Zen And The Contolled Accident

wants to speak about it, words fail. When the mind seeks affinity with it, thought

vanishes. Sun and moon cannot illuminate it completely. Heaven and earth cannot cover

it entirely. The deer hunter doesn't see the mountains. The miser doesn't see men.

Last year's poverty was not real poverty. But this year's poverty is poverty indeed.

The angels find no path on which to strew flowers. The heretics, secretly spying, find

nothing to see. Last year's plum and this year's willow. Their color and fragrance are as of

old. At the limits of heaven, the sun rises and the moon sets. Beyond the balustrade the

mountains deepened and the waters become chill. He sees only the winding of the stream and

the twisting of the path. He does not know that already he is in the land of the immortals.

A lot of people think that the spontaneous or completely natural life, as it's understood

by these far eastern philosophers, is to act according to whim. There was, for example,

a great Zen monk who lived shortly after 1000 AD who had a very peculiar way of painting.

He had long hair and he would soak it. He'd get very drunk on rice wine. Then he'd soak his

hair in ink and slosh it all over the paper. Then he would do a Rorschach test on it and

decide what kind of a landscape it actually was and then put in the finishing touches. And

suddenly, out of this apparent mess, a great landscape would be evoked. But the whole art

of the thing lay in putting in the finishing touches. And also, there's a very curious thing.

If a person who is untrained in painting makes a mess with a brush, it's liable to be just

a mess. Whereas if a person who has the feeling of painting in them for a long time, and they

make a mess with a brush or just do anything, it looks interesting. And that's why if you

try to copy the best people in modern, abstract, non-objective painting, you'll find it's

a very difficult thing to do. Because there is more to spontaneity than caprice and disorder.

And I want to try and explain what that is. I mean, wouldn't it be great if we could

live absolutely on the spur of the moment? Not make any particular plans, not feel that

well, you might make plans because you can make plans spontaneously. But not to worry about

whether you've made the right decision, whether you've been good or bad, selfish or unselfish,

not to hesitate in anything, you see. In one of the great applications of Zen, as I pointed

out, was to the art of fencing. And when you learn fencing, you see, you have to learn

to be spontaneous. Because here, of all places, it is true that he who hesitates is lost. If

you're engaged in combat, you see, and you stop to think what sort of a defense or attack

you ought to make, the enemy's got you. So the way they teach people spontaneity in fencing

is very interesting. When you start in to fencing school, you of course live with the teacher.

He has a kind of ashram. And, but you're given a janitorial job. You clean up, you wash dishes,

you put bedding away and things like that. But while you're going about your daily business,

the master surprises you with a practice sword, which is made of four strips of bamboo, rather

loosely tied together. And he hits you with this, surprisingly and suddenly, from nowhere.

And you are expected to defend yourself with anything available. With the bedding, with the

broom, with the pots and pans, with just anything. Defend. But the poor student never knows when

the attack is coming. Or where, what direction it's coming from. And he begins to get tense.

And he begins to go around everywhere on the sort of alert, you see, watching, watching which

direction it's coming from. And as he goes down a certain passage, feeling that the master

is probably lurking around that corner. And he's all set to go for him with that, that he

gets that practice sword. He suddenly gets hit from behind. So eventually, he gives up.

There's absolutely no way of preparing for the attack. And so he just wanders around, feeling

well if it hits, it's going to hit. And then he's ready to begin fencing. Because, if you

prepare for an attack from a specific direction, and it comes from some other direction, you have

to withdraw from the direction in which you expected it. And send your energy in another direction.

And that takes time. So what you do is, you go around with a mind of no expectation. That

is called, uh, Mushin, or Munen. This is a very important Zen expression. Uh, Mushin, it all

most means an empty mind. Uh, you could also call it no heart. Because the character Shin means

both heart and mind. But it isn't quite the same as our word heartless, as we use it.

And it isn't the same as the word mindless, as we use it meaning stupid. To be in the state

of Mushin is to have a mind like a mirror. And of this, the Taoist sage Zhuangzi said, the

perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing, it receives

but does not keep. And when, uh, anything comes in front of a mirror, it reflects it instantly.

The mirror doesn't wait to reflect it. They also say, when the moon rises, all bodies of

water instantly reflect the moon. I mean, they, they don't, they don't bother with physics

about the speed of light or anything like that. It's irrelevant. Or they say, when you clap

your hands, the sound issues immediately. It doesn't stop to consider whether it will issue.

And so, sparks from the flint, when it's struck, they issue instantly. But to do this, you can't

try to be quick. See, if a Zen master corners you with a funny situation, and he puts you

in a quandary expecting spontaneous action from you, don't try to hurry. I know, I've watched

Suzuki wait a whole minute before answering. But he doesn't hesitate. He's not at all embarrassed

by this wait. And he can answer with silence just as well as with a formal response. The

point is, do something. When, uh, two young Americans wanted to study Zen, they were taken

by a Japanese monk to interview the master and act as interpreter. And one of them had

had some practice. You know, he knew a bit about it. And so after they'd had tea together

and just discussed formalities, the master said in a very easy way, well, what do you

gentlemen know about Zen? And one of these students threw his fan, which he hadn't unfolded,

the fan was still folded up. He threw it straight at the master's face. The master slightly moved

to one side, and the fan went, and went right through the paper wall. And the master laughed

like a child, you know. That's the sort of game they get in. Once a master was, uh, going

around through the forest with a group of students. And he picked up a tree branch. You know, just

that one might pick up a tree branch. And suddenly he turned to one of his students and said,

what is it? And he hesitated, so he hit him with the branch. And so another student was

there and he turned to him quickly. He said, what is it? And he said, give it to me, I want

to see it. I'll tell you. So the master tossed the branch to him and he took it and hit the

master. Now you may think all this is kind of rough stuff. But let me give you another story,

which is on a rather different level. A certain Zen priest was having dinner at a big party.

And the party was being served by a geisha girl, who was so elegant and so skillful in serving,

that he suspected she might have had some Zen training. And so he decided to try her out. And he nodded

to her and she immediately came to his place and sat down in front of his little low table. See, everybody

would be seated, probably, in front of low tables all around a room and the geisha servants and people

move up and down in the middle. And so she came down and sat down in front of him and bowed. And he said, I would

like to give you a present. And she said, I would be most honored. Now on the table there are hibachi, which are

little braziers with hot charcoal in. And you move the charcoal around with iron chopsticks. He took a piece

of charcoal out in iron chopsticks and offered it to her. She had long, long sleeves on her kimono. And what

she did was this. She wound them all around her hands and took the charcoal. Immediately got up and went to the

kitchen, disposed of the charcoal, changed her robe, which had holes burned all the way through the

sleeves, and came back. And she sat down in front of the master and bowed. And he said, and she said

to him, I would like to give you a present. He said, I would be most honored. And so she picked up the

iron chopsticks and handed him the charcoal. And he pulled out a cigarette and said, that's just what I

wanted. And lit the cigarette. Now, here's the lesson. The master's spontaneity and being ready

for that situation was the kind of quick thinking that a good comedian has, who in a completely

unprepared way can make all sorts of jokes and turn any situation into a jest of some kind. There are all

sorts of people who do that. People who are experts in kind of like Dorothy Parker, in that sort of repartee. But

here it's been developed in a very fundamental way and to a very high degree. Now, the way in which it's

developed, you see, requires a protected situation. Because if we all started to act on the spur of the

moment, without the slightest consideration or deliberation, everybody would think we were crazy. And

that people would avoid us and call the police and things like that. But what they do is this. They

start you doing this in the context of a disciplined situation, where there are very rigid rules for most of

the time, that there are certain instances at which all those rules go hang. And you're in a community which

understands the game. Because the point is this. When you start acting spontaneously, you're not used to

doing it. And therefore, your responses are unintelligent and inappropriate. But when you become used to doing this, and when it becomes

second nature to you, to act in the state of Mooshin, with no mind or no deliberation, then your behavior has matured. And you find that you're accustomed to respond quite appropriately, as the Zen master did in lighting his cigarette from the charcoal. So also in learning the art of swordsmanship, when he has a

when he has given up defending himself and preparing his mind for attack, then he's got a mirror mind. And this is also likened to a vessel of water like a wooden barrel. When you make a hole in the barrel, the water instantly flows out of the hole. Because the water is always available to come out. It doesn't have to chew

to chew. And so you could also say that Mooshin is what Krishnamurti calls choicelessness. And because you see, choice in this sense is not quite the same thing as decision. Choice means dithering. You know there are some people who, before they start to write something down, they wiggle their pens a little.

pen dithers over the paper. And then they start to write. And so in the same way, a lot of people constantly in the life situation, they dither. Because that dithering is anxiety. To be or not to be, that is the question.

