Present: Kobun (K) · Sonja (Son) · Judy C. (JC) · Angie (A) · Judy (J) · Gert · Ruth (R) · Glenna (Gl) · Carmelia (Carm) · Hathaway (H) · Mary Kate (MK) · Trout (T) · Steve (St)
April 21, 1975. Hathaway's.
T: I have a question. In this transcript you said that men-ju... "how it is is two lights appear in the utter darkness, or two blinds appear in utter brightness, and recognize there is another one, not besides two, but besides himself. You attach like this, you're blind, too. If two lights meet in utter darkness, two of them make each other recognize they are light. If light just alone in utter darkness, light doesn't realize he's light, she's light." And another time we were talking about the Ten Aspects, one... I've forgotten what it's called... the Buddha enlightened without a teacher. Pratyekabuddha.
K: We have to look that occasion more closely into... look into that occasion more closely.
T: The occasion of the Pratyekabuddha?
K: What is question?
T: Question is... um... well, it seems that when you said... question is, how can men-ju take place one person?
K: Shakyamuni Buddha's awakening, to say without teacher is half-way expression. Without self, without himself, is another half-way to say. Why he remained on this earth and lived for more than forty five years is in order to... maybe examine it is true or not. His awakening was true or not.
T: To examine it with other people?
K: Um hum.
T: So that half of men-ju is in isolation, no matter what. Meeting face to face is one aspect. Another aspect is in isolation, is that right?
K: Isolate, Isolation. Isolation from what?
T: If you have two lights meeting in the darkness... that seems to be one aspect of men-ju. Is there another aspect where there's one light in darkness?
K: Yes. We discussed that point. It's called ju-ki.1 Isolation, separation is light but no light. That is called ju-ki. Ju-ki is promise of future men-ju.
S:2 Like when the master says to the student, "Seven lives from now..."
K: That is ju-ki. Many cases appear in Lotus Sutra.
S: Encouragement, maybe.
K: (laughs)
R: Forget it!
MK: It'll happen anyway, Ruth.
K: Reminder. Seven lives from now means seven lives before you were.
Son: For a student who won't believe.
JC: I still have Trout's question. I still don't have an answer.
K: Yes. (pause) Question is... how this two lights arranged. It can be many lights. In order to simplify, this occasion, meeting occasion, you say two. It can be one and many. Major question is very difficult one, because how can you meet with yourself tomorrow?
MK: Tomorrow? That's easy.
K: Men-ju is... subject men-ju relate with this. How you meet with yourself yesterday.
T: The same question — when I said I still have that question, I thought, that wasn't my real question. I want to understand better my own mind. That seems to me to be the day to day wrestling with what men-ju is about... at least in one aspect. Feeling in one way... living my life, people and trees will be face to face with me, and that is men-ju always. And there's another voice which says I don't understand my life face to face with me.
K: Men-ju, that is half of it. Another half of it is another wheel come and matches to your wheel.
T: My sense is getting hit from the back of the head.
Son: If you had a cart and you were one wheel of it, another wheel comes and there are two, then it's so much easier for the cart to go.
Gl: My feeling is, if the wheel knows it's a wheel, it's every wheel.
Son: It seems to me, in the relative world there's always another.
J: A difference between another and myself... to bend around and feel another and myself... it feels crazy.
K: Yes, it is crazy. If you have yourself, it is not men-ju.3
JC: I thought so.
K: This men-ju is mutual. It's not understanding of yourself about something or about somebody.
JC: If Shakyamuni Buddha experienced men-ju, then why do we need teachers?
Son: Since it wasn't mutual with him?
JC: I guess he felt everyone was enlightened, but on the other hand...
K: Because of that, nowadays we have problem. (laughs) Don't you think so? He is waiting to meet with us tomorrow; he exist, existed in that way.
JC: Wait a minute, I understood until you changed it to past tense!
K: Time. We are speaking Shakyamuni Buddha many century ago, but men-ju doesn't have time, doesn't allow us to have sense of time, so it can be today or twenty centuries from now.
JC: But Buddha didn't have Buddha...
K: I'm sorry, but he saw millions of Buddha before him. Before him, around him, after him. That is what he saw.
JC: It's the same.
Son: His experience and our experience.
MK: I have a problem. I never know when it's happening. Even when I love someone. I feel really good, but... whapo!... I find that...
K: You are wise to free yourself, and freeing others — that has to be. Otherwise always live in tomorrow, or always slip back into yesterday. Like or love is unity. Unity exist only when freedom exist.
MK: So what I hear, you're saying in this feeling of mind, I feel bound to them, or they to me, and in order not to be disappointed I need to release that kind of bind. So there's some sort of... something messing up my feeling.
