There's a phrase in the Zen tradition, who is it? Well, I grew up in China. I used to live here a long time ago. So I lived by Suzuki Roshi a long time ago. My day job, I had a small sunflower company. My day job, I had a small a sitting group in Novala called the Bhima Sangha. More information about which is probably out on the table. So does that answer the question? No, not entirely. That's one way. Let's try again.

[01:29]

I'm the person giving the talk. I'm up in the high seat, working my special powers, talking to you and not talking to me. I'm supposed to know something. We are to learn something. Is that it? No, not completely. Let's try again. I am a ordained Buddhist priest. So what that means is my primary job, like my Tao, is to help other people practice the Dharma, over and above my own needs. So actually, I'm kind of a servant here. I'm not really sitting on the high seat. I'm sitting on the low seat. And we're sitting on the high seat.

[02:30]

And I'm here to do whatever you want. In a very humble way, I hope I can do a good job. So, is that it? maybe we're getting a little bit closer. I think all of those things are true in a certain sense. The last one is probably the most true. It's getting closer. And that's the arena I want to spring off from today. I'm not the boss. I'm not here to... and deliver something that I think will be useful. I'm here to be with you and to have you help me figure out what to do.

[03:33]

The problem that all religions wants to get done is that they seem like they're something. So Buddhism seems like something. And it seems hard to imagine that you could know much about Buddhism unless you read the Buddhist scriptures. But here's the deal. The Buddha did not read the Buddhist scriptures because they hadn't been written at the time that he lived. So he didn't have that advantage. In fact, he didn't know anything about Buddhism because it didn't yet exist. Same is true for Jesus. Jesus didn't study the Bible because the Bible is about him. So the Zen tradition, which was kind of a late rising Buddhist history in China after Buddhism had been going for several centuries and had beautiful temples with great big beautiful Buddhas like this and lots of rituals and ceremonies and fancy silk robes like this.

[04:38]

It seemed like that's what Buddhism was. And some of the best and brightest of that time, people who might have been nuclear physicists or something in our age, started asking themselves, well, let's see, wait a minute, did the Buddha have a big temple like this? Did we bow to both statues? Well, I don't think so. I think the Buddha was... He was a prince, a person of privilege. He left that environment and went out into the forest by himself and raised and lived on almost nothing and sat down under a tree, basically. So, well, we can do that. We can do that. We don't need these big temples and all these scriptures and all these holy things. Why don't we do what the Buddha did?

[05:41]

Let's try that. Let's try that. So that was the Zen, or Chan, as a kind of movement starting in the 7th century A.D. It was a kind of reactive tradition, very roughly like St. Francis or somebody like that, who... said, you know, even though St. Francis also was a wealthy man originally, you know, it occurred to him at some point that Jesus didn't wear on in capes and all the things that the church had. And so he walked out of his palace and just like the Buddha, he tried to live like Jesus might live. So what I'm leading up to Is that authentic or transformative? Dharana, as opposed, not opposed to, but to the one side, it can be a part of worship. Dharana begins with a question or something. always with a question.

[06:44]

And it's not a question that is foreign to any of you. It's the same question for all human beings. In the case of the Buddha, Gautama, we'll call him Gautama, that was his family name. The question was, once he actually got out of his palace and saw how people lived in 5th century BC India, why do people have to live this long? Why do people suffer? Why do people fight? What's the fundamental reason why that's so?" And that was his question. And we went to all the religious teachers of the time and essentially presented that question. he was sharp enough and trusted his own question enough not to be satisfied with the answers that he got. So eventually he went off by himself and said, I'm going to true and came to his own conclusions.

[07:47]

So that sounds like the beginning of Buddhism. That's the founding of Buddhism. Who knows whether it ever happened literally, but it happens. And it's happened actually for the last, who knows, two million years that we've been around. This is the great perennial drama of searching for fundamental answers to fundamental questions. Just a few other question stories. The Bodhidharma was the legendary founder of China and the monk who came to China and supposedly sat in a cave facing the wall for nine years. I love these myths, they're great. He wondered when he ever went to the bathroom. So... and his student, who we call the second ancestor, came and wanted to ask a question of this great yogin, this great saint.

