Last night I heard, as probably most all of you have heard, that Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated and his name is on our altar. So this occurrence is very disturbing and this man had a very powerful effect on many, many people with his efforts towards peace.

[01:32]

I remember listening on the radio to the speech that he gave with Yasser Arafat about a year ago or so and the quality of his voice, those of you who've heard him, is like no other voice. It's very resonant and low and he speaks very slowly. It's like a big bull bellowing and he was bellowing for no more blood, no more killing. So I have this in my thoughts today during this talk and have this person in mind as I try to talk about

[02:53]

our practice and our efforts that we make towards peace within ourselves and in our lives. So I can't help feeling that there's millions of people who are feeling very confused and bewildered and as if they've lost their way or don't know now which way to go. Which way to turn. And this is very much like being in a maze, in a wandering maze. The word maze and amaze comes from the old meaning is to lose one's senses or to be bewildered.

[04:05]

Now we use amazed as just being astounded or struck by something. But the earlier meaning is to lose one's senses, to be stupefied and bewildered and not know what's going on as if you're lost in a maze. In the dark and this is the time of year in our hemisphere when things turn towards the dark. The nights are getting longer, all the plants and animal life, they begin to go underground. There's hibernation and the plants are, the main activity is underneath the ground, the roots and the root systems are growing and strengthening.

[05:18]

But there's not much going on above ground. And we're drawn to this turning towards the dark. We actually want to pull closer in, closer to the fire. In the tea ceremony at this time of year we change the way the hearth, the way the fire is arranged in the tea room. Instead of an above ground hearth, an open hearth, that's taken away and a sunken hearth is placed. And the guests come closer and draw around the fire for warmth this time of year. So everything for us is moving in this way, turning towards the dark and feeling drawn to the dark in some way.

[06:25]

Drawn to do a practice period. We have winter practice period and people carve out space in their lives to come and do an intensive period of meditation and study and silence. This is the time of year where that is, one may feel some calling towards turning in. And I feel this is natural. And we see it reflected throughout the natural world. And yet our society often pulls us the opposite way. There's not much change in the rhythm of our work life or our social life. In fact there's more parties and things sometimes at this time of year that responds to this, the dark really.

[07:37]

So this turning towards the dark, the practice period is very much like this, a time to turn toward yourself and your life and to parts that you're not maybe so familiar with. We're in the third, beginning the third week of our practice period right now. And when we go in to this kind of activity we don't know necessarily what's going to happen to us. This is not a guaranteed, there's no guaranteed outcome that it's going to be one way or another. This is like going into a maze or a labyrinth. Now the labyrinth is a very old, old symbol. In fact it's found on pottery and figures and on gateways and doorways.

[08:51]

It's sometimes called the meander. A kind of maze-like spiral or meandering symbol. And it's found all over in excavations from thousands of years ago. And in our present day time in South India, Hindu women at the fall equinox, when the sun begins to die, when the sun begins to get shorter and shorter time, they draw labyrinths at the threshold of their doors, right at this time of year. So the labyrinth or the meander or the maze and the spiral is a sign, a symbol for this going down, going into the dark and facing the unknown, facing the dark.

[10:01]

Now the most famous labyrinth that we know about is one made famous by the Greeks. And that's the labyrinth of Crete, King Minos' labyrinth in the palace of Knossos. And the story that we know about Theseus and going into the labyrinth is rather recent. The culture in Crete actually is thousands of years older than that, 3000 B.C. And there was this palace in Knossos was built like a labyrinth, many, many corridors and rooms opening on to one another. But the story is that down at the basement, down underneath this palace, there was a labyrinth built to keep the monster named the Minotaur. And the Minotaur was the son of King Minos and his wife.

[11:05]

And the labyrinth was designed by Daedalus, the greatest engineer and architect of Crete. And Daedalus had a son named Icarus, if you know that story. So Theseus was a hero from Athens and Athens at this time had to pay tribute to King Minos. The tribute was seven maidens and seven youths every year had to be brought to the labyrinth and put in to feed the Minotaur. And Theseus, who was a hero and heir to the throne of Athens, volunteered to be one of these young men to go and face the Minotaur. And he sailed off with these other young people and said to his father, Aegeus, I will kill this Minotaur.

[12:16]

And if I don't, the sails on my ship when it returns will be black, just as they are now as we're sailing away. But if I kill the Minotaur, I'll change the sails to white. And then you'll know that I've accomplished this deed. And off they sailed to Crete. Well, when they got there, these young people were paraded through the streets and King Minos' daughter, half sister to the Minotaur, Ariadne, saw Theseus and fell in love with Theseus and decided she was going to do something to save him. So she went to Daedalus, the architect, and she asked, how does one get out of the maze? How does one get out of the labyrinth? And Daedalus, you know, because the one who makes the labyrinth is the one who should know how to get out. And Daedalus said, the only thing to do is to take this clue.

[13:24]

And he gave her a ball of thread. And the word in Greek for thread is cloua. So he gave her this ball of thread and said, fasten it to the doorway. Have him fasten it to the doorway and hold on to it as he goes in. And he'll be able to find his way out. So she went to him and told him what she was going to do and that she loved him. And he took the clue. And the next day, all the young people were brought into the labyrinth. And he fastened the clue to the doorway and went in. Never knowing which turn, where he would find the minotaur and around what bend. And it was a very complicated place underneath, down underneath. Well, finally, when he turned one of these corners, he found the minotaur.

[14:29]

The minotaur was sleeping at that time. And Theseus, as Homer says, pressed the life from the minotaur and killed him. With his bare hands in one version and with a sword in another. And then with the help of the clue, he was able to return and find his way out and bring everybody with him. And they found Ariadne and took her also and got on ships in the night and sailed away to safety. And there's more adventures that happened at Theseus. Which I won't tell you about right now. Daedalus, by the way, was punished for giving Ariadne the clue and was put into the labyrinth with his son, Icarus. And he couldn't get out either. He needed a clue himself. So he made those wings for both of them and they flew out of the labyrinth.

