Thank you for a very nice talk, Mr. David. I think maybe you should give more of them. So maybe on, you're doing five days now? Maybe zero and five days, okay? And one and three and six. Just zero and five. And I'm very grateful for Murayama Sensei for coming. I should have asked him to give a lecture, actually. But next time. And I think he's been giving lectures. Anyway, just by his kindness. Tsukiyoshi always hoped Murayama Sensei would come here, or someone like

[01:04]

You know, he had in his mind someone like Muriel-sensei coming. As you may know, he, Tsukiyoshi, thought we should not have any official connection with Soto school. So, administratively or organizationally, we have no connection with Soto school. But, Tsukiyoshi felt, With Zen, not even just Soto, but all of Buddhism, Rinzai and Soto, and he told me to study Shingon Shu and Tendai Shu too, and Jodo Shu, Jodo Shinshu. With all of Buddhism there should be spiritual connection, and of course, especially with Soto, lineage. So he hoped, if we're practicing here sincerely, he hoped somebody would come and help us. I feel Murayama Sensei's visit is that kind of help.

[02:28]

I don't know if he'll be able to come back again, but if he has to go to Omaha, San Francisco is on the way to Omaha. And today I don't have anything particular to talk about, though a number of things are on my mind. that I want to talk about in the next few weeks. Miriam asked me about merit because of M the other day. We say no merit.

[04:02]

No merit, of course, like Bodhidharma, means nothing to possess. But also we can say merit because there is some causation or interrelationship, interdependence. So when we emphasize interrelationship of everything, co-emergence of everything, we can say merit. Or we can say it's like a good joke goes very fast across the country and a bad joke needs television. There are many ways we can understand many points of view. You know what I mean, right? A good joke goes... They've actually measured it, you know. If someone tells a good joke in Boston, it gets to Los Angeles within a day or so, two days or three days, very quickly. If someone tells a bad joke, it stops in Boston unless someone tells it on television, then it will get around. So if something has right form, if it joins everything, it joins, it's very interrelated, it moves very quickly.

[05:29]

But also I saw a photograph of this Manjushree, Manjushri, with all the pumpkins in front of it. Have you seen the photograph? It's a great, marvelous photograph, wonderful photograph. There's two of them which are just as good that are all blurred, because it was hand-held, you know, kind of aura of pumpkins. But what was interesting in the photograph was this Manjushri is completely gold in the photograph. So it made me think about how whole world is completely gold. We don't see it, you know, that way. And you can ask, why don't we see it? I think camera sees it as gold, but we don't see it as gold. I believe because we only perceive edges. But if you take something and you bathe it completely in light, for instance, with no shadows, it's very hard to see it.

[06:54]

Or if you take a scanning device and you scan the world, barely anything appears. It's one surface. But if you take in the scanning device where there are jumps, and you begin to outline the jumps, then you begin to be able to see objects. But our bodies, our eyes, kind of monitor the gold, monitor the sensory information, and choose this surface as red, and then suddenly this surface is blue, or this Buddha is black and gold. And our mind kind of breaks it up into two things, where the light is most pronounced we call gold, But where the light is less pronounced, we call black. But actually, it's all gold. The light is equally shining, almost, on the whole thing. But a camera will see it as all gold. But you won't. But they try to make cameras so that they do what eyes do, so they see it the way we do it.

[08:20]

Dogen says, talking about secret teaching, the essence of the eye and the essence of the ear, or essence of ear and nose and vision, is to see with whole body, not just with the eye. And he means this by this, to see gradations or to see What else he says? He quotes Setia, who says, the night breeze has filled the castle with fragrant blossoms and myriad streams. Secret teaching is to perceive without gaps. So, anyway, he introduced this section of Shobogenzo with a story about a patriot government official makes some kind of donation to Ungo and then asks Ungo, Shakyamuni, the question, Shakyamuni possessed the secret teaching.