[09:00]

Again, the legend has it that he stood outside the cave in the snow, and the snow rose higher and higher. Finally, Bodhidharma turned to him and said, well, what do you want? And Quaker said something like, I've been, what is the nature of my mind? Or something like that. And Bodhidharma said, well, bring me your mind and I'll explain it to you. And Vaika said, well, I've been searching and searching and I can't find it. And Bodhidharma said, well, there I settle it for. And that's a great teaching story in my tradition. Another one, the sixth ancestor, Hoi Nung, who was really the one who popularized Zen in China, was an illiterate woodcutter.

[10:03]

who came to a great temple of the fifth ancestor of the Vedas, the Chinese. And there were all these monks wearing robes like this, beautiful statues, big, big temple. And this guy kind of was, not only was he illiterate and a woodcutter, but he was from the South. In this part of China, people from the South were considered beneath the enchantment. So he was a real bedraggled person. He wandered in and somehow informally happened upon a fifth ancestor. And the fifth ancestor said, well, who are you? Where are you from? And Khoi Nung said, I am from the south and I've come here because I want to be a Buddha. So that's a kind of question.

[11:06]

What does that mean? It's been a question in Buddhism for a long time. And the fifth ancestor said, you're a southern barbarian, aboriginal. How can you be a Buddha? And Khoi Nung said, Well, people may be from the north or the south, but what difference is there with respect to their Buddha nature? Right then, the fifth ancestor realized this guy was no ordinary person, and the story goes from there. He was a layperson. He was not a priest. He was not tutored in any way. He was just an ordinary human being who had a question. And in the Zen world, that takes precedence over everything. It takes precedence over these robes, over my exalted status as a disciple of Suzuki Roshu, of everything, these statues, this hall, this place. All that really matters is the question, the question.

[12:10]

So what I thought I might do today, and I'm giving you a little bit of advance warning, we do have a question and answer after the official lecture here after 2. But I thought, well, that's fine. Let's do that. But let's also play around with having a little question and answer right here. at least for a little while. So I'll talk for a little while longer and then I'd like to turn the floor over to my boss's view. and lets you do what everybody in Buddhism has always done, is ask the question that's in your heart. So I'll give you a little time to think about that. A little bit of guidance here, we have a room of a hundred people, so short is the Vajra, short. Also, not too personal.

[13:15]

We could maybe question and answer or private. We could deal with personal things. The kinds of questions that we are interested in, in the Dharma, in Buddhism, are not necessarily so personal like, why am I fighting so much with my boyfriend or something? But why do human beings fight at all? That would be more what we're interested in. Something more universal, something we've all shared. And maybe something that you think might not just be your question, but someone else's question, everybody's question. So the question is not just a private question, but not a public question. Like the questions I mentioned are questions anybody with a heart couldn't have asked. Not just those people. Dogen, the founder of our lineage in Japan, his question was kind of interesting, a little different. By that time, Buddhism was very, very well established and lots and lots of scriptures and literature.

[14:20]

And so he wasn't coming, you might say, with a naked question, like, why do you think we need supper? This question came out of those scriptures. The scriptures teach that all beings without exception are endowed with the nature of a Buddha. So, like any good Buddhist who didn't take that at face value and just say, okay, well, it's in the scripture, so I'll just go with that. He said, well, wait a minute. I don't see that. I don't see that in myself. I don't see that in other human beings. Where is this nature of a Buddha that we're all supposed to be endowed with? Why do we have to work so hard, practice so good in such difficult ways to realize that? So his question came both from a kind of faith, he trusted what the scripture said, and a kind of doubt in the sense that maybe it was true, but it wasn't true for him. So he was a very sincere and also very insightful person.

