I haven't completely sorted out what I'm going to talk about tonight, so like a number of my talks, it may not have a beginning, a middle and an end, and at the start of the talk I can't tell you what I'm going to tell you and then proceed to tell you and then proceed to tell you what I told you, you know, this is the classic model for talks. I appreciate, it's not that I don't appreciate classic models, they're very useful. I just don't seem to be able to bring myself to follow them always.

[01:02]

Also, you know, sometimes I'm more ready to talk than other times and no matter who it is that is in front of me, I can start talking and tonight I have more of a feeling like I'm not so ready to just talk and so right now, I'd rather, I'd like to spend some time, even though it's an unusual way to do it, I'd like to get some time to get to know you, in a certain sense, get to know you by sitting here with you. And this has to do with, because I don't have a particular, what this means is I don't have a particular feeling or idea or thought about what you need to hear or what I would like to say

[02:50]

to you, all of you in particular. Conversation or talk, it actually makes much more sense in the context of relationship and it's not so much the point for me to, I don't have some profound Buddhism to share with you. Each of us is the depth and profundity of Buddhism and this is at once the most elementary teaching and the most difficult and advanced teaching.

[03:51]

I thought, partly I was thinking about this because Gil mentioned to me that perhaps when he invited me to talk, he mentioned that perhaps I would say something about the Hokyo Zamai, the jewel mirror awareness. And at the beginning, of course, it says, the teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhists and ancestors, now you have it, so keep it well. Thusness, we, thusness, here is this word, thusness, and what does it point at? What does it point out? And it's one of those curious words because it looks like it must be talking about something

[05:11]

apart from something else, usually when we point out something, it designates that it's different from the other things, I'm here, you're there, you're not me, I'm not you, you know, like that. But thusness, is there something that isn't thusness, what does it point out? Do you understand that? Here is a book, and it's not a sofa, it's not each of you, it's not the floor, it's the book. So when we have a word, it usually indicates that there is something that

[06:16]

that word corresponds to, and there are other things that don't correspond to that word. And Buddhism has these words like thusness that don't point out anything, or point out everything. Anyway, I want to, so this is what I told you, that each of us is the depth and profundity of Buddhism, and each of us is, you know, alive, and each of us has each moment, the dharma, the teaching. We say teaching, so, you know, confronts each, the teaching confronts each on each occasion, each of us has our teaching, our dharma, it's right there, moment after moment.

[07:28]

So, to hear the birds, and you feel some sensation of your breath, we have various thoughts. So what do you think, you know, is there something else? Is there something? More or not?

[08:32]

Is there something you've been missing or not? If the teaching is there moment after moment, do you pick up on it or not? Do you meet it and respond to it or not? And then what you do, this is what we do, what we think, and this is all more teaching for us, more dharma confronting us on each occasion, and our karma. So, you know, in the New Wind Bell, I came across today, I was reading the New Wind Bell,

[09:38]

and there's a short little quote, it said, by, I think it's a Chinese Zen teacher, and he said, the central benefit of Zen, the central benefit in the, in terms of the ordinary world of ups and downs, is not to increase the pluses and decrease the minuses. Buddhism isn't much good for that. He said, the central benefit, the chief benefit is to bring you into contact with the fundamental ground, fundamental reality, which is beyond ups and downs. So, on each occasion, a fundamental reality is there, and then you may not, you may like it or

[10:56]

not, it may be up, or it may be down, but fundamental reality is there, and you are there, and there you are. I want to go back a little bit and share with you a story, I know many of you know it, but it's a story about Ikkyu, who studied Zen in a rather austere fashion for many years. His teacher had them in Japan, you know, sleeping with one blanket in the wintertime.

[11:58]

They didn't get a down bag, and, you know, they wouldn't let them have any long sleeves, you know, same sleeves summer and winter, and no, you know, nothing, you couldn't, they couldn't wear anything on their sleeves, they had to have their bare sleeves. So, you know, not very many of them lasted very long. Ikkyu was one of the few who stuck around for a while, and I guess some parts of the year he used to go out on a boat, they were by a lake called Lake Biwa, it's a big lake, and he used to sometimes go out on a boat and meditate floating around on the lake. One day when he was out on the lake he heard a crow, and somehow it was a very profound experience for him, just hearing a crow.

[13:09]

And he went to his teacher and told his teacher what had happened. The teacher said, that's pretty good, Ikkyu, but it's still not the enlightenment of the Buddhist ancestors. Ikkyu said, I don't care, it's good enough for me. And the teacher said, that's the enlightenment of the Buddhist ancestors. So I think this story helps a lot to point out the teaching of thusness, and to show you, or demonstrate for us, how it can always be there. And also it helps us notice how we might tend to think that whatever is happening right now is not good enough.