[15:35]

But as you know, Icarus went too close to the sun and plunged to his death. But Daedalus made it to safety. So this labyrinth, meander, when we meander around without a clue, we can get into a lot of difficulty and trouble and despair and not know what to do. The other day someone was talking with me and he said, they had a practice discussion and they mentioned how they felt they were in a new situation, a new kind of life, and they couldn't go back to their old life. It didn't make sense anymore, it wasn't what they wanted to do, and yet here they were in this new situation and they were afraid to do, they didn't really know how to act here,

[16:44]

and they didn't say these words, but they didn't have a clue about what to do. And they couldn't go back, they couldn't really find their way back to the old ways. They dropped a lot of those and yet they were afraid of the unknown and they were afraid that if they kept going in this new way, they would find out something about themselves that they maybe didn't want to find out. What were they going to find out? What kind of person actually were they? Could they actually be as bad as their inner kind of critical voice was always saying? Is that what they were going to find out? They didn't want to find that out. And so on. And this to me was almost a perfect description of someone in the maze, in the labyrinth, and not being able to get out and not necessarily wanting to go forward and not knowing what was around the bend.

[17:47]

When were they going to come up against the Minotaur? Now the labyrinth is one of a cluster of symbols that come together in the ancient world and these are the symbols of the horn, the bull's horn, and the moon. The crescent moon is like the bull's horn. And the butterfly and the bee, these all come up together in various ways. The word labyrinth itself comes from, and there's another word, labyrinth, which is the double-edged axe or Manjushri in the Zen here has a double-edged sword which cuts through delusion and gives and takes life.

[18:50]

So it has two sides to it, this sword. And that Bodhisattva is in the Zendo. And the labyrinth is also a double, it's a double axe. And this was the symbol of the sacred feminine power of Crete and all of the ancient world for thousands of years. This symbol of two triangles coming together is found on walls and throughout this palace of Gnosis it's found everywhere, incised on jewelry and all over, this double axe. And this is the axe that gives and takes life also. This is the full cyclical life of birth, life, living our lives,

[19:55]

and death also, and then regeneration. And this time of year, in the old religion of the three-part goddess, this is the dark time of year, the time of death. And last Sunday we just had our big Seikaki ceremony where we call forth those people who have died, remember their names and acknowledge this energy of restlessness, unsettledness, the unknown. And also All Saints Day, Day of the Dead, All Saints Day, these are all ceremonies throughout different parts of the world, Norman mentioned this last week, that acknowledge this time of year and the dying back of the vegetation and that everything goes under. So this time of year, this is the taking life.

[20:57]

And this is also totally natural, this is not something to hide away and not look at, this is the natural movement of our life, birth and death and coming around. So this double axe is the giving and the taking of life and it's the symbol of the butterfly which is regeneration. When the butterfly emerges it's regeneration. Butterfly doesn't live for very long, so it has a very transient feeling. Some butterflies only live for, you know, well the monarch lives for six months and that's a kind of long time. So this double axe or two triangles together is this butterfly and the word Seiki means butterfly. And the labyrinth, those come from the same words,

[21:59]

those come from the words, that means lips. The lips at the gateway that protect the passageway in to the heart, in to the deepest place where we need to go to face ourselves, to find out and to do what we need to do. But we need our clue, we need a clue, we need some thread that will help us. And this clue, you know, once Thesis got out of the labyrinth he didn't need that clue anymore, that was very particular for that time and then you can give it to somebody else. It's not something that lasts forever and ever, it's for this time, very particular. So in Virginia Bean Rutter's book, Woman Changing Woman,

[23:01]

she mentions that in all the feminine initiation ceremonies there's always three parts, three areas. The first is containment and the next is metamorphosis or transformation and the third is emergence. And I'd like to add a fourth which is after emergence then going into the world with gift-bestowing hands is the fourth. So the practice period is like this and when I say feminine initiation I don't mean necessarily only women's initiation, I mean the psyche, you know, everyone has a psyche. The psyche is the butterfly or soul, although in Buddhism we don't talk about the soul, but in each person this longing to go in

[24:09]

and to know what one needs to know in this world to live in peace and to find our way. So this is, for each person this is an initiation, going into the labyrinth. It's not a man's or woman's job, it's everyone's job to face what needs to be faced. So the practice period now is really, I feel, in containment. The practice period itself is containment. We have a schedule, we have staying in this valley, we ask people not to leave for the 49 days, everyone stays put, everyone's eating pretty much the same food, there's a stable group that's together, working together, having meals together, studying together, sitting together, and the whole schedule contains the people.

[25:15]

And this is very important to have this time of containment where there's not that many distractions, there's not as many worries to actually feel like you're being supported and contained to do the work that you need to do, which is hard work. It's hard work to be in the labyrinth. It's not easy, you don't know what is around the corner. You don't know what is going to be bubbling up for you. So this is cooking, cooking in the cooking pot, with the lid on, and the fire not too high, not too low, and everything kind of bubbling away in a nice slow simmer. That's containment, and we try not to turn the fire off, not to take the pot off the stove, we just keep it there for the whole time.

[26:19]

And you feel like you're getting cooked. You don't have to take the lid off to look in and see how it's doing, you can smell, you can smell it's starting to change. And that's the second part, is metamorphosis, or change. So while you're in there, cooking is this chemical or alchemical event, and there's changes going on in the cooking, the raw becomes cooked. And that's what happens in the practice period, or in the container, is change, metamorphosis, transformation. And people do change, people actually change. How do they change? Well, they drop away old ways of acting, or habitual ways of approaching people and the world,

[27:23]

and their own thinking, and their own posture, their own body, speech, and mind begins to change, and there's a new orientation, and it's very fresh, and surprising, and scary. And there's actually, in metamorphosis, there is a dying, there's actually a dying of the old form of life, and a new form of life comes forth. And when it's ready to come forth, it begins to want to break out, and come out. But maybe there's a long period of containment and metamorphosis. But for the practice period, even in the 49 days, there's metamorphosis and transformation, and then there's emergence, and people come out,

[28:26]

and they feel fresh and new, something has changed, and maybe they don't even know what it is, but they faced something, and maybe they didn't slay the Minotaur, but they went in there. So when you emerge, then what do you do in the world? What do you do once you're emerged? That's when you move in the world with gift-bestowing hands, and that can be doing anything. And the Sutra's name, lots and lots of vocations that people do in the world that are of benefit to others, that are gifts to the world, including teaching, and nursing, and economics, and architecture, and arts, and everything can be helpful.

