I get to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I'm bound to taste the truth of the Bhagavad Gita's words. Good evening, everybody. It's good to be with you here this evening. I, when I found out that I would be giving a talk at this Togo Lection session, I came in equipped with something I wanted to talk about. But then as the weeks began to unfold, and I got to experience not only the largest sangha, people that come from all over the world, but also the sangha here being published.

[01:04]

And as I watched the students here interacting, so as I got to watch the Gringo Sangha interacting with their teachers, and with us visiting here, and most importantly as I got to interact with my own Dharma brothers and sisters, and my teacher, I decided to speak on a very different topic. How's that?

[02:08]

Hello? Any suggestions? I can speak in the loud voice, huh? Hello? How's that? Hello? Are you getting it? Okay. Now you've got it. So my experience of all of you,

[03:18]

of the worldwide sangha in a sense, the Gringo Sangha, watching the interactions of people, meeting my own Dharma brothers and sisters, and my teacher, and the thing there is that in the past 15 years, it's the first time I've spent this long a period of time with my teacher and with my Dharma brothers and sisters. And I watched and began to just renew my appreciation of what this incredible Dharma is all about, and how it manifests, how it unfolds, the kind of magic that takes place just very quietly, moment to moment, day by day in these interactions. And so I decided to talk a little bit about the transmission of the light. Not so much the technical aspects of it,

[04:19]

but more the personal aspects of it, how it unfolds day to day. Someone asked me earlier today what I was going to speak on, one of the Gringo students, and I mentioned that I was going to talk about transmission of the light. And she said, Oh, so you're not going to talk about anything that would be of interest to us? And I mean, it's not, this transmission of the light is not something that happens at the end of training. It's something that's a continuum. It's just like the ceaseless practice that we do day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment. It includes every interaction that we have with our teachers, with each other. And it's the wonderful thing about it,

[05:20]

about the transmission of the light, is that it really has nothing to do with something going from A to B. We use the word transmission, and it kind of, in a sense, is a little bit misleading. The Buddha, when he realized himself, the first statement out of his mouth was that all sentient beings possess the Tathagata's wisdom, virtue, each and every one of us. And that light is that Buddha wisdom that we're born with. It's not something that comes from us. It's more a process of discovery, of realization, of the inherent perfection. That's the life of each one of us. And it doesn't happen at any one point in time. The formality of it may happen at a point in time. So suddenly, one day, your Dharma brother or sister is walking around with a black Kesa,

[06:22]

and the next day it's a brown Kesa. But the process was an endless process, and our practice is an endless practice. Each time we take the Bodhi seat, we verify and actualize the enlightenment of the Buddha, of all Buddha's past, present, and future. So what I'd like to look at is how this process of the transmission of the light happens. Different teachers have different criteria of how they do this, but at some point there's a coming together that happens between the teacher and the student, where they kind of formalize what has taken place. Nogen says, in each generation, every face has been the face of the Buddha,

[07:26]

and this original face is direct face-to-face transmission, and that's what it's about, one-to-one. We're an ancestral lineage, you know. What's handed down from generation to generation is primarily the relationship between the teacher and the student, their point of meeting. What is that? What is it all about? The great master Yakajo once said that if the student's understanding equals that of the teacher, they diminish the Dharma by half. It's only when the student has surpassed the teacher that Dharma transmission is complete. So what is that about? I've chosen a small paragraph out of Shobo Genzo's San Sui Kyo, the Mountains and Rivers Sutra of Dogen,

[08:27]

and in it he says, Since ancient times, wise ones and sages have lived by the water. When they live by the water, they catch fish, or they catch humans, or they catch the way. These are all traditional water styles, and going further, they must be catching the self, catching the hook, being caught by the hook, and being caught by the way. In ancient times, when Tokuju suddenly left Yakuzan and went to live on the river, he caught the sage of the flower in river. Isn't this catching fish? Isn't it catching humans? Catching water? Is it not catching himself? That someone could see Tokuju is because he is Tokuju. Tokuju teaching someone is his meeting himself. And I think that's the heart of what goes on, what takes place.

