I am delighted to be here again with you this evening. This will be my last appearance for a while. I want to again express my appreciation and Anne Aitken's appreciation for your hospitality all this time, to express my thanks to you individually and to Reb and his staff for a wonderful respite, a working vacation, and I want to thank Yvonne and Bill for their

[01:09]

hospitality also during the last part of our stay. I'm looking forward to seeing all of you again. I have been working on revising my taishos on the Mumonkan or Wumengwan, transforming them from transcribed tapes to essays. This is one of those taishos, Case 45 of the Mumonkan or Wumengwan, a book that was put

[02:09]

together in the early 13th century, a collection of 48 classic cases of dialogue, stories, dreams, and folk stories, and simple challenges like today's case. I said, I could hold this flashlight in my mouth, you know. Fayan Dengshan said, Shakyamuni and Maitreya are servants of another. Tell me, who is that other? Wumeng comments, If you can see this other and distinguish that one clearly, then it

[03:13]

is like encountering your mother or father at the crossroads. You will not need to ask somebody whether or not you are right. Wumeng's verse, Don't draw another's bow, don't ride another's horse, don't discuss another's faults, don't explore another's affairs. Fayan Dengshan is no other than Wuzhu or Goso. A familiar case, a familiar figure in these cases. He was a Sung period Linchi or Rinzai master, lived in the 11th century just into the 12th century. He was the instigator of case 35 in this book, the story of the young woman who got

[04:25]

separated from her soul, and case 38 about the water buffalo that passes through a window all except his tail. Thus he appears in this collection three times, as often as Unmon or Yunmin, which gives an indication of how highly Wumeng thought of him. He was actually a great-great-grandfather of Wumeng in the Dharma, and was teacher of Yuanwu, the compiler of the Blue Cliff Record. Wuzhu was ordained at 35 after a very promising career as a scholar of Buddhism.

[05:27]

He went from teacher to teacher seeking the Dharma, and at one place he heard the words, It is like drinking water and knowing personally whether or not it is warm or cold. And he said to himself, I know about warm and cold, but I don't know about personally. And he settled in the assembly of Po Yun Shou Duan, and one day he heard the Roshi say, There are several monks from Mount Lu, all of whom have had satori. If you ask them to speak, they give beautiful talks. If you ask them to write pithy commentaries, they do so nicely. Yet they have not attained it.

[06:30]

Well, he was dumbfounded by this and pounded over it. And his realization of Shou Duan's meaning was his personal realization. His reputation spread, and for some 40 years he was a prominent teacher. Yet they have not attained it. This is reminiscent of Case 9, the story of the non-attained Buddha. You know, in Zen, there are two points of view which melt and blend, just as form and emptiness blend. Those two points of view are the essential point of view and the practice point of view.

[07:35]

Now of course, Wu Tzu's teacher here was speaking from the essential point of view. They have not attained it. But there is also a practice point of view, and I'd like to stray a bit from our topic here and go into that a little. I'm often asked, how is it that people who have passed their first gate are obviously not yet mature? That's a tough one. You know, you've had enlightenment, but you're not mature. Let's abolish that word, enlightenment, at least in that context, I think. Well, the holograph, maybe, is the best model or metaphor for explaining this point.

[08:51]

The holograph will reveal a three-dimensional picture, sharp and clear, when you shine a laser through the plate. If you break the plate and shine a laser through any of the fragments, you will still get the first full picture, but the perspective will not be complete, and it may not be so sharply in focus. Yosutani Roshi used to say, Kensho, realizing true nature, is like rubbing a clear place in a piece of frosted glass. You look through the clear place, and that's essential nature, all right, but you don't really see it in focus yet. You need to clean up the whole glass and maybe push it out. That is continued practice. I remember the Hasansai ceremony that is conducted in the Sambho Kyodan school for people who

[10:04]

have completed their Koan study. This was a Hasansai for an old-timer, and Yosutani Roshi, in his words at the ceremony, said, now he is beginning his practice, and those of us who are still struggling away at our first Koans are thinking, wow, where does that put us? And of course, maturity of character is a matter, too, of concern. How is it that a person who has passed his or her first gate is not mature in character? Well, this is another interesting question.

