I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome today's speaker, Seisan Ikushin, Purest Green Nourishing Heart, better known as Jerry Oliva, our shuso for this year's practice period. Jerry was born and raised in New York City and is a practicing physician at UCSF Medical School here in the Bay Area. She's a wife and mother of two children, and has been practicing Zen for 20 years, having started Green Gulch, and she's made her way over here for the latter part of the last millennium. I'm old. But the kids aren't old. I'm really happy to see you today. So I'm going to talk to the grown-ups later about all the earth is medicine.

[01:04]

But now I'm going to kind of talk to you guys. And I hope you'll help me. Will you help me? Because we need to teach the bigger people about what medicine is. And I'm going to give you some clues. OK? You want to tell me what medicine is right away? It's something that helps you when you're sick. Well, that's a good thing, yeah. Medicine helps cure you when you're sick. Uh-huh. Anything else? Anybody else have any ideas about what? Can you repeat what they said? Well, medicine helps you when you're sick. Medicine cures you when you're sick. Something you take, somebody said. So I'm going to show you some pictures, and then you can tell me if this is medicine or not. This is a picture. This is a book that I used to read to my kids, which I found yet last night, very late, in a pile of old books.

[02:06]

And I thought, wow. How did that happen? So look at what's happening over here in this picture. Can you see? All of them, they all show various aspects of the same thing. What's going on there? People are jumping. What else? Huh? Running. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So they're doing all kinds of jumping and running. What's that called? Yeah, it's called exercise. So does exercise make people better? Yes. What does it do? It helps their body get longer. Well, if you do that kind of stretching exercise where you hang upside down, that works. So what else does it do? It makes your body get longer.

[03:07]

What else does it do? Helps your muscles grow. Yeah. Well, that's good, huh? So all these different exercises are really... So is that like kind of a medicine to your body? Yeah, so exercise can be a medicine. What about, oops, my show-and-tell is really a problem. What's happening in here? I think it's about healthy food. Uh-huh. You guys are too smart. You're going to really tell, you're going to take my whole... There's a woman who wants all these healthy food, food that tastes like a human. She's made of Yeah, that's right. Her whole body, just like your whole body, right, is made of healthy foods. And your dog is made of healthy food. The dog is made out of healthy food. And you know, what do we feed the dog sometimes?

[04:08]

You know, like what kinds of things do dog eats, doggies eat? What? Doggy biscuits. Well, they do eat doggy biscuits, yeah. Yeah? Anything else? Do you ever give dogs anything to eat? They eat me. You never give dogs anything to eat, do you? Or cats? I don't even have a dog, but I think I know what they eat. They eat bones. They eat bones, so they eat something that you might throw away, right? That you might not eat, that you might not think is food, but the dog thinks it's food, right? Dog thinks those scraps from the table that you don't want to eat, you sneak to the dog. They think those are really good, right? And the dog gets strong, the dog gets to eat that calcium from the bones too and gets really big. Let's see what else we have here. Oh, what's this? What did you say?

[05:09]

Go ahead. Sleep. Oh, so is sleeping good, too? Yes. Sleeping is good. So sleeping is a really good medicine, isn't it? It's really good to sleep, right? I like that. I wish I had more. When your shoes sew, you have to get up every morning. So sleep is a good thing, too. All right. A lot of things are medicine. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. Oh, here's something. What about this? What's he got? Yeah, well, don't read anything. That's cheating. What is this? Ice cream. Ice cream. Ice cream. Is ice cream good? Yes, it is. No. Oh, no. Why no? Because it has a lot of sugar.

[06:14]

Ah. No, it's delicious. So ice cream could be kind of good, but also it could be kind of bad, right? Yeah, but this is what it is. It's delicious, healthy sugar. Healthy sugar. And healthy fat. But, um, well, I think, you know, maybe one ice cream cone might be okay, but two ice cream cones kind of is a lot, right? What would happen, what could happen if you ate, like, too much ice cream? Like, how about if you had four ice cream cones? Go ahead. Your teeth would fall out. Cavities? Oh, bad. And what? Yeah, you. This little girl wants it. What's your name, honey? Georgia. Georgia, what do you want to say? A sugar rash? A sugar rush? Those are sometimes good and sometimes bad. You could die. You could die. You could also get kind of big, right?

