since 1970. Peter and his wife and two children live here at Berkeley. Peter was a shuso, or head student, down at Tassajara some many years ago. I'd like to welcome him here today. Thank you. It's very nice to see you all. I wanted to speak this morning about the problem of understanding the wonderful teachings that have been provided for us. I have a lot of experience with misunderstanding the teachings, and some of those experiences I'm sure I share with you. Suzuki Roshi's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, has many wonderful statements in it. that I have found inspiring over the years.

[01:02]

And often I have, well, when you read the book, I'm sure as many of you know, he'll say various things, and if you understand this fundamental point, you know, all of Buddhism will be revealed, or this is the most important thing that you must understand. I don't know if he says those exact things, but there are various statements like that. And of course, what has come before is often quite inspiring. And I've had experiences of feeling really refreshed and uplifted and ready to continue practice, having felt a deep encouragement by reading these words. And that goes on for a day, and the next day it's breaking out. This is really inspiring. And by the third day, I can't remember What did he say? What was that? I'm so confused. What is all this?

[02:04]

And then I realize, after experiencing this many times, that what's going on is that I'm sort of remembering the feeling or the experience I had when I read these words. I'm not really looking into the words anymore. I'm really not really trying to open up the teaching anymore, I'm just sort of remembering this experience, and I think if I remember this experience, that will be of some guidance. And it's not as though that doesn't take place, but it comes to a dead end. It wasn't enough. So I wanted to kind of talk about this problem, and I wanted to share a particular Zen story that I currently find very engaging. I can find a book.

[03:07]

And this is the story about Deng Xian and his encounter with Yun Yan shortly before he had Great Awakening. And I'll try and This appears in several places, of course. And in the Blue Cliff Record, there's an autobiographical note in the back where it talks about this. And Deng Xian has come to Yunnan after wrestling within himself and engaging in dialogue with various teachers about the question of whether Inanimate objects preach the Dharma. Can you hear inanimate objects preaching the Dharma? This is a very long, interesting story, but I won't read it all.

[04:10]

The master took leave, that's Dongshan, took leave of Guishan and went right to Yunyan. Having quoted the preceding incident, he asked, Who can hear inanimate objects expounding the Dharma? Yunyan said, the inanimate can hear it. The master said, can you hear it, teacher? Yunyan said, if I heard it, you would not hear my expounding of the Dharma. The master said, why wouldn't I hear? Yunyan raised his whisk and said, do you hear? The master said, no, Yunyan said. You do not even hear my expounding of the Dharma. How could you hear the inanimate expounding of the Dharma?" The master said, What scripture contains the inanimate expounding of the Dharma? The yin said, Haven't you read how the Amitabha Sutra says rivers, birds, trees, and forests all commemorate Buddha and Dharma?

[05:17]

At this, the master had insight. Thereupon, he uttered a verse, How wonderful! How wonderful! The inanimate expounding the Dharma is inconceivable. If you use your ears to listen, you'll never understand. Only when you hear in your eyes will you know." The Master asked Yun Yan, "'I have leftover habits which are not yet exhausted.' Yun Yan said, "'What have you ever done?' The Master said, "'I have not even practiced the holy truths.' Yun Yan said, "'And do you rejoice or not?' The Master said, I am not without joy. It is like finding a bright jewel in a dung heap. This is all very interesting, but this is just leading up to the point I wanted to get to. When he was about to go, he asked Yun Yin, after your death, if someone should ask me if I can depict your true likeness, how shall I answer?

[06:20]

In other words, if somebody asked me what was your true teaching, what was What was essential here? What shall I answer?" The master said. Yuen Yen remained silent for a good while and then said, just this is it. The master was sunk in contemplation. Yen said, Reverend Chi, now that you have taken up this matter, you must be very careful and thorough going. And then Dungshan leaves and while a little while later crosses the bridge and sees his reflection in the water which prompts a great realization on his part. I wanted to just, I was looking, I borrowed Nell's book here and because the story appears in Case 49, the Book of Serenity, the case reads

[07:22]

As Dengxian was presenting offerings before the image of Yunyan, he retold the story from before about depicting the reality, that is, that question that he asked Yunyan. A monk came forward and said, when Yunyan said, just this is it, what did he mean? Dengxian said, at that time, I nearly misunderstood my late teacher. The monk said, Did Yunyan himself know it is or not? Dengshan said, if he didn't know it is, how could he be able to say this? If he did know it is, how could he be willing to say this? So this statement of Yunyan's in response to Dengshan's inquiry just this is it, is one of those curious statements that I find opens up the teaching for me.

