This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So, good evening. Tonight, here at Zen Center, most of the residents are going through some grief counseling with a grief professional... and over Myogen's death, the Abbot of Zen Center. So we're going to have a very informal talk, as you've already witnessed at the beginning of the informality. And I can, since we're all here, and there's not that many of us, I was going to give you all the option of either giving a Dharma talk on Shikantaza or... the transmission of the fifth and sixth ancestor and that history and the beauty of the poems that were involved.

[01:12]

Or, if you prefer, since we're such a small group, we could just do discussion and question and answer. And I'm happy to talk about any aspect of Zen practice that you want to. So, Give me some feedback. What would y'all like? Totally open to y'all. Nobody has any feedback. History is lovely. Okay. We'll do history. We'll start with my history. How's that? My name is Jamie Howell. I am a lay entrusted... Zen teacher. I'm not a priest. I started studying with a Renzi teacher in 1978, the same teacher that studied with Leonard Cohen, or Leonard Cohen studied with the same teacher.

[02:15]

We somewhat overlapped. But contrary to many of the priests here at Zen Center, I have a wife of 46 years old four children, three grandchildren, a dog, a refrigerator, two mortgages, and three cars. And two jobs. And I'm a member of the Lay Zen Teachers of America. And we're having our convention this weekend down in Burlingame. So that should be exciting. Zen teachers are coming from all over that are lay teachers from Burlingame. New York, from Portland, from Miami. It'll be very interesting. Before I got involved in Zen, I was the road manager of Natalie Cole, and before I started, before I was the road manager of Natalie Cole, I was the staff record producer for Jefferson Airplane, and before that I was a lead guitar player in my own band and practiced music with many different

[03:27]

country, blues, and rock bands throughout America. I ran away from home when I was 17. So how I ended up here, I have no idea. But here I am tonight. So I wanted to talk a little bit, I guess, since history was voted on, the only person that voted. I thought I would talk to you a little bit about... a historical oddity in Zen. I'm going to take it for granted that you don't know a lot about the history of Zen Buddhism in China in the 800s. So if I'm being too basic, please, you can come up and slap me anytime you want. but we all know that well we all may know that Bodhidharma came from India in around 800 AD or 700 AD and began the Zen tradition and he passed it on to Eka and then five people later the

[04:55]

holder of the Dharma lineage was a man named Diamond Conan. He was the fifth ancestor. And he was getting ready to die and he wanted to pass on the transmission to a good successor. And Everybody expected it to be his head monk, whose name was Jinshu. But about six months before he passed on his transmission, a student showed up at his place who had heard the Diamond Sutra. And this was a young man. who was later known as the sixth ancestor, Daikon Eko, Daikon Eno, who was illiterate, totally illiterate.

[06:06]

And when he got to the monastery, they wouldn't even let him go into the Zendo. They sent him off to help cook the food, and his job was to hulk rice. And... So the fifth ancestor decided that he would have a contest to see which of his students should be his successor, and the contest was to write a poem. And nobody wanted to write a poem, so everybody was totally embarrassed. I'm not going to write a poem and give it out. But finally the head monk wrote a poem, and he wrote it on the wall, but he didn't take credit for it. I just wrote it on the wall to see how it would be accepted. And his poem was, The body is the tree of wisdom, the mind is but a bright mirror.

[07:07]

At all times diligently polish it to keep it free and be it untainted by dust. So polish it, keep it free from dust. And of course he was using... the idea of the mirror as a metaphor for the mind, to keep the mirror clean, allow all phenomena to easily manifest itself on the mirror, don't have a lot of thoughts if you're practicing zazen, if you allow yourself to be, say, an empty mirror. When the bus goes around the corner, you don't think, oh, there's a bus going around the corner, but you just hear the beep, beep, beep, or you hear the purity of the phenomena, or you see the purity of the phenomena. And this actually was a really, really good poem.

[08:09]

Jin Shu is often, he was the loser of this... Dharma combat, but he's often put down for this poem because subsequent to his posting this poem on the wall, Daikon Eno, the illiterate, dictated his poem to a friend and he put a rebuttal to Jinshu's poem and his rebuttal was... The tree of wisdom fundamentally does not exist, nor is there a stand for the mirror. Originally, there's not a single thing. So where would dust alight? So that poem comes from the point of view of no duality, no duality, There's no mind, there's no phenomena, there's no nothing.

