you know, the samurai howl is so loud. Yes, Moppet. You also mentioned, I think, in the last sentence of the book, the competitive quality. And certainly that comes through in the Soto, in the Shanrenzai, which is the koan, which is a kind of can be a kind of combat, and there is this sense of the mondo, of the dharma combat, of, you know, if one person wins and one loses, which I think isn't really true, even though it seems that way, it's adopted from from combat and public trial situations, but the fact that those are the things that are taken in and used to encourage enlightened prayer and some other forms of practice, there's a kind of mother

[01:11]

I'm wondering if some of the men, I mean, if there were men teachers in China, in the Shantou tradition, possibly, it depends on who, Maybe they've been lost too. Yeah, most likely. Yes, most likely, and that's the point that, you know, it's almost like the white conquest of all native lands, you know, all the gentle indigenous people have been extinct by those who know how to make weapons and do combat. Yeah, so there's that.

[02:14]

But I remember very well Ross's Shuso ceremony where someone asked him a question to answer without words and he wept. And so it's alive and well. Yeah, you guys can't get enough. Add it again. So there's certainly signs that we are unfolding something new here and I'm very happy about that and I hope that we continue. You were going to say something? We can talk later. Okay. And Peter, were you going to say something before we close? It's a little bit hard to figure out what to say, but it seems like from a historian, we have our history as Buddhists, and we need to bring more of that. And yet, here in America, it seems from that point of view, really all bets are off. We also have the disadvantage of really being very much in a kind of superficial contact with these traditions thus far on a big picture.

[03:33]

And I think we do get, we're still really in the process of untangling all those kinds of confusing responses to these masculine appearing practices and attitudes really lead to a much greater opening. Right, yeah, I think so. I think that the important thing is that we have our own authentic response and that we really take it in completely and not turn away from it even though it's a little bit hard to look at. Okay, I think we can agree on that. Yes, that's right, I meant to. It went by fast and also as I meant to do that.

[04:37]

Thanks, Dan. Yes, I am. Thank you. The important thing now is that you are in a position to make it more your own, the poem, knowing something about her life and the life of the nuns. And so this is the poem that will stay here at BCC. Upon hearing the first bush warbler of spring, amid the plum blossoms, I hear the first burst of a song. Too young yet to give a full-throated performance still. What a joy. And what Jerry and I finally came to understand about the poem was that it was a poem about the new year and its first cry, like the baby bush warbler, still too young to tell us what kind of year it would be. And perhaps this is also true of our practice. in America that it's too young yet to give a full-throated performance, but let's sing it out.

[05:41]

and not do such a thing. He knew well what had happened to the jewel, but if he had explained, the goose would have been killed. So he pretended not to know for the sake of the goose. Ikku, listen to me please. If no one else was here, and you yourself did not hide it, how could the jewel disappear? Yes, that's very strange. I'm wondering too. Hearing this, the jeweler was very much infuriated. If he did not offer this jewel to the royal court the next day, his life would be in danger. So he was very impatient. I'm sorry to talk like this, but you had better take it from your pocket, said the jeweler. The monk actually had no pockets. You are talking nonsense. I did not take it or hide it. You mean it flew away like a bird or disappeared under the ground like a mole?

[07:11]

Please give it back to me. I assure you, I never took it." Greatly enraged, the jeweler called his workers and told them to tie him up and beat him. The body of the monk was bleeding, but he did not say a word. At this point, the goose, smelling the blood, came up and began to lick it from the man's body. The angry jeweler kicked the goose away in the fury of his passion. Struck at a vital point, the goose died, its wings flapping. Then the bhikkhu opened his mouth. Please untie me and I will confess what I have seen. The jeweler remarked, even a bhikkhu is worth beating, beaten he begins to speak. Saying so, he untied him. Speak out quickly. If you talk nonsense again, I'll beat you to death." The Bekus spoke with clear voice. The jewel is not taken away by me or anyone else. The fact is that the goose, now dead, swallowed it up.