[09:32]

The Mountains and Rivers Sutra has been an important one for me personally. Any one of the fascicles of Dogen Zenji is just so chock full of incredible teaching. And this one in particular really touched me kind of karmically, because while I was studying at ZCLA with my Zumi Roshi, I had asked him if we could work on this sutra in Dogen Zenji. I wanted to know more about it, and he said, sure, get yourself a copy of it, and we'll start working on it. The only copy that was in existence at that time was the thesis of Carl Belfield, and it was in the school library. It was either a master's thesis or a doctoral thesis, his translation. And so I got myself a copy of it, and I began studying it.

[10:37]

And then before we got a chance to do anything, I was asked to come east with Tetsugen Sensei to help him set up. So Mountains and Rivers Sutra went on the back burner. And then a while later, as we found our place that we were going to establish, that mountain monastery, turns out it was on a mountain with two rivers crossing in front, and it seemed so auspicious to me at the time, its relationship to the Mountains and Rivers Sutra. So I again started reading it. The day we moved in, I stopped at a coffee shop and bought a copy of the local paper, the Woodstock Times, and I opened it up, page two, big bold type right across the top. It said, these mountains and rivers of the present are the manifestation of the way of ancient Buddhas, Dogen Zenji, 13th century Zen masters, a small town newspaper.

[11:43]

And I started reading the article, and it was all about Dogen's Mountains and Rivers Sutra. I got very excited about it. Another auspicious sign. Went to the local newspaper, asked who did it, and they said the editor. And I burst into the editor's office and said, did you write this article? And he said, yes. I said, this is a very obscure text. It wasn't published in English anywhere. Where did you find out about Dogen Zenji? And he looked me straight in the eye and said, doesn't everybody know about Dogen Zenji? So that became kind of the spirit of our practice there on Mount Tremper. And it became kind of a personal koan to me, and still is. It just has endless wisdom that keeps, the more I study it, the more it comes up and makes itself clear. So Kassan in this koan could see Tokuju because he is Tokuju.

[12:53]

Tokuju seeing someone is his meeting himself. My teacher seeing me is my teacher meeting himself, and it's me meeting myself. That's what was going on for me this week here, and that's what led me to this. This Tokuju is, he was a student of Yakuza. And Yakuza, as you know, came from Sekito, and the author of Sandokai. And it was a time in Chinese Buddhism that the air was kind of filled with Huayen and the relationship between dualities, between absolute and relative. It was the seeds of Sekito's. Sandokai was the seed of the five ranks of Master Tozan.

[13:59]

And Yakuza had transmitted to Ungan, who transmitted to Tozan, and that was the beginning of the Soto school. And he had also transmitted to Dogo. And Dogo's Dharma brother was this Tokuju. And at one point Tokuju left the assembly of Yakuza and went off calling himself good for nothing, went off to live along the Flower Inn River and became a boatman there where he ferried people kind of appropriately, ferried people back and forth across the river. Because he was teaching also, it was during a period of time of the great purge of Buddhism in China. So a lot of these monks either hid away or became hermits or disguised themselves. But my teacher seeing me is my teacher meeting himself,

[15:01]

and it's me meeting myself. Isn't this the same as Buddha meeting the Buddha? We often say to realize oneself is to really be intimate with oneself, or being intimate with oneself. Isn't this the Buddha meeting the Buddha? Meeting oneself. Now in one of the talks, and it was one of the talks that Narasaki Roshi gave, he talked about vertical and horizontal succession, and kind of part of the ceremony of transmission that has to do with establishing that merging, that identity of teacher and student. In fact, in this sutra here, Dogen speaks of the parent becoming the child and the child becoming the parent.

