..续本文上一页and true. Character relates to our willingness to be small as well as grand. The flow of things carries us along, and fighting the flow does not help, as far as I”ve ever noticed. It is how we are with that, what attitude we have to being carried along, that is crucial. Do we have peace in our hearts, even when there is an external calamity, even when we are in the midst of struggle

　　 In the midst of darkness can we find, can we touch, light

　　 If we have no consciousness of the greatness within the small, then we have no enlightenment, no insight; then we do not know about the name of Avalokiteshvara. But Avalokiteshvara is also the other side, is also compassion, and if we have no awareness of our own smallness, if we resist and pull away from our smallness, the rumbling stomach, the aching knees, the sorrows and griefs, the joys and frivolities of zazen, if we try to pull too much away from those and fight with them and have a hostile attitude toward what comes up, then we are clinging too much to the insight side of things, too much to the dazzling clarity. We know then that one flower holds eternity, but we do not know that one aching knee also holds eternity, one destructive thought also holds eternity.

　　Some people do rather well in a temporary kind of way by clinging to the insight side of things, almost as a refuge from developing character. I think as Zen students we are always veering towards one side or the other of any dichotomy we can name, so this is not a great shame. But I see this in Zen, I have known this in myself. My own teacher and the teacher of many of you, Robert Aitken Roshi, was telling me about a former student of his, who worked hard at his koan work but never really had a very good touch with it; it felt like he had never got down below his neck. He wanted to teach, but Aitken Roshi wouldn”t let him, so he went around, visited many teachers, and finally found one who told him he could teach. Now he travels and teaches small communities. Aitken Roshi told me how he was talking with another rather crusty old Japanese teacher whose wife runs a sushi bar and who is very fond of jazz and who lives in Berkeley. This crusty Japanese teacher was saying he heard this fellow giving a teisho, and Aitken Roshi said, "Well, how was it

　　" and the teacher said "One chopstick!" (A restaurant metaphor.) This is not really so much to be harsh with this person; it is to use this person as a representative of a state of mind that we can all have, where we cling to our meditation experiences and neglect the other side of our lives, neglect to look in at all, neglect to know our own hearts.

　　So we have to be patient with ourselves. No matter where we are in our training this is an absolute necessity. Over and over again we think we need to be somewhere else, whether we are at the beginning of our training, or far along, or teaching, or wherever. And we must find the truth right here, right now; we must find our joy here, now. I have even known people come to me in dokusan and say, "Well, I am waiting for sesshin to get over with so I can do some peaceful meditation, without all these bells ringing." How seductive it is, the thought of tomorrow . . . We must find our understanding here. You know I moved to California from Hawaii some years ago now, and people ask me where I came from and I say Hawaii and they say, "Oh, it must have been wonderful to live in Hawaii," and I say "Well, I thought California was wonderful." And then I come out to Australia I come to Perth and people say "Where do you live

　　" and I say "In California," and they say "It must be wonderful to live in California," and I say "Well, I think Perth is pretty nice": you know how it is. We must find it here; it is always here; this is where the grass is green.

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