the function of a Zen teacher is to put
his students in all kinds of situations
where in the normal course of social
relations they would get stuck by asking
nonsensical questions by making absurd
remarks by or always of unhinging things
and above all keeping them stirred up
with impossible demands to hear the
sound of one hand to without moving stop
a ship sailing out on the water or to
stop the sound of a train whistle in the
distance magic to touch the ceiling
without getting up from monks chair to
take the four divisions of Tokyo out of
your sleeve to take Mount Fuji out of a
pillbox all these impossible questions
are asked and in the ordinary way of
interpreting these questions we think
well now see how could we do that see
that's very difficult question that's
been asked and you have to think that
would I do to do that because we have
caught up in a certain way of discourse
which the language game that we play and
the social games the production games
and the survival games that we play our
good games but we take them so seriously
that we think that that is the only
important thing and this is to unstick
us from that notion and realize that it
would be just as good a game to drop
dead now as to go on living is a
lightning flash bad because it lives for
a second as compared with the Sun that
goes on for billions of years
you can't make that sort of comparison
because the world is like ningoz also
with the world rebels of sun and vice
versa so long live creatures and
short-lived creatures go together that's
the meaning of that saying flowering
branches grow naturally some short some
long so this n is a scene in in a zend
community where the spontaneous behavior
is encouraged within certain limits and
as the student becomes more and more
used to it those limits are expanded
until eventually he can be trusted to go
out on the street and behave like a true
Zen character and get by perfectly well
you know what occasionally happens on
the street when two people are walking
down the sidewalk straight at each other
and they both decide to move to the
right together and then to the left
together and they somehow get stuff they
can't pass each other then teachers will
pull just exactly that sort of stunt
when going down a path and meet one of
their students to see if they can get
him in a tangle and can you escape from
it and you will find in everyday life
that there is a very clear distinction
between people who always seem to be
self-possessed and people who did the
ring and nervous and don't quite know
how to react in any given situation
always getting embarrassed because they
have their life to strongly programmed
you said I mean this is a common
marriage argument you said you would do
such and such a thing as such and such a
time and now you've changed your plans
not that they really a change of plans
really caused any inconvenience but just
the feeling that when you say you will
do something at a certain time you ought
to do it at that time come hell or high
water
but that's being very unadapted that's
being a stone kind of sticky thing if it
after all doesn't matter when we do it
and as somebody is offended because the
time can change that simply because they
are attached to punctuality as a fetish
and this is one of the great problems
this is causes many automobile accidents
men rushing home to be on time for
dinner when they stayed late either
working or they had to stop for a drink
at some bar or when the girl feels that
she has to if she has a fussy husband
and she feels she has to have the dinner
ready at exactly a certain moment she
ruins the cooking you'd rather have a
faithful wife and a bad cook I've I'm
not ready one on your toes so you see we
spend an awful lot of energy trying to
make our lives fit images of what life
is or should be which they could never
possibly sit so Zen practice is in
getting rid of these images but it's
it's so explosive socially to do that
and it's so worries people they get
vertigo they get dizzy they don't know
which end is up and this happens you
know if you've ever been in one of those
blab blab sessions where they call them
t groups I think or something like that
where the people gather together without
any clear idea of what this gathering is
about they know it's somehow self
exploration but just how do you begin on
that and so somebody starts to push his
idea and then somebody else says well
why you tried to push your idea on us
and then they all get into an argument
about the argument and the most amazing
confusions come about but sometimes they
all see what idiots they're being and
then they learn to live together in a
really open spawn
way there was a very interesting dinner
party once where the Zen master was
present and there was a geisha girl who
served so beautifully and had such style
that he suspected she must have some Zen
training and after a while he when she
paused to fill his sake cup he bowed to
her and said I'd like to give you a
prison and she said I would be most
honored and he took the iron chopsticks
that are used for the hibachi the
charcoal brazier I'm moving the charcoal
around he picked up a piece of red hot
charcoal and gave it to her well she
instantly she had very long sleeves on
her kimono she weld the sleeves round
her hands and took the hot choco
withdrew to the kitchen dump it and
changed her kimono because it was burnt
through then she came back into the room