[16:03]

And there are certain things that are done in that ceremony that kind of reverse the role of teacher and the student. And this vertical succession, horizontal succession, there are certain gestures that are done that kind of punctuate that. And Roshi in one of his talks, and again someone else in another talk, talked about to receive the kai is to transmit kai. That transmitting, and to transmit means to be awake. But in the process of transmitting, there's receiving. In the process of receiving, there's transmitting. Giving is receiving. Receiving is giving. And we find it in all of the different aspects of our training. It constantly is brought up. It comes up, to me, the biggest place it comes up is in liturgy and service. You know, we receive the teachings. And when you receive the teachings and it's touching your life deeply,

[17:04]

you're overwhelmed with the need to want to give something back. And you feel so inadequate. You know, what could I possibly do? What can I possibly give my teacher who gives me so much? Well, that's what the service does, you know, to the Buddhas and ancestors. It's a way of giving back, of giving our gratitude, of identifying with them. I mean, the memorial service for Suzuki Roshi today is a way of appreciating that endless teaching of his that's still going on. Doshasana mentioned today when we were studying funeral ceremonies that, you know, at death, it's just a change in the form of teaching. It continues. Obviously, in the Buddhism, teaching continues. Dogen's teaching continues. Suzuki Roshi's teachings continue.

[18:05]

Endless teaching. Endless receiving and endless giving. That's why it's so important to be able to do that. And it's the same in Takahatsu. You know, when the monk receives the donation, he gives the heart sutra back to the person. Giver and receiver in that process merge, become one. In Oryoki, when we receive the food, we make an offering of food. We give back to the 10,000 things from where we received it. And so it's really critical. And it's one of the things that kind of hit me on the head here, being with my teacher again and watching him interact with there's a steady stream of people that come and want to talk to him, you know, and the subtle ways that the teaching is taking place that we sometimes miss. We don't even realize that we're receiving a teaching.

[19:08]

And if it's one sided, if we just take and don't give back, it kind of makes us a thief. It's like kind of you feel something's missing. But when you're able to give back, it kind of makes that dynamic relationship between the teacher and the student or the student and the Dharma live, sparking. I remember one of an incident in my own training. Probably she doesn't even remember it. It was one of those small moments fleeting. When I grew up, I grew up during the depression. My father died when I was eight years old and my mother had to go out to work and it was a very difficult period of time. And she wasn't able to make enough money just for the job.

[20:10]

So she began cleaning houses and she had ended up cleaning houses for people. My father was in politics at the state level and she used to be host many dinner parties and so on. And she ended up cleaning houses for some of the people that used to be her guests. And I remember her crying at night. She wouldn't take welfare. She had this thing that you earn whatever you get. You work for it. And she would do these house cleaning things. And I grew up having this thing about servants and people cleaning your house. And I remember after I got married and we had enough money to afford it. My wife wanted a housekeeper. I just resisted it like crazy. And finally she persisted and I agreed. We ended up getting a housekeeper. And I was just felt awful. I couldn't, I couldn't do it. I couldn't have this woman serving us.

[21:11]

I couldn't have this woman cleaning my house. And we argued and finally we let her go. And that stayed with me for many years. And years later, as we were established on Mount Trent for one year, Roshi came to visit and we're sitting in the Abbasid. And I was cooking dinner for us. And I was trying to talk with him and make the dinner. And he says, why don't you get the Anja to help you? So I proudly said, I don't have an Anja. I do it myself. And he said, why are you being so selfish that you won't let your students serve you? And I had never seen that. And having seen that, which seems like a very nothing simple thing. Having seen that changed my whole way of relating to my students. Of being able to receive from them what they had to give me.

[22:16]

And being able to give back to them. That's the source of the inexhaustible strength that comes in the relationship between the teacher and the student. I never realized how much that nourished. And how when there's only giving and no receiving, that the student will dry up or the teacher will dry up. One or the other, that they both need it. I remember reading recently an old memorial issue, a Yastani memorial issue of his death. And in it, someone describes the story of the last Jukai that Yastani Roshi gave. And they said that he was very sick. He was close to death. Actually, he had died a couple of days later after this Jukai ceremony. And they kept telling him, you know, you don't have to do this. And he, you know, knew that these students were waiting for Jukai and insisted on doing it.

[23:18]

In fact, one of them was Akin Roshi that received Jukai, Ann Roshi, Ann Akin, that received Jukai on that day. So he dragged himself to this Jukai ceremony. He had to be helped to walk in. And they sat him down in a seat and he was very feeble, very, very weak. And as the ceremony began, this person describing it said that he suddenly became a lion. You know, his voice was strong. His chanting was strong. It was totally present. It was one of the most powerful Jukai ceremonies they had ever seen. And then it was over. He kind of began to fade again. But what fed him, the juice that ran through his veins at that point was what came from his students. And he sent it right back. And that's the dynamic of the relationship face-to-face with a teacher.