[15:27]

A little bit like Einstein, at the time that Einstein was learning physics, Newtonian mechanics was the was the law of the universe, that there were certain anomalies in the experiments that couldn't be explained. And so, on one level, Einstein accepted that Newtonian mechanics was true, but he also had the intuition to realize that there was something that wasn't quite explained by that. So it's very much like Dogen. Dogen is kind of the newest Einstein. He was very smart. He read the entire canon of Buddhism, which is about 30 volumes of stuff by the time he was 90 years old. So it was sad. So real smarty pants. He realized later it didn't help him at all. And I can vouch for that. What I really like about the plain youngster of the Sixth Patriarch, the one who was an illiterate woodcutter, is that it's also a kind of story about status or role.

[16:46]

He had no status. Not only he wasn't a monk, not only wasn't he literate, he wasn't even from the North, where civilized people do this from the South. So the story, which is concocted and probably isn't true in any literal sense, but it's a wonderful story about the externals of what we see that human beings are. Oh, you know, the person giving the lecture must know something, or Buddhist priests are more enlightened than lay people, something like that. So the story really magnifies the notion that he was a complete, utter nobody. In fact, it goes further, and when it turns out that there's a kind of verse competition with the head monk of this Thousand Monk Temple, and the head monk writes a poem, and then Hui Nung writes a poem, and it turns out that Hui Nung is the one that's given the transmission from the master, not the head monk, but this guest student.

[17:50]

You would really arrive rice-pounding nobody. People wanted to kill him. And they chased after him. In fact, there was a monk there who used to be a high general. He led the contingent to get this guy, this imposter. You see the wonderful drama of the story. There's a general in the monastery. He's kind of like Colin Powell or something. He's going to get this guy. And then there's this great story where They catch up with Hui Nung, and Hui Nung has the precious robe and bowl given to him by his master. And the general says, give us that robe and bowl, you imposter, or they'll kill you. And so then the story gets kind of magical. Hui Nung puts the robe and bowl on the rock and says, fine, take it if you want. So they go to take it, and it's like he can't lift it. He can't get it off the rock. And so then the general is transformed and he bows down and he says, I'm really not here to kill you.

[18:53]

I'm here for the Dharma. And then he has a question. It was a great dialogue that ensues from that. So the notion of a deep question or a real question or authentic question that's outside of any sense of external roles or who wears the robes or who's got the goods is a real question fundamental theme of our particular tradition. And I think all of Buddhism, too. And I think all of religion. There are always people like St. Francis or Meister Eckhart or people that somehow are so true, so deeply true to the essence of their tradition that People get very suspicious of them, run them at the stake, want to kill them, call them heretics, all of that. All of that.

[19:53]

So I'm here to tell you that today nobody's a heretic. There won't be any generals running after you who ask the wrong question. There are no wrong questions. The other thing that I learned the hard way, when Suzuki Roshi was alive, and I think we all go through this, I'm not just telling you my story, I had the sense, he was such an impressive person, he was so exotic at that time, with his voles and the way he was, a real Zen master, that I was intimidated, at least in public, from asking the real questions that were in my heart. I think I was proud, too. I didn't want to be embarrassed. I wanted to be a smart guy who always knew what I was talking about. It's that kind of feeling. So he died, of course, when we were all rather young, and I think that more and more as I grew older, I had a feeling of regret that I was too young and too proud

[21:00]

and too much of a whippersnapper to expose myself because there's so many things I would like to ask him now, but I can't. So I'm inviting you, not that I'm anything like him. As I say, I'm their servant, and who knows what I know, maybe nothing. But I'm inviting you. In the end, it's not about the answer. It's about the question. And I can't actually answer any of the questions, really. That's something, a little bit of the point of when Kweka said, I can't settle my mind. He says, well, show me your mind. It's not like Bodhidharma actually answered anything. He just turned... the search back on the person themselves and he was able to answer his own questions. So don't have any high hopes for me, please. This is more of a process of aging and maturing of something that we've been doing as human beings since we lived in caves or not in caves.

[22:13]

Am I supposed to... Okay, it's a quarter of now. Let me see if I have anything to say. I'm too distracted. I open things up. Oh, when you ask a question, if you're sitting in a chair, stand up and speak in a loud voice so that everybody can hear. And I'm going to repeat the question so that it gets onto the tape so I won't just sound like I'm speaking in outer space about something. And please, I don't want to make this at all highfalutin. I want to make this very comfortable and just... ask anything we want or say anything we want. And let's do something together that's very basic. Some of you maybe have a sitting practice, some of you don't. Some of you have been coming here for years.

