Hello again. The record button on. Great. So welcome. Welcome back. I'm kind of excited about this next course of study for me and I hope those of you who join. We just finished. I just kind of untied us and me from the transmission of light. which went on for a number of years, and each of those chapters was a story in and of itself, but the sequence, you know, pretty much took us quite a while to get through. So now we're done with the transmission of light, and I had this interest and now inspiration, it's become an inspiration, to go back to Suzuki Roshi and look through his teachings and locate in those teachings any koans that he presents and talks about. So as it turns out there's a whole list of those and we have lots of opportunities to study koans together and then also to hear what Suzuki Roshi had to say, his commentary as well.

[01:10]

So one of the things he said is that the important thing about zazen is not that it gives you power but that it gives you possibility. The important thing about Zazen is not that it gives you power, but that it gives you possibility. I thought, wow, that is so good. And I feel like that would be a really good thing to remember, you know, that this practice of ours is really about opening, not about limiting. So that's what I want to be doing together with all of you, all of you who come along for the ride, is to explore these possibilities that are coming up. through the study of our founding teachers' words, and also from these ancient ancestors who he in turn has studied, you know, in order to understand ourselves better through the Buddha's enlightened teachings, which is the whole point, right? This is all about the arrow points back toward each of us.

[02:11]

What does this have to do with me? What does it have to do with you? So, there are many things this Izuku Rishi said, to his students and both privately and publicly while he was here and living among the founding generation of Dharma students, many of whom sadly have either passed away or are now moving away. So that original generation, very few of the original students of Suzuki Rishi are still available. You know, there's Reb. at Green College, Mel has now passed away. And so for quite a long time, we had both of them to ask questions. And there are a few other elders who will be moving soon up into Enso Village. So there'll be a little more time. And I hope we all can find ways to ask those questions of them while they still remember what the answer was.

[03:17]

That's really the challenging part for all of us these days. So among those things that Suzuki Roshi said, a lot of them were gathered and put into books that I think most of you have probably read, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. That's usually the starting place for a lot of people who encounter Zen. And then there's also Zen is Right Now, a little series of conversations, almost koans in their own right, between Suzuki Roshi and his students. And then there's another one, Zen is Right Here. So Zen is Right Now, Zen is Right Here. And then we did look at, some years back, Branching Streams, Flow in the Darkness, which is a really wonderful book about the Sandokai, the merging of difference and unity, which was apparently Suzuki Roshi's favorite text by Shirtou. Shirtou was prior to the founder of Sotozen, Dongshan, or Tozan, Soto, Sotozen, but had a great influence on Dongshan.

[04:20]

and on all of the teachers who followed. So we recite the Sandokai every week at Zen Center. And it has really this resonance between these two teachings of the ultimate truth and the relative truth. Over and over again, that's the dance that we are hearing in these early poetic teachings and also in all of the teaching stories that follow. Everyone's basically dancing with the two truths. which I find very helpful in orienting myself. So my plan, as I said, for this upcoming year is to use Suzuki Roshi's teachings and to find the koans that are nested in there, and then to explore those, find out who is the teacher that had that story, that conversation, when did that happen, and what else might they have said. But before I do that, I wanted to give you a little bit of background on koans. and how they came to be so important in the Zen tradition as expressions of the Buddha's teaching, kind of distillation of what the Buddha taught.

[05:27]

And really, really, if you image a tree with the root of the tree being the Dharma, the 2500 years of Dharma teaching and the source, Shakyamuni Buddha's awakening under the tree, and then all of those the trunk and branches that share the essence of that teaching. As it says in the poem, trunk and branches share the essence. And so we're, you know, Zen is kind of one of those little branches that came off from that initial inspiration that happened way back in India, that was long, long, long time ago. So a few years ago, I was invited to give a talk at the Ho Center for Buddhist Teachings down at Stanford, which was very exciting, very lovely. I had never been to Stanford before, and it was this beautiful campus. So I had a lovely time with the Dharma teachers there, the professors who teach. They really are Dharma teachers, but they're kind of disguised as college professors.

[06:28]

And they all have done extensive studies in many different fields connected to Buddhism. And they've traveled extensively and they've learned the ancient languages so they can read and translate and so on. Just very, very sweet people. We sat together and had a kind of potluck at the end of my talk. And the students were wonderful too. they were really interested and asked these great questions. I have a really nice memory of that visit down there. So I talked about koans during that talk, and I brought up two koans in particular. The first one was about, and these are familiar to you, I'm pretty sure, does a dog have Buddha nature? And the answer given was moo or no. Does the dog have Buddha nature? No. So it's kind of strange because Buddha said everything is fundamentally Buddha nature. So why did the teacher say no? So that's a koan. And that one represents the teaching of the ultimate truth.

[07:33]

The ultimate truth. And then the other koan was about this teacher Bai Zhang who has an encounter with a wild fox. And this represents the teaching of the relative truth. So here they are again, the two dancing partners, the ultimate truth, no, and the relative truth. How come I'm in a wild fox body? All I said was, you know, a person of the way is not trapped by cause and effect, isn't committed to cause and effect or the outcomes of cause and effect. Why would I turn into a fox? Which is that story, that koan story. And you can read both of those in the Mumong Khan, collection of koans. The first one is the Mu koan, the second one is the Fox koan. So again, these two koans, these two teaching stories represent the two truths. So I will bring up a little bit more about those koans later on. I think we'll probably run into them as well in Suzuki Roshi's writing because they're particularly famous in the Zen camps.

[08:38]

So this other container teaching, the one that comes even earlier than all of these conversations, is the one that was written in the second century by the great Dharma master Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna was an Indian master, Northern Indian at Nalanda University, which for many centuries was kind of the center of Buddhist studies and scholarship and many, many wonderful writings and commentaries have come out of Nalanda University. So Nagarjuna, second century, wrote a text, a very famous text, called the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Middle way between what? The two truths. What's the middle way? The name in Sanskrit, Mula Majjama Kakarika, Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. So in that teaching, there's just a little bit I want to read to you. I've read this before. It's quite extraordinary. I think it's pretty simple to understand. This teaching by Nagarjuna is foundational to Mahayana Buddhism, which is the branch of Buddhism that you'll find in the Zen school and the Tibetan school.

[09:52]

Chinese Chan School and so on. The Mahayana tradition clearly has grown from these early teachings and understandings of emptiness. Form and emptiness, two truths. So here's what Nagarjuna said. He said, the Buddha's teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths. A truth of worldly convention, relative truth, and an ultimate truth. Those who do not understand the distinction drawn between these two truths do not understand the Buddha's profound truth. Without a foundation in the conventional truth, in the relative truth, the significance of the ultimate truth cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate truth, liberation is not achieved. By a misperception of emptiness, a person of little understanding is destroyed.

[10:54]

By misperception of emptiness, the teaching of emptiness, a person of little understanding is destroyed, like a snake incorrectly seized, or like a spell incorrectly cast. And for that reason, that the Dharma is deep and difficult to understand and to learn, the Buddha's mind despaired of being able to teach it. For whom emptiness is clear, everything becomes clear. For whom emptiness is not clear, nothing becomes clear. And then he goes on to say, And yet, liberation is not some ultimate reality existing beyond the phenomenal conditioned world, behind some veil of conventional truth, for that would commit us to a belief in eternal life. eternalism something permanent that always exists like emptiness emptiness is the ultimate truth of reality and of liberation nirvana too is empty of its own existence there is nothing that distinguishes samsara from nirvana there is nothing that distinguishes nirvana from samsara and the furthest limit of nirvana

[12:17]

is also the furthest limit of samsara. Not even the subtlest difference between the two is found. This is a pretty high bar. Nagarjuna is definitely the very high bar. In fact, it's the one that I think a lot of us just kind of avoid for a long time. Although I must say there's a really, really excellent translation of the fundamental teaching of the Middle Way. that that I have been by Jay Garfield professor I think at Yale maybe I'm not remembering exactly but anyway Jay Garfield was a philosopher professor of philosophy and like a number of professors Western professors of philosophy people kept saying to him well have you read Nagarjuna you know have you looked at some of these Buddhist teachers from centuries back, and most of them, of course, had not. A lot of it wasn't in translation then. But when Jay Garfield began to look into the emptiness teachings, he was transformed, and transformed into a professor of Buddhist studies.

