It always amuses me to have... This is going to be for the people who are taking care of the children? It always amuses me to have it taped because I don't know what I'm going to say, you know? Already somebody wants to listen to it. They think, probably, when they listen to it. Maybe that's what I'm talking about today, actually. Nakamura Sensei mentioned the other day that as soon as you enter the room with Elizabeth, you know, little Elizabeth, as soon as you enter the room with her, she's immediately affected. She immediately changes. As soon as you get anywhere near her, she changes. Now, it strikes me as... Somehow, it strikes me as very interesting.

[01:29]

And seeing it so immediately, I wonder, are we, how are we all our lives affected like that? Is someone, to have someone look at us? Avalokiteshvara, the name means the one who oversees, the one who looks over, looks down on, or more, looks over, oversees beings. And many forms of Buddhism have a deity practice, not in the sense of Christian, Western God, or god of most religions, but like Amida Buddhist, Namu Amida Buddha, you chant, calling on the name of Buddha, the sense of being witnessed

[02:57]

I was touched by reading about a poem written by an old woman. Actually, she couldn't write, so when her son went off to the city, she just said to him a poem, which he wrote down. And she says, I can't write, so please, you write it down. And he wrote it down, and somehow it's been kept. And she, in various ways, talks about when she forgets or gets in trouble or makes mistakes or whatever, then she remembers, Namo Amida Butsu, and at that moment she'll chant, Namo Amida Butsu. And yet sometimes I'll say to you, no one knows we're here. Several times, you know, I've talked with people who've been hiking in these mountains and had no idea Zen Center Tassajara was here. And like Shangri-La or something, they come over the mountain, like you were, say you're out wandering in some wilderness and you come, suddenly there's magical green valley, not so green, and there's people living there.

[04:37]

There's a scroll I've always liked, which shows a kind of inlet, and a little bridge, and across a kind of arm of the sea, and a stream, and that little village, and you can see tiny figures walking. And there's a poem written on the side of the scroll, something about people in the village doing such and such, going about their business, and no one knows they're there. But we may not feel it so much being here. Maybe we feel more like Frank O'Hara He says he wants to go to New York where the trains shout and the books wear sleeves and trousers and the city is hung with flashlights. Maybe that's the same feeling that I'm talking about.

[05:54]

No one knows we're here is very important. No one knows we're here. That's also meeting Ryutan in person. So many of us are tied into being predictable. We want to be predictable. Elizabeth wants me to be predictable, or Virginia especially, every three hours or so to be predictable. And she wants attention, but at the same time, she doesn't know what will happen. A lot of us read novels because something happens to the people in novels. We don't know what will happen and we read it, but in our own life it's so predictable, nothing happens. Our brothers and sisters or parents or most people we meet are quite predictable. And so much of the effort of Western culture is to make things predictable. The histories of Herodotus and Thucydides get involved in some cyclical view of history which repeats itself. And our own idea of history is not so different.

[07:33]

Western historians, Western way of thinking have imposed on Buddhism a pattern as if Buddhism was a revealed religion, like Mohammedanism or Christianity. The Buddha appeared, some historical person said the religion, and we're continuing it, you know. So we chant the seven Buddhas before Buddha. And although we know historical Buddha, we don't know much about him, but we know pretty surely he existed, and as you know it's pretty factual that his father existed, from finding father's tomb recently. But a Buddha is not so important to Buddhism, the way the founder of a religion is important, a Western idea of religion.

[09:07]

So you may then say, well, Buddhism is more like science, like accumulated knowledge. And that's true. Nagarjuna can add something, or Dogen can add something, or you can add something. Buddhism changes in that way. koan about this point, that Buddhism is revealed in the present, but our life is revealed in unpredictable present. Paul Valerie has a poem, it says something, if it were clear it'd be so boring. We're standing at the threshold

[10:13]

of an insecure world, he says. Anyway, this Kempo Roshi, who's Tozan Ryokai's heir, disciple, a monk asks him, It is said that the bhagavats, it means buddhas, it's good enough, the bhagavats or buddhas of the ten directions know only one way to enlightenment, by only one way reach nirvana. What is this one way? The bhagavats of the ten directions reach nirvana. And Khenpo Roshi lifts his stick, draws a line in the air and says, And later the same monk asks Uman, Roshi, about it. And Uman answers. He has a fan. He says, this fan jumps up to the thirty-third heaven, hits the deity on the nose, and the carp of the eastern sea leaps, and it rains cats and dogs. That's pretty good.

[11:49]

This famine leaps up to the 33rd, jumps to the 33rd heaven and hits the deity on the nose. And the carp of the Eastern Sea, wherever that is, leaps and it rains buckets, cats and dogs. Do you know that feeling? What is this contact they are talking about? As I said, waking and dreaming and dreamless, and a fourth state, meeting. You know, again, the story I told you before about Po-chan, Hyakujo, and Issan, Kueishan, about the hibachi, remember? Po-chan asks Kueishan, who are you? They must have been together quite a while by then.

