Alan Watts - Eastern and Western Zen II

===== Eastern And Western Zen II - 01 - Introduction To Zen =====

I suppose most of you have heard of Zen, but before going on to explain any details about it, I want to make one thing absolutely clear.

I am not a Zen Buddhist. I am not advocating Zen Buddhism. I am not trying to convert anyone to it.

I have nothing to sell. I am an entertainer.

That is to say, in the same sense, that when you go to a concert and you listen to someone play Mozart, he has nothing to sell except the sound of the music.

He doesn't want to convert you to anything. He doesn't want you to join an organization in favor of Mozart's music as opposed to, say, Beethoven's.

And I approach you in the same spirit as a musician with his piano or violinist with his violin.

I just want you to enjoy a point of view which I enjoy.

Now then, when that's been said, and I hope it's put your minds at rest, let me give you, first of all, some simple historical information.

Zen, Zen is a form of Buddhism.

It originated in China about 500 A.D.

And about 1200 A.D. it migrated to Japan, where it exists today.

And it is a form, it's a way of life that has had an immense influence on the arts and on the culture, the poetry and architecture of the Far East.

It has lately become of enormous interest to many people in other parts of the world.

Now, normally, when one talks about Buddhism, and Zen is a form of Buddhism, it is supposed that you're talking about a religion.

And people are apt to classify themselves as Buddhists, as they might say, I am a Catholic, or a Methodist, or a Baptist, or an Episcopalian, or a Jew.

But that is rather misleading.

Buddhism is not a religion in that sense.

If we want to find an equivalent to Buddhism in our society today in the West, probably the nearest thing to it is psychotherapy.

When a person goes to a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst to work out a serious personal problem, not because he's just nutty,

I mean, not necessarily because he has hallucination or excessive singing in the ears with no clear physical origin,

but when a person feels that his whole life is somehow disoriented and wrong,

and he doesn't go to the preacher because the preacher only moralizes to him and says,

my man, you should have more faith in God or something.

So he goes instead to a doctor because in our day, a man with the tag of science on him has more prestige than a man who has the tag of religion.

And so when a psychiatrist goes to work on you, his objective is more or less to change your state of consciousness.

That is to say, if your state of consciousness, your state of mind, is one of being day after day constantly depressed,

the objective of going to a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist is to have your state of consciousness changed to one of happiness.

Now, in a somewhat similar way, the objective of Buddhism in all its forms is to bring about a fundamental change

change in a human being's everyday state of consciousness.

If I make it yet more specific, it's to bring about a change in your sense of personal identity,

that is to say, in your sensation of who and what you are.

And in this way, Buddhism, which I suppose you know, is a method of changing consciousness,

discovered or invented by a man called Gotama, who lived in India shortly after 600 BC,

who was given the title Buddha because the word means the awakened one,

the man who woke up.

And therefore, that very title suggests that ordinary people are asleep.

I remember a very wise man who used to give lectures like this.

And when he came in, he used to be silent and he would look at the audience

and he had gazed at everybody in the audience particularly for a long time

and everybody would begin feeling vaguely embarrassed.

And when he'd gazed at them for a long time, he'd say,

Wake up!

You're all asleep.

And if you don't wake up, I won't give any lecture.

Now, in what sense are we asleep?

The Buddhist would say that almost all human beings have a phony sense of identity,

a delusion, a hallucination as to who they are.

Now, I'm terribly interested in this problem of identity.

And I try and find out what people mean when they say the word I.

I think this is one of the most fascinating questions.

Who do you think you are?

Now, what seems to develop is this.

Most people think that I is a center of sensitivity somewhere inside their skin.

And the majority of people feel that it's in their heads.

Civilizations in different periods of history have differed about this.

Some people feel that they exist in the solar plexus.

Other people feel that they exist about here.

But in American culture today, or in the Western culture in general,

most people feel that they exist in here.

And there is, as it were, a little man sitting inside the center of the skull.

And he has a television screen in front of him,

which gives him all messages from the eyeballs.

He has earphones on, and that gives him all messages from the ears.

And he has in front of him a control panel with various dials and buttons and things

which enable him to influence the arms and legs

and to get all sorts of information from the nerve ends.

And that's you.

So we say in popular speech,

I have a body.

Not I am a body, but I have one,

because I am the owner of the body in the same way as I own an automobile.

And I can take the automobile to the mechanic,

and occasionally in the same way I have to take my body

to the mechanic, the surgeon, the dentist, the doctor,

and have it repaired.

But it belongs to me.

It goes along with me.

I'm in it.

A child, for example, can ask mother,

Mom, who would I have been

if my father had been someone else?

That seems a perfectly simple and logical question for a child to ask.

Because of the presumption that

your parents gave you your body

and you were popped into it,

maybe at the moment of conception

or maybe at the moment of birth,

from a repository of souls in heaven,

and your parents simply provided the physical vehicle.

So that age-long idea that is indigenous,

especially to the Western world,

is that I am something inside a body,

and I am not quite sure whether I am or am not my body.

Some doubt about it.

I say I think.

I walk.

I talk.

But I don't say I beat my heart.

I don't say I shape my bones.

I don't say I grow my hair.

I feel that my heart beating,

my hair growing,

my bone shaping

is something that happens to me.

And I don't know how it's done.

But other things I do.

And next,

I feel quite surely

that everything outside my body

is quite definitely not me.

There are two kinds of things outside my body.

Number one is other people.

And they're the same sort of thing as I am.

But also, they're all little men

locked up inside their skins.

And they're intelligent.

They have feelings and values.

And are capable of love and virtue.

But number two

is the world that's non-human

that we call nature.

And that's stupid.

It has no mind.

It has emotions, maybe, and animals.

But on the whole,

it's a pretty grim business.

Dog eat dog.

And when it gets to the geological level,

it's as dumb as dumb can be.

It's a mechanism.

And there's an awful lot of it.

And that's what we live in the middle of.

And the purpose of being human

is, we feel,

to subjugate nature.

To make it obey our will.

And we arrived here.

We don't feel that we belong in this world.

It's foreign to us.

In the words of the poet

Haussman,

I, a stranger and afraid

in a world I never made.

And so, all around us today,

we see the signs of man's battle with nature.

I'm living at the moment

in a marvelous house

in the Hollywood Hills.

And we are overlooking a lake.

And on the other side of the lake,

the whole hill

has suddenly been interrupted

with a ghastly gash

where they have made level lots

for building tract homes

of the kind you would build

on a flat plain.

This is called

the conquest of nature.

These houses will eventually

fall down the hill

because they are causing soil erosion

and they're being maximally stupid.

The proper way to build a house

on a hillside

is to do it in such a way

as to effect

the minimum interference

with the nature of the hill.

After all,

the whole point of living in the hills

is to live in the hills.

There's no point

in converting the hills

into something flat

and then going and living there.

You can do that already

on the ground.

So people,

the more people live in the hills,

the more they spoil the hills

and they're just the same

as people living on the flat ground.

I mean, how stupid can you get?

Well, anyway,

this is one of the symptoms

of our phony sense of identity,

of our phony feeling

that we are something lonely,

locked up in a bag of skin,

confronted with a world,

an external, alien, foreign world

that is not me.

Now, according to certain

of these great ancient philosophies

like Buddhism,

this sensation of being

a separate, lonely individual

is a hallucination.

It's a hallucination

brought about

by various causes,

the way we are brought up,

being the chief of them,

of course.

I remember as a child,

and you probably have

very similar memories to mine,

that all our parents

were desperately interested

in identifying us.

Don't you remember

that sometimes you went out

and played with other children,

and there was someone

in the group of other children

you admired and look up to,

and you came home

imitating the mannerisms

of that other child.

And your mother said to you,

Johnny, Johnny,

that's not you,

that's Peter.

And you felt a little bit ashamed,

because somehow

you would let her down.

She wanted you to be you,

her child,

and not Mrs. Jones' child,

Peter.

And so, in many ways,

we are all taught this.

For example,

the main thing

that we are all taught

in childhood

is that you must do

that which will only be appreciated

if you do it voluntarily.

Now, darling,

a dutiful child

must love its mother.

But now,

I don't want you to do it

because I say so,

but because you really want to.

Or,

you must be free.

