knowing. And that imagination doesn't think in words. nor dreams or stories or by John Yakujo's Fox. That's a story that gets you caught up in it. But Manjushri says there's nothing outside the gate. The gate is inside. Where is the source? Time and space are just separations. Solid or void or... I mean you're lucky you do have the superpower of separating

[33:06]

the Carmel radio stations from, and it doesn't take much, I told you that story, didn't I, about, you know that story, don't you, about Lucille Ball and her tooth? No? Sorry. Lucille Ball had just gone to the dentist, and she was driving along in Los Angeles, and she began to hear radio in her mouth. And she drove a little farther and it stopped, so she turned her car around, went back, and the radio came on again. She turned around, so she went to the police. And they went there, and there's a vacant lot there. And they dug it up, and there's a Japanese sending station under the vacant lot. Supposedly, this is a true story. Sending to, you know, Japan during the war, or to ships outside. And there's a more dramatic story that I won't tell about the tea house in Golden Gate Park was a sending station during the war. But all it takes is a filling and you'd be picking up all of those radio stations sitting here. You know, a filling of the... It doesn't take much. In other words, your body could be picking up all those radio stations. But you have a sorting process that sorts it out.

[34:38]

That's maybe a superpower. As yours, you have the superpower to sort out the bombardment of cosmic rays. But you, as I keep saying, you exist at this level, too, of implicate order. All the implications are there. All the order we see, the structure of every leaf, This is the knowledge of all modes. And maybe it's a little philosophical or highfalutin or something to talk about this stuff, but until you have a real sense of this, you are always trying to make a story out of your life. Look at your thinking as a story. And in our Western culture particularly, again, where reality speaks, everything is a story.

[35:47]

Robert Duncan says that myth is the story of what cannot be told. The telling of what cannot be told. But boy, when you try to tell it that way, it gets pretty... so much allegory and symbolism. In Zen, in Buddhism, we're not interested in what kind of film is in the cartridge. or what kind of camera projector you're using, but the screen itself. So karma in Buddhism is not pattern, but consequence. As I said, it's not where the railroad tracks came from, but just the tracks you're on right this moment, where they've been. Everything is included in the tracks right now. And the teaching of emptiness is that you can walk off the screen. is we're talking about the screen, not what's projected onto it. So karma is also as thin as what's projected onto a screen. The screen in this sense, trying to find some language would be implicate order. All potential, all modes, all knowledge, floating through ramp hills.

[37:17]

Nyogen Senzaki says somewhere, mankind is still young and stupid. We're still teaching in the religions and society and life, we're still teaching duality and not unity. I think that's true. There's a Chinese poem. The moon glows silently above the pines. The veranda grows cold. An ancient song flows from his fingertips. An ancient song flows from his fingertips.

[39:11]

Usually the audience sweeps hearing old melody but the music of Zen is without sentiment. So today I guess I'll start with just this emphasis that to see how you're always trying to impose a story or meaning on your thinking, a problem on your thinking, trying to make something clear. That's all right, but at the same time you have to see through, feel through that. to trust, maybe, the source. The language, I can say source, but it's not a beginning. It's not in time. So the story of Yakujo Baijian's fox and karma is about the story itself.

[40:47]

is a statement about karma. It says, who has ever transgressed in the introduction? If you hold, it says in the introduction, if you hold even the letter A, it says sometimes the entire Prajnaparamita literature is summed up in the letter A. If you hold even the letter A in your mind, you'll be a fox for 500 years. Now, what's wrong with being a fox, though? Who has ever fallen? Not to fall into cause and effect is to be a fox. What does the story have to do with it? When will your life get outside of stories? Your satisfaction is not in a story or anybody else acknowledging your story. That's always... In the end, you're isolated. Alone.

[42:14]

There's no outside from which satisfaction can come. This way you can give satisfaction. Not a solid trumpet.

[43:07]

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