[09:15]

Everything is pre-existent in a state that exists before the mind itself, maybe, or before the mind perceives other things. And the fifth ancestor liked that poem a lot. but since it was written by a novice who hadn't even been to the Zendo yet, he couldn't exactly confer upon this guy the robe and the bowl and the symbols of transmission to become the sixth ancestor. So he called this young man into his quarters in the middle of the night, and he transmitted the robe and the bowl to him. And he gave him the advice, go away and come back in about 15 years because nobody's going to accept you right now at age 18 or 20 or whatever he was.

[10:23]

And don't tell anybody that you were transmitted and just leave. So he led him to the gate and Daikon Eka left. And the word got out that he had given transmission to this young guy. And a number of the students, not Jinshu, but a number of the students were very upset that this upstart, this nobody, was now going to be the next patriarch of the Zen school. So they gathered together a posse. And the posse was led by... none other than General Ming, the evil Ming himself. It may have been the same Ming that was in the Flash Gordon movies of the 1930s. So the evil Ming takes off with his posse, and Ming is the only one that has the fortitude and the stamina to keep up the pursuit for...

[11:35]

40 days and 40 nights, let's just say, for sake of religious purposes. And the rest of the posse drop away, and Ming catches up with the sixth ancestor, the young kid, and he catches up to him on a mountaintop, and the sixth ancestor says, well, if you want the bowl and the robe so much... if you want the transmission so much, because the bowl and the robe were just metaphors for the transmission. I'll set them on the rock here, and if you want them, you can take them and go. And Ming went over to grab them, and he couldn't pick them up. Of course, this is perfect mythology, but he couldn't pick them up. It's probably like something that we would read in our... Christian-Judeo transmission. He couldn't pick them up, and so he was breaking out in sweat, and he turns to the sixth ancestor, and he says, okay, brother, I understand you've got the power, and if you will show me how I can become enlightened, I would appreciate it, or something like that.

[12:54]

And the sixth ancestor says one of the first koans, that you're given in Zen. Does everybody know what a koan is? A koan is a Zen question that is often given in the Rinzai sect that you meditate on and when you come up with the answer, you come up with a lot of wrong answers before you come up with the right answer, but you meditate on it. They're often nonsensical and paradoxical and difficult to come up with a clear answer. And I did study in the Rinzai sect for about six years and was never able to answer a koan using words. I always had to act it out some way before it was accepted. I would always try words first, but that was never acceptable. So he said to the General Ming, he says... Show me your original face before your mother and father were born.

[14:01]

And of course, as so many of these Zen stories go, upon hearing those words, General Ming was suddenly enlightened, and everybody lived happily ever after, and the sixth ancestor was installed as the abbot, and he wrote the Platform Sutra, and everything was fine and dandy. But what happened to the loser? who wrote this wonderful poem that I still love. The body is the tree of wisdom. The mind is just a bright mirror. At all times, diligently polish it and keep it remaining clear and untainted by dust. When I teach my... or when it even gives us an instruction on Saturday, one of the things that I try to get people to do is to set their minds in a way that they can stop thinking and that they can easily reflect all phenomena that comes into their sensory field.

[15:23]

just went by. The shadows change a little bit. And all of this phenomena, as you're sitting zazen, as you're sitting meditation, should be experienced before language and before, well, Before language, and then before you make the further mistake of saying, oh, that was a motorcycle, I am hearing a motorcycle. So there's two steps there. There's a vroom, well, there's three steps. There's vroom, there's I am hearing a motorcycle, I'm hearing, and then I am hearing a motorcycle. There's a motorcycle, and I am hearing a motorcycle. And if you stay just with the pure phenomena, the vroom, or the... as it's reflected right now, or the pain that's in your knees and you want to move a little bit or whatever.

[16:25]

If you just stay with the actual physical sensory perceptions, you're able to develop a state to where you can make true Buddhist inquiry. But before you make that Buddhist inquiry, you've got to get all those thoughts out of your head, and let phenomena just manifest itself clearly. And then you'll get the answers. All the answers to all the koans, all the answers to your life's problems will become easier for you to access once you allow phenomena just to appear and disappear as it does throughout the day. Instead of thinking about it yourself, or thinking about thoughts, just allow the phenomena to come and go. So Jenshu was proposing this, this kind of philosophy, and he didn't get to become the sixth ancestor.

