Recently, someone approached me, a reporter for a magazine, a national magazine, and he said that there was several questions about success of failure. Something like how failure can become success. And he said they asked the Dalai Lama to answer these questions for the magazine, but he, although he said he would, he decided he wouldn't.

[01:02]

So they were looking for somebody else. So somebody suggested me, but they never, he said, but the editors would have to get back to, you know, have to decide. So he never called back, but it's a great question. And so I've been left with a question. I appreciate him giving me this question. So what occurred to me was in the Zen stories, there are quite a few stories where failure becomes a catalyst for success. Although we say one should not be attached to either failure or success, ultimately, I think this is very true and is ultimately what we should be concerned with.

[02:12]

not being attached to either success or failure. But then there's the story of Kyogen. Kyogen was a student of Isan. Master Isan was one of the famous Zen masters in the Tang Dynasty in China, and Kyogen was his disciple. Kyogen had studied with Hyakujo, and when Hyakujo died, he came to Isan. And Kyogen was a very erudite monk. He'd studied for many, many years, and he was very intelligent. And he was actually a kind of scholar of Buddhism.

[03:19]

But Ison, knew that Kyogen's learning was standing in his way of really understanding, because he was kind of clinging to his intellectual understanding. So one day, Master Issan asked Kyogen, Tell me, what is your original face before your parents were born?" And Kyogen was really startled. He'd never encountered such a question in his life, and he couldn't answer. And so he went and he looked through all of his books, couldn't find the answer.

[04:22]

And so he was really at his wits end, and he came back to Issan, and he said, please, Master, tell me the answer to this question. And Issan said, if I were to tell you the answer to this question, I would be doing you a great disservice. So Kyogen was really dejected. Everything that supported his understanding was completely gone, and he had no place to stand. So he decided that he would leave and just be an ordinary monk.

[05:27]

So, he burned all of his books, packed up his traveling bag, and he went to the National Teachers Shrine and became a caretaker, just sweeping the grounds, and taking care of this monument with no ambition, just to kind of live out his life as a caretaker and let go of all of his ambitions as a monk. And one day he was sweeping the grounds This is a very famous story. One day he was sweeping the grounds and a little pebble hit a piece of bamboo and went ping.

[06:32]

And this ping totally opened his mind. Anything that he had left was completely shattered and dropped away. And his true mind, his true self became totally apparent to him. and he was overjoyed. And he went back to Ihsan and told him the story. And he said, I'm so grateful to you for not revealing to me the answer to this question. If you had tried to save if you had tried to save me by giving me something, I would never have been able to find this treasure myself. So this is a wonderful example of a good teacher withholding the teaching, or teaching in a way, or giving the student the responsibility

[07:48]

But also, it's a wonderful example of despair turning into success, or failure turning into success. Success and failure are linked as two sides of a coin. As a matter of fact, everything is continually failing. And as Suzuki Roshi used to say, everything is falling out of balance moment by moment and finding a new balance moment by moment. Fundamentally, without a failure, there's no success. And especially in practice, failure is very important part of success. My old teacher used to say, the people that have the most difficult time gain the most value out of practice.

[09:03]

So in a sense, failure for a Zen student should be a spur to make more effort. So Kyogen presented his students with a koan which exemplified his understanding from this incident. This is a very well-known koan called Kyogen's Man Up a Tree. Kyogen Osho said, it's like a man up in a tree or a woman a person up in a tree, hanging from a branch by the mouth.

[10:22]

Her hands grasp no bow and his feet rest on no limb. Someone appears under the tree and asks, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West? If he doesn't answer, he fails or falls. To respond to the question, if he does answer, he will lose his life. What would you do in such a situation? That was his koan to his monks. What will you do? Quick. And Lu Man's comment is, even if your eloquence flows like a river, it is of no avail. Nothing.

[11:27]

There's no way to figure it out. It's like the fifth day of Sashin, and you're sitting in Zazen, and you can't continue and you can't stop. What will you do? And you cannot figure it out. Though you can expound the whole of Buddhist literature, it is of no use. If you solve this problem, you will give life to the way that has been dead until this moment. and destroy the way that has been alive up to now. Meaning, the way that has been dead is the true way. And the way that will be alive, that was alive will be the false way.

[12:40]

Otherwise, you must wait for Maitreya Buddha and ask him. Maitreya Buddha, of course, is the future Buddha, who in some incalculably long time will appear on earth, but this is just a way of saying. If you wait too long, you'll have to wait for Maitreya. Don't wait for Maitreya. Just let go now. This is a koan about how do you just let go. In Mumon's verse, he says, Kyogen is truly thoughtless. That's kind of interesting.

[13:49]

Thoughtless means without being. It sounds like a fool. He is a kind of fool. He doesn't cling to any thought. His vice and poison are endless. He stops up the mouse of the monks and lets the tears stream from their dead eyes. This is a kind of poisonous poem, depicting Kyogen as giving this impossible koan to his monks. and about their suffering. It really hands them a very tough problem. But it's not Kyogen giving them a tough problem.

[14:54]

Life itself gives us this tough problem. Kyogen is just bringing it to life. bringing to life the existential problem that we all have. The tree is like our life, the world, and we are all hanging by our teeth with nothing to stand on, even though we think we have something to stand on. We're always looking for footholds. And we keep going from one foothold to another in this precarious life. But this is what Muhammad calls the

[15:57]

the life, the dead life, rather than the living life? How do we just let go and come to life? We're always looking for a comfortable way If you look at what our life is like, we're always inventing new ways to be comfortable. But no matter how comfortable we make ourselves, the comfort that we have now becomes uncomfortable. And then we have to find a new way to be comfortable. And then we're always seeking one comfortable way after another.