[13:22]

He's written some really excellent and helpful commentaries. And one of them that he does is on the fundamental teachings of the Middle Way. So if you'd like to follow up on that, Jay Garfield's book, called the fundamental teaching of the middle way is a really really good way he takes each chapter and then he tells you what's going on there you know so it's a very good tool to use so this profound vision that nagarjuna had about reality and that he was able to actually speak you know put into words is what our practice and the teachings are trying to guide us to understand But more than to understand, to actually realize by our experiential, that we actually know it with our whole body, our whole sense of things is shifted, is changed by this understanding, by this realization. Practice realization, as Dogen often says.

[14:24]

And how we do that is what's been up for discussion for all these centuries. How do you do that? How do you come to this realization? school the soto zen school we say to students i've heard it recently myself by the teacher there just sit just sit so shikantaza just sit and uh and then we and then the other school the other major school of zen that many of you i think know about is meditate on a koan you know don't just sit there meditate on a problem or a koan like does a dog have buddha nature work on that you know for 40 minutes day after day after day see what you come up with and then present that understanding to your teacher you know with your whole body yeah so that's how the renzai folks work with these these teachings they use these words to try and help the student have what's called a breakthrough you know realization so

[15:27]

In my understanding, the distinction between these two approaches to realizing an unawakened mind, you know, the one school in Soto Zen emphasizes the oneness of the ultimate and the relative truth. They're inseparable, which indeed they are. How could they not be? But anyway, the oneness of the two truths is the emphasis in Soto Zen. So kitchen and zendo are, you know, go to the kitchen, go to the zendo, it's practice. Practice realization. Whatever you're doing is practice Realization. What you all are doing, what I'm doing right now, is practice Realization. You can't pull them apart. You can understand that they can't be separated. That's what we're called to do. See how everything you do is the ultimate truth, whatever form it takes. And on the other side, the Rinzai school emphasizes this realization, this particular realization of emptiness as an aspect of reality, you know, what they call having a breakthrough, you know, kind of like, Eureka, I found it. And people exclaim, you know, they exclaim, I found it, I got it.

[16:30]

And the teacher goes, yeah, you got it. And then I think, apparently, I don't know, I've never been practiced in a Rinzai temple, but people will be shouted at, they'll shout out, yeah, so-and-so got it today, you know. some one place i was here the names would go up on the altar or something like that i thought well that's so interesting you know uh i i again i have some of you may have experienced that it'd be really interesting to hear what what you have what you've done there so this is quite a difference in approach of the how how to do it well just sit or penetrate this this problem this word problem you know really come back come through it break through it and express that to to your teacher So before looking at the first koan that I found in Suzuki Roshi's teachings in Zenmai Beginner's Mind, there in the very first lecture, he says, he quotes, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha. So it's kind of an old famous one, a little startling, as I'm sure it was, first time it was said, apparently by Lin Ji, who's the founder of the Lin Ji or the Rinzai school, Chinese master from, I think, the 12th century.

[17:41]

So he was quite a character. I've just been reading the record of Lin Ji, and mostly what he does in many of the stories, his encounters with his students, is he hits them. First he yells at them, and then he hits them. He gives them a chance to yell back at him, which they do. Oftentimes they yell back, he yells, they yell, and then he hits them. So it's actually quite... It must have been a very exciting environment, you know, to approach Linji, dare to approach Linji to ask a question. What he was hitting them with, apparently, at least in these stories, is a whisk. So we know about that from Shirtou. He was also hit in the face with a whisk when he was, you know, conceptualizing and intellectualizing his answer to his teacher, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the teacher just whacked him with the whisk and Shirtou woke up. So... This is a kind of tried and true, often tried, and sometimes there's a great relief for the student who has been working so hard to understand and finally can drop that effort and just look, just look and listen quietly.

[18:55]

So the thing is, what we want to do is find the koans that actually are occurring in our own lives. And that's where the life of it is for us. You know, what's our koan? How do we find those? So in terms of that seeking, our seeking for understanding, I really enjoyed another author, another teacher from the, it's kind of a combination Rinzai-Soto lineage, Yasutani lineage, in which John Tarrant, if those of you who've been around a while might know John Tarrant, wonderful teacher of, he teaches koans, and there's also Maizumi Roshi students who went on to do koan study with their students and so on. So there's a lot of that going on in America, or in the West, from, a lot of it from Maizumi Roshi, who was a student of this hybrid form of Zen. So John Tarrant basically wrote a book on koans that I like very much.

[20:00]

He starts, he introduces the koan on the dog, does a dog have Buddha nature, one chapter that he has in his book. His book is called Bring Me the Rhinoceros. So if you'd like another kind of easy access to understanding koans through John Terence commentary, that's a lovely book to get a hold of too. Bring Me the Rhinoceros. And the cover, there's a picture of a little bird. So it's right there. You're going like, wait a minute. Bring Me the Rhinoceros, and there's a picture of a little bird. So in his chapter on the dog and Buddha nature, he quotes Rainer Rilke, the wonderful German poet, about how to approach unsolved koans or riddles that persist inside of our own inquiry about life. He says to this, he's gotten a letter from a young poet asking for advice. And so this is called a letter to a young poet. Rilke says, I would like to beg you, dear sir, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

[21:15]

Don't search for the answers which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them. Don't search for the answers which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything, to live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. So it may be that the first step in entering into spiritual practice, in other words, into a deep inquiry about our very own lives, is to find out what our own questions really are. you know, to listen for those. What is it about your life that is seemingly unfulfilled or unsatisfactory or just simply stuck? Sometimes I ask students about that, you know. And it's pretty clear that that's kind of a hard thing to do is to look back on ourselves and to listen.

[22:23]

to what might be coming up. You know, once in a while, not once in a while, often a student will come in to see me and I just say, well, I don't know what to say, or I don't know what to talk about, or, and I say, well, that's okay. Why don't you just sit quietly for a while until something comes? Because what I found when I go in to see my teacher, and for years I'd go in with a question all prepared, you know, I'd memorize the question and go in, you know, because I wanted to have something to say. And at some point I realized that if I just sat there, with my teacher and listen to myself that these little, I've thought about them as little minnows. These little minnows would come up from the depths of my unconscious mind, these little tidbits. But that was always kind of a prelude to the big guy, which was just lurking down below. So little ones would show up and then the big one would come and I go, there it is. That's what it is. That's what's on my mind right now.

[23:24]

And of course it changes. It was always different. Almost every time I go in to see my teacher, my teachers over the years, there would be a different big fish that would show up. So although you could maybe already feel the question, you know, referred to as the great doubt, and in Santa's called the great doubt, Unless we discover a way to articulate it, then it kind of remains in the realm of what we call unrequited love. We know there's something we really want. We really want to find something, but we don't know what it is or where to look. It's unnameable, unlocatable, unrecognizable, missing piece of our own heart and our own mind. This kind of vague and persistent longing. If only, if only, Only I had. So these questions, the ones that seem to ache, are referred to in Zen as barriers or gates.