[29:31]

So the butterfly does this as well, right? Psyche, the butterfly goes into containment, and containment is this chrysalis or cocoon, and the cocoon, you know, we use the word contemporarily, and we're going to cocoon tonight, and you get your pizza and your video, and sit on the couch, and that's cocooning, but actually, and I think that can be transformative, it may be, I'm not saying that isn't transformative. I mentioned this once before about couch potatoes, the life of potatoes under the ground is this very strong, transformative thing that's going on under the ground,

[30:41]

so if you really were a couch potato that was like one of those potatoes, it would be very transformative. But in the cocoon, this cocoon is spun, and then inside there, lots of things go on in that cocoon, and then the butterfly transforms from this caterpillar into this whole other being. That's why the butterfly has been so fascinating and awe-inspiring through the years, because it's so amazing, the difference between the caterpillar. Yesterday, I walked to the ocean. I know somebody saw one of these, probably those of you who might have walked to the ocean yesterday might have seen these little caterpillars out. I saw ten in just a stroll. They're black with kind of a dark reddish-orange middle, and I'm not sure what they're going to be turning into. Maybe somebody knows. But they were all over, out for a stroll.

[31:42]

Anyway, the butterfly, when it comes out, is a totally new creature, and is Wendy here? Wendy's been studying these, and they fly around, and they don't get eaten up by the birds, these colorful things. They fly around, but they're poisonous. The plants that they eat often are poisonous to birds, and nobody touches them, the butterflies. They also don't eat anything. They just drink nectar, and they fly. Some of them fly like the monarch flies for thousands of miles down to South America and back on nectar alone. So they're these awe-inspiring creatures, and they transform inside this container, this cocoon, and then they come out, and they emerge, and then pollinate and do all sorts of things with their gift-bestowing wings. And the butterfly was thought to emerge out of the horns of bulls.

[32:54]

This is this connection between the bull. And the bull and the old goddess is very connected, because of the horn of the moon and the phases of the moon and the menstrual cycle of women. So you have the crescent moon and the bull's horn, and also the bull's head is very much like, with the horns, it's like the uterus with the fallopian tubes. If you've ever seen a picture of them side by side, they're almost identical. So there's this connection between regeneration, birth, death, regeneration, that's all part of this cluster of symbols. So this, we need clues, you know, what are the clues that we have?

[33:57]

For some people, hearing something that somebody said can be a clue that they carry with them for years and can resuscitate them. They can tell you when they heard it, and maybe there's something that someone once said to you that made a difference that will be helpful forever until it's time to give it to somebody else. And in Zazen, you know, the Zazen posture, I feel, can be like a maze or a labyrinth. You cross in, you pull in your legs into this kind of maze-like construction. You don't know, if you're sitting in full lotus, what's right and what's left, and you're like a pretzel. This is kind of a maze shape, a meandering, wandering shape that you contain. And then you go in. You go into the labyrinth, into the unknown, just you and your own body-mind. You don't need some special practice period

[35:00]

or to go somewhere else. This can happen right under your own 2 feet. You're right there at the lips, at the entryway to the labyrinth. Always. And when we sit, we actually... There are clues that have been given to us by Zen teachers for hundreds of years, and thousands of years, actually. Some of those are things like, be sure your spine is straight. Be sure your ears are in a line with your shoulders. This is a clue. Pull up on this back part of your head as if you're holding up the sky and allow this lower part of your body, your hara, to be filled with air and soft and loose.

[36:05]

You know, the labyrinth and the meander is a symbol for the uterus also. This kind of, this place, this... Talk about containers, you know, where metamorphosis happens. This is another place of birth and death, you know. You never know what's going to happen in birth or labor, what comes forth. So this area of your body to be rounded and soft, and this is a clue. Eat and drink moderately. This is one of these clues to help allow the thoughts that come up to come up and to go again.

[37:06]

Don't hold on to them and try to make them something else, or don't try to push them away. This is a clue. This is a thread. Now, I don't want the feeling to be dualistic, where you go into this labyrinth and do this work, and then you emerge and go somewhere else. I feel like the actuality of it is that it's all here. The labyrinth, the entry to the labyrinth, the clue, the transformation and the emergence is all... It's not necessarily sequential. It's all happening in a mysterious way.

[38:12]

It's all happening for you now. The word mysterious means to not talk, to keep your mouth shut, and this is also part of the containment, to not be... That's like taking the lid off, if you're talking a lot about everything that's going on. It works to talk on occasion when you need help or when you need another clue. It's helpful to talk, but to blab, to talk and leak and have idle chatter doesn't work very well. So you keep it mysterious. You keep it in the realm of I don't know and continuing with your practice. So just to find your way through working with your posture,

[39:23]

through working with your body and mind, just to work with that is enough. It's enough to find your way through the labyrinth. I wanted to... I read something that was very... It was very maze-like. This family went into a kind of labyrinthine time. Their son... This I read in the Adni Reader, the November, December issue. Maybe some of you have read it. It's written, it's a true story by Barry Kaufman and his wife, Samah Ria, and she gave birth to a son. She's Indian, I believe, and the son's name was Raun. And this little boy, just at a few months old,

[40:23]

was not... didn't seem to be progressing in the way that their other children had, not responding in certain ways. Then he got an ear infection and had to be hospitalized, and then there was a lot of changes that happened, and he wouldn't respond to their voices. It wouldn't look at them. So they took him in to be tested and diagnosed, and the people that tested him said that he was severely autistic and had a very low IQ, below 30, and they basically recommended that he be institutionalized and they forget about this child. They had two other children. Put your attention towards these children, and, you know, there was nothing to be done. And these people... ..decided to enter the world of their child

[41:25]

and take the cues or take their clues from him. This was totally against what the medical profession was saying and the psychologists and people they had consulted with, because the going way of handling autism is through very strong behavioral kinds of training and using sometimes corporal punishment, if need be, to teach them to stop doing bizarre behavior, these children. And they felt that in any other situation, some of these techniques would be like child abuse if it was done at a school or home, but for children with these special needs, some of these things were done, and they decided that they weren't going to do this, and they turned their whole lives over, and I mean 24 hours a day, to the care of this baby, really, this little toddler. 19 months old.