[23:27]

Some of you are coming for the first time. It doesn't matter. We're all here for some reason. I don't know why. It's so nice of course. But I talked to a woman just before the lecture who'd been here for one day and taken kind of a retreat from her life. And the first thing she remarked, which we all remarked, was how beautiful it was, the gardens and the ocean. And, you know, I was here when, I mean, I was involved in leadership when Zen Center bought the land, and it was kind of overwhelming. All modesty aside, it's probably one, if not the most beautiful piece of real estate in California, and probably one of the four or five most beautiful pieces of real estate in the world, so we're all very lucky. uh... to be here. The temple itself is a teaching. The line itself is a teaching.

[24:28]

I know that one of the reasons you all come here is to soak some of that up. That's why the people who live here have lived here. I lived here for seven years so it's like coming home to be here. You know, look at all the trees and how deep they are. And the same old points that I used to walk over and the scratches on the road and everything. Well, I think that's really all I have to say until we have something to say. So what's on your mind today? Let's just start. I'd like to start weighing the VAT because you're always going to ignore it. So you, yes. Oh, good. Uh-huh, uh-huh. You really start big, don't you?

[25:39]

Well, what? Oh, yes, sorry. Keep reminding me because I'm absent-minded. He said, what is the Buddha way? Well, what have you come up with so far? Uh-huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. Not really.

[26:54]

Well, he's talking about a famous case in one of the Koan collections. What is the way? What is the path? Ordinary mind is the path, and so on. It's a very, very famous teaching story. Yeah, well, I mean, it's replicated. It's a core teaching, not just in Zen. Well, your question was, what is the Buddha way? The Buddha way is to live with a story like that until it opens up for you, actually, for you. Yes. Oh, let's see. I want to start from the back and move forward. So if you're in the back, you have an advantage. Yes, way back there. No, no, you're it. You're the one. Everybody's interested in the gong.

[28:09]

That's one of the things you start to realize. even Saddam Hussein is interested in Madonna believe it or not somehow oh you'd be the one tell me every time to repeat it that's your job she said in terms of being a humble servant like I said about a priest maybe I make sure I understand your question what about people that are interested in Madonna what about them is that your question am I a humble servant of those people too Absolutely. Do I consider myself a humble servant of people who have no interest in Buddhism? Yes, I do. See, I can do it and answer questions. Yes, no. Yes.

[29:11]

Really? Really? Good question, yeah. She said she goes around to various centers and she doesn't see very many people of color, minorities and so forth, mostly white people and mostly black people. And so how can we open the Dharma up more to people of color? Do you have any suggestions? I bet you do, Asher. Go ahead. Mm-hmm.

[30:26]

Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I just had a, when we said that, I remember, Guatemala, Guatemala. Well, anyway, I remember a story about when I was here as a teacher, living here, giving talks, we used to have a question and answer over in the Wheelwright Center. And at the time, you know, it was the Land Contract time, there was a big war going on. in Central America. And somebody asked me with some heat, what the devil does all what you're talking about have to do with what's happening in my country? I can't remember whether they were equal or not, but, you know, it was Central America.

[31:30]

And I really didn't know how to answer the question. I don't think I answered the question very well at all. I think I just snuck. So now's my chance to do better. Well, I think you're right. I think that the clue is what you said about there should be more Spanish speakers. I think that when there are more leaders of Dharma who are people of color, then quite naturally, that will attract more people of color. So that's one practical answer. I agree with that completely. Other than that, I don't really know. I think many of the Buddhist centers have developed or put together some kind of diversity committees or diversity outreach, and they're working on it. I know that Spirit Rock is, and I think this is a center that has some things.

[32:32]

So I think that we're aware of it, and we're working on it. Does anybody who's involved with that have anything to explain? How's it going? It's awesome. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Uh-huh.