[10:10]

Mahakasyapa did not conceal it. And he says, what is this Buddha's secret teaching? And Ungo says, Shosho, his name is Shosho, in Japanese they translate. Shosho, do you understand? And he says, I don't understand. And of course, Ungo says, to not understand is to possess this Buddha's secret teaching. To understand is to Mahakasyapa, to not conceal. And then he goes on to point out, what is to not understand or to understand? To not see the Buddha, maybe to not see the Buddha as gold, Or to see the Buddha as gold would be a secret teaching, if you like. But it's not something you can point out. But a painter, some painters see, you know, we usually see shadows as dark, but if you're a painter and some painters try to paint it, shadows are rich colours, blue and maroon and many colours, and the world is awash in colour, and most of us see

[11:37]

some kind of black and white picture colored in with the surfaces rather even. Ann Bradstreet was America's first poet and writer. America's first professional writer was a woman. And she was born when Shakespeare was about 48 years old. She said she was supposed to be a good Puritan. She said somewhere, She was so wiped out, she didn't use the word wiped out, pretty nearly, by the tremendous light on the leaves, how the world was bathed in light, that she looked up and up this tree and to the sky and said, no wonder. It's so glorious. No wonder man has named you a deity. She said something like, if I could I would do, call you a deity. So merit also is that sense in which you don't perceive gaps. The secret teaching is to not perceive gaps. So this is also merit.

[13:05]

And so, Dogen says, once you see one Buddha, you will see many Buddhas. But to miss by a hair's breadth is to miss by a hair's breadth. So again, what I've been emphasizing recently is how our senses and how our mind divide things and how by zazen you should find a way to let go of it, let go of the division. To let go of the divisions, to point out no gap, to point out no over there is merit. But the word for no over there is merit. But no over there is not a thing. So merit names something which doesn't exist. But if by our chanting the sutras, since everything is so interconnected, much, much more than you can grasp conceptually, no over there reaches everywhere. And so we are always teaching no over there, and that teaching is merit.

[14:31]

And since it's said, since the bodhisattva possesses nothing, his activity or her activity is like a fountain overflowing, constantly overflowing. Their activity is just overflowing. But, you know, I was talking about ideas the other day, and you can experiment in your zazen. Just try a simple experiment. Instead of counting One to ten, your breasts. Letter them. A to J. A. B. C. You'll find it's like buttoning your coat. It's not like lacing something. One is like lacing. Because two includes one and 1, 2, 3 is actually 6, because you have 1 and then 2 is 2, 1 plus the previous and 3 is 3, so 1 plus 2 plus 3 is 6. That idea is incorporated. It's not just 1, 1, 1, 1. Since you say 1 and 2, you have idea, two apples. But if you say A and B, B doesn't include A.

[15:55]

You can take a name like Brzezinska, you can add a Z and a J and a few other letters and it's still pronounced the same way. But you can't take 1716 and add a 4 and a 5 and you end up with something quite different. Or if you just try to see if you can create a state of mind which is more powerful than words. For instance, when you're breathing, say on your breathing with each breath, say to yourself, loud, loud, or big. And then after a few breaths, say, quiet. And it's very difficult, I think, for most people. Not when, if they're saying the word loud or noisy, say noisy as you breathe, but think, try to feel quiet and your breath will come out noisy. Very difficult. If you form the word noise, your breath will, there'll be some noise of your breath coming out.

[17:06]

There's tremendous interrelationship instantly, the thought noise, and then you can try to keep another level of thought going, which is quiet, quiet, quiet, but noise and you'll have some noisy breath. So then you can ask, who decides whether to say noisy or quiet? Where are you going to get it? You know, where is it coming from? I tried for many years, like Ant and Bradstreet, to kind of nature worship, having no religion, really. And what you miss in religion is a sense of community and relationships with among the generations, and a non-competitive fellowship, non-comparing friendship.

[18:09]

So the Sabbath in Christianity and Judaism is very important as a day, a kind of non-competitive day, a day of fellowship or to join with each other. It's like a meditation. In Buddhism we don't have a Sabbath, we don't have the idea of a Sabbath, of a day of rest or fellowship with each other. Zen emphasizes that that should be there all the time, or is going on all the time. So Zen always, Buddhism always emphasizes, find out what's going on all the time. That Buddha is gold, always gold, everything is gold. Or as I said, there's black and white, and then white that surrounds black, or black that surrounds black, or gold, all colours that surround. to exist and move in the gradations and not just by the edges. And you can see a well-trained Zen person moves by gradations, not by the edges. And they feel you out by the gradations and not by the edges.