[42:28]

And what they did was they entered the maze and the labyrinth, not knowing what, and their only clue was, their thread, was their own love for him and their own happiness, and what they call happiness is open-heartedness and love. And they began to, they thought, well, he's doing various things that are satisfying to him, but he's cut himself off from the outside world, so we'll do what he does and we'll communicate with him and show him that we want contact with him or care about him by just doing whatever it is that he does, and that's what they set out to do. And they would spin for hours, you know, and they would get down on the floor with him and he'd be looking at his hand. He had very strong powers of concentration. They would sit there with him and look at his hand.

[43:31]

Anyway, their other two children wanted to get in on the act also, and they would do it also, get down on the floor with him and be with him. This went on from the moment he woke up until the moment he went to bed. They just turned their life over, the whole family did, without knowing and against all of the advice that they had had. In fact, people thought they might be doing harm to him even, and they just went with the thread of their loving him and their wanting to connect and their feeling like he wasn't connecting because it was painful in some way or there was a problem and it was very difficult and they would go with him. Well, for feeding him, they got down on the floor

[44:35]

and they would try to have eye contact with him, and during a meal they would, sometimes as many as 30 times during a meal, they would have eye contact, and slowly, slowly things began to change and he would make some contact outside of his own world. Anyway, the article goes on. It reminds me very much of the miracle work in that movie with Helen Keller where she breaks through eventually her world and makes contact, and that's what this child does. And he ends up, at a certain point, his dad comes into the room whereas he said he could have thrown a grenade into the room and the child wouldn't have batted an eyelash at one point, but he came into the room and the little boy went... And that was like a thunderous contact that he made.

[45:38]

And eventually he speaks and says words for water. He cries and they give him water and then he says, Wah! Anyway, they have him tested again. This is in about, this is like 8 months or so of this full-time work that they did with him, and he tested age appropriate and his IQ was extremely high and they stayed working with him. There were setbacks too. He would regress and they would question, Are we doing the right thing? Maybe this is all harming him. And they just stayed with it in the maze with their clue until he was transformed and their whole lives were transformed and he emerged. And the last picture in this article shows him. He graduated with honors from some Ivy League school

[46:38]

and he's got his motorboard, his cap and gown on and he's hugging his dad and into the world with gift-bestowing hands. So they actually worked, the psychologists and doctors and all were so astounded by the work that they did that they've now set up this institute to work with autistic children in this way that they devised called SUNRISE. And as he said, there's no guarantee. Some of the children do not respond, but some of the children do. And that's what makes our lives so alive and that's what we fear. But this way of living is the best in the world. We have a sutra we chant and one of the lines in it is,

[47:39]

this way of living is the best in the world. Someone said to me this morning, it reminds me of their religion of origin where they're always saying, we have the real answers over here. They didn't like it that Buddhism was also saying, this way of living is the best in the world. But my feeling about it is not necessarily this way of living, being at Green Gulch per se, doing practice periods, living that kind of life, but this way of living is the best in the world, is the life that meets fully all the parts of our life, be they the scary parts, the unknown, the minotaur, the happy parts, meeting each one of those fully and not averting from whatever our life brings forth, whatever our life brings to us, and with that, the wish that all beings may be happy,

[48:40]

the wish that each person can live in this way, that's the way of living that's the best in the world. Not any particular lifestyle, but the way of living that includes everyone and wants each person to be exposed to the golden wind of the truth. So I wanted to close with a poem from Emily Dickinson who, as I said to someone, talk about emergence, talk about containment. Oh dear, don't tell me. I took it out of this special envelope with a butterfly on it. Oh, here it is. So Emily Dickinson, didn't she stay in her room

[49:48]

basically for her whole entire life, contained in her room? But within that room, she didn't stay there totally, but almost. She metamorphosized, she transformed, and then she emerged through her poems, I feel, and these became these gifts for the world. So this poem, it just has a Roman numeral for the number, it doesn't have a title. It's Roman numeral, I can't read Roman numerals, LXXXV11. Go on. My cocoon tightens. Colors tease. I'm feeling for the air. A dim capacity for wings demeans the dress I wear. A power of butterfly must be the aptitude to fly.

[50:53]

Meadows of majesty implies an easy sweeps of sky. So I must baffle at the hint and cipher at the sign and make much blunder if at last I take the clue divine. Thank you. Thank you very much. May our intention Yes?

[51:55]

I wondered if you have seen the Labyrinth of the Grace Cathedral? I haven't, I've just been hearing about it. Have you walked it? Yeah, I actually didn't walk it, but I was there the other day, and just, you know, I felt like I wanted to sort of prepare for walking it, just like you, you know, they have a thing that you can read about, you know, how it started, what it's about, and that in medieval times when it became too dangerous to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the different cathedrals started, you know, having these labyrinths as a symbolic sort of pilgrimage. You would walk this long path, and so they have one in the, inside the Grace Cathedral that's a giant round carpet, and then they also now have one outside that's in two different colors of stone that's on the new entryway to the Grace Cathedral, and so like as you're walking the labyrinth into the center, you're supposed to be thinking about shedding, you know, all the old, you know. It was just, it really went with your talk today,

[52:57]

and so I sort of thought that maybe I missed the beginning. I did miss the beginning. It was a little late, so I thought maybe you started it off because you had just done that. But it's really, when you finally get in the middle, then you're supposed to stay there as long as you want, and then, you know, head out with this, you know, back to get out of the labyrinth with a, you know, sort of a new awakening or something. Anyway, it's something I look forward to doing. Have any of you walked that labyrinth at Grace Cathedral? A lot of you? Yeah. People walk it too fast, though. The day I went, I felt that I wanted to walk it more slowly, and it was people just really zipping through, you know. Do you, can you tailgate, or do you have to do that? Signal and pass. In the thing that you read, they say you can, you know, you can walk at any pace you want, and that people who want to go faster should just pass. I mean, it's wide enough so you can put on your signal.