Well, there is no question about to be or not to be. See, because to be and not to be go together, as we saw, they arise mutually. So then, in the situation of the Zen community, safeguards are set up within which you can learn how to act without deliberation. Which is, you see, in a sense, going back to the state of innocence.

Now, it doesn't mean that you give up thinking. It doesn't mean that you become an anti-intellectual. You all can also learn, and this is part of the later phases of Zen training, how to think spontaneously. How to deliberate spontaneously.

The saying is, you see, stand or walk as you will, but whatever you do, don't wobble. So, this is our difficulty. Because the human mind is a feedback system. Feedback has a peculiar susceptibility to nervousness.

There was a young man who said, though, it seems that I know that I know that I know. What I would like to see is the eye that knows me when I know that I know that I know. You see?

Now, in this way, we think about thinking. We worry about worrying. And then, when that really gets bad, you worry because you worry about worrying.

Now, that is analogous exactly to the kinds of vibration that are set up in certain mechanical systems. For example, I did this trick on television once. I had the cameraman turn the camera on the monitor.

The monitor is the television set in the studio, where you see what you are doing. And so, on this show, I said, now, I'm going to show you a picture of anxiety.

Don't worry about your sets. There's not going to be anything wrong with your sets, so don't turn it off. Now, I said, Mr. Cameraman, will you please turn the camera on the monitor?

He does that. Now, what does he do? He's taking a picture of taking a picture.

All in the same system. And as you do that, the system starts going like that. You see? And it makes a sense of a kind of oscillation.

And you see on the screen all these jagged lines dancing across. Now, that's what's meant, you see, by hesitation, attachment, blocking, all that kind of thing which the Zen discipline is designed to overcome.

And because the human being is such a peculiarly beautifully organized nervous system, and has this tremendously subtle cortex, which is capable of all kinds of thinking about thinking.

You can turn yourself on in the most extraordinary ways by, for example, getting earphones, which repeat what you say just a fraction of a second after you say it. Back to you. They delay it.

And you can get an oscilloscope tied up with your own heartbeats and get feedback through in this way so that you suddenly begin to see yourself behaving.

And it completely balls you up because you wait for yourself to go on. But then you realize it's you doing it. But you can't wait on your heartbeat. You can't wait on what you say.

And you get this sensation of going faster and faster and faster and faster until you just have to close the whole thing off. You'll go crazy.

So that's what we're doing. And our civilization and our social institutions reflect this in hundreds of ways. And this would be true of any civilization because all civilization is based on the development of consciousness and feedback.

That is to say, the property of self-control, of being self-conscious, looking at what you've done, and then being able to criticize it and correct it.

But who criticizes? Is the critic reliable? When you criticize yourself, who will criticize the critic? You see? Or to put it in the other way, quis custodiae, ipsos custodiaes.

Who will guard the guards themselves? Who will take care of the policemen? Who will govern the president? And that is the big problem. And when we get tied up in that problem, the Chinese got tied up in it because they were simply a very high order of civilization. So did the Japanese.

There has to be a break. Somebody has to start throwing things. Otherwise everybody will go insane. So Zen functions in that culture as a way of liberation from the tangle of being too civilized.

Now you see, in Japanese culture, people are tremendously concerned with propriety, with good manners, and with keeping up with the Joneses.

One of the funniest things in the world is to watch Japanese people having a bowing contest. It's a very frequent thing when friends meet or take leave. They go, ah! And they bow and they bow and they respond. It goes back and forth and see who gets the last one in because I'm more polite than you.

And the worries about when somebody comes, you know, you visit a family, you always bring a gift. And they start worrying, is this gift suitable?

Is it anything as good as the gift they last gave us? And is it right for the occasion? Have we thought about it enough? Is there some symbolism in this gift that connects with this person's name or their birthday or something like that?

Think about these things internally. And thus they cultivate it in the ordinary culture has a great deal of social nervousness in it. People giggle.

You often see girls who giggle and cover their mouths to say, I'm not really giggling. All sorts of funny things happen because of this immense social awareness and nervousness.

Now, Zen breaks that up. Only it does it in a way that has high artistry to it. So you see, let's just take the aesthetic domain for the moment. And you remember I was discussing yesterday one tea bowl.

And you remember too that in the whole history of ceramics, the Chinese developed some of the most elegant work imaginable. You are probably aware, I don't see a specimen, of the great work of the Sung and Korean potters.

Very often done in a jade-like green, the most gorgeous texture. It looked practically as if it was carved out of jade. Well, that led on, you see, to the high techniques of the Ming dynasty.

With translucent porcelain, white clay, the most subtle designs of all. And that style went also to Japan. And the very, very rich people you read about in, say, books like The Tale of Genji.

And you see, and you see in a film, and you must see it, Chushengura, the story of the 47 Ronin. The lovely things they had around their houses were unbelievable. The lacquer, the boxes in pure gold, and oh, you know, it was delicious stuff.

But then, it was just like having too much eclairs, and ice cream, and filet mignon, and cooked à la carême, you know, that French cook who made everything look like an oriental palace.

Now, what happened? The people who practiced Zen suddenly got an eye for the beauty of the ordinary. There were two reasons for this. One was that they became fascinated with what happened spontaneously.

What pattern a brush would make when handled roughly when handled roughly and the hairlines were shown.

They also, because they practiced Zazen, which is sitting quietly, not thinking of anything special, but having a completely open mind.

That puts you into a state where you get much better eyes and ears than you ordinarily have. And you start really seeing things.

So, you know that famous haiku poem, The Old Pond, a frog jumps in, plop. In Japanese, that plop is miso no otto, the sound of the water.

And there's another poem, just like it. In the dark forest, a berry drops. The sound of the water.

Somebody suddenly realized, you see, just the sound of the water is marvelous. That's all.

Or, they found that they kept getting in very, very cheap Korean rice bowls. The poorest, cheapest kind for peasants to eat out of.

And suddenly it struck one of these Zen masters that that was an incomparably beautiful object.

Nobody had seen this before. They also had the simplest wooden ladles, bamboo, and then a stick in it, for use in the kitchen.

And one day somebody noticed that this ordinary, everyday kitchen utensil was just lovely.

And so, in the same way, they found that it was quite as satisfactory to listen to the kettle boiling as to listen to an elaborate concert.

So, what did they do? They started through, particularly a man called Senna Rikyu, to give parties, for very small, few guests, in shacks.

Little huts in the garden, made of very primitive materials, such as mud walls. And where they would go and sit.

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out of the simplest utensils, carefully chosen by a superb artist, they would simply sit and

enjoy the uncomplicated life. And so was born the tea ceremony. Now look at that, you see,

in the historical context, that's terribly important. It was a going back to the primitive,

the people were sick of too much civilization. And yet, it was going on to the primitive,

rather than back. Because the people who selected all those things, they knew, they knew the

whole tradition of their civilization, their culture. They weren't barbarians. What's

happened today is this. Tea ceremony is essentially something to enjoy. And there are a few men

left who know how to serve tea ceremony. And it's an extremely congenial, quiet get-together of easy

conversation, simple and unostentatious manners, and really lovely things to look at. I was

present at a tea ceremony celebrated by a Zen monk who happens to be an American. And he

is a man who has done a lot of mountaineering. And he has, therefore, with him at all times,

the sort of equipment that you take on camping in the mountains, because he does a lot of climbing in

Japan. And I said to him, won't you, this afternoon would be very nice to have the tea ceremony, and you

did it once before here, and it was so pleasant. Would you serve it again? He said, yes, by all means.