[07:14]

And die. You could get fat. You could get fat. You could get fat, yeah. And die. Yeah. Diabetes. Diabetes. These kids know everything. Okay, so food is pretty good, but sometimes if you eat too much food, right, or you eat the wrong food, then it's not so good. So you have to kind of have somebody. So how do you know what food to eat? How do you find that out? Tell me when I'm done. Yeah, Georgia? How do you know what's the right food or how much food? Oh my God, okay. So the internet is kind of like a teacher, right? We learn a lot of things from, yes, go ahead. What's your name, honey? Mira. Mira. You can look on a food pyramid.

[08:15]

She's going to look on a food pyramid. Does anybody in your life tell you about food? Yeah? You're a babysitter. This is modern America. I always wanted to say that. What? You always wanted to say that this is modern America? OK. Yeah, Georgia? The person who runs the grocery store? Oh, so somebody could tell you in the grocery store what's good, yeah? Mira? You could ask your doctor. Ah! You could ask your doctor! How about your parents? Obviously, obviously you don't ask your parents. No, I don't. You don't? You can taste the food if it's bad or not. Well, you know, that's true. Because there are things that, you know, like when food goes bad, you know, it doesn't taste so good.

[09:22]

Unhealthy. Yeah. Okay, well, we're going to move right along here. You guys already told this lesson, but we're going to learn the lesson again here. So what happens here? He trips and falls. So he was, like, exercising. And then he fell. So sometimes we have to know how to exercise too, right? Like exercise could be really good for you, but if you do too much, then you could fall and you could hurt yourself, right? So you have to know about that. Does anybody teach you about exercise? No. What? The gym teacher? Sure. So there's a teacher who helps you know what's medicine and what's not medicine, right? But mostly, it could be medicine, but it could also be not medicine. And what's this person? They ate way too many apples. Oh, see, so here's one of those people we talked about.

[10:24]

Look, he kind of got a little large, and he doesn't feel well. Well, he's too fat. Yeah, well, but he just like... If you eat too much good sugar... Yeah, he doesn't look very happy, right? He was already fat, so that means he's chubby now. Yeah. OK. And then here's another person. Somebody was cooking food that was really good for them. And water is kind of good for you, right? But if the water is hot, it might not be too good. So who tells you about that? Your parents might tell you, like, be careful of the stove, right? The stove? Water's really good, and we're going to put it in our food. But it might not be. You have to be careful. The stove does. If the stove is hot, never touch it. Yeah. I don't know. Let's see what else I have in here.

[11:27]

Oh, here's another picture. And this tells us something else. What's in here? Racing. Well, there's a lot of people together, right? Yeah, different kinds of people. Uh-huh. Let me see. How much time do I have for the kids? Okay. They're taking over the whole talk. I don't have to say anything. Well, it's kind of like the family. It's about family and community and how it's really, you know, what do you think about that? Like, does that make you feel better and make you feel, like, happy? So sometimes if you're sad, that's kind of like not feeling so good either. And then you've got all these people, right, to help you and to be with you. So I think we're just about done here because... because I think you kind of get it. You basically got it. I was just going to tell you something. You got the whole lesson, right? Yes. You do.

[12:30]

Well, there's things to make you healthy everywhere, right? There's all these different things that make you healthy. Almost everything. Almost everything can make you healthy, right? But sometimes if you don't quite understand what's healthy, then you might need a little help. Right? But if you're dead, you don't need to get healthy. Well, that's true. If you're dead, you may not need to get healthy. Well, not if you're a Buddhist. If you're dead, that's really good. So I just brought a couple things. If you get sick and you go to the doctor, what does the doctor do? They check your body. Yeah. So they kind of find out what might be going on to make sure you're okay. What does this feel like when they put that in your ear? Cold. It doesn't feel so great, right?

[13:31]

But what about, is it there? What do they do with it? Does it help you in some way? Yes, it does. It's in your ear. So it isn't so comfortable and it doesn't always feel good, but it also can help the doctor find out if you're okay. Right? Right. Right. Well, I think, you know, you guys were really helpful. And I think you help these grown-ups understand a lot about all the Earth is medicine. Would you like some medicine? Would you like some? Okay. Well, thank you, kids. You were really helpful. I wasn't sure if you would help me, but you did. You were great. Okay? Everybody thank the kids, because they made my life a lot easier. They're getting ready for skit night.