See, this comes into politics.

Everybody must vote.

You see, imagine,

you're members of a democracy.

And you must be members of a democracy.

See, you're ordered to.

Crazy.

Also,

thou shalt love the Lord thy God.

Is that a commandment or a joke?

You know,

if you suggest that the Lord is joking,

most people in our culture are offended

because they have a very moronic conception of God

as a person totally devoid of humor.

But the Lord is highly capable of joking

because joking is one of the most constructive things you can do.

So,

when you are told

who you are

and that you must be free,

furthermore,

that you must survive,

you must go on living,

and that becomes a kind of compulsion,

you get mixed up.

It's very simple.

Of course you get mixed up.

If you think you must do something

which will only be the thing required of you

if you do it freely,

these are the sort of influences, then,

that cause human beings all over the world

to feel isolated,

to feel that they are centers of awareness

locked up in bags of skin.

Now, this sensation of our identity

can be shown and demonstrated to be false.

by some of the disciplines of our own science.

When we describe a human being

or any other living organism

from a scientific point of view,

all that means is that we're describing it carefully.

We are going to describe very carefully

what a human being is

and what a human being does.

All right.

And we find that as we go on with that description,

we can't describe the human being

without describing the environment.

We can't say what a human being is doing

without also saying

what the world around him is doing.

Just imagine for a moment

that you couldn't see anything up here except me.

You couldn't see the curtains behind me.

You couldn't see the stage.

You couldn't see the microphone.

You could only see me.

That was all you could see.

What would you be looking at?

You wouldn't see me at all

because you wouldn't see my edges.

And my edges are rather important

for seeing me.

My edges would be identical

with the edge of your eyesight

with that vague oval curve

which is the field of vision.

And what you would be looking at

would be my necktie,

my nose,

my eyes,

and so on.

But you wouldn't see my edges.

So you'd be confronted

with a very strange monster

and you wouldn't know

it was a human being.

Because to see me

you need to see my background.

And therein lies a clue

of which we are mostly ignorant.

In Buddhist theory,

the cause of our phony sense of identity

is called avidya

and that means ignorance.

Although it's better to pronounce it

ignorance,

the having a deluded sense of identity

is the result of ignoring certain things.

So when you look at me

and I manage by behaving up here

in a kind of a more or less interesting way,

I cause you to ignore my background

because I concentrate attention on me.

Just like a conjurer,

a stage magician,

in order to perform his tricks

misdirects your attention.

He talks to you about something

he's doing here

and he talks to you about his fingers

and how empty they are

and he can pull something out of his pocket

in plain sight

and you don't notice it.

And so a magic happens.

That's ignorance.

Selective attention.

Focusing your consciousness

on one thing

to the exclusion

of many other things.

So in this way,

we concentrate on the things,

the figures,

and we ignore,

we don't concentrate

on the background.

And so we come to think

that the figure

exists independently

of the background.

But actually,

they go together.

And they go together

just as inseparably

as backs go with fronts,

as positives go with negatives,

as ups go with downs,

and as life goes with death.

You can't separate it.

So there's a sort

of secret conspiracy

between the figure

and the background.

They are really one,

but they look different.

They need each other

just as male needs female

and vice versa.

But we are ordinarily

completely unaware of this.

So then,

when the scientist

starts paying attention

to behavior of people

and things carefully,

he discovers

that they go together

that the behavior

of the organism

is inseparable

from the behavior

of its environment.

So, you see,

if I'm to describe

what I am doing,

what am I doing?

Am I just waving my legs

back and forth?

No.

I'm walking.

And in order

to speak about walking,

you have to speak about

the space

in which I am walking,

about the floor.

About the direction,

left or right,

in relation to what kind

of room,

what kind of stage,

what kind of situation.

Because if, obviously,

if there isn't a ground

underneath me,

I can't very well walk.

So the description

of what I am doing

involves the description

of the world.

And so the biologist

comes to say

that what he is describing

is no longer

merely the organism

and its behavior.

He is describing

a field

which he now calls

the organism

hyphen environment.

And that field

is what

the individual

actually is.

Now this is very

clearly recognized

in all sorts

of sciences.

But the average

individual,

and indeed

the average scientist,

does not

feel

in a way

that corresponds

to his theory.

He still feels

as if he were

a center

of sensitivity

locked up

inside a bag

of skin.

The object

of Buddhist

discipline

or

methods

of

psychological

training

is, as it were,

to turn

that feeling

inside out.

To bring about

a state of affairs

in which

the individual

feels himself

to be

everything

that there

is,

the whole

cosmos,

focused,

expressing

itself

here.

And you,

as the whole

cosmos,

expressing

itself

there and

so on.

That what,

in other words,

the reality

of myself

fundamentally

is,

not something

inside my

skin,

but everything,

and I mean

everything,

outside my

skin,

but doing

what is my

skin and

inside it.

I mean,

imagine that

every one of

us,

look,

in the same

way that the

sea,

when the

ocean,

has a wave

on it.

The wave

is not

separate from

the ocean,

is it?

Every wave

on the ocean

is the whole

ocean waving.

The ocean

waves and it

says,

yo-hoo,

I'm here,

see?

But I do,

I can wave

all over the

place.

I can wave

in many different

ways.

I can wave

this way

and wave

that way.

So,

the ocean

of being

waves every

one of us

and we

are its

waves.

But the

wave is

fundamentally

the ocean.

Now,

in that

way,

your sense

of identity

would be

turned inside

out.

You wouldn't

forget who

you were,

you wouldn't

forget your

name and

address,

your telephone

number,

your social

security

number,

and what

sort of

role you're

supposed to

occupy in

society.

But you

would know

that this

particular role

that you play,

this particular

personality that

you are,

is superficial

and the real

you is all

that there is.

===== Early Chinese Zen =====

This is Audible. Electronic University presents Early Chinese Zen 1 with Alan Watts.

One of the things that is a really interesting problem is just why Zen has become so fascinating to many people in the West.

Well, it's due very largely to the way in which certain people have presented Zen to the West, notably Suzuki and R. H. Blythe.

They have made a great use of the Zen story or the anecdotes.

There is a book of Zen anecdotes, these conversations between the masters and their students.

They are called Mondo or question/answer.

There is a book which is called the Mumontan and it's just a collection of stories.

And I remember a friend of mine in England when this was first in circulation, getting this book when he was in the hospital.

And he said, "I don't understand it at all, but it's cheered me up immensely."

So the typical sort of Zen story where the student asks the teacher a question, "What is the fundamental meaning of Buddhism?"

And the master says, "Wait around until there is no one here and I'll tell you."

So later the student says to him, "Now there is nobody around, Master, what is it?"

And he takes him out into the garden and he points at the bamboos.

And the student says, "I don't understand."

"Wait around until there is no one here and I'll tell you."

So later the student says to him, "Now there is nobody around, Master, what is it?"

And he takes him out into the garden and he points at the bamboos.

And the student says, "I don't understand."

And the master says, "What a long bamboo that one is, what a short one that one is."

And this is a very, very straight story, you see.

This is saying exactly what it's about in the plainest language.

Only people overlook it.

You know when something is right under your nose and you can't see it,

and you go looking over there, there, there, there, there, and you're carrying it, you see, it's like that.

And so Suzuki has explained that that's the way it is.

That once when Saburo Hasegawa, who was a great Japanese painter,

was at a dinner party here in San Francisco, somebody asked him,

"What about understanding Zen? How long does it take?"

He said, "It might take you 30 years, it might take you 3 minutes. I mean that."

So you see the element of fascination?

That it's right under your nose, you're looking right at it, you see.

It's like you do get sort of strangely puzzled when you've lost something

and somebody's kidding you, they're not pointing it out to you, but they say, "Why don't you see it?"

It's right there.

And you can't for the life of you, I mean it's far more interesting,

that sort of situation than something that's really difficult to find.

In a way you'd have to go digging under the floor, I mean if someone,

if a treasure were concealed in the walls of this ferry boat,

you know, you'd have to go digging through the walls and looking for all sorts of things.

But here is the treasure concealed in full view, and concealed by being in full view,

but in a place that's too obvious to look.

So that's the flavour of Zen, and that's why it becomes so fascinating.