Before, he had served tea ceremony in the style that Zen monks do it, which is rather simple and

direct and much more comfortable than all these well-educated ladies who are tittering about it and

are on tiptoe and nervous and hoping they won't make a mistake and all that kind of thing. It's just dreadful.

So he suddenly came in with a small primus stove, set that down. Then he had an old paint pot,

which had inside it an aluminum mug. He set that down. He then proceeded to take the aluminum mug out,

pour water into the paint pot, and set that on the primus stove, but he ritually pumped up the primus

stove. He did everything in the style of tea ceremony, but this was a dirty old primus stove.

And suddenly the thing began to flame like the god Fudo, and he mixed the tea in the traditional way

with the whisk, had all the perfect lovely manners, handing us the aluminum cup. And we got into a long,

we, it's a custom after the tea ceremony, after you've drunk, to pass all the utensils round for

inspection. This is exactly what happened. And we found that the aluminum cup had the year 1945

stamped on it for some reason. And we got into a discussion about styles of aluminum cups made

in 1945. And it was the funniest thing, but it was a complete makeover of the tea ceremony into the

modern idiom. Of course the tea drunk in tea ceremony is that powdered green tea, which you don't steep

like you make ordinary tea. You whisk it, and mixed with a small amount of hot water into a froth,

and it's called liquid jade. And it's a bit of an acquired taste for most Westerners. It tastes a little

bit like a mixture of mate tea in Guinness. But when you get to know it, it's very invigorating,

and very awakening. And if you make up a strong mixture of it, it's a good thing to use if you

want to stay awake all night and do work. And so you see, it's a, the legend was that Zen monks

started this interest in tea because they needed it to stay awake during their practice of meditation.

And it said that Bodhidharma, whom I drew for you yesterday, and he's always drawn with eyes that are

wide open. Why? Because he hasn't got any eyelids. Once when he was meditating, he fell asleep, and he was

furious and cut his eyelids off. And as they dropped on the ground, up came the first tea plants. That's why

they have leaves shaped like eyelids. And are to be drunk ever thereafter for staying awake. So the

plant of Buddhism, tea is the Buddhist drink, just like wine is the Christian drink, coffee is the

Islamic drink, and milk the Hindu drink. Every religion has its drink. So then around this kind

of appreciation, born of stillness, and the delight in seeing how nature takes its course, came the

entire cult of Zen art, with its special kind of primitivity, its special ceramics, its special

calligraphic styles, and its special gardens, which are the controlled accident. I showed you yesterday

on that other tea bowl. This is a water jar. And they like to leave the bottom unglazed.

But look, you see how the glaze has been allowed to run. It's what we would call not neat at all.

And you watch somebody make one of these. And I have watched a man just pick up the plate,

and as he applies the design of the glaze, he just goes whoosh with a brush, and lets it drop on.

And it's done. There's another man who glazes by wood smoke, and in his kiln he may put about

eleven hundred pieces, and he wraps them in straw. And wherever the straw touches,

it leaves a splash of orange color against a purple background.

Now, you see, the straw arranges itself according to the nature of straw.

It doesn't follow strict human direction.

And the fascination is when they open up that kiln and bring the things out, they look eagerly to see

what has the straw done. So, this principle of letting glaze run to see what will happen

is wu-wei. This is non-interference. This is mu-shin, also. No purpose, or it can also be translated. No

specific intent. And now, of course, you see, sometimes this doesn't work. And the master picks

it up and says, that's not very interesting, and rejects it. What are the canons of taste

which decide whether he will accept one of these accidents or reject it? Because here,

an additional principle of control enters. See, say, in the practice of calligraphy, a man may sit

down with a huge pile of paper in front of him, and do piece after piece after piece, and if it

isn't just right, he throws it away. So, he eventually makes a selection that comes out. There's a famous

story of a Zen master who was doing calligraphy, and he had a very smart monk standing beside him, who

was his assistant. And the monk said, uh-uh, to each one as he did it. You can do better than that.

Oh, no, no, come now. You know much better than that. This master got more and more furious, but the

monk had to go out to the banjo, to the toilet at the moment. And he thought, quick, while he's away,

he did it. And the monk came back and looked and he said, a masterpiece. So, there's this element of

selection, you see. Now, what determines this? How do you know? Or another example of this. There was a tea

caddy. Porcelain tea caddy. Not porcelain, but clay. And, uh, when Senno Rikyu was having tea ceremony,

he saw this tea caddy and made no comment on it. And the owner was so disappointed that he smashed it.

But one of his friends picked the broken pieces out of the trash can and took them to a mender.

He said, look, mend this with gold. And he put, therefore, gold, uh, cement, and put this caddy back

together. And so it had all over its surface spidery lines of gold. And when Rikyu saw that,

he was just enchanted. And it became one of the most valuable tea caddies in, uh, the Japanese

collections. Spidery lines of gold following just the, apparently, chance marks of a smash.

There was a competition at the Art Institute in the University of Chicago,

in which, uh, the, it was a sculpture class, and the competition was that each student was given

a cubic foot of plaster of Paris. And they said, now do something with it. Well, the prize was won by a

woman who looked at this cube and said, it has no character. It doesn't want to be anything. So she

flung it on the floor and smashed it all up. I mean, she made dents in it and banged off the corners and put

cracks in it and things. Then she looked at it again. She said, ah, now I know what it wants to be.

And so she followed the grain in it, as it were, made by all these cracks, and produced this

marvellous piece of sculpture. You have in this area a very ingenious sculptor by the name of

Donald Hoard, who, um, is a master at following the grain in wood and actually making the grain.

The grain seems to suggest to him the muscles and the flow of the kind of body that he's making.

Uh, well that's the thing. So, when a master decides

whether the accident came off, what he wants is this. He wants the thing to be the perfect harmony

of man and nature, of order and randomness. Now, this is a curious thing in the human mind.

When we play games, we get most fascination out of those games which satisfactorily combine

skill and chance. Games like bridge, poker, uh, have a sort of admirable combination of these two elements.

And we can go on playing those games again and again and again, because you don't feel completely

at the mercy of chance, as you do with dice, unless you cheat. And, uh, you don't feel completely at the

mercy of skill as you do with chess, or especially with a game like three-dimensional chess. So there's

a sort of optimum middle where order and randomness go together. Well, that's what this man is looking for.

He's looking for the optimal combination, you see. The things, the artwork like Persian miniatures,

or the jewelry of Cellini, um, and the Chinese porcelain, is too much skill, too much order.

It's like those houses you go into where you daren't put an ash in the tray because everything is so

clean and everything is so tidy, you daren't touch it. One prefers a house, you see, that looks a little

lived in. It is more genial, more comfortable, somehow invites you to sit down and even put your

feet on the table. Whereas on the other extreme, some kind of pad where, uh, everything is covered

in dirt and, uh, filthy clothes are thrown in the corner and, uh, you know, people are all paint all

over them and so on. Uh, that's, that's the other extreme. We don't want that. But that's that curious

thing in the middle. Now, the most difficult thing is to hold to the middle. It's like walking

a tightrope. And that's why the path of Buddhism is called the razor's edge. Because you see what

happened. When this, all this kind of work in the course of history became fashionable, people began

to affect these styles. For example, when Sesshu, the great master, uh, ink painter worked, he would

sometimes take a handful of straw and paint with that instead of a brush in order to get the sort

of rough effect that he wanted. But later on there came people who could take an ordinary paintbrush

and so exactly ink that brush that it would give precisely the messy effect that they had in mind.