[13:21]

And Kuei Shan says, his personal name was Ling Yu, so he says, I'm Ling Yu. Which, as you know, is just answering, simple answer, by a mark, but also with a sense, since he's not unfamiliar with Zen practice. This is just a tentative name for So it also means emptiness, to say, I am Lingyu. So he says, who are you? And he says, I am Lingyu. And then Pojang says, are there any coals left in the hibachi? Someone asked me. What is that box beside my desk? That's a hibachi. That's Tatsugami Roshi's hibachi. And he looked in it and he didn't find any coals, you know?

[14:46]

So, Pojang goes over and reaches into the hibachi and finds some hot cool. And Isang, as you know, at that time was enlightened. And then Pojang says, I want you to know that this is not the usual way to teach. It's not the usual approach. It's only for this moment, he says. This is not the usual way to teach. It's not only for this moment, he says. He says, the sutra says, a Buddha appears at the right moment and under the right conditions. Buddha appears at the right moment and under the right conditions. It is like awakening from a dream, remembering something you've long forgotten. It's like awakening from a dream, remembering something you've long forgotten. One finds out that it's one's own self, not from outside.

[16:06]

the ten directions. If there are Buddhas in ten directions, it means there are Buddhas everywhere. Ten directions means every molecule. So it means Buddhism is some human power or some is name of our existence, that's all. Near Kuishan and Yangshan, we're out picking tea leaves all day. And Kuishan says, at the end of the day, all day long I have heard your voice. I'm sure they were just working silently, but he says, all day long I have heard your voice, but you have not shown me your true self. Please show me your true self.

[18:02]

And Yangshan shakes the tea bush or tea tree. And Yangshan, Kuishan says, you have shown me function but not substance. So, Yangshan says, oh teacher, please show me then. And Yangshan, Huishan, doesn't say anything. And so Yangshan says, oh, you have shown me substance and not function. So this substance or function, you know, it's so interesting that, again, looking at Elizabeth, she doesn't care about eye contact yet. She likes eye contact, but she responds to your voice, even if she's looking, or your presence, even if she's looking the other way, quite almost identically. She hasn't gotten locked into the way we like eye contact. Eye contact is all right, but it seems like any other contact at this stage is okay with her.

[19:25]

But I watch, people are trying to program her into eye contact. They feel better if she also looks at them. So she's going along with it. She gets more attention that way. But we get locked into predictability that way too, we ourselves. more and more we want a certain kind of contact that is eye contact or some conceptual contact. So again, as last time, all I'm talking about really is that space between thoughts, or that activity of not needing control, or not needing contact. It also means, you know, again, Frank O'Hara says, he, no one read his poetry.

[20:52]

And the poets in New York were rather ignored by establishment literary scene. But the painters, he says, were interested in his poetry and his friends' poetry. I lived in New York at that time and remember the situation very clearly. And what Frank made clear is that they needed an audience, you know. So we need… for us, you know, we're an audience too. We're an audience for American culture and for Buddhism, and we are creating an audience too. Because we're here, people can do things. There are poets, or painters, or thinkers, or feelers, or whatever. Who can feel something because we're an audience? You can see when somebody, a poet, comes to read at Zen Center, or somebody comes to give a lecture, they'll say afterwards, I read differently,

[22:22]

I spoke a little differently than I have any other place, because actually we're a little different kind of audience than is available somewhere else. Again, I'm raising, what is audience for Buddhism? Who is watching? Big Brother is watching you. But Big Brother, you know, is trying to get you to toe the line. or follow some, is trying to control you. And although we don't like things, we want things to happen to us, but we live in a way to prevent it, though sometimes something happens to you. You didn't predict you were going to be here. You all expected to be firemen. and meeting Suzuki Yoshi, those of you who did, had rather unpredictable effect on us. Something happened when we meet him. And I think from then on you feel watched by him. If you really met him, from then on you feel watched by him.

[23:49]

I know in various times with him, one thing we would do sometimes is, at a specific time, we'd both bow. Even though we're in different locations, we'd both bow 25 times at the same time. So now I can bow 25 times, at the same time he's bowing 25 times. If you met Siddhartha Krishna, you probably feel watched, but you don't feel watched in that you tell the line, you know, or have to follow some line, but rather that he gives you lots of line, lots of space, just watching without controlling you.

[25:14]

This is also the idea of Avalokiteshvara, who just watches, you know. Wittgenstein talks about deaths of Western philosophy. He says, don't think, look. And thinking is a kind of thinking. You're always thinking things when you think. And all of your suffering is mental. All of your troubles are mental. And some of you have an enormous tolerance for troubles. I have very low tolerance, so I made a very big effort in practice. If I had capacity like some of you for mental confusion. But my tolerance is very low. I'm not so strong as some of you. I don't think I could sustain the confusion you've sustained for so many years, willingly even. And sometimes the desire comes up to actually end suffering, but it doesn't work if it's for you.

