I am about to teach you the 12 Tantra's words. This morning I want to make a comment on a case in the Blue Cliff Records. Case number three, and Suzuki Hiroshi is very fond of this case.

[01:15]

Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha is the title. And he used this koan quite a bit in his talks. So I want to read his commentary. It's very short in this particular version, very short. At that time, we didn't have the translations that we have now. So we used the old RDM Shaw translation, which wasn't terribly accurate. It expresses the point, all right. So this is the introduction by Shaw, the translator.

[02:19]

The principal character in this model subject is Basō Dōjitsu Matsu, Chinese name, who lived from 704 to 788. the chief disciple of Nangapu Ejo, who was one of the major disciples of the Sixth Patriarch. In the introductory word by Engo, the commentator, says, he, Engo, says, introducing, he said, one gesture, one posture, one word, one verse. Now, if one plans such an approach in teaching disciples, That is like gouging out wounds in good meat, making holes and cavities in it. The great activity is before us, manifest. There are no regulations in it." He's referring to the various gestures that are the trademark of certain Zen masters, like raising the fist or raising Fute's finger, always expressing

[03:29]

the fundamental in some way over and over again. So he's kind of criticizing that, but at the same time you have to realize this kind of criticism is also a praise. That's the kind of language that these old Chinese used. When they would say one thing, they'd mean the opposite very often. So, gouging out wounds in good meat means not necessary to ruin something in order to make something else good. But he says, the great activity is before us manifest, there are no regulations in it. If you plan to make known to people that there is an Absolute throughout the whole heaven and the whole earth, the search for it will not succeed.

[04:32]

Supposing one does attain, and what if one does not attain? For what? An extremely small matter. Supposing one does not attain, and what if one does attain? An extremely critical matter. And if you don't pass along either of these roads, what is the right thing to do? I tentatively put the matter before you. Ponder it." Translation is maybe not completely right, but... So here's the main subject introduced by Setso. That was the introduction. Here's the main subject. This is the koan. Attention. Baso, the great teacher, was unwell. Great teacher Baso was unwell. And the temple's chief accountant visited him. And he said, teacher, or yes, sir.

[05:37]

And he said, teacher, during these recent days, how is your health? How have you been, you know, during your illness? And the great teacher Matsu said, sun-faced Buddhas, moon-faced Buddhas. That's kind of like what he was criticizing in the beginning, saying one gesture, one word, you know, So that was Matsu's reply, his response. Sun-Faced Buddhas, Moon-Faced Buddhas. This comes from a, it's a phrase from a scripture. And this scripture enumerates thousands of Buddhas and their names and some characteristic of their life. These are Buddhas which precede the seven Buddhas before Buddha.

[06:40]

There's a whole list in the Sutra. And the characteristic of the Moon-Faced Buddha is that the Moon-Faced Buddha lives only a day and a night. And the characteristic of the Sun-Faced Buddha is that the Buddha lives for 1,800 years. So Baso Baso replied, when we think about our human lives, there are, as you know, people who live long, like those sun-faced Buddhas, and there are people whose lives are short, like those moon-faced Buddhas. It's useless to worry. And then Suzuki Roshi has a short commentary. And he says, although you are looking forward to the bliss of the teaching, you do not know that you are always in the midst of the teaching.

[07:52]

So your practice does not accord with your teachers. Once you realize Buddha nature within and without, there is no special way to follow for a student or any specific suggestion to give for a teacher. When there is a problem, there is the way to go. Actually, you continuously go over and over the great path of the Buddha with your teacher, who is always with you. Negative and positive methods, or the first principle and the second principle, are nothing but the great activities of such a character. The Buddha nature is quite personal to you and essential to all existence. There are many ways to interpret this particular case. But in the face of the length of our life, moon-faced or sun-faced, what will we do with our life?

[09:08]

And how will we find satisfaction in our life? Whether we have a short life or a long life or we don't know, you know, about our life. I was talking to someone yesterday And he's getting older. He's not as old as I am, but he's getting older. And he said, you know, the more I think about it, anything can happen at any time. This person is working with dying people, actually. and they had something wrong in the stomach and a lot of uncertainty about life.

[10:21]

When we are well, pretty well, we don't think about it, but as soon as something hits us, we find that we're out of it, out of tune with life in a way. And some illness or incapacity will put us in a place where life is going on around us, so to speak. But we're in a field apart from that. And it makes us feel lonely and isolated and wondering about the purpose of our life. It makes us think about things, about what we're really doing. I was talking to someone else who has a kind of high-powered business.