They would also be able to ink a brush in such a way, and this is terribly decadent,

they could dab grapes on a vine and have dark ink where the shadow was supposed to be

and no ink at all where the highlight was supposed to be. That's when they started getting mixed up

with western ideas about shadows and perspective. They didn't have that earlier. But they were so

skilled in the handling of ink that they would do this sort of thing and they would imitate, you see,

all the, the, uh, so-called, uh, rough natural effects of the great Zen artists. And so today in Japan,

a younger generation of artists has decided it's time to break all that up.

If we imagine, for example, haiku parties, the writing of haiku poetry. Basho, who was the great

17th century master of haiku, said, get a three-foot child to write haiku, because they are the sort of

direct guileless things that children would say. But now there are magazines devoted to haiku poetry,

where in every issue there will be 10,000 haikus written by people all over the country. And they

get so stilted and so affected that one wished one had never heard of haiku. The same thing is

starting over here. And, uh, you should see the entries we get in these haiku competitions that,

uh, Japan Airlines and other people sponsor. But it all after a while becomes dated, stilted,

and so somewhere again, the new thing has to break out, which is always coming up. But there's no formula,

you see, for fixing it so that you can do it again and again and again, because the moment you start

doing it again and again and again, it isn't it anymore. The, the, the real thing has escaped.

Do you remember some time ago there was a fashion for having wrought iron fish, just the outline of

a fish. Some artist originally, you know, put this fish together and it looked great. But then you

suddenly found them in every gift shop and dime store, and they look perfectly terrible.

So this is the mysterious thing. Well, not only in the arts, but in lifestyles, in everything,

when you start saying, what is the technique for getting this thing? And people say, well, this is it.

It's gone. Same in education. Same in music. The moment you start teaching something, what are you,

what question are you asking? How could we, is there some method whereby in our schools

schools, we could produce from the music department, every graduation ceremony, three musicians of the

statue of Bach or Mozart? Now, if we knew how to do that, that knowledge would prevent us from being

surprised by the work of these people. Because we would know how it's done. And when you know how

something is done, it doesn't surprise you. That's why there's a Zen poem which says, if you ask where

the flowers come from, even the god of spring doesn't know. Certainly the god of spring would be

supposed to know where the flowers come from. But the truth of the matter is he doesn't. And so in the

same way, if you ask the lord god, how do you create the universe? He said, I have no special method.

And this, this is known in Zen as a very difficult, this is the most difficult virtue to attain.

So many of these things begin with Moo. Boojee. Boojee. It means nothing special. It means no business.

No artificiality. In American, current, real cool.

Boojee. So Boojee is where something doesn't stand out like a sore thumb. But it is absolutely

different from being modest. A Boojee person may be immodest in the sense that if he knows he can do

something well, he just says he can. He doesn't have all sorts of blushing violet techniques. Boojee,

you see, is this mysterious quality of nothing special, no special method. Because if there is,

let me repeat, if we do know the method and we know it infallibly, it ceases to be interesting.

There are no surprises left. And the moment the element of surprise is gone, the zest of life is

gone. That, you see, is why it's very difficult to teach Zen to yourself. Because you can't

easily surprise yourself. The essence, you see, of this kind of spontaneity is response to a surprise.

So the master, you don't know what he's going to do, and he surprises you. It's like trying to cure

hiccups. Very difficult to cure yourself, because when you pat yourself on the back, you know when

you're going to do it. So you're all ready for it. When somebody else comes up and slams you on the

back, then that's a surprise. And what you needed was a surprise. Or it's like jokes. What makes you

laugh about a joke is the element of surprise in it. That's why jokes aren't funny after they've

been explained. So in the same way, all these Zen stories, if explained, have no effect.

They're intended to produce what I would call metaphysical laughter. But this has to be a

surprise. And so as to be surprised, well, there's no way of premeditating it. So you see, if you read,

for example, there's a book out here called Zen by Eugen Herrigal, who studied archery. Many of you

probably read this book. He had to learn to pull the bowstring in the manner of the Japanese archer

and let it go, but not on purpose. He had to let it go without thinking first, I'll let it go, and then

let go. He had to let it go, not on purpose. Now, that really bugged Herrigal. How do you do something

not on purpose? Especially if you're aiming at a target? Well, the whole point is, if you think before

you shoot, it's too late. The target's moved. That's why we have a thing like beginner's luck.

You see, if you simply point at something like that, if your finger was a gun, I would probably have hit

the light switch. And so you get a person who's naive about a gun, will pick a gun up and bang,

and the thing will be, will drop dead. I'll never forget the first time I ever used a slingshot.

This friend of mine was with me, and he was aiming away and not missing, and I just picked it up,

ping, and it hit. But I couldn't do it again. You get a certain naturalness there. So,

there was a master by the name of Ikkyu, who was a great leg puller, and he had in front of his house

a very gnarled pine tree, one of those things that's contorted, and they love this kind of thing.

And he put a notice up by it. He said, I, Ikkyu, will pay 100 yen, which was a fair amount of money

in those days, to anyone who can see this tree straight. Well, soon, there was a whole crowd of

people around that tree, lying on the ground and twisting their necks and looking at it from all

sorts of angles, and there was absolutely no way of seeing the tree with a straight trunk.

But Ikkyu had a friend who was a priest of another sect, and a smart boy went over to see this friend,

and said, what about this Mr. Ikkyu's tree? Oh, said the other priest, it's perfectly simple.

He said, you go and tell him, the answer to seeing the tree straight is to look straight at it.

So, this man went over to Ikkyu and said, I claim the reward. He said, you look straight at it.

And Ikkyu looked at him in a funny way and said, he was forked out the 100 yen and gave it to him,

and said, I think you've been talking to Rosanne down the street.

Now, in that way, you see, just look straight at it. In other words, here's the bowstring,

let go of it. All this thimble-fambling, mimble-mambling, jumble-humble about

the right technique of letting go of it, let go of it, damn it! But that's very difficult.

It's as if I would say to you now, everybody, let's be unselfconscious.

And so, finally, in desperation, you at last learn to let go of the thing,

which was what you were supposed to do all the time. And then,

one is as again as a child. This is original innocence. So, this is the meaning of the person

who was asked, what do you do here in this Zen institution? He said, we eat when hungry,

and we sleep when tired. Well, he said, that's being just like everybody else. They all do that.

He said, they do not. When they eat, they don't eat. But they think of all sorts of extraneous matters.

When they're tired, they don't sleep. They dream all kinds of dreams.

Nobody ever transforms himself into an enlightened pattern of life

by dividing himself in two pieces, good I and bad me, wherein good I preaches to bad me

and tries to make me over, as if a human being were divided, were like a rider on a horse.

And the rider is the soul and the horse is the body. Or the rider is reason and the horse is passion.

The rider is control and the horse is the uncontrolled. In other words, we've got the

the opposition of the ego allied with the super-ego, trying to ride the ego aligned with the id.

And Freud's metaphors and Freud's construction of the sort of psychic anatomy of mankind

and it is really derived from Plato, with the image of the soul riding the animal horse.

Now, all this is a total failure, because there is a secret connection, as it were a sort of back

stairs, between good I and bad me. Good I can look down at bad me and say,

uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you oughtn't to be like that. But all the time, bad me is sending its energy

up the back stairs to good I and motivating good I, uh, to go uh, uh, uh, at bad me.

But for the reasons of bad me. I ought to be better, because then I could be more proud of myself.

So, in this way, there is something about spirituality, self-conscious spirituality,

all kinds of religion involving preaching and moralizing and talking to oneself in a split and

divided way, good I against bad me, that is profoundly phony.

One of the main streams of Buddhist way of life, to be what one might call the religion of non-religion.

To find...

to demonstrate, to convey what is the most highly spiritual

through what is the most everyday and ordinary.

