This is I'm very happy to be here with you this evening. And Ann and I are delighted to be here at Green Gulch on our unprecedented sabbatical. I'm very grateful to all those of you who made this possible. I know that you devoted a lot of energy to preparing for our stay.

[01:07]

We are both of us very grateful. So please sit comfortably. I have been reading my revised talks on the Mumonkan or Wuminguan to Sangha members at the Kokohan Zendo during Tuesday evening classes. And people have responded with questions and comments that have been very helpful to me in making the final polish. So I'm going to impose on you this evening and read Case 23, Think Neither Good Nor Evil. And I ask that you please freely afterwards, or in the middle, offer your comments and your questions.

[02:26]

The case reads, the sixth ancestral teacher was pursued by Ming, the head monk, as far as Taishung Peak. The teacher, seeing Ming coming, laid the robe and bowl on a rock and said, This robe represents the Dharma. There should be no fighting over it. You may take it back with you. Ming tried to lift it up, but it was as immovable as a mountain. Shivering and trembling, he said, I came for the Dharma, not for the robe. I beg you, lay brother, please open the way for me. The teacher said, don't think good, don't think evil. At this very moment, what is the original face of Ming the head monk?

[03:37]

In that instant, Ming had great satori. Sweat ran from his entire body. In tears, he made his bow, saying, Besides these secret words and secret meanings, is there anything of further significance? The teacher said, What I have just conveyed to you is not secret. If you reflect on your own face, you will find whatever is secret right there with you. Ming said, Though I practiced at Huangmei with the assembly, I could not truly realize my original face. Now, thanks to your pointed instruction, I am like someone who drinks water and knows personally whether it is cold or warm. Lei brother, you are now my teacher.

[04:40]

The teacher said, If you can say that, then let us both call Huang Mei our teacher. Maintain your realization carefully. Momon's comment, a woman's comment. I'm converted to Chinese. Pardon my pronunciations. It must be said that the sixth ancestor forgets himself completely in taking action here. With grandmotherly kindness, he peels a fresh lychee, removes the seed, and puts it into your mouth. Then you only need to swallow it down. woman's verse. It can't be described. It can't be pictured. It can't be praised enough. Stop groping for it. The original face has nowhere to hide. When the world is destroyed, it is not destroyed.

[05:45]

This is one of the 48 cases of the Wu Mingwan with Wu Ming's Commentaire and Verse, a book published in the early 13th century. So some of our most worthy ancestors didn't know about it. Dogen Zenji, for example, didn't know about it. However, it became very popular and for centuries now it has been a primary source

[06:51]

for Zen study. The sixth ancestor, Dajian Huineng, was so-called because he was sixth in succession from Bodhidharma, who introduced the antecedent of Zen Buddhism into China. Huineng was born in 638 about a little over a hundred years after Bodhidharma came to China. The son of a civil servant who lost his position and then died young, leaving him and his mother penniless. It is said that he had no schooling, but worked as a child and youth to support himself and his mother as a peddler of firewood. One day, while delivering wood to a customer, he heard a monk reciting the Dian and Sutra.

[08:00]

Now, if you were a Chinese person today and you heard someone reciting the Dian and Sutra, you wouldn't understand a word. And the same is true of someone reciting it in Sino-Japanese in Japan. It's become rather antique in its phraseology. But in Hoi Nan's time, the Chinese of the Diamond Sutra was the vernacular. Almost. So... He could understand each word. His mind opened and he experienced deep realization. One tradition states that this occurred at the lines, dwell nowhere and bring forth that mind.

[09:10]

The young Hui Nung approached the monk and asked who his teacher might be. The monk said his teacher was the fifth ancestor, Huangmei Hungren, who lived a thousand or more miles away in North China. Hui Nung resolved to go there and study. It is said that a neighbor kindly agreed to support his mother. And Huineng set out like the young Shakyamuni in search of his spiritual fortune. Arriving finally at Huangmei, he was shown into Hung Run's presence, who asked him, Where are you from that you come to this mountain making obeisance to me? What is it that you seek here? Huineng said, I come from Lingnan in the south.