[17:36]

So what happened to him? He left the monastery, and he started another school of Buddhism called the Northern School of Zen. which lasted for about 300 years. He was the national teacher of three emperors. And of course, you know, that's like saying you were MVP of both major leagues and you won the Cy Young also. So he was very well thought of as a teacher. And his school would have lasted to this day if it hadn't been for the An Lushan Rebellion. which was a rebellion by sort of a psychotic Chinese general that actually cut the population of China at the time in about, well, they had 6 million people before the rebellion, they had 2 million people after. Not all the people died in warfare, but the economy and the whole system of

[18:45]

Government and everything spells so much apart that people had flags, they had starvation, they had warfare, they had all kinds of stuff. And so that school of Buddhism was lost. But recently, his death poem was found, and I'd like to read you this as well. All Buddhadharmas come forth fundamentally from mind. If you waste effort seeking it outside, it is like rejecting your father and running away from home. In Chinese culture, if you reject your father and you run away from home, it's very uncool. He's still saying that everything comes from mind and he's disappointing back to his his previous poem about keeping the mind free from dust, but he's implying it.

[19:50]

So when you are sitting zazen, and I hope that you all do sit some zazen, just take a good posture. You can sit in a chair. It doesn't matter. maybe do a couple of clearing breaths, and just begin to concentrate on the phenomena as it manifests itself. There's lots of little tricks that I've learned over the years, and this may sound totally ridiculous, but one of the things that I'll do when I'm really being bothered by the buzzing of thoughts in my head or whatever, is I try to see the phenomena that I'm hearing. So I will use my eyes to hear and use my ears to see.

[20:57]

It's just a trick. But it requires so much concentration that the rest of your buzzing thoughts seem to go away. So maybe... We could sit together for a second and maybe you could just try that. Try to see sound and hear light. Okay? Maybe we could sit for maybe a minute. Was that ridiculous?

[22:22]

Or was that helpful? Or was that impossible? I mean, I wouldn't do it for very long, but it's kind of like starting the engine when it's cold. It's just a way of opening or strengthening your concentration. You know, there was a student who asked a Zen master, not so long ago in the 19th century, he said, Master, what's the secret of zazen? And the master said, attention. And the student said, well, there's got to be something more. I mean, that attention. What's that? And the master said, attention, attention. And the student said, can you just say one more thing, Master? And the master said, attention, attention, attention.

[23:25]

And this trick of seeing sounds with your eyes and hearing sights with your ears is just a way of jump-starting your attention. It's not the... I wouldn't do it for very long. It's I've never heard anybody else say it. It's just something that I've found that I can do sometimes in the Zendo when I'm starting to dream about ice cream or my wife or my dog or something. So I think it's valuable to do. And I think it's important that you try to sit, if you are sitting, that you try to sit every day, even if it's for 10 minutes.

[24:32]

And try to sit with just following, not even following your breath actively, but just allowing phenomena to drip through your mind. and allow it to manifest itself in its pure state without any language, without any identification. Ten minutes a day and work up to whatever you feel is necessary. Any questions? Please. I really want some questions. You have to ask me a question. see sounds and hear light, what would be the corollary to thinking thoughts?

[25:43]

Well, we each practice differently, you know. I can only speak for myself and I'm not so orthodox. But A lot of people will talk about labeling their thoughts. A lot of people will talk about letting their thoughts pass and honoring them. And there is no corollary, but I don't try to suppress my thoughts. I just try to become so actively involved in experiencing phenomena that thoughts gradually tune themselves out. Does that make any sense? Well, thoughts are confusing. But attention, attention. Pay attention to your thoughts if you have to.

[26:44]

But if you pay attention to the phenomena as it comes up, you'll find that sooner or later you're just experiencing the purity of... the world as it is. Yes, sir? I've done it both ways. When I was sitting at Mount Baldy with Sasaki Roshi, they used to feed us the world's worst cup of coffee in the morning before we got started. Here, you can go and make a cup of coffee in the kitchen if you want to do it. The reason I don't do it is that I almost inevitably want to go and use the restroom about 20 minutes into it.