[19:41]

And they feel themselves out by the gradations and not by the edges. Gradations, I don't have any other word, because a word points out a distinction. So gradation is also an edge, but it's something softer than edge. So in your breathing and in your practice you are trying Shikantaza too. Settle yourself, immerse yourself in no edges, even no gradations. So maybe there are some edges, but you withdraw your identity from them. Who does it? You can take a piece of paper. You can draw a... If you draw a...

[21:12]

This is rather well known, but anyway, if you draw two rectangles connected by lines, so it looks like a flat drawing of a cube, and you draw one as you see with your right eye, and you draw the other as you see with your left eye, and then you put a piece of paper between them, and you let them merge, you will see a three-dimensional cube. I mean, you'll feel like if you put your finger through it or pick it up, I mean, you will physically see a three-dimensional cube. They've developed many things based on that. But who sees it? Where does it exist? Who sees this three-dimensional cube? Who is Buddha? Who is deciding that? Why should you practice Buddhism? Anyway, I tried, you know, religiously, almost sensually, physically, to have some relationship with blades, leaves,

[22:34]

stars and sun and stuff. The moon last night, early this morning, was great. The moon is very friendly. Some people think that the moon is a major condition of life on this planet because, I don't know if this is particularly interesting, but the possibilities of protein amino acid combinations are about, well, way over a thousand, but only twenty exist in all plant and life forms, all animal and plant forms. Someone produced them recently by taking all the components of DNA and amino acids in a solution and progressively wetting them and then drying them on clay, which was like early clay on the earth, which had zinc and… which had metals in it, zinc, copper, and… I forget the other one. Magnesium, maybe. Anyway, zinc, copper were two of them. And by this drying, pretty soon the amino acid chains produced these twenty.

[23:54]

by this process. The metal and the clay, the metal, this zinc clay and copper clay, kind of eliminated all of them but these twenty. Whether this proves anything or not. But it requires the moon to do that. You don't have some object, I guess the moon's about one-eighth the mass of the earth, And on the solar system, all the other planets' moons are teeny by comparison. The moon being one, I guess, one-eighth, it exerts tremendous motion and activity on the Earth. The Earth has this motion all the time because of the moon. And this motion seems to be, at every stage, We see it in the tides and in our periods. Every stage, this motion seems to be identical with life. Anyway, I tried, you know, moon or leaves or glades. It's pretty good, but it's not enough. You know, at least for me it wasn't enough.

[25:25]

It was some experience, like Anne Bradstreet's. But where was it in your daily life? Where was it, this experience, in the midst of all the edges, very sharp edges of life? You know, it's where I find, it's where that cube exists. I find, you know, it's wonderful to go hiking or to the mountains or to the ocean, to some beautiful place, you know. Tsukiyoshi counts that poem, quotes that poem often. I always heard such and such a place, the mountain, the misty mountains of Lushan or wherever it is, stream or river – I forget, you maybe know, it's in Zen mind, Guinness mind – were so beautiful. But I went and it was just a misty mountain and river also. Someone may hear tasara, it's very beautiful, but if they come here it's just mountain,

[26:53]

So I find, for me, the discovery, Buddha's discovery or the teaching of Buddhism, of zazen and of mindfulness practice, it combines. It's going to the mountains or to the beach or being in love. whatever edge you want, all of those distinctions and gradations, I found were in Zazen. Very hard to sense what's inclusive, if it's the idea of nature or a moon or something. How do we sense, how do we act with the inclusive? What's inclusive? Which is what religion is about. Great kindness, great inclusive kindness.

[28:13]

You know in Shoyo Roku, Book of Equanimity, I told you the story of Kuei-Shan and Yang-Shan coming from the fields. How many people are working in the fields? Where did you come from, from the fields? How many people are working in the fields? Yang-Shan just put his staff in the ground and folded his hands. And Kuei-Shan said, Oh, on South Mountain there are many people gathering thatch. And Yangshan went on. Or a later story, it says, where are you going on a pilgrimage? To where? I don't know. I don't know is nearest, the teacher said. I don't know is nearest. This I don't know is not indifference. comes up again and again, this way of expressing in Buddhism. But it means you have to let go of your edges.