[10:15]

I have come this long distance seeking no particular thing, only the Buddha Dharma. Hun Run said, If you are from Lingnan, then you are a barbarian. How can you become a Buddha? Hoang Nang said, Though people from the North and the South are different, there is no North or South in the Dharma or in Buddha nature. Though my barbarian's body and your body are not the same, what difference is there in our Buddha nature? Hongrun recognized the worth of his new student, but assigned him to the harvesting shed to husk rice. One senses that Hongrun had a rather unsettled sangha, and he had to be careful not to stir up the monks with decisions that would threaten their status.

[11:21]

Rice husking would be the logical job for an illiterate layman. Then a few months passed, and Hung Run felt the need to name a successor, feeling old. He announced a contest for this purpose, saying, Whoever believes that he is worthy of Dharma transmission should submit a poem showing his understanding of the way, and I will acknowledge the writer of the best poem as the next master in our line. All monks felt that their head monk, Shunshu, had the clearest insight of all, so none of them wrote anything. Qin Xu, however, wasn't sure of his own attainment, so instead of turning in a poem, he wrote one anonymously on a wall.

[12:31]

If it were approved, he could step forward and announce his authorship. If it were disapproved, he could just keep silent. So he wrote, The body is the Bodhi tree. The mind is like a clear mirror. Moment by moment, wipe the mirror carefully. Let there be no dust upon it. Hung Ran praised this poem very much, as indeed it is a fine exposition of Samadhi practice. And he had all his monks committed to memory and recite it. However, he said nothing about making its author his successor. Hui Nung heard a monk reciting the poem and recognized immediately the limitation of its author's realization. Learning of the contest for the first time, he dictated his own poem to the monk who wrote it on the wall beneath that of Shunshu.

[13:42]

Bodhi really has no tree. The mirror, too, has no stand. There is nothing at all from the beginning. Where can any dust alight? Everyone was impressed with this second poem and felt upset at the rumor that the lay worker in the harvest shed had dictated it. Hung-run recognized its worth but prudently rubbed it out with his slipper, saying it was of no value. That night, however, he summoned Hoi Nung to his room and preached to him on the Diamond Sutra. Hoi Nan grasped the inner sense of the sutra at once, and thereupon Hung Run conveyed the robe and bowl of Bodhidharma to him as symbols of transmission, warning him that some monks would seek to do him harm if he remained at the monastery.

[15:01]

teacher personally rode Hui Nung across the river and advised him to polish his realization secretly for some time before emerging as a teacher. Next day, Hung Run told his monks what had happened, and they became agitated as they felt sure that their old teacher had made a mistake in choosing a young layman as his successor. They set out in pursuit of Huineng in order to bring back the precious symbols of transmission. The head monk Ming, a former general who was powerful in body and will, soon outdistanced all the others in the pursuit. The story in the present case picks up here. Is it a true story? From very early times, Buddhist history has been rewritten to clarify archetypal themes.

[16:07]

For example, on examining the internal evidence, most scholars believe that Huineng could not have been illiterate. In fact, the historical validity of the entire Sutra of Huineng is doubtful. Such chronicles should be read as instructive folk stories. And if it can be shown that they have historically factual elements, well, that's interesting, but not profoundly significant. Scholars seek the historical facts. Zen students seek religious themes. My own view is that where scholarship helps to clarify the themes, it can be very useful. The rest can distract the student of religion from resolving life and death questions. In the early days of my internment in Japan during World War II, I was feeling full of doubts about myself and the world.

[17:20]

I had recently looked down the wrong end of some very threatening weapons, and I was looking for a religious base. I had not yet encountered Zen. One day I asked a Catholic priest who was interned with us, what if it could be proved that Jesus never lived? He replied, my faith would be destroyed. Though I was young and unformed in understanding, I felt there was something wrong with that answer. Somehow I knew that while Jesus is important historically for Christians, still that is surely not his primary significance. In the same way, it is important for us to see the virtue of Hui Nung's illiteracy, his lay status, his exposure of the fallacies of self-centered Samadhi.

