I'd like to speak about cases number 30 and 33 of the Buam Khan. Case number 30, there's two sort of related cases. It's a teacher, Master Baso, talking to two different students, and the answers he gives to the same question, sort of two sides of the same koans, so I'd like to read both of them. So Daibai, a monk by the name of Daibai, once asked Baso, what is Buddha? And Baso answered, mind is Buddha. And Mumon's, this is Mumon Kan, Mumon's commentary is If you can at once grasp it, you are wearing Buddha's clothes, eating Buddha's food, speaking Buddha words, and living Buddha life.

[01:10]

You are a Buddha yourself. Though this may be so, Daibai has misled a number of people and let them trust a scale with a stuck pointer. Don't you know that one has to rinse out his mouth for three days if he has uttered the word Buddha. If he is a real Zen man or woman, he will stop his ears and rush away when he hears, my is Buddha. Then the poem is a fine day under the blue sky. Don't foolishly look here and there. If you still ask what is Buddha, it's like pleading your innocence while clutching stolen goods. And the case 33, a monk, there's no name to this monk, a monk once asked Baso, what is Buddha?

[02:16]

And Baso answered, no mind, no Buddha. If you can see into it here, your sense study has been completed. And the poem If you meet a swordsman in the street, give him a sword. Unless you meet a poet, do not offer a poem. Excuse me? Yes, unless you meet a poet, do not offer a poem. In talking to people, tell them three quarters only. Never let them have the other part. So, the question here about what is Buddha is a question with many different layers, but what's being asked here is a question about Zen experience and it's not a philosophical question about Buddha.

[03:27]

If you can grasp it, then you are Buddha yourself. So what is Buddha? Each one of us has to answer that question for ourselves through our practice. And that is what we're doing day-to-day and year-to-year. So why is Mulan saying that Daibai has misled a number of people and let them trust a scale with a stuck pointer? Actually, because you could see that usually Milowicz points out that Muwan is usually criticizing the koan of the teacher or the student or the question, and yet the criticism is also a praising of it. So you could see the criticism for both the question and the answer.

[04:36]

The criticism for the question is, why do you want to know what Buddha is? What's behind your question? Are you trying to objectify Buddha in some way? Are you trying to, do you want a, what kind of answer do you want? And so the stuck pointer is, trying to pin down Buddha to any kind of definition. Actually, you can't define it, so you could give many different answers to that question, and they would all be correct. So that's the stuck pointer. And yet, Baso seems to have given a kind of definition which has a kind of philosophical or psychological tint to it that could, you know, arouse a lot of speculation about what is mind or what is the Buddha mind.

[05:58]

So, and yet nonetheless, So in that sense, the response, the second koan, the response is better because it doesn't provide a stuck pointer. It says, no mind, no Buddha. Don't try to grasp the ungraspable. And yet, each answer, the answer to each question is appropriate in the situation for the student or what the student needs. It's the reading of the teacher of the mind of the student and teacher giving to that student the appropriate answer for where they are at at that moment. So I think that's the poem to the second koan is a sword for a swords person, a poem

[07:03]

for a poet. So it's a different, it's the same question, but if the question is asked by a sorts person, then you give them a sort. If the question is asked by a poet, then you give them a poem. So that's why giving different contradictory, apparently contradictory, response to the same question. So One way to interpret is to say that the Daibai was apparently looking for a Buddha outside himself and therefore Baso had to point to find Buddha in his own mind. So mind is Buddha. And that monk may have needed a particular explanation, given a little bit of an explanation because he was needing that for his practice at that moment, only later to have to give that up as well.

[08:13]

So in line with that, there's another mandala between another student and Baso. So another monk came to Baso and asked him, why do you teach that maya is Buddha? Why did you say mine is Buddha?" And Basu said, in order to stop a baby from crying. So the baby's crying, you have to give something to the baby so the baby stops crying. And then the monk asked, what is it like when the baby stops crying? And Basu said, no mind, no Buddha. So that's a nice way of sort of putting the two cases together. And then the commentary says, don't you know that one has to rinse out his mouth for three days if he has uttered the word Buddha?