R: Does the idea of nonattachment to feeling have anything to do with that?
K: Attachment is simply memory.
R: Attachment is the problem, then?
K: Nice problem. It's a reminder how you were... not how you are. That's why it is said, memory.
R: I missed something you said.
K: Attachment is very strong action, too, but it is memory, so actually you say — exactly you say — it was memory.
R: Is that the same thing MaryKate is talking about?
K: Yes. Little other way to say... From... (pause) Maybe to speak of this is helpful: Something is missing. Do you feel (to MK)?
MK: Yeah. Obviously.
K: We have to emphasize this very important thing to feel. Something is missing.
MK: I only feel that after. When it's happening I feel that everything is fine.
T: Really?
MK: Yeah. I'm just too dumb, too naive.
K: Something is missing is, something has to be found, something has to be done.
Son: The feeling something is missing... it feels like something has to be done.
K: It is very positive situation. Opposite it: everything is done. Nothing is left to do. That's terrible.
Son: That's me! Mother said I was born that way.
MK: Being deceived... it keeps me going... being disappointed... Is that what you're saying?
K: Words you're using — deceived — is your interpretation.
R: It's that grasping after illusion... that's why we're doing it!
Carm: I'm trying to understand. In the beginning you have this going with the other person... we expect the other person to support this.
K: Yes, it is so, but what actually it is, is what can you do for them? Expectation from others looks like you're expecting something from others, but what you want is what you can do for them. For that reason you are projecting...
MK: But that's a trap. She just wants to live her own life...
K: It is a trap if you can say so, but he or she doesn't know your mind is working in that way, so you are creating such situation. If you say trap, I think it's simply expression of your concern how to do, how to relate with others. Maybe, actually thing has to be done is more bigger than you think. Or in another word, real expectation on your life, this whole life, is more than you have ever thought.
MK: (lost) More than I thought?
K: Vow is biggest desire.
Son: Includes everybody.
K: Basically it is illusion.
MK: So where do I go from here? I can see all... I have to (lost)...
K: Big meal, everyone is full stomach. How shall we do? Lots of cars on space. Little strange to see. Those cars and lots of food. Besides that, young man is holding like this: San Francisco. Isn't that really strange? At this point we cannot speak of this subject, meeting, in very horizontal way. Have you ever felt, "I want one more body, two more bodies"? When I get really tired to exhaustion, tears run out! Same as when you lift heavy thing which you have to lift and you cannot lift it. You have to cry... "One more body." Extension, freedom relate with this sensation. You expect tomorrow, you extend today to tomorrow.
Son: Time and space. Extension of universe to all time. Kūkai.
K: Kūkai?4
Son: I was just reading one of old masters. One of the qualities he spoke about was extension. His caring in terms of affinity — caring for, being with.
Carm: That extension would really solve the problem.
K: Problem is how you extend yourself. Key point is whether we can... when zazen can exist with me, with each of you, because of samadhi. What samadhi means is extension. Samadhi penetrates without destroying things, and wave of samadhi contract without contracting existence. So strange thing is this eyes — don't you feel that where your eyesight ends is your body?
Gl: No.
K: You are different from that.
Gl: I know there is a great deal my eyes don't see. Some of it I sense in other ways.
K: When you move around, many things you see and feel. What are they?
Gl: They're part of me, they're my large body.
K: So what it is is phenomenon which appear in very dynamic way in this life is all to know yourself, and once in a while you meet with existence which speaks in same language as you; sometime you don't need to use this language at all, you see this is it, this is it. Vairochana5 is, you say Dharmakāya Vairochana Buddha, which is not different from your body; only it is recognized when you're in meditation. Vairochana is formless. If you want to touch him, you have to do something, and when you touch it, this sensation tells you this Vairochana is there. Vairochana. So it is another word of Annutarā-samyaksambodhi.6
K: The basic point brought up this subject to this meeting is the nature of our practice. If we lose this sense, the Sangha is like — Sangha exist in the history. If we lose this sense of men-ju, it easily corrupts.
Son: Dissolves, suffer loss.
K: Men-ju is not idea or theory. In actual relation you experience. In Sangha this appear in very dynamic ways. Not only particular person. Friends tomorrow become great teacher for you. The friend you are for others become student for someone yesterday. This realization is not just for present moment. Yesterday's experience becomes more deeper today by your recognition. Why this is so difficult: very familiar, but very hard to grasp. The utmost subject of whole Buddhism is this subject. Menju. And everyone who started to meditate had such sprout of such sense; it is simply matter of time whether it reach to ripening or it is forgotten in process.