and after a suitable interval she
stopped before the Zen master and bowed
to him and said I would like to give you
sir he said I would be very much honored
of course he was wearing a kimono
something like this and so she picked up
a piece of coal and offered it to him he
immediately produced a cigarette and
said thank you that's just what I needed
now you know in the same way that we
have this in our culture certain people
who are communal who know how to make
jokes and gags in a completely
unprepared situation face them with
anything and they somehow come through
so that is exactly the same thing in a
special domain as then only a master of
them does this in every life situation
but the important thing is to be able to
do this this is the secret you must
remember
you can't make a mistake now that's a
very difficult thing to do to cause from
childhood up we have had to conform to a
certain social game and if your go to
conform to this game you can make
mistakes or not make mistakes so this
thing has gone into it all the time you
must do the right thing there's certain
conduct appropriate here certain comic
appropriate there and that sticks in us
and gives us a double self all our lives
long because we never go up do you
realize that the whole of life plays a
game which is a childhood game if there
are three kinds of people top people
middle people of bottom people and there
can't be any middle people unless that
our bottom people and top people there
can't be any top people unless the
middle and bottom people and so it goes
and everybody's trying to be in a top
set well if we're going to be there has
got to be someone and a bottom set and
the people who do the right thing and
people who do the wrong thing here in
sausalito we have this very very plainly
there are the right people nice people
who live up on the hill then there are
the nasty people who live down here on
the waterfront and they grow beards and
they wear blue jeans and they smoke
marijuana and whereas the other people
on the top and he'll Drive Cadillacs and
have wall-to-wall carpeting and nicely
mowed lawns and their particular kind of
poison is alcohol now the people who
live on the top of the hill know that
they're nice people but they wouldn't
know they were nice people unless they
had some nasty people to compare
themselves with
every in group requires an output
whereas the nasty people think they are
the real far out people whereas those
people those Hillbillies and squares and
they wouldn't be able to feel far out
unless there were squares see these
things simply go together but when that
is not seen we play the games of getting
on top of things all the time and so
we're in a constant state of competition
as to if it's not I'm stronger than you
it's I'm wiser than you I'm more loving
than you I'm more tolerant than you I'm
more sophisticated than you it doesn't
matter what it is but this constant
competition is going on in terms of that
competition we can of course lose place
and in that sense make mistakes but what
is n student is is a person who is not
involved in the status game that's the
real meaning of a monk is not keeping up
with the Joneses and to be a master he
must get to the point where he's not
trying to be a master the whole idea of
your you're being better than anybody
else simply doesn't make any sense at
all it is totally meaningless because
you see everybody manifesting the Marvel
of the universe in the same way as the
stars do and the water and the winds and
the animals and you see them all as
being in their right places and not
being able really to make mistakes
although they may think they're making
mistakes or not making mistakes and
playing all these competitive games but
that's their game now i only say if that
game begins to boil and it begins to
trouble you and give you hours and
all kinds of things then you raise the
problem of getting out of it and
therefore you start to become interested
in things like then that is simply a
symptom of your growing in a certain
direction where you are tired of playing
a certain kind of game you are as
naturally flowing in another direction
as if a tree were putting out a new
branch so because you say oh well we
people are interested in higher things
you see that depends still on the
differentiation of rank between the
superior and the inferior people but
when you begin to see through that and
grow out of that you don't think any
more of this superior and inferior
classification you don't think we are
spiritual people who attend to higher
things as distinct from these morons are
only interested in beer and television
this is simply our particular form of
life like there are crabs and there are
spiders and there are sharks and there
are sparrows and so on the trouble with
the human being is like the trouble with
certain animals like the dinosaur who
evolved to the point where he was so big
did he have to have two brains a higher
self in the head and a lower self in the
rump and the difficulty was to get these
two brains coordinated but we have
exactly the same trouble and we are
suffering from a kind of jitters that
comes from being too brained now you see
I'm not saying that that justice is bad
it's a potential step in evolution and
an opportunity of growth but remember in
the process of growth the oak is not
better than the Acorn because what does
it do it produces acorns
or you could say just I like I sometimes