[24:25]

That's a barrier or a gate. Which means that's the place you go through. The gate is the place you go through. Now it might be closed or it might seem to be locked. But that's where we put our energy. We find out where's the gate. Where is it? as in the title of this collection of koans in which Zhaozhou's answer to the dog appears. You know, it's called the gateless gate, the gateless barrier. So this koan about the dog, Zhaozhou, the teacher in that koan is called Zhaozhou, and Zhaozhou and the dog has been around a long time, you know, maybe a thousand years or more. And still, in the Rinzai tradition, it's considered the best one for beginners, is my understanding. as they enter into some more systematic study of koans. And to arrive at that breakthrough, that breakthrough into a more awakened sense of who you are and where you are and what you do and don't know, which is mostly everything that you don't know.

[25:26]

But here you are anyway, right? So this question of breakthrough, as I said, is one of the primary issues of which the two schools, the Soto and Rinzai school, seem to have hearted ways in a certain sense. I mean, we're still the Zen school, right? We're on the same branch. We're just a little different sub-branch, little different twigs coming off of the same branch. So, you know, this gate that we are trying to open, again, referring to John Tarrant. John Tarrant says that the gate is the gate of the heart, of the human heart. I think that's really good. I like that. A gate that opens up our hearts to the simple joy of being alive. This kind of reminds me of this definition of nirvana that I found a while back that I like the best, as utter contentment. Utter contentment. That would be... I mean, I got anything out of life.

[26:27]

That would be it. That would be really nice. I am really content. Things are just fine. Not too bad, not too good, just good enough, good enough, good enough. So another way to understand opening the gate is to think of it as entering into a new or a different space than the one you're already used to, you know, some new perspective. And in the case of koans, it might mean opening to a new way of seeing things. Like, I never saw it that way before, you know, so that kind of the excitement of studying Zen studying the Buddha Dharma is I never saw that before you know of course you didn't I mean how could we you know we need that support we need that help we need that that that wish that urge to know more than we already know to find out what's just what's you know what's over the rainbow you know what's what's behind the what's behind the next mountain range or what's through that gate what is there that I don't know so That kind of a shift can take place by changing our focus from the content of the present moment, you know, the little things that are running around in our minds or before our eyes or, you know, into our ears, to the context of our life, you know.

[27:45]

It's what Suzuki Rishi called our big mind. The big mind is the context, the container. You know, other words for the context are the universe. reality itself, big mind. So our big mind, we are all citizens of big mind. We all are born with big mind. That's mom. That's where we come from. We come from big mind, and we're going home. That's where we're going, and that's where we are now. So there's no separation from reality. We're always in big mind, the context. We're always swimming around the great ocean of reality. But mostly we humans have been wired and taught to focus our attention on content, on the words on the page, and the meaning of the words on the page, or on the foreground of our field of awareness. Things like words and images, memories, sensations, objects, and in particular, stories.

[28:47]

We love stories. Stories that begin, they have some kind of adventure, and then they end. Dharma, that's called karma. This, and then that. This happened, and then that happened. As if it could, as if it did. So stories are basically, almost without exception, are delusional. Because this, it's just this. Just this is the realization of ultimate reality. Just this is it. As Reb's been teaching all week, thus, just thus, thus. Thus is always in the present. It's always complete, and it includes everything else. So this and that are thus. So focusing on the this and that, or focusing on the foreground, or on the content, is what Suzuki Roshi called our small mind. Our self-centered and our limited mind. So we have these two extremes. We have our big mind, the ultimate reality, and we have our small mind.

[29:52]

the one that we need to use in order to understand, in order to give the teachings of liberation, as Nagarjuna said in his verses. Without an understanding of the relative truth, the ultimate truth cannot be realized, cannot be taught, cannot be taught. We need words, we need explanations in order to understand how to free ourselves from words and explanations. so once you begin to identify with the background or the context of our life as well as with the foreground you know that kind of again Reb was saying about pivoting you pivot from one to the other you kind of check out the content and then the context you know expand and contract look at the big and then look at the small and see how they're in relationship with one another that's what these stories are helping us to do see that dance see the relationship of these different aspects of our experience so so that particularly we want to look at stories you know koans are stories and we especially want to look at the stories that we come up with ourselves that we call problems

[31:07]

The stories that we have that are not problems, we probably don't need to spend much time with, but the ones that are problems are the ones that we spend a lot of our time with, whether we want to or not. They're more like they have us than we have them. I don't have problems. Problems have me, right? And so all of it, you know, the whole show appears to exist in a different way than it actually does, you know? It begins to appear that things, that problems are really, really, really are. do really exist. And it's kind of painful if someone tells you that that's just an illusion. It's like, well, that seems kind of insulting. You know, my problems are an illusion. But actually it's intended to be medicine, to begin to look more closely, you know, to spread them out a little bit, give them more room. My therapist used to say, get more room inside, more space inside for your problems. You know, they're not, if you put them all together in a tiny little space, they really are, that is a problem. You know, how about giving them more room, more air? to move around and to be seen and to be thought about, cared about ultimately.

[32:12]

We want to care about them, not get rid of them, they won't go, but how to care for them, how to respect what it is that we care about in our lives and come to some harmony, internal harmony, which then helps us to have harmony with what seems to be outside of ourselves as well. So if you think about all the stories you've ever told yourself throughout your life, for example, you know, those times that you got lost in the woods or your relationship ended, you had a heart, a broken heart, or you were terribly afraid, or maybe you had an injury of some kind. You know, recently had a little surgery and now it's all healed up and it's sort of like I'm not thinking about it too much anymore. So it's like, yeah, that story seems to be Not so interesting anymore. It kind of had my attention for a while. Now not at all. Or write about money stories or anger stories. All of them. You know, we've all had a whole assortment of these stories.

[33:13]

And where are they now? Where have they gone? I would propose that most of them are forgotten. We've just forgotten. We've moved on. We're looking for something fresh. Something new. And of course they come. New problems come. But they will go the same way. that the old ones did. They don't last because impermanence is the primary truth of our life, of reality, as the Buddha said. So at the same time, I'm really not suggesting that we treat the things that come into our minds or we treat our problems as simply some transient appearance so that we don't have to care about it, we don't have to worry about it, you know, or we don't have to respect them or We can just disregard. That's not the teaching. The teaching really is about helping us to do this shifting perspective and to just lessen the weight of what we carry as we continue to work to resolve them. That's all skillful means. You know, the problems really, rather than overwhelm us, we want to put them a little bit out front so we can work with them and see what's a skillful way for me to resolve what's happening here.

[34:25]

What steps can I take? What things can I do? So what the Buddha saw and said about the nature of reality, as you all know, I'm sure you've heard many times, is that it's all transient. Like those problems, they will pass. There's no self. The one having the problems is also of the nature of illusion. And there's discontent, and that has to do with the problems and the one who thinks they have the problems. That there's a discontentment about things not being the way we want. In fact, the cause of suffering is wanting things to be different than they are. And as soon as I say that, I go, yeah, I know that. I want things to be different than they are. And when I do, that's suffering. On whatever scale, small or big, wanting things to be different than they are. Different than thus. Or just this is it. So it's still very hard for us to believe that that's so.

[35:27]

that things are really transient and no-self and the discontentment comes from our craving things to be otherwise. Unless we pass through these gateless gates of great doubt, we really bring it into the front, bring these issues in front so we can study them, like good scholars or good scientists. We really want to study as deeply as we can with the help of others. We don't go alone into the dark woods. We go with our friends, with our sangha. We explore, we ask, we look at the compass. Maybe we got their GPS signal. So we're always asking for help. And help is there. We want to help each other. So I think that's another part of our journey is making sure we don't forget about others as our companions and as those who perhaps have some way to support us when we're having something difficult going on. As I said, koans have been around a long time and through all these centuries there are lots of humans like us who have made use of them to understand themselves and to understand the world and to understand the problem.