[18:27]

Other lessons include the dangers of malice and the importance of not seeking to teach to Sun. This case is an adult fairy tale. that orders our deepest archetypes to the way. The head monk Ming was intent upon chasing down the thief of transmission. There was nothing else in his mind running after Huainan. As head monk, Ming must have had some understanding of the Dharma, yet he allowed himself to be carried away by group anger. This is all too human. With the drop of a hat, Zen students, including you and me, will follow upon mob excitement and neglect the Buddha way. The sixth ancestor, seeing him coming, laid the robe and bowl on a rock and said, This robe represents the Dharma.

[19:38]

There should be no fighting over it. You may take it back with you These words must have been very startling to Ming, whose spirit was already simmering. Simmering, an important symptom. The head monk Ming was ready for experience. One might simmer with anger, despair, nostalgia, or just a weird sense of something unknown. This is the context of great opportunity. You have stepped out of your usual state of mind and can step from there into something altogether new. Be alert to this chance. Ming tried to lift up the rope, but it was immovable as a mountain. Ah, there you see the state of his mind.

[20:40]

Mob anger no longer was his motive. Suddenly he was in touch with the profound and subtle law of the Tathagata. He realized that Dharma cannot be transmitted by outward symbols. I am reminded of Friedrich Frank's story of his conversion to vegetarianism. As a small child during World War I, He lived with his family less than a mile from the Belgian border. He lived in Holland, which was neutral during World War I. I was from my fifth to ninth year confronted with the incomprehensible horror of seeing living human flesh in the tatters of German, Belgian, and French uniforms coming across the border on pushcarts and other improvised ambulances.

[21:51]

It sensitized me against all forms of physical violence. During those childhood years, Frank was forced against his will to eat fish and meat. and was preoccupied with a home-grown koan, whether it was more evil to eat whole sardines than a slice of cod. One day his doubts were resolved. It happened in a restaurant when a fragrant filet de sole amandine was put in front of me. I took my fork, but it refused to touch the fish. I ate the palm duchess and never knowingly ate animal flesh again. The fork would not touch the fish, just as the robe would not budge for the head monk Ming. Ming, however, had to take another step.

[22:57]

Shivering and trembling, he said, I come for the Dharma, not for the robe. He wasn't just making a defensive excuse, but had suddenly realized his own true intention. I beg you, lay brother, open the way for me. Thus he opens himself sincerely. Hui Nung said, don't think good, don't think evil. This is an essential preamble to true realizations. In the Shin Shin Ming, we read, to set up what you like against what you dislike, this is the disease of the mind. Comparisons are odious. I hear grown up people say, I don't like so and so. Such prejudice limits one's understanding of Buddha nature.

[23:59]

of the Buddha nature of the world and its beings. Rather than setting up good and evil in the mind, set up right views, the first step of the Eightfold Path. Right is the opposite of mistaken. It is an attitude that is in keeping with the interdependence of things and their essential emptiness. Don't think good. Don't think evil means, really. Find the silent place of essential harmony in your mind and be ready for what might come. Hui Nung goes on to say, at this very moment, what is the original face of Ming the head monk? With this fresh, new, existential question, Ming had great realizations Sweat ran from his entire body.

[25:04]

In tears, he asked, besides these secret words and secret meanings, is there anything of further significance? Hoi Nung answered, what I have just conveyed to you is not secret. If you reflect on your own face, whatever is secret will be there, right there with you. Ming said, though I practiced at Huang Mei with the assembly, I could not truly realize my original face. No problem with Huang Mei, but Ming's pursuit and Hoi Nung's words give him a perspective that is altogether changed. Now, thanks to your pointed instruction, I am like one who drinks water constantly. and knows personally whether it is cold or warm, at last it is intimate."