[14:18]

Somehow this gentleman Ikkyu needed to have, and he wasn't such a gentleman apparently, but he was rather eccentric, and at times something of what some people might call a smart-ass. Maybe he was a little crazy. We don't know, but you know, he did things like, he was in a town one day, one time they had a town, some town had just had a new Jizo statue made, and they had a new shrine, and they asked him to dedicate it. So he went to dedicate it, and he lifted up his robe and peed on the statue. And they ran him out of town. He said, but you wanted me to dedicate it, you didn't ask somebody else to do it. So there are many stories about him. They're kind of bizarre. Anyway, that's a sort of an aside for your amusement, you know.

[15:29]

But I think it's a telling story, and it helps us realize how much we each might tend to think there's something more than this. I want more. This isn't good enough. Rather than Ikkyu somehow finally being convinced that he didn't care whether or not it was the enlightenment of the Buddhist ancestors, I don't care, it's good enough for me. So this is very curious, you know, this is very, I think, profound. And all the time, each moment, our life is completely in front of us, so to speak. And our body, our mind, our breath, it's all happening.

[16:36]

So sometimes I say things like, will you have this body and mind, this body and mind right now, will you have it? Or do you want to get rid of it? No, I don't want this body and mind. This one isn't good enough for me. I don't like it. It's kind of depressed right now. I'd rather have another one. It's a little more buoyant. Oh no, this one's kind of angry right now. I don't think I want it. Oh, this breath is kind of uptight. I'd like one that's more relaxed, thank you. You know, there's that story about a man who, I think he was having, you know, he had, he suddenly had a pain in his side and he had realized it was a kidney stone, because he'd had them before. So he went out, I guess he was in town someplace, and he got a taxi,

[17:45]

told the taxi man to take him to the hospital. He was sitting in the back of the taxi and he was saying to himself, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, please take this pain away. And he heard a voice saying, but I just gave it to you. There's another story about, um, oh I don't know, you know, it's one of those characters in Esri or somebody. And anyway, it's this fellow who, he was telling a friend of his how he had spent a good number of years looking for the perfect wife. And, you know, he found women who were beautiful who weren't, you know, very caring or weren't very intelligent, and women who were intelligent but weren't very attractive, and women that he could communicate with, but, you know, they had, I don't know what, you know, kids already or

[18:52]

something. Anyway, there were all these problems, right, with the women he'd find. And he traveled around, you know, all the time. He spent a good number of years at it. And finally, he said, you know, I finally met this woman who was perfect, who would be the perfect wife, you know, she was attractive and beautiful and we got along well, we related really wonderfully, and it just felt like a perfect match. And his friend said, well, did you get married? And he said, no, unfortunately not, she was looking for the perfect husband. Another example. Is what you have, or what your experience is,

[19:56]

whatever your experience is, you know, is it of value or not? Is it something to be gotten rid of? Is it something to be held on to? Is it something to be, you know, discarded? What do you do with your experience each moment? So, that's why you see, so what we're talking about is how to, what do you do? What do we do on each occasion with our experience? And we have this kind of reassurance that this is the teaching of the Buddha Dharma, moment after moment. This is the Buddha Dharma, moment after moment. Another kind of expression says, each and every moment is a gateway to the truth.

[20:59]

Each and every moment is a gateway for the heart of compassion, for Avalokiteshvara to enter the truth. Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion. We enter the truth with this, we enter the truth with compassion, being willing to have the body and mind of presence. So, um, so there's something I did think about to remind you about. Just to say that there are,

[22:34]

um, there are, you know, many different kinds of, or styles of, of practice. And to be careful to recognize or value the fact that there are these different styles. Sometimes people say, you know, whether it's Tibetan Buddhists and Zen, or, you know, Vipassana and Tibetans or something, you know, it's pretty easy to say, or different Zen groups, you know, it's pretty easy for people to say, well, they don't, you know, they're pretty good, maybe, but they don't really have, they don't really have it. You know, they don't really understand. Not exactly Buddhist, you know, they're not, I mean, they call themselves Zen, but they're not, you know, you've heard that kind of thing. Anyway, I thought it was pretty interesting. I went to last fall to the Vipassana retreat. It was two weeks. And one day Jack Kornfield talked about different kinds of traditions just within Vipassana.