[08:35]

But, on the other hand, it's one of those statements that, I guess because it's a statement, it can also be sort of fundamentally confusing or misleading. It seems to point to something. It seems to suggest that, you know, whatever yin-yang is intimating or suggesting, you know, whether he's, you know, laying it out for all us to see, or whether he's just sort of hinting at something, whatever that is, you know, a statement like that suggests that maybe you can kind of put your finger on it. And when I relate to it in that way, I can get, you know, kind of very intense and like, what is this, you know? It's a real struggle to relate to it in that way.

[09:41]

On the other hand, What I found interesting about these kinds of looking into these kinds of statements and see what it is they reveal What my real interest in is is How is it that something can What I want is for that inquiry to open up everything Some years ago I had an experience of various members of our family were in therapy and I found it very curious to realize that there was a strong analogy between this process of looking into a pattern of psychological pattern or a pattern that seemed to replicate itself in my life in terms of emotion and action.

[10:51]

I found a very curious correspondence between that and sitting zazen, just carefully following what was it, what was the thread that connected this to that. And one of the things that struck me was how in this situation, this sort of safe situation that you create when you go to your therapist, which is, you know, it's an hour or 50 minutes or something, and it's in this room and it's quiet. Nobody's going to bug you, and nobody's going to barge in, and the phone's not going to ring, and all that. And there are certain parameters of behavior that, you know, within these parameters, we're safe, we can do anything. Feel, say, think, anything. Within that structure, I was able to allow anything to happen. everything come off, shouldn't everything come off, whatever.

[12:03]

So this led me to kind of come back to these Zen stories in that way, in a way that I asked, how can this, what's being suggested here? How can I just let this open up so that whatever is in the landscape, internal or external, is what, in fact, I'm dealing with? Now, everyday experience does present us with these kinds of situations. You know, earlier this summer, or in the early summer, I traveled with my family to Korea. My children are adopted Korean-born children. We had long planned to go there, and so we went on this trip with a group of other adoptive families. Being on a tour, of course, is very intense, and then they're with children in a foreign country where we don't necessarily know the language very well.

[13:10]

And then we were doing these other things, like meeting with foster parents, and maybe we were going to meet the birth parents, but we didn't know. and going to orphanages and meeting with unwed mothers who had planned adoptions for the children, babies they were carrying. A lot of very emotionally charged situations and emotionally charged expectations. And so every day there was something he didn't know quite was And at the same time, very busy and intense schedule. And we actually did okay with it. We actually were able to cope with this level of possibility that we didn't know what was going to happen or didn't know how it was going to turn out or didn't know whether we could cope with our children or whether they could cope with the situation.

[14:14]

And it sort of went on and on like this. And then when we got home, That was all over. And, okay, what next? It was a little bit like this experience. It's so wonderful because it was so difficult to get a handle on what was going to go on next. There was a plan, yes, but we felt so out of control. And surprising and unusual things happened and it was really quite wonderful. But the whole picture of it was create is one of great, in some sense, stress that we're sort of just allowing ourselves to expand and take in what could happen here. And so I'm sure all of us have had these kinds of experiences where we've got to somehow open up to something we don't know quite how to do it

[15:16]

we're going to do it, we've committed ourselves to do it, it's something you can't... you intend to do it, and yet you know that you can't quite get a handle on what it's going to be. But you allow yourself to do it anyway. So this statement, just this is it, Somehow it occurs to me that it's pointing in this direction, just what, not so much what can I understand or what can I get a hold of, but how much am I going to allow myself to be awake? So the bad news is it's dimensionless. There's no time dimension to it. You can't say, oh, I'm going to really open up now.

[16:20]

because later I know that I can kind of shut down. That all my stuff is going to be up in my face and I'm still going to go to work. And I'm still going to kind of get out the door of the family in the morning. That's the hard part, is that it can't be shut off. But the good news is that within this dimensionless space that we invoke in practice. That time and space and rules and, you know, our everyday patterns are actually there too. They don't sort of disappear. I mean, the big anxiety I have about really engaging in practice is that I'm going to really staying with this inquiry into just this is it.

[17:39]

My big worry about this is that I'm going to lose track of stuff. I'm going to forget to do what I'm supposed to do. going to be inconsiderate, etc. etc. But our everyday norms are not outside of that. So how is it that we can desire or want to open up to a kind of limitless possibility in terms of time, what might occur to us, what other people are presenting to us?