[11:09]

I think it's like cleaning up the first floor, but there can be lots of spiders and other things in the basement that need cleaning out. Kensho, or realization experience, opens the gate, or rather it reveals the open gate. It is up to us to go on through. In my own case, I suppose I formally had Kensho with Nakagawa Soenroshi at a retreat or session held at San Juan Bautista. 1969, at a Catholic retreat house there that we rented for the purpose of session.

[12:22]

I had actually had an experience many years before that, but it wasn't clear enough. And I went through some checking questions with Soenroshi, and then when Yamadaroshi came to lead our Diamond Sangha centers in 1972, suddenly the boulders that were blocking my way broke loose, and the waters rushed through. And then after that, I went through Koan study with Yamadaroshi, and then I went to Japan every year for four months, and we worked intensively with him. And in 1974, I had my own Hasan-sai ceremony, and we had our first session with Miyashita

[13:29]

Roshi at the Maui Zen Door in 1975. And Shibayama Roshi's book, Zen Comments on the Momonkan, had just been published, and the students gave me a copy of that book, and they all signed it. It's the copy that I still use, and every time I leaf past that title page with all those old names on it, I feel very nostalgic. But the point is that when I read that book, I found there were many points I didn't understand. That was quite a shock, you know, there I was, a Roshi already, and I knew that Shibayama Roshi was a teacher I could trust. His teacher's teacher was Toyota Dokutan Roshi, abbot of Nanzen-ji, and Toyota Dokutan

[14:50]

Roshi was also the Rinzai teacher of Harada Sogaku Roshi, whose descendants later founded the Sambo Kyodan, with a Soto lineage also. So I felt very close to Shibayama Roshi in the lineage, but I didn't understand a lot of what he said. You can believe that I really worked on those points that I didn't know about. That was truly an important beginning for me, always beginning. So please see this whole matter in perspective. It is a matter of hard work all along to realize what has been true from the very beginning,

[15:52]

the essential nature that has been clear from the start. So of course, Wutsu is speaking from the essential point of view here, when he asks that question. Shakyamuni and Maitreya are servants of another. I want to ask you, who is that other? Shakyamuni Buddha is the great founder of our way, who after years of hard practice realized that all beings are the Tathagata. Only their delusions and preoccupations keep them from realizing that fact, testifying to that fact. Maitreya is the Buddha still to be born. In Chinese iconography, Maitreya is indistinguishable from Budai or Hotei, the so-called laughing

[16:59]

Buddha, with a big belly, his arms raised in the air, with a warm smile, the arrived Buddha that is potential in all of us. In the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, the figure in the last picture, entering the marketplace with bliss-bestowing hands, consorting with publicans and prostitutes and enlightening them all. This is Hotei. Well, these marvelous Buddhist figures, the Buddha himself and Maitreya, these teachers of us all, are servants of another. Tell me, who is that other? I'm reminded of Yasutani Roshi comforting us the second night of Sishin, with his cautions before we went to bed, saying, when you are tired, the enemy is tired.

[18:06]

Who is that enemy? Who is that other? This is the question. In our school, in the Diamond Sangha school, we work on the koan Mu at the outset, and we enter the dark night and sit hard through all kinds of difficult conditions to personalize that other. If you can see this other, Women says, and distinguish that one clearly, then it is like encountering your mother or father at the crossroads. You will not need to ask somebody whether or not you are right. Is that my father? Is that my mother? Just one glimpse is enough. I recall a few years ago, we received a brochure from the Bank of Upper Lake.

[19:15]

You know where Upper Lake is? It's where my grandparents, my mother's parents, lived, and my brother and I frequently visited there, and in fact, I spent my senior year in high school there. My grandpa was a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Upper Lake, and he had stock in the bank, and we have a few shares of that stock which we inherited. It brings us in about $75 a year. Well, they sent this brochure, and on the back, there was a little tiny picture of the Bank of Upper Lake in the 1920s or 1930s, I guess it must have been. A little picture, no larger than an inch and a half high, and there was a tiny figure entering

[20:21]

the bank in that picture, and it was Grandpa. His back was to the camera, but it was unmistakably his figure, and it was no higher than maybe half an inch in that picture. No mistake. Well, a man's verse. Don't draw another's bow. Don't ride another's horse. You must be your own archer. You must be your own horsewoman, your own horseman. I think of Yoshtani Roshi's wonderful mime of this line, don't ride another's horse. He was his own rider. The next two lines are not as easy.

