You know, the five fears are fear of loss of livelihood, fear of loss of reputation, fear of death, fear of unusual states of mind, and fear of speaking before an assembly. And this fear of speaking before assembly, it seems to be so built into our culture. I mean, because there must be some basic thing like that that makes it so hard for us to do, get the chanting started. I mean, I can't understand it. I mean, I think we really have to have some practice where people shout until you're not hesitant. Because as soon as the group, your voice becomes hesitant. Maybe like, who's it, Demoses, was it, who put stones in his mouth? No, who was it? And spoke on the beach, famous orator of Greek culture.

[01:04]

And he put stones in his mouth and spoke till he could speak even clearly then. I mean, I can't tell you, it's exceedingly important. You can't, if you can't start the chanting, you can't teach. You just don't have the kind of energy to be out there in front of people. except in safe situations. So this thing about starting the chanting is not a small thing. It's as important as anything else we're doing. And we always start to... It's better to do it completely wrong than to do it with hesitation. I mean, there's nothing worse in Zen than to do something with hesitation. It's better to be totally wrong and make a fool of yourself. And I've been saying this for 15 years. I must be a terrible teacher. I can't get any... I can't get it. You just put yourself out there. Okay, in this corner, I'm trying to, you know...

[02:16]

And I think in our culture on the whole, we need a lot of encouragement to practice that, a lot of support. Because it's so different, seems so different at least. I like the way you fixed the lights, girl. And made a nice atmosphere this morning in the chanting. But I'm also trying to challenge you Now, in this koan, I guess, I suppose the larger sense of what I'm doing, talking with you this evening, and it's nice to do a teisho in the evening, is give you, continue the process of of finding out how to let the koans speak to you, to hear the koans.

[03:31]

Because if you really start hearing the koans, you will hear the world, to truly hear the world, to hear yourself and to hear others. Because that's, in a way, we could say what the koans are about, is learning how to actually hear this kind of world we live in. Now, koans are presenting insights. They're presenting the dynamic of certain teachings. They're presenting how teachings function in a particular context by showing you a sort of the teaching in action in a narrative. But the koan is also showing you a particular world in which the koans function.

[04:42]

showing you the kind of world in which enlightenment happens. Now, if that sounds strange to you, it means you think there's a fixed world out there. The Suiyan's Eyebrows, which is koan number eight, I believe in the Blue Cliff Records in 71, and Shoyaroku, which is the koan that Daito Kokushi, whose temple Robert and I studied in, his favorite, or his enlightenment koan. And now, you may, they say, it's said, it's common to say that if you really penetrate one koan, you penetrate them all. It's more or less true. But still, there's usually one koan that you will really penetrate. So you may study many koans, you may, in a sense, pass or benefit from many koans.

[05:49]

My feeling is really 20 to 30 to 50 koans is enough to study, at least in our culture. But usually still one koan, maybe two or three, but usually as you study various koans, one takes hold of you. One phrase and a koan takes hold of you. And that was true of this koan for Daitoku Kishi. But in the Blue Cliff Records, Higiganroku version of this koan, it actually deals with the same three phrases and talks about these same three phrases of young men, so-called three phrases of young men. And in that koan, it's worth studying the koan, both of them, both the Shoyuruku and the Ekingan Ruku, but the Ekingan Ruku more particularly is a sibling of this koan 76 in the Shoyuruku.

[07:05]

But in it it says, when the great function appears, there are no fixed standards. When great function appears, there are no fixed standards. So you can ask yourself a question like, what kind of world do I live in? You don't have to just assume, oh, there's this world I live in. But you can ask, what kind of world do I live in? very definitely different centuries of the West lived in different worlds. You go back a few hundred years or less, certainly a few hundred years, and you're in quite a different world, although there's some, of course, in the West underlying continuities. Perhaps we should say overriding continuities. So you can ask, what kind of world do we, do I live in?

[08:18]

Or who are other people? Or what are other people? Do I see other people as companions? Or do I see other people as part of me? Or do I see other people both ways? And when you ask yourself a question like that, you can begin to see surfaces in your own definitions, in your own behavior, which suggest you see people as perhaps at best companions, and often as a threat, or someone who judges you, something like that, or may judge you. where you may divide people to those who accept you or those who probably don't or might not. Anyway, noticing those things is very useful. Or you can ask, you know, in the sense of what kind of world do I live in?

[09:29]

What kind of world is out there? You can look at some possibilities. Do you see the world as a kind of structure which you find your place in? Or maybe you get a room in the world. Maybe you see the world as a kind of architecture and then not only do you get, maybe you think you not only get a world, you're going to build your own house that mimics the world house, and you're going to build it on the front lawn of the world house, and have your career, and your wealth, and so forth. Now looking at what kind of world you're in is essential, I think in general, very helpful if you're going to mature.