[54:00]

In the basement, the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral was copied from the labyrinth in Chartres in Paris. They uncovered way, I don't know at what depth, but down below, they uncovered this labyrinth that had been made, and they, some people from Grace Cathedral came and copied that and replicated it at Grace Cathedral. In fact, on November 4th, just Saturday night, Friday through Saturday, there was a 24-hour women's, the program that is involved with the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral is called QUEST, and the QUEST program put on this all-night labyrinth walk, and you can sleep in Grace Cathedral, and there was a women's event just this weekend. I have an ongoing question for myself, about the place of the psyche, and I think about the story that you're telling us,

[55:07]

when Theseus was a young hero, he would have gone to the minotaur, and made some profound statement about life and death in the minotaur, and the king would still be paying tribute, so I'm curious about what is the place of the psyche then, because I know that also on the path for myself, things emerge that are of the psyche, so it's just interesting to me that you told that story. It just brings up that ongoing question for me. Did you say that if a young Zen student went into the labyrinth and met the minotaur, it would say some profound things and then be destroyed? Being that the minotaur is not really of the realm of the spirit of the psyche, it would be affected by that perspective. Oh, I see. If the Bodhisattva said some... Did you say a young Zen student or a young Bodhisattva?

[56:10]

If Theseus was a young Zen hero. A young Zen hero. What do you think a young Zen hero would do when he met a minotaur though, really? Well, I was thinking about this. I imagine him being brought along with these other men and women, before this destroying monster, and would come to terms with the place that he was in reality at that moment. Would not have pressed the monster to death. How do you know that? I don't know. That's just what my imagination is saying. That's all. Well, I think that's the distillation of what somebody who truly understands the way is. One distilled phrase is that what they do is an appropriate action. They do the appropriate thing. So you can't necessarily... One can try on various scenarios about what would you do

[57:17]

if you were in there and faced the monster. What would you actually do? Even if you were against killing, let's say, or non-harming was your by-law or your heart way, what do you do? So this is an unanswerable question, really, because you do the appropriate thing at the time, and you can't necessarily figure it out ahead of time. It arises out of the causes and conditions of that moment. So I don't know what the young Zen hero or heroine would do. They do the appropriate thing, whatever that is. So in terms of the psyche, Zen practice, when one starts... I talked at the end about there's no guarantee and the kind of risk involved. I think that's very true.

[58:19]

People begin practice and take it on, and things happen unforeseen. Things begin to bubble up or fly through, or they come up against some tangled knots of their life that they cannot get... They have no way of approaching, or they're at a loss. And when it has to do with the psyche, then you need some help for the psyche particularly, like therapy of all types one might want to do, because I think that's the appropriate action. You need the appropriate tool for the appropriate job. So I think when we first started practicing, I remember there was some... I don't know what to call it, some kind of cultural, Zen cultural,

[59:20]

meaning American Zen, young Zen student cultural thing that only Zazen. You just do Zazen, and anything else but is sabotaging your practice, or you're a dilettante. If you do yoga, even yoga at that time, it was like dilettante, and therapy and different things. And I feel like that was kind of an extreme way to kind of approach the practice. And I think since that time, it's more come back, you know, swung back to what the situation calls for. Do that, you know. If you need, Picasso said, if you need blue, paint with blue. If you need red, paint with red. So I don't know if he said exactly that, but... LAUGHTER Then you used interpretation. Yeah. So if you feel you need a certain kind of being met in a certain way, then do that,

[60:21]

and it may be body work or art therapy or whatever, you know. But it's true, when you begin to practice, there are risks involved, you know. Does that answer...? Well, it's not... I appreciate the answer. My experience is that the two realms don't necessarily... aren't necessarily in the same place. There's overlapping, but also one goes one way and one goes the other. The realm of the psyche and the realm of Zen practice? The spirit. So it's a curious question for me, which way to go sometimes. I also just need to talk about this for a second. I guess I think of the realm of the psyche as the realm of the spirit for me, the spiritual path. And, I mean, if you look at the myth of Psyche, you know, she...

[61:22]

just to collapse it into kind of a thumbnail sketch, she marries her husband. She doesn't know what he looks like. It's in the unknown. She can only be with him in the dark. Do you remember the story? Eros is who her husband is, but she never sees him face to face. He just comes to her in the nighttime. And then her sisters plant these little seeds of doubt that, you know, he's really a monster and you should take the lamp and the knife and light the lamp and look at him, and then if it's a monster, kill him. Right? So she gets swayed by that, and in the night, she lights the lamp. She lights it, actually, and covers it. And then in the night when he's asleep, she uncovers it and holds it up with the knife, and she sees, and it's Eros. You know, it's the god of love, and he's the most incredibly beautiful man, you know. And he's also a god, so to look upon an immortal can blast you, you know, out of your consciousness.