[21:21]

Don't discuss another's faults. Of course, this is the same as the sixth precept, isn't it? But does this mean you just shine it on? You know, sometimes... Oops. We're fading. Excuse me. Yes. Don't discuss another's faults. This is a real everyday life go-on, isn't it? That's all right. That's all right. That's all right. Last page. I can wing it. How do you deal with another's faults, and what do you say?

[22:26]

Hmm? Something has to be said sometimes. How do you handle it? Don't explore another's affairs. It's the same kind of point. How do you do it? You cannot live in this world... Hmm? Oh, thank you. You cannot live in this world without an awareness of the affairs of others and without dealing with them. How do you deal with them? Hmm? I think we can get a hint from the Huayen Sutra, that we are all reflecting each other, that we all include each other, one another, in what Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing. Hmm.

[23:30]

The Buddha said, at his birth above the heavens, below the heavens, only I, alone and sacred. And he also said, on his enlightenment, now I see that all beings are the Buddha. Hmm? So it's this individuality and this otherness and the sameness of the self and others that U Tzu is getting at here. Who is that other? Okay, I'll stop there and invite your questions. And we go until what time? 8.30? 9 o'clock? 9.30? Okay, all right.

[24:40]

We have time for half an hour or so of questions. Pardon? Oh, yes. If we are? Oh, you have to deal with mistakes of others. Hmm? And you have to help resolve the tendency of others to make mistakes. Surely that is the main focus of people

[25:50]

who are in responsible positions in this very sangha. Ah... If somebody is messing up, clogging the toilet, say, bad habit, hmm? You have to go about it in the right way, see? So how do you do it? Hmm? Struck dumb.

[26:52]

Yes, there you go. Yes. Yes. Yes. A peep. Yes. You bet. How do you... Of course, that's the basic question for Western students. It's not regarded as a problem in the East

[27:55]

because people who are involved intensively in Buddhist practice are living in a monastery. And if you live in a monastery, it's like living in a training center, you are like rocks with rough edges that are being rotated around in a pot and you gradually rub off the rough edges and become smooth and bright through sangha interaction while applying the wisdom that you have gained. Ah... But it is possible, especially for a person of some talent, to grow up,

[29:01]

maybe even go all the way through Koan study without ever having to deal with the spiders in the basement. You are, in the words of my dear friend Beatrice Wood, a potter in Ojai Valley, a talent bum, you know? And there are lots of talent bums in this world, you know, who have wonderful achievements behind them, but they are still neurotic as hell. So we must look at the limitation of Koan study, that it takes one through a course of wisdom,

[30:07]

and if at each step, one examines how this works in everyday life. I'm thinking of the case of case 40 of the Momon Koan, where Issan kicks over the water bottle, and Momon's verse runs, tossing bamboo baskets and ladles away. Of course, Issan was the cook of the monastery. He swept all before him. He kicked over the water bottle. Yakujo's great barrier cannot interrupt his rush. Yakujo was the teacher who set the water bottle on the floor and said, you may not call this a water bottle, what do you call it? And Issan kicked it.

[31:10]

And then the last line reads, thousands of Buddhas come forth from his toes. Well, I always regarded that as a kind of conceit, a kind of decorative line, a fancy idea. But my student, who is now an independent teacher, Nelson Foster, says to his students, how do you show that in your daily life? Thousands of Buddhas come forth from your toes. So if there is the constant referral back to daily life from this arcana, from these empowered fragments of wisdom, then certainly Koan study is going to clean out the basement too.

[32:17]

But it's obviously possible to bypass such questions. And maybe even get the knack of showing how to do this in daily life and not do it. Yeah. So, I was talking about this the other night with someone who called. And she was looking at the relationship of the twelve steps to Zen practice. And I said, that explicitly you're more likely to find that in Theravada practice and in Tibetan practice than in Zen practice.

