Present: Kobun (K) · Carmelia (Car) · Judy · Trout (T) · Angie (Ang) · Ann (A) · Glenna (Gl) · Bob Weinberg · Gert · Hathaway · Rob Crist (RC) · Nena (N) · Edie (E) · Ruth · Babette (Bt) · Mary Kate (MK) · Judy C. — R: is genuinely ambiguous: Ruth and Rob Crist are both present and the note-taker writes Rob Crist as RC:, so the bare initial is kept as typed. A: is taken as Ann, since Angie appears as Ang:.
May 5, 1975. Judy Cosgrove's.
K: Beginning, I'd like to thank for sesshin meals, Ann, Gert, Judy. Thank you very much. Sort of very rich feeling at sesshin, lots of energy.
K: Before move on to new subject which is another way to see our reality, like to ask you is there any suggestion way of meeting. Sometime I feel I'm just talking in the forest, and the plants, everyone say, "I know such thing, but you shut up." Sometime discussion goes on and on and I don't hear anything, just noise. No meaning. Maybe just one meaning which all noises are expressing.
Somewhat more interest is sense meditation is very personal universal action, or maybe opposite way to say: universal personal action, so each of us has to have very strong confidence about the substance...substance is not someone, or somewhere, it's here. So my interest to avoid many dangerous phenomena in religious practice must continuously suggest to you you are the master, you are major point, points. Otherwise, meeting never happen, even you are living on this earth ninety years, one hundred years, it doesn't mean anything. You just live alone. Maybe your senses are working, but you do not feel anything. It's strange thing to say this. And it is not bad situation. Maybe it is perfect situation to be totally ignorant about what's happening. What I am suggesting is to meet with this sensitivity whether I can feel others in real sense.
Problem appear then: what to do? Immediate action, immediate efforts in order to have this kind of sense is impossible. Even you think one hundred days about it, solution doesn't come. This relate with what kind of thing it is, to do zazen. Because of so fine quality and fine quantity you don't recognize it is done. If there is little crunchy elements in your zazen, then you can understand, "I got it!" It is like when very fine music is playing, you don't feel it is music. If little difficulty to listen, you feel, "This is music." Real music without struggle go through you, and you feel, "That's natural, nothing." Many time we experience this kind of little difficult points to feel.
K: Study of men-ju1 also broadly opened for this kind of concern. Man-ju, real meeting, go beyond forms...go beyond forms...so, like, all religious concerts,2 symbols, doctrines fall apart when such meeting is done. I'm talking about man and man meet, or maybe man and absolute existence meet. Doctrines and forms are so embarrassed to pop up between.
This doesn't mean forms are useless, of course. Structures, phenomenal structures and memory of such unseen experience, so by seeing form which is beyond you, you understand, "Oh, I was like that." Not, "I am." We came like this by saying it...was meeting...twenty people meet. Actually, no one came and nothing happen. Only something which we don't know happen. As soon as you say, "I know what happen," you got some kind of form. And yet, there is very subtle knowledge, certain knowledge what have happened. If you don't remember who came, you are not so clear. Maybe your mind is off to some realm. What have happened is recognized in real meeting. And actually in real meeting there is one hundred forms of possibility to be done different ways. So form is always...now do you say?3...very refined...only such form had to be taken...maybe chosen or (lost). So it have happened. It means nobody but you came to this place. Each of you.
K: Very nice to see this one. (a great scroll hanging on the wall depicting Buddhas sitting in a tower made of Chinese characters) The building of a sutra. It's a...tower...words of Diamond Sutra. You have Diamond Sutra. Probably you may have. Each part built one tower. You can see this later. Then if you sit here and recite, not problem. You can see...I had a difficult very small age. It was small monk, and go to layman house and —4 In chanting sutra. My sutra never end because doesn't go right way. Always goes another line, come back another line. So my friend very happy to tease me, "Again you didn't finish your sutra!" You may have difficult time what it is. Sutra just one particle of the word among million words, is enough to taste. Not whole sutra to study sutra. That is not the attitude. Just to touch a part of it and know everything...
Gl: Kobun, does "Enmei jukku kannon-gyō"5 come from the Diamond Sutra?