[24:19]

It's nothing that just goes from A to B. It doesn't go in one direction. It's present in both places. It comes alive when they come together. And the deeper and the stronger that coming together is, the clearer it begins to become. The whole story of this encounter in the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, there's just that one paragraph. So to find out more about it, you really need to go into the Ehegoroku. And in there, Master Dogen speaks in detail about this particular thing. I also looked for this because it is kind of a koan among his 300 koans, Shobo Genzo, but it's not there. But it is in the Ehegoroku. And what he says is that

[25:22]

Dogo had gone to Kassan's monastery. Evidently, Kassan was the abbot of a monastery and listened to one of Kassan's talks. And during the talk in the lecture hall, a monk asked him, what's the Dharmakaya? And Kassan replied, it has no form. And then the monk said, what is the Dharmakaya? And Kassan said, it has no crack. And on hearing this, Dogo, who was visiting, burst out laughing in spite of himself. And after the talk, Kassan came down from the rostrum and asked Dogo why he had laughed. And Dogo said, I have a Dharma brother who teaches others in a boat on the Flowering River. You should go and see him and you should realize it. He also suggested that Kassan

[26:28]

change out of his temple clothes and immediately go to the river. And so Kassan did that. He put on traveling clothes, made the journey to the river. And as soon as Tokuju saw him coming, he said, chief monk of an assembly, in what temple do you stay? And Kassan said, I stay at no temple, otherwise I wouldn't look like this. And Tokuju said, if you don't, you say you don't, but then what do you look like? And Kassan said, I am beyond sight, hearing, and consciousness. And Tokuju, really, when Adam then went for his throat, where did you learn that? He says, beyond sight and hearing. And Tokuju said, even one phrase of ultimate reality would lose its freedom forever if we were to attach to it.

[27:30]

To drop a thousand foot fishing line means to seek a fish with golden scales. A fish with golden scales is another word for enlightenment, to realize. Why don't you say a word, he says to him. And as Kassan was about to open his mouth to respond, Tokuju leapt on him and threw him into the water and held his head under. And then Tokuju lifted him up, gulping and gasping, and demanded, say a word, say a word. And again, just as Kassan started to open his mouth to say something, back again into the water, and he'd hold him there. By the second or third time, Kassan realized himself. And suddenly, when he came up, he bowed to his teacher. And Tokuju said, you're welcome to the fishing line,

[28:31]

but the meaning of it, ripples no quiet water, is naturally profound. And Kassan said, why do you want to give away the fishing line? And the fishing line, in this case, is a symbol of the teaching, being a teacher. Tokuju is handing it over just as sometimes the kuts, or the shepe, or the staff, or fly whisk, are used as symbols, handed over at the time of transmission from a teacher to a student. And here, the teacher was a boatman, fisherman, and so, the fishing pole and the hook and the fishing line become the symbols of what's passed on from the teacher to the student. So, why do you want to give away the fishing line and the hook, Kassan asked. And Tokuju's answer was to fasten a green float to a fishing line

[29:34]

and decide whether a fish has golden scales or not. That is, to find out if someone had realized it or not. And then he said, if you have realized it, say it quickly, tell me quickly. Words are wondrous and unspeakable. You can see such a fish only after you've fished it out of the sea wave, and only after you've gone beyond discrimination. And while he's talking, Kassan sticks his fingers in his ears and begins to walk away. And Tokuju says, quite so, quite so. And so the Dharma was transmitted from Tokuju to Kassan. And then Tokuju said to him, staying on Mount Yakuzan for 30 years, I clarified this. And now that you have grasped that you must not live in the castle city or human habitation, cover your traces,

[30:35]

nor should you hide yourself where you leave no trace. You must go to a mountain recess, lead one person or half a person to succeed in the Dharma so that it's not extinguished. Realizing Tokuju's meaning, Kassan made a bow, a thankful bow, and started to depart. As he was walking away, Tokuju called out, Abbott! And when Kassan looked back, Tokuju raised an oar and said, Try to tell me. I have something more. And at that point, he jumped out of his boat and disappeared into the water. And later, Kassan became a very popular teaching. And Dogen in the Ehegoroku, what I just read, all came from the Ehegoroku, but I reworded it. The wording is a little awkward in the translation. What Dogen says is,