(To Steve, just arriving) We're discussing, still, men-ju. Probably next time we discussing same subject with different subject.
K: This men-ju is... after my ordination master never spoke of it until on the boat I was directing to this country, and my master is very demanding about this. I was in Eiheiji and he sent me letter: "Come back right now." No, no... he didn't say, "Leave Eiheiji." "Come back right now," and he ordered, "Do it now."
S: What was he demanding about?
K: No, no — about men-ju. Men-ju literally appeared: bowing. And it occurs whether you are before ordination, after ordination — it can happen any time. Whether you are monk or nun, no difference.
Son: So old master sent for you.
K: He said, "Come back." He wanted to see me.
MK: Did you go back?
K: Of course. Actually, my suffering began from that day. Before that my suffering was simply sweet imagination.
T: You said after Shakyamuni Buddha attained Samyaksambodhi he spent the rest of his life checking it out; was that his suffering, too?
K: In terms of pleasure. Pleasure and suffering same thing, actually. When we have body, we sense something, it has same quality.
T: What did Buddha want to check out?
K: To come to old family members and other tribes touching his body. Simply samyaksambodhi is his body.
T: Making contact. Was it the same for Mahakashyapa? That didn't change anything for Shakyamuni Buddha?
K: (lost) ...several Buddhas in past, several numbers of Buddhas, so no begin or no ending, it go.
Son: All beings coming up from that crack.
H: Do you know about his relationship with his wife and children?
K: Yes. One day after Lāhura7 (his son) was ordained a shami... shami is child monk. After dharma meeting he couldn't find a place to sleep, and he come to toilet and there was a little place to lie down. It was Shakyamuni Buddha's toilet, and Shakyamuni Buddha came and patted his head. "Why you cry?" And he said, "No place to sleep!" And I said,8 "I didn't make you as a monk because you are helpless, useless," and from that day Lāhura eye turned something and became different person.9 Wife also became nun. He said, "Go alone, wherever you wish to go."
(lost) When Buddha became very close to death, all of them sensed it and began to come back. Magnet contracting energy. Existence of the — [the line breaks off here; the rest of the sheet is machine stutter and stray letters from the neighbouring sheet]
T: So what?
K: So what? Go on.
Gl: One time you answered Angie's question of what is the Sangha. He said, "An endless garbage can."
A: He didn't say that. He said, "Sometimes it seems like..."
K: "A bottomless garbage can."
Gl: Since then I've seen garbage cans in a new light.
K: Same as a wind. Sangha is all up to you, whether you make it countless jewel.
Gl: Seems to me that a garbage can is so free. You can look through it. You can take out anything you like. You can put in anything you like. It is lively with human concern. It's very human.
K: You can sleep in it! Inside, outside, actually quite similar. Nothing is dirty, actually. But if we don't have garbage can, we have difficulty.
Gl: Yes, we need each other very much.
K: To go beyond dualism, or pure/impure, this is the essence of the Sangha. If we stuck to concept of pure/impure in terms of Sangha, we always fail. In other words, if we limit Sangha as lay community, or monk's community, it never works.
Son: How about good and bad, or enlightened or unenlightened... it goes on endlessly. It seems to me religion sometimes is vague declaration of separation.
Gl: Is that what it is to you?
Son: No. Historically.
St: The very existence of religion is separation. Somehow, in our practice we're trying to undermine that illusion. We're still living with these clothes on. It is something to work with constantly. It's something like having a body: we have this body, we have this Zen.
Son: It's like being specially chosen. The first field spiritually special that (lost)
K: My aspect, feeling is a little different. Body... in old time Buddhism and other religions the body was kind of difficult thing. Kind of process of appearance, extinction process. Hinayana has this very strong negative emotional theory.
Son: If you practice hard...
K: Yes, and it has been successful, but however emotion is, sad or glad, good or bad — because basically you want to exist, so you have body. That is the way you understand body.
St: That is why we have Zen, too. Because we want to exist!
K: So how to arise as if you come from grave — you live. Resurrection is nothing very special thing, as you know. Today existence not because of tomorrow's existence. Today existence because it has to be like this, and it doesn't expect tomorrow. If tomorrow doesn't exist, that's ok.
Next, Archie is in hospital. He is getting well. Did I explain? He fainted in kitchen. Many people around longing for the day. It's a little exhausted feeling. That still explain a very strong desire to exist. I am, for that moment.
S: is left unexpanded, as typed. Both Sonja and Steve are on the attendance list; Steve arrives late — "(To Steve, just arriving)" comes several pages on — so these first two S: lines are most likely Sonja (elsewhere Son:), and the S: after his arrival most likely Steve (elsewhere St:).