[62:27]

And she is thunderstruck and drops oil from the lamp on him, and drops on him, and he wakes up, and he's burned by this dropped oil. He wakes up, sees that she's broken through her unconsciousness in this dark, and now sees him, and he says, that's it for you, baby, and he takes off flying out of there and says, you'll never see me again, right? She's pregnant at the time, and she sets forth to find him, and she has to do various tasks, but she's trying to reunite with Eros, you know, with relationship and love, and she has to do various things, and she has to, one of her tasks is to sort the seeds. She's given, anyway, Aphrodite, his mother, gives her these tasks. One is to sort seeds, a mound of poppy seeds and sesame seeds and flax seeds, you know. So this is a job, this job for the psyche is sorting. You know, sometimes practice period, it's like sorting out, you know,

[63:29]

what works, what doesn't, what's good for my life, what isn't, you have to, it takes a long time, and she gets help. She gets help from the animal realm, and then she also has to gather the golden fleece, and the rams who have the golden fleece are out in this pasture, and if you go at high noon, they're really full of their oats, you know, and they're running around bashing each other, and she realizes she can't go at high noon, so she waits till twilight, when they're kind of calmed down, and she goes around the edge, and she gathers it off the hedges where it's been stuck, where they go to scratch their back, you know. She gathers all the fleece in the twilight, so this is appropriate action. She doesn't go galvanizing off at night. So she has to find out what works, what doesn't work, how you modify, you know, your life, what you do that's appropriate, and of benefit, you know, and her last task, well, she's got a couple more. She's got to get this water from this high mountain,

[64:33]

and this bird helps her and scoops it out, but then her last task is to go down into the underworld. See, this is another underworld story she's drawn. Aphrodite wants her to bring this box of beauty. It's like this salve or something, and so she has to go down into the underworld, and when she's down there, she can't eat. She can't speak to anybody. She has to just do her task, and that's like going into the labyrinth, you know. You go down, and it's really scary down there, and all these people are grabbing on to her, saying, Psyche, help me, help me. Oh, how can you be so cruel? Help me, Psyche. They're grabbing at her outfit, you know, and she's just on task, you know. She's just, and it's like really hard. That's the hardest because people are saying, who do you think you are, leaving me here, down here, you know, but she's got to leave them. She has to go forward. This is a spiritual task, you know. This is a spiritual journey. You can't stop. You can't take care of everybody else's needs.

[65:35]

You've got to take care of what you've got to do, and then she gets the beauty, and when she comes up, she ends up opening it up and falls into this spoon. Anyway, she ends up becoming an immortal herself, is taken up and gets back together with Eros, and then the child that is born soon thereafter is named Joy. This is a spiritual thing, I feel. So, you do your Zen practice, and this realm begins to, you actually, and people can come in practice discussion, and they are completely sorting. They are in the sorting, and they have to do it, or they're in the underworld, and they can't listen to, they cannot go home for Christmas. It's like it will ruin their, they cannot maintain. They have to stay here, you know. So, I feel like there's a similarity.

[66:36]

Thank you for listening to that long answer. Yes? The other part of that, that she's dying, when she swoons, when she has gone to get the beauty kit, and that she can do nothing, and except that he helps her, he sends someone to help her, and it's almost as though there is help from the outside, which is also a different view of that tale that it has to help, not from just within, but it has to connect with the outward, and I always thought that was an interesting part of the tale, and also the labyrinth tale, I mean, I mean, I've always thought that the best question to ask would be, you know, what is the minotaur in your life? What is the minotaur? Because if you're in the labyrinth, and there's a minotaur,

[67:39]

it's different for each person what it is, and I always thought in the tale of Psyche that the minotaur in Psyche's life is Eros himself, which is often the case for a woman in the present world, that the minotaur in her life is the man she loves, but... Thank you. I know, I don't necessarily feel that about Eros, because it was relationship. Well, she got help. See, it had to do with being in relationship. See, she had been in the dark, you know, and unconscious, unconscious of how she was living and what her relationships were and all, and she came into consciousness, you know, and part of being full consciousness is being in relation. So I always see the Eros as being in relation, love.

[68:40]

I mean, it's been turned into a cupid, you know, this kind of a Valentine-ish kind of a being, but it's actually, to me, is full relationship with, you know, interdependent relationship with all beings is more how I see it. With also the sisters, and the mother-in-law who's after that, and it's a very much a family thing, but I think in the real world, that the story becomes, if you look at it that way, it becomes something different for the person. Well, it's true, you can't necessarily, your relationships, one's husband or wife may be the minotaur in one's life, that's true, and you have to face that, that's right. You can't gloss that over. Or the mother-in-law or the sister. Yeah. What else?

[69:41]

Yes. I don't want to overhear a biomythology, but there was just, maybe you're familiar with the Daedalus myth, there was actually a second Leprechaun, a second clue later on in the Daedalus myth that I thought was very interesting. Tell me, tell us. King Minos was enraged that Daedalus had escaped and was hiding somewhere in one of the kingdoms, he didn't know where, so he thought up this idea about how he was going to find where Daedalus was, and he made this contest, he said whoever can, there was apparently some kind of snail that had a very intricate shell with many sparkles in it, and he said whoever could thread the shell put a thread through all the sparkles in the shell from one end to the other, I would get this big reward. Because he knew that only Daedalus was clever enough to think of a way of doing that. And Daedalus did think of a way, he put a tiny little hole on the end of the shell

[70:43]

and put an ant through it with a string tied to the ant. So in a sense it's kind of like Theseus all over again with the thread. And an ant came out on the other end and he thread the shell and he won the prize, but he also gave himself away for doing so. That's right. I forgot about that. Thank you. So it seems like little brains play a large part in that myth. Yes. Echoing each other. Yeah. Yes. You mentioned that psyche was the body and the image of soul, and then you stopped yourself and said, but we don't talk about the soul. And I wonder if you could talk about that. Is that because it's the cause of your soul? Well, you know there's this term called Atman.