[08:16]

Why didn't you say so earlier? I wish I could have, but I didn't want the goose to be killed. Hearing this, the jeweler apologized to the monk, the bhikkhu, monk bhikkhus. He severed the bowel of the dead goose and found the lost jewel. The jeweler was greatly moved by the conduct of the bhikkhu, so he regarded him as his master and provided him with food and clothes for the rest of his life. From this episode, the name of Ocho Bhikkhu became, that's where he got the name, Ochu Binku. Ochu means the jewel of the goose. So that's what his name was, the jewel of the goose. So that's the end of the story. Is that a good story? What do you think is the moral of the story? Do you know what I mean by the moral of the story? The point? What kind of point do you think came out of the story?

[09:21]

I'll tell you what I thought. I thought that Bhikkhu was loyal to his vow He wouldn't, he didn't want the goose killed, he didn't want, he didn't steal, and he didn't lie. But he put himself, he allowed himself to be mistreated in order to keep his promise. So, maybe the most valuable thing is to keep your promise and then good things will happen. even though you may have a little bit of suffering in order to do that. You now can either leave or stay. Thank you very much.

[10:34]

You're welcome. Thank you. I have another story. I thought of this one too for them. That's a good point.

[11:38]

He lied in order to save the goose, which is keeping the precepts. That's a very good point. I'm glad you brought that up. Keeping the precepts does not mean to do something literally. It means to understand the precepts and to act appropriately using the precepts as a guide Suzuki Koshi used to say, if you practice the precepts literally, that's heresy. Pretty strong. But lying in order to save something from being killed is closer to truth. than just saying the truth in order to keep the letter of the law.

[12:46]

So the spirit of the law is what's most important. And often people get caught by the letter, which is rather unfair and mechanical. Life is not mechanical, and we keep trying to reduce life to put a grid, a mechanical grid on life, and then try to fit into that grid. But it always bursts the seams of the grid. And then when we put the grid over it, we feel caught and trapped. And society does that. You know, the pendulum swings from one end to the other. When there's too tight a grid, society bursts out of it, and the pendulum swings the other way, and then we have liberalism. And then, when things get too loose, the grid goes back on, and we have conservatism.

[13:51]

So, that's the rhythm that keeps going. The pendulum keeps... So, somewhere in the middle, you know, is where we feel is the mean, but then the mean gets kind of boring, so there's no end to it. But it's a good point that following the spirit of not lying rather than the letter is actually keeping the precept. recess because he would have been killing himself in some way or leading to his own death. Well, we don't know what he would have done at the end.

[14:53]

That's a good point. And as a good lawyer, I also Give me two years. I'll find the criminal for you if you just give me a little time. I know who he is, but I can't tell you. How then do we study to learn the flexibility of managing the precepts? Well, it's your intuition.

[16:02]

Precepts There's a list of precepts, right? Don't do this, don't do that, blah, blah, blah. But that comes from our own wish to have some direction. So if you follow the precepts by rote, that's imposing precepts on you as a binder. So precepts are not to bind you, they're to free you. whether to give you some framework, and within that framework to find your freedom. And real precepts comes from inside. Precepts are your wish to do the right thing. So that's the real precepts. The others are not unreal, but they're It's like the difference between reading about something and experiencing something.

[17:12]

So your experience comes from inside and your intuition is what you draw on by directly knowing something. The two, to have the list of precepts and your own intuition about what's right and wrong or how to manage, they check with each other, you know. So it's kind of checking and balancing. It gives you a way to check your inner and to verify your inner precepts. And so if you just stick to the outer precepts, they're immovable. And life is not immovable, life is flexible. So you have to weigh and judge things.

[18:19]

I see it as an interrelationship, the whole story, rather than singling out and saying, oh, you should do this or you shouldn't do that. And it seems to me all the characters and the actions are interconnected. So you can't have one thing In that way, the whole idea of the precepts, following or binding or flexible, belong together. It's not an either-or situation. So you couldn't have the story without the goose, and you couldn't have the precepts without the jeweler, and on and on. So it's a very shivering kind of interconnection. That's right. All those factors create go together to create the actual incident. Right? I think in a way that the Buddhist ethics grows out of the understanding of interdependence.