[14:40]

They're going to be in the skit night about how do you learn about healthy foods in the United States in 2008. It's all going to be downhill from here, I think. So Sojin Roshi always gives the shuso koan, a story to read and learn and study during practice period. And my story. guess what, is all the earth is medicine, which is a case in the Blue Cliff Records, which we all read and study all the time. And for those of you who don't know about these stories, these koans, Sojin Roshi talked a couple weeks ago about one story, Sun-Faced Buddha, Moon-Faced Buddha, and he really talked about the fact that these stories are often like a story about a monk asking their teacher or

[15:41]

or a teacher, an enlightened person speaking to a community and saying something that seems to be very puzzling and doesn't make any sense. But it does make sense, or it can make sense after you study. So before each one of these stories is usually what they call a pointer, which is It kind of lets you know that even though you read the case, it doesn't make any sense to you, but here's how to look at it. So for this koan, I'll read the pointer and I'll read the case and then I'll try to give you my best understanding at this moment. A clear-eyed person has no nest. Sometimes, on the summit of a solitary peak, weeds grow in profusion. Sometimes they're naked and free in the bustling marketplace. Suddenly, they appear as angry titan with three heads and six arms.

[16:43]

Suddenly, as sun-face or moon-face Buddha, they release the light of all-embracing mercy. In a single atom, they manifest all physical forms to save people according to their type They mix with mud and water. If suddenly they release an opening upwards, not even the Buddha's eye can see them. Even if a thousand sages appeared, they too would have to fall back 3,000 miles. Is there anyone with the same attainment and the same realization? To test, I cite this old case. Listen." They always say, listen. So the main case is Yun Man, teaching his community, said, medicine and disease subdue each other. The whole earth is medicine. Where do you find yourself? And then there's a verse. The whole earth is medicine. Why have ancients and moderns been so mistaken? I don't make the carriage behind closed doors.

[17:44]

The road, though, is naturally quiet and empty. Wrong, wrong. Though they be high in the sky, your nostrils have still been pierced." So Yun-Man, or U-Man in Japanese, lived more than 1,000 years ago in China. And he sometimes used the idea of sickness to describe levels of understanding of the ultimate truth or understanding how it is. But in the pointer it says, a clear-eyed person has no nest. Sometimes on a summit of a solitary peak, weeds grow. And that kind of refers to an enlightened being, an enlightened one, who is at this place of understanding. Often the summit is where teaching happens, or the summit is where a teacher goes to preach. It's used kind of symbolically as well as literally. And that person, it says, Weeds grow in profusion. Often these things really are talking the opposite of what they say. And in this case, it means that somebody was on the solitary peak, that he achieved understanding and had let go of all the busyness of the mind, let go of all the things, let go of everything, completely let go.

[18:55]

But then it says, sometimes they're naked and free in the bustling marketplace. And that kind of refers to the fact that someone who is truly realized can be anywhere. They don't have to go to a mountain solitude place. In fact, they're more alive and free in the midst of everything, in the midst of the things in the world. They're just as free because they understand the nature of the things in the world. And then there's a whole section on they appear as angry with three heads, and then there's sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. This, I think, refers to the fact that this enlightened person who wants to come and help save everyone uses all kinds of means, all kinds of skillful means, whatever the means are that are appropriate for the person. So if the person needs an angry Buddha, then there's an angry Buddha. If the person needs a compassionate Buddha and needs to learn about compassion, they learn about compassion.

[20:01]

In a way, for me, it feels like a bodhisattva coming back to save all beings who has complete knowledge of the true nature of reality, but then they want to help other people to have that same realization. But everybody's at a different stage of realization, so there has to be some approach that might work for anybody at whatever stage they're at. And a skillful bodhisattva knows intuitively what it is that each person needs. So I think that kind of sets the stage for thinking about what it means when we're talking about medicine and disease subdue each other. So really, what is illness or disease? Sojin often talks about disease as dis-ease, lack of ease, being kind of out of balance. Another way to say this might be suffering. there's dis-ease. And it could be either mental suffering, physical suffering, spiritual suffering, meaning kind of lack of understanding of the true nature of reality or the truth of emptiness.

[21:18]

That also can create dis-ease. That can create suffering. In Zen, there's a lot of talk in Zen teachings about the Zen sicknesses, the three Zen sicknesses. The first Zen sickness is called going away before arrival. When I thought of this, I thought about people coming to Zazen instruction and never coming back, especially if it's my Zazen instruction. But I'm going to have the kids next time participate in the Zazen instruction. I think they would help my performance. So in that case, for example, someone might start to practice. I was thinking the other thing that came to my mind when I thought about this is the ox herding pictures, you know, that first you don't see any ox and the ox is kind of a symbol of realization or enlightenment. You don't see the ox and then the ox peeks out behind a bush and then you run away because the ox is pretty scary.