[26:43]

we get terribly impressed with, affected by suffering of everyone. Someone asked me in Green Gulch a while ago, does a bodhisattva feel okay? Is bodhisattva practice characterized by beginning to feel okay? I thought it was quite a good question, very practical question of someone who's practicing. It's true and not true. Maybe most true to say, bodhisattva is characterized by feeling, I know it sounds rather like a platitude, but feeling completely okay about being not okay. You really do feel okay in a way that doesn't have anything to do with okay or not. It also means your attention or consciousness has penetrated through and through. So there's now a mutuality. The audience doesn't just listen, the audience has to look at you – active audience. And at Buddha's time, you know, so many… I've been reading a book about Puritan New

[28:19]

And I'm struck by the intensity of the discourse. How much those people cared about whether their congregation was really independent or not and so forth. Vehemently they cared. And reading about the Buddha's time when supposedly so many people went around talking with other people, they cared tremendously about how we live and what our life is. I think this country is different from, say, other countries that are settled, much as we put down the negative side of Puritan life. The fact that this was settled originally by people concerned about religion. Again, much as we dislike religion, I think many of us do. It was settled by people not interested in power or colonies or profit, but they really cared about how to live. And maybe they cared in a coercive way

[29:39]

trying to… caring too much about how everyone else lived, and that certainly characterized New England at that time – tremendous backbiting and gossip and so forth. But the positive side is they really cared and deeply engaged each other in this. I think it has a great deal to do with vitality. We've fallen away from that caring a lot, but I think our practice is an aspect of expression of caring about how we live, and being open to it, not being something predictable, like in Buddhist time. And we, of course,

[30:42]

Emphasis in Zen is strongly on caring about how we think or feel, but more watching others, not caring about others, but in a more aware kind of witnessing. So, you know, Sukhya used to tell me, don't argue. Dogen also says, don't argue. But feeling of practice is much more that phenomenal world looks back at us. We look at phenomenal world, and phenomenal world looks at us. So even here in the mountains, you know, you are not alone. Even though no one knows we're here,

[31:42]

You don't have experience of being cut off, or you may, but it's possible not to have experience of being cut off or lonely, ever. Friendly air touches us everywhere. That when, strangely, when that attention or consciousness penetrates us, You know, we can give attention, same time, give attention to everything. And that attention comes back, you know, as attention. This is very much like deity practice, where you may, as we do sometimes in Zen, imagine our teacher on our crown of our head.

[32:45]

Imagine some bodhisattva. Or I many times said, you are in stomach of Buddha. This is stomach of bodhisattva or Buddha. So we're trying to stretch our usual way of thinking to get sense of a non-conceptual, non-pinpointing sense of being, wide being. All of us as Buddha. There's no Buddha separate from you, no Buddha separate from me. I cannot be a Buddha separate from you. You cannot be a Buddha separate from your friend. And although you who have met Suzuki Rishi may have been affected, were probably affected by Suzuki Rishi, but how many people in your life actually affect you?

[34:11]

In fact, how many of you dismiss half the group right here, or maybe more than half? You'd rather disdain or don't take seriously most of the people you're living with right here. With that kind of arrogant practice, you can't, there's no chance, no matter, there's no possible insight that can transcend or break through such an attitude of dismissing those of us we are engaged in life with. So, we say sentient beings, or insentient beings, preach the Dharma. Or ask, Dogen says, ask the pillars of the temple, the Bhagavats of the ten directions. All reach nirvana by one way.

[35:40]

What is that one way? Kempo Rishis. When one fan leaps to the third head, it's deity on the nose. When you're doing zazen, where are your boundaries? Kuishan was coming, Yangshan was coming back from the fields and ran into Kuishan. He said, Where have you been? He said, Working in the fields. He says, Are there any others there? And Yangshan just sticks his hoe into the ground and stands there.

[37:02]

This question is trying to disturb him. They are playing at shaking the tree, or what is function, or what is substance. How to express this sharing or meeting or how to awaken that sense that we are in, you know, that we stick on to our parents or some future lover or something, you know. Most of us even in love, you know, are still in our waking mind or dreaming mind or dreamless mind I think only most of us for the first time only in zazen come face to face

[38:43]

with, what, in person, your time in person. I'm not talking about some group feeling or being nice to each other, but a, I don't know, boundaryless or primitive consciousness, developed consciousness, I don't know.

[40:42]

Stream, sound of stream is what I mean. Stream flows through us, wind blows over us. This is famous Zen statement, one Zen story. So who do we share? How do we share our life? Or is there, even to say it is already something separate, you know, as if we, you know. It's more like something we're holding off from ourselves, from noticing. We have profound, ingrained feeling that life doesn't work, as Buddha found, old age, sickness and death. And your own experience suggests it doesn't work. So you hold back. But we also need vision or understanding

[43:34]

that life works this is meaning of buddhism is revealed in each moment or bhagavata ten directions and so forth this is also deity practice

[43:59]

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