[26:06]

And incidentally, I have discussed this word, intimate, at length in earlier cases. Intimacy in Zen literature is a synonym for realization. When you are intimate, you are one with. When you are not intimate, you are in your head. So intimacy is a key word, more than a key word. It is something to truly experience. Lay brother, you are now my teacher. Ming was ready to follow his new guide. Wei Neng said, if you can say that, then let us both call Huang Mei our teacher. The teacher had Hung Run's caution in mind and was saying, in effect, I must deepen my realization for a while.

[27:17]

Actually, according to a traditional account, he lived with a party of hunters for 15 years. I cannot be your teacher at this time. You had best return to Huangmei and bring peace to the monastery there. This is not a koan point, but it is important nonetheless. The monks were upset that a mere layman had written an interesting poem and then that he had been selected as Hung Man's successor. If there is no harmony in Buddha's temple, How can its residents bring harmony to the world and fulfill their vows? Finally, Huinan cautions the head monk Ming, Maintain your realization carefully. This is advice for us all. Practice certainly does not end with realization. Wumen comments, It must be said that the sixth ancestor forgets himself completely in taking action here.

[28:29]

His body and mind fall away, in fact. The needs of the head monk Ming stand paramount. With grandmotherly kindness, he peels a fresh lychee, removes the seed, and puts it into your mouth. Then you only need to swallow it down Nothing for Huainan. One hundred for Ming. Nothing for me. One hundred for you. The Dharma can be conveyed only in this way. The Sangha can function only in this way. Woman's verse reads, It can't be described. It can't be pictured. It can't be praised enough. Stop groping for it. It is your original face. It can be presented personally, but it disappears once you try to say what it is.

[29:31]

It most assuredly is not something especially imbued in the robe and bowl. As Huénan understood very well, he wisely hid them away in an unknown place or destroyed them. and the practice of numbering the ancestors stopped with him. The original face has nowhere to hide. It is not secret at all. There are no boundaries at all. When the world is destroyed, it is not destroyed. Why not? This is the final koan point. Okay. Long paper. So we have about 15 minutes for question and answer. Yes? Towards the end, you said, this is not a koan poet.

[30:44]

And so I think that you could define a koan poet. Yeah, it's kind of matter of fact. It's kind of common sense that we should try to seek to keep peace in the family, and it's our responsibility to keep peace in the family. The koan point here, in this case, is what is the original face of the monk Myo? And then there are points in the poem. The main point of the poem is, oh, one point is the original face has nowhere to hide. And then when the world is destroyed, it is not destroyed. So these points emerge with zazen and judicious prompts.

[31:55]

Prompts. Prompts. Pushes. Nudges. Hints. Yes? . Yes, absolutely. . Well, you know, The whole world is made up of metaphors. The whole world is metaphor, really.

[33:00]

We are being instructed all the time. There's a wonderful story about a teacher who, or a future teacher, a monk, who was out on a takohatsu. You know, takohatsu is the trip outside to the village or town where the monk accepts food or money. And he was standing outside a butcher shop for some reason. It was an open shop. And he could hear the customer talking to the proprietor. And the customer was saying, give me two pounds of your best boar meat." And the butcher said, all my boar meat is the best boar meat. And with that, he was ready, you know, and he got it. So what the teacher tries to do is

[34:16]

to find those expressions and actions or to summon up those expressions and actions. And if the teacher is really good, it's second nature, which will prompt understanding or at least prompt a closer understanding to the way. Now, certain of these terms and certain of these dialogues and these actions have become arcanum. you know, they have become so empowered, you might say, with the deep zazen and the close attention of countless students down through the ages that, you know, like the Kuan Mu is an example.

[35:43]

It's like an image that has been worshipped by generations after generations of monks and nuns concentrated in that one word, mu, is the whole universe. really. So it is important to enter in there. Now, of course, Jung talks about archetypes in a little different way, you know. The wise old woman and the dwarf and other figures appear in dreams and will have a profound significance for the dreamer that comes out of human racial memory.