[22:20]

So you run away before you've gotten to true understanding and that's considered like the first type of Zen sickness. But Yunmin also talks about sickness being when the light doesn't penetrate freely, and he talks about two sicknesses that really result in not having the light, not having the illumination of Buddhist wisdom penetrate, and so your understanding is murky. yet because you can't see clearly. One of those types of sicknesses is called attachment after arrival. So you actually stayed for zazen and you came back and you began to practice. And what happens to some people when they start to practice is they get kind of enamored of the forms or they get enamored of the dharma. They get enamored and attached to the precepts.

[23:21]

to following the precepts exactly or to doing the forms exactly right, or even though they kind of understand that everything's impermanent, that nothing is the same, constant, nothing you can hold on to. Many of us, when we practice, we get to this place where we really still can't let go. We are still attached. and that causes us suffering because we're attached to some outcome, we're attached to getting someplace, or we're attached to ourselves still. So that's another kind of Zen sickness. The third type of Zen sickness is called penetrating through having no basis to rely on. Oh, I should actually say, I wanted to say something more about attachment after arrival. Sometimes that's called, some of the stories talk about it as riding on the donkey while still looking for the donkey. And really, the donkey is you, the donkey is the world, the donkey is practice and realization.

[24:30]

In the very act of sitting, in the very act of practicing Zazen, Sojin often talks about practice and enlightenment are one, but often when we have Zen sickness, when we don't have a complete understanding, we're still looking for something. We don't recognize that what we're doing is realization, what we're doing. where we are is where it is. So we're still looking for something. So the third type of sickness is called penetrating, though having no basis to rely on. Sometimes this is described as riding on a donkey and not being willing to get off. So this is somebody who really likes formlessness. who really likes to hang out there in Zazen and just everything is gone, everything is quiet. They've mastered kind of tranquility practice and they want to stay there. They never want to leave the gate. They don't want to go into the marketplace. They want to stay right there and they get very attached to

[25:34]

In a way, it's another attachment. There's still a distinction because that state is good and another state is bad. Where I am when I'm doing bad is great. So there's still some distinction. So Zen teachers, in diagnosing this illness, then, have to assess kind of where a person is in order to give the medicine, give the teaching, that will in fact move that person's understanding to another place. So they'll be able to go from form to emptiness, emptiness to form, and they can hold those together in a way and see more clearly. So I got, because I'm a doctor, I got interested in, okay, but what about real medicine? And so I started, this actually happened before practice period. I had gotten interested in Tibetan medicine a little bit.

[26:38]

So I kind of, I started to look at Tibetan medicine because in Tibetan medicine, the monks who become doctors train with the monks, the other monks. So they get the same basic monastic training. That's considered the basis of their medicine. And then only after their understanding is good, their understanding is that they have a high level of understanding of Buddhist practice, of Buddhist philosophy, then they can go on to learn things like, you know, looking at urine. all of that other stuff. So I was interested in that. So I decided to go to a talk. I heard somebody was talking at the university, and then I started to look at the internet like the kids. It's amazing what's on the internet, right? So basically, what's interesting to me about this is that basically, the Tibetan Buddhists see everything related to three systems.

[27:44]

wind, bile, and phlegm. And wind is, they say, wind is manifested when the mind is expressed in attachment, desire, or the materialistic worldview. So this is considered a body system, a body abnormality, but it's all related to attachment. All of these are related to one of the three poisons, greed, hate, or delusion. So in this case, anything that affects your circulatory system, Your nervous system or your digestive system, it has to do with the wind and has to do with attachment and clinging. And then bile is manifested when the mind is expressed as aggression, hatred, or anger. And, you know, we've heard about bile, you know, your bile. Well, and this has to do with your metabolism and liver function. So if you have a lot of hatred or anger, then you're likely to have metabolic problems or liver problems. And then phlegm or bodin is manifested when the mind is expressed as ignorance or incomprehension.