[09:19]

So this I think is sort of you have to wash your mouth if you objectify Buddha in some way. And this is a stark pointer. Because Buddha, as it relates to, it's a similar question to what is the way? Or it could have been what is Dharma? So it's the Buddha of our own experience. So, or fixed in any image or symbol. So, not mind, not Buddha. So, you know, it's interesting because a lot of theists and Jews tend to criticize Buddhism for worshipping a graven image. So, sort of making a graving

[10:25]

graven image at the center of our practice and worshipping it. So that's sort of the classical definition of idol worship, setting up some kind of graven image at the center of a practice and worshipping it, and making that worship a practice. Which is not really what we're doing, but it looks like that. Especially if we have this when we're practicing and we're bowing to it, so it would be a kind of natural predisposition to think that, well, we're bowing to this radiant image here. But actually, this is why Baso answered, mind is Buddha, to caution against objectifying, making Buddha into some kind of radiant image, that to be worshipped outside ourselves Actually, we don't really need this graven image to practice Zazen or to do Dogen's practice.

[11:37]

And actually, that was one of Dogen's rebellions, was that he thought that people were just thinking that, you know, making offerings to the Buddha and, you know, doing all these ceremonies and rituals, was it. It was enough to actualize the Buddhadharma. And he said, only through zazen. Zazen is the true vehicle. So we don't actually need this. But as far as I'm concerned, if it's you, it's okay. As long as we don't think, as long as we keep Baso's advice in mind. And also, on the other hand, Buddhists and seculars and scientists criticize theism and Judaism for being this kind of childish worship of a deity, almost laughable deity.

[12:53]

you know, the deity is with parental symbols, you know, father, mother, lord, king, queen, so on and so forth, when actually at the center of the Jewish notion of the absolute is this no image form. There's no mind, no Buddha. And this absolute, it's not really a deity. No cult of deity. Often I think that's a mistake. Sorry. But I think in Buddhism, we talk about the gods, small gods with multiple gods, with a small g, as deities. Different manifestations of the absolute.

[14:05]

different deities but actually the absolute is not a deity and although Jews use a name or names to address it This is the name of the nameless, and that's the colon there. What's the name of the nameless? And it's interesting because in Judaism, the name of God is really a name that can't be pronounced. So it's the same thing as washing our mouth if we pronounce Buddha's name. we pronounce buddha's name incorrectly we objectify buddha then we have to wash our our mouth and that's the same thing of for jews not to pronounce the word of the absolute and the word of the absolute has four letters but the four letters that don't nobody knows what it means so people put you know vowels into it and turn it into

[15:30]

all the other names, but strictly speaking, it doesn't have any meaning. It's just four letters. So it's like pushing the language, pushing the use of words to express something that's beyond words, which is similar to how the Zen masters in the Koans use language in the same way. It doesn't make any sense. So it's carrying language to that point of senselessness. can't understand it and that's why it's so irritating in some way to read these poem books. It seems totally ridiculous or meaningless. Maybe, you know, in Buddhism we have something similar to in the work Tathagata. Tathagata. So that's one of the names that's used for Buddha, which is sort of the same thing.

[16:39]

What is Tathagata? So that's another koan. You ask, well, what is Tathagata? How do you respond to that? You know, but getting back to the koan, Why not say the body is Buddha or the brain is Buddha? And Buddhism is not a physical culture. Although the body, the human body and the human form and the posture are necessary for realizing the buddhadharma, nonetheless, it's not a physical culture. So I think it's this mind, so what is buddha?

[17:46]

Buddha, mind is buddha. Then the next question, well, what is mind? And again, there you come to the ungraspable. That's another point, what is mind? So the monk could have actually continued the dialogue beyond that point by asking that question next, what is mind? And this is something that's not so easy to put into words because this mind doesn't have any form. It's emptiness itself. So sometimes, you know, we all need some kind of definition to be able to make some sense of practice and why we practice. Why are we doing this?