[37:02]

This is a little different. These archetypes are also and they come out of human racial memory, but their function is instructive. Their function is to bring one to peak experience. So what Wu Men did in collecting his stories was to select 48 of the probably hundreds of thousands of stories that were available by verbal, oral tradition. You can imagine. In Tang China, there were literally hundreds of Zen teachers.

[38:14]

And each of these Zen teachers, each evening, met with students. And there were Dharma dialogues. There was Dharma combat. Each evening, there would be maybe 20 or 20 or 30 monks coming forward. every evening for these hundreds of teachers over hundreds of years. So there were many, many, many stories. And out of these, you know, bubbled to the surface as most significant, well, in our curriculum at the Diamond Sangha, 550. In some other koan traditions, Maybe 1,500, as many as that. But really, very few. And it's interesting, the koan mu is usually the first koan.

[39:28]

So out of those, you know, countless cons comes 550. Out of those 550 bubbles up what? That's just shown by experience to be the most efficacious. I don't know. I've just been talking along here in response to your question. I'm not sure that I've really touched on that. Yes. No, I said in Zen I instruct. They're also instructive, of course, of course. What I want to ask is, You know, that really touches the heart of things.

[40:47]

That question touches the heart of it. Fundamentally, although they overlap, we can distinguish between spiritual practice and therapy. And Jung is interested in spiritual practice. He's interested in religion. But he's working with individuals hoping to make them whole people. Whereas the con gives us the experience of, well, to use Thich Nhat Hanh's term, interbeing.

[41:59]

You know, it's in Honolulu, you know, they've introduced the Kentucky Cardinal, which is a wonderful songbird. It's the Cardinal that teaches us And the koan opens us to our unity with all things and the ephemerality, in fact, the vacancy, we can say, of all things, which in human terms is inner peace. So therapy and religious experience overlap. But believe me, Zen practice is released from the self rather than self-correction.

[43:08]

No, go ahead. Being a whole person would it be not necessarily the requisite for relief? Oh boy, it is. Oh boy, yeah. The more neurotic you and I are, the harder time we have with Zen practice. Yeah, no doubt about it. The mentally handicapped person cannot do zazen. The child really can't do zazen. The child can sit there with you But that child is not doing zazen in an adult sense of the term. That child has to go through puberty and all of those things that go with puberty and resolve all those things that go with puberty pretty well. And then zazen can be meaningful.

[44:24]

And so when people come who have emotional problems, severe emotional problems. I welcome them, but I encourage them also to get conventional help and either do that first and then Zazen. Calling me up and saying, hey, you know, if you're a student for me and all that stuff, I'd possible, as whole as possible. And there's no end to it. And the one helps the other. You know, the Zen practice helps the psychological practice, the process. The psychological practice helps the Zazen. Not doubtable. Some Zen teachers will try to steer their students away from therapy, but I'm not one of them.

[45:41]

Do you think it's important to have a therapist that's familiar with sasa? Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Or at least someone who has had some contact with one of the meditative disciplines, like vipassana or Tibetan Buddhism or something like that. I find it doesn't really matter. to have a general idea of what's going on. Yes? I have a similar . Dreams come to all of us, whether or not . Somehow, I have the impression that dream interpretation is somehow treated differently, um, theoretically, rather than the normal book.

[46:46]

Well, they overlap, you know. In fact, Case 25, and I'll read Case 25 if we have enough time during my stay here, two more to go, deals with a deep dream. on the part of Kyozan. You know, Kyozan goes to Maitreya's Sita Heaven and is led in to sit in the third seat. And seeing a monk strikes a gavel and says, today the one in the third seat will speak. Well, you know, Shakyamuni was sitting in the first seat probably and Maitreya in the second seat. Maybe it was the other way around. Here he was in the third seat. So very confidently he arose and struck the stand with the gavel and said, the truth of the Mahayana transcends the four propositions and is beyond the 100 negation.