[36:38]

So for Shakyamuni Buddha, his problem he discovered was suffering the suffering of humanity due to transiency. He found out that his beautiful young handsome body was going to age, sicken, and die, and that was unbearable. You know, I called that the facts of life. He found out about the facts of life, and it just, it terrified him, and so he ran away from home. It's kind of, I mean... I don't want to say that was silly, but it is kind of silly. How are you going to get away from old age sickness and death? But I think he thought, and there was a teaching of his era, that you could find eternal life somehow through meditating. You know, you could get out of this horrible body that is going to sicken and die. And you could go to some transcendent space, you know, something like heaven. or some Dharma realm, the Brahma, you could unify with Brahma, unify with light itself, and then you're free, you've been purified. So he did all that to try and arrive at that unification with the ultimate truth, as though it were separate, something outside that he could actually do things like meditate or not eat,

[37:51]

You know, not bathe. He did all these ascetic practices. And then at some point, your body would be so atrophied that it would let you go. And your spirit could transcend to this higher plane. Well, that was the idea. But what he discovered instead is he got very sick and he almost died. And he realized this is not the way. This is not the way to what I really want, which is to be liberated in this lifetime. I want to find freedom now. from my my fear of the facts of life now that's really what he discovered was he freed himself from his fear of what's happening he was no longer like looking for an alternative like you know things to be different than they are he stopped looking for things to be different than they are and that was the freedom he found from his suffering so You know, it says that on the Han. I think all of you who've been to Zen Center, you've seen the Han, and you've heard the, there's a mallet, the people hit the wooden board that hangs outside the Zendo.

[38:56]

And on it, it says, great is the matter of birth and death. You know, Buddhist Koan. Great is the matter of birth and death. No forever. Transiency. Gone. Gone. Completely gone. Awake, awake, each one. Don't waste your life. So, you know, you hear that sound, and that's the signal that invites you to the zendo in the morning. So 15 minutes of that sound, bonk, bonk, hit on that verse. Great is the matter of birth and death. So for Dogenzenji, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, his driving question, the one that sent him across the ocean to China, was this one. exoteric and esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintain that human beings are endowed with Buddha nature at birth. If this is the case, why did the Buddhas of all ages, undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment, find it necessary to seek enlightenment and to engage in spiritual practice?

[40:09]

So Dogen was already ordained But for all the things he'd done as a young boy, he was inspired at the site of his mother's body when he was seven, and he had promised her he would enter his spiritual life, and he did everything. From a very young age, he was in a monastery, he was a novitiate, he studied the texts, he read the originals in Chinese and old Japanese, and he had all of this training in the Buddhist theory and Buddhist teaching and the sutras and all of that. enviable body of study he'd done. And yet, you know, why am I doing all this if I am endowed with Buddha nature at birth? Why aren't I content? Why aren't I utterly content? You know, what's the problem? So that was his problem. What's the problem was his problem. So that drove him to China where he was relieved. You know, his famous drop body in mind. Drop body in mind. Drop it.

[41:10]

Drop it. Just this. Just now. Just here. Is it. So then, you know, what's the driving question for each of you? I've had quite a few of them, and I'm still driving around, so I think there's lots of promise for us to find questions that we can discuss together. You know, finding our own questions is the most essential part of this spiritual journey. And it's the first place that you take a step. on the path. So one of the ways to work with koans that I understand, or any problem for that matter, is to see how our judgments arise about the problem and to turn toward those very judgments over and over and over again. You're like, is this a real problem or did I make it up by myself? How will I know? Is this a real problem or am I making this up? fantasy, an illusion.

[42:13]

Can I step back and try to figure that out? What is the real problem here? And then little by little, we could perhaps come to understand, again, as John Tarrant says in his book, and many others have testified, how intimate and how tender our life surely is. John Tarrant says this, After years of struggle, my heart was at rest, and the world seemed like a much kinder place. After years of struggle, my heart was at rest, and the world seemed like a much kinder place. Could this openness be the way things truly are? Could this be the way to freedom? So, isn't that kind of interesting? It's just that letting go, like letting go, letting go. But without the struggle, we may never recognize that we let go. We need the stroll. We need that mountain to climb, or we need that challenge, or that knot to try to untie, or that friend to help, or whatever it is that we need to do these things in order to realize ourselves as fundamentally endowed with Buddha nature from birth.

[43:29]

So then I want to say a little bit more about koan. What is a koan? A koan is an interesting word. Basically, a koan is a story or a dialogue. Oftentimes it's a dialogue. In the early years of Buddhist teaching, the Buddha gave talks and those were written down. Thus have I heard was the first opening lines of each of the Buddhist talks. It began with thus have I heard. Thus have I heard was being written, meaning this is being written down by Ananda, who was the Buddha's attendant and cousin, who stayed with the Buddha for almost all of his life. He was attending the Buddha and copying or memorizing, he wasn't writing it down, he was memorizing what the Buddha said, because in those days there was no written text. But he, along with others, memorized what the Buddha said, and then later on those things were written down.

[44:31]

You know, these stories or these dialogues or questions, sometimes from Chinese, you know, fairy tales or lore, are oftentimes supplemented with commentaries. People comment on the koan. So if any of you looked at koan collections, the one we use most in Soto Zen is called the Book of Serenity. And then there's also the Mumongkan. and there's the Blue Cliff Record, and a number of others, which I'll be sharing those with you, some of those. When we find a koan that comes from one of those collections, then we can look in there and see what the commentaries about that koan are, and by who. You know, who wrote a commentary? So in our Zen practice, and particularly Ranzai practice, but also, you know, it's not like koans belong to anybody, because all of us who I know at Zen Center have studied koans, not in the same style. I don't take my koan into my teacher and have him say quats, or hit me on the head, and then I go out.

[45:32]

It's not like a two-minute exchange that oftentimes I think is what goes on in Rinzai. Rinzai's tradition, you go in, you state your answer, and then the teacher most often indicates that that's wrong, and then you go out. And then once in a while, a very great while, they they nod their approval and then you go to the next koan so there's kind of a series of a great number of koans that you work your way through so these these teaching stories that we've been studying we study them more like we talk about them we read about them we think about them and then there's kind of this like aha they show up at various times like oh that's just like that koan that i was studying or thinking about um but you know if you're if you're pushing on them if you're really working through them and breaking a sweat trying to understand them it can provoke this great doubt and then from there you can have some initial understanding in your practice so if the prolonged koan study can also shatter whatever you've made out of the fact that you got some understanding you know because then you start to in what we humans tend to do is start to inflate

[46:45]

So you begin to understand something and you kind of go like, oh, I guess I'm catching on to this, you know. You start to begin to puff up a little bit. So the Koan study also helps with that, kind of popping you, like they're very good at popping your inflated sense of your own understanding. And that allows further insight, further development of your compassion and of your integrating these great realizations with your daily life and with your character. So little by little, it's more like you're just weaving. And Reb is talking about the tapestry, reality, the ancient brocade, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. which is our daily life. The forms of spring are what's fresh, what's happening with us. Now we're taking those threads of our daily life, of what our life is now, and weaving them into this ancient brocade of teachings, of insight, of study that had been going on now for several thousand years. So we're the living generation.