Also, there are other elements in it that, it has a humour to it, which is peculiarly Chinese.

I don't think the Japanese have quite the humour in their Zen that the Chinese had.

And because, you see, this humour comes from Taoism.

You know, say the writings of Zhuangzi, who was the great Taoist philosopher who lived shortly after 300 BC.

He's the only really great humorous philosopher.

And that flavour has passed on into Zen.

Also, Zen is something experiential. You're not required to believe in anything.

It doesn't have any doctrines.

It entirely consists in a state of consciousness.

Awakened consciousness.

So as if I were to say to you, if you were puzzled about some, you know,

what Tillich calls "concerned" about being,

what is this thing, life?

Why are we here?

Why is it suffering?

Why do all these creatures multiply in different ways and shapes?

Why are there ducks? Why are there trees?

Why are there snails, clams, people, all that?

For heaven's sakes, why?

And why do they come and go, and what happens to them when they go?

We all want to know that.

So that's the kind of concern.

And Zen answers this, not with an idea, but with a changed state of consciousness.

What is it all about?

It's like asking, what's the pit in the middle of an onion?

And you take off all the skins and so on and so on and so on,

and suddenly you find you've got a litter of skins and no pit.

There wasn't anything in it.

And you might say, well, it's a hoax.

It's a...

The light of the deception.

A tale told by an idiot.

And yet,

what you had missed

in looking for the pit

were the beautiful skins.

See, that's the edible part of the onion.

Whereas you may peel a potato,

the onion is all skin.

But, excellent.

Now, what one has done under these circumstances

is you have missed the point by being too eager.

You have therefore overlooked what was obvious.

And so, problems are made about the nature of the universe

by asking the wrong questions.

Is there something important here?

Well, yes, we say there are certain things that are more important than others.

We've agreed among ourselves, because we are people,

that we are more important than seagulls.

And the seagulls have agreed among themselves that they're more important than people.

And they recognize their kind,

and they pick out in life all the things that are significant to their needs

as we pick out the things that are significant to our needs.

We say, "Now that's the thing that really must happen."

But actually, nothing must happen.

It just happens.

And that's called "thusness" or "suchness."

And so, then it's concerned

that the whole nature of Zen

is to get you back to seeing the suchness of things.

It's a process of unhypnotizing you.

Now, when you see you have picked out things in the world

that are the important things, the significant things,

in other words, the things,

a thing is a name for something you think about.

All things are units of thought,

like an inch is a unit of measurement,

or an ounce is a unit of weight.

A thing is a unit of thought.

It's a think.

And so, when you say you can only think of one thing at a time,

you can only think one thing at a time.

That's what it's saying.

Because actually, you say, "Think of a thing, think of a tape recorder."

How many things is a tape recorder?

You know, it's a mass of stuff.

A human body, likewise.

But, when that predicament is foisted on you,

and you have divided life into all these things,

then you are under the delusion that the world

is all separated and disjointed,

and that you are only something in the world.

You forget by doing that,

that you are, that your physical organism,

let me put it this way,

is something that the whole cosmos is doing.

The real you is all that there is.

The whole works.

There's no real separation.

I mean, when I say there's no separation,

don't imagine that I'm saying

that there aren't any skins,

there aren't any outlines,

there aren't any surfaces or lines.

Yes, of course there are.

But, the basic lesson in metaphysics

is that for every inside there is an outside.

That's really all you need to know.

Once you really understand that, you've mastered all philosophy.

That the inside and the outside go together.

People think that I'm in the inside,

and you're on the outside.

But where would my inside be without the outside?

See, imagine a bottle

which has an inside but no outside.

It won't work.

There's no such thing.

Imagine an object

with no external space around it.

It couldn't exist.

So the space and the object go together.

Just in the same way as your front and your back go together.

And that's it.

Only, you see, we're taught by

pointing out what things are important and what are not,

to ignore that.

So, ignoring it is in Sanskrit,

ignorance, avidya.

And the Buddhists say,

avidya is the beginning of the trouble.

You just ignore

how the inside and the outside go together.

So,

the work of Zen

is to get people unhypnotized

by this sort of thing,

back to the point

where they started in babyhood,

but they never cultivated it,

because they were developed along other lines.

It's called to regain one's original pleasure

that you received from your father and mother.

Or what is sometimes called to get the unborn mind.

That's a curious phrase,

the mind that didn't arise.

That is to say,

what you are fundamentally,

as distinct from what you pop up and declare yourself to be.

Imagine, for example,

a big sow with many tips on it.

All these are passages to a central source of milk.

And so, they unite together under the surface.

Well, in the same sort of a way,

you see, we are all united like that.

We are channels

through which it is happening.

Only,

we are sensitive only on the tip of the nipple.

All our concentration is there at that point.

And so we've lost the realization of being the whole thing.

That happened very, very early in our infancy.

Now, when you get it back,

you don't become incapacitated.

In other words, it isn't as if you lost

the sensation

and the comprehension

of what we call the different things and events in the world,

their names, their places,

all that sort of practical knowledge.

The knowledge, in other words, that is

helpful for survival.

You don't lose that.

But you see all these separate things

and people and events

in a new context.

You might say against a new background

in which you see that they're all one.

Or if I'm going to get very, very technical, as the Indian logicians like to,

you would say they are non-dual.

Because the word "one" is still a dual word.

It has an opposite.

"One" is opposed to "many" or to "none."

Whereas this "whatever it is"

that we're all on

doesn't have an opposite,

because it's everything.

So the word "one" isn't quite the right word for it.

So they use the word "non-dual,"

which is a kind of a fancy word.

They use it...

I mean, "non-dual" is, of course, the opposite of "dual."

But they have a convention about it.

Imagine

when you draw on a flat surface

and you want to represent the third dimension of depth.

You do it

still using lines on the flat surface,

but by a convention that we all agree on,

certain slanting lines indicate

this dimension.

And we all know that.

So in the same way in Indian philosophy,

certain words are used

to designate a dimension

not in our ordinary way of thinking.

Our ordinary way of thinking is either this or that.

We think in dualities.

And that may have something to do with the fact that our brain has two sides,

and we have two eyes, two ears, and so on, two nostrils.

This, and the way our ribs are formed,

growing out of a spine, and two legs, and two arms,

probably that structure is connected with the way we think.

Either this or that.

Will you have what's in the left hand, or will you have what's in the right?

And...

So, we can't talk about,

we can't say anything sensible

about everything,

about the universe.

Because we can't find something that's not the universe, you see.

So, then what we do is we take a dualistic word and say,

"It is to be understood that this word refers

to what is beyond all dualistic ideas."

If you look at it this way,

in order to make a word mean something,

I have to be able

to say what is excluded

from the meaning of this word.

It's like a box.

If the box is there,

there must be what's inside the box,

and there must be what's outside the box.

Now, I want to talk to you about a box,

which is the ultimate box.

The class of all classes, as logicians say.

And there isn't anything outside it.

Everything is in this box.

Well, a logician would say, "That's absurd.

There could be no such box. It wouldn't be a box.

Unless you can show me that it has an outside.

I'm sorry."

Well, I'm going to get clever with this fellow.

I'm going to say, "Yeah, I...

My box has an outside.

And the outside and the inside, however, go together.

Actually, the box I have here

is constructed in a peculiar way.

You know what a Möbius strip is, don't you?

You take a strip of paper,

you twist it once, and you join the two ends

to have a continuous strip.

Now, this has a very strange property.

It has only one side and only one edge.

You can hold that strip of paper between your fingers

and say, "Well, look here.

I've got one finger on one side and one on the other.

This basically has two sides."

Say, "Wait a minute.

Take a pencil, a bright red pencil,

and run it along that so-called one side

that you think you have there, and keep going.

And you will find, when you have followed the pencil

back to the place where you started,

that you never took it off the paper

to go around to the other side.

In the same way, you run your finger along one edge of it,

and you keep running, and you'll get back to the point

where you started from.

And you will have covered the whole thing, both sides.

Both edges.

Now, just put that now into three dimensions

instead of two.

And you have what's called a Klein bottle.

I think somewhere around the house, I'll dig it out,

we have the Life magazine book on mathematics,

and it has a beautiful drawing of a Klein bottle in it.

That has the same property in three dimensions.