[10:34]

When you're old you're going to be wise, not just, you know, losing your powers. But let me take a current event to see if this current event can illustrate a little bit what I mean We could say the U.S. and the Western world is in a kind of chess game, in which maybe we could say the U.S. is the queen, maybe the United Nations is the king, perhaps Germany and England are bishops, and maybe Italy and France are knights, maybe Japan is a rook, a castle, something like that. So the present current event is that the United States has voted with the Security Council of the United Nations to veto, has voted with the Security Council to condemn Israel for deporting, what, is it 150?

[11:50]

400 so-called terrorists. And The Supreme Court of Israel has just voted, strangely enough, voting on a basis of a law that England used to expel Jews from Palestine, before it was Palestine, as terrorists. So now they're expelling Arabs, Palestinians, as terrorists. And they voted that, the Supreme Court of Israel voted that they can be deported as terrorists. And they can, from their position of being deportees, they can now appeal to the courts of Israel for whether this was legitimate or not.

[12:51]

Of course, these people, these deportees, are quite highly educated, smart folks, a lot of them. They're doctors and professors at universities and things. So they intuitively understand that they can create a different world than a chess game. In a chess game, the queen and the knights, they have all the power, really. So what they've done is, by refusing to go along with this, They've put the United States in a very difficult position. Basically, they've got UN and the US checkmated. Because if the US votes with the Security Council to put sanctions on Israel, it could virtually bring down the Clinton administration. Because Israel and the Jewish community in the United States will be in an uproar.

[13:58]

And if Clinton votes, if Clinton vetoes sanctions, then it puts America in the position of being U.S. of any double standards. One standard for Arab countries and former Soviet bloc countries like Yugoslavia. And another standard for France and England and Germany and Israel and so on. So it calls the whole policy in Iraq into question. So if they vote, if he votes, if the new administration votes along with the Security Council, they're in deep doo-doo nationally. And if they veto it, they're in deep doo-doo internationally. So what has it done? They've changed the game into a game of go, where structure and allocated power mean nothing.

[15:10]

Position means everything. They're more powerful right now in their position, 400 people, than Saddam is with the Iraq army. They can do more damage by the position they're holding than Iraq can do. Could do by far to the Bush administration. So what I would say is, to my mind, and in light of this koan, is what they've done is they've demonstrated that the underlying game that's more powerful is a game of position, not structure. That their position is more powerful than structure. And the point I'm also making in using this, using current events, I'm a high school teacher, I have a talk about current events today, is that you can change one world into the other.

[16:16]

You're not stuck with a chess game. You can change a chess game into a game of Go. So in this koan, We don't really have, we don't have, not really, we don't have a game of structure and allocated power and a position of building your house or having a room in the house. You have a world which is much more like an ocean or a harbor or perhaps a swimming pool. And what counts is how you swim, who you decide to swim next to, And can you change the water? Yes. So this koan is about changing the water and where you're swimming. And in that sense, in this sort of, what?

[17:18]

What did I call it last night? Blissful existential angst. of not knowing where you are, but just knowing that you're swimming, and more or less knowing who's swimming next to you. Now this is also the difference between feng shui and geomancy. Feng shui is the system of deciding how we place the zendo. Geomancy is the Western version, but it's quite different. Geomancy is about ley lines and power and structure. Feng shui is much more a fluid world, where if you move this, you change everything. You change the power of the mountain. The mountain doesn't just change the zendo, the zendo also changes the power of the mountain. So you move things. It's like you adjust how you adjust the sides of the pool.

[18:25]

You adjust how you swim in relationship to the harbor. But you're also adjusting everything. Because, again, Buddhism is obviously a teaching of everything changing. So this koan says... If you attain on the first phrase, you teach what Buddhists and ancestors. And if you attain on the second phrase, you teach humans and gods. And if you attain on the third phrase, you can't even teach or save yourself. And it also says, one is not three. So as you well know, Buddhism has no idea of oneness, one truth, or then one enlightenment.

[19:45]

So you could say in Buddhism that a rule of truism of thumb is that different is different. So if you attain on the first phrase, you attain a different enlightenment if you attain on that first. It's not like you get the same enlightenment from different, no. It makes it very clear that these are different kinds of enlightenment. In one enlightenment, you can teach human gods, another buddhas and ancestors, and another you can't even teach yourself. So this koan is presenting different kinds, in this case, three kinds of enlightenment. And what kind of world this enlightenment happens in. It's not just like you change and become enlightened, but you change the world so that you can be enlightened in that kind of world.