[18:58]

The big challenge is when you're trying to be conscious of what might happen, what might be there for you, is that someone will present something to you that you can't, don't, no, no, not that, not this please. It cuts it off, you know, and this is the kind of experience we have when we go to do the next thing, go to work or something, and you're feeling pretty centered or feeling pretty open, but then somebody says, you get that phone call or somebody says something to you, and before you know it, you're flipped back into, you know, just, you don't want to open to that possibility, that it's just too painful. So it's a little bit like when we sit for extended periods of time, we have a great deal of physical pain.

[20:04]

Most of us, I do. For sure, I still do. And it is, when I was earlier in my practice, for a long time, I couldn't, people used to say things like, well, if you just sit through the pain or just relax, it won't hurt so much. In some ways, this is good advice. I mean, it's true that, you know, most of the problem comes from contracting, withdrawing from the experience. And the problem of withdrawing from openness is that when you come back to it, you just have to come back to it. Sorry, I'm a little confused there.

[21:06]

But I want to say one other thing about the difficulty of relating to these statements is that when you have some insight born of you know, looking carefully at the teachings, hearing the teachings, the problem is that circumstances change, and then somehow the experience doesn't quite translate over, or it's just an experience, or what. So, the The koans are very useful because these pithy statements can be revisited under varying circumstances. And then you can see that, well, what did they mean?

[22:12]

They meant this and [...] this, because each time you return to it, just as each time you return to your breath while you're sitting, it's something new. and this one story for me is a teaching about something new something that I can say just this is it but the it doesn't it's not there it's not I can't put my finger on it I have what it means is that not that I can put my finger on it but that that I can just allow it to be there. I just allow, how much can I allow it to be there? And if I can just open up a little bit further, just something's knocking, just open that door a little, another crack, then maybe I won't fall off

[23:24]

or maybe I won't fall on my face next time. Or maybe I might be willing to, when the usual, maybe I might be willing to be a little bit open when I would normally just turn it off and flip back into a kind of normal pattern, which doesn't allow for much change or possibility. Words seem so inadequate to convey what's been in front of me lately.

[24:29]

They seem very inadequate now. I hope that I can encourage you to come back to the teachings and ask again what it means. be willing not to know, not to understand what they mean, and keep coming back to see that there's always another possibility. At this point, probably many of you have more interesting things to say than I do, so I'd like to ask if anyone would like to ask a question or make any comments. about anything.

[25:37]

Yes? Did you? Yeah. duality between being very open and shutting down, like you said, and that I sort of have an intuition but I can't find a shape for it or I can't centralize it, that there's a way, and I think it's kind of what we do in Zazen, that there's a way to open yourself and yet I don't have any thoughts on that.

[26:49]

So that you're not at risk of having to shut down. That it's not a duality. But I don't know what that is or how it feels. Well, what you're making me remember is something that I think relates to this. It's Richard Baker, who used to be advocate of Zen Center. I read an interview with him. And he said something that reminded me of things he said in the past, which is that in Zen practice, we think in terms of we have, at any moment, we have everything we need in order to practice. And so, whatever it is, it may be that you feel you have a very, you know, sort of obsessive state of mind, or you're very distracted. That's just part, that's it. You know, you've got it.

[27:49]

You know, the whole thing. And there might be other things there too, somewhere, you know. But that's... It's... Part of what I'm trying to talk about in terms of saying, you know, this statement for me, you know, helps me kind of just accept, you know, to bring up everything, to bring up the whole ball of wax, so to speak, is that it starts right with, you know, right now, we have the whole ball of wax, and the whole ball of wax might seem rather small, you know, because, you know, you're trying, in some sense, you're trying to open to whatever, but, in fact, at this moment, you know, I might be really obsessed with what I'm going to do at work today.

[28:50]

You know, I may come to Zazen and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I'm worried about what's going to be going on. And, but that's just, that's what's happening, you know. That's, that is just, it's okay. It's just there, it's okay. And that's one of the possibilities, and there are other possibilities. So, it's a little bit like giving everything its own life. The thing that's giving other possibilities, giving the idea that you could open up its own life, giving your limited, sort of constricted thinking, feeling, pattern, giving that its own life. I'm not directly addressing your question, but I think that in a way, what I'm suggesting is that allowing everything to come up, and whether it remains to be very limited and difficult, reveals, it allows the way, the expression of the intuition you're talking about,

[30:14]

to reveal itself. And so you don't have to try to get at something that making space for all the things that are going on to have their own place allows change. It allows that constricted feeling to kind of just take its own place, find its own level and settle out. Actually, what clarifies for me, even though it's true it doesn't feel like you're addressing exactly what I'm talking about, is that in the experience of sitting, when anything can come up, Yeah, that's happening too.