[28:47]

Okay. All of us have a lot of this. People are going to love this. This has to do with the body system of lubrication. I think about that as, for example, arthritis and things like that where there's not enough lubrication of the joints and that kind of thing. When a person comes into a Tibetan doctor, that Tibetan doctor says, how's your practice? and talks to them about their practice and finds out, and then they get clues to what part of their practice is off by, well, okay, it's a digestive problem. Ah, what are you attached to? So they start talking to them about that. And then when they treat them, they treat them with certain types of meditation. So for some, they prescribe meditation of letting go. And some, like people who are filled with hatred, they prescribe meta-practice.

[29:52]

And so they do do other things too, but I just thought it was really interesting that there's this ancient recognition that this lack of understanding and the kind of suffering we have because of the lack of understanding not only gives us Zen sickness, but it also ends up having physical manifestations. And often the physical manifestations, not that they're psychosomatic, but that there's a reason to look at the physical manifestations in terms of healing. So then, all the world is medicine. What's that about? We heard that from the kids, I think. They did a really good job of teaching us that. And the story that's told about that is Manjushri, who is the Bodhisattva Wisdom, asked Sadhana, one of his monastic students, if there's something that's not medicine, bring it to me, I'd like to see it. And Sadhana searched exhaustively, but he couldn't find anything that was not medicine.

[30:56]

So he told Manjushri, there's nothing there that is not medicine. And Manjushri said, bring me something that is medicine then. And Sadama reached down and picked up a blade of grass and handed it to Manjushri. And Manjushri held it up for everyone to see and said, this medicine can kill people. This medicine can also bring them to life. So he was communicating that there's healing and there's medicine in everything, and there's learning in medicine in everything. And I guess we could really say everything preaches the Dharma. sentient and non-sentient beings preach the Dharma, so there isn't anything, anything, whatever, whether it's something that looks good to us or bad to us, that anything could lead us to understanding.

[32:02]

That's kind of the kind of Buddhist medicine, is just stay where you are, look at where you are, look at what is before you, whether it's a piece of grass, whether it's a rotting tomato, whatever it is, it has the same value of teaching. You don't need to go anywhere for some special teaching if you pay attention right where you are right at that moment with whatever's before you and study that. I mean, the kids really talked a lot about, with the kids we really talked about all the different kinds of things that are medicine from a kind of a literal point of view. So I don't think I need to do that anymore. But I think one of the things we tend to do is when we think about medicine or we think about what's good for our understanding, we do not look at certain things that seem like they're unpleasant or we don't want to go there because that's not going to be healing. And so we have preferences. And the preferences are our distinctions, and those are part of what we are working to give up, those preferences.

[33:09]

Because in fact, everything we look at can be our teacher. Everyone we meet can be our teacher. And everyone can be the medicine, just the medicine that we need. And a lot of times, we get stuck. We get stuck in these places of Zen sickness, and that's really where our teacher comes in, and our teacher delivers the medicine. Our teacher is the healer, the doctor that gives us the medicine that we need. So I alluded to this before. If we're attached to form, the teacher points to the emptiness of all phenomenon, and if we're attached to emptiness, we're sent right out there to deal with form so that we can hold both form and emptiness at the same time. So this whole thing about medicine is really expedient means or skillful means of healing and improving our understanding so that our suffering can be relieved.

[34:17]

So, how do medicine and disease subdue or cure each other? That's kind of one of those. That's part of this that's challenging to look at in a literal sense, I think. You know, we take in something. We take in a medicine. perform some function, and the medicine metabolizes, and the medicine is no longer what the medicine was, the medicine is now in harmony with our body in some way. And our illness, our raging fever or whatever, is also then subdued, our symptoms are subdued, and so that's a very literal way of looking at it from a kind of a literal medicine point of view. That there's nothing separate, that when we interact with healing, healing of any kind, there is some resolution of the differences and the distinctions, so that there's no separation between the healing, the medicine, and the illness, or the person and the healer.

[35:24]

There's the absence of distinction and the absence of separation. It's all one. It all becomes one and inseparable. So there's a part of this koan that points to that in terms of understanding the dharma and how the healing of the dharma is also a medicine and also can subdue our suffering, and our suffering can subdue the dharma. So the story that's in the case is Elder Chin O called on Sui Tu, they discussed medicine and disease subdue each other all night until the dawn before they were finally able to exhaust its excellence. At this point, no learned interpretations, thought, or judgments can be employed. Afterwards, Sui Tu made a verse to send him off, which said, medicine and disease subdue each other, most difficult to see.