[48:01]

Listen, listen. That's his dream. Great dream. And in fact, It's a kind of makyo, if you know about makyo. Makyo are the sense distortions that you experience in zazen, particularly the deep dreams that you experience in zazen, where you find yourself a participant in, the central participant in some kind of religious ritual, or you find yourself to be one of the archetypal figures like the Buddha or Guanyin or Jizo. These can be compared to the visions of the Virgin Mary that the Christian mystics will have.

[49:07]

But whereas often in Christianity, that vision is considered the be-all and end-all, and the person becomes a saint. In Zen, it's just a milestone on the path and can be very harmful if it is taken as something ultimate. The Surangama Sutra, the Chinese Surangama Sutra, there are several Surangamas, but the one that's translated by Charles Look gives fifty kinds of makyo. They're worth going back and looking at, because they're very instructive. Yes?

[50:11]

Working in the heartbeat, I something that is dying, it's a process of killing. Yes, yes. And now that we are talking about these two points of releasing the self, or transforming the self, and evolving the character, I took together these two things, and I say, dying might be releasing the cell. Can be, yes. Yes, it is. Willy nilly. And it's a thought of healing the cell.

[51:16]

Releasing the self, the problem, healing the self problem. Yes. Yes. The other side of this search. Yes. We have this practice, healing ourselves. Yes. But is it the only way of healing ourselves? Dying, releasing, for there is another way, therapy. Yes. It gets very blurred. Another term for realization experience in Zen literature is the great death term. And in fact, this term is not confined to Buddhism or Zen, but is found in Christianity and Judaism and Islam, where you hear the injunction, you must die to yourself.

[52:22]

And the great fear, in fact, the terror that is spoken of in the Heart Sutra, I don't remember how your translation reads, but our translation reads, no hindrance and therefore no fear. Well, that word fear in the original Chinese is more accurately translated terror. And this is the terror that many Zen students or most Zen students feel at a certain point in the practice because it is a fear of death. It is a fear of that release of the self, which is really transformation of the self, of karma. So I think all these things meet at that great depth or can meet in the physical death.

[53:29]

Not always with the physical death, as you know. There are some people resisting it to the very last and making themselves miserable to the very last. Yes? Oh, well, really, it is no different from the self that is washing the dishes or cooking up the food. It's not a matter of samadhi. Yes. Yes. You know, I am reminded of something that Rajneesh said.

[54:40]

I have no brief for Rajneesh, but he says very good things here and there. And one of the things he said was that practice does not lead to realizations. or in your terms, understanding of original faith. There is no straight line cause and effect from or through practice to realization. Realization is an accident. So then you might ask, why should I practice? Well, practice makes you accident-prone. So it is very good to practice chikantaza, very good to practice mu.

[55:53]

And one reaches a still, quiet place. But realization of one's original face may be far away. And as to where it is, in fact, of course it's not separate. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It may be and it may not be. It may be nothing more than pure stillness. What we're speaking of here is a transformational experience.

[57:05]

And we're also speaking of the fact that with that transformational experience, we find that it's been there all along. Well, I don't... I wouldn't say that... You know, if you say the original face is all things as they appear, it flattens it, you know.

[58:10]

And there's no potency left anymore, even though it may be true. So it's important not to try to generalize, but to get at Huineng's real intention here. And so you are asked to show in the duksan room, in the Sanzen room, show me the original face of the monk Ming. That's the cause. And when you can really see what that is, then you can present Ming's original face, transcending time and space. Yeah.

[59:20]

Understand means to stand under it, you know. Yes, yes, yes. Well, it kind of sounds that at the realization of the realization of practice, that what surfaces as the original face is that that that which is consistent, even when the garbage is down, when things are more natural, the thing that is most consistent. I think that is all right, but it's a bit philosophical and it rises from the view that samadhi is somehow the only way.

