Good morning. Thank you, Peter. I couldn't help listening to the news while I drove over here, though I planned not to. What I want to talk about this morning, in addition to the news, Actually, I'm going to try and frame things around a koan, which is case 38 of the Mumonkan, or the gateless barrier, gateless gate. And the case reads, can you guys all hear me? Wutsu said, it is like a buffalo that passes through a latticed window. Its head, horns, and four legs all pass through.

[01:02]

why can't its tail pass through as well? That's the case, that's it. The woman's commentary, he says, if you can get upside down with this one, discern it clearly and give a turning word, then you can meet the four obligations above and give comfort to the three existences below. But if it is not yet clear, pay close attention to the tail and you will resolve it at last. I'm sure this is all really clear. When I first started thinking about this calm, The first image that I had was being present at the birth of my children and as they were passing through the body

[02:12]

of their mother, their mother's opening and arriving here on this planet. First the head, then the body, legs, feet. Yet there was some part of them that was still connected to the world before we are born. The world that exists before birth, a place beyond words and beyond form. And in many ways this connection in a way this tiny tail, this tiny thing left over seemed more important, more poignant than these bodies that were appearing, this powerful, powerful connection to something beyond what we know, beyond what we can imagine. And I also, the other image I had in thinking about this koan initially was I was remembering being with my mother as she was dying and breathing with her and seeing that as she started to let go that her breathing got slower and slower and became more and more full.

[03:28]

Then there was that last breath and no more breath as she had passed through, passing through this window from life to death. And yet, there she was. There's her body and everything about her was still right there. So again, this tale, this sense of what does it mean to pass through something completely? Just a tiny bit of background about this Mu Man Khan is a collection of 48 stories, 48 koans that was collected by this master Mu Man. It was in the 12th century in China. And the particular person, Wuzhu, who's the person who presents this case,

[04:32]

was a few, I think a generation or two before Mu Man, and Mu Man was in his lineage. And Wuzhu was unusual in that time in that he didn't study, he didn't practice Zen as a youngster. Most people who were Zen teachers in China during the 11th, 12th, 13th century were all, for the most part, spent their whole life embedded in Zen practice. But Wuzhu, he was a scholar and philosopher and didn't come to Zen practice until he was in midlife, so more like many of us. And he had this burning question in him that kept saying, He's been studying this idea of not-self and no difference between subject and object. And he went to his teacher and asked for some kind of explanation about how he'll know when he's really entered Zen practice.

[05:40]

And his teacher said, it's like drinking water, you'll know you know when the water is warm or when the water is cold, that it's something that you experience for yourself. And the buffalo in this story, the buffalo that passes through this lattice window, except for the tail, it's an important member of the farming family throughout Asia at that time. The buffalo represents essential nature and in essence it represents you, it represents your life. And the thing about these stories is to make them come alive, to make them you. And so you are passing through this window, you are passing through whether it's Zen practice, that you have some insight, that you have some sense about that, now you're really practicing.

[06:47]

But there's this tail, there's this part that doesn't go all the way through. Or you are passing through the window of pain, where you're feeling just so completely suffering and pain, and yet there's this tail, there's something else, there's some joy or some hope. And sometimes you might want to deny this. Our minds want things to be clear, black and white, but it seems to never be the way things actually are. It's that darn tale. I was thinking of a story of a... I have a cousin who's a business, just a straight business guy living in Florida who was asking me a lot about meditation and he told me that he that he had high blood pressure and that he wasn't feeling so happy in his life and was concerned about his high blood pressure and the way that he was driving himself.

[07:59]

And he asked what I thought about him coming out to Green Gulch for a weekend and I said I thought it would be a really good thing. And this was about five or six years ago, and my cousin from Florida planned this venture to come out and spend a weekend at Green Gulch to address this high blood pressure problem and to learn how to meditate. And I had told Norman to, Norman was the abbot at the time and was living out at Green Gulch, and I had mentioned to Norman that my cousin was going to be coming in from Florida and to please make him feel at home or kind of, you know, just to say hi to him or something. And it turned out that Gary, my cousin, When he arrived, he pulled up in the parking lot in his rented car, having just come from Florida, and there was Norman. And they bumped into each other. And Gary told me this in a letter, which this letter had me rolling on the floor laughing, his experience of Green Gulch.

[09:01]

But he bumped into Norman, and Norman said hi, and he recognized that he was my cousin. And Gary said the first thing Norman said to him was, being here for a weekend's not going to make any difference at all. that forget about it. If you think this weekend is going to do anything for you, maybe you should just go back to Florida. And this was the warm greeting he got from the abbot. And then, I think it was that morning, Norman gave the lecture. And Norman started the lecture by saying that he had been practicing and sitting Tsazen pretty much every day for 25 years, and that he wasn't sure that it made one bit of difference. And in a way, I think, Norman, both in meeting my cousin and in talking, was talking about that tale, that there is that something about our ideas about how things are, how things should be.