[18:48]

And what is this anyway? So the teachers at different times give us different definitions which are not stuck pointers but are what we need at that particular point in time to be able to continue our investigation of the Buddha Dharma. But it's not like that's it either. So, you know, you could explain, you know, one of the things that we're trying to do is trying to the word is not integrate actually disintegrate maybe better disintegrate uh psychology and buddhism uh and uh but it's not so easy actually because we could use uh uh you know freudian models or jungian models to understand the transformations in zazen but actually

[20:01]

he would fall short of the fundamental point of Buddhism. It would be too much reason for Zen. And it's interesting because in Zen there's this kind of, you can even say censorship of the It's really trying to put the intellect in its proper place so that we can restrain it in some way and put it in its proper place so that we can realize our fundamental nature. But for scientists, it feels like a censorship. And it's interesting, and that's sort of a tribute to religion in general, and it's interesting that the whole ushering of science was a kind of a rebellion against that, against being able to freely use the intellect and not having to be restrained about the kinds of questions that you can pursue rationally.

[21:15]

And then in science, we reject the intuition, because we give more importance and zent to the intuition, prashna, than to reason. And actually reason covers over our intuition, so we have to put it aside to let our intuition emerge and be evoked. And scientists tend to think of the intuition, the undefinable, the ungraspable, as something that really doesn't exist. It's just mysticism. So there's a real edge of some conflict there, although now people are writing a lot about integrated science and spirituality. But there is an edge there that's not so easy to resolve in our own experience. But, you know, in physics they talk about energy, but energy is something also that cannot be defined what it is in itself.

[22:42]

So they say, well, energy is just a measure of work. Energy has to be applied, and when you apply it, that's the way you talk about it. So energy is water produces energy, or fire produces energy, and then that's transformed into electricity, and then electricity turns the lights on. But if you say that water is energy, it's not right. You say that in itself, or fire, or electricity, or lights, neither of those are it. So in a way, it's similar to the point of Nazen, or what is Buddha? Because the male asked me that question. I told him I was going to talk about this koan. So he turned right around and asked me the question. And the response that came up for me was, well, you know, getting up in the morning and sitting zazen is Buddha, or bowing completely is Buddha.

[23:54]

which is what the commentary is saying. If you can at once grasp it, you are wearing Buddha's clothes, eating Buddha food, speaking Buddha words, so on. So the only way you can answer it is by ordinary, in an ordinary mind is the way. I'd like to open it up here for discussion. If you have any questions or if you have any comments to add, please do so.

[24:59]

I think that very creative scientists are very intuitive. And there are a lot of examples. It's of interest of mine. You know, people like Einstein and so on, the ones who made the greatest contributions. And there's one scientist, I can't remember his name, he's a German who had been working on a problem for, I don't know, 16 years or something. And it was around 1920, and all of a sudden he had a dream in the middle of the night, and he knew this was it. But then he didn't write it down. And then when he woke up, he'd forgotten it. But the amazing thing about the psych youth, the next guy he went to sleep and he had the same dream. But this time he got up at three in the morning and went to his lab and did the experiment. And many years later, he won the Nobel Prize. And I can look it up and find his name if you want. But I think that people who really are Well, in the other case, as far as physics goes, I understand that there's a lot of, when you get into quantum physics, you get into, you know, is it a particle, is it a wave, is it a particle, and so forth.

[26:20]

And a lot of people who study physics and quantum physics have discovered quite a lot of similarities between Nietzschean thought and the questions that physics brings up. So, I think they're scientists and scientists. Yeah. Well, actually, the actual practice of science, you know, it's like, you know, the everyday work with no particular idea in mind, sort of just the practice of experimentation, you know, day to day, and sort of being completely one with that, that sort of evokes the intuition, a spark. which is what you're saying, so that creative spark which comes from Prajna. And yet, you know, science is about, is within that duality of subject-object, because science always, every scientific field has an object.

[27:23]

You know, they're trying to understand, cut up nature into pieces, into its element, and trying to understand it as objects. So in that respect, that's the realm of reason and it's not intuition. left-brain thinking reason. I think that's where Buddhism is very important. Well, I think there are two things.

