Walter's been a practitioner here for a long time. He began his practice as a mere youth in San Francisco while Suzuki Roshi was there. And he has been here for quite a while. He's been directing many of our of his hand in many places on the grounds. He's also the treasurer of Berkeley Zen Center's board. But for this time, while we're in practice period, he is relieved of these responsibilities, and we are taking them on, and he is the exemplar And this is his first Saturday talk, his first opportunity broadly to expound the Dharma.

[01:29]

So we listen with eagerness. Thank you, Alan. Yes, and I am eager, it's true. Sometimes two, eager. I wanted to begin by thanking Jean Selkirk and Mary and Kika for preparing this book cover, and also Libby Potter, Mary's wife. Earlier this morning, I had my papers in my old ratty Redwell, and Angela said, you can't use that. Well, someday somebody might give me something else." There it was. So, very, very nice. Also, I wanted to acknowledge this scroll. which was made, the characters were made for me by Shohaku Daijo, who is a monk at Daishun West Angelus Temple in Humboldt County.

[02:40]

The characters say in script, great way without difficulty. So this is the theme of our practice, and it was fortuitous that years ago, Daizhou made these characters, and he didn't know me very well at the time, and it's fortuitous that the theme of the practice period is Xinchen Ming, and of course this is the first characters of that poem that we're working with. And we can talk a little bit more about that later. So, what I would like to do is recite or read the koan that I am working with, that we are working with. and then make some commentary about that, that follows.

[03:43]

And this particular koan is based upon these same characters, the same first line of Xin Xin Ming. This is Zhou Xu's Koan No. 2 in the Blue Cliff Record. A translation comes from a Zen monk that came here years ago, Sojin, again his name, the translation of this that you gave me. Oh, oh, oh, Yogen Sensaki. Yogen Sensaki. Yogen. Yogen Sensaki. And I have made a few edits to work out the male generics, which I'm inclined to do. Joshu said to his monks, the great way is not difficult to follow. One who walks it simply must avoid making preference. One word is said and you stop at preference or non-preference.

[04:44]

I do not linger even at non-preference. Do you follow me? A monk stood up and said, if one has no preference, what do they follow after? Joshu said, I don't know. The monk responded, if you don't know, why do you say you do not linger even at non-preference? Joshu said, your business of asking questions is over. You may bow and retire. So, hmm. Lots is there. Lots is there. So I think the next thing I want to do before I sort of work into this is I think that the poem that was in the Blue Cliff Record written by Yuan Wu is actually very useful as a kind of transition, if you will, to talking about this.

[06:04]

The poem in the Rekluseka, whoever reads. The final road is not difficult to reach. Word or no word never disturbs the walking. One is many, many is one. The sun rises and the moon sets. Water is icy cold in the remote mountains. Dried skull is not separate from living head. Decayed trees rustle in the wind. Their life has not ceased as of yet. Difficult, difficult, preference or non-preference. To experience this, one must work it out for themselves. So, what I thought we could do this morning is work it a little bit together. So that's my thought. So what I would like to do is talk a little bit about not difficult and difficult.

[07:21]

These two aspects. And just open that up a little bit. talk about why the way is not difficult and why at the same time it may be. On the not difficult, starting with the good news, the not difficult part, I'd like to recite a poem by Master Wendell Berry. This poem runs like this. We look up. A line of geese crosses over as the sky closes. Abandoned as in love or sleep guides them on their ancient way. Everything we need is here. So we pray not for a new self or a new world, but rather to be calm in the heart and in the eye, clear.

[08:42]

Everything we need is here. So, the easy part the not difficult part is that everything we need is here, right now, forever, always. And so there's really nothing extra that needs to be done other than perhaps the abandoned that those Gishus define their way north and south every year, mysteriously. There's so much emphasis placed on doing this or doing that, and in fact, we have nothing really to do other than the abandoned that you do when you go to sleep at night or when you fall in love.

[09:49]

So, it's very easy in that regard, and there's really not much to do because we're already like a fish in water or a bird in the sky, immersed and surrounded by this, by the way, by wisdom. So there's really nothing that need be done, actually. And there's really nothing that can be accomplished or achieved or gained or lost. And this isn't a concept or a theory. It's really, really important. I think, to recognize that when the Buddha spoke about these things, he wasn't making ideas or theories, he was describing reality. This is a description, not a prescription, not a theory. This is it.

