Subtitles
[Music] 00:00:05
[Music] as I showed you yesterday on that other 00:00:18
tea bowl this is a water jar and they'll 00:00:27
eat they like to leave the bottom 00:00:28
unglazed but look you see how the glaze 00:00:31
has been allowed to run is that we would 00:00:35
call not neat at all you watch somebody 00:00:38
make one of these and I have watched 00:00:42
their Manders picked up the plate and as 00:00:45
he applies the design of the glaze he 00:00:48
just goes whoosh with a brush and lets 00:00:52
it drop off and it's done there's 00:00:55
another man blazes by wood smoke and in 00:01:02
his kiln he may put about a 1,100 pieces 00:01:05
and he wraps them in straw and wherever 00:01:11
the straw touches it leaves a splash of 00:01:15
orange color against a purple background 00:01:23
now you see the straw arranges itself 00:01:27
according to the nature of straw it 00:01:30
doesn't follow strict human direction 00:01:32
and the fascination is when they open up 00:01:35
that kiln and bring the things out they 00:01:37
look eagerly to see what is the straw 00:01:39
down so this principle of letting glaze 00:01:49
run to see what will happen 00:01:53
the way this is non-interference this is Lucien also no purpose or it can also be 00:02:00
translated no specific intent and now of 00:02:14
course you see sometimes this doesn't 00:02:18
work and the master picks it up and says 00:02:23
that's not very interesting and reject 00:02:27
it what are the canons of taste which 00:02:31
decide whether he will accept one of 00:02:35
these accidents or rejected because here 00:02:38
an additional principle of control 00:02:40
enters so you say in the practice of 00:02:43
calligraphy a man may sit down with a 00:02:48
huge pile of paper in front of him and 00:02:51
do piece after piece after piece and if 00:02:54
it isn't just right he throws it away so 00:02:58
he eventually makes a selection that 00:03:00
comes out there's a famous story of a 00:03:02
Zen master who was doing calligraphy and 00:03:05
he had a very smart monk standing beside 00:03:09
him who was his assistant and the man 00:03:12
said uh-huh to each one as he did it you 00:03:14
can do better than that 00:03:15
oh no now come now you you know much 00:03:17
better than that there's master got more 00:03:19
and more furious but the monk had to go 00:03:21
out to the vendor with it toilet the 00:03:23
month and he felt quick parties away he 00:03:26
did it and the monk came back and looked 00:03:28
and he said a masterpiece 00:03:30
[Music] 00:03:30
so there's this element of selection see now what what determines this how do you 00:03:38
know or another example of this there 00:03:49
was a tea caddy porcelain tea caddy not 00:03:54
porcelain to play and when Sen no Rikyu 00:03:54
was having tea ceremony he saw this tea caddy and made no comment on it and the 00:04:04
owner was there disappointed to be 00:04:10
smashed it but one of his friends picked 00:04:14
the broken pieces out of the trash can 00:04:16
and took them to a mender he said look 00:04:21
mend this with gold and he put there for 00:04:25
gold cement and put this caddy back 00:04:30
together and so it had all over its 00:04:32
surface spidery lines of gold and when 00:04:36
ricky who saw that he was disenchanted 00:04:38
and it became one of the most valuable 00:04:41
tea caddies in japanese collections 00:04:46
spidery lines of gold following but just 00:04:50
the apparently chance marks of a smash 00:04:54
there was a competition at the Art 00:04:56
Institute in the University of Chicago 00:04:58
in which the it was a sculpture class 00:05:02
and the competition was that each 00:05:04
student was given a cubic foot of 00:05:06
plaster of Paris and they said now do 00:05:09
something with it 00:05:11
well the prize was won by a woman who 00:05:14
looked at this cube and said it has no 00:05:17
character it doesn't want to be anything 00:05:19
so she flung it on the floor and smashed 00:05:23
it all up I mean she made dents in it 00:05:25
and banged off the corners and the 00:05:27
cracks of it and things then she looked 00:05:29
at it again she said ah now I know what 00:05:32
it wants to be 00:05:33
and so she followed the grain in it as 00:05:36
it were made by all these crafts and 00:05:38
produced this marvelous piece of 00:05:39
sculpture you have in this area a very 00:05:43
ingenious sculptor by now MacDonald 00:05:45
hoard who is a master at following the 00:05:49
grain in wood and actually making the 00:05:51
grain the grain seems to suggest to him 00:05:53
the muscles and the flow of the kind of 00:05:56
body that he's making well that's the 00:06:00
thing so when a master decides whether 00:06:08
the accident came off what he wants is 00:06:12
this he wants the thing to be the 00:06:22
perfect harmony of man and nature of 00:06:27
order and randomness now this is a 00:06:36
curious thing in the human mind when we 00:06:41
play games we get most fascination out 00:06:44
of those games which satisfactorily 00:06:46
combine skill and chance games like 00:06:52
bridge poker have a sort of admirable 00:06:58
combination of these two elements and we 00:07:00
can go on playing those games again and 00:07:02
again and again because you don't feel 00:07:05
completely at the mercy of chance as you 00:07:08
do with dice unless you cheat and you 00:07:11
don't feel completely at the mercy of 00:07:13
skill as you do with chess especially 00:07:17
with a game like three-dimensional chess 00:07:20
so there's a sort of optimum middle 00:07:22
where order and randomness go together 00:07:26
well that's what this man is looking for 00:07:29
he is looking for the optimal 00:07:31
combination see the things that are 00:07:34
artwork like a Persian miniatures or the 00:07:37