Now, imagine a world which has the same property

in four dimensions.

And you've got something like what our universe is.

It's outside, it's the same as it's inside.

Crazy.

And you see, it's difficult to talk about that

in the kind of language that we have.

Just in the same way, mathematicians,

especially in mathematics applied in physics,

have ideas which they can express in their formulae,

but which they can't talk,

they can't tell the layman about it.

Because in order to instruct the layman

as to the meaning of these concepts,

they have to put them into our ordinary

three-dimensional sensory images,

and they always distorted.

So you see, the view,

that's why it said that Zen cannot be explained in words.

Although it is, in a way, explained very clearly in words,

in all these little stories.

Nevertheless, these stories are not intelligible

until you have what I can only call

a new dimension of consciousness.

You see, a lot of people don't really have depth perceptions.

They would look at the moon and see it as a disk.

They don't see a ball.

In the same way, a lot of people are tone deaf.

They hear noises but never hear tunes.

It's something like that.

Suddenly one day you say, "Good heavens, the moon's a ball."

Or you suddenly become alive to what it is that people dig in music.

So in just that sort of way,

you can become suddenly alive to,

I'll just call it, the oneness of everything that's going on.

And you see that that's all you,

and you are eternal.

You're what there is.

And there's nothing to be afraid of.

Because we're coming and going,

we go through a whole spectrum of feelings,

from the most rapturous pleasures to the most ghastly agonies.

And it's all as insubstantial as weaving smoke.

And just go!

You know, just get with it and go!

And then you have the basic understanding of Zen.

Now, all that I've said thus far

is simple introduction to what Zen is about.

This way of understanding things

arose independently in both India and China.

In India, in what we call the tradition of the Upanishads,

in Vedanta and Yoga and so on.

Then in Buddhism.

In China, in the form of Taoism.

And they reached each other eventually.

And the confluence of the Buddhist and the Taoist traditions

came to be Zen.

And this, the formation of Zen, really began in about 415 AD in China.

With the students of a great Hindu monk, Kumarajiva.

And in the following 200 years, 300 years,

it slowly took form and took form

until a very remarkable man by the name of Huineng,

H-U-I-N-E-N-G,

who died in 713 AD,

the man who put it on the map.

Who, as it were, brought all the threads together

and could be called the real founder of Chinese Zen.

Now, we're going to, in the course of this seminar,

we're going to look at the work of Huineng.

But I want first, before we look at him,

at some of the earlier people, especially Sun Tzung.

Sun Tzung was a couple of generations before Huineng,

spiritual generations, that is, master pupils of him.

Who wrote the most succinct summary of Zen that exists,

which is called the Xin Xin Ming.

That is to say, the treatise on trust in the mind.

Mind with a capital M, which means many things.

Mind is used in Zen.

They use the word Xin.

And when a Chinese says Xin, he points here.

Kokoro in Japanese means the heart mind.

The psychic center of gravity.

But it means mind in a much wider sense than that.

It means mind in the sense of, do you mind?

Mind out.

And it also means mind in the sense of space.

Everything that we see is on the mind.

Like the sound of the radio is on the diaphragm of a loudspeaker.

It's a very wide sense of the word.

This morning I simply tried to give you a general survey

of what Zen is about by way of being an introduction.

And I was discussing the peculiar reasons for the interest in Zen in the West.

Stressing the extraordinary way in which

the sort of now you see it, now you don't

implication of Zen literature has fired people's imagination and curiosity.

The feeling there is a new vision of the world

in the aspect of its unity as distinct from our ordinary vision of the world

in the aspect of its multiplicity and broken upness, fallen apartness.

And that this is something that you might somehow suddenly catch at any minute.

It isn't that Zen is an easy thing or that it's a difficult thing.

It might be either.

And it exercises this peculiar fascination by saying

that the vision of the world in its unity is terribly obvious.

It's right under your nose.

Only you are looking too hard in the wrong place so you don't see it.

And so this is always the same puzzle as if I said to you

if you came here, you know, and said well we want some philosophical enlightenment or whatever

and I looked at you in a funny way and said

but you've forgotten something.

You know, as if you hadn't got your pants on or something.

What have you forgotten?

You know?

Who do you think you are anyhow?

Oh, you say, I'm just me.

Oh, now come on. Don't give me that line.

Well, what do you mean? I'm just poor little me.

Oh, nuts.

Don't put on that act.

And essentially, you see, it's that kind of upaya which a Zen teacher uses.

Upaya is a Sanskrit word meaning

pedagogical techniques in spiritual disciplines.

In politics it means cunning.

But in the vocabulary of Buddhism or Hinduism

it means the expert cunning

used by a teacher to surprise and trick his students out of their ego-centricity.

And then, therefore, in all these koans, dialogues, rough Zazen practices and so on

it's all upaya.

It's a colossal hoax, but a very beneficent one.

Well,

true Zen came to birth in China

as a result of a sort of interplay

between Buddhism and Taoism.

Now, both the Confucians and the Taoists

on, although there's a certain puritanism in Confucian ethics

they all believe in the physical world as a good thing.

The Taoist loves nature, the Confucian is particular about parents and family and all that jazz.

The Buddhists of India, on the other hand, tended, very often, to be anti-physical.

I mean, in other words, to be celibate, to be interested in getting out of this state of consciousness

in which the world appears to us in its multiplicity.

The Chinese never could get on with that.

They didn't see any sense in that Indian attitude.

So when Buddhism came to China, the Chinese did a flip of it.

And they wanted a kind of Buddhism which, although it was sort of monastic in the Indian tradition,

was not monastic in the way that it is in India, or in Burma, Sulaiman.

Buddhism for the Chinese is, to some extent, a thing which you go into for a time

and you retain enlightenment.

Then you can come back, as it were, and do anything you want.

You can have family, you can be a tramp, you can just play it any way.

But they feel, with the whole tone of the Mahayana type of Buddhism, even in India,

is that once enlightened you ought to come back.

So the situation of a Buddhist monk in the Far East is, generally speaking,

that he's not quite like a monk as we understand monks in the West.

Monks in the West take life vows.

They vow poverty, chastity and obedience until they die.

But in the Far East, a Buddhist monk may go into the discipline for a number of years

and then return to lay life with no bad feelings.

In fact, he may be considered a considerable success in having done so.

So, that kind of trend in the Confucian and the Taoist attitudes,

when it coalesces with Indian Buddhism,

produces something very different from anything you find in India.

And then, uniquely and outstandingly, represents this sort of attitude.

I have to explain this by telling a sort of a modern anecdote.

Joseph Campbell, who is, as you know, the editor of all the works of Heinrich Zimmer,

and actually wrote them himself, out of Zimmer's notes, went to India.

And he went to the greatest living guru in India today, who is an expoliceman,

and said to him,

"The sutras say that all things are Brahman.

Isn't this also true of the illusion of the Maya?

Isn't that the way we feel every day, and just ordinary kind of human beings?

Isn't that the Brahman too?"

And this man said, "You know, it's interesting.

That was the first question I asked my teacher."

And he said, "Of course, they are."

"Well," Joseph said, "nobody in India teaches that anymore."

So, the guru took Joseph downstairs to all his students,

and said, "I want you to meet a great Rishi sage from America.

He really has found it, and you should...

He will now give you a lecture or something. I don't know what happened."

In other words, the Hindu tends to say,

"Yes, in fact, all this world that you see now before your eyes

is the divine, ultimate, non-dual reality.

But of course, you have to find out what it is.

And when you do, it will disappear.

You will go into what they call Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

That means, technically, it means being in a state of Samadhi without having concepts.

But they mean something else by it.

They mean as if all the shapes that you saw before you were suddenly to dim out.

And instead, there is nothing but light.

Maybe this light is slightly violet, but I don't know.

Anyway, every kind of sensual experience disappears.

Now then, the way in which you have to argue this with a Hindu Swami who takes this line,

is to say that your position is still dualistic.

Because you've moved from the vision of form to the formless vision.

This is just changing places. This is not liberation.

It's somewhere else on the wheel.

And you know they have to admit it.

And I once had an argument with a Swami,

in which I brought up a point we were discussing this morning.

He was referring to the Brahman, the ultimate reality, as the One.