[11:39]

And this person's busy all the time with people and with the mechanics of the business and with accounts and things going wrong. And the person's wondering, well, what is the purpose of this? What am I doing? What's the purpose of all this? I could get out of it, but then what would I do? I'd just do something else, which eventually I'd be doing the same thing over and over again because of the kind of person I am. Just as Suzuki Roshi said, changing your equipment. It's easy for us to just change our equipment by starting something new, but without doing something fundamental.

[12:43]

And he decided that he would be satisfied by limiting what he does, limiting the size and the responsibility, and just taking care of the people, and taking care of his own mind. In a way it's like watching a transformation from an ordinary person into a bodhisattva. We tend to... it's easy to think that practice has some special form. But here's a situation where a person is turning the form of their life into a way to practice, so that being a bodhisattva, or cultivating in this way, becomes more important than... it becomes the most important factor in the situation.

[14:11]

And in a situation like that, where it's very easy to be caught by greed and material benefit, to be able to hold the line. I've seen this happen so many times. When I see it happen in school, when people have a certain talent or a certain ability and are happy within that ability or that talent and can find their place easily. They feel that when they graduate all that gets lost because they're expected to go out and make money. They say, I could do this, but I'm supposed to make money, because that's what's expected as a person.

[15:24]

Not personal satisfaction or even being helpful in some way, or not personal growth, but materialistic values. So it really pleases me to feel that someone who is so exposed to materialistic values and could be so easily caught by them, and is right in the midst of that dynamic, could take a step back and really be so firmly rooted in cultivation, mindfulness of what's real, to really have a view of the reality and not get caught by materialistic values.

[16:48]

It's very rare in this day and age Also, I've been spending a lot of time at Green Gulch and also a lot of time with the leadership of Zen Center in San Francisco. And although Green Gulch has picked itself up in some way, as you remember a year ago or so, People wouldn't even go out there because it was too dangerous for most students. But now there's a training program and things have picked themselves up a lot. But there's still some big problem. And it's a big problem based on

[17:52]

the difference between running an institution and actually having a vital, a vitality of practice, kind of different between those two. And there is some vitality of practice, but there's also, within that structure, a lot of reliance on kind of a holdover from the institutional days of Zen Center. When Zen Center was a big institution, still is, but when the institution dominates, the vitality gets sacked out of it. And all the vitality goes into running an institution. People wonder where the practice is. When you get to a certain point in practice, then you become an institutional person, you know.

[19:02]

And I've been trying to put some effort into less emphasis on the institution and more emphasis on, you know, what are we doing here? treating each other, you know, and it's a wonderful kind of frying pan or boiling pot, you know, to be able to work with that situation. I sometimes get into that problem here with myself. You know, the I put a lot of, not so much reliance on institution, but that things should run well. And when they don't run well, I get very upset. And sometimes I lose my sense of reality.

[20:13]

Because I'm somewhat attached to things running well. And every once in a while I have to remind myself of my original vow, which is that I'm just sitting zazen here. And if anybody wants to come and sit zazen, that's fine. That's the basis. But I sometimes get lost in expectations. It's pretty hard to get to not have expectations and it's not wrong to have expectations but it's not so good to get lost in it or to get confused by it or to get too upset So when I remind myself that I'm just sitting dozen here with everyone else, then I can relax and enjoy my practice more.

[21:39]

Sometimes I think, well, I see the zendo in the morning sometimes, not so many people, and I think, We have to get more people. That's a kind of, you know, deluded idea. All right, well, we should make people come in the morning. So I always have to remind myself of my original intention. which is to just sit dozing and not set something up that's too much. That way I can always keep a check on myself. So

[22:45]

I always have to be careful to know what my intentions are, my original intention, not stray from it. And the way things go is kind of koan for me and reminds me when something goes wrong, I think it's going wrong, it's just going some way or another, but I think, oh, it's going wrong. I think, oh, it's going well, but it's just going one way or another, really. And I just put some judgment on it. Oh, it's going wrong. But I found that if I just mind my business and come back to my original intention, everything works very well. when I review the purpose of my life and stay within that bound, those boundaries, then things tend to go pretty well.

[23:59]

There's still problems, but as Suzuki Roshi says in his commentary, problem will be the way to go. When you see the problem, then you know you have the way to go. Not some special idea about how things should go, but just taking care of things. When, in the old days of the Berkeley Zen Center, I was very uninstitutional minded, and I used to keep the money in a the money that people paid in dues in a little tin can. And I used that for various purposes, and Zendo used it for various purposes, and there was no problem. We really had a good time.