[31:37]

Although when Kassan was at the other temple, he was excellent in discussion. He expounded the teachings to humans and celestials. He was perfect in speech, and no one can defeat him in an argument. It still wasn't complete. Since he had seen Tokuju, he had realized himself. So there was nothing more to be desired. He succeeded in the essence of the Buddha and became the master. You may seek such a person in the world now. We find it impossible. Ah, what a shame. Noble Buddhist trainees, you must know this. First of all, you must have an indestructible, bodhi-seeking mind and fix your eyes upon the absolute realm beyond increase and decrease. See how Tokuju left a fishing hook. Who could do such a deed? That part where he calls

[32:38]

and says, and the abbot turns around and he jumps out of the boat and disappears, kind of is, I don't know if it really happened, if he really did that, but it's kind of similar to a thing that happens in the transmission ceremony called Muju Hai, where after the ceremony is over and you're doing all this stuff with your teacher and incredible bonding is taking place that's bringing the years of training and practice with the teacher to its conclusion and switching positions and so on, and then suddenly the ceremony is over, the teacher is gone and you come back later to the empty room and you bow, you bow in the direction of the teacher and actually, I only found out while I was here talking to Roshia,

[33:38]

I thought I was, the direction I was told to bow in, there was the empty chair that Roshia was sitting on while the ceremony was taking place and we would exchange seats and so when I was bowing, I was bowing, what I was seeing was this empty chair, I was actually bowing in the direction of where his bedroom was and he was asleep, but what a feeling that was, you know, that the empty seat being there, and what a feeling it must have been here and suddenly the teacher disappears and there you are, but, you know, does the teacher really ever disappear? Needless to say, no, it doesn't happen. I mean, if it's, if the thing is complete, the teacher is always present and the teachings are always present. In a sense, we say, you know, don't let the dharma be extinguished. How?

[34:39]

How could you let it be extinguished? Where would it go? You know, or protect the dharma. From what? But what is it that's realized? Vulture Peak, the Buddha holds up a flower, blinks his eyes, and the dharma goes to Mahakai Shapa. Mahakai Shapa calls out to Ananda, Ananda answers, and the dharma goes on to the next generation. The pebble hits the bamboo and it's transmitted. Tokpaju almost drowns Kasan and it's transmitted. But it's not only these accounts that we read about in the various koans, it's a continuum. It's a continuum that begins from the moment we take the seat, from the moment we meet our teacher, maybe even before we even meet our teacher. I know that was the case for me. The fact that that was going to happen

[35:43]

had filled me. I had no idea what it was all about. And then it happened. And it made no sense. There was no logic to it. My intellect couldn't do a damn thing with it. But my heart knew that something was taking place. And I, needless to say, resisted every step of the way. It was like struggling against this incredible force. And that force is the light that's transmitted. But the light is already part of it. We're born with it. It doesn't come from the outside. And all the teacher is doing has the same light, as did the Buddha, is helping us uncover that. Helping us work our way through the layers of conditioning. And all of us are conditioned. We're conditioned from birth.

[36:44]

There's no way to avoid it. We're conditioned by our parents, by our teachers, by our environment, by our culture, by our peers, by our education, by our religion. It's like a continual process of programming. So that by the time we reach adulthood, we don't know who we are, or what our life is, and we're confused, and we're trying to live our life out of some sort of stuff that we've been told. And what the Buddha Dharma is saying is that we really need to go very deep into ourselves to find the foundations of our life. It's not something that, you know, you're going to find in a book. And so you have to deal with that conditioning layer by layer, because beneath all of that is a person alive, a Buddha alive and well, buried under those layers of conditioning. And to get to that ground of being and realize it, and then not only realize it,

[37:45]

but actualize it, learn to live our life out of what we've realized. Learn to actualize, to manifest it, because until it's happening there, it's not yet over. Zen training is not over. So it's not enough to ascend the mountain, get to the peak of the mountain. We still have to come back, down off the mountain, back into the world. Until that which has been realized, has been actualized, in everything we do, in the way we drive a car, or raise a child, or grow a garden, make love, or whatever else we do, until it's manifesting in our day-to-day reality, it's not complete. So it's not just about the one side, it's about the both sides coming together. I want to leave time for some questions.