[10:54]

And so, because of that, the great way is easy, is without difficulty. The difficulty, the difficulty, let's talk about difficulty. So, if it's so easy, You know, why, what is the struggle? You know, what is the barrier? What is the conflict? What is the, and I think it comes down to, I think, I believe, I don't think, I think again, describing this, comes down to the fact that we have this notion of selfhood, of an independent self, of independent things in general, being separated from, And again, we spend a fair amount of time talking about this and thinking about no self as some kind of proposition or concept or idea, but it's not a proposition or idea or concept.

[12:03]

It's the truth, the absolute truth. And yet it's a very difficult one for all of us to accept because moment by moment, we're creating this self. And once that's created, there is a separation. And that separation, that feeling of separation or being not a part, leads to the thought that I need something. Something's missing. There's something to attain. There's something that I don't know. And the rest is history. So even after all of the affinities and good fortunes that bring us to practice, we spend a lot of time starting out with this notion of something's missing. And therefore, we need to sit Zazen, we need to listen to lectures, we need to read books, you know, blah, blah, blah, to fill some kind of hole.

[13:06]

But in fact, that hole, that gap is never going to be filled because it doesn't exist in the first place. It doesn't exist in the first place. But it's very, very difficult because these concepts, these ideas that we have about separation run really deep. In fact, I think that they are even biological, and so it's a very persistent or sticky situation that we find ourselves in because this self, this separation, this sense of separation is a constant, a re-arising situation, something that we're feeling moment by moment.

[14:07]

And it's not something that kind of comes and then just goes, or ever really goes away, no matter what. I think it's just a part of existence, a natural thing that we have to contend with. And yet, it, this separation that we sense, is utterly delusional or conceptual in nature, doesn't really, really exist. And yet it does. The other thing about this concept from sort of broaching into sort of the neurological realm is that the sense of self creates just these ideas, actually, we think of them as being non-material, but in fact, material, non-material, who knows, in our mind these ideas have a way or an ability to actually bend or affect everything, the way we see, the way we think, the way we taste.

[15:15]

Angela's teacher, Ursula, tells a story about how, relates a story about how people who taste expensive wine, or know wine is expensive, actually, that idea of expensive actually changes the way that people taste things. So they're tasting their concepts. Wow, this wine costs $200 a bottle. Yum. You know, it's like, okay. And it just, when in fact, without that idea, if you approach wine or anything without that idea, that something different arises. This is this whole subject-object interaction that's very, very powerful. And so, if it's true that something like an idea about the cost of wine affects you in such a powerful way, and it does, actually changing the biochemistry of how you are tasting and feeling.

[16:35]

So the wine, it's not like the wine doesn't taste better. It really does taste better. And so if that's the case, and there seems to be evidence that it's true, then thinking about the idea of this notion or idea or concept of a separate self is exactly the same. And it also affects how you see, taste, and touch, and feel in a way that is very, very compelling and powerful. And that That feeling, that sense of that taste of selfhood is actually not good. It's not as good as the taste of $200 wine. It's the taste of suffering. It's the taste of separation that we're working with. And so it's really quite potent. And it's hard not to believe. If you tell somebody, no, that $200 wine is no better than two-buck Chuck, they will laugh at you.

[17:42]

And so it's similarly difficult to explain to us or accept ourselves that indeed this This reality, this truth, that there is no separate self, is the very root of all of our difficulty and suffering, is similarly difficult to accept. And so we persist. So, there's the difficulty. There's the difficulty. I wanted to talk then about difficulty or no difficulty in view of practice, in view of practice, in view of what, in givenness, what are we doing?

[18:47]

when we sit zazen, when we study Kowan, when we respond to Kowan, when we encounter everything in our daily life. What are we doing? And if you begin with the sense that something's missing, something's not here, something you need, something that you don't have, or you have something that you don't want, or, you know, that's not a particularly good place to start. So, with Dazen, we are just sitting. We've heard this a thousand times, but it's the absolute truth and case. We're not trying to get anything, we're not trying to lose anything, we don't need any of that. And similarly, with the Koan or the body of Canon in general,

[19:54]

The whole lot of it has exactly one purpose, really, to get us to this point. It's not to understand something you don't understand, or get something that you don't get, or lose something that you do. It's rather to crack that crack and challenge that sense of separation, that sense of self. And even in the text, the introductory text, they talk about these, the koan, as brick bats. to break down or challenge our tendencies to try to conceptualize, to intellectualize, to make up things that make you feel better in the moment, rather than to confront the reality of basically what is needed, which is this loss of or