And to make no division between the two.

So that you might say the more everyday it is,

the more truly spiritual it is.

But the more it appears to be spiritual, that is to say,

something different from, aside from, apart from everyday life,

the more false that kind of spirituality will be.

And this reaches a peak in the history of Japanese culture in the 17th century.

When in this country there were three, no I'll say four, superbly important men.

Basho, the haiku poet.

Bangkei, a Zen teacher.

Hakuin, another Zen teacher.

And Sengai, a Zen painter.

And I want to say something about the work of these four men,

and their genius and the movement in Japanese history which they represented,

which you might call the democratization of the esoteric.

And there's something about this of extraordinary interest to Americans.

Because for good, for better or for worse,

we as Americans live in a culture in which there is nothing esoteric.

There are no secrets, except those things which cannot be understood.

In a way they are always esoteric.

Only a few people can understand them.

And they don't need to be guarded because even if you, for example,

you publish a textbook on nuclear physics,

and only very few people can understand it.

But in the sense that it is published, it is no longer esoteric.

In our world, for example, a teacher tries his utmost to make himself understood.

He knocks himself out to make his message assimilable without tears.

But as I've explained to you, in oriental cultures,

teachers expect the student to make the effort to attain the understanding.

So a teacher is difficult.

And you must put yourself out to understand what he says.

He's not going to make it easy for you.

Because of the feeling that what comes to you too easily doesn't really come to you.

Now, however, there was in 17th century Japan a movement among the people you might call esoteric

to make their understanding available to the masses.

In a sense, arising out of Buddhist compassion, the idea that the aim in life of a bodhisattva

is to bring enlightenment to as many other sentient beings as possible.

And always the problem is, you see, when you've popularized something,

how to do it without making it vulgar, cheap, watered down, insipid.

And these four men were in their own quite different ways geniuses at doing it.

Let's start with Basho.

Basho didn't invent haiku poetry, but he brought it to a certain degree of development

whereby it was possible for ordinary people who were not very literate to become poets.

Now, to understand the situation in which Basho arose, you must realize that Japanese poetry

grows on the tree of Chinese tradition, and that by the 17th century,

Chinese poetry was as difficult to follow as, say, T.S. Eliot is today.

Now, to understand T.S. Eliot's poems, The Four Quartets,

you have to know an enormous amount of world literature and some very, very obscure books.

Because T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets is a complex texture of allusions to other works.

And you have to know what these other works are in order to get the point.

So this is poetry written strictly for literati.

And the Chinese brought this to a high degree of perfection.

So that, you see, poets were writing only for other poets.

They weren't getting anything across to people who just, as it were, spoke everyday language.

And so the development, this happened also in Japan.

If you read, say, a novel like The Tale of Genji, and read all about the light-footed amours

of those very, very cultivated people.

And with their little poems and things, the subtle kinds of illusion they had.

And also, when tea ceremony became over-refined, you know, there were suggestions in the shade of a cup,

which was intended to remind you of something.

You know, a complicated set of associations, which the master planned.

And you were supposed to get the point.

And so people indulged in all kinds of fantastic one-upmanship.

In seeing who did or didn't recognize the subtle chains of association,

which recognition of which depended upon a great deal of learning.

And you see what that is?

That's a very elaborate game.

And the intent and the object of the game is not really delight,

but seeing who can out-associate whom.

So these seventeenth-century masters rebelled against all that kind of thing.

And they wanted tea and poetry and painting and Zen to be appreciated for itself,

and to be appreciated by anybody with human equipment.

So Basho said, in order to write haiku, you should be taught by a child three feet high,

because a statement which such a child would make would be a poem,

and a profound poem, to the degree, and especially to the degree,

that what the child said was a simple image,

and had in it no kind of philosophizing,

but was just that vivid statement, which children do.

You light the fire, and then I'll show you something wonderful,

a great ball of snow.

That's a haiku poem.

And all these poems, each one simply takes an image,

and says no more.

A brushwood gate, and for a lock, this snail.

Leaf fallen, flying back to the branch, butterfly.

You see there's something a little bit clever about those ones,

and for that very reason, they are not the best kind of haiku.

Better still is something like this.

In the dense fog, what is being shouted between hill and boat?

You see the image of a river estuary,

and you can't see anything, but you know there's someone down there in the boat,

talking to someone up on the hill,

and you can't hear the conversation.

You can't quite put your finger on it.

The quality, which in Japanese aesthetics, is called yugen.

Yugen, made up of two Chinese characters,

both of which mean the dark, the deep, and the mysterious.

But, yugen is not like, is not like a great abyss,

full of black clouds and lightning in which there might be a dragon.

That's not yugen.

Yugen is the subtly mysterious.

And is described by the poet Sayami,

as to wander on and on in a great forest without thought of return.

To watch flying geese appear and be hidden in the clouds.

To watch distant fishing boats on the ocean disappear behind islands.

And what in all these images is the connecting link?

In haiku poetry, we would feel, with haiku from a Western standpoint,

that these poems are unfinished.

They are simply titles.

They are simply first lines of something that could go on

to elaborate and express everything.

But in this kind of artistry, one doesn't express everything.

One leaves the best part unsaid,

because the work of the poet is not simply to impress everybody else

with how clever he is and leave them speechless,

but to evoke in the listener something.

In exactly the same way the art of the painter,

in the tradition of sung Chinese painting,

is to leave something to the beholder's imagination.

Hence, what is called one-corner painting.

Say, a painter like Ma Yuan,

or Bayen as he is known in Japanese,

is a master of one-corner painting.

He indicates a line of hills somewhere near the top,

and down at the bottom, there is a single drifting boat,

and a fisherman.

This is all there is.

The path comes to an end in the parsley.

Now you've got to go back to childhood to understand that.

Don't you remember how as a child you loved to explore paths,

and to get right down among the stalks of grasses,

and weeds, and see where it all goes?

And how sometimes one of the eternal child stories

is that you were one day walking along a little lane,

and you discovered a door in a wall that you had never seen before.

And you opened it,

and it led into a magical garden,

where all the bushes were covered in jewels,

and there were marvellous birds,

and fantastic songs.

And you came out,

because you had to get home in time for dinner,

and the next day you looked for that door again,

but you couldn't find it anywhere.

And yet you knew it was there,

it was just between this fence and that fence.

But today it isn't there,

and yet somehow it always is there.

And so for every child,

there is always a kind of a funny place

that leads on to somewhere else,

and you don't figure out exactly where it leads,

because that would spoil it.

You mustn't know.

So all this haiku poetry,

and this kind of painting,

which the Song artists so marvellously mastered,

is to evoke that sense of what I would just call possibility or potentiality,

without actually filling in any details.

And that's real magic.

This is the way in which to suggest the abysmally evil,

and it's likewise the way to suggest the ineffably beautiful.

Don't fill in the details.

Indicate.

Don't explain.

And so, let's take some more examples.

I want you to think of Ryo Anji garden,

you've all seen that.

One thing that is most important about Japanese gardens,

is the background in which you find them.

You can't take Ryo Anji, as people have attempted to do,

and reconstruct it in Brooklyn.

Unless, at the same time, you take the background.

And that's going to be pretty difficult to do.

Now, what is that background?

You notice there's a wall along the back of the garden,

rather a low wall,

but just high enough,

because it lies on the crest of a slope,

that beyond it goes down.

And then, beyond the wall, all you see is trees.

So, too, in many of the gardens around the temples here,

you will see over the wall, perhaps a roof.

And then, beyond that roof, treetops.

And those treetops,

although we're in the middle of a dense city,

somehow suggest that outside that garden is a forest.

There's something else.

You know the quality of sky as you see it

over the tops of hills that lie between you and the ocean?

There's something very distant in the blue of that sky,

suggesting miles and miles and miles,

and gulls and pelicans drifting away into the distance.

Openness.

Something that, in other words, your spirit goes out into,

and has nowhere to land.