[23:39]

And I think, you know, there's various kinds of traditions in Zen. And he said, you know, there's, that there's one Vipassana teacher who just teaches, emphasizes to notice feelings of, you know, liking, disliking, and just to notice that. And there's, you know, he studied with a teacher, Achen Chah, who had a forest monastery. And they didn't do a lot of meditation. They did some meditation. And then they swept the grounds, and they cooked, and they, actually, they didn't cook much. They went out begging for their food. But they took care of the grounds in the temple. And they didn't do

[24:43]

a lot of meditation. And Jack went to his teacher and said, you know, I don't like this kind of teaching. You know, I mean, you don't seem to be doing, we don't seem to be doing much meditation. You know, I'm not getting anywhere. And not only that, you're not, you know, you don't seem much like a real teacher to me. And the teacher said, well, that's very fortunate for you, don't you think? And Jack said, why is that? And he said, if I, if I was like your idea of what a Buddhist teacher should be, then you'd still be looking for the Buddha outside yourself, wouldn't you? So whatever the teaching, you know, whatever each of these teachings is, it should be some way to bring you back to yourself. And he said his teacher, Ajahn Chah, used to emphasize letting go. He said, if you let go

[25:50]

a little, you'll be a little happy. And if you let go a lot, you'll be a lot happy. And if you let go completely, you'll be completely happy. And so he would just say, let go. And then he would walk around the monastery and say, how are you feeling today? Somebody would say, well, I'm kind of depressed. He'd say, oh, clinging, are you? So I'd say, oh, I'm happy. He'd say, oh, let go, huh? Anyway, so he used to emphasize letting go. And then there, then Jack finally did leave that monastery because he wasn't getting there quick enough. He went to, off to Thailand or Burma, Burma, Thailand, one of those. And he did a, about seven months, apparently very intensive,

[26:53]

well, seven months just individual retreat, just sitting and walking in a room all day long. And they'd bring him food. And interestingly enough, you see, because he was a foreigner, he had gotten this kind of good room, which was looked out on the garden. And so in fact, he could look out the window of his room and see the abbot of the temple sitting out there and in the garden, he said the abbot of the temple was to, in a kind of direct and precise way of putting it, a slob. And he said this person used to, you know, eat apples and leave, you know, and oranges and leaves and peels and cores around in the garden and would sort of chat and gossip with the nuns. She wasn't supposed to be doing particularly some Burmese scars or something. And this rather put Jack off for a long time.

[27:57]

Of course, it's quite curious that, you know, it's nice to find something like that out there, you know, that you can put all that on. So anyway, he finally decided to just go about his meditation, I guess, and kind of forgot about the abbot. It took him quite some time, I think. And then after he left there, he also went to a place where they do what he calls the Rinzai Vipassana. In the Rinzai Vipassana, they have this big gymnasium. There's a lot of people sitting there and then the teacher says, all right, you know, and then you practice hyperventilating for an hour. And the teacher is kind of like a gym teacher, you know, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, and shouting at you, you know. And everybody's going,

[29:04]

try that for a while, you know, see if you can, you know, how long you can do that. And you're going to keep it up for an hour. This is a strenuous practice. And then at the end of an hour, stop, sit still for an hour. That's pretty far out. So there's this Rinzai Vipassana, you know. Well, you know, and actually, I've heard, that's one of the certain things, they used to do those things with the Rajneesh, they had part of that was to inhale, exhale, hyperventilating for 15 minutes and then something else, and then something else. And so anyway, he mentioned also then, for instance, there's Vipassana teachers who are very similar to Thich Nhat Hanh, just teach basically loving kindness, or smiling, practice smiling, practice loving kindness.

[30:10]

And then there's Vipassana traditions, which is the main one that's come to the United States, which basically teaches noting, mindful noting, and trying to note in more and more detail, reaching, reaching, reaching, touching, touching the doorknob, turning, turning, hard, oh cool, cool, turning, the sensation in the arm, and then try to notice the intention to move, intention to reach, before you reach, there's some intention, and then you reach. So there are these different traditions, or different practices, you might say, different

[31:19]

sort of schools, traditions. And Zen emphasizes more, particularly the meditation, emphasizes more the posture, breath, especially posture. Try taking an upright, open posture. You know, you're not like this, you're not bent at your stomach, you're not protecting your stomach, keep your elbows a little bit away from your sides, don't protect your flanks, you know, you don't have your shoulders up, you're not protecting, you know, you don't have your neck down, you're not protecting the back of your neck. Try taking the best posture you can, under a variety of circumstances, such as your knees hurt, you wish the period would end, you can't stand the person sitting next to you,

[32:23]

and so on. So again, that's a kind of practice that you can do, that one can do, and any one of these practices has the potential to bring you to yourself, or the teaching of Blessedness. and each of us will, you know, we come upon practices and then we pick them up and take to them. They can be very useful and powerful practices, and be a kind of thread or uh, you know, that takes us through the maze, that we can follow.