[28:41]

I think that some people believe the word intuit comes from to put together. And the other is that... I don't know, maybe this is following up on what you just said, but I think one of my favorite journals, I don't think it's in... was in Japanese, a scientific journal, a naturalist journal. And in it, they studied monkeys on an island in Japan. And there was a monastery on this island, and they used the monks to observe the monkeys. And what they came up with was totally different than any Western idea. at all of what monkeys were like and what their, I keep saying monkeys now, but they saw them rather than as laboratory objects, and my father used to experiment on monkeys, or as people in zoos, they really looked at these monkeys and they began to see things

[29:58]

The most amazing things, and one of the things they found out, that is, a teacher has always been amazing to me, is that the children spread the culture. And a mother would teach something to their child, and the child would teach it to another monkey child, and that monkey child would teach it. And one of the things they found is that the monks would come down to the river to wash the grain. The cook, Tenzo, would do this. And the monkeys learned to wash their food, and they would bring seeds and things down and put it in the stream as it went down, and then strain the water out with the other hand and wash their food. And the spreading of this was spread through monkey children. But I don't think there's any way that any Western naturalist that I know of would be able the way our science is bound to learn that and I'm not so much sure how much this is an intuition against science or a Western against Eastern certain types of Eastern culture.

[31:11]

So I just whenever I think of this duality between intellect and I always think of that one journal article. The monks probably merged with the life of the monkey, as opposed to staying separate and observing them from the outside. And then in that merging, there's compassion, there's values, everything is included. And yet, I don't know if they really sat down and explained it, everything. Explained everything, you know. That's the other commentary. And the second koan says, don't explain it all. Don't say it all. Say it only halfway.

[32:13]

So all these koans are saying, talking about it halfway. Not really getting down and explaining it to the detail. So it's just an illusion. And I think it's an interesting observation.

[33:57]

It's one that has a lot of meaning for me because I realize how little I know about what things really are. In an effort to try to work with describing what they are. Yes? Would it be fair to say that the effort of science and admitting an inability to define energy. It's just the same experience of someone trying to identify Buddha. It is not reality.

[35:08]

It is not that which we seek. The seeking is the problem. It may be the appropriate uttering, the appropriate definitions may be a little bit too much. but maybe the appropriate expression of that it for that situation. But if you think that that's the only expression, then that's a stuck point. gives the questioner an answer, which is not the final answer, but which moves them on.

[36:26]

And then he discards it. Actually, he gives the opposite answer later. I mentioned earlier, I had several relatives who were terminally ill. And it just occurs to me how they're surrounded with this scientific effort and that there's very little intuitive understanding there. And it's very animating that they're helpful to everyone involved. You need to really tune in to what is it that they're experiencing in that process versus just what's going on with their body. Right. That's a major source of pain. Yes?

[37:30]

I have a very, very, very old membrane. My mother, the day she died, was in the hospital and was complaining of pain. And a very young intern came out in the hallway, very irritated with her. And in a very irritated tone of voice, explained to me that she couldn't possibly be feeling any pain because they cut the vagus nerve to her stomach some months before, in the course of some surgery. And I remember being flooded with just the realization that she was dying, and that the pain was trying to come to terms with that, and that it's a mistake, and that there was no place for her. So dying is this ungraspable dharma.

[38:35]

sometimes rather than described as dying. Yes, I really resonated to your comment about how impenetrable and even irritating the koans can be because I find a terrific level of irritation as these sentences and words and phrases resist my understanding, so much so that I just throw up my hands in despair at even trying. I think, to strike a personal note, my own maybe more than ordinary difficulty is that I spent many years professionally as a technical writer, attempting and succeeding in understanding complicated scientific material, which I would transcribe into plain language.

[39:39]

So usually, my experience throughout my life has been that I can get it. I can just get the reading, get the dictionary, go talk to someone, and I can get it. And then I can say it in my own words. That's what I did so successfully. But this is a whole other kettle of fish. Well, you know, it's because the reason, you know, reason is tied to our ego, right? Say it again? Reason is an ego function, so it's tied to our ego. So we, you know, we have great pride in being able to understand and understanding, you know, and the Zen teachers sort of just, you know, hit you across that pride and you cannot get it. And it's very wounding to our ego. Yes. I had a thought while Dali was speaking about being a technical writer.

[40:43]

Her job was to take things that were complicated, were written in a complicated way to understand, and making them, putting them in simple language. And the thought arose of the Zen teachers. She was saying she has trouble with the language and not getting it. The Zen teachers use simple language. He's trying to make it more complicated, going reverse. That's the technical writing. and presented, that's the non-technical, that's actually the...