Now, all that kind of quality is yugen.

And the trick is to evoke the mood of yugen,

a certain sort of mysterious suggestiveness,

by very simple means,

which don't actually pin anything down.

So that was the point of haiku poetry.

To put this possibility within reach of people who had within themselves the capability,

the sensitivity to appreciate the yugen feeling,

or another feeling that is called sabi.

Sabi is akin to yugen,

but it's a certain kind of solitariness or loneliness,

good loneliness.

Not the loneliness which plucks at the heartstrings and makes you long for friends.

That's not sabi.

Sabi is when you love to be alone,

and are at peace in this loneliness.

And so there is also another mood,

still akin to this,

which in Japanese is called aware.

It's spelt like our word aware,

only pronounced aware.

And this,

like yugen and sabi,

is difficult to translate,

but it's a sense of sadness,

but delightful sadness.

There's a poem which says,

even in the mind of a no-mind man,

there is aware.

When the snipe leaves the marsh on an autumn evening,

and you know,

late in autumn,

when all nature is foggy,

and cold,

and the leaves have almost gone,

and the last sign of life,

the bird, the snipe,

leaves,

and goes somewhere else,

perhaps further south.

It's all gone.

When the last geese migrate,

and winter sets in,

it would say,

even in the mind of a no-mind man,

that is to say,

a Buddha,

who has no,

you might say,

egocentric feelings,

even in such a person,

there comes a clutch

of sadness.

Aware is a sort of nostalgia.

And we feel it very strongly

in all the poetry of transience.

You know,

this is one of the greatest themes of poetry.

How the world is floating away.

Nothing can be possessed.

And we are all dissolving smoke.

And poets keep on at this.

So do preachers.

But in what different ways?

The preacher will say,

vanity of vanities,

all is vanity.

But in the next moment,

he will burst into poetry.

You know that chapter in Ecclesiastes,

where everything is described as passing away.

How exquisite it is.

And in Shakespeare,

the same magic is evoked.

Our revels now are ended.

These are actors,

as I foretold you,

are all spirits,

and are melted into air,

into thin, thin air.

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

the cloud-capped towers,

the gorgeous palaces,

the solemn temples,

the great globe itself,

I, all which it inherit,

shall dissolve.

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

leave not a rack behind.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on,

and our little life is rounded with the sleep.

What's going on?

From one point of view,

you see,

the poet seems to be putting everything down,

and to say,

it's all an illusion,

it's all a vision,

and there's nothing.

And yet at the same time,

he borrows from this vision.

He borrows the beautiful imagery

of cloud-capped towers,

and gorgeous palaces,

and solemn temples.

And from the illusion itself,

he weaves his spell.

Omar Khayyam,

which is today Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam,

is a bit corny,

to ears trained to modern poetry.

But to the Victorian ear,

it had the same magic.

The earthly hope men set their hearts upon,

turns ashes,

or it prospers.

And anon like snow upon the desert's dusty face,

lighting a little hour or two,

is gone.

And now,

oriental poetry,

is full of this theme.

Haiku,

every kind of Buddhist sutra,

and so on,

is full of the theme of the disappearing world.

Ukiyoye,

the floating world,

that vanishes.

And there's one kind of person who says,

uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

don't you look at those beautiful girls,

because in a few years,

they're going to be ugly old ladies.

Don't you take delight in this delicious food,

because in a few years,

you're going to have chronic stomach ulcers,

and bad digestion.

Don't you dissipate,

with singing and dancing,

because not long from now,

you'll have rheumatism,

or arthritis,

and a sore throat,

and you won't be able to enjoy it anymore.

But another kind of person is saying,

yep,

it all dissolves.

It all goes away.

And the beautiful girls will be old ladies,

and the handsome young men,

will be crones,

and, uh, eventually skulls.

And isn't that great?

What's wrong with skeletons?

When you pick up,

on the beach,

a shell,

of some fish,

and you say,

no fish at home anymore.

All the flesh in this bone is dissolved.

And you've got just the bone.

And you say, wow,

look at that.

Isn't that great?

A skull is just as beautiful as a seashell.

A bone which a brain once lived in.

A bone which jeweled eyes once shone from,

but still look at that white skull.

It's really a marvelous thing.

Only we've been taught wrong associations with it.

Taught that, uh,

the going away of life is against life,

whereas a matter of fact,

life is entirely something that always goes away.

Going away,

dissolving,

is the same thing as living.

Only if our associations get crossed up,

and we are taught

that dying

is against life,

then we can't live.

Dying is the same thing as living.

And if you see that,

that everything becoming bones,

everything turning back into the soil,

becoming manure,

you see,

that is life.

The loved one must be allowed to dissolve,

and not be clung to.

So,

this is why

the theme of transience

and dissolution

is really

one of the mainstays of poetic beauty.

And the poet

is a genius

and a compassionate

bodhisattva to us all.

When he takes the thing that we dread,

that is to dissolve,

and shows us

that dissolution

is the heart of beauty

and the heart of life.

And this is what

the mood of aware

in haiku

and in painting

and in poetry

evokes.

Now,

I've got, I'm afraid,

a rather long way

from the rest of the gentlemen

I started to talk about.

But,

in

taking next, say,

Sengai.

Sengai

was a Zen master

who

made the greatest thing

of

marvellous,

bad paintings.

In a way,

you might say,

of Sengai

that he couldn't paint,

nor could he write.

His writing

is like a child's writing,

and his paintings are caricatures.

and yet they're not.

There's something about him

that is

extremely humorous.

He enjoys always

a joke on himself

of how badly he writes

and how badly he paints,

and he gets away with it.

In fact,

he became so famous

in the 17th century

that people started to copy Sengai,

thinking that it was a cinch,

you know.

Anybody could paint like Sengai.

Like some people look at

a modern abstract painting

and say,

well, my child could do better

than that.

And there was one painter

in Kyoto

who was making quite a lot of money

by forging Sengai paintings

and selling them.

And one day,

Sengai came to visit him.

And he brought with him

a furoshiki

with a package inside.

And he said to this man,

I have brought you

my seals.

Because if you would put

your forgeries of my paintings

are so good

that if you would

actually put my own seals on them they would be perfect but he said excuse me if occasionally i

may borrow them because i might need them myself now what is the same guy doing he's a man who has

been greatly collected but who painted for the joy of painting and not to be shown that is to

say he had no ambitions to be hung in a gallery or a museum he just liked to draw and so he's trying

to say in order to be a painter you don't have to be shown in a gallery and if that's the why you

paint that you paint to be shown in a gallery you are not going to be a genuine painter has ever

occurred to you that today people who want to be shown in museums and that's their supreme ambition

in painting are doing a very odd thing see a museum is kind of a morgue that's why i haven't on this

tour done very much museum viewing i'd rather tried to show you works of art in their natural

and convenient setting because only professional professionals paint for museums real artists paint

to have their paintings to live with to put in a house to paint a screen that is actually going to

be used for part of the furniture of a room painting in other words is something as useful in its own way

as plumbing it makes a gorgeous house it isn't made just uh to be shown to be a fad to be a sort of thing

to be talked about and to have books written about it and to have art historians going cluck cluck cluck and

so on the moment it becomes that it becomes the same kind of thing as poetry which can't be understood

unless you know the illusions it becomes academic painting so sengai restores to 17th century japanese art

painting that you can do not to be a little fake gallery artist but to thoroughly enjoy yourself with a brush

and so likewise with zen zen uh zen too could become too clerical and it does so become you know with uh

professional zen i was discussing this with a good western zen student a few days ago

and she was saying do you know uh if you stay around a teacher too long he starts to get worried about you

that is to say if you're not going to be a professional if you're not going to be a teacher

yourself if you're not going to be a priest you're just a lay student of zen and if you stay if you if

you go year after year after year back to this guy he starts to get troubled and says you are addicted