K: Umhum. "Enmei jukku kannon-gyō." Sometime...this is ten phases6 of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. Maybe ten beings of wisdom. Ten beings of wisdom is symbolized in human words. As you know, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is manifestation of wisdom, and when it appear in various form, no-one feel wisdom, but compassion. It is strange. Like light is basically cool, but when it hits the earth, earth become warm. This kind of relation. Like if you say moonlight is cold, that...if you feel moonlight on your body is warm, then you got it.7 Because moon is...you are warm and moon is cold.
Like old manuscript, Upanishad, nature of atman is discussed. When all lights like sun and moon and stars and somewhat thing which send us light, if all lights diminish, what do you do? Whole world is completely dark, what do you do.
MK: We'd all die.
K: You die? That is scientific understanding.
MK: Or we'd go crazy.
R: Or maybe we'd go somewhere else.
RC: We'd be blinded by the radiance. In sensory deprivation tanks, if you stay in one long enough, it becomes very bright.
MK: And noisy?
RC: A hum.
K: That is called atman. You said bright? "Depend on my atman, I'll shine." Atman say, "I'll light, I'll be light for you." It's like you make a fire or...how do you say?...electric light, and from your side you shine. Atman is always like that, and what the nature of atman is is compassion which is impossible to create by brain, but you create, you create.
The language...we say atman...is not Buddhist term, or not Christian term, so scholars argue about it, but this is basic reality. Language can be any. By retracing religious form you can never reach it, it is simply past, because you are in the present and you don't return the fallen leaf to the branch. You just live your present and create those doctrines which later people may call it.
So naturally what happen at this point is possibility of non-religionist. There are two kind of religionist...maybe more kinds, but the one who doesn't belong to any form of religion can be still classified one of many forms. It means, maybe, head is above clothes. In another word, when you go to Sunday service in the church, what exist is the one hundred...how do you say?...human kind. And the beautiful, light come from stained glass and you see people are there. What exist is not such people, but just one light. If one of them recognize it, whole thing makes sense. If none of them recognize it, whole thing is just complete darkness.
RC: But there's usually a mouse over in the corner, and if it sees it, it's alright.
K: (laughs) He brings cool air in church, making lots of holes. I have little headache, so my brain doesn't work so well. You should speak. Just go ahead.
MK: We like to hear you speak, Kobun.
R: He's asking for a rest.
Gl: Actually, just to be together is enough.
Bt: Yes. Just to be together.
K: (looking at scroll) Layers and layers of samadhi. Looks like this sticking out on the earth, like this. It is just slice of it, slice of samadhi. Actually, it is round, cubic, round, and you cannot explain it, so you slice it and show it to people. This is what tower is, and we...this existence is one slice...it is tower.
RC: Is the tower secure? Is there a danger that the tower might be destroyed by earth practices? We have a slice of it here. I've felt it's in danger. It's very delicate and it taught us man's...particularly at the present time, with human beings' scientific interest in exploiting the riches of the tower, men are working out ways of getting to it without being pure, without surrendering to the highest energy. Do you feel that?
K: Yes.
RC: One fellow told me...he was a yogi who had an inner school...maybe like the tower, and every once in a while there would be people come passing through very fast. That tower is a thousand years of patient construction. Like there he is, sitting in the tower, and these people would come zipping right through the wall. If too many of these forces come, it will be ripped apart.
K: It should be ripped apart. Otherwise tower become totemism, and you hurt your teeth by very hard slice of old bread. You cannot chew it. There are many hard bread in Japan. Maybe in this country, too. And it's ok. If you chew, it is hard. If you don't chew it, it is beautiful.
T: Should be torn apart.
K: It is already torn apart.
T: (lost)
K: You spoke this light of (lost) go penetrate to it sometime pierce without hurting.
RC: Oh, but it might hurt. Fire something toward the nucleus. Most of the time spiritual energies go by, once in a while they go bang, and knock something around. Trout is asking is that good or necessary?
T: I felt it's ok to be knocked apart if we think it's that real. If we can (lost)...
K: I meant knocked apart. It's strange word, knocked apart. It has been digested,8 you can not touch it anymore.