[20:50]

So these different three phrases are all through different gates. Now, it's also presenting, as is traditional in Zen, sudden enlightenment. You attain on a phrase. This is sudden enlightenment. But it's also demonstrating by the narrative of the koan, that it took generations to even develop these phrases which are finally attributed to young men. So if it takes generations of teachers to produce even three phrases that can produce enlightenment, then is enlightenment only sudden? No, Colin is pointing out that there's also enlightenment which we could call cultivation.

[21:57]

I'd rather not use sudden, gradual, that's kind of political stance. So there's sudden enlightenment and there's cultivation enlightenment. And in Japanese there's, I don't know, at least fifteen words for enlightenment, technical terms for enlightenment. Some meaning insight, some meaning awakening, some meaning great awakening, and there's of course satori and kensho and so forth. And there's then many additional phrases like breaking through the alaya-vijnana, which are phrases from koans which refer to enlightenment.

[23:05]

Now, in a way, all these enlightenments communicate with each other. But also, the way you... What this koan is emphasizing is that the way you attain affects the kind of attainment Now, that may not have been obvious to you, but it should be obvious to you if you read the koan carefully. Sukiyoshi was quite famous in Japan. for kind of perfection, which could be called nirvana enlightenment in contrast to bodhi enlightenment.

[24:06]

Now, when you talk about enlightenment, I think we talked about it in the seminar the other day, that nirvana, when you attain enlightenment in this world, In this existence, you are free, can be free of the suffering, the pain of suffering. Suffering itself has pain. And you can be free of the suffering of change. But you can't be free of the suffering that arises from having the five skandhas, the physical body. and of life itself. But with nirvana, you're free of your physical body, so usually nirvana is used for death, because you're free of your five skandhas. But the bodhisattva is one who gives up enlightenment, gives up nirvana, to stay in the world with people.

[25:18]

That's the idea, right? But he or she gives up nirvana. This is one way of understanding it. Gives up nirvana in order to give nirvana. Gives up nirvana for himself or herself in order to give nirvana to other people. So this sense of a nirvana enlightenment in this life, which is one way of talking about it, which Suzuki Roshi was said to exemplify by other Zen teachers in Japan. There's various stories about him in the middle of a ceremony in which there was a gathering with, I believe, Kichizawa Roshi, who was one of the most famous Roshis.

[26:22]

in Japan and an expert on Dogen. There was a gathering of all Kichizawa Roshi's disciples and in the middle of this important gathering and ceremony, Kichizawa Roshi stopped the ceremony in the middle and began severely criticizing Suzuki Roshi. And Suzuki Roshi accepted the criticism, and gashoued, bowed, and apologized, and the ceremony went on. But it's, as is a Zen tradition too, it's clear Suti Roshi was the outstanding person in this group, which is our Roshi's main disciple, and he was free enough from ego to accept this criticism in front of everybody without ever a blink. without any feeling of bad or good. So that's the only reason Kichidzai Roshi could do it, or would do it.

[27:29]

And it was said, you know, that the way Sukershi just put down his bowing cloth, because like nothing else in the world existed, there was no other place, no comparison. It was like he was swimming right there And there was nothing else. There was no comparison. He was in the marketplace, in the dark, without knowing where he was, but following. Without any idea of the rooms. There's a world out there with structure. I should have a position. I have to relate to the world. The world's this way, so I have to be that way. No such ideas. Just swimming at a certain point in the ocean. This ocean. without any idea that there's any other point in the ocean. Midnight, moon set, you're going through the marketplace.

[28:34]

So this kind of, we could say that bodhi enlightenment is The third eye is third eye enlightenment. I'm just trying to characterize these things in some way. Or the single eye enlightenment. Sometimes the third eye is called the single eye. Go on. The single eye which sees that there are no persons. This is the Prajnaparamita Diamond Sutra. The eye that sees there are no persons, sees space, sees transparency, luminosity, But what I'm calling today nirvana enlightenment, we might call the third ear, or a single ear that hears everything all at once. This is Avalokiteshvara, the great Avalokiteshvara, who hears, as our sutra starts, the cries of the one who hears the cries of the world.

[29:52]

So this koan is emphasizing this kind of enlightenment, the enlightenment also of cultivation, where it took generations to develop even these three phrases. It takes a long time to be able to hear yourself. There are teachings that aren't even given to disciples or students until they've been practicing at least ten years. Because you can't hear unless you, no matter how good you are. You may have attained bodhi enlightenment, but you haven't got this kind of enlightenment which really hears everything. So Peter has to go back. He mentioned to me in the kitchen yesterday, or the day before, that he loves his clients, and he misses his clients. And Peter may feel he's not been doing much here, instead of putting his eyes on his stacking wood, things like that.