[47:46]

If you think of a tree, if you think of our generation being the growth ring, of the tree the one that's alive now all those other rings have a great influence they're supporting us to live now and to develop further the understanding and to hold up the tradition so we're very important you know the growth ring even though we don't know a lot we're really just catching on and we're really trying our best but still it's our job to continue to let this tree continue to live and to have an impact to help with the suffering that there is in this world, as we all know. So the word koan itself is a compound, koan, or kungan in Chinese. Ko is like a public document. And originally, koan was a public case and the an is a table. So there was a table in public where the judge would sit and people would bring them their

[48:48]

problems, and then the judge would rule on them, and that would hit the gavel, and that would settle it. So the judge would settle the koan. So settling your koan, settling this question you have, the great doubt, is what this relationship is all about. So it serves as a kind of metaphor, this judgment table serves as a metaphor for these principles of reality that are beyond the opinion of any single person. And it's not just my idea of what the right answer is. It's like, what's the idea that's grown with this tree, that's grown out of this amazing relationship over so many centuries, that this magnificent tree, how do I respect what's happened, what's come before me? How can I make sure I'm not just going off on my own personal idea about what this all means? You know, it's like, keep coming back, keep coming back, and stay close to the source of your inspiration. So, and that teachers may try to help the students to recognize and to understand what that principle is, what that common ground that has been feeding and nourishing this tree for these thousands of years.

[50:00]

Any one common understanding people have is that koans are just tricks or they're unanswerable questions, you know, but actually they're not. They're not just meaningless or absurd. You know, in our practice, it's not, it's not, it's not just a riddle or a puzzle you're actually expected to give an appropriate response something that resonates from your heart from the gate of your heart as it opens and there's a Zen teacher by the name of Victor Hori who says that the central theme of many koans is the identity of opposites so again back to the two truths that form an emptiness form an emptiness, or light and dark, or any oppositional notions, which are all language, any oppositional notions we have, the koans are trying to help us to stop seeing them as opposites. So Victor Horace says that koan after koan explores this theme of non-duality, non-duo, non-separation.

[51:02]

of the ultimate and the relative, or of light from dark, or me from you, maybe the most important one. Not separating myself from the world or from my place in it in human society. I don't want to go away. I made a vow to live and be aware of the suffering of others and to do what I can to bring some relief both to myself and to those who suffer. where it says that koan after koan explores the theme of non-duality. Haquan's well-known koan, two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand is clearly about two and one. The koan asks you to know what duality is, not what is non-duality. And what is your original face before your mother and father were born? The phrase father and mother alludes to reality. And this is obvious to someone who's versed in the Chan tradition where so much philosophy and thought is presented in the imagery of paired opposites so when we're listening to koans we're looking at koans let's listen for those paired opposites to see how they're used to help us to understand and break through the clinging to one or the other side of a dualistic proposition and this phrase your original face another koan alludes to the original non-duality you know

[52:30]

What is your original face before your parents were born? There we are. So next week I'm going to look at this first lecture in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind and discuss the koan about killing the Buddha if you meet the Buddha on the road. As I said, this koan is attributed to Rinzai's founder. and it can be found in a record of Linji's sayings called the Linji Lu so I just got a copy of that from my teacher who happily had a copy he got back in 1973 and he's got these little notations this is so amazing I'm looking at these little notes that Reb wrote you know when is that 50 years ago anyway as he was beginning his studies with Suzuki Roshi. So I feel really privileged to have gotten this very pristine copy of the Linji Lu from Reb to use for our class. Okay, well that's what I have for now.

[53:35]

And I'd be very happy to hear from you, whatever you'd like to say. We have some chat things going on. Let me see what's going on in the chat. do. That's not chat. Yeah. Melissa sent the fundamental teaching of the middle way. Did you do you all receive that? You were able to get that in the chat? Oh, great. Yes, they did. Thank you, Melissa. That's great. Oh, good. Great. Okay. So you've got Hazy Moon by Maezumi Roshi. You've got Bring Me the Rhinoceros. great book, and Blue Cliff Record book. What? This is all there? Geez. I had to buy books. When I was a new student, I had to go and carry these really heavy books. And here we are, as light as a feather, lighter than a feather. It's the digital world. What a miracle. Thanks, Melissa, for doing that.

[54:36]

I really appreciate it. So, any questions any of you would like to bring up or comments? Whatever you would like to share. You'd be more than welcome. Any cons? Hi, Hope. Welcome, welcome. Hope has just left Green Gulch for far, far away. Salt Lake? No, Utah. Yes, yes, Salt Lake. Hello, everybody. Thank you for welcoming me to the saga. This is very important to me. This question is a practical question, but I wonder if there is... a way to be connected to everybody in the Sangha, like an email list or something like that, if that already exists.

[55:36]

Or maybe not, and that's okay. No, we kind of gather here at the watering hole. So anytime you want to meet with any of these folks, you can do that right here on Sunday at 5. We talked about that at one time, but I don't really know how we'd go about that, it seems like. I don't know, and then we'd put it, and I don't know. But that request comes back around, and people really want to have some way. But, you know, the chat is good, because we can share, like we just did, readings, and if somebody wants to meet up, certainly you're welcome to... offer that right here. If you're coming out to California or you're already in California and you'd like to talk about meeting with some of us, you're welcome to do that. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. Well, welcome. Nice of you. Glad that you were able to come. Tom do you want to say something about your note in the chat about group group me groupie yeah group group me um it's a uh it's a um an app I used uh with some people previously um and I

[57:09]

I don't think you don't even have to give. It's just an app that folks can get probably in Android or also Apple stores. And if someone starts it, which, you know, I could potentially be the person to start it, then I think you can find ways to connect pretty easily and like send an invitation to all. And then it's just something because who was asking the question? Hope was asking the question about connecting. possibly having the option to connect throughout the week, and that would give us the option if we wanted that option to connect at other points other than just on a Sunday if we want that going forward. So I'm just throwing that out there. Thanks, Tom. Thank you. Of course. Say it again? Yeah, thank you. Yes, of course. My pleasure. Yeah. Hi. Hello, Sangha.

[58:11]

I wanted to say a particular hello to Hope. Hi. I remember you from Green Gulch and my little Dharma sister. And I wanted to speak to how one creates Sangha in this environment, if I may. I was surprised at the degree to which I feel from meeting weekly in this group how close I feel to its members it's kind of like it's making me choke up a little bit actually I've never had an actual conversation with some of them but we've bantered about Dharma together every week and so when I met my Dharma sister Senkol at our Jukai I felt like I'd known her for a long time and it was so heartwarming to be in the same physical presence as someone you studied such enormous questions with.

[59:22]

But I built that entirely through being online with these people. And so it's so there and it's so present and we welcome you into it. Yeah, you'll be surprised. Thank you, Melissa. I realize now that my question came from longing and sadness leaving Green Gulch. So thank you for seeing that. I feel seeing. Yeah, I'm going to be feeling that myself pretty soon. And we don't have to be at Green Gulch, which is kind of... Kind of nice to know. It's not located. The unlocatedness of our Sangha, I think, is kind of a gift that those of us who can't be here, you know, it was wonderful that Ying could come for Zhukai, and that somehow doing the work of preparing for that was able to happen without our having to be in the same place, because we couldn't.

[60:30]

So anyway, I feel really grateful for this. flat screen event that's going on. And the other thing I thought about the meeting online that I really like, when I teach classes at Green Girl Chip, if there are a number of people in the room, I have 30 or 40 people, I can really only see the front row. Everybody's in the front row on Zoom. You know, you're all right there in the front row with your big head and your presence and your name. So there's something about that, just only front row seating. that I also really appreciate about this way of meeting. So anyway, there's of course pros and cons. But what's also also been very special is when we have had a chance to be together. Lisa was just out here. I showed you photographs from her Jukai last week and that was amazing. And now she's maybe not back home yet. Lisa, are you here? No, not yet. So she was traveling on her way back to Massachusetts.