RC: Whole thing sounds like it's a process.
A: It's only a slice, a slice of the whole thing. There is nothing that can affect the whole thing.
RC: My car is one Fiat. But at the factory, all cars can be affected. We are all cars on a spiritual assembly line.
Gl: Where is the factory?
RC: Up there on the third floor of the tower!
K: Ghandara Magari,9 miragic, in some place when it go, see very often like rainbow. Northern Lights. Appearance, disappearance of phenomenal world is like that. This galaxy, whole life of galaxy can be just one moment which is miragic of reality and absolute. Do you understand this? It means rainbow you see is a rainbow, but what it is is rainbow is watching rainbow on the rainbow, and that whole thing is just one moment.
Like a cloud appear and disappear, we say cloud appear and disappear. It is simply we see a part of whole thing, temperature, dust, water, it's just changing temperature, cloud appear and cloud disappear. And why we see, physics, the microbe world with electron microscope the smallest elements existing, the smallest standard elements is like that, appear and disappear and still you don't know how it appear and disappear. Quite relative, like microbe, like huge dust and small dust and this relativity is still problem. If it appear this large dust appear, if it disappear, this large dust disappear.
My headache is making little problem.
R: Along these lines, of electron microscopes, scientists and mystics are beginning to sound more and more alike. Mystics have always claimed to be incoherent. Now scientists sound incoherent, too.
T: Is reality incoherent?
K: I don't know what coherent is.
RC: Incoherent is where you don't know what it means.
Ang: It doesn't stick together.
E: It is?
K: It feels like. It's interesting, samadhi, I spoke this is slice of samadhi, and this one come through. When it go through, whole thing is affected by it. What do you call that? Cycle of travelling star. Orbit? Even human eye sees traveling star which comes very rare, human eye see that is miraculous thing, because miraculous thing is going on in human eye. Most people saw meeting is not simply same kind as our meeting, like this meeting of ancient with present existence in order to set the future, person meet with ancient. This is why human doesn't give up to clarify what is real place of human kind, study of history grows more and more clear. It is because it is creating future. Study of history is necessity, history is not a place up to your back, it is draw it toward you and lie it down to future with this emptiness to the moment.
A: Is that what you mean by the advance of samadhi?
K: Yes. It sounds very strange. Advance of samadhi. It means one movement of you. You get up and move somewhere. That is advance of samadhi. Enlightenment have...maybe shallow understanding about enlightenment, content of samadhi is all enlightenment, so if mother is holding baby and feeding milk to baby, that state is called enlightenment, because all are in one samadhi. It's not something where mother say, "I am mother." Whole thing, which is quite ignorant and natural is called enlightenment.
N: Kobun, you said you felt like you were talking to plants here? When I leave on Monday morning I always feel like a complete tree.
K: You may have misunderstood. It's very perfect happy place. Wood is fearful place? Ocean is fearful place? What is feeling?
E: Meadow? A meadow is a nice place.
K: Like, when I said wood, it is very much (lost) all trees and all grasses know each other completely, and they say, "Let's not think whether we know each other or not. We already do." That's my feeling, it's a little awkward to have chance to speak, whole thing is a little dusty.
T: Do you feel that way at dokusan and lecture, too?
K: Like a person hit a hammer with a nail in the sky.
E: Kobun, I always feel here that I'm waiting for you to begin first, and also complete it. Not that you're breaking (lost), but completing it. I would be disappointed if you didn't say anything.
K: It's advance of perfection. My (lost) is screaming, "Not let me speak." If you like to hear (some one else speak(?)) Maybe next time, dice or something. Not (lost) of meeting. Maybe mess up perfection.
RC: Dice were rolled a long time ago. You won.
(long pause)
K: Very nice house. Am I getting fever, or house is getting warm? Two hours is increasing temperature.
R: (feels his forehead for fever)
MK: Would you like to stop?
K: You can go on.
Car: In a meeting like this, it is not just one. We should be able to give you something.
K: No, I got everything.
Car: I mean, what we are getting.
K: Meeting is mutual.
Bt: I missed these Mondays. (having just returned after a long absence)
K: We missed you.
corrections-1975-05-05_cosgrove-s.json.