[33:22]

But on meditating about this question a little more, I realized that one can pick out in Koan study teachings that can be related to each of those important twelve steps of A.A. and Al-Anon and so on. So it seems to me, you know, one of the things I noticed when I first began my Zen practice in Japan was how arrogant some Zen monks were. And my first Zen friend used to tell about the time that he was in Korea at the Myoshinji Betsuin, the branch of Myoshinji,

[34:27]

which was in Seoul or Keijo as it was known in those days before the war. And there was a monk who had, oh, there was a monk who always kicked the dog, the stray dog that came around, kicked him out. And after his Kensho, Mr. Blythe, watched to see, is he going to kick the dog? And sure enough he did, you see. It seemed to kick him harder. That is my point, you see. Kensho, our realization experience, exposes the open gate and it's up to us to walk through. It's up to us to take all this to heart, to personalize it. That's the task, right through, to personalize it. One can be exposed from

[35:31]

hell to breakfast and not change. Zen practice is transformational or it is nothing. Yamada Roshi used to say, the purpose of Zen is the perfection of character. How do you distinguish character from personality? That's a very interesting question. Maybe basically there is no difference. Hilary Rand the other night was mentioning something she ran across in Heraclitus, a fragment that says, character is fate. Of course you can read that as character is karma.

[36:38]

Character is your karma, in other words. I don't believe that one is born a tabula rasa, a white tablet on which everything is inscribed after birth. I don't think it's true. Scientifically I think it can be shown that this is not true through studies of twins. Twins who grow up separately are found to marry spouses, to get married and their spouses have the same name. They name their children the same names. They name their cats the same. They have the same habit

[37:40]

of maybe flushing the toilet before they are completely done. It's incredible how similar they are, even though they were separated at birth. The little details of habit and preference and taste in movies and all of that. So you wonder where free will comes in. The point is the nirmanakaya. You see, the nirmanakaya is the infinitely varied body of the Buddha, the unique body of the Buddha. The prototype is Shakyamuni Buddha. There was never anybody before like Shakyamuni Buddha and there will never be anybody again like him. There will never be anybody with your face again

[38:43]

and there never was before. You are completely unique. You are special, as Mr. Rogers says. That specialness, you see, is your character, that is your karma. And it is your responsibility, within this world of harmony, within this Indra's net, to cultivate that particular talent and potential that you have within you in this process of rubbing off the rough edges and harmonizing with all beings. So, personality, you know,

[39:44]

is that original character with whatever has been inscribed on it since. Change. Or the degradation. What is it, Dr. Johnson says, in speaking of another's faults, he said about somebody, Sherry, sir, is naturally dull, but it must have taken him a good deal of cultivation to become as dull as he is. So, it can go both ways. Yes. I believe that, especially by some Soto teachers,

[40:46]

the koan practice is helpful, it's efficient. And I really don't understand this too well, but an example of this, whatever doping that I've been doing, he says a line that's used to justify this, I think, to carry the self forward. I can't remember. To carry the self forward, to be enlightened by the ten thousand part of this delusion. And in other words, koan practice seems to be a practice designed to cultivate the self, a self-improvement, self-achievement. It seems so. And to go back to Dogen's line, and incidentally, you know, Dogen Zenji certainly used koans in his teaching. I mean, the Ehe Koroku is simply a collection of koans. And in the Shobo Genzo, there is a case

[41:49]

in virtually every chapter, a koan case in virtually every chapter. And many of the, in the Genjo Koan, the case ends the chapter. But in many of the chapters, the case begins the chapter, and the rest of the chapter is a commentary on that case. And with regard to that famous passage in the Genjo Koan, that the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion. That's the difference. He doesn't say it is delusion. If you know Japanese, that word to is there. To is the particle that is equivalent to our quotation marks. It's called delusion. It's one of the ways, in other words,

[42:56]

it's the kind of thing that God commanded Adam to do, to name the animals. Naming is an extremely important human endeavor. Without naming, we can't function. So, that... Those two lines, that the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things is called delusion. That the ten thousand things advance and confirms the self is enlightenment. There's no to in that second line. There's no quotation marks. He is simply highlighting

[44:00]

the two ways, so to speak. And he is not... He is not giving excessive stress to directionality here and he is not, I think, making invidious comparisons. Now, the next point is about Kant's study. Kant's study is not self-improvement in the modern sense of human development. If it is, I resign. If it is, I resign. There is no realization apart from perception. Beginning with the Buddha who looked up and saw the morning star. See?