[10:12]

In thinking about these passages, I was also remembering a good friend of mine when I lived at Tassajara, a woman named Carol Rankin, who was kind of a rebel. She didn't like the fact that everybody wore black at Tassajara. And one of the ways that she rebelled is she wore a pink underrobe. It was her way to make some statement about the feminine. But she, Carol became quite ill and was diagnosed as having cancer and was dying at around the same time that my wife was pregnant with our daughter. And there was this amazing meeting that we had where Carol was, where Carol Rankin was preparing to die and looking in a way with tremendous acceptance and tremendous joy at her passage, at this passage through this window.

[11:28]

And there was a way in which my wife and I were both looking forward and getting ready for the arrival of our daughter. And we ended up naming our daughter Carol after Carol Rankin, which again, that comes up, it feels like it's that tail, that part, that there's no completely passing through this window. To practice is to realize that our lives are beyond ideas and labels, and beyond ideas of success and not success. And beyond fear and beyond finding, our lives are beyond finding some safe place for ourselves or gathering things, gathering assets, gathering titles. That's not what our lives are about. In Wuman's comments he says, if you can get upside down with this one,

[12:35]

And in a way, his commentary is a description of a path of Zen practice, and it starts with getting upside down. That is, seeing yourself and the world not from the usual perspective of success or failure, or from ideas of right and wrong. In our practice, we vow to save all beings. And of course, as we say that, we recognize that we can't save all beings, but we have to. We have to make this effort because we want to, because we feel that we have to do it. And we appreciate both this vow and this sense that we know that we can't quite achieve that vow. Again, it's that sense of the tail, appreciating the tail. Only when we get upside down and see clearly can we give a turning word.

[13:41]

Again, this is Mumon's commentary. Only by turning our world upside down can our speech come from a place that is clear enough, unfettered enough to help others. And yet, no matter where we are in our practice, we have to say something. And no matter where we are in our practice, we're constantly missing the mark, causing pain, creating confusion, despite our best intentions. If only it weren't for that tail. Sometimes we cherish the tail. Other times we curse the tail. If that buffalo had only gone all the way through the window. If you can get upside down with this one, discern it clearly and give a turning word to it, then you can meet the four obligations. And these four obligations are our parents, our country, all beings, and the three treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

[14:51]

I think of these obligations as being the window to use the metaphor in this cone. As we pass through this life, only when we are turned upside down and see clearly can we really meet our parents and find some way to take care of the people that brought us into this life. And only when we are upside down can we have some sense about how to live in our community, in our country, which is particularly difficult these days when our government is acting in a way that we all are so clear lacks any sense of wisdom or compassion and that threatens the health and well-being of our planet. I think we all know that war is insane. And how can it be that our leaders, our leaders of this country and the leaders of this world, how could it be that they haven't come to the same conclusion?

[16:06]

With war, everything is turned upside down, but totally the opposite of the way this koan speaks about. This koan is about finding real freedom, about seeing and acting beyond fear, beyond our usual conditioning and habits. War, by definition, is acting out of fear. It cuts off any possibility of understanding compassion and freedom. Again, totally opposite of the kind of turning upside down this koan talks about. Getting back to the tale, there may be tremendous suffering and insanity in the world, but we shouldn't overlook what is healthy. Of course, we must face and meet the horrors of war, but not at the expense of joy, of our connections, of the laughter of a child, at seeing a waterfall fresh.

[17:11]

The story teaches us not to be fooled or caught, by thinking that everything is suffering or that everything is not suffering. How do we allow for joy and love in the midst of insanity and horror? That darned hell, it just won't go all the way through. Throughout my life, I've had this repeating dream It's been a... I had it a lot as a child, and still have it, although not so frequently these days, but every once in a while, a few times a year, I dream that I'm standing on the moon, and suddenly I let go and kind of dive off backwards, and I'm floating through the air, turning, feet over head, head over feet. And at first I feel terrified and then excited and I don't know whether I'm terrified or excited and then I'm just floating and not knowing what to expect, not knowing what will happen.

[18:28]

And then there's this boom sound and I land on my back And I assume, in my dream, I assume that I've fallen and landed and that I've died. And then I start to wake up. And as I wake up from this dream, I'm in a complete sweat. My body is drenched from the effort of having hurled through space and hurled upside down. And to me, that's my, again, thinking about this koan, that's one of my experiences of turning upside down. If you can get upside down with this one, discern it clearly and give a turning word, then you can meet the four obligations above and give comfort to the three existences below. Again, the path is spelled out. Get upside down.