[38:48]

Question 1 when you look at our history, you read the newspapers, it seems that the basic characteristics of our species are war, and pillage, and hate, and insensitivity. We destroy the environment and each other, and here we are at the edge of the 21st century, and when you look at what we bring to it, I mean, you know, we know so much about the universe, so much more than these ancient teachers knew about it. I mean, a monk that comes into training today is so sophisticated in the ways of the world, in knowledge, and so on. We know about subatomic species, and worlds, and other planets,

[40:03]

and computers, and artificial intelligence, and bioengineering, and all of this incredible stuff, but what do we know about ourselves? Almost nothing. Our history has continually been dualistic, and everything we call our knowledge is dualistic. You know, self and other, this and that. Our psychology, our philosophy, our politics, our sociology, our medicine, all of it is based on a dualistic way of seeing the universe, and it's no wonder that we end up killing each other, and fighting each other, and ripping each other off. But there has been, in history, and very little is known by the general public, a small handful of humans who for 2,500 years,

[41:05]

Buddhist men and women, have been constantly verifying and actualizing the truth of the Buddha nature, of learning, realizing that ground of being, and manifesting it in their life. Realizing and actualizing the inherent Buddha nature that's the birthright of each one of us. It's the thing that lights the fire that raises the body-mind that brings us into practice to begin with. There isn't one of us sitting in here right now that wouldn't be here if that fire, that spiritual fire weren't burning in us. It raises the questions. Who am I? What is truth? What is reality? What is life? What is death? And that becomes the cutting edge of our practice. It enables us to endure the unendurable,

[42:08]

to engage in one of the most difficult encounters that any of us will ever experience. And that is to encounter the self. To study the self. Sounds so easy. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to be enlightened by the 10,000 things. But to study the self is a big thing. Most of us spend our life avoiding the self. We make ourselves numb so that we don't have to deal with it. And to forget the self, I mean the self is specifically programmed not to be forgotten. That's where the resistance comes in. And what is it that's uncovered after we get through all of these layers? What is that truth? We're surrounded by it.

[43:10]

We're interpenetrated by it. We co-exist with it. So much so that it can't be spoken of. You can't even point to it. The finger pointing to the moon is the moon. The moon is the finger. The finger sees the moon and the moon sees the finger. And the moon realizes moon-ness and the finger realizes finger-ness and they realize each other. There's no way to separate them. And that's what that teacher-student relationship is. And that's what, as far as I'm concerned, the Dharma transmission is. It's total identifying, total merging. It's not even. That seems like it's something that you do. It's realizing that connectedness that's always been there. But not just with the teacher.

[44:12]

That's just the beginning. With the whole catastrophe. All the good and all of the evil. Master Dogen says the interdependence between the Buddha and each one of us cannot be measured. We should sit quietly and reflect on this. Through Shakyamuni's face we will reflect his eye in our own. When this occurs it becomes the Buddha's vision and original face. This transmission has been handed down right up to the present time and has never been broken. This is the meaning of the direct face-to-face transmission in each generation. In each generation every face has been the face of the Buddha. And this original face is direct face-to-face transmission. Open the eye,

[45:12]

directly transmit through the eye and receive the Dharma through the eye. Find the direct transmission of the face through the face. Direct transmission is giving and receiving of the face. Open the mind, transmit and receive through the mind. Reveal the body and transmit the body through the body regardless of the place or the country. Transmission has always been just like this. He wrote a poem one evening at his mountain retreat at Eheji. He had a retreat house that he used to go to. He used to write. In that poem he says evening zazen, hours advance. Sleep hasn't come yet. More and more I realize mountains and rivers are good for the efforts of the way.