[71:45]

Do you know that term? Atman in Hinduism, which is translated as the soul and the understanding is that it is eternal and goes on forever. So the Buddha, in the Buddha's teaching, this is the earliest teaching, one of the main things that he said is there isn't this soul that goes on as an eternal being of some sort. There is only impermanence and there's no self and there's not a self or a person or soul like that. So it was a counter to this teaching and you find it all over the place, that there's no being, not a person, not a soul. So this is one of the main teachings of Buddhism is that there isn't this soul that transmigrates in that way that was being taught. So I think,

[72:48]

and I imagine in Christianity it's similar, the soul goes into a life everlasting, either hell realm or heavenly realm, but there's this kind of eternal thing around the soul, that one soul. But Buddhism doesn't actually have that as a teaching. Yes? What about while the life is being lived? Does Buddhism recognize that there is something that progresses and that moves forward and that refines and deepens and expands? Because that would be, I'm thinking of that as being soul as being presence and being able to be with what is right now based on what was before and what is to come. I think it's in this technical point that I mean there isn't this eternal soul in that same way that's a kind of fixed thing

[73:50]

that's going along. Go ahead. But does Buddhism recognize soul in the present? The consciousness, the living consciousness within a person as being unique to them? Let's see. I don't want to mislead anybody in the labyrinth here. Buddhism talks about no inherent existence. That's kind of one of the main emptiness of inherent existence. It doesn't deny that there is a person that arises, person meaning a psychophysical event that develops and remembers

[74:52]

and goes to work and that lives in the world and practices and so forth. It doesn't deny that. It denies that that has inherent existence meaning exists by itself as its own entity all by itself. That which I described is completely conditioned by everything else around it. In fact, it's conditioned to such a degree that it is everything else actually. Each person contains what contains every other person. Now, that's like what's that poem about in A Grain of Sand? World's in a Grain of Sand. That's a Western poem about the same kind of thing where within each being they're not just themselves all by themselves.

[75:52]

They are completely connected and that connectedness is called emptiness, that non-inherent separateness we call emptiness. It's emptiness of inherent existence. So the problem with soul, I think, is it very easily lends itself to a kind of inherent existence like thinking about it, conceptual framework around it, but it actually arises in concert or it arises by causes and conditions only. It doesn't arise by itself somewhere over there. Does that? Yes, I think so. Studying about emptiness takes a long, I found, years of kind of turning it and looking at it. But I think the main thing is this no inherent existence.

[76:58]

And it doesn't mean then, I think to take it to an extreme is like, well, then what's the use and I don't need to do anything or practice or anything because I don't exist. That's nihilism. That's extreme. The other extreme on the other side is I exist by myself and I'm going to do it my own way and forget about all you folks. That's the other extreme. So somewhere in the middle is the middle way, the middle way emptiness and non-inherent existence is like a triangle. What is it to not inherently exist but be arisen in the world? Where does karma come into this? Does this mean that your karma is my karma, is everybody's karma and we are all interconnected in that way as well? Well, there's various kinds of karma. Karma is action.

[77:58]

The word karma means action and we often equate it with the results of the action, the consequences of the action. There's retribution. There's karmic retribution. So if you do something, there is a consequence. There's causes and effects. Within this life. Yes, but karma has, within this life, retribution. You know, you do an act and the fruit of that action ripens you can picture it as fruit, you know. So some ripen right away and drop down ripe, like the next day and the others, you know, take a long time. Like, well, I don't know, smoking comes to mind, you know. The fruit of that action may take 20 years but there's some consequence that comes later and then there's some that ripen supposedly in next life, you know. So this is the teaching around karma. So in your psychophysical stream,

[79:00]

there is consequences to your action but there's also consequences to collective action too, you know. You can think of broader consequences to, you know, the genocide of the Native Americans, you know, there's a kind of the karmic retribution of that which does not reside in anyone. That's not the retribution that is for one person, it's a wider... Does that answer some of what you're saying? I think I'm wondering if there's no inherent existence then it's not karmic. Right, well, this is the same thing we talk about if we say, well, there's no inherent existence that means anything goes so whatever I do, so what? Like, and karma,

[80:03]

who cares about karma because I don't even inherently exist anyway so I'm going to do whatever I want. That's a way of thinking that's very, it's kind of a dangerous way of thinking which is nihilistic, you know, and it's not... The Buddha didn't teach do whatever you want. He actually, and all the Buddhist teachers since have taught be extremely attentive to every single thing you do. Right? Because there are consequences. Well, and we live in the world in a way that's non-harming so that all beings may be happy and that's when you understand the non-inherent existence of things then you live like this. The precepts, that's the teaching that comes out of a mind that understands emptiness. Those teachers then say live with great attention to your life, take care of your life and the lives of people, animals and plants. That's how you live. It's not nihilistic.

[81:04]

Now, but then one might say but, you know, it doesn't, you may have some nihilistic or extreme view of that but that's not a full understanding. You know, it's off to one side. It's leaning over to one side. So being upright in the world, you know, in the Zazen posture as the beautiful example of living upright, not leaning over to nihilism and not leaning over into hedonism is full attention to detail, appropriate action, you know. That's what fully expresses the fact that we don't inherently exist, that way of living. One, two, three, four, five. Okay, Kathleen.

[82:06]

Yes, so is this correct in the world of karma that we are, let's assume we are all trying to wake, to awaken and that our actions when we were not awake still have karma. There's karma to that. That's the scary thing to me. And I see in my life that things that I have done in my unawakened state have karma. Yes. Yes. Yes, and that's what often brings people to practice. They show the light, they uncover the light, you know, and they realize how they've been living, you know, and the harm they've been doing. I remember when I first started sitting in this one period of Zazen, it was like these people's faces just came through my mind of people I had hurt in my life unintentionally. Who cares unintentionally?

[83:07]

I did, out of my own ignorance. See, the three poisons in Buddhism are ignorance, well, are greed, hate and delusion. That's the hub. That's the, if you, iconographically, there's the wheel of life and in the hub is greed, hate and delusion and it's turning, turning and then the the twelve-fold chain around it that's turned by this hub of greed, hate and delusion, the first one is ignorance. So out of ignorance, the ignorance of living your life based on greed, hate and delusion, we hurt a lot of people, you know, over and over. So yes, there are consequences to that. Pain, there's a lot of pain. So out of that, this is the ground of why anyone would start practicing anyway. You see that very clearly one day and say enough, enough of living in the dark, you know. I want to, doesn't mean that, you know, in a day you turn around. This is, this is going into the dark.