[20:58]

jumping off from this sense of self. It's Khagan's man up the tree, letting go with his teeth and hitting the ground. It's the great death. And this is the difficulty. And this is a difficulty that I think, that I sense and feel all the time. And it's not as if at some point, at least I don't have the sense that this is something that just clears. I think it's something that we work with together. moment by moment, day by day, with great faith in the reality of the great faith in the reality of Buddhadharma, the fact that there is ultimately no separation. We are all actually what we really are is something unimaginable that we participate in and appear as this or that.

[22:08]

So that's That's what I have to say this morning. And I'd be happy to answer questions that you may have. Peter. So, just sitting here, it seems that we don't live in the world of delusion, we live in the world of delusion. How do we do that without getting caught by it? You keep walking. Joshu is basically not drawing a distinction between preference or non-preference, or delusion or not delusion. He is the clouds flow over the mountains without stopping. Just keep walking. A moment of delusion, a moment of enlightenment. is going to be gifting you a $200 bottle of wine.

[23:24]

I'm not sure when it's going to be presented to you. But in anticipation of that wine bottle, how do you taste it and discern its quality without people intruding? Somebody actually gifted me a case of $200 bottle of wine a while back from Napa. And as it turns out, I don't like $200 bottles of wine. I'm sorry. But my not liking what Napa makes, because it's over-oaked, over-alcoholed, over this, over that, malolactic, blah, blah, blah, I've got my own idea. And my idea is I like... Piedmontese, Barbera, flight style, but that's just another preference. I'm sorry. When we accept something, everything that comes our way, when we have these concepts that we're working with all the time, we react to with aversion.

[24:35]

I hate this. I was at a winery a year or so ago with my son and we were doing a flight and somebody poured me the Chardonnay. I hate Chardonnay. I drank it and I'd go, and he said, Dad, behave. So we just live with our preference. Some people are fooled or liked with $200 bottle wines, and some people find it really bad because they have an idea. And by the way, You might imagine that the marketers and people that we respond to in the greater marketplace know all this really well, and they're working us all the time. So, yeah, there you go. Jerry.

[25:35]

Yes. A number of years ago there was a big kind of media frenzy because they had a bunch of French wine connoisseurs come over here and they did them all up. And the big scandal was that they picked pretty cheap California wine as the best. So I'm wondering how do we take the labels off? Because a lot of what happens is once we name something and we put it in a box, then it stays that way, as opposed to needing something just as it is. So how do we take the labels off all of the things in our life so that we can actually be more receptive, more open to what they actually are?

[26:37]

If we don't bring, if we are experiencing things just as they is, as they are, as they is, as Suzuki Roshi would say, Okay, okay, if we are experiencing things just as they is, what that means is we're not bringing any concepts to the stage. We're just accepting things clean. It's called the precious mirror. no defilement, just sound, just sight, just that immediate experience. And in that moment, you are not, no matter what, you're not bringing that eighth consciousness pile of concepts into the moment. You're just hearing, seeing, tasting, touching. And at that moment, you are accepting everything without that judgment process. It's just not there. Well, that's easy to say.

[27:45]

It is easy to say. You're going to go to the restaurant, and there is a menu and you have to order. Yeah, the preferences. You have to buy lunch. So what about then? What is served you eat? So you could say, just bring me It's, again, it's not as if, this is really important, it's not as if there aren't preferences. We live and swim with preferences. But in that moment, this idea of bringing a whole lot of baggage to that experience is the question. And insofar as you can clean that up, you will enjoy yourself. You might be surprised with something you might otherwise, asparagus. Wow, these are pretty good. Yeah. This little dialogue is attachment. And it's the way it matters that makes it matter. And that taking off the labels is not the point.

[28:47]

The point is to have it not matter that much, whether it's the best. And we're so trained that we should be striving for the best. But letting go of that one label, that one thing of this matters because it feeds my ego. It makes me feel like I'm important. if you're not making a judgment of yourself as well as the mind. Yeah, yes, that's exactly right. And this, of course, we're landed squarely on a nice go on here, you know, right? I mean, this is not something that is answerable in rational terms. We can't psychologize our way out of this one. It's a moment by moment thing, so for sure. Yeah, Jeff. lines of one of Ryokan's poems that I like so much says, are subject and object bound?