As Oneness has distinct multiplicity.

I said, "Ah, ah, ah, ah, Oneness has an opposite, and the Brahman has no opposite."

And what do you think he said? He said, "You argue just like a Hindu."

Well, he knew very well. I mean, he was using loose language, as we all do.

So, this was the thing, you see, historically, in the development of Indian philosophy

that took place between about 100 and 400 AD.

That they faced the fact that looking for a state of consciousness

that's radically different from this state now, is just an escape.

It hasn't really come to terms with the problem.

The problem is, you see, that the state of consciousness you're in now,

however loused up it may be, is in Hindu language the play of Vishnu.

You are all Vishnu playing that you're in this mess, which is the part of the cosmic dance.

So, if that's the case, dig it, you see. I mean, get with it. Be that.

So, the Chinese caught on to this.

And when, you could say, this very moment, this very world, this very body, is the point.

Now. But if you see you're seeking something beyond all the time, you never get with it.

You're never here. So, they saw that very clearly.

So, this man, Sun Tzung, who I was talking about at the end of this morning's session,

who is one of the first, I would say, really articulate people about Zen,

who wrote the "Chin Chin Ming",

he starts out by saying,

"The great Tao, or the perfect Tao, is without difficulty,

except that it avoids picking and choosing.

Only when you neither love nor hate does it appear in all clarity.

A hair's breadth of deviation from it, and a deep gulf is set between heaven and earth.

If you want to get hold of what it looks like, do not be anti or pro anything.

The conflict of longing and loathing, this is the disease of the mind."

Okay, now, if you take that quite literally,

if you try to avoid picking and choosing, that's another kind of choice, isn't it?

If you say, "I ought not to love anything, I ought not to hate anything,

I ought not to take any extreme attitudes," you're still choosing.

If I say, in psychological jargon, for psychiatric health, "You ought to accept yourself."

You know? Accept everything that happens.

Well, among the things that happen is the very concrete fact that there are things you don't accept,

and that you can't accept. So you have to accept that.

Now, do you see what this does?

It's a very interesting technique.

It's saying that you are, each one, a Buddha, enlightened, even before you've accepted yourself.

You see, you don't have to do anything about it.

But it's terribly difficult for human beings to resist the temptation to do something about it.

So it says, "Okay, do that."

If you want to practice yoga and meditation, go ahead.

If you feel that would make you better, do it.

But the point is that there's really nothing to do, and there's nothing not to do either.

You won't get this by sort of acting spontaneous in a phony way, but you can do that if you want to do.

But you're it right where you stand, without making a single move.

And that's what's meant, you see, profoundly, by avoiding picking and choosing.

Actually, there's nothing you can do about it.

You may get the illusion that your picking and choosing makes a real difference,

that your choices really do change the nature of things, but they don't.

And so, so long as you want to hang on to that illusion and play it, there you are.

But actually, you are, as you live and all sit around this room at the moment,

in the various stages of what you may consider subjectively to be goodness and badness, sickness and health,

sanity and insanity.

Every one of you is as much a splendid accomplishment as the shape of the clouds.

And that's natural.

You know, with all the funny hairdos and artificiality and everything.

We're all like the birds.

Only we have a complicated way of pretending that we aren't, so that we figure out we're something special.

And that's it too, you see.

But, it is a tough job getting anybody to see that.

So, what do they do?

They have all these techniques, and they put you through the mill,

because people won't accept this vision until they feel they've paid for it.

Until they feel, they finally discover, after an enormous effort,

like the student I told you about this morning, there isn't anything to realize.

It really is fantastic.

See, so all this is very direct and simple.

So, not picking and choosing doesn't mean that you have to cultivate being detached.

You can try that, sure.

But then you find you're terribly attached to your non-attachment.

Like you're proud of your humility, or something like that.

And it just goes round and round and round.

So, you know, come unstuck!

Well, you always were unstuck, because you're in the flow.

And nothing is stuck.

It all is changing, changing, changing.

One is nothing but a flow of change.

There isn't anything to hang on to.

Nobody to hang on to it.

You know, here is a decaying hand grasping at smoke.

It's all falling apart.

And there's nothing anybody can do about it,

because what anybody is who perhaps could do something about it,

that is falling apart too.

It's what's meant by the doctrine of Anantama.

There is no, the Buddhist idea that there is no permanent self,

because it's all falling apart.

So, cheer up, you know, it's great!

So, not knowing the profound meaning of things,

we disturb our original peace of mind to no purpose.

Original peace of mind is what I was referring to as the child's,

the infant's, the baby's fundamental knowledge of the unity of the world.

The oceanic feeling, as Freud calls it.

Perfect like great space, the Tao lacks nothing and has nothing in excess.

Truly, because of our accepting and rejecting,

we don't get the suchness of things.

You see, I explained suchness this morning.

How it's the way everything is just like that.

But we pick out some things as significant and other things as not significant.

And this prevents us from seeing that all the insignificant things are in a way significant,

and all the significant things are in a way insignificant.

See, that I go on living is for me significant,

until I don't anymore.

But that means I'm going to run around, busy, busy, busy, talk a lot, and work, and eat,

and entertain, and do this, that, and the other, and it's a great dance.

Actually, it has no more ultimate meaning than somebody sitting and going,

One Zen master said, "From the bathtub to the bathtub I have uttered stuff and nonsense."

That was his death verse.

The bathtub in which the baby is washed at birth, the bathtub in which the corpse is washed before burial.

All the time he's been talking nonsense.

And so all these birds are going around, (gibberish)

and all these human beings are making this great hullabaloo and building houses and all that kind of thing.

And it's all, well, it's just suchness, that's the point.

So, neither follow after, nor dwell with the doctrine of the void.

I mean, don't get hooked on the idea that things are empty, and therefore that this is a way of saying

that the world is a ghastly sham, and something you ought to avoid.

That's what this means.

So, don't try to catch hold of this doctrine as if it would do you some good.

And on the other hand, don't dwell with it.

Don't get attached to it.

For if the mind is at peace, these wrong views disappear of themselves.

The mind at peace is not quite what we ordinarily mean by peace of mind.

Oh, he quotes a thing here on the comment, "Neither follow after, nor dwell with the doctrine of the void."

This verse, from another early Chinese Zen master.

"Getting rid of things and clinging to emptiness is an illness of the same kind.

It is just like throwing oneself into a fire to avoid being drowned.

When activity is stopped, there is passivity.

Now, when activity is stopped, and there is passivity, this passivity, again, is a state of activity.

You see?

If you practice detachment, and being calm in mind, and free from all worldly passions,

this in its own turn is a worldly passion, since you're attached to this new state.

You see, that's the Chinese criticism of the Hindu viewpoint.

Stay where you are.

If you try to be spiritual, this is putting legs on a snake.

And the snake doesn't need any legs, and is only confused by them when it gets them.

But, you may have to try to be spiritual, or whatever the equivalent of this is,

psychoanalyzed, integrated, clear, all the words that are used.

You may have to try to do that, to find this out.

But that everything you add in this way, by clinging to some idea of detachment, spiritual freedom, nirvana, whatever,

all that in the end is an artificiality that will be sloughed off.

So, you might say, to use Spiegelberg's phrase, "Zen is the religion of no religion."

That the highest perfection of religion is just not to have any noticeable religion.

See, the Daos don't have a religion.

They don't preach, they don't pray, they don't recite sutras.

But the human beings have to do this thing, and have Buddhas and all that.

And when you really get the point, none of that is necessary.

But then you can have it just for kicks.

Audible hopes you have enjoyed this program.

===== Eastern And Western Zen II - 03 - World As Just So =====

A lecture on Zen is always something in the nature of a hoax

because it really does deal with a domain of experience

that can't be talked about.

But one must remember at the same time

that there's really nothing at all that can be talked about adequately.

And the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

So every poet, every artist, feels when he gets to the end of his work

that there's something absolutely essential that was left out.

So Zen has always described itself as a finger pointing at the moon.

And you must be very careful not to mistake the finger for the moon

and especially careful if the finger looks religious

not to suck it for comfort instead of following where it points.

In the Sanskrit saying that we were discussing in the first of these seminars

Tatva Masi, that art thou.

Zen is concerned with that.