[25:02]

But there wasn't much money, but everything worked very well. I didn't really keep track of how much money we had, or how much money I had, or what we spent, But there was always something, you know, and it always worked. And the idea of incorporating, you know, made me laugh. Incorporate? A Zen Center? Have by-laws and all that stuff? But eventually, I succumbed to that. And I thought, well, that is a good idea. It is a good idea. And I'm glad that we did it. But basically, I've always had the less... that other attitude has really been underneath everything for me.

[26:04]

I think it's fine to do those things, to have some structure and some... framework. But even so, that exists. At the same time, it really doesn't exist for me. Both things exist at the same time. We're just all free to come and go. And that's what our life is like. And we just take things up as they come. And I just try to appreciate this short life of one day in the night or whatever it turns out to be.

[27:15]

And I would just like us to help each other to do that. I would like people at Green Goats to help each other to enjoy their life. It's so easy to turn a good thing into a sour thing. very easy. And through our expectation we start criticizing and backbiting and pretty soon nobody trusts each other. And we get, the whole practice turns sour. It's very easy to do.

[28:25]

It's easy to kind of turn it from sweet to sour. And sweet doesn't mean that everything's goody-goody. But it means to maintain a balance between sweet and sour so that you can be sweet. But everything doesn't turn sour. Sometimes you have to be strict. Sometimes we have to criticize, and sometimes we have to condone. It's great. And you have to know when to do which, but not to be caught by either one. And I think one of the biggest problems is when we get in a critical, when we criticize, to fall into a critical mode.

[29:28]

That's a little different. It means that you're not letting go of criticism. Criticism has a place, but it's not a mode. When it turns into a mode, then we go sour. So... If we find our real nature, if we settle on our real nature, true nature, which is neither sweet nor sour, which is neither critical nor condoning, but condones when it's necessary and is critical when it's necessary, it gets off. It's not bound by that. It doesn't stay there. And if we stay in that place, we naturally treat each other in the right way.

[30:48]

So whether we have a lot of things or don't have a lot of things, whether we live a long time, don't live a long time, to cultivate our nature. And not get out of that, not stray from that. That's why we can say the main thing in our life is our practice. It doesn't mean that you're always in a zendo. That means that wherever you are, you're in your zendo. Wherever you are, you can practice that as the main thing in your life. Not money or positions or fame or power.

[32:06]

or excitement. My experience with Suzuki Roshi was, sometimes he was very sweet, and sometimes he was very critical. But even when he was critical, I never minded it. As a matter of fact, I always enjoyed

[33:15]

not enjoyed, but it's like appreciated his critical attitude toward me when he was critical because somehow I felt that at the same time that he was critical he was not apart from me Not standing aside being critical. Not putting himself in some other place or rejecting it. But that's hard to cultivate. easy to see sometimes, but hard to cultivate that kind of selflessness.

[34:25]

Do you have something that you want to say? Can we ever over-cultivate? Over-cultivate? You can over anything. What would you think would be over-cultivating? We should be careful that we don't. The one thing that we're always warned about is having too much of a taint of cultivation. You know, some kind of arrogant attitude.

[35:47]

Stinky bin. In the introduction when you spoke about planning, the one gesture and planning, the way that came through to me was that the one finger zen or the one gesture zen of those masters was a spontaneous upwelling of their understandings and it was kind of a culmination of their life that overflowed, but that if the teacher would say to himself, well, I'm going to do that, too. I'm going to have a gesture, and I'm going to... it would be going the wrong way, because it would be so artificial. And the students practice, too, probably, if you get set on, this is the way that

[37:01]

You know, I'm not planning it out, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to... to be genuine for you. Yeah, that's why the little boy got his finger cut off by Gutei. You know that story. Yeah. And we have to be careful not to imitate. We do imitate. And imitating is okay. But we have to be careful about imitating. Imitating is how we learn something. Copying is how we learn something. But that's in a certain stage. But we have to find our own way to be genuine. In the case of someone making that kind of gesture, they better be themselves.

[38:08]

They better be out of that stage. So it was quite a common thing, and it still is, for a teacher to have some gesture or phrase that expresses the understanding over and over. Banke used the phrase, the unborn. That's all he ever talked about after a certain period in his life. That's all he ever talked about was the unborn. That was his phrase that he used over and over again. That's very good.

[39:44]

That's a very good example. If you do it too much, you overshoot. If you don't do it enough, you never get up to it. Good. Question. You mentioned going along Who are these people? What am I doing? And I wondered if I could say something more about that. Can you say something? Only if it's confusing. Would I say it's confusing or that's confusing? Being in that position is confusing. Oh yeah.