to medicine it's becoming a bad habit and somehow you have to get rid of zen

so uh wherever these things become professional people uh lose their spirit

and so there were these two other men in the 17th century who in quite different ways

helped made it possible for zen understanding

to spread beyond a sort of clerical circle hakuin did it by one method of bankei by another

and very interesting results arise from this hakuin was an extraordinarily clever teacher

and he systematized the koan system in such a way that it could be very conveniently handled

and he had 80 students who became accomplished zen masters that was considered absolutely extraordinary

because before it had been felt that one zen master would have only one or two really good students

who would be his spiritual descendants that in this age of the kali yuga when everything is falling apart

you couldn't possibly expect more than that so hakuin by his very ingenious but rigorous discipline

he was a martinet he really was but he encouraged many young japanese to go through this mill

that he put them through and by somehow pepping them up and challenging them with a very vigorous discipline

he got 80 people to succeed him now bankei did exactly the opposite

bankei taught zen mainly to farmers he was the roshi at myoshinji in kyoto for many years

and he taught to the simplest people and said to understand zen

you don't really have to do anything if you try to attain satori it's like a person trying to wash

off blood with blood what you have to understand is your uh difficult to put in english but your unborn

mind this expression in japanese who show who show means not manifest that which hasn't arisen into uh

the world of appearances and he said because of your unborn mind when you hear a crow

uh squawk and when you hear a bell ring you know instantly without any premeditation

or without stopping having to stop to think what has happened so one day there was a nichiren priest

nichiren shu is a very belligerent form of buddhism it's like jehovah's witnesses in buddhism

and uh there was a nichiren priest heckling bankei when he was talking and saying out on the back of

the audience i don't understand what you're talking about so bankei said i'd be happy to explain please

come closer when nichiren priest came in he said come closer still and he got up here and said please

still come closer and the nichiren priest kept on coming when he was right up there bankei said how

well you understand me uh so bankei would say zen consists in faith in your innate

quality of intelligence in your uh organic pattern trust it after all your eyes are beautifully blue or

brown your hair is wonderfully brunette or blonde your uh breathing is fantastic your heart is working

beautifully that is uh your zen go ahead and all those farmers and people who came around understood

bankei but bankei didn't leave any disciples he had no spiritual successes and for this reason he is

considered in a certain way an enormous success because he was like a bird going through the sky without

leaving any traces he was like that as that poem says entering the water he does not make a ripple

entering the forest he does not disturb a blade of grass bankei is largely forgotten today

because of this and those are remembered you see who left spiritual descendants who could chalk up a

certificate and say i was trained by such as a master who was trained by such a master who was trained by such a

master and in all such genealogies there is a temptation to formalism and a certain kind of pride so

in the sense this happened in leaving no specific descendants

he at the same time left many nameless descendants people who were totally unimportant historically who

were farmers and peasants and who really got the point of what he said but then and there decided

that just because they did understand that they wouldn't

there was no need to become professional zen buddhists to label themselves as bankei followers or zen

followers or buddhists because you see whoever really gets this thing and understands it uh knows

that he hasn't attained anything buddha said in the diamond sutra when i attained complete perfect and

unexcelled awakening i attained nothing at all and you see that nothing at all is the same nothing into

which all trees and plants and bodies and butterflies and birds are disappearing in the course of endless

transformations everything disappears into nothing at all but out of the same nothing at all come

all the new things forever and ever he who would understand the meaning of buddha nature

must watch for the season and the causal relations every voice is the voice of buddha

every form is the buddha form the wild goose has no intention of leaving traces the water has no

thought of engulfing reflections the instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark the badger

and the white bull emit a glorious radiance with no bird singing the mountain is yet more still

in the spring beyond time the withered tree flowers when the snowy heron stands in the snow

the colors are not the same a pair of monkeys are reaching for the moon in the water when pure gold

enters the fire its color becomes still brighter the sound of the bell in the silent night

i wake from my dream in this dream world of ours

gazing at the reflection of the moon in a clear pool i see beyond my form my real form the song of birds

the voices of insects are all means of conveying truth to the mind in flowers and grasses

we see messages of the dawn of the way of nature the scholar pure and clear of mind serene and open of heart

should find in everything what nourishes him men know how to read printed books

they do not know how to read the unprinted ones

they can play on a stringed harp but not on a stringless one applying themselves to the superficial

instead of the profound how should they understand music or poetry if you know the inner significance

of things the misty moon of the five lakes is all within you if you understand the activity of human phenomena

the heroism and nobility of the great men of all ages is in your grasp

zen developed out of the work of kumarajiva

came into china as i said for 400 or a little before

he had two disciples who began to work on buddhism from a taoist point of view

and they were actually the the originators of zen

then apparently about uh shortly before 500 as the dates now check out another indian came to china

whose name was bodhidharma and bodhidharma was the uh person who touched off zen as a specific movement

bodhidharma had a pupil by the name of uh

eka hui ke in chinese

eka is japanese pronunciation like zen is the japanese pronunciation of the chinese chun

and uh the story is that when eka came to bodhidharma

bodhidharma refused to accept him as a student

all zen masters do this they reject you and this stimulates you you see to come back stronger

if i mean if you're going to learn at all

and eka came back stronger and stronger and stronger and bodhidharma resisted him stronger and stronger

and finally he cut off his left arm and presented it to bodhidharma and said look here's my left arm

given to you as a token that nothing in the world matters to me except to find out what you're all about

all right he said uh what do you want to know eka said i have no peace of mind please pacify my mind

in chinese mind is um this word pronounced shin and shin is here shin is the heart mind it's the psychic center

and so bodhidharma said bring out your shin here before me and i will pacify it

eka said when i look for it i can't find it bodhidharma said then it's pacified and eka immediately

understood what all the thing was about that's the experience called satori in japanese wu in chinese

uh mandarin and in the cantonese dialect uh it's just what we call in our modern psychological jargon the aha

phenomenon uh the aha phenomenon aha now i see well now um what was all this this zen

uh which uh in chinese is uh is this character is uh a translation of the sanskrit word jnana and so

this is being pronounced chan in chinese and zen in japanese is unfortunately untranslatable in english

it designates a certain state of consciousness that is sometimes called meditation but that won't do it

all contemplation isn't really the point the chinese have a different word for contemplation

and uh sometimes one pointedness of mind i would prefer to translate this word with the notion of

total presence of mind when we say a person is crazy we often say they're not all there

now go to the opposite of that and visualize the person who is completely there or who is completely

here person who lives totally and absolutely now that doesn't mean he's incapable of thinking about

the past or the future because thoughts about the past and about the future are included in the present

you have them now but imagine the kind of person who is not distracted who when he talks to you

it really gives you his whole being who doesn't as it were look over your shoulder and wander after

something else somebody who first of all he's completely here and he's so much here

that you can't phase him now this idea of faithing is crucial in zen you see i referred a moment ago to

attachment that buddhism is living free from attachments and i have made the point that this is not

abandoning a sense of a good appetite for dinner but it's stopping sticking in psychological jargon you

don't block a mind of no hesitation it's sometimes called in chinese the phrase mo ju chu is used of

going straight ahead uh so supposing somebody walks up to you on the street and says are you saved now

most of us who are intelligent people feel embarrassed by such a question you know what's this wretched

salvation army person or jehovah's witness doing asking me whether i'm saved or not and we're all a

little bit you know what do you do with a nut like that so but in zen this is a perfect moment

to respond see to the most embarrassing question are you saved but zen comes back in a very funny way

in zen one doesn't give philosophical answers to a question like that you give practical answers

i had a boiled egg this morning because whenever you are asked about matters sacred theoretical and

philosophical you answer in terms of things earthy and practical but then on the other hand when you

are asked about things earthy and practical you answer in terms of things religious and philosophical

is dinner ready you know who's asking this question who are you so this is then the flavor of zen

is you know a bodhidharma is supposed to have meditated so long that his legs fell off