That, of course, is the word which is used for Brahman,

the absolute reality in Hindu philosophy.

And you're it, only in disguise,

and disguised so well that you've forgotten it.

But, unfortunately, ideas like the ultimate ground of being,

the self, Brahman, ultimate reality, the great void,

all that is very, very abstract talk.

And Zen is concerned with a much more direct way

of coming to an understanding of that,

or thatness, as it's called,

Tatata, in Sanskrit.

So Zen has been summed up in four statements.

A direct transmission outside scriptures and apart from tradition.

No dependence on words and letters.

Direct pointing to the human mind

and seeing into one's own nature

and becoming Buddha.

That is, becoming enlightened, awakened

from the normal hypnosis

under which almost all of us

go round

like somnambules.

It's extraordinary how much interest

has existed in Zen in the United States,

especially in the years since the war with Japan.

And, naturally, I've often meditated

on the reasons for this interest.

I think, first of all,

the appeal of Zen lies

in

its unusual quality

of humor.

Religions aren't, as a rule,

humorous in any way.

Religions are serious.

And when one looks at Zen art

and reads Zen stories,

it is quite apparent

that something is going on here

which isn't serious in the ordinary sense,

however sincere it may be.

The next thing, I think,

that has appealed to Westerners

is that Zen

has no doctrines.

There is nothing you have to believe

and

it doesn't

moralize at you very much.

It's not particularly concerned

with morals at all.

It's a field of inquiry

rather like physics.

And you don't expect a physicist

to discuss authoritatively

about morals

even though, as a human being,

he has moral interests and problems.

But as a physicist,

he is not a moral authority.

Or if you go to an oculist

or ophthalmologist

to have your eyes adjusted,

that is so you can see clearly.

And Zen is spiritual ophthalmology.

Another thing

that appeals very much

to Western students about Zen

is that they've read their Zen

from Suzuki

and from some of my writings

and from R.H. Blythe.

And these people present

a rather different kind of Zen

from that which you will find today

in Japan.

They present what is essentially

early Chinese Zen

from the old writings

ranging from about

shortly before 700 A.D.

to 1,000 A.D.

and that Zen

has a very different flavor

from modern Japanese Zen

and so, of course,

many of the people

who go to study Zen in Japan

disapprove of Dr. Suzuki thoroughly

and also naturally

of my exposition of Zen

because we don't make

a great fetish

of studying Zen by sitting.

In Japan today,

they sit and they sit

and they sit.

R.H. Blythe

asked the Zen master

what would you do

if you had only

one half hour left to live?

And he said

I would do Zazen

which means he would sit

like the Buddha here

and practice meditation.

And Blythe had given him

several choices.

Would you like to listen

to your favorite music?

Would you have a dinner?

Would you get drunk?

Would you like the company

of a beautiful woman?

Would you take a walk?

What would you do?

Or would you just go on

with your daily business

as if nothing

was going to happen?

In other words

would you wind up your watch?

So he was very disappointed

in this answer.

And he said

you know

sitting is only one way

of doing Zen.

Buddhism speaks

of the four dignities of man.

Walking

standing

sitting

and lying.

And so

Zazen

is simply the Japanese word

for sitting Zen.

There must also be

walking Zen

standing Zen

and lying Zen.

You should know

for example

how to sleep

in a Zen way.

That means

to sleep thoroughly.

Zen has been described

as when hungry eat

when tired sleep.

And

when the student

got that description

he said

well doesn't everybody

do that?

And the master

said they don't.

When hungry

they don't just eat

but think of

ten thousand things.

When tired

they don't just sleep

but dream

innumerable dreams.

So in a sense

this sounds like

the old

western

uh

truism

whatever you

your hand

finds to do

do it with all

your might.

But

that's not the same

thing as Zen.

a lot of people

like to see

if they could

sum up Zen

in that way

in the

Latin motto

of the school

I used to go to

in England

Agedum Agis

act when you act

or while you act.

There's a famous

story

which beautifully

illustrates the

current relationships

between east and west.

Paul Reps

who wrote

or rather drew

a lovely book

called Zen Telegrams

once asked

a Zen master

to sum up

Buddhism

in one phrase

and he said

don't act

but act.

So

Reps was simply

delighted

because he

thought the master

had said

don't act

but act

and that of course

would be the

Taoist principle

of Wu Wei

of

action

in the spirit

of not being

separate from the world

realizing so fully

that you are

the universe

too

that your action

on it is not

an interference

but a

an expression

of the totality.

But the master's

English was very bad

indeed

and Paul Reps

had misunderstood

him.

He had said

don't act

bad act

and you know

that is the sort

of attitude

that all clergy

develop

over the centuries.

You know how it is

when you go to church

if you do

so often

the sermon

boils down to

my dear people

you ought to be good

and everybody

knows that

but hardly anybody

knows how

or even what good

is.

No the fascination

of Zen

to the west

is that it promises

a sudden insight

into something

that is always

supposed to take

years and years

and years.

The psychoanalysts

if you're mixed up

they tell you

the troubles

you've got yourself

into over all

these years

can't be undone

in a day

and therefore

it will take

many many sessions

maybe twice a week

for several years

for you to get

straightened out.

The Christians say

that if you embark

on a path

of spiritual discipline

you get yourself

a spiritual director

and submit yourself

to the will of God

but you may not

get into the high states

of contemplative prayer

for very many years.

The Hindus

the Vedanta society people

the Buddhists

also say

will require

many long years

of meditation

very hard concentration

very difficult practice

and stern discipline

and then maybe

you will make

enough progress

in this life

to become a monk

in your next life

and then you'll make

enough progress

to enter some of the

preliminary stages

leading to Buddhahood

but it's all likely

to take you

many many incarnations.

But when this artist

Hasegawa

was asked

how does one

see into Zen

he said

it may take you

three seconds

it may take you

thirty years

I mean that

and so you see

there is always

the possibility

that it may take

only three seconds.

Zen literature

abounds with stories

you see

in which

there's a dialogue

or what is called

in Japanese

mondo

which means

question answer

between

a Zen teacher

and his student

and these dialogues

are fascinatingly

incomprehensible

but it always

seems to be

that the end

of this swift

interchange

the student

gets the point

sometimes he doesn't.