[19:29]

See clearly. Say something or act in a way that is authentic. Meet our obligations and give comfort. These three existences that he talks about giving comfort to are the world of desire, the world of form, and the world of no form. My Buddhist name that I was given during lay ordination 25 years ago is Takunenshitsuman, which means benefit decree, form gate. And I've always felt that this name signifies that my path, and in a way all our paths, are about form. That there's no escaping the world of things, of money, of power. that we need to face this world directly.

[20:34]

I think sometimes myself and other Zen students think that, maybe we think sometimes that Zen is about not engaging with these things or turning away from these things. When we say that form is not different from emptiness, perhaps it means the only way to truly experience emptiness is to fully enter and engage in the world of form. Giving comfort means to express our gratitude and love even in the world of desire, the world of pain, the world of war. This is the world that we live in. For me, after being a Zen Center resident for ten years, I chose to enter the world of business in some way because it seemed like the most difficult thing to do and most contrary to any idea that I had about myself or what I would do.

[21:42]

Pretty dumb, looking back. There was something, though, that drew me to the world to want, in a sense, to want to explore the tale, to explore that something that I couldn't explain, that didn't make sense, that wouldn't go all the way through. And I've had many, many, I call them, I should have gone to medical school days, or what was I thinking? There's a famous expression of Dogen where he says, when the Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. When the Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. Again, I feel like he's talking about that tail. There's no limit to our understanding and no limit to our confusion.

[22:50]

If we think we have gotten to a place where we have complete understanding, that's Dogon's Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind. What's missing? The whole buffalo passes through the window. Head, horns, four legs. Why can't the tail pass through? Our job is to practice by remaining open. Usually when we hear something, We're comparing it to our own ideas. We hear something and either it agrees with our worldview and we accept it or it doesn't agree with our worldview and we reject it. The buffalo passing through the window except for the tail is to be open, to be open to what we don't expect. We expect that the buffalo, it should pass all the way through. How could it be that it doesn't? How is this a metaphor for our own lives?

[23:54]

One of the questions that I've been asking myself, a question that's been my column for some time, what is the impossible request that this life asks of me? I believe that we all have some unique gift, some unique mission, that it's no accident that we're here at this time in this place. At Paul Haller's Mountain Seat Ceremony, I asked Paul this question, what is the impossible request that your life asks of you? And I thought Paul's answer was quite wonderful. He said, to keep an open heart, to be open to his own and others' pain, suffering, and open to joy. And it made me ask myself, why is it so difficult for us to love ourselves, to accept ourselves, to accept ourselves and others as Buddha?

[25:07]

I wanted to I'll tell this short story. As I was thinking about coming here, I remembered a story about spending some time with Mel. Mel Weitzman during the Tassajara fire, it must have been 25 years ago, I think. This was the big forest fire in 1977, I believe. I was the baker that summer. And as the fire encroached Tassajara, everyone was evacuated and everyone went to Jamesburg. But then we were able to convince the fire service that we could save Tassajara by coming back in, and we did. The fire service came in with us and there was backburning, meaning that we burned all the hillsides surrounding Tassajara to keep the fire from going in. And we had to be on this 24-hour watch to make sure that the sparks and things from the fires that we had set didn't burn down the buildings.

[26:15]

And so we took shifts, and I had a shift of walking with a partner up the Tassajara Creek upstream for about half a mile, walking just back and forth up and down the creek. The creek bed was dry. I think this was August. I did this for days and days and each time I did this I passed a dead fox that was lying right in the creek bed. And I became intimately familiar with, I got to know almost every boulder and where everything was in this creek bed. And towards the end of this stint, Mel was assigned to be my partner. We were trading partners. So Mel came and joined me, and this was the night shift. And Mel and I were walking in the creek bed with flashlights.

[27:18]

And Mel was kind of stumbling around because this was his first time there. And we're walking along and Mel says, he starts sniffing, he says, I smell something, I wonder what that is. And I hadn't told Mel that I had been on this path many, many times. And I started sniffing and I said, smells like a dead fox. And I took my flashlight and shined it and Mel was really impressed. But I had to tell him the truth. And again, it was that tale, you know, that tale left over that I had to tell him what had happened. My son, Jason, who was born while I was director at Tassajara, which is now almost exactly 20 years ago, because he'll be 20 this week, The way he's thinking reminds me so much of how I was thinking when I was 20 years old, and it's pretty astounding.