[40:47]

Being sick is a practice for us. It is a place to practice. And it's a stopping. You may stop the activities of your life. And you say, well, who am I now? So it's a good spot. Kind of like Zazen, in a way. It is Zazen. If you're sick, you can practice with the sickness as Zazen. You don't have to figure it out intellectually, but you deal with sickness in the same way that you deal with pain in your legs. But there's a lot, it's quite a different situation. And it's like being... when everything's taken away from you, who are you?

[41:49]

Best situation. But don't get sick to do it. It's not a good idea. Although, a lot of the people... Hakuin got sick, and Bankei got sick. And when they were just about... They practiced real hard, both of them. They overdid it. They overshot the mark. And they both got real sick. And then they just gave up. And when they gave up, they found it. But they were both, you know, Banke would spit against the... He said, I spit against the wall. And there was this big thing, you know, right down the wall. It was great. At that moment, you know, my mind I had a big realization. Many, many stories about it. and being the final catalyst, you know, for the realization.

[43:19]

When I hear you talk about, you know, talk about some faith, faith in Buddha, it all sounds just almost obvious, just balance and harmony, you know, adjusting to situations and accepting things. But then I think, well, what's hard about it was The thing is control. That I want to, in part of my life, I have to control things. Situations have to, not totally, have to be exert some control. And then when situations come up, which seem bad or unpleasant or negative, unless I've lost the control, it's really difficult. And if it's an extreme, there's not much problem.

[44:24]

If a hurricane comes up, it's completely out of your control. But when it's closer to the middle, where you're not exactly sure what to try to influence or act on, what to leave alone and just let it act. And how much to push something and how much to let it run. That's always at the basis of everything we do. Not much to push it, not much to leave it alone. The main problem is this fear of not... Yes, Maylee? Well, before I do that, I'd like to ask Ron's question to clarify what I've been wondering about.

[45:31]

That, from one point, if you could just come here and just sit down then, first I was thinking that there's almost a selfish aspect to that, but then if you really sit down then, you're being extremely open and My question is, how responsible? When does the issue of responsibility come in? How do you know that at this moment you're responsible? Yeah, well, I'll say this. If you just come and sit sadhana, then there's really nothing to do. In the world of sadhana, there's nothing to do.

[46:32]

So whatever step you take is very fresh. And you can choose, well, I'll do this, or I'll do this. or something presents itself, and then you do something, you respond. So if you continually have that, keep control of yourself, or let yourself respond to circumstances without being hindered by, I want, then you can naturally Go with them and you'll know what to do because things will present themselves to you and in your response you encourage things to continue in a certain way. Do you understand what I mean? Turning and being turned. it would be obvious what to do.

[47:44]

And it's those, you know, it depends on being open and being willing to take up something. And also, but the other side of that is not being selfish or self-centered so that you're not making a problem, creating a problem. And it's a delicate balance that always has to be maintained moment after moment. It underlies, it's kind of underlying. So, when there's something to do, you either can accept it or reject it, but you can build with it. Because you're not, you don't have anything of your own to, that has to be done. I don't know if it makes sense.

[48:50]

It seems that a constant change... There are times when we actually make a decision that, well, this needs some attention, I'm going to pick it up. And other times we see something that needs attention and we decide we're not going to pick it up. But there's other times when you... have found, after the fact, that you're actually acting as a leader. Or that you were thought to be a leader, but you're really a follower. Right. And for me, that struggle between leading and following is always... Yeah. And it will always be. Right. And when it's like abandoning that striking for the mark, when you abandon it, that's when the most wonderful experience that's happened. Yeah. Don't worry about it.

[49:52]

Right. You know, it's a calling. Leading and following. That's really at the crux of things. And how to... You can't say, you know. Whatever you say, you fall into the wrong thing. So all the things are up there. together. How much do you assert yourself and how much do you allow yourself to be turned. If you do too much, you distort things. And if you don't do enough, nothing, not much happens. And to keep it right is that point where everything you do is just right.

[50:55]

And you have leadership, but you don't feel that you're overbearing. And you're able to follow, but you don't feel that you're being pushed around. And it's all internal. It's all about how we manifest our own freedom. But whatever we do, it always comes up against our ego. And we either have some take or another on it. It's a refining process.

[52:03]

The process, that's what we like. Cultivation. Constantly being refined through that kind of activity till we can flow very smoothly, very easily without being bothered by being taken advantage of or taking advantage of Anyway. Nice to discuss.

[53:07]

Thank you.

[53:08]

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