[29:58]

This is a question for beginners wrapped in seas of ignorance. And so my experience of this is that I often wrestle with the clarity of the wisdom that arises because I'm so sure that there must be a different path. Yet sometimes I just see. I just see and it's a miracle. I was just in an airport, and I was walking through the airport, and I was struck by how many happy people were walking around. And instead of trying to figure out what they were happy about and to do all the stuff we do to parse our experience, the thing that arose for me is what a great miracle to get to see just pure happiness. That's just sad. to hear and just to see, that is as much an arising as it is the result of intent. This is the nature of the way for me, right now.

[31:01]

If we say that all of my understanding is just in this moment, what happens next? I don't know. Lovely, Walter, thank you. Lovely, Jeff, I think that's pretty good. John? I was thinking about the idea we arrived in a moment and start to function in our preferences and so on. Sometimes it seems to me that if I look at the moment, I think, oh, everybody's unhappy, just for example. And I think, well, really, I'm unhappy. And there's some kind of projection that's going on. And so I'm wondering if you would agree with the idea that each time we're in a moment and we see it as delicious wine or happy people, that it is telling us something about our state And we can look into that as part of the delusion, should we want to work on that as part of the delusion, and so on. What do you think is coming from us or we know about this conceptual separate self that we're bringing in through non-preference?

[32:06]

Well, you have this experience, happiness. Unhappiness. That's clean. That just comes in. The next thing that happens. I need to fix this unhappiness. That's where the trouble starts. Or I need to continue. I want everybody to be happy like those people in the airport. That's where the trouble starts, right? So it's, I think, it's just not, just experiencing that moment of unhappiness or happiness and working with it. In my work, I deal with an incredible amount of projection onto myself as somebody that's there to solve problems. And it's a very heavy burden. because these problems are often large. And it's like, oh, what the fuck am I going to do now? Like, how am I going to respond?

[33:12]

And I'm not really responding to the problem. I'm responding to this person's sense of anxiety around this problem. And it makes me anxious. And then a whole cascade of difficulties arise. So it's really, really, and insofar as you can stand back, and this is, again, this is abandon, this is stepping back, when that moment arises, of, oh, I need to fix this. It's the stepping back, it's the letting go of that. And at that moment, something opens up. You know, maybe. Alan. When you read the, I don't want to get ahead of you, but when you read the koan, in the exchange, the monk asked you, is he asked, how do you go forward? He says, if you don't have preferences, what do you follow after? And Joshu's response was, I don't know, right?

[34:15]

Right, that is correct. So do you see that I don't know as a statement of not knowing, or do you see that I don't know as actually his strategy in that moment? Joshu had no strategy. He doesn't know. But I think what I'm asking is that not knowing is also a strategy. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, cut that out of my translation, sorry. Christian. So do you think Zazen helps us to distill our preferences or desires to something more useful or beneficial, or really it is good for nothing?

[35:21]

It's absolutely good for nothing. It sounds like a cliché. Lots of things sound like clichés that are true, but it's ultimately good for nothing. The masters for a thousand years have told us the same thing over and over and over again. Good for nothing. To add nothing to your necessary desires? It's good for nothing because You are not gaining anything. There's no transformation. There's no gain. There's no loss. There's no purpose. You already are it. And all that zazen is, is an expression of that. Good for nothing. Yeah, we know it's good for something. Kamar, please. Why do we call it a way if it's not going anywhere?

[36:25]

Why don't we call it a state or something like that? We call it a way, though. Well, I think that Tojin mentioned in his talk that these words, this language, comes from the fusion of India and China The word Wei, Dao, or Michi in Japanese, basically just means road or path or whatever. And somehow that's what happened. And so it's just the word that they landed on because it was the word that the Chinese understood. But they don't say house, for example. The word that they use implies motion and direction. They don't say, sitting zazen is not difficult. They say the Great Way is not difficult.

[37:26]

That's my question. Yes, and there may be that metaphor, coming to that metaphor, this notion of way or walking is a strong metaphor in our practice. So, this idea of walking, like the traveling monks walked incessantly. Are they really talking about walking? Or are they really talking about waking? You know, what? So, I think that with respect to these words, remember when you say a word, a word has this conceptual strength to it, pop something into your head, and boom. you're just digging a hole, digging a hole into a dark cave. So you just have to, I think you have to hold these words and ideas on your tongue lightly, not get stressed about all of these details, and try to penetrate in Zazen.