[19:31]

Yes. To the extent one really internalizes the idea of interdependence, then one begins to see the effect you see the effect your actions have on other people and take that into account. And you do that more and more, of course you could get to the point where you become absolutely paralyzed because you realize that the myriad causes and conditions of everything and then you've gone to another extreme and you have to get back to the balance. I would guess all of us, considering more the effect or most of us anyway, considering the effect on others of our actions is a key to understanding where the precepts direct us. I think that's, yeah. Somebody in the back, I can't see you. I had a thought about the jewel.

[20:34]

What is a jewel? I had an idea of the jewel. The jewel reflects something that the goose thinks it wants, like to eat. It's a mistake. So the goose sees the jewel as meat, as something to eat. And the jeweler sees the jewel as his livelihood, and his life depends on it, because the emperor could cut his head off or something if he doesn't get the jewel there. And it seems that the monk And he's a common witness to an interplay there. And then he becomes part of it because the jewel is now hidden. Nobody knows where it is except the monk. And in order for the merchant to learn where the jewel is, unfortunately,

[21:37]

which then reveals where the jewel was. He becomes a student. He wants to be taught the Dharma. There's the sacrifice too, of the pain of your God, born loose by a monk. The real jewel is the wisdom of the situation. Biku didn't break his vows, even if it was just a goose, right?

[23:02]

Yeah. Would somebody weigh in? Diana? Yeah. What I'm thinking about is that the Biku didn't break his vows, But the interesting thing is that Bhikkhu, knowing all this, maybe, or not knowing it, but he did say that I had great faith in the power of his own truth. And like walking at the razor's edge, knowing that if he went this way, there would be consequences, if he went that way, there'd be consequences, right?

[24:12]

So he just stayed right on the edge of the razor, so to speak, and just depended on his, you know, didn't say what he depended on, but he just depended on his truth to And maybe not even knowing how it was going to come out, but staying with it. That's the way I see it. Alan? in that the way they kept, I think, Moffat and Lois used facets, you know, facets of the jewel. So the jewel becomes, you know, the jewel is like the object around which things turn.

[25:17]

And so you have this material jewel, which catalyzes actions around that, including And the transformation of the monk who gets a new name. Right. So it's really, it's very neat. A lot of things going on there. Yeah. Catalyst. Very catalytic. Like the material jewel then is transformed into the wisdom jewel. Right. Yeah. I think you said the moral of the story had to do with and the power of his vows. I did use the word truth at one time, but basically the power of his staying with his vows, not breaking his vows.

[26:32]

How one doesn't, how one wouldn't have? Well, he would say, the goose ate the jewel. And, you know, give away the goose. The goose is cooked. I think you can make all kinds of different, you know, scenarios. But this scenario is... Other scenarios are speculation. And that's good. I don't have any problem with that. But you can speculate, you know, all over the place. This is what happened, right? So we have to kind of stick to what happened. I think you could make a deal, but the jeweler could break the deal.

[27:46]

You know? I mean, that's another speculation. He said, yeah, OK, tell me. And then the goose says, oh, OK. They cut off the head of the goose and the mug. Who's to say? Yes? Can I follow the story? It's the whole idea that even though he did the right thing, which is really wonderful that he chose to do the right thing, but the end result he really couldn't control because the goose No, the jeweler's anger. That's right. No, he didn't. That's right. That's right. So he had to resort to other means. That's correct. And that's a really good point, you know. when we don't have that faith that we have to resort to other means, and we upset the balance of the world.

[28:59]

Pam? I think that the monk's expression of faith really is the key, because we don't know what the jeweler might have done, but the monk, being steadfast, It almost sounds as though the dealer kicked the goose rather than hit the monk, given the condition the monk was in. But the monk, I mean, that takes extraordinary courage to do that. I remember reading one of the Japanese monks talking about, I think it was during the war, when he realized that sometimes you simply have to stand there and die, or at least be ready to die. And you think of people who, What an example it is when someone dies for their beliefs rather than for camp, like, you know, in the Salem witch trials or Christian martyrs or whatever.