[29:39]

I was reading about, recently, Henri Gaudier, I guess you pronounce it, Brzeziska, I don't know exactly how to pronounce it. But he was a sculptor who died at 23 in the First World War, and Pound, Ezra Pound, made him famous. And I think I've seen one or two of his works. I knew about him from POM, but I read something else about him recently. And he was a strange facade. And many of the Victorian buildings, cheaper Victorian buildings, just had a facade, if you look behind it, just almost flat roof, and there's this stuff. But you could not make this mountain in a facade. So although we perceive a plane, we also perceive a mass of the plane. So the ability of a sculptor is to suggest that mass. And again, I think those of you who

[31:21]

Maybe your experience with psychedelics first made you aware of... Some of you, I think, may have had some experience with psychedelics. That the wall is not just flat surface, it's quite marvelous thing. But if you practice Zazen, you also find out. You don't have idea of that, so you see this physical thing. You feel the mass of it, not just the plane, as an idea. So Sculptor doesn't just make a plane, he makes a plane in such a way that you feel the mass of it. This is also what I mean by merit. That each thing, you can feel the mass of it. And the to give you a little more idea of what I mean by this or what Gaudier meant by this is the futurists tried to rather short-lived movement in art tried to express say motion by some famous painting nude descending staircase and there's sculpture

[32:44]

sculptures of this figure with the kind of multiple legs and tried to show motion as if you were taking a photograph with a camera that was too slow, so you got a blur. But Galie Brzezinski, he said, in the snap, in the single stopped thing, there is motion. You don't have to try to demonstrate. It's there already. That motion is there in each moment, even though you don't show. It's all there. Or Pound, Ezra Pound, you know, in his imagist movement. And these... It's not an accident that Gary Snyder and myself and others began studying Buddhism and studying the Orient from reading Ezra Pound. Because there is much preparation in Western European thinking, and as I talked about some weeks ago, much of that preparation is actually stimulated by ideas from the 1500s on of what the Orient was like, what Japan was like, what China was like. But anyway, there's much preparation. And one of the

[34:06]

Pound and that group, they had two words. Their early magazine was called Vortex, which means pretty much the same thing. Each thing is a vortex. Or they were called images. And Pound's idea of the image was that single image which everything could pour through. Not something dead, but that single image which all many ideas and could pour. This is just like Gaudier's idea of the plane expressing the mass. So practice period is kind of like a mass, Catholic mass. When Tendo Nyojo, ancient Buddha, Togen said, Tendo Nyojo, my teacher, ancient Buddha, said, this ango, or practice period, is you are forming the structure of practice. You are forming the structure of practice and carving or making a cave in universal emptiness. Universal emptiness is everything is gold.

[35:32]

You are making a cave in universal emptiness and thus you will acquire a lacquer bucket. As I said, Spinoza never said that. Leibniz never said that. But this is what I think we can call exterior mindfulness. Phenomenal world and we as one. I pointed that out. by explaining how Einstein came to trust his thinking as one with the phenomenal world and trusted the pursuing beam of light. This is really to trust the phenomenal world, but when you begin to see your sense, how we perceive, you will see it's a function. Phenomenal world and you are functions of each other. Now, do you say it's mere appearances or do you say this is reality? In Buddhism we say this is mere appearances, but we also say this is reality. So here we have secret teaching, profound relationship of leaf and mountain and you. So night breeze carries all the blossoms and fragrant streams through the castle.

[37:00]

So interior mindfulness is getting yourself off that tape loop. Now I'm getting angry. Now I'm angry. Now I'm walking. Now I'm lifting my foot. And exterior mindfulness is practice period. Eating together. Creating the structure of practice. acting in the masses, not just the planes. The gradations, not just the edges. And it's not something you can find out except by this great creation of practice period of ango. This great creation which you cannot quite grasp. And it's not much different from ordinary activity. And yet you will find you are subtly you are becoming more so so in your practice in your zazen please enter this universal cave

[38:26]

Find the structure of practice. Finally see the golden Buddha. This is all words but it's also your stomach, your breath. your mind quiet or loud. We won't find out who is doing this practice, except who is seeing this cube, except by this practice. This kind of practice. So again, please, in your Zazen and in your work at

[39:56]

Tassara, please enter. Golden Cave of Universal Emptiness. Namo Buddhaya [...] Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, OM NOM NUM KHYEN SE GANG NAM [...]

[41:24]

sentient beings are anomalous. I vow to save them. These others are impossible. I vow to put an end to them. The Anandas are helpless. I vow to rescue them. The Buddha's grace unsurpassable, I vow to attain it. Ha ha ha!

[42:28]

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