I gave a book

of these dialogues

once to a friend

of mine

who was deeply

interested in

Eastern philosophy

he said

I haven't understood

a word of it

but it's cheered

me up enormously

so this book

called the

Mumonkan

which means

the barrier

with no gate

or the

gateless gate

contains such

stories as

the student

I say student

rather than monk

because

Zen students

are not monks

in our sense

of the word monk

our monks

take life vows

of poverty

chastity

and obedience

and to make

the grade

you're expected

to spend

your whole life

in the monastic

state

but I call

the Zen monk

a student

because he's

more like a student

in a theological

seminary

he may stay

much longer

than the usual

three years

he may stay

thirty years

or so

but it's always

possible for him

to leave

with dignity

and to graduate

and to go

into lay life

or become

a regular

priest

who keeps

charge of a temple

can get married

and have a family

and only

very few

graduates

of a Zen

monastery

become

Roshi

that Roshi

means simply

old teacher

that is the

man in charge

of the

spiritual development

of the students

so one of these

students in the book

says to

the master

Joshu

I have been here

in this monastery

for some time

and I've had no

instruction from you

master said

have you had

breakfast

yes

then go wash

your bowl

and the monk

was awakened

now you may think

that the moral

of this story

is

do the work

that's nearest

though it's dull

at wiles

helping when you

meet them

lame dogs

over styles

or that

the bowl

might be a symbol

of the great void

the all containing

universe

and probably

the monk

had washed it

already

because they

immediately

after eating

in Japan

and China

in a monastery

they would

take tea

and pour it

into the bowl

and swill it around

wash it

and wipe it out

so maybe

he had already

washed the bowl

and in that case

you might think

that

the master

was saying

don't

gild the lily

don't

to use a real

nice zen phrase

don't put legs

on a snake

or a beard

on a eunuch

no

the point

of that story

is so clear

that that's

what's difficult

about it

and all these

stories resemble

jokes

in this sense

a joke is told

to make you laugh

when you get

the point of a joke

you laugh spontaneously

but if the point

has to be explained

to you

you don't laugh

so well

you force a laugh

there is some kind

of sudden impact

between

the punchline

and the laugh

and so in exactly

the same way

with these stories

there is

expected to be

something else

than laughter

which is sudden

insight

into the nature

of being

nature of being

that sounds

again very abstract

but it was

go wash your bowl

so

another story

in this book

concerns a master

who said

when a cow

walks out

of the enclosure

the corral

the horns

and head

the four legs

and the body

all get through

but not the tail

how is it

that the tail

can't get through

and nobody

could answer this

another story

tells of a certain

master

called

Bai Zhang

who was so

good

that he had

hundreds of students

and they couldn't

all be housed

in one

monastery

so he had to

find one of the

students

who could also

be a master

and so he

arranged a test

he put down

a picture

in front of them

all

and said

without making

an assertion

or without making

a denial

tell me

what is this

and the senior monk

said it couldn't

be called

a piece of wood

and the teacher

didn't accept

this answer

but the monastery

cook came forward

and kicked the pitcher

over and walked

away

and he got the job

and the commentator

remarks

maybe he wasn't

so smart

after all

for he gave up

an easy job

for a difficult one

when

a

an inquirer

about zen

came to a master

they often

you know

they approach

a zen master

with a kind

of key question

what is the

fundamental principle

of buddhism

or why did

the bearded barbarian

come from the west

because zen

is supposed

to have been

brought into china

by a hindu

named bodhidharma

bodhidharma

is always

represented

as having

a huge

bushy beard

and very fierce

eyes

now bodhidharma

always insisted

that he had

nothing to teach

and so

why did he come

that's

one of the fundamental

questions

you might say

to me

i've often said

when i'm giving

a lecture

i'm not trying

to improve you

i'm not trying

to persuade you

to a certain

point of view

that is to say

like a preacher

would convert

somebody

in fact

i have nothing

to tell you

at all

because

were i to

presume

that i had

something to tell

you

i would be

like a person

who picked

your pocket

and sold you

your own watch

so you might

say then

why do i talk

you might ask

the sky

why are you

blue

the clouds

why do you

float around

birds

why do you

sing

and we've been

busy trying to

invent explanations

for all this

and so

there's this

great zen

saying

one of the

old masters

said

when i was

a young man

and knew

nothing of

buddhism

mountains were

mountains

and waters

were waters

but when i

began to

understand a

little buddhism

mountains were

no longer

mountains

and waters

no longer

waters

in other words

when one starts

scientific and

philosophical

inquiries

everything gets

explained away

in terms of

its causes

things or other

things that go

with it

or one sees

that all

the things

in the world

what we think

are separate

things

are as

things

illusions

there is

nothing separate

so but he

said at the end

but when i had

thoroughly understood

mountains were

mountains and

waters are

waters

so this is

what's called

direct pointing

if you ask

me

what is this

is one answer

if you had a

cigarette in

your hand

that might be

another answer

a zen master

was once

talking with

me

and he

said

when water

goes out

of the wash

basin

down the

drain

does it go

clockwise

or anti-clockwise

and this was

all phrased

in the middle

of a very

ordinary

conversation

and

i you know

it just seemed

like a speculative

question

and i said

oh it might

go either

he said no

like this

now he said

which came

the first

ego hen

i said

now he said

that's the

point

now it is

saying too

much

i warn you

to say

that zen

is trying

to point

to

the physical

universe

so that you

could look

at it

without forming

ideas about

it

that is saying

too much

but it is

the general

idea

it's in the

direction of

being the

right idea

zen

people speak

of the

virtue of

what they

call

mushin

which means

no mind

or munen

no thought

that red

lantern

says munen

on it

no thought

and

this is

not

an

anti-intellectual

attitude

the ordinary

simple person

is just

is just as

bamboozled

by thinking

as a

university

professor

you can

think

intellectually

in a

no think

way

that's the

art

it doesn't

mean not to

have any

thoughts at

all

it means

not to be

fooled by

thoughts

not to be

hypnotized by

the forms of

speech

and uh

images that we

have for the

world

not to be

hypnotized by

them into

thinking that

that is the

way the

world really

is

so if i say

this is a

fan

it isn't

to begin

with fan

as a noise

and this

doesn't make

the noise

fan

but just

whoosh

but it

can be many

other things

than a fan

it could be

a backscratcher

very well

all sorts

of things

don't let

words

limit the

possibilities

of life

actually

this fan

was

has an

inscription

on it

written by

a zen

master

who is

a hundred

years old

and it

says

i don't

understand

i don't

know

anything

about it

so

that goes

back to

the story

of bodhidharma

that when

he first

came to

china

sometime

a little

before

a.d

he was

interviewed

by the

emperor

wu

of liang

and he

the emperor

was a

great patron

of buddhism

and said

we have

caused

many

monasteries

to be

built

monks

and nuns

to be

ordained

and the

scriptures

to be

translated

into chinese

what is

the

merit

of this

and bodhidharma

said

no merit

whatever

well that

really set

the emperor

back

because

the popular

understanding

of buddhism

is that

you do

good things

like that

religious

things

and you

acquire

merit

and this

leads you

to better

and better

lives

in the

future

so that

you will

eventually

become

liberated

and so

he was

completely

set back

so he

said

well what

is the

first

principle

of

the holy

doctrine

and

bodhidharma

said

vast

emptiness

and nothing

holy

or in

vast

emptiness

there is

nothing

holy

so the

emperor

said

who is

it then

that stands

before us

the implication

being aren't

you supposed

to be a

holy man

and bodhidharma

said i don't

know

so the

poem

says

plucking

flowers to

which the

butterflies

come

bodhidharma

says

i don't

and another

poem

like it

if you

want to

know where

the flowers

come from

even the

god of

spring

doesn't

know

so

anybody who

says that

he knows

what zen

is

is a

fraud

nobody

knows

just like

you

you don't

know who

you are

all this

business about

your name

and your

accomplishments

your

certificates

your

what your

friends say

about you

you know

very well

that's not

you

but the

problem to

know who

you are

is the

problem

of smelling

your own

nose

when

the great

japanese

master

dogen

came back

from china

in about

the year

to bring

his school

of zen

into japan

they asked

him what

did you

learn

in china

he said

the eyes

are horizontal

the nose

is perpendicular

this man

went on

to write

a tremendous

book about

zen

they are so

contradictory

these people

don't expect

consistency

out of a

zen master

big big

book called

the shobo

genzo

and uh

i talked

with the

zen master

about this

book in

japan

and he said

oh he said

that's a

terrible book

it explains

everything so

clearly

it gives

the show

away

he said

you don't

need any

book for

zen

the sound

of the

rain needs

no translation

so you

see

it is this

kind

of way

of going

about things

this method

of zen

that has so

fascinated the

west

and everybody

who reads

about zen

wonders if

somehow

you see

this understanding

is right under

your nose

you know how

it is sometimes

you get a crowd

of people to

come into a

room and you

put something

in the room

that's absurd

like suppose

there was a

balloon floating

on the ceiling

people could

come in

and not notice

it at all

or you

know somebody

puts on

something weird

some kind

of a funny

necktie or

something

and you say

to a person

well

haven't you

noticed

a woman

in a new

dress

you know

haven't you

noticed

you said

well

what is it

you know

it's right

under your

nose

they're staring

in the face

but you

don't see

it

and zen

is exactly

like that

so

I might

say to

you all

what did

you forget

when you

came in

here

maybe you

forgot it

long before

something

you've

forgotten

and you

think

is it

this

is it

that

oh no

no

it's much

simpler

than that

so

it's

very

obvious

and

this

makes

it

all

the

more

difficult

it

is

very

obvious

the

master

bokaju

was

asked

we

have

to

dress

and eat

every

day

and

how

do

we

escape

from

all

that

in

another

Zen

master

in

quite

recent

times

was

interviewed

a student you see all these stories i'm telling you are connected and what i want you to do is

to grasp intuitively the connection i was uh interviewing a student western student

and he said um get up and walk across the room he got up and walked and came back

said where are your footprints another monk asked joshu what is the way

tao chinese the tao he said your everyday mind is the way how do you get into accord with it

he said when you try to accord you deviate so here is this extraordinary phenomenon now let me say