[45:02]

There... It's very interesting to look at this in terms of gender, in terms of the traditional sexual roles, you see, of striving and receiving. The masculine role of striving and the feminine role of receiving. There is both in Zen practice as I see it. Heejin Kim translates one passage in Dogen. Mustering the self, which is a really great expression. It's a military expression, you know? Mustering the self. Getting it all together, so to speak. And striving. But that striving is the striving of focus. Openness, you see. Openness.

[46:10]

Open... A one-pointed open focus so that the sound of the birds goes right through. The shine of the star goes right through. The smell of the incense goes right through. And when we look at Zen literature, that's what happens to these old worthies. Remember the story of Nangaku twisting Baso's nose. That is perception, you see? Feeling of pain. Dogen, hearing the sound of the stone striking the bamboo. Little sound. My own case was hearing my teacher shout in the dojo.

[47:16]

It is not attainment. And this is the whole point of Utsu's teacher here, saying they have had kensho, they can write pithy commentaries and all of that, but they don't have it. There is nothing to attain, really. But you have to work hard to realize that. And koan study is no more than this aspect and that aspect of non-attainment. What is perfection of God? Pardon? There is nothing to attain. Yes. Why bother? That was, of course, Dogen's question,

[48:23]

you know, when he was a little boy. If all beings by nature are Buddha, how is it that all the old worthies of the past had to sweat blood in their practice? And that question took him from teacher to teacher. Sure. It's the old complementarity, you see, of work and no work, attainment, no attainment. And the Fukan Sasengi, Dogen, says something like you may practice Zen and get enlightenment, but each step is equal in substance. That's not an exact translation, but it's something like that. But, you know,

[49:32]

nowadays, there is quite a separation between the practice of koan study and the practice of shikantaza. But in our heritage, they were not so separate. And it's only with the developments of time, you see, from the Sung period down that we see this progressive separation. But even now, in the Soto school, there are these hard questions being asked. And even now, in Rinzai school, well, I don't know about Rinzai school, you know.

[50:35]

My practice in the Rinzai school was much before I had any real understanding. But anyway, in the Sambo Kyodan school, what do people do in between koan practice? Commonly, the person who has finished or completed his checking questions on Mu and he's working on koans beyond Mu, he'll come to Doksan and will work on a koan and will finish that koan, and he'll get the next one and he'll walk out the door, make his vows, walk out the door, and on his way back into the dojo, he'll think, oh, that must be it. See? Well, he's got hours of Zazen during Sesshin before he can see the Roshi again. So, or she has. What do such people do? They do Shikantaza.

[51:36]

Or they do Mu, which is, at that stage, not distinguishable much from Shikantaza. So... Too much is made of these distinctions, I think. And this was Harada Roshi's faith, you see, in finding no real satisfaction in his Soto practice. So he went to study in the Rinzai school, came back to Soto practice, and that is... And he founded a line which he felt, I'm sure, was to revitalize the Soto school. And there are other ways to bring these two lines together. Not only, I think, should we bring these two lines together,

[52:40]

but we should be concerning ourselves about finding the perennial truths that underlie Mahayana and Theravada, between Mahayana, Theravada, and Vajrayana. Senzaki Sensei believed this so firmly that he would use Pali instead of Sanskrit whenever he had occasion to use the old words, like Dharma. He would always say Dharma instead of Dharma. And he would always bring in Theravada teachers to talk to us. We must find the water in our own well, but at the same time we must be open to other tastes

[53:43]

and to find the taste of no taste that is at the very source. Excuse me, I got carried away. OK, it's 8.30 already. I didn't see you sitting there. How are you?

[54:06]

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