[36:28]

10,000 lock gates indeed have no starting points. Wayfarer Chino came calling. In one night, we exhausted the waves of the ocean of learning." So by the end of the evening, there was no problem. There was no question. There was no concern about this koan anymore. There was an understanding, and that understanding subdued There was nothing to subdue. At that point there was nothing to subdue. They exhausted their minds and they had to go beyond their minds into some other place. So the mind was no longer there even though body and mind were involved. I mean, what people say about this is, only when you've exhausted all learning, all the combinations and permutations of logical thought, you finally get to the place where the truth can be seen.

[37:34]

So that's why we all spend a lot of time, we actually all spend a lot of time wrestling with the Dharma, or wrestling with the teaching, to reach a point where somehow, at some point, we go beyond that. We go beyond the mind and body-mind just experience the peace or the awareness or the realization of the true reality. And then, in that case, there's no suffering or there's relief of suffering. I want to take a couple more minutes if that's okay, yeah. When I first thought of this medicine and disease subduing each other, I thought about an experience that I had actually. Some of you know the print by Michael Sawyer that's in the community room called Medicine Buddha. Michael and his wife, Emily, gave this print to Mel for his 75th birthday.

[38:37]

And I was fascinated with it from the first time I saw it. It's a beautiful, it's very beautiful, and on the top part of the picture is a beautiful Buddha with owls and trees and the sky is really lovely, and then on the bottom part of the picture is basically garbage, dirt, waste. And I kind of struggled with it and I found out that it had been inspired by this koan. It was Michael's understanding of this koan reflected in a print. So I had the opportunity to actually go visit Michael a couple of years ago, and he has a very advanced stage of Parkinson's disease. And he is quite disabled, and his functioning is kind of Sometimes he can talk and sometimes he can't, and the time that I went to see him, I really wanted him to tell me the answer.

[39:43]

What was this Koan about? And so I had some expectation and some attachment to finally meeting Michael and finally having him take away the mystery of this. I was not going to have to struggle with it anymore because I was going to the source, and he was going to tell me. And the day I got there, and Michael is quite disabled, so when you go into his little apartment, he's in a wheelchair, and he really can't do anything for himself, so everyone has to help him get dressed and eat and so forth, and he has, but he can use his hand. Well, he could then, can't now, but he could use his hand. Somehow he could create this most incredibly beautiful, beautiful, I would say, healing work. Because everyone who looks at his work just, there's some understanding that happens when you look at his work. But Michael that day couldn't talk. And he could only, he kind of whispered, and he has these attacks where his vocal cords are paralyzed and he just can't speak. And he, so here I was waiting with all my,

[40:51]

grasping mind to see what was going on. And there was this man in a wheelchair who couldn't speak. And he really wanted to help me out. Because I said to him, you know, I came here, I just love your work, and it really means so much to me, and I'm trying to figure this out. And he really wanted to. And he got agitated. He wanted me to know. He wanted to be able to talk to me. And he went to the painting, and he started to try to point to it. And I was trying to hear it and, you know, there was this whole interaction and then something happened that I just kind of said, well, okay, you know, I'm not going to learn about this today. I'm just going to hang out with Michael. And I had to kind of totally let go of knowing, of knowing in the way that I expected to know. And then Michael calmed down, and we spent, I don't know, another half an hour or so, and Michael just kind of went around and pointed to the different paintings that he had done.

[41:59]

And something happened in that interaction. In that interaction, there was me, the doctor, who wasn't able to help him. or trying to get something and he was wanting to do something and somehow out of that there was just looking at the paintings. There was nothing except looking at the paintings and being with the paintings and being with Michael and being together. So there was this nothing happened, but everything happened in that interaction. A little bit late, you know, when I was two years later or three years later, I mean, I didn't quite get that at the same time, and when, during, actually it was during the last Rahatsu Sushina, somehow this picture came to my mind, and I realized that I had always kind of seen it as very separate, that I had seen

[43:03]

you know, this wonderful, beautiful Buddha with the owls and I kind of not looked at the bottom part of the picture and wondered, you know, it kind of wasn't very... and all of a sudden with... and then somehow in that meditation it was all... it was all beautiful and it was all the way it is. And so I felt that there was again this kind of interaction between what one might call disease or garbage or the dark side and the beautiful and some kind of acceptance or resolution. And so although the dark side was still kind of there and the light side was still kind of there, it wasn't the same. So that's kind of what I get out of that in terms of my intuitive getting out of it. The last line of this koan is, so where is the self, or where do you find yourself?