[17:07]

But there's no end to this. But there is a comfortable way. But the comfortable way doesn't look comfortable. In Zazen, Dogen calls Zazen the comfortable way. But when you are a beginning Zen student, you don't think that this is the comfortable way at all. How can he say that? Sounds very ironic because Zazen is so uncomfortable until you let go. This question, why did Bodhidharma come from the West? It was a question that was very, going around amongst all the monks in the Tang Dynasty, China, it was a famous question.

[18:20]

And there were many, many well-known answers, none of which are answers. The question, why did Bodhidharma come from the West, means what is the meaning of them? Or what is the meaning of practice? Or what is the meaning? If you say something, It has to be with true understanding. So how do you say it without saying it? Which means, how do you express your understanding from the bottom of reality? If you cling to anything, you lose your life.

[19:25]

It's just the opposite of what we think. We think that by clinging to something that we preserve our life. But it's just the opposite. By letting go, we have our life. And we leave our life up to Life itself. We give ourself over to our true nature. How do you let go of ego? Ego is necessary. How do you allow ego to take its place rather than rule?

[20:36]

Who is the ruler? There's a famous koan. Who is the master? So here, what looks like failure is actually success. Usually we think of success in terms of gaining something. We think of success in terms of security, money, possessions, position. But all these are false securities.

[21:49]

True security is just the opposite, to let go of everything. Then there's nothing to lose. If you have something to lose, you will feel insecure. Someone said, we leave this body to this earth. This body belongs to this earth. How do we let go of it and let it be? So whether we have a lot or have a little is not of so much consequence.

[23:19]

What is of consequence is whether we're attached to success or failure or if we're attached to anything. Where do we find our freedom? So in the end, the question is, How do we give up ourself to the absolute being, to big mind, whatever you want to call it?

[24:25]

How do we give up and trust the universe? And trust ourself to the universe. There's another famous story of Fa Yan and his disciple, his student. Fa Yan was a teacher in the Tang Dynasty, and there was a student who had been there for a while, a couple of years, and the student had never seen him. had never come to visit, never come to talk, he said. So one day Fayan confronted him and he said, you know, you've been here for quite a while but you never have come to see me.

[25:37]

And the student said, well, I have to tell you that when I was with my other teacher, found the great bliss. And Fa Yan said, oh, well, how did that happen? How did your teacher, what was your understanding with your teacher? And the student said, well, I asked my teacher, what is the self? of the practitioner, what is the true self of the practitioner? And my teacher said, the fire boy seeks fire. Fire attendant seeks fire. And at that point, I was awakened.

[26:44]

And his son said, well, what does that mean?" And he said, it means that the self seeks the self, fire seeks fire, the self seeks the self. And Hisan said, well, if that was the true answer, the meaning, the practice would not have survived to this day. And the student was totally at his wits end, dejected, failed, feeling like a failure. And so he left. And when he got a little ways away, he thought, well, if Ion is a teacher of 500 monks, a very well-known Zen master, he must be right.

[27:52]

So he returned to Fayan, and he apologized for his arrogance and made vows to the teacher. And the teacher said, Fayan said, why don't you ask me the question? So the student said, what is the self of the practitioner? And Fayan said, the fire boy seeks fire. Self seeks the self. At this, the student woke up, had a real awakening. of failure turning into success. Do you have a question?

[28:59]

Alan. Right, so we may not be able to accomplish certain tasks, but in the process, our self-development and our character becomes strengthened, and there's a success which is beyond what we envisioned.

[31:20]

which is in the end just as important as the failures of, the success or failure of our missions or our intentions. Well, in a sense, you know, we're always are failing because ultimately we can never accomplish everything that we want to accomplish. That's not possible to accomplish everything because our life doesn't last long enough to accomplish everything that we want to accomplish. And even though we accomplish great, make great strides socially, all of the edifice that's built up is eventually torn down and has to be built up again, and is torn down, has to be built up.

[32:44]

This is the rhythm, actually, of our life. The structures we build up are torn down, and then we go back and build them up again, and then they're torn down again. And it's this ebb and flow that is constantly going on. So success and failure are inextricably bound up with each other. And you can't really have one without the other. I want to ask if the reverse is true also, that if the success that we intended leads to some kind of inner failure. I was thinking if the Dalai Lama became the head of some autonomous Tibet,

[33:45]

and we succeed in some personal endeavor that we had our hearts set on, does that lead to spiritual failure? More often than not. I think that success isn't always what we think it is. Senator McCain was talking about his being a prisoner in Vietnam for five years and that everybody, so many of those prisoners were tortured.

[34:58]

And he said he signed a confession, right? He was coerced into signing a confession. People think, well, you know, he wasn't faithful. He's a failure. But he said, everybody who's tortured confesses. So this is like a kind of interesting dilemma. But in some way, that success and failure, that failure has another side. It's like, nobody can withstand, almost nobody can withstand this kind of treatment.

[36:01]

And so they have to betray themselves. But in recognizing that there is a limit to what a person can endure, there is also a kind of acceptance of the limits, which is a kind of success. To be able to accept the limitations that one can withstand is also a kind of success. Not success in the sense of having accomplished something, but in realizing that there's no other way. From the beginning you said that Suzuki Roshi talked about

[37:21]

constantly losing our balance and regaining our balance. And when you said that, I realized I think that we should expect to be losing the balance. When you take that as part of the rhythm of your life, then it's not a surprise. And you're not clutching because you expect to be losing what you have on this moment

[38:25]

and finding what you have in the next moment. So you're always looking to how you can find yourself in the next moment. So the practice is without too many preconceptions, to just be open, to be totally in this moment and totally open to the possibilities of the next moment, and to find yourself in that next moment by being in this moment. I remember this.

[39:59]

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