[61:34]

So, yeah. Dean. Hi, y'all. I'm on my phone, which is a little bitty screen, so it's a little bit of a challenge, but I wanted to let people know, and some of you probably know and some don't, the The literature that we get online, often it opens up generally in a PDF file. And just know the page numbers are not necessarily the same as if you have a book in front of you. For example, I've been studying the hand of thought with a group of people online. And today someone got lost. Half of us have the books. Half of us are using the online book. And the online book has page number 119, and the written book, the actual physical book, is on page 109.

[62:44]

So just keep in mind, because a PDF reads every page. You know, often in the beginning of a book, there's like the moon and a dew drop. Page one is the front cover of the book. And then by the time you get to page one inside the book, there's been 15 pages of, you know, introductions and a drawing and other things. So just keep that in mind that when some of us are studying the PDF, that there may be some confusion because sometimes the books don't have, the digital books don't have even the numbers on the actual pages. So just you'll find out when it happens and it'll be confusing. But just know we all I think everybody struggles with it when we're balancing both of them. Thank you, Dean. Thank you for that. That's a little bit more information about koans.

[63:48]

That part of my brain, that sort of metaphor part of my brain doesn't. It's definitely alive, but it's generally in a state of confusion. And I've been in a koan class for for a while. And what I finally figured out is somewhere towards the end, often after we've said goodbye, I thought, oh, I've got something to say. So just, you know, if anybody else has got a sort of a slow brain around that, just keep in mind that it. It can seep in even if we don't know what it means. So I'm encouraging myself here with that. Yeah, thank you. You know, it also reminds me a lot of just looking at abstract art. you know, like you and I understand that I'm like, look at the horses running through the field, you know, what are you talking about horses, jellyfish, or whatever. So it's really also it's open to interpretation, which I think is what I like about him best is that we can all bring our own hit on what it is that those words are conveying and write our own commentary.

[65:03]

And Gil Franser years ago, I was I crazily said I would do a class on the Diamond Sutra, not knowing what i was saying it just said oh yeah diamond suture sure anyway it was insane and i realized i was way over my head and i said to gil who had been at stanford getting his doctorate i said well so so which commentary of the diamond suture should i read and he said oh you can read them but the one you really want to take care of is the one you write what's your commentary and i said oh so i like the invitation to find the freedom to your own understanding You know, how do you see it? And can't miss. Senko. Hi, Fu. Hi, Senko. I have a question, but I first want to just tell Melissa how much, you know, the same feeling I had when I see you guys in person.

[66:03]

And I feel like really dearly, she is my Dharma sister. It's very special. It was like, who did the magic work? Somehow she just, I don't know. I'm like, it's really hard to express. But, you know. I also have a personal koan. I've been thinking about it. I don't think there's an answer. But it's something, you know, kind of puzzles me. Like, from time to time. So I've been really into this book called Determined by Robert Sapolsky. He's a neuroscientist at Stanford. Basically, he writes about, you know, from neuroscience and biology to explain why there's no free will and why we don't have some kind of soul or some kind of central admin place just determining what we do as we think we have a spirit somehow. So from a very scientific approach, and I really loved it. And also some philosophy.

[67:05]

And also, you know, with the Buddhist teaching, I think it's really supportive. But then another thing I guess I'm trying to understand is sometimes like from my own experience, I find, yeah, I'm very determined, especially at the point when sufficient condition triggered my karma from the past. I would just say things to my kids, like I feel really bad later, but I couldn't control myself at that point, right? So then I start to think, you know, there's no free will. There's no such thing as, you know, soul to instruct. But how can I use my awareness, this practice, somehow to, I don't know, maybe not defeat, but managing this karma that's so deep. And I often repent, you know, my ancient Twisted Karma, because I think it's just so powerful. It's really hard. And then also, you know, scientifically, I understand, really, I like the theory of no free will.

[68:06]

But it's just those things mingle together. I think I'm very confused. I might have confused you. Me? Yeah. Well, maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'm confused. I'm talking a lot. Lack of free will. Well, what I thought when you said that, I mean, I understand that teaching. Also, there's a lag time between when we... do something and actually the decision to do it was nanoseconds earlier than we're aware of it. I've read that study too. And that's fine. I think that the nice thing about the Buddhist teaching is that that conditioning that's bringing forth that thing you wish you hadn't said, we're working to recondition ourselves. So we may not have free will, but we don't have to be conditioned we got from our parents so the way we were talked to by our parents we can actually as things arise into our consciousness from our unconscious so the unconscious is where all that conditioning took place that lack of free will because you know I just been trained to think a certain way and speak a certain way and so I am now in a retraining program and as the Buddha said what you are today

[69:22]

comes from your thoughts your training of yesterday your present thoughts and training will build your life of tomorrow your life is a creation of your mind so the way the method works is that what comes up now in your mind you you may see that as some like really kind of unkind speech or whatever so what we're working on is practicing kind speech and then that goes down into our unconscious Oh, I just said a really nice thing. I'm practicing nice speech, kind speech. When I'm not being motivated to say something unkind, I'm just gonna keep practicing kind speech. And then when my unconscious produces a response, maybe that kindness is going to start to come forward. Maybe my patience is, I'm practicing patience, and I'm putting that down in my unconscious. Maybe the patience will begin to emerge as a response rather than impatience. And I think it works. I think you know it works. I know it works. Yes. So it really isn't so much about whether you have free will or not.

[70:24]

It's like, what is your will? That you basically have some influence in kind of repackaging what you're carrying around. Yeah. No, that's really good. Because sometimes I have a little... Yeah, like what you said, I was thinking, no, free will... It just means we're so conditioned by our past, the past in the past, but then we can change the conditioning. Yeah, yes, yes, I think that's really helpful. You just reminded me, because sometimes I have a little thinking about that. Yeah, think about that. And also, you can help with your children's conditioning, because you're the one who's conditioning them. So your motive may also be, I don't want this to be generational. I want that behavior to stop with me. And I want my children to have a different option or different set of choices to make other than the ones I've inherited from my ancient twisted karma. Yeah. So it's not just for you, it's for everyone in your world, in your life.

[71:27]

Yeah. That you want to remember. Yeah. It's my lifetime practice. Yes. [...] Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. in. Thank you. You know, you just said something when y'all were just talking now, and you said, I believe this is what you said, that our unconscious is where that conditioning comes from. But it made me think that that unconscious is also where, when you said you know that decision, before we know it, it's somewhere. But that unconscious is also where I think our decisions or our knowing comes from too, because if, if one of the things I've learned is that I'm in an uncomfortable situation and I have to wait, I have to sit before I can move forward.

[72:44]

I have to wait for the answer to arise rather than try to go. get an answer. I have to wait for it to arise. And I sort of think that doesn't that, I mean, what we're doing is we're maybe working on those conditions that, you know, what Ying was talking about. But also in the same place, there's our, I don't know if strength is the right word or our peace or whatever. Doesn't that also reside there and what we do in this practice is we're also allowing that to be part of our i guess awareness yes and yes and then yes and then the you know the basic error that the alaya we're talking about the alaya the storehouse consciousness

[73:47]

which is what the Yogacara teachings, the mind-only teachings, are showing us the structure of the mind, which is above the line, there's six sense consciousness, that's all you're ever aware of, five senses and your thinking consciousness, which is aware of thoughts. And below the line, which is where you're sitting right now, is the alaya. The alaya is where all the ancient twisted karma has been carried along from beginning this greed, hate and delusion, And being born through body, speech, and mind, it makes me. That's what I'm made out of. And the good stuff, some of my conditioning was rather good. My parents were nice people, more or less, and they mostly did really nice things and took care of their children. And they basically taught us some nice ways to look at the world, along with other things that maybe weren't so good to be trained about. Even so, I feel like that good stuff is there too, and how does this living being discern?