[38:39]

What is that? What is that really? What is that really? really not conceptual. Let's lose the concept, clean it out, and see what's left. Margaret? I keep thinking of the email that was sent around yesterday telling us about, at the end, it says something about Blanche Hartman always ended her talks after her friend had died of AIDS with words, words, words. I don't even land in non-preference. Non-preference. Well, I think, I mean, for what it's worth, kind of back to Tamar's question, is this, and also to Peter's question, about not stopping. You know, things are just arising.

[39:46]

You may be in preference one moment, and the next moment, non-preference. Don't get stuck. But there's a tendency to get stuck. We like being stuck. So we get stuck. Once you get over not getting stuck in preference, we're still looking around for somewhere to get stuck, so we get stuck on non-preference. Exactly, precisely, precisely. I think that there's this idea that, oh, I've got this concept of spiritual practice as being non-preference, so I'm going to non-preference, and this is better. So, but the idea of just like those traveling monks and the clouds going, or the geese, just moving, moving through this without restraint, not getting caught, is, yeah. Kika. Do you remember what you said when I asked you what you'd like for shuso dinner?

[40:49]

Some potato something. You said, whatever everybody likes, I don't care, whatever. So we just made the menu ourselves. Right. But where does that, what kind of answer was that? For me. Well, my first answer, and I don't recall what I asked for, but it was some Italian crazy thing. That was a tease, of course, and I was just teasing. But my second answer was, I don't want to make any trouble for you. I just want to make it easy and convenient and acceptable to everyone. I don't know what it's an expression of. In the moment, it just seemed to me the proper thing, not to trouble you or anybody with my preferences, which are towards the Italian.

[41:58]

Is indecision the same as non-preference? Actually, now that's a really good question, isn't it? Indecision, indecision is stuck. You can't move. And so, if you're caught, oh, I don't know, I like this non-preference so much. This is really good, like, I love this story. A guy came out of Sishin, back with Suzuki Roshi, and said, I've reached Anuttari Samadhi, what should I do? And Suzuki Roshi said, keep breathing, it'll go away soon enough. Don't get stuck, right? Don't get stuck. And indecision is like the art of being stuck. It's like, oh, yeah, gosh.

[42:58]

I mean, and that's, by the way, back to another metaphor that Sojin likes to say, and also from Ziggurat, is that frog. A frog is not indecisive. It's, you know, pow! Right? And there's no preference or lack of preference. There's just acting, you know, freely. And, yeah. Peter? Sounds to me like the elephant in the room is impermanence. The elephant in the room. Well, impermanence, nikā, is change, and everything is that change. And the change, the fact that things are always changing is an offense to us, ultimately. There's a great poem by Wallace Stevens saying, and it's kind of, I wish I could recite it just now, but he's basically saying he wished he could live when the moon was frozen in the sky.

[44:07]

Because the change is just unbearable. And so for us, change is unbearable. But again, this word change and also this word of traveling or the way may have something. But I think you just let it go. Ed and then Judy. That's because you are. That longing is a sense of separation.

[45:20]

That's the taste of self. That's the very taste of self. Well, maybe, but it often feels like I welcome it because to me it's a reminder that this world of duality is just one world. I do stop. It brings me back. Yes, and that's good. It's not good or bad, it just is.

[46:22]

Judy? Christian? I keep coming back to the grapes. I do too, actually. I keep coming back to this I Love Lucy episode. They've got the Richard Rod and they're stomping on all these grapes. But in that scene, what I'm feeling is the grape, the grape action, you know, just what's going on with the grapes. So my question isn't so much what is this way, but for you right now, here, where's the juice? Interesting question. When I hear the word juice, that word translates to me toward energy.

[47:36]

Where's the juice? Where's the, what's the push? I don't know if that's what you meant by that, but that's how I heard that. And I think the juice is, Actually, the same answer I was just going to, or response I was going to give to Ed, and also the last thing I want to say, because Jerry's holding the beater. One must work it out for themselves. Yeah, so, but we're very, very fortunate, because yes, we must work it out for ourselves, but we are here together, and we have a really fabulous teacher. And so we have a special opportunity with respect to that juice to work together, to help each other, to practice together sincerely.

[48:44]

And I'm really, really pleased to be a part of this.

[48:50]

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