love to say that a chicken is one eggs
way of becoming others so an oak is an
acorn sway of becoming other acorns
where is the point of superiority the
first verse of that time I just quoted
the flowering branches grow naturally
some short some long the first verse is
in the landscape of spring there is
nothing superior and nothing inferior
the flowering branches are naturally
some shorts and long so that's the point
of view of being an outcast in the sense
of being outside the taking seriously of
being involved in the social game and
therefore being threatened by making
mistakes of doing the wrong thing that
is to say of carrying into adult life
one's childhood conditioning where
somebody is constantly yammering at you
to play the game so therefore the
preachers and the teachers take the same
attitude towards their adult
congregations the parents take two
children and lecture them and tell them
what they should do and judges in courts
feel also entitled to give people
lectures because they say those criminal
types haven't grown up but neither have
the judges it takes two to make a
quarrel so one can begin to think in a
new way in the polarity thinking instead
of being stuck with the competitive
thinking of the good guys and the bad
guys the cops of the rubbers the
capitalists and the Communists the all
these things which are simply
childishness
now of course you recognize that if I
the moment I say that it's like talking
in English in order to show that the
English language has limitations and i
am talking in a language that seems
competitive to show that the competitive
game has limitations as if i was saying
to all you cats here look I have
something to tell you that if you get
this you'll be at a better position than
you were before you heard it but I
cannot speak to this group of the
society or this language speaking
culture without using the language the
gestures the customs etc that you have
the Zen masters try to get around this
by doing things suddenly that people
just don't get well what is this
therefore that is the reason why this is
the real reason why then cannot be
explained you have to make as it were a
jump from the valuation game of better
people and worse people in groups and
out groups and you can only make it by
seeing that they all are mutually
interdependent so if we take this
situation let's say I would be talking
to you and saying look I have some very
special thing that you've got to take
notice of therefore i am the in-group
and I'm the teacher and you are the out
group I know perfectly well that I
cannot be the teacher unless you come
here and so that my status in my
position is totally dependent on you it
isn't something you see therefore I have
first and then you get these things
arise mutually
so if you wouldn't come I wouldn't talk
I wouldn't know what to say hahaha
because I borrowed your language so that
that is the insight that things go
together then when you see that and
aren't in competition then you don't
make a mistake because you don't dither
when I first love the piano and play
these wretched scales the teacher beside
me add a pencil in my hand and she hit
my fingers every time I made a lot wrong
note consequent was I never learned to
read music because I hesitated to long
to play the note on time because I was
always businesses pencil gonna land see
that gets built into your psyche and so
people are always although they're
adults and nobody is clubbing them
around and screaming at the mini lambda
they hear the echoes of that screaming
mama all that bombinating Papa in the
back of their heads all their life long
and so they adopt the same attitudes to
their own children and the fast
continues because there is no I mean I
don't say that you shouldn't lay down
the law to children if you want them to
play the social game but you if you lay
down the Lord your children you must
make provision later in life for them to
be liberated to go through a process of
curing them from the bad effects of
education but you can't do that unless
you to grow up you see as we grow up as
I including myself
so that is the fig now therefore in the
Zen seen you would think that the master
as we know him and as we read about him
is an extremely authoritarian figure
that's the way he deliberately comes on
at the beginning he puts up a terrific
show of being an awful dragon and this
screams out all sorts of people who
don't have somehow the nerve to get into
the work but once you are in a very
strange change takes place the master
becomes the brother he becomes the
affectionate helper of all those
students and they loved him as they
would a brother rather than respect him
as they would have father and therefore
the students and masters they make jokes
about each other they have a very
curious kind of social relationship
which as all the outward trappings of
the authoritarian but everybody knows on
the inside that that's a joke liberated
people have to be very cool otherwise in
a society which doesn't believe in
equality and cannot possibly practice it
they would be considered extremely
subversive therefore great Zen masters
were purple and gold and carries
scepters and sitting Thrones and all
this carried on to cool it the outside
world knows are there alright then this
has been that order they're perfect if
I'm out of your mind now continues with
the next lecture
the world has just so lecture series
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