[60:29]

that leaves out the bulbuls and the cardinals and the thrushes and the geckos. To make it your own. Yes. To make it your own. Take it on yourself. to personalize, to become intimate. Yes? The last phrase, I think, on Luther, you know, the last phrase is, even though the world seems to just crawl over the story of visiting the place,

[61:35]

Oh, when the world is destroyed, it is not destroyed. Yes. Okay. What is it in this context? Yeah, everything falls away. Yes. Dogen Zenji says, body and mind fall away, but actually a lot more than that fall away. Yes. Oh, no. Two different things. Yeah.

[62:39]

There are many, many degrees, depending on the individual. You know, with some people it is just, oh, that must be it. Or you can read in Three Pillars of Zen Yamada Roshi's account of his own experience where it's a very interesting story. He had been doing Zazen for some time. And he was on his way home from work on the train, and he was reading in the Shobo Genzo, I've forgotten the chapter, where Dogen Zenji says, Mind is the mountains, the rivers, the great earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars.

[63:52]

And he suddenly was struck by this passage. And tears came. Tears actually flowed from his eyes. He felt rather embarrassed looking around at his fellow businessman, you know, sitting there in the first-class car in their suits and hats, you know. You hear this guy who's sitting there weeping, crying. and then came home and had dinner with his family and evening with his family and went to bed. And suddenly, in the middle of the night, he heard these words, you know, the mind is the mountains, the rivers, the great earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars. And he leaped out of bed, leapt out of bed, which is it, leapt out of bed and stamped on the tatami, you know, on the floor.

[64:55]

And the whole universe opened its great mouth and gave a great laugh. A gila. And of course his wife thought the end had come, you know. But there is that kind of experience. too. So there's quite a range of experience. But even Yamada Roshi had to begin with the checking questions with Yasutani Roshi and continue with miscellaneous koans and then go through the various books of koans, just like everybody else. and it often happens that what seems to be a rather mild experience at first turns out to be rather deep, or even vice versa. So, deep or shallow,

[66:01]

You know, these are words on a single line sort of range, whereas it's much more dynamic than that. And that experience is only the beginning. That's where it starts. That's where Zen practice, in my view, really starts, with that deep experience. or a shallow experience, whatever it is. Because then, you know, you have an opening and you can enter in and enjoy the fun. I didn't come to lay my own trip on you folks here. I thought it somehow got drawn into Some more questions.

[67:04]

Yeah. This sounds interesting. I was thinking recently about a very good phrase I heard a few years ago. I thought it was pretty neat. You've been talk to talk, but you walk the walk. And it's sort of like a synonym for realization can be that you've been talk to talk, or you have a certain level I had an interesting experience in Berkeley, this visit. I got acquainted with Akiba Sensei. I think he's been here. He's really a wonderful man. And we were talking about a mutual acquaintance. And he had heard this person give a talk.

[68:05]

And so I said, what did you think? And he said, in his inimitable English, Not yet, Chopstick. And his wife, Yoshi, you know, said, What? Not yet, Chopstick. What do you mean? And I was laughing, you know. And I said, I agree, I agree. And so he explained. He says, Chopstick up here, okay. But Chopstick here, no good. Ha, ha, [...] ha. Ha, ha, [...] ha. Yeah. Yeah. Not yet. But we're all on the path, you know. Not making invidious comparisons yet. I feel very much at home with all of you, as though I were with my own sangha.

[69:50]

And while here, especially chanting the old sutras that we don't do at Kokohan anymore, but were a part of my training in Japan. I feel the community of Zen practice very keenly. And particularly now, my own teacher, Yamada Roshi, is very ill, very critical condition, and is probably dying. And so I'm very much in tune with what is happening there in his own center. And I know that the sutras they are reciting for him are the same sutras that you're reciting here, in the same way.

[71:02]

So it's very moving for me to be here. to practice with you. We are all in it together, and you are taking responsibility also for the Dharma, which is very heartening. Perhaps you could remember him in that morning service. He has pneumonia. The old man's friend, they call pneumonia.

[72:08]

I don't know if you've heard that term in your hospice work. It's traditionally, in the West, it's been called that as the easy way to go. Thank you very much, everybody.

[72:40]

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