[33:57]

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, what I'm getting from all of you, thank you all for explaining these things, I think that the essential effort is to ask people of color. Actually, not think we know something, but just ask, what would work? What would make things better, more welcoming? How can we serve you in a more authentic way?

[35:02]

Ask the question and listen to what the answers are. I think it's probably the basis of what you're saying. And that's what I've been saying all day, really. So something else? Yeah. Mhm. Mmhmm. I'm not sure I can repeat all of that, but we heard something on the radio about lucid dreaming.

[36:25]

Let me see if I got the sense right, that you're wondering what's the point of all of these special practices, and there are many of them. Lucid dreaming is a practice that comes out of Tibetan tradition, if ordinary mind is the point, as the story says. Well, translations are always such an important issue with these stories. It doesn't exactly say ordinary mind like just schlepping on, walking down the street, keep on trucking. The feeling is more like basic mind. or ground mind, or fundamental mind, or something like that. That's the feeling of the store. So, which includes schlepping mind. It's more like a, and Suzuki Roshi used the term big mind, because that was not very technical, and you could get a feeling for that, big mind, including everything.

[37:25]

In a pure sense, we don't need anything to rest in our big mind. But this was Dogen's question. This is exactly Dogen's question, as I told you. If that's so, Why do we act the way we do? Why are we so confused? Why are we so deluded? Why do we kill each other? Why do we lie to each other? Why do we live that way? Clearly, that basic mind is not able to be there, but it's not being manifested in the way that we live. So, to have faith in that basic mind is at the root of who we are, and have the honesty To admit that we're not able to manifest or live in it means that we have to do some work. And that's where all the special practices come in. Lucid dreaming is not part of our practice, but you could say that zazen is a kind of lucid dreaming.

[38:52]

It includes it. Have you ever done a long retreat and you said a lot of zazen? Well, those of you who have know that dreaming is part of it. So our basic practice is to sit still and rest in that basic mind and let it work on itself. But over the centuries, the various traditions of Buddhism come up with lots of different slants on how to do that. So that's where you can read Buddhist books. There are 10,000 in English, and there's all these confusing practices and myriads, and they can confuse you. So in the end, that's the point of the story about the illiterate woodcutter. We didn't know any of that. We hadn't read any of the 10,000 books. We just walked in and said basically just what we said to the master. So that's why the question is much more important than the details.

[39:53]

I see you're smiling, so maybe I've done something good. Yes, in the back there. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Right. Yes. It's a wonderful thing to worry about.

[41:16]

And I laud your sincerity in being willing to expose that. I've heard that same question so many times. It's a universal question, universal question for people who practice. So, yes. See, I have special radar hearings, a special power I've developed. I can hear these questions even when none of you can. The question was, let me see if I can hone it down. A lot of times when he's doing zazen, he's focused on the future, on planning, on how to develop himself, to be a good person, how to help the world and all of those things that we do. And every so often, he comes to rest, like when you're chopping vegetables in the kitchen. Do you have to leave? Are you in the kitchen? Yeah, let's stay for this. You're the questioner, so you're excused. And you have a concern about, are you just going to come to rest in some kind of meditation space where you're not ever going to develop or do anything useful or socially active?

[42:29]

Is that roughly what you said? Won't be focused on helping others. Yeah. Well, actually, Buddhism historically has had a real problem with that. It is, you know, the side of Buddhism that's meditation-oriented, that's inward-looking, can easily slip off into being something self-indulgent. It can. So that's an acknowledgment that we have to be on the guard about that. But let me go back to the very beginning of what you said. If I remember what you said, it was something like, a lot of times in zazen you feel like you're focused on the future. But those thoughts about the future, when are those thoughts happening? They're happening in the present. So when we say the future, it's not like there really is a future out there.

[43:33]

It's like it's a certain kind of thought that's happening in the present that you're paying attention to. Would you agree? Yeah. So actually, all of our thoughts happen in the present because that's the only time there is. And even the present is emotion. There's no present. The time I've taken to say the present, it's already in the past, right? So the key point here is what do we pay attention to? Where is our attention focused? That's the issue, not past, present, or future, but what are we paying attention to? What are we putting attention to? And what's the intention of that? That's the key point in the standpoint of practice. And if... the intention of practice is to find a way to escape from the intractable suffering and existential confusion that is our world, then it's not actually Buddhism.