[33:28]

I think I want to talk about one other thing, is it all right if I take a few more minutes? Or is it restless too, we settled enough? Go on. I just want to, I just want to go through what I thought was an interesting, recently I heard a recording of a talk by Robert Bly. Robert Bly, you know, is a poet, American poet. You know, he has these wonderful poems like, um, what is sorrow for? It is a storehouse of barley, wheat, corn, and tears. One steps to the door on a round stone, and the storehouse feeds all the birds of sorrow. And I say to myself, will you have sorrow at last? Oh, go ahead, be tranquil, be calm, be tranquil, calm, be stoic,

[34:46]

or in the valley of sorrow, spread your wings. Uh, so anyway, he has, you know, various poems. And he's into, you know, he's gotten into myths lately. And, uh, Grimm's Fairy Tales, he's written some new myths. And he's kind of involved in the new, you know, men's movement. Men now need to be liberated, you know. And, um, you know, stop being such wimps. Women have trained them all to be caring and sensitive. Um, I don't know, I don't, that's not, I'm just, that's an assertion. I'm trying to tell you who Robert Bly is. We don't need to go into all that. But I thought this, he gave this talk, and this was at the Faces of the Enemy conference several years ago, and I heard this tape of the talk. And that's kind of interesting, because if you practice meditation, or you do any number

[35:51]

of kinds of practices, this is the sort of thing you go through. In fact, you don't even need to do meditation practice to go through this kind of stuff. Meditation practice may be, and one of these particular kinds of meditation practices may be what helps you go through this kind of process. So I thought I'd tell you the kind of process that's basic to all of us, whether you're doing meditation or not. So what he said was, when we're born, you get a 360-degree personality. It's all there. Okay? And then, you know, your parents say to you, as you're growing up, can't you sit still? And do you always have to make so much noise? Couldn't you be quiet? And they say, shut up. And they tell you different things. So pretty soon, you start putting stuff in this kind of little invisible bag. You start stuffing it in there. You know, behaviors that don't seem to kind of fit out there in the world. You know, that's your energy, too. And then pretty soon, you get to be a teenager. Teenager is time for heavy backpacking. The other kids are kind of merciless,

[36:57]

and you've got to do it the way you're supposed to. And you know, it's time of heavy conformity and everything. And your teachers and the kids in high school take over where your parents left off, and you stuff a lot of stuff in the bag there. So he says, you spend the first 20 years of your life putting stuff in the bag, and then you spend the time left after that trying to get it back out again. This is pretty interesting. So I thought, oh, that's pretty interesting. And you know, this is not to say, and he says, now don't idolize primitive cultures. You know, every culture has their own bag. Stuff gets put in there. You live in a primitive culture, and it's a group, and you put a lot of individuality in the bag. You can't be an individual. They're not going to let you get away. You can't do that. You've got to be part of the group. And you know, places like Zen Center have their own bags. You've got to put certain stuff in the bag in order to be at Zen Center. And Freudians, he says, have their bag, and Jungians,

[38:02]

and so forth. So there's the individual bag, and then there's the group identity bag, and then there's the California and the New York. I talked to a friend of mine from New York today. He says, I have to be careful in California because I'm from New York. I mean, we know how to do it in New York. And you people here, I mean, and then people say, wait a minute. Who do you think you are? But I think that sort of thing, in California, you can do a lot of weird stuff, and people are sort of easygoing about it, but you can't get away with it in New York. It doesn't go over there. So there's these individual bags, and then group identity bags, and so forth. So we get involved in these different things, and they don't necessarily help us get stuff out of the bag. All right, so how do you get stuff out of the bag? This is what I was going to tell you. Interesting process, the process that he describes.