[31:24]

It's like everything would disappear, like my terrified. But it's like, no, there's my breath and there's... Right, right, all those things are happening, you know. Then the phone rings and that's happening too, and it's... You know, we want to compartmentalize, and our culture forces us to compartmentalize. time and space and it gets, you know, it's like coping or dancing through this sort of compartmentalized reality that we do on a daily basis. It can be kind of fun and it can be kind of a drag, you know, whatever. But approaching practice is to kind of let go of that. I mean, it may be there, it may be sort of, you know, This is where my practice is. I'm completely compartmentalized. And, okay, and then what else? But, in any case, all those... It can all be there.

[33:02]

You don't have to let go of one part of it and say bye-bye for gone forever. It's not coming back. I think that... We need to let it all be there and trust that the norms of our culture will, in fact, help us cope with so-called everyday reality. Yes? experience of having insight into your life and family's life that when you in that moment had that insight or understanding did in fact there was some sense of okayness with all the other dimensions in your life that there was some understanding or acceptance and then sometime later of course it shuts down and then it's all mixed up again.

[34:05]

I've always wished for, you know, a big experience which clarifies everything. And now I'm hoping just to open myself up to whatever's in front of me. So in some sense, you know, whatever's in front of you just this is it. You know, there's a there's this sort of immediacy to it. It's the immediacy which I think, I feel like I have a little more, a little more access to. And what will come of that, I don't know. And the immediacy The price you pay for immediacy is, you know, whatever it is, it's there.

[35:12]

You know, so you walk out the door and then you remember something else and, oh, and, you know, and, you know, 20 years ago, I felt so bad about that. I had never thought about it. I hadn't thought, you know, I mean, whatever it is that comes up is okay. You know, as we're so often admonished to, don't push it away, don't grab onto it. Or as it says in the Jhulmir Samadhi, it is like a massive fire. Turning it away and touching it are both wrong. So, to have access to some immediacy or intimacy like that, you have to allow it to be there. You have to kind of accept that whatever that might turn out to be, whatever it might feel like, that's the way it's going to be.

[36:13]

There's no, you can't change it. Yes? You said that when you came back from your trip, everything changed. I mean, you were no longer in that mode of communal experiences, How did we deal with that? How did we deal with that? Yeah, and did you find ways of continuing the state that you were in? Well, we tried various things. It was kind of a situation because that kind of openness and kind of exciting sort of never knowing what was next was all sort of in the context of family relationships. And then when we come back home, the structure and the purpose and everything that supported that kind of experience had ended and changed. And now we were home together and what were we doing together, you know, what was the marriage about, what were the kids supposed to be doing, you know.

[37:16]

And the... I think we're still working on it. Because at first, you know, there was this great vacuum and a feeling of not knowing what to do next. Because of something, we had a big build-up for something over a number of years or two. And so then we kind of thought about projects, you know, and that started off with, you know, doing stuff around the house or something. That started off as being sort of maybe too charged, you know, trying to kind of get back into some, you know, engaged place But I do feel that, in a sense, the problem with that, what has been happening has been a lack of perspective, long-term perspective on, you know, so anxious to get involved in something that, you know, has some kind of juice to it, that it gets too important.

[38:30]

the activity itself. But it's just one of those things, you know, I mean, you probably have the same kind of experience when you're doing something very exciting and engaging, and you feel really engaged, opened up on many levels, and then suddenly it's sort of, you know, situation changes, and you have to kind of come back to something. And I think that for me, coming back to sitting more has helped a lot. In fact, that's... Yes, I mean, it seems to be a That is, you say, you know, we just have to be with whatever is right now, whatever is, is.

[39:42]

And we just have to be with it. On the other hand, we put ourselves in situations like you did by going to Korea, where we throw ourselves into situations where we're just asking for all kinds of things to happen. We don't know what. So, you see what I mean? It's not as simple as just saying, just be with what is. Because we... start concocting situations or putting ourselves in situations or guiding ourselves in certain directions? Well, in various, but there's various categories of that sort of activity. One is to, you know, following our karma, which is to just repeat the patterns that we've developed over years or lifetimes or whatever. There's another kind of activity where you kind of you're not quite sure why you're doing it, but in fact you're doing something that Puts you in a position where you have to open up We actually we actually make those kinds of choices because we seek to awaken ourselves so we we come we you know, you go to the sign up for session or do something like that and You don't know, you know, you think you know why you're doing it maybe but then when you get there and

[41:05]

you find out that there's all sorts of things happening you didn't expect. And maybe you've even had enough experience that you realize that that's going to happen, but you still do it. But what I was trying to talk about or get at when I brought that up about this trip to Korea is that sometimes we create circumstances where, you know, we have a an interesting and important experience because we are placing ourselves in a situation where we have to open up. But then there are large parts of our lives where we just can't go on concocting these kinds of experiences. Most of your life is you get up, you wash your face, you brush your teeth, you eat breakfast, you go do something, if it's work or whatever, school. And it's fairly routine. And under those circumstances, how do we bring up the sense of all-encompassing possibility?