[31:04]

But my guess is he's in ways that he doesn't know yet, if it's true for him as a as I would guess from my own experience and my experience of these teachings, is that he doesn't fully know to the degree to which he has learned to listen to himself. First you have to develop the ear, and then you have to find out what to listen to. It takes some time. So you just sit here, you know, and you begin to listen to yourself and listen to the world, beginning to be able to hear others. And this cultivation enlightenment talks about, I think it's in the Blueprint for Records, it talks about being able to understand or know at a glance, to assess someone's, where somebody's at.

[32:12]

And this arises through bodhi enlightenment, in which you can dharmakaya enlightenment, in which you can teach Buddhas and ancestors. And the middle one, cutting off streams, is if we want to To make it a pattern here, we could say the first phrase is dharmakaya enlightenment, the second phrase is sambhogakaya enlightenment, and the third phrase is nirmanakaya enlightenment. Sambhogakaya enlightenment would be cutting off streams. Cutting off myriad streams means maybe the third body, or the single body, or the subtle body, or the bliss body. So here we have the enlightenment also of realizing a subtle body that you begin to hear and act within.

[33:31]

So just as these guys, these 400 deportees have changed the game, from a game of chess to a game of Go, you can change your life by beginning to see not only the structure, but also the liquidity, the fluidity of life in which you're swimming. So it becomes, you know, not a question of structure, but how well do you swim? How do you swim the same way as the people you're swimming with? And again, can you change the water? And you're also the water. And you make this kind of change by taking a phrase which exists in both worlds.

[34:53]

As it's pointed out in this other koan, when great function appears, there's no fixed standards. So you begin to swim. In a world in which there's no fixed standards, there's no right and wrong, there's no good and bad, there's no specific way to practice, there's no right way to practice. On the one hand, yes, there's a right way to practice. But if that's the only way you practice, you'll be caught in a game of chess. Because the world in which there's no right way to practice moves underneath, around, above, and it's much more powerful. It's the actual territory of enlightenment. You'll just be a good priest if you think there's a right way to practice. A moral priest. A priest in which you see structure and you bring people into structure.

[36:00]

That's very helpful. But that's not a depth practice. A depth practice is to swim and change the water in which you swim and others swim. So in this practice of the third ear, where you don't know where you are, it's dark, the sun is set, the moon even has set, but you're in the marketplace and you feel the connection. You are the connection. There's no distance. Like when you hear something, there's no distance. It's just in the ear. So this isn't just a function of the ear. It's one way the world exists. And one, a particular kind of enlightenment, particular kind of person, particular kind of great function is characteristic of this world.

[37:05]

So the world in which you feel no distance and connection is different from the world where you see no person than you see space, luminosity. And so enlightenment is a kind of function. It says in Dharmakaya enlightenment you're like a mile high wall in particular. This is quite important to be like this, quite independent. And it's very encouraging for others. It's called the Iron Man, you know, in practice. But there's also this world in which you're not even positioned.

[38:11]

You're the water itself. Now if I can't say, can I say more? No, I don't think so. Maybe the narrative of this koan and the narrative of my teisho, maybe it has some, you know, molecules on your breath. Perhaps your breath's, uh, uh, and your activity swimming here, Crestone Mountains Ensign, swimming in the kitchen in these halls, swimming along with, beside each other, some, something instructive happens. In some ways we practice completely alone.

[39:13]

We practice below the threshold of what you can say in language. and below the threshold and out of the psychological polity of a kind of internal and external governance which is characteristic of democracies, which is a kind of thought control. So as we've talked about before, you have to slide out of this thought control, move into a world you can't share with others, at least at the level of comparison or checking up, has anybody felt this way before and so forth. So in some senses you practice completely alone. That's one kind of function or enlightened deep. In the other sense you practice completely with others simultaneously. And what you're not companions

[40:23]

which you really are part of each other. And which, as I said the other day in seminar, our subtle bodies carry each other. So in this enlightenment we can teach humans and gods humans, gods here means bodhisattvas, because you're realizing the bliss body, the bodhisattva, the sambhogakaya body. And when you look at bodhisattvas, what you're seeing is the glorified body. And the jewels are at various chakra points and so on. So what this body teaches humans and bodhisattvas, gods, But the most inclusive kind covers the other two, is this last in which wave follows wave, wave leads wave, in which you can't even teach yourself anymore.

[41:40]

There's really no comparison. You're just swimming. You don't know where you're swimming. Can you find yourself in this world sometimes, freed? Freed in this world where you don't know where you are, and you don't need to know where you are. May our intention equally penetrate every being.

[42:29]

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