[74:49]

How do I listen? I think listening is the key. How do I listen for that sound, that sound that's liberative, that's freeing? This direction is also freeing in the direction of how I see the world. So the teachings are all in there too. They're all getting put in there. digital systems can be going into the unconscious or in their collective unconscious. And we can access those in our conscious studies. We can learn these words, we can practice patience, and that continuously transforms the unconscious so that little by little becomes more and more beneficial, less harmful, less greedy, and so on. It's a work in progress, as we were saying. And at some point, you know, a fully enlightened Buddha doesn't have an alaya. It's gone. There's just kind of reflections in the mirror. There isn't that kind of person thing going.

[75:50]

They asked Buddha, are you a human being? He said, no. Are you a god? No. He said, what am I? I'm awake. So somehow, whatever that means to be awake, it kind of short circuits this thing about Because one of the problems with the alaya is the other part of the mind that's unconscious. It's called manas, the lover. And that part of the mind loves the alaya. We think that alaya is ourself. That's what we're in love with. That big bag of old conditioning. I can play the flute, and I can speak English, and I blah, blah, blah. I've got all these things that I carry around. That's what I'm in love with. So that has to pop. That dualistic notion that I have, possess, and yada yada, and am different than you, and so on and so forth, that's all stuffed in there too. So all of that needs to actually disappear. But before it does, we work with it.

[76:52]

You know, that's our practice. Just keep working with it, little by little. So I have faith in that. So does it disappear in that it's almost like we absorb it, that duality goes away and that disappearance happens because we sort of integrate and absorb everything into no thing? Well, I think that we do it, it disappears. The doer disappears. So it's pretty hard to testify how that happened. You know, it's basically the one who still sees themselves as separate is doing the work. You know, we're the bodhisattvas. We're not abandoning our selfish tendencies or our hateful tendencies. We're learning about them. And we're learning how they work and how they fool us. And the more and more we're not fooled by these products that are coming up from down below.

[77:57]

the better chance we have of making a different kind of response over time, you know. So I think we can just sort of trust the process if we do, and that if we continue to work with practicing patience, practicing ethics, practicing generosity, and so on, that that's transformative of this whole system. And then as we get really, really old. Perhaps we'll just smile. Goofy. Goofy smile. All that will be left of you, Dean. I've got good practice with that. Thanks. You're welcome. All right, dear ones. Hope wanted to know what the name of the poem was. Nagarjuna? Was it the Nagarjuna? Hope wanted to know. What did you want to know, Hope? Where are you? Hi. You read a poem or recited a poem earlier about inevitably awakening, finding... Nagarjuna.

[79:09]

Nagarjuna, okay. So you want to look at the fundamental wisdom of the middle way. Jay Garfield. Give you something to do out there in Salt Lake City, okay? Thank you, thank you. You're welcome. I'm going to go on gallery. I'm putting you on gallery. You're putting me on gallery? Okay. I have my own Alaya over there. Okay. Are you going to do it? I got it. You did it? Oh, hang on. I know what the problem is. There we go. Now I'm on gallery. Wonderful. Hello. Hello. Why? Oh, look in the chat. If you want those references, they're all in there. I think you've got to get them now, or they will vanish. Tom's Go Me is there. Huh? Tom's Go Me is there. Group Me is there. Oh, Group Me. Okay, I'm going to let Tom and Amir, who seem to know what they're talking about, take care of any possibility of linking us in, because I am a boomer, and I know nothing.

[80:19]

It's so embarrassing. No, that's okay. If I could say just another word about it. So the group me allows us to kind of chat with one another and I can kind of make a group. And then it's kind of it just allows us to kind of share those links, for example. So it's kind of a yeah, it's just a chat function, a social media chat function. You can look at reviews and read about it more like within the app stores on your if you have a smart device. And I don't I think you have to have a smart device. Maybe you could just connect on any browser. on a laptop or whatnot but it just allows us to chat with one another and and uh you know share those links that folks were sharing tonight uh going forward or any other information that we want to share with each other so at the moment i just gave my name and so you'd connect with me and then i'll change i'll make it a group uh if you'd like to do that i can make it a group called the sunday dharma group as an option so Does that help to explain it better? Am I being helpful? I hope. You are helpful, Tom.

[81:20]

I'm sure everyone who's nodding knows what you're talking about. Okay, cool. Good. Yeah, I just barely know what a document is. That's how bad. No, that's okay. I'm just like, what's a document? Anyway, I'm just making new copies of things. I kind of do that. I make a little page. Okay. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, everyone. Yes. My pleasure. Have a good night. We'll be killing the Buddha. So I'm very sorry. Sorry. We have to deal with that. But it's first koan. This is a Giro. She presents in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. So read the first chapter. I think what's going to be really fun is rereading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind together and then finding these little nuggets that we can, you know, poke into a little more. there it is thank you michael ten my beginner's mind okay everyone many blessings to you all i hope you're gonna have a great new year and life and uh we'll see you next week thank you so much food thank you [...] everybody welcome thank you thank you take care thank you

[82:39]

Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful. Good night till next time. I hope you had a good visit at Enzo. We did. We had measuring tape, you know, extravaganza and a couple of inches off a few places. We're going, no, no, it's not going to fit. Our favorite little thing is, you know, anyway, we're, we're doing this suffering of stuff. You take it up and you squeeze it down a little. Can you? No. You can just do it like you do on the page. You just push it together and it gets smaller. Mm-hmm. Or you push the walls out a little bit. Oh, that's lovely. We didn't try that. Actually, we're really excited. We think we've got it. We've got our map and we've got our... Yeah, you guys seemed very excited yesterday. When's your move in? Well, that's a little question, too. Technically, April 12th is our... our moving date, but we'd like to maybe make it April 1, if we can get Zen Center degrees so that we can have the stuff we've ordered, delivered, and put in place so that when the Zen Center stuff arrives, we've already got the things that we bought, like the bed and things that then we can put the other stuff in.

[83:59]

So it's a little bit of a conversation with the powers who are also very hard to figure out who they are. Let us know what we... I keep saying, I think Kate Page is one of the powers. I think we should keep going up to the fourth floor. That is not the case. Let me assure you that, you know, it really does seem like that is a really big question. Everybody has like one of them, Kate, I want to share with you actually thought of emailing you. There was one of our friends who I'm a little concerned about. And I told a number of people I'm concerned about her and people who know her. And I wondered, I mean, as time goes by, there are going to be a lot more people we're concerned about, you know, who are wandering the halls or forgetting to dress or whatever it is, this happens. And what is the overview or who's got the eyes on the people in terms of caring for them and letting someone know we've got a concern about

[85:04]

you know, so-and-so. Do you know anything about that line of care? Yes. That one, there is a person in charge. Have you met Florence? Yeah, in the elevator. Yeah, we did. We ran into her. She's the head of health, I think. For instance, two weeks ago when Marsha Lieberman went and had a knee replacement, she monitored it and arranged... transportation for her to have her PT and went and checked on her regularly so Florence is the one great that's so good to know this is one of the things that Enzo is trying to do is to kind of take care for people care for people as needed but not intrusively but there are certain obstacles because there is HIPAA the health privacy I know at a different CCRC, they have a buddy system so that if someone's ill, you can't ask the staff.