[30:03]

There are many examples. And that has proven to be transformative for other people. Even though it doesn't always have a big impact on the martyr, but ultimately those have been among the most powerful transformative events. Well, that's true. Every religion, as an example, has to have that as an example. Otherwise, it's not proven or tested. That has to happen. wondered what the role of delusion is in this, in the sense that the, you know, the goose saw the jewel as one thing that was food, and the jeweler saw it as something very precious, and the monk really didn't think the jewel was very precious at all, and they all operated on what their perception

[31:12]

that we could, in having, operating on delusion, could end up doing all sorts of things. Absolutely. That's exactly the state of the world. operating on delusion. The monk was the only one of the three who wasn't concerned about the jewel, and yet he's the one who was the point man, who got accused. There's sympathy for everybody.

[32:24]

What would you do if you were the shop owner? There are no policemen around. I mean, it's not like... It's everybody kind of... There are laws and so forth, but he called his men to do this. He didn't... How much would we... What would we do to protect our possessions? How far would we go? Right. How far... Yeah. But Bhikkhu is a wandering monk. Yeah. So does his life actually transform as a result? Does he now become a different type of monk who gets fed and clothed by the same... Oh, that's a good point. You know, a lot of the time in those days there were wandering monks. There were also viharas, you know. The monks in the monsoon

[33:28]

period would gather together and that's how the monastic practice started. But in other seasons they would wander. And then lay people would bring them food in the viharas often as a kind of gift meal. But then there were other monks who had patrons. So somebody would say, I will support you as a monk. So they have a patron. Step up in the world, sort of. Well, maybe. The monk can't help that somebody is a patron, as long as he's around there. Whether he gains some status or not, I don't know, but he certainly gains in security as far as his eating habits go.

[34:35]

He became his disciple and his disciple fed him. That's very common, actually. Well, I had this other story, just for amusement. I'd like to read it, okay? I wondered whether I should read it to the kids. You know, some kids would get a kick out of this, but we'll see if you kids get a kick. This is a story about Master Hyawal. It's called, My Bull is Not a Calf. When he taught Zen to many disciples at the Naewonsa Zen Monastery, this is in Korea, Master Hyewol bought a large bull. Whenever he had time, he cleared the mountain forests with his disciples.

[35:36]

I think this is taking his bull to plow the new land. This is a water buffalo because they use water buffaloes to plow it. But it's a bull water buffalo. He said to them, If the Zen practitioner eats too much and too well, he cannot study properly. In the monastery they ate only barley and vegetables, and his students complained about the poor food. One day he was invited out. And while he was gone from the monastery, his disciples, Pak Kobong, Pak Kumbong, and Chang Umbong, took the bowl to the marketplace and sold it. They bought lots of rice, cakes, fruits, and candy, and taking the food back to the monastery, ate well for several days. What naughty students! Master Hyawal returned and asked, where has my bull gone?

[36:40]

All of his disciples said, we don't know. But Hyawal said, bring my bull, otherwise I will punish all of you. Since they already sold the bull, they didn't know what to do. At last, his disciple, Pak Khobong, took off all his clothes and entered Master Hyewol's room naked. He said, Here, I brought your bull, and he walked on all fours around the room, mooing. Master Hyewol smacked his disciple's buttocks with his hand, saying, My bull is a large golden one, not a small calf like this. Then Master Hyewol went to the meditation hall and said to the disciples, Pak Kobong paid back the money from the sale of my bull. After that, he never mentioned the bull again.

[37:43]

What do you think of that story? The ending was kind of abrupt. She got confused on the names. The name that he said at the end is the same name of the guy who came to his room and walked around? One of the guys, yeah, came to his room. One of the, yeah. Peter? Say it again. So, it's called demonstrating your understanding with nothing. He paid his teacher in full with nothing, and his teacher accepted it as nothing, and he was paid back in full.

[38:55]

These are numberless.

[39:05]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