[44:10]

And it seems to me that this is a question... Why are they asking that question? This is a question that appears over and over again in Buddhist stories, you know, where is the self? Who am I? Who is the self? What is this? What is it? The question is kind of like a process, and Sojin always tells us the answer is in the question. And he tells everybody who asks him, and every year somebody new asks him that, or somebody new coming to practice asks the same question. And sometimes he gives one answer, and sometimes he gives another answer. But to me, the heart of it is not in the answer, but the asking of the question. The asking of the question, really helps to wake up because it means that you're awake and studying the self. You're studying what is. You're looking and you're studying and you're practicing.

[45:17]

It kind of leads you into practice. It leads me into practice. And sometimes I get it, you know. I said, oh, I get it. You know, the self and the activity are one. There's no separation between the healer and the healing. the sick person and the well person. There's no separation. That's it. And then sometimes I forget that. And so I have to ask again, where's the self? Or where am I in my practice? Where's the self? And so this question And just asking the question is a letting go. Just being with the question or being in the question is kind of a letting go and a letting go and a recognition of who's on first. Some of you heard that, who were at Sashin. I remember when I hear who, you know, the answer is in the question, I sometimes think of the Abbott and Costello gag that's, you know, who's on first?

[46:21]

And in fact, who's on first? So that being with this question without being too serious about it, without making something of it, but just being, resting in our meditation, in our zazen, sometimes with the question, who is the self, where is the self? And so I think I'll kind of leave you with, where is the self? I will. The whole thing? Okay, Yunmin, teaching his community, said medicine and disease subdue each other. The whole earth is medicine. Where do you find yourself? Do we, are we supposed to be done, or do we, when are we supposed to be done?

[47:22]

It's time that, you know, it's up to you to I guess if anybody wants to ask a question, that's fine. Yeah? I'm drawn to the image of the blighted grass as deadly. And that's where I'm kind of stuck at the moment, thinking, is the deadliness that you've fastened on it separate from everything else? You could grab onto it. Yeah, you could grab onto the grass. It seems like that to me. Sojan, feel free. Any other questions?

[48:36]

Yeah? Maria? Jerry, we were together, beginner students in Tassajara, and I think new students kind of come with a hope that we're finally going to get it. We're finally going to really get the big E. And instead, we're just faced with all of our unprocessed garbage. And in that case, on that practice period, it was like, it has to be brought forth quite a bit. And somebody asked me yesterday, a woman whose family is falling apart, and she asked me, how did you feel when you went through family problems? And I didn't know what to tell her, because she can't go to Tathagata and she's not a siddha and yet there's got to be some other way, you know, to really to heal, to come to wholeness.

[49:49]

I think that people can come to understanding in lots of different ways and in our interactions with people sometimes just asking a question or helping people to just see that there is no fixed view of anything is actually what people need to hear. They need to hear that this isn't how it's always going to be, and they need to maybe hear something about impermanence, something about Something about how you see something in a certain way at this moment, but in the next moment you see something different. It's not always going to be like this. But not everybody can come and sit like we do. My mother has no idea. She's always saying, what are you doing? I have that same question.

[51:00]

Because you can say those things, you can say words and say, well, things change. You can say really good words. But I do think that some form of stillness and quiet seems essential. It seems to me that way, and there's a lot of people that it is. It seems like they're not going to do that. That's not going to happen. And so there is this somewhat helpless feeling because you say the words and you want them to feel better. And I'm always inclined to try to encourage them to sit. So I don't know. We probably have a lot of psychologists here, but I think, you know, when you think about all the world is, you know, all the earth is medicine, I mean, the things I was talking with the kids, you know, I mean, there are different way, different dharma gates for people.

[52:10]

And so it's not all one way. And I think that's us getting attached to our way sometimes. You know, you can't, You're never going to see the truth if you don't go my way. And I think that's a temptation for us, is to try to proselytize. But that's just my own... Yeah. One person's medicine is another person's torture. Yeah. Yeah. Fulani. Yeah, hi, Geri. I would like to thank you for your talk. In 1983, I gave birth to my second son at Alta Bates Hospital, and I had a motus for him. And that is when you don't cut the cord.

[53:12]

And Geri was one of the doctors on staff. And she was one of the few people that did not, she was just with that. But I just never got that. Oh, great! I think on that note, we'll have tea.

[53:53]

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