[39:07]

The first step in the process, the first step is that you project it out there somewhere. So you can project that, oh, isn't so-and-so a wonderful man? Or isn't so-and-so a beautiful woman? And you can project onto people a certain, you know, they've got a certain kind of strength that I don't have it. Or you can project onto other people, she's really a bitch, isn't she? You can project, you know, negative stuff or positive stuff onto this other person. And he says, you know, one of the tragedies, of course, of our modern age is people get married, and then they think they have a whole person, they still only have about half, because there's so much still in the bag. And then you get the two people together, and then you've got a lot of, and then, you know,

[40:15]

somebody else said about marriage, the practice of marriage is to re-own your projections and find out who you're living with. This is also kind of the process of meditation, you see, to re-own your projections and find out that, ooh, you're that person, you know, I'm this person who hurts, and I've got this anger, and I have this, you know, fear, and I have this anxiety, and, you know, that's me. Uh-oh. I mean, I thought, I didn't think I was a greedy person. I thought it was all those other people who came to tea and, you know, went over there and grabbed, you know, several of the brownies and ate them all. And I didn't think I was greedy. I'm not a greedy, I wasn't a greedy person, no. Those other people, I used to be the cook. I happen to notice these people have been greedy, you know. My God, the amount of stuff you have to make sometimes, you know. It's unbelievable. So, I'm not a greedy person, no, but, you know, one day I,

[41:15]

in fact, Mrs. Suzuki gave me a box of salted nuts, mixed salted nuts, not just peanuts, and I discovered that I ate it in private. I may not exactly have been greedy, but there was a certain hoarding involved. I'm getting ahead of the process, though. You project it, you project something onto this other person, these other people, okay. The second thing that happens is, the second, this is a very important step, okay. I have to mention that. This is a very important step, because otherwise, how do you get it out of the bag? As long as it's in the bag, you don't notice that there's something in it. You don't notice it's in the bag. See? What's in there? It's all in the shadows, all in the dark. You don't know what's in the bag. So, how do you get it out? You put it on something else out there, okay.

[42:18]

Then, the second step is, it starts to rattle around a little bit. It doesn't quite fit. She's not always a bitch. He's not always, he doesn't always have it together. He isn't always stupid. She isn't always beautiful. That person isn't so creative after all. It starts to wiggle. There's a rattle. It's loose. It doesn't always fit, you know, okay. Familiar with that? Third step, you use, he says, this is a very dangerous step, you see. You use the force of your moral intelligence to reassert to projection. And you also use, you know, your most subtle and devious and means to get that person to behave the way that, you know, you projected them that they're supposed to. You do everything you can, you know. It's really an angry person, so then you do all these things to make them mad. No, I'm not, oh, I'm not angry. No, I only have positive emotions. You're really angry with me,

[43:26]

aren't you? They say things like that to you, you know. So, you know, we have a lot of religious fanatics at times. I mean, not exactly religious fanatics, but I mean, there's a certain fervor that goes into that, you see. When it starts to slip, the projection starts to slip, you've got to put it all back together, you see, and make it stick up on that thing out there, okay. Okay. The fourth step in this is you begin to notice a certain lack or a certain, um, I don't know, you know, exactly how to say it, but there's a certain lack or, you know, instability to the whole thing. It's not working. You can't do it after all,

[44:29]

you know, and things don't make sense anymore, and you know, it doesn't, it's not fitting. Now, what are you, what are you going to do now, you know, and you kind of get at a loss. And then the fifth step is to, that you re-own it, or what he, the term he used was, you eat it. And he quoted Winston Churchill, who said, I often have to eat my words, and I've found the diet rather nourishing. But it has certain, you know, this is rather painful and distasteful, distasteful thing to be doing, you know, to be owning up to your own shit, so to speak, you know, and to be, and have to take it back, and to have to come to some, you know, to come to grips with it,

[45:34]

and to absorb it, and in fact, then be nourished by it. So you take up, uh, your anger, and your fear, and anxiety, and you know, positive things, those are all, that those are, look like at first glance, kind of negative things. But in fact, tremendous energy with anything you get out of the bag, and you re-own, then the, after that you, there's certain energy from that, you get, energy is released from that, it's been in the bag. And you can't use the energy as long as you're doing everything you can not to, that's energy you can't use as long as you're being so careful not to behave in a way that you would have to own up to that, or that stuff to get out of the bag. This is another kind of

[46:37]

thing, you know, that Zen teaches at times to be very energetic. Do things with some energy, do things with some vitality, you start to do that and stuff starts falling out of the bag. But then again, there's other Buddhist schools that say, do it all real slow, why don't you? And you get stuff, you can get stuff out of the bag that way too. But in Zen it's, they, we teach sometimes, and it's partly Japanese. They're very energetic and industrious, and they work a lot harder. There was an article in the paper recently said, problem, the problem is not the trade, the trade deficit and the Japanese have these embargoes and don't let stuff in and all of this other thing. Problem is that, is that they're morally superior, they work harder. Anyway, you get energy, there's energy that comes from reabsorbing stuff.

[47:37]

And I want to bring this up to say that.

[47:43]

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