[86:14]

You have to sort of go through this buddy system. They have to give permission for information about their situation to be passed around. Even if they're kind of endangering themselves a little bit? Well, I don't know. To be misoriented? Right. Because you know, like, what happens to our compassionate practices if you're, you know, in the face of HIPAA? I mean, how do we... Anyway, it's an interesting problem, isn't it? So Florence is the one, and she's very good. Good. Yeah. Good. All right. At least there's no problem with telling her if you're concerned about someone. I think I will. I think I'll write her. I think, yeah, I am concerned. So there was yet another piece of... Unfortunate news passed to me this afternoon that Malika is leaving. Oh, I actually got a preview of that one. Wish I was told not to tell, but now you know, so.

[87:16]

She apparently announced it this morning in after meditation session. Yeah, people are. The community is concerned by the number of people who are leaving. Yeah, I bet. It is so, it must be like, I don't know, the Ukrainian army or something. They just drop out. All of a sudden you think you got this thing and then it's like, holy moly, we're running out of this, we're running out of that. I sympathize with the startup problem that's going on that I can hear about. And yeah, I really do. I feel, I'd be glad to be there and try to be a part of the conversation. I know Nancy's been sick too, which I hear had kind of a problem for the Zendo not having it in there, but now she's back, so maybe there'll be some more order in the seating. Apparently the seating is kind of wild. So I'm hearing a little bit about all of that, and we're planning to come back up fairly regularly in the next two months while we're moving.

[88:24]

And if there's any way I can help or get in touch with anybody, I'm more than happy to do that. I'm going to email you and see if you have any time this week for a Zoom with me. I would. I'm kind of retired. My last day as a Zen Center employee is April 12th, and my vacation starts February 12th. So I'm basically... I'm a free person. It's amazing. I have had this experience before in my life, so I will be available. We experienced that challenge of people changing over last week when we were there because I had the contacts lined up. From earlier in the month, I had lined up two contacts. One was the Enzo facilities guy who was named John, and the other was a white person who could get anything done.

[89:28]

And when we came back a week ago Monday, and I was prepared to go at it again, I found that John had left the week before. Oh. And Eddie, the white guy, had a personal family issue and wasn't there either. So suddenly I'm recalibrating, trying to find out my connections into the system to try to get things done. And it unfolded totally differently than I had expected. But I did find new connections. And also Eddie returned on Thursday. very in good spirits so whatever it was he worked through it with the family and things were good again and so it's a dynamic and we're just and we're concerned about the turnover and there are some other I don't know big issues not for now that we're kind of starting to ask questions about and

[90:36]

So I'm glad for your April date because there are some big challenges in the operations, especially the big one seems to be the heating, the climate control. There's some major disconnect or problem with that system that we're realizing nobody has any idea how to fix it. Ultimately, even the experts. The guy who was supposed to be the expert did a talk on Tuesday and people would bring him, well, my system's doing this. He says, oh, I have no idea what's doing that. So if you've got the guy who's supposed to fix everything saying, I have no idea to everything that people bring him, there's a challenge ahead of us. Did he say something like, but I'll find out? Oh, they've got to say that. I don't know, but I'll find out. Probably he has to find out, doesn't he?

[91:36]

I mean, you can't just say, sorry. This is the disconnect with whites. We're surprised at the things that they don't answer that way. The obvious answers aren't coming back to us from a company that's this old and this established and been through this so many times before. It's Everybody, all of the workers are very sincere, very hardworking, but they can't fix it because the overall structure has some cracks in it and they can't fix the cracks in the dam themselves. And nobody's above is saying, well, what do we do to fix the dam? And so we're trying to figure out how do we proceed with this to try to facilitate some... vision into this by the management. So we're not... Is this called Rosemary? I mean, is Rosemary either buck stops there? Not with whites, though. That's someone else, right? Rosemary is... We're finding we like Rosemary a lot, but she has limitations in what she understands in these mechanical systems and in terms of who to talk to and how to try to get this...

[92:54]

It needs some very high-level engineering experience. I'm not quite sure where to go yet. We'll work on it next time we're back there. But what I'm expressing is that your dates are good because by then, we'll hope some of this stuff is settled down. And it'll be also... It'd be getting warmer, too. Well, that's what concerns people. Oh, the air conditioning. Oh, the air conditioning. It doesn't work. But if the air conditioning doesn't work, it could be a big problem. And there are people whose units are basically uninhabitable where they keep flooding from the air conditioning system. No, that's horrible. Liz Klein had a situation where the system would only air condition. So it was freezing in her unit.

[93:56]

She could not get it to turn off. And so she got these little space heaters and kind of huddled in the corner. But it was... They should have moved her somewhere else. But she was sort of just, you know, doing the Zen practice with it, of sitting with the discomfort. And... And ours isn't so bad, but we have our system set at 68 degrees and it keeps warming it to 73 and holding it there. Well, that's what happened to, I think it was, somebody was visiting and she had it set for 72 and it was 75. I mean, it seemed like there's a, it's not completely like Liz Klein, not completely that bad, but obviously not what you want. If I say 72, I want 72. Yes. And I assume that's how the system is supposed to work. And the head guy is saying, oh, no, it can't be. We can't do that. It has to be in a four-degree band. So between 68 and 72 is what the thermostat is going to hold it at.

[94:59]

And that's not acceptable. Two degrees above and two degrees below. Oh, my God. It's making no sense. So don't try to. When I got my Prius, when I first got my Prius, the tank. You're supposed to not run out of gas ever, right? So the tank was reading that there was gas. And then my daughter drove my car and it stopped running. And she was, all the lights were flashing and everything else. And we towed it to a gas station and the guy's going in an engine. And then we towed it to the Toyota dealer. And he said, you're out of gas. I'm out of gas. I'm going to be out of gas. It says there's gas. Well, it's a bag, you know, and it's kind of more or less. Got stuff in it. It shows you low. Yeah. You know, the rule is when it gets low, you have to fill it. Exactly. Exactly. A little more primitive than this precise, you know. So it sounds like our heating system might be similar. Yeah, you think it's dialed into a precise readout and it's just an approximation of what's there.

[96:01]

So anyway, I'm hoping we have a mission next week when we go back to see if we can make some progress. with our unit, which may also translate into others. But there's a bigger problem in the complication of the HVAC. And part of the problem was that the contractor that was installing it just left one day. We'd call it, he went bankrupt, but he couldn't finish the job. And so now there have other... people coming in and trying to fix everything that they left undone and no documentation as to what was finished and what wasn't. And there are some units which is the plumbing, the ductwork in the ceiling is so messed up, they're actually having to open up the entire ceiling and the unit and reduct it. Those are examples of worst-case scenarios. There's a few of them, at least a few of them like that.

[97:02]

There's also a third of the units are not occupied, so nobody can report whether these things are happening. It's the occupied ones. They're in hotels, aren't they? Those guys are in hotels, right? Some are. Yeah, so supposedly White's pays for people to stay at the Trio Hotel. White's are Enzo. Or Enzo. It's paid for. It's not on the individual. I heard that. They can't live there until they get signed off on this. That's another one. There are people. Maybe we'll reconsider the offer to move to Mallorca. It's like... We'll keep you updated and you can decide if you want to fine tune it as it gets later in February, whether this stuff is getting resolved or whether it's getting worse. We'll be up there. We're coming up. We're going to keep coming up. Yeah, we're going to come up and see people and hang out and make, you know, we just got a storage unit so we can start to bring things up.

[98:07]

You'll get regular reports on what's going on and decide how to fine tune it. Let us know next time you're planning to come up. I will. I will. That'd be sweet. I hope you'll be there. We can have lunch together. Yes, and I will email you to get a date this week. Okay. Okay, great. Let's do it. Thank you. Good to see you guys. Good to see you guys. Everywhere. Everywhere I go. We're all in this together. We certainly are. That's the good part. Yes. That is the good part. Okay. Good night. Good night. Bye.

[98:38]

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