[46:13]

Sounds of the river valley enter my ears. The light of the moon fills my eyes. Outside of this there's not a single thing. What an incredible teacher. How can we ever repay him for these teachings? How can we ever repay our own teacher? That's why the Buddha after he realized himself didn't go off somewhere in solitude and live out his life in peace and quiet. He kept himself in the very samsara that he was looking to get out of for 47 years so that this Dharma could reach us here. So that we could be practicing it today. And every teacher that followed the Buddha down through India and China and Japan

[47:16]

to the present time had the same motivation. It was I take it very personally it was for me that he did it. And so how do I repay him? How do I repay my own teacher? Well there's only one way to do it and that is to realize ourselves and to pass it on to the next generation. In other words to do what they have done and give life give our life to this incredible Dharma and give life to the Buddha. That's all I've got. So do questions if you have any. Question from the audience

[48:40]

Struggling through what? Struggling through? I said struggling through the light? I don't remember saying it and I don't understand it either. Anybody else hear that? Does the silence mean no one ever heard it? Heard me say it? I don't... Huh? I thought you said struggling and resisting. Oh. Okay. Now I understand. That's a more personal thing. I don't know how many people experience that sort of thing but that's one of my highlights of my life. I resist. When I got this call recently I told someone it wasn't resistance that gave me the call

[49:41]

it was conforming that gave me the call. I mean resistance makes my life vibrant and when I first realized the incredible pull I was I grew up very resistant to religion and I was a Catholic and I had to go to Catholic school and Jesuits were my teachers nuns were my teachers and although I had this great respect for them and what they did I had so many questions about the religion that I never got answers to. They would treat me like a heretic of some kind so by the time I was 11 I was an atheist and a very active atheist all through my life and so when Buddhism started coming into my life I found myself resisting it and particularly when I'd go to a center and I'd see people with robes and bowing and all this stuff I mean it would just repel me and I remember I'd go to a session

[50:42]

I remember not wanting to go to the session to begin with I went to the monastery just to photograph because the teacher had very lousy photographs that he was showing at a slide show and I said okay, he needs a photographer so I'll go and make pictures for him and I went and made pictures and then the head monk said would you like to sit with us? and I was sitting on my own and for four years I was sitting before I would go near a teacher and I said sure and I came and sat and after a while the teacher said why don't you come and do session? I said oh, I'm not ready for session he said no, no, you're ready I said well I can't actually I don't have the time and he says you always come here on a sad day anyway just come for one day and I said well I don't have the money he said I'll pay for you so I went and you know I finished that session I'm driving back down the mountain I'm saying I'm never going to come here again I'm never going to do this again and two days later I'd be going back and one day became two days it became three days

[51:43]

and every time I'd finish a session I'd swear I'd never do a session again the rest of my life that's the resistance I'm talking about I mean it went on and on and on and still it's not over I still practice it I used to resist liturgy you know and I mean I would sneak out the side door as soon as the liturgy started I mean everything else was fine the work and the zazen the liturgy I would disappear out the side door and every time I would take off I remember Tetsugen was going to go after me Roshi would say let him go and then after a while they pulled me into a position where I had to be there for the liturgy and I did that position and I hated everybody and their sanctimonious looks on their faces and all this and then little by little it just opened up I had no idea how it happened

[52:44]

or why it happened you know I mean it's just like I had nothing to do with it and I remember years later going back and giving a talk at the same center at GCLA Roshi had asked me to give a talk and I decided to give a talk on liturgy because they were doing it sloppy they weren't paying attention to it and I gave this fire and brimstone thing about liturgy and I went on and on and on and when the talk was over we were walking back to the house Roshi elbows me and said do you remember when you used to sneak out the side door? so it changes but that's the resistance I was talking about I don't think everybody has it but I know a lot of people do have it anyone else? was it that clear or was it obscure that there are no questions? it's nice to hear that it is an ongoing process

[54:04]

and that you may be undergoing it right now yeah yeah yeah I don't think anybody starts off in this practice thinking that that's what they want to do you know I did you know so who knows you know the buddhas that sit in this hall all the great teachers that sit in this hall I sure don't but everybody really should practice that way it's an incredible journey it's been an incredible journey for me and who would have guessed it definitely not me so that's it

[54:56]

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