and he's usually drawn this way something like this anyway it looks like a shmoo but in japan you buy

these toys that are daromas and they are so weighted in here that you can never knock them over you can

bat it on the floor bat it this way bat it that way but it always comes up again and so the poem says

seven times down eight times up such is life so uh this is the the the principle of not being phased

not being attached so to play the game you can't phase me this is a very important in the art of

lifemanship fundamental gamesmanship because you see when the zen monks moved into kyoto

uh they took over the best part of town simply fantastic how this happened the beautiful hills

that i was talking about this morning were occupied by the brigands who later became the japanese

nobility uh the great daimyos these were the toughest characters and the zen monks played a game with them

which was that you know you possess all these lands and you were powerful and so on but so what

it's all falling apart then what will you do well they said that's too bad we don't know

and the zen monk said oh you haven't got the hang of the thing you see so they found that they couldn't

terrify zen monks that uh they played all sorts of tricks but the zen monks were better masters at it

see supposing you say to somebody uh look i'm not afraid of you you can do anything you like you

can kill me or anything at all but if i go and kill the fellow who says this i'll never find out

whether he was afraid or not

so they out faced these people and said you did you we have a secret you see that you don't have

and we'll teach your your uh servitors to be great warriors because they'll learn the secret too and

they won't be afraid of anything and this is what they did and so the daimyos uh the noblemen uh built

great monasteries for these zen masters and monks on their best land the finest artists of japan made gold

leaf screens uh for almost every room in the place and although nobody owns anything individually

the community owns it collectively with the protection of the daimyos and they had a tremendous

scene going

now to us that sounds extremely weird even immoral you don't expect religious people to do things like that

no i know you don't uh if if the religious people are self-righteous and have no humor

but these people didn't go around pretending that they were specially good

they didn't dupe themselves they were people who understood what human nature is

that in every one of us there is an element of irreducible rascality

in jewish theology this is called the yetzahara uh y-e-z-e-r-h-a-r-a it's the yetzahara

the element of irreducible rascality which was created by god

because god has one too and that's why when you are really affectionate with somebody else

When, for example, men, I don't know what women do in their private lives between each other, but men,

as we all know, say to someone they're very fond of, why you old bastard, you know?

Just like that, you know, there's a certain way of saying to a person,

there's a certain glint of recognition, and so there's a Zen poem which says, when two Zen masters meet each other on the road, they need no introduction.

When a thief meets a thief, they recognize each other instantly.

And this goes back, you see, again into the heart of Chinese philosophy.

That human nature is considered to be basically good.

And even the rascally elements of it are good.

They have a sort of salt in the human stew.

There has to be this little thing, that human passions, and that the natural contentiousness and greed, or whatever that we have,

is an essential element in our makeup, and that when people lose sight of that, they go mad.

Nothing, for example, is more dangerous than a saint, that is say an unconscious saint,

who thinks that he is right, who thinks that he is right, and who endeavors to live an absolutely pure life,

and to eliminate all selfish thoughts.

Somebody who undertakes that task is going to be a menace to all around,

because he loses his humor, he loses his real humility,

which is knowing that after all, since we are humans, we have certain needs,

we need to eat, we need sex, we need this, that, and the other.

And this sort of has a quality of humor to it.

And so this is why, in Zen art, the sages are always drawn to look a little bit like bums.

You know that putai, or hotai, as he's called, what's called the laughing Buddha,

the fat Buddha with an immense belly,

and carrying around an enormous bag of rubbish,

into which he indiscriminately puts anything he finds around,

and then gives it away to children.

This is the sort of type which the Chinese call the old rogue.

And the old rogue, as a type of poet, sage, monk, and scholar, you see, is greatly admired.

He's the non-violent brigand.

The rolling stone, the free man.

Or, in our words, the joker.

The joker, you see, is the card that can play any role in the pack.

So then, Zen developed in China,

after Bodhidharma's time,

and came to a sort of golden age

in the Tang and Song dynasties.

The golden age of Zen lies between 713 A.D.

and approximately 1,100, 1,200, 1,100 to 1,200.

That's the great creative period in which all the marvelous masters emerged,

and during which Zen exercised a profound influence on the development of Chinese poetry,

painting, calligraphy, and scholarship.

Then, between 1,100 and 1,200, it shifted to Japan and underwent a new development,

rather different in quality and in tone.

And after it had done that for some curious reason,

which is a very complicated historical question,

it slowly faded away in China.

So that, as we find it today,

it is principally a Japanese phenomenon,

and it is slowly fading in Japan,

and slowly growing in the West.

It's a very funny thing.

Now then, let me indicate what Zen training,

what its method is.

How does it work?

I said before,

what is involved is a dialogue,

an interchange between two people.

One who has defined himself as a student,

and has therefore defined the other as the teacher.

There is no teacher until a student arrives,

no problem until a question is raised.

So students create teachers.

It's very funny.

We have a saying,

anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

You can interpret that as,

you're an idiot to go to a psychiatrist because there are a bunch of charlatans.

But the subtler meaning of it is,

yes, if you define yourself as being in need of help psychiatrically,

you need a psychiatrist.

They say exactly the same thing in Zen.

If you ask a question,

you get 30 blows with a stick.

If you don't ask a question,

you get 30 blows with a stick.

Because you simply,

you put yourself in statu pupillari.

You've defined yourself as having a problem.

Now nobody really has a problem,

but the Maya,

the game of life is to pretend that you do.

Going back to fundamental Hinduism,

the Godhead,

or the self,

pretends it's all of us.

And so gets lost,

and so has a ball.

And dreams,

all that's going on.

So,

when you're on your way out

from the dream,

it suddenly occurs to you

that you have a problem.

Life is suffering.

You would like to get out of this.

So,

one such student went to a Zen master,

and he said,

we have to dress and eat every day.

And how do we get out of all that?

In other words,

you might ask the question in this way.

We have to work,

get up,

Monday morning,

go to the office,

do all this routine,

sell something,

and so on.

How do we get out of the rat race?

So,

we have to dress and eat every day,

and how do we get rid of all that?

And the master said,

we dress,

we eat.

The student said,

I don't understand.

He replied,

if you don't understand,

put on your clothes

and eat your food.

This is the kind of dialogue

so characteristic of Zen.

So,

the position is this.

The master,

on being approached by a student

about the problem of life,

says,

I have nothing to teach you.

I'm a Zen master.

I have nothing to say.

Zen is not words.

And,

furthermore,

everything is perfectly clear.

There was a Confucian scholar

who went to a Zen master

and said,

what is your secret teaching?

And he replied,

there is a saying

in your own teacher Confucius

which explains it all.

Don't you remember

when Confucius said

to his disciples,

do you suppose

that I'm concealing

something from you?

I've held nothing back.

And the scholar

didn't get this.

So,

a few days later

they were walking together

in the mountains

and they passed

the wild laurel bush.

And the Zen master

said to the Confucian scholar,

do you smell it?

He said,

yes.

He said,

you see,

I'm holding nothing back.

So,

the position of the Zen master

is,

there is nothing to tell you.

There is no,

we're not offering you

any panacea,

any solution,

any doctrine,

any big,

big goody

to the problem of life

because

the problem is an illusion.

Well,

then the student

under these circumstances

thinks,

well,

this is some sort

of a come on.

He's testing my sincerity.

And of course,

the nothing

which he has to teach

is the mystery

of the great void.

See,

he doesn't take it

as meaning

just plain old

ordinary nothing

but the great void.

And so,

he persists

and the teacher

makes him persist

until he gets

way out

on a limb.

He has to persist

so much

that he practically

dedicates his life

and saying,

just as the way

Huayka symbolically

cut off his arm,

the student

is put in the position

of dedicating his life

to solving this thing

and getting what

that teacher has.

And of course,

there wasn't anything

all along.

But he's been put

in that position.

So,

then,

once he's

in statu pupillari,

once he's

in statu pupillari,