[27:52]

So that's my... really the reason I don't. I don't think there's anything wrong with coffee, especially if you're not used to getting up so early. It does make for more thoughts. It does make for you to have a tendency to roll off and not stay with the phenomena that's coming up. But it also keeps you from falling asleep. So sometimes you have to give up one to get the next. Theravada. I'll disagree that it originated from, but Theravada. Well, you know, it's a really interesting concept because school-specific, because I think, this is my opinion, is I think that

[29:01]

we're influenced here in the West by Theravada Buddhism, by Tibetan Buddhism, by Zen Buddhism, Vipassana, which is a style of Theravada Buddhism. And I think more and more these various styles co-mingle and ultimately, I think in 200 or 300 years, there's going to be a style of Western Buddhism that co-ops a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Myself, I would like to keep Zen as pure as I can, but I don't think that's really what's going to happen. So anyway, that's a side thought. Questions from somebody? Yes, ma'am. Well, Suzuki Roshi said when he first came to America and he had Western students that were very, very diligent and in a lot of ways more diligent than his students had been in Japan.

[30:27]

They wanted to sit more. I recently came back from South America where they're having the same kind of schism that Suzuki Roshi faced in the 1960s. They're having it there now. The Western students want to practice meditation. They want to practice compassion. They want to practice the precepts. And the older Asian Buddhist groups want to practice bingo. And, you know, the temple was really the social thing. and there's less of that. Anyway, I bring this up because Suzuki Roshi said, I understand that you are not exactly priests, but I also understand that you're not exactly lay students.

[31:29]

It's easy for me to understand that you're not priests, but it's harder to understand that you're not laymen. So, out of that statement, and statements of other Japanese teachers, comes this tradition of lay dharma entrustment or lay dharma transmission that, yes, has only been occurring in the West. As far as I know, it's only been occurring in the English-speaking world and in the French-speaking world. I was down in Brazil. They did two retreats with some groups down there. And they have a very, very sincere teacher who studied in Japan for 12 years, but is a Brazilian woman. And she thinks it's a good idea, and she wanted me to come down and talk to her students about lay dharma and trustment. And it's a way of practicing your sincerity and becoming a teacher without having to give up

[32:39]

your life my my life as a father and grandfather said i would have to study priestcraft for three or four maybe even five or six years before i could could teach and my teacher thought i was ready to teach five or six years ago so he gave me entrustment at that time In Japan, in the late 19th century, during the Meiji Revolution, after the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown, the Zen priests were thought to be primarily Tokugawa loyalists. And the Meiji supporters thought that one of the best ways to diffuse the political power...

[33:40]

And the militaristic power of the Zen priests, because they had little armies of their own back in the Middle Ages, was to tie them down with wives and children. So starting about 1865, Zen priests were not only encouraged, but made to marry and have children. They are the Japanese Buddhist sect are the only Buddhist sect that has a non-celibate precept. You don't have to be celibate. The precept of sexuality is do not misuse. It's not do not do. It's just do not misuse. So priests can have families. But by and large, in the West, And in the East as well, it's impossible to have a large family on a priest's salary.

[34:45]

A lot of priests have one child, sometimes two. But I don't know of any priests that have more than two. And the ones that I do know that have two have twins. So, I don't think you could get away with having four and putting four through college. Oh, God. Yes, ma'am. Well, I'm going to say this is the way I teach. I don't hear very many other people talking about it, although my teacher talked about it a little bit. I don't hear very many other people talking about it. I'm trying to give you a different point of view. If you come here all the time, you can pick and choose. Maybe what I'm saying to you is useful to you, and maybe it's so unuseful that you can throw it in the trash as you go out the door.

[35:53]

But I'm trying to give you a different way to hang your hat on it. But I'm sorry to interrupt. You didn't even get to finish your question. Well, you know, that's an interesting question because there was a Zen teacher named Nagaharjuna in the Indian period of the Chan lineage, or the Zen lineage, and he and his students did that kind of thing, and they would list all... 2,978 types of phenomena and how they would interact and how hot fudge sundaes are both hot and chocolate and vanilla and cold you know I mean it's a conundrum the Indians are really good on lists you know they were that pre pre maybe

[37:03]

500 AD, they really got good on lists. How many sins you could make and how many different kinds of phenomena and how many precepts you had to take. I think at one point it got up to 342. We're down to 10 now. I think one probably covers it. Do no evil, just do good. But... I could probably find you some literature that would answer your question, but I'm afraid your head would hurt from boredom after you read that sort of treatise. Yes, sir. Well, I studied Rinzai Zen and Soto Zen, and they may seem very similar to the outsider, but to the insider, they're about as different as the Russian Orthodox Church and North Carolina snake handlers.