[84:08]

This is being called to the dark. You know, another myth that I didn't bring up is the Persephone myth, which is the older myth than the Hellenistic. This is pre-Hellenic of Persephone when she goes down. Hades, later Hades takes her down, rapes her and keeps her. But the earlier myth is she on her own wants to go down. She says to her mother, I have to go down. She's called to go down into the underworld and to face some of this stuff. So it will occur to us. We are drawn to it. Inanna, you know, went down. She put her ear to the great below. She was drawn to the great below. And I think of this turning towards practice as being drawn to this unknown and out of one's own pain. Holograph. Can you relate to that to what you're talking about?

[85:10]

Holograph? Yeah, hologram. Hologram? Can I relate to hologram with my... With regards to what you're talking about. Tell me about hologram. I'm not sure I'm not explaining. A hologram is a picture that's projected out. And there it is in the middle of the room, three-dimensional. I mean, that's one example of it. But the fundamental thing about a hologram is that any part of the hologram, in other words, you take just a little piece and it will project the whole. And so when I thought, I thought, wow. I mean, it's just like a light bulb went on for me as to where I fit in the scheme of things. I feel that Zen has, or Buddhism, has some of the same concept, that we're all part of one. We're all one of the part, of the whole. So I don't know whether that makes any sense or not. So what happened for you? You actually had an insight into how you are in the world? Somehow that...

[86:11]

Some of my own personal nutsy stuff and what I see going on in the world in some ways. I could see how I fit into the scheme of things and the scheme of things fit into me in a much more accurate way. So I was just curious. Yeah, well, I think from what your description is, I don't know that much about holograms, but it sounds very like an accurate description, an accurate description or way to help one think about. It's actually beyond conceptualization is the thing. So whatever metaphor or help tool to understand that helps you, please use it. But it's actually beyond conceptual understanding. It's like the concept that out of nothing came all things. And all things eventually go back into nothing. At least I started thinking about them. And that's a sure way to go nuts for an hour or two.

[87:13]

And yet in terms of the hologram, there's that same concept of a small piece, of that representing being all, and all being a small piece. If that sort of hit the mark for you, then keep it, take care of it. Yes? I got a little confused when this lady asked about the soul. And you addressed it from a different perspective which was emptiness. But then in your words, you describe the next lifetime. And I'm having a hard time understanding what is your next lifetime if the soul, if the body dies, obviously something else remains. Is that not true

[88:16]

in Buddhist thinking? These, let's see, the, you know, in Asian countries where former lives and future lives are kind of just a given, you know, it's like, in fact, there was a Tibetan teacher who came to this country for the first time and heard about Christianity for the first time and was astounded. He said, I mean, they only have one more life to live. They just go to one place. Just couldn't believe it. So I think for us, the Westerners, future lives, it's a little difficult. I mean, people say, yes, I love Buddhism and everything, but don't tell me about

[89:16]

past lives or future lives. You know, I want to do Zazen and, you know, pay attention to the details, but don't talk to me about these other lives. But from an Asian point of view, this is a very integral part to understanding and is used in the teaching a lot, you know, and used as examples, former lives, the Buddha in former lives and that kind of thing. So I don't have the answer necessarily what happens, you know. I think if you read something like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, where it has it very laid out when consciousness leaves the body and goes into an intermediary realm and the bardo states and the choices this intermediary being has there. But I don't think anyone ever says, and this is where certain sects of Buddhism kind of got into trouble, you know, where they kind of set forth and they were heading right for what is it that transmigrates, you know.

[90:18]

If it's not, if we're saying there's no soul, well, what is that being, you know? And you kind of come up against a problem there conceptually, you know. So, and there's whole schools of Buddhism called the Pudgala Buddhists who said there was a soul. You know, there is this being that actually does carry on. And they would debate the other ones and this has been a problem, you know, for if there is just momentariness, you know, causes and conditions that arise and go and dissolve and arise and dissolve, about past lives and former lives, you know. How do we reconcile this? So you've asked one of the oldest questions, you know, in Buddhism. And, you know, in some ways there are certain questions, this will get me out of it. The Buddha, you know,

[91:18]

was asked various questions like what happens after you die? What happens this? And there were certain questions that he refused to answer. He just was silent. And the reason was, I'll use this parable, this is for your own Buddhist education, so you have this in your repertoire. He said it was like asking if somebody shot you with an arrow before you took the arrow out, you had to know where the wood came from, who made the arrow, where the feathers came from, who made the tip, you know, before you removed it. So he basically said you just remove the arrow, you know, don't worry about these other things. They don't lead towards salvation or liberation, but we like to think about them a lot. And I'm not putting you down by any means. I think there is a kind of conceptual what about that, you know, that kind of stops one. The thing is that not only do we talk about the non-inherited existence of a being who is right here now,

[92:20]

there is also the non-inherited existence of the, whatever, the Tathagatagarbha, or the, no, it's not called the Tathagatagarbha, it's called Gandharva, which is this being that chooses a womb to be born into from this intermediary realm. They have a name for it. And it's drawn to, you know, there's a whole, there's stories about this, right, teaching stories, that Gandharva, Gandharva, is drawn to, well, I don't know what it does now with artificial insemination, you know, it's like, but anyway, it's supposedly in the mythology or whatever, it's drawn to couples who are making love, and it's drawn to certain couples all throughout the world, and it goes into the womb, and if it's drawn to the man,

[93:22]

it's a woman, it's a female, and if it's drawn to the mother, it's a male. There's a whole, there's lots of stories about this, teachings that you can find in the literature, and there's the non-inherited existence of that as well, you know. So you can read about it and stuff and kind of grapple with it, but I think the main attention has always been focused on living your life in such a way that you liberate yourself from, and awake, awaken. That's kind of where the emphasis is put in the teaching. But yes, it's true, there are these kind of areas that need to be settled sometimes. Okay? Let's see. I've never said something about this whole thing, but it's kind of helpful to make this, you know,

[94:23]

trying to understand what goes on. It isn't the same soul that goes on, except think of yourself when you're five years old, and then think of yourself as you progress, and the groove has changed over the years.

[94:40]

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