[42:14]

Where do we seek access to that? You know, we can't, sort of, most of us don't get out every day and climb a rock face with our bare hands, you know, where, you know, the student Zen center, So where do we gain that access? And we do have resistance to encountering that, to letting it come up. Our daily practice is a sort of support in trying to find that place. It's patterns, your everyday patterns. You know, if you think of something that's sort of difficult for you, something you do that you don't feel like you quite have control over, it just sort of happens, you know, and you look at that carefully, you can see a pattern that gets repeated again and [...] again, and that's kind of the box.

[43:27]

And sometimes, even though it's not a very nice pattern, it's also kind of comforting, comforting because you know what it is. So even for things that are sort of unpleasant or not so good, and that you know are not so good, sometimes it's nice to stay inside there because it's what you know. But Zazen is a pattern, and Zen life is very patterned. Yeah, there is. However, my experience of Zen life... whatever that is, I mean, like being at Tassajara during the practice period in a kind of monastic setting, is that the routine actually interrupts my patterning. I mean, I can get into a place where I'm sort of comfortable and I can kind of go through it, and in some levels, yes, it's true that it's patterned, and it does have a negative side to it. But on another level, the routine, you know, changing your clothes on and off, going to the Zen Dojo, going to eating now, and now we're eating, you know, what's for dinner?

[44:37]

Oh, well, whatever they bring me, you know. All of that kind of interrupts the pattern. But it's true that whatever we say about practice, whatever teachings we share, whatever forms we engage in, like this, you know, and coming to the Zen Dojo on a daily basis, they're subject to our interpretation and subject to our trying to make them into the thing that will, you know, we sort of pervert them into our little pattern and try and make them, you know, if you live in a monastic setting, you end up having to cope with the careerist impulses that you might feel. You say that for Those kinds of things take on meaning, which seems ridiculous, but in fact that's your stuff manifesting again.

[45:38]

creating things to happen, that's not going out and making plans and all the rest of it. I think it's because of the kind of culture we live in, we think of, those kind of words evoke an image of passivity, like maybe the idea of non-violence evokes an image of passivity, but in fact it's a very, it can be a very active, you bring a lot in with what is, you bring a lot of compassion, or you bring a lot of resistance, or you bring things to being with what is. And that it's also being with what is in the way that life really is, which is that you do not just sit there and wait for it to walk by and then be with what is. You do things, and then you be with what is. I mean, on the one hand, you know, it's true, you sit there, and here's a picture of what is. You sit there, you wait things to come by, and that's what is. And being able to appreciate the fact that you're perhaps just sort of just sitting there not really participating and sort of watching things go by, that's it, you know?

[46:57]

But then what happens after that? When you're conscious of that, then what happens? So allow yourself to be conscious of that and not critical of it, you know? And then what happens? It's always a question of what's next, you know? So yeah, I got that. What's next? Because there's always something. There's always something next. And it's true. There's a tremendous amount of stuff going on. Tremendous amount of tension required to kind of be there for the next thing. So it is A lot of the things I've been saying I think are coming from a little sort of a reaction to my own judgmental nature about the teaching where, you know, if I... just this is it, you know, this is... and anything short of that, whatever that is, is really stinks.

[48:03]

It's this feeling of real acceptance of oneself that allows whatever, just whatever, to be there. Whether it's really limited or screwed up, that's okay, that's the whatever. So that's paradoxical too, that this great insight that is being hinted at, in fact, starts with, you know, just the shit, you know, just the stuff that It is so ordinary and boring and unpleasant that you don't really want to know about it. But that's where it all begins. And... I don't know, it's just wonderful. It's time to go. Well, I want to... Usually when I come here to speak, I do really appreciate coming here to share with you and I usually think of something much more interesting to talk about.

[49:15]

I know this is kind of difficult and it was kind of difficult for me to prepare to say anything because it's so damn slippery and I'm sorry for boring you if this is what's taking place. It's what I have. Numberless.

[49:42]

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