[41:47]

But the Zen teachers, it's really interesting stuff because on the one hand they're saying, set all that aside, put all that aside and just go from the guts of your experience and you can grasp reality. On the other hand, the guys and women who are saying this are steeped in a tradition they've done this work. And most of the people I know, I don't know which translation you're using, but people like Eiken Roshi, his life is devoted to studying these things. It doesn't mean just simply It may be simple, but it's not easy.

[43:42]

And yeah, what you're saying is that there's a code to it, and you have to break into the code. I mean, what the textual meaning, so how it refers to all the different Buddhist texts, which there are thousands of them. But then, if you think that way, then you think, well, if I knew all the texts, then I will understand the code and then I will understand the meaning of the code. And then that's not it. Yes, Charlie? The thought occurs to me that there's more to understanding than the word or the idea. There's also understanding through the presence and the example and the action of the teacher. But it's another thing to ask your own teacher a question and experience the way he gives you an answer and experience the way you receive that answer.

[44:44]

In our tradition, it's been one of passing understanding directly from teacher to student Well, the passing, I mean the transmission is based on the practice. Do this practice. Go and do this practice that I also do. That's the transmission. But you have to realize the transmission is actually through doing the same practice and realizing your own nature. It's not through the dialogue between the teacher and the student is just sort of the, you know, the cherries on the cake. Yes? It seems like the essence of science is to come up with models for how things work.

[45:51]

And in a way it seems like including this sentence that I'm using right now as an attempt to draw a diagram and say, this is how this works. Right. So that's giving something to the baby when the baby cries. For us being a baby and we're crying, And we want to understand to soothe our pain, right? Because if we understand something, then we can soothe our pain, because then it makes sense. At least I'm suffering for some reason, right? At least the pain has some meaning, it's not just meaningless. So that's sort of the soothing for our pain, which is Yeah, right, but there's a point in which at one point the teacher gives you something to stop you from crying because of his or her compassion, right?

[47:11]

At some point the teacher will take everything away, you know, and that's no mind, no Buddha. There's no model, you know, it's like you're on your own and you have to I was just following up on what Alan said. I think there's not just a sort of Buddhist technical code, but there's a cultural You sort of mentioned that when you mentioned the language, and I think that you have some spectrum of culture. Explanation by indirection, metaphor, elliptically, is very present in this doping in one context, whereas American culture in the 1990s is very direct and very

[48:25]

states very sort of affirmatively what it's saying in ways that in many cultures would be considered to be almost rude. So you're ending up trying to understand with a 1992 American contextual mind sort of cultural norms containing Buddhist goals, containing some essential all these insights, and to try to get your way to the insight past all of this is a real problem. So to some extent, I think maybe one just has to acknowledge that it's not that it's so difficult to understand because it's so incredibly insightful, but it's so difficult to understand because it's obscured by all these layers of things. So you're saying it's a kind of a culture shock or cultural dissonance. Yeah, I mean this whole way of talking or even, you know, the tensor and the cultural relationships between the tensor, you know, that has a whole meaning that you have to understand to understand what this dialogue is about.

[49:42]

So, you know, maybe sometimes in understanding this we put too much emphasis on the getting it from global as opposed to while still emphasizing that no one verbal description is the truth, that it's multifaceted. But you don't necessarily have to say it in quite such an elliptical way. So I think you're making a similar point to what Alan was saying. More heretic. But it's similar in the sense that it's a question of the difference in culture rather than the it, the what is it, or the it being ungraspable.

[50:43]

But I think like I responded, like I said before, I think there's that. then you would also need to, well, if I knew all the texts, then I would be able to understand it. So I think it's not just culture, code, it's our nature, that there's a level of our nature, or a level of the spectrum of experience, that is this it. And Western civilization has always been the object. But Zen, as a human expression, as an expression of human nature, of Buddha nature, is trying to relate to this thing, this It, directly from the inside.

[51:47]

It's a different way to express something that is not culture-bound. It's part of our nature, and it expresses itself differently in different cultures. And actually, you know, it's also sitting at the very core, in the midst of something very Western, like psychoanalysis, that everybody thinks is about reason. But actually, if you look closely, the really good interpretations of an analyst are really the same thing. They're words, but it's using words to touch something of reality, in our own experience. And that's what's healing. So you see, that's a completely different cultural paradigm, and yet, in a way, it's the same, trying to relate to the same reality. Thank you.

[52:50]

our numbers.

[52:56]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