[28:32]

And he said to me the other day that he doesn't want to be anything like me. He pointed out that I'm short, balding, I have crooked teeth, I'm not that smart, I'm not wealthy, and I'm starting to limp because I have arthritis in my hips." And he also pointed out that he can now beat me at every sport, which actually has been true for about the last 10 years. But when he was saying this, I felt really proud of him. He also said that he doesn't want to be like me in the sense that he sees me as having all of this responsibility, that I'm responsible for children and my kids and I run this business and I own a home.

[29:35]

Why would anyone do that? And I said, I had never looked at it that way. But I hadn't chose to do any of this and I still, I don't feel, I'm glad he thinks I'm responsible. I don't feel particularly responsible. I feel like I'm just doing what I'm doing. But he doesn't buy that at all. And I wondered, you know, I said to him, well, what's the alternative? What is the alternative? And again, I think of that tail, you know, that tail hanging out there. I'm going to finish with a poem by Hafiz. And I don't know, it's funny coming to some place where I haven't been, you know, you may have all been studying Hafiz and know, I don't know. I'll assume not. Hafiz is a Persian poet that lived a hundred years after Rumi and is still, actually is more

[30:41]

in the hearts and minds today of people in the Middle East than Rumi is. He was more of a kind of a people's poet. This poem, which again, in the context of what I'm talking about, in the context of this buffalo not going through the window, it has a very similar feeling to me but with completely different language. The name of this poem is, Someone Should Start Laughing. I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question, how are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question, what is God? If you think that the truth can be known from words, if you think that the sun and the ocean can pass through that tiny opening called the mouth, Oh, someone should start laughing. Someone should start wildly laughing now.

[31:46]

Do we have time for questions? Yes. Hi, Linda. One of the last things you said was about I wonder why we can't love ourselves, why we can't accept ourselves. So, if we see ourselves regularly doing harm, causing suffering, why should we accept that? Well, I think we don't. I think partly why it's so hard to accept ourselves is that we're so driven.

[32:48]

I think in a way we're driven in that story that I was talking about, the birth of my children. We know that we are connected to that other world. We know it. Some part of us knows it and that there's so much confusion about how to take this world of stuff that we live in and knowing at some level that it's all being supported or it's all being supported by this other world that we want some glimpse of, want some real feeling for. I don't know if that really answers your question. Yes? Can you tell me what the difference between being at the monastery and being in business school is?

[33:52]

You know, in some... I don't mean to sound zenny, but I would say no difference. And, you know, I lived just recently, just in the recent few months, I lived in the city center. I took a sabbatical I think of it as a sabbatical from my family. Because I didn't take a sabbatical from work, I just didn't see my family for two and a half months. And I lived at 300 Page Street, and I followed the schedule completely. And in fact, I found out, it was funny coming back, I had been at Zen Center during such an orthodox period of time that I couldn't believe that everyone didn't sit, you know, 5.40 p.m. Zazen. This was city practice period and I did.

[34:58]

I actually left work every day and I sat and it was me and the new students. But it was actually wonderful. I went around and did posture adjustments and had a great time. I think I even talked some time. It was just great. It was just me and the new students in the Zendo at 540. At first I complained about why the older students weren't there, but then I said, who needs them? This was great. But there I was doing practice period. alongside people who were monks. And at the end of the morning schedule, they were going off and working. They were going off and doing their jobs, whether they were the treasurer or doing fundraising or working in the kitchen. And I was going off. I just happened to be 10 miles away. I happened to be working in business, doing my stuff. But, you know,

[36:02]

My own intention, I felt like my life was about practice. My life was about really trying to go deeper in terms of understanding my own practice, trying to help other people. And in a way, when I was director of Tassajara, what inspired me to go to business school was realizing that I was in business. that I was running this monastery and resort and that my day-to-day activity was managing people and solving problems and doing budgets and trying to think about how to take care of this place, which that there seemed to be no escape from any of that. You know, even if I had decided to be a therapist, still, there's money and there's marketing and there's, you know, you call your customers your clients.

[37:05]

So, I kind of came to that realization that there was no difference for me. We're five minutes after. Can we take another question while we're... Sure. Five minutes after. See that tail? Yes. Mark, thank you. I've always understood that pesky tale to be an impediment to enlightened action, but is it a requisite for enlightened action? Yeah, as I read it, it's, you know, again, it's Dogen's, you know, What is the difference between impediment and prerequisite? I'm very grateful to be able to be here with you. It's really moving for me to have... I haven't been in this place for, as I told Peter, I now measure things in decades.

[38:14]

And I hope that it won't be so long till I come here again. Thank you very much.

[38:22]

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