[44:38]

It's something else. What makes it Buddhism, what makes it the path, is that we never stop paying attention to that. And we understand that that's all happening now. So what's happening now includes plans. There's an appropriate time for plans. There's an appropriate time for paying attention to chopping vegetables in the kitchen. There's an appropriate time to sit. So I appreciate that you're thinking about that. Don't ever stop thinking about that and it will be okay. Because the Buddha, the Buddha's, that was the Buddha's question. That's what it held them to leave the palace was just your question. And what made them become the Buddha was it never stopped focusing on that question. But at the same time, we spent many years sitting under a tree. So what's that all about? Very powerful. I think let me just time check here.

[45:40]

I think we have time for maybe two more. The two of you maybe get the jackpot. So first you and then me. Well, I don't have anything to add, but I will remember to repeat the question. And you help me nod if I'm doing well and shake your head if I did it wrong.

[46:41]

What I got from what you said is that's what we're all doing. And we have to each find our own way to that. Was that pretty much what you said? Yeah, I agree. Thank you. We each have to find our own way. And at the same time, We need to take advantage of and benefit from those who have come before and the hints that they left us. Never forgetting that those hints are not us. Those hints are hints. It's still your path. It's still your problem. I can't help you go.

[47:44]

As much as I'd like to. Thank you. This is the last one. Sorry. It's a mystical experience. Sorry. Therese Zazen in Mindfulness is an extraordinary experience. We have a saying. Oh, he asked, I understand that in the Soto tradition, we don't put a lot of emphasis on mystical experiences.

[48:49]

Do you mean by that like enlightenment or something? Kensho experience, yes. Kensho means to see your nature. And what's my view on that or what do I have to say about that? Well, what I said, I still stand by. Just being right here, you and I talking, was beyond extraordinary. As to the Soto approach and what you said, that's a common understanding. In Soto, they don't emphasize enlightenment or satori or something. Some other schools then, they do. That's not really very accurate. And probably to really answer that question well, maybe you should come to question and answer, and I'll take the time to really go into it, but I'll just try to answer very briefly.

[49:54]

Kensho means to see our mind, the nature of our mind, our fundamental mind. See means to grasp it in a way that changes our mind. And to say that's not important is basically to throw out all of Buddhism in the trash can because that's the essence of what Buddhism is. So it is important. But what we have to guard against is to treat it like something that we can get or something that we want or a possession or something. Because that actually is the core problem that the Buddha tried to solve. So if we start treating spiritual... opening itself like something to get, then we destroyed the whole thing. So to put it in the terms that my teacher Suzuki Roshi would say, we practice without gaining idea or gaining motivation. But that doesn't mean there's no accomplishment or no transformation.

[51:01]

It's a very subtle point and worth a lot more than I can say about it right now. But I think that the notion that, oh, so does Zen, we don't care about. I wouldn't call it mystical experience. Enlightenment is not a mystical experience, or Kensho is not. I don't like the word enlightenment. Bad word. Kensho is much more accurate. It means something quite precise. That's not a mystical experience. It's beyond mystical experiences. It's more like that. But we say in Zen, the small miracle is Celestial Buddha's great enlightenment experience and his wonderful advisors of

[52:07]

vast fields of myriads of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, numerous as the sands of the Ganges. That's the small miracle. The big miracle is chopping wood and carrying water. That's the big miracle. That's Arunitsa. Beautiful. I saw them I hung out in the kitchen for a while before I came to the spa, gone to the spa, watching the atmosphere, and I saw them carrying water out for the tea, and cups, too, that we were going to have, you know, and it was so beautiful. Most of the people there were pretty new, you know, working in the kitchen, like the sixth ancestor, by playing with them, but they were elevated to the back, and who knows who's there? I opened the door for them and I felt so beautiful.

[53:15]

Thank you very much.

[53:21]

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