having presented you with all these fireworks let me say a few sober things about zen as a historical

phenomenon which we can put it in context with other things in the seminar we've been studying

about the history of oriental philosophy zen is a subdivision of mahayana buddhism and as you know

that is the school of buddhism which is concerned with realizing buddha nature in this world

not necessarily by going off to the mountains or by renouncing family life everyday life etc

etc as if that were an entanglement but realizing in the midst of life uh the the possibility of

becoming a buddha and uh so the great ideal personality of mahayana buddhism is the bodhisattva

a word now applied to somebody who has attained nirvana but instead of disappearing uh comes back

black in many many guises there's a famous painting of one of the bodhisattvas in the form of a prostitute

and uh bodhisattvas in zen art are often represented as bums there's the beautiful one over there uh by the

furnace painted by sengai of the bum hotei or putai in chinese who's always immensely fat and he's saying

buddha is dead maitreya who is supposed to be the next buddha hasn't come yet i had a wonderful sleep

and didn't even dream about confucius and he's just stretching and yawning as he wakes up so zen is

mahayana indian mahayana buddhism translated into chinese and therefore deeply influenced by taoism and

confucianism zen monks brought confucian ideas to japan and the origins of zen lie actually

around the year 414 at which time a great hindu scholar by the name of kumarajiva

was translating with a group of assistants the buddhist sutras into chinese

one of his students taught that all beings whatsoever have the capacity to become buddha

to become enlightened even rocks and stones and that even heretics and evil doers have the buddha

nature or buddha potentiality in them and everybody said he was a dreadful heretic

but then a text called the nirvana sutra came from india which said precisely that so everybody had to

admit that this man was right he also began to teach that awakening must be instantaneous

it's a kind of all or nothing state i don't mean that there aren't degrees of its intensity

but once you see the principle you see the whole thing

as they say when the bottom falls out of the bucket all the water goes together

those men then promulgated the way of sudden awakening bodhidharma came later and he is supposed in

legend to have been followed by a line of six patriarchs of which he was the first

the second was named eka i'm using the japanese pronunciation

uh who was formerly a general of the army then the third was so son who wrote the shinjin mei

which is the most marvelous little summary of buddhism in verse

and so on till they came to eno the sixth patriarch you know perhaps more familiarly his chinese name

quenang uh the problem you know with what you read in books is that the spelling is terribly confusing

you see this guy quenang most people say hui neng and they've also read a text called the sutra

of w e and they say why lang but this is simply the cantonese way of pronouncing the same characters

when this is the mandarin way in mandarin hui neng becomes way long in cantonese almost say hui

way when i'm way long and in japanese a no totally confusing but it's all the same man

and he died in 715 a.d he's the real founder of chinese zen the man who synthesized the whole thing

and was the uh at least his collected discourses are contained in what is called the platform sutra

and any student of zen should read the platform sutra it's fortunately there's a new translation

from the earliest form of the text done by wingtzer chan published by st john's university in new york

it's catholic university but you know really fused zen with the chinese way of doing things and he

emphasized very thoroughly do not think you are going to attain buddhahood by sitting down all day and

keeping your mind blank because a lot of those students who practiced dhyana which is the sanskrit

for chan which is the chinese for zen which is in turn japanese means meditation or contemplation

perhaps would be better translation in english and everybody thought that the proper way to contemplate

was to be as still as possible but according to zen that is to be a stone buddha instead of a living buddha

now i can knock a stone buddha on the head clunk and it has no feelings and so it's a stone buddha

there was a famous zen master called tankar who went to a little lonely temple on a freezing cold night

and he took the buddha image one of the buddha images off the altar split it up and made a fire

and when the attendant of the temple came in in the morning he was horrified

broke at the image and tankar took his stick started raking in the ashes

and the temple priest said what are you looking for he said i'm looking for the sali that is to say

the jewels that are supposed to be found in the body of a genuine buddha when he's cremated

so the priest said you couldn't expect to find sali from a wooden buddha

in that case said tankar let me have that other buddha for my fire

that's you see the difference between living buddha and stone buddha

but a person who thinks that in order to be awakened you have to be heartless to have no emotions

no feelings that you couldn't possibly lose your temper or get angry or feel annoyed or depressed

those people haven't got the right idea at all if that's your ideal said a no you might just as

well be a block of wood or a piece of stone what he wanted you to understand is that your real mind

while all those emotions are going on is imperturbable just like the sky uh when you move your hand

through the sky you don't leave a track the birds don't stain the blue when they pass by and when the

water reflects the image of the geese it doesn't uh the the reflection doesn't stick there so to be

pure-minded in the zen way or clear-minded is a better way of translating it is not to have no thoughts

is not a question of uh not thinking about dirty things

one uh great master of the tang dynasty when asked what is buddha

believe it or not answered a dried turd

so it's not that kind of purity it is purity clarity in the sense that your mind isn't sticky

you don't harbor grievances you don't be attached to the past you go with it with life life is flowing

all the time that is the tao the flow of life and you are going along with it whether you want to or not

you're like people in a stream you can swim against the stream but you'll still be moved along by it

and all you'll do is wear yourself out in futility

but if you swim with the stream the whole strength of the stream is yours

of course the difficulty that so many of us have is finding out which way the stream is going

but certainly as it goes all the past banishes the future has not yet arrived and there is only one place

to be which is here and now and there is no way of being anywhere else none whatever if you understand

that thoroughly your task is finished you then become instantaneous and also momentous

so this was a nose principle as i said he died in 715 and he left five very great disciples who taught

substantially the same sort of thing but as things go then they became uh these disciples had disciples

and those disciples had disciples and there's a genealogy and zen broke into what are called five houses

and these uh some of them didn't go on zen went on in two main forms one is called by the japanese

rinzai zen after the great master rinzai who lived uh towards the end of the ninth century

and the soto school comes from another line and they have a slightly different emphasis

soto is more serene in its approach rinzai more gutsy

uh rinzai people use the koan method in zen studies soto people don't at least not in the

same way but this period between the death of the sixth patriarch eno and about the year 1000

is the golden age of zen this were these were the really formative years

and after that zen began to decline in china it became mixed up with other forms of buddhism

and it suffered the fate of many many forms of

meditation type or yoga type discipline it got a little bit sidetracked into occult and psychic matters

what are called in buddhism siddhi or the development of supernormal powers

for zen this is completely beside the point but they did it got involved with chinese alchemy

with taoistic alchemy and uh all sorts of foolishness in that direction but a very strong strain of zen went

to japan the first being in about 1130 the monk esai and then about 1200 the monk i told you about dogen

who founded the great beautiful gorgeous galluptious monastery at a heiji which exists to this

day now in this golden age of chinese zen the main method of study was walking zen

rather than sitting zen all monks were great travelers and they walked for miles and miles through fields and

mountains visiting temples to see if they could find a master who would cause their spark to flash

to get what is called in mandarin woo or in japanese satori or in cantonese um this uh

always rather fascinates me the way this character is written the word i in in chinese is sometimes

represented by this right hand side of the character alone five mouths five senses

this one means your mind or heart the heart mind shin now when we say was something very surprising

happened my heart came into my mouth here it comes into all five so this character means awakening it's

the same in a way as the sanskrit bodhi which i explained to you in the talk on buddhism awakening from

the illusion of being a separate ego locked up in a bag of skin discovering that you are the whole

universe and of course if you do discover that and you do see into it all of a sudden it's a shock

because your whole common sense is turned directly inside out everything is the same as you've always

seen it but completely different because you know who you are you know that what the devil were you

worrying about what was all that fuss what was all that to do well you see it was part of the game

everything from one point of view is fuss and to do to do to do what is there to do

i must read you in the second session a poem by james browton called the birds of america which is all about that

but when you wake up you see and discover that all this to do wasn't you what you thought was you

but was the entire works which we could just call it that you're it and it is

it and everything is it and it does all things that are done and then that is a great surprise

but it sounds tasteless it sounds empty it sounds void because if i say well you're all it that is a

statement without the slightest logical sense because we don't know what is it unless there's something that

isn't it but if it's both is all is is and all isn'ts then we can't think about it nevertheless

it is highly possible to see that that's so in a way that's so vivid it brings your heart into all your

five mouths