[38:13]

So it just really depends on your perspective. Buddhism did a wonderful job at going into various countries and co-opting whatever was going on in their society and sometimes co-opting their relationships their religions that were going on in their societies. And that way they would sneak in quite a bit. I mean, the Tibetan versions of Buddhism, the Vajnirapana, has so many aspects of the old Ban religion. Go to Sri Lanka and you'll still see some shamanistic ideas that they had in Sri Lanka in 500 B.C., So the Taliban blew up most of the statues in Afghanistan, but there was some pretty interesting Buddhism on the Silk Road in Afghanistan. It's interesting to look at the history of Buddhism.

[39:18]

The Mongolians, which are way up there, are almost identical to the... Tibetans which are down in the Himalayas because they were right on the same Silk Road and they interchanged ideas and they were both quite a bit different than say the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and the Vietnamese and anyway you can go on and on but I haven't personally studied any of those other ones I've always had a feeling that I didn't have enough of a lifetime to really investigate this practice deeply enough and to spread myself thinner would really be taking away. But what I would do is I would encourage somebody who was at your age, because I didn't start, I was a late comer, I didn't start sitting Zazen until I was in my late 30s. I won't even tell you how old I am now.

[40:19]

But I think it's good when you first start to experiment and see which of the various types of Buddhism really fit your personality, because there's a lot out there. There's a lot of Tibetan, there's five Tibetan schools, and maybe six if you count Chogyam Trampas, who's the first Tibetan Tolkuda who brings Zen to the West and was very influenced by Western philosophy, some of it really good and some of it very hedonistic. He was a wonderful teacher. Try a lot. There's a lot of good stuff. Tibetan always seemed a little daunting to me because the culture and the language are so foreign to my prior knowledge. Most of the Tibetan teachers that you would have met when I was

[41:23]

in my late 30s, would have expected you to have studied Tibetan for 10 years before they would have started teaching you religion. So I just wanted to get in and start doing it, and that's what I did. I was crazy enough to go to the Renzi Temple in Los Angeles that Joshua Sasaki Roshi had at the time and I said, I knocked on the door and I had really long hair. I'd been working for Natalie Cole for five years and I was pretty crazy. And I knocked on the door and I said, I want to meet Sasaki Roshi right now. And the poor bald-headed monk said, you're out of your mind. You can't meet him. Anyway, he's busy. He's going to lead a seven-day retreat on the top of Mount Baldy starting tomorrow. I said, okay, I'll do that. And so I went and set a seven-day retreat. without ever having sat a period of Zazen in my life.

[42:25]

And I remember on the seventh day, and each day was divided into about four segments, and then the fourth segment towards the end of the seventh day, you're not recording this, are you? I said to myself, okay, just get off your cushion, tell these Zen people to fuck themselves, get in your rent-a-car, And go back to the Ontario airport and never come back again. And I was back in about three weeks and did another retreat. It's very addictive. Yes, sir? You never heard me say this before in any of our Thursday meetings? Scratch the microphone.

[43:40]

Well, don't get caught in this. This is just... I said earlier that this is just a startup. Just a startup. But I love music. And I can tell you two times where I've... seeing music or just experienced it as seeing not really seeing it because I'm hearing it of course but I was concentrating on it as if I was seeing it once when I was sitting at Mount Baldy there was a country and western bar down the road and when the wind was right we could hear the jukebox playing especially in the late afternoon and One late afternoon, I was sitting rather quietly, and all of a sudden, Tammy Wynette, stand by your man. And not only could I see stand by your man, I started weeping profusely.

[44:45]

And everybody else, of course, I'm from Texas, so my accent is gone, but my roots are in country music. And that's what I started playing originally. And I even played with George Jones back then. middle 60s. But I just couldn't stand it. I started weeping and I thought it was wonderful. And the other one was just recently when I was sitting in Brazil, we were sitting out in the country in this nunnery, but it was only about 45, 50 miles from Sao Paulo. And so it was far enough away to where blue-collar workers would come home late at night. Traffic in Sao Paulo is... hideous. So it would take you probably four hours to get 45 miles. So about seven o'clock at night or eight o'clock at night, this guy would come by every night during Rohatsu. And he must have had speakers as big as doors. And he was playing this Brazilian rap that was with a samba beat and all kinds of intricate stuff.

[45:51]

And I thought it was the best stuff I'd ever heard in my life. And at the end of the sashim, I went and asked one of my sashim mates, What kind of music is this? And he said, Oh, you don't want to know about this. This comes from the favelas, the slums, and it's all about drogas and matados and... I said, no, I've got to have it. So I bought an anthology of it at the iTunes store, and I've been blasting it to my wife every night when I come home. It's quite wonderful. I'm just waiting for it to catch on. If I had a car that had speakers as big as doors, I would be driving around playing it myself. But anyway, I've seen both of those musics, or I've... I don't know if it really works, but it grabs my attention.

[46:54]

It's a device to fool myself into grabbing my attention, into making my attention very attentive. So it's a what? So it's a koan. Yeah, of course. Got an answer? He was sitting next to me when I tried to choke myself to death on a grain of rice. That's another story. Somebody else had a question. Yes, you. Part of what I was trying to say was the senses, sight and sound, smell and taste, touch and thought. And I know it's pretty easy for me to sometimes feel my thoughts. You know, they can like sear through me. But trying to think my feelings, that just kind of seems like the whole thought trap.

[48:02]

Well, I'm thinking about the Sando Kai. And at one point, they talk about the tastes, the five tastes, and... and how they all mix and interact, and each fields of the senses act and interact together. And all of that stuff is just like Grandma told me. You don't have to have your peas and your steak really separated on your plate because it all ends up in the same place in the end anyway. So this separation is only artificial. And it's only a Kickstarter. And then when you're feeling feelings that feel physical, that come from your thoughts, then that's something for you to meditate on. That's a huge hook for you to start right there. You're hooked right in. You're feeling it, and you're seeing cause and effect, and you've got all kinds of stuff right there for you to hook into.

[49:14]

I would say concentrate on the feelings and not the thought. Concentrate on the physical part of it. But that's just what I would say. We've known each other for a good while, well, a little while anyway, and I respect your intelligence and practice, and I think that you have a way to get through it. But... I would say just concentrate on the physical manifestation of your thoughts. Of course. Everybody is going to have a different take on this. I don't want to get too hung up on that. If I had to backtrack, I would almost want to take an eraser and wipe that off the board and just say, concentrate on phenomena as it occurs.

[50:24]

I just brought that up as kind of like, okay, this sometimes works as a jump starter for me without me having to really spend a lot of time buzzing with my thoughts on the cushion, I can just really force myself to see sounds and pretty soon I'm just living in the world of phenomena and not the world of ice cream and Tahiti vacations. And, you know, dreadful bills that I'm unable to pay. It's not just all good stuff, but just the reality as it presents itself instead of the reality that doesn't really exist except on your bill-paying machine.

[51:25]

Yes, sir? Well, I was carried away by my thoughts and life story and intention and plans.

[52:43]

And even today, I'll still, believe it or not, this old man still does triathlons. And so sometimes still today, I will say, oh, I got to do 2,500 yards in the swimming pool. Let me figure out real quick right now I want to divide up the 2,500 to 500 yards of warm-up. You just drop that stuff. As soon as you can drop that stuff, the sooner you can drop that stuff, the better off you are. The sooner you can get down to pure phenomena, the murmur of traffic in the background, but it's not really, you don't want to go and say the murmur, you don't want to label it, just... If we were out in the country and we could hear frogs, we would hear croak. Or if we were hearing birds, we could hear... I don't know. Just the pure phenomena.

[53:46]

And your own life story and your thoughts are just obscuring your interaction with... the purity of the world. Basho. Does anyone know who Basho is? Basho wrote a very famous haiku. Frog jumps in old pond. Plop. It's the plop that's the turning word there. Plop. I've confused you all enough. Oh, go ahead, please. No, he wasn't even a cook. He was just a rice husker. No, I don't know what... You know, I think they were trying to hide him away.

[54:51]

I didn't tell that story long enough, but I think that he was recognized right away as a prodigy and... he was so young and so naive to the world of the monastery that they just took him away and the master saw his potential and wanted to put him someplace where nobody would know who he was. And so he just was the rice husker. At least that's the, you know, so much myth is involved in those 2,000 years ago stories. We don't really know what happened. I don't know that there is a lot of different choices because there are

[56:00]

There's so much Zen canon. Zen canon is so full of stuff, and it's mostly used as a teaching tool anyway. So it doesn't really matter whether it's true or not true, as long as it's a good teaching tool. Have I bored y'all enough? Okay. Thank you so much for coming and for... listening to this poor fool. And if anybody has any questions afterwards, I'll be glad to sit and talk with you all out in the lobby for as long as you want. If you would unplug me and somebody else would turn me off. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge. And this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[57:02]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

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