jewelry of chilly knee and Chinese 00:07:41
porcelain is too much skill too much 00:07:45
order like those houses you go into 00:07:47
where you then put an ash in the tray 00:07:49
because everything is so clean and 00:07:51
everything is so tidy you don't touch it 00:07:54
one prefers a house you see that looks a 00:07:57
little lived in it is more genial more 00:07:59
comfortable somehow invites you to sit 00:08:01
down and leave and put your feet on the 00:08:03
table whereas on the other extreme some 00:08:07
kind of pad where everything is covered 00:08:11
in dirt and the filthy clothes were 00:08:14
thrown in the corner you know people are 00:08:18
all paint all over them and so on that's 00:08:22
that's the other extreme we don't want 00:08:24
that but that's a curious thing in the 00:08:27
middle now the most difficult thing is 00:08:32
to hold to the middle it's like walking 00:08:36
a tightrope that's why the path of 00:08:39
Buddhism is called the razor's edge 00:08:39
because you see what happened when this all this kind of work in the course of 00:08:47
history became fashionable people began 00:08:54
to affect these styles for example when 00:08:59
seshu the great master bra pink bata 00:09:03
worked he would sometimes take a handful 00:09:06
of straw and paint with that instead of 00:09:09
a brush in order to get the sort of 00:09:11
rough effect that he wanted but later on 00:09:15
there came people who could take an 00:09:16
ordinary paintbrush and so exactly ink 00:09:20
that brush that it would give precisely 00:09:25
the messy effect that they had in mind 00:09:25
they would also be able to inca brush in such a way and this is terribly decadent 00:09:34
they could dab grapes on a vine and have 00:09:40
dark ink where the shadow was supposed 00:09:42
to be and no ink at all where the 00:09:47
highlight was supposed to be that's when 00:09:49
they started getting mixed up with 00:09:50
Western ideas about shadows and 00:09:53
perspective they didn't have that 00:09:54
earlier but they were so skilled in the 00:09:57
handling of ink that they would do this 00:10:00
sort of thing and they would imitate you 00:10:02
see all the the so-called rough natural 00:10:09
effects of the great Zen artists and so 00:10:13
today in Japan a younger generation of 00:10:17
artists has decided it's time to break 00:10:19
all that up if we imagine for example 00:10:22
haiku parties the writing of haiku 00:10:25
poetry Basho who was the great 17th 00:10:28
century master of haiku said get a 00:10:31
3-foot child to write haiku because they 00:10:34
are the sort of direct guileless things 00:10:37
that children would say but now that are 00:10:41
magazines devoted to haiku poetry we're 00:10:44
in every issue there will be 10,000 high 00:10:46
clues written by people all over the 00:10:49
country and they get so stilted and so 00:10:52
affected that one which one had never 00:10:53
heard of haiku the same thing is 00:10:56
starting over here and you should see 00:11:00
the entries we get in these haiku 00:11:02
competitions that Japan Airlines and 00:11:05
other people sponsor 00:11:08
but it all after a while becomes dated 00:11:13
stilted and so somewhere again the new 00:11:18
thing has to break out which is always 00:11:22
coming up but there's no formula you see 00:11:24
for fixing it so that you can do it 00:11:26
again and again and again because the 00:11:27
moment you start doing it again and 00:11:29
again and again it isn't it anymore the 00:11:31
the real thing has escaped do you 00:11:34
remember some time ago there was a 00:11:36
passion for having wrought iron fish 00:11:39
just the outline of the fish some 00:11:41
artists originally you know put this 00:11:43
fish together and look great but then 00:11:45
you suddenly found them in every gift 00:11:46
shop and dime store and they look 00:11:48
perfectly terrible so this is the 00:11:53
mysterious thing well not only in the 00:11:56
arts but in lifestyles in everything 00:12:00
when you start saying what is the 00:12:03
technique for getting this thing and 00:12:05
people say well this is it it's gone 00:12:09
same in education same in music the 00:12:16
moment you start teaching something what 00:12:18
are you what question you ask how could 00:12:21
we is there some method whereby in our 00:12:24
schools we could produce from the music 00:12:28
department every graduation ceremony 00:12:31
three musics of the musicians of the 00:12:34
stature of Bach or Mozart now if we knew 00:12:41
how to do that 00:12:41
that knowledge would prevent us from being surprised by the work of these 00:12:49
people because we would know how it's 00:12:54
done and when you know how something is 00:12:59
done it doesn't surprise you that's why 00:13:04
there's a Zen poem which says if you ask 00:13:07
where the flowers come from even the god 00:13:10
of spring doesn't know suddenly the god 00:13:14
of spring would be supposed to know 00:13:16
where the flowers come from but the 00:13:17
truth of the matter is he doesn't and so 00:13:22
in the same way if you ask the Lord God 00:13:26
how do you create the universe he said I 00:13:30
have no special method and this this is 00:13:40
known in Zen it's very difficult this is 00:13:45
the most difficult virtue to attain so 00:13:49
many of these things begin with mu boogy 00:13:54
boogy it means nothing special 00:13:54
it means no business no artificiality in American current real cooool so bougie 00:14:08
is where something doesn't stand out like a sore thumb but it is absolutely 00:14:22
different from being modest a bougie 00:14:34
person may be immodest in the sense that 00:14:37
if he knows he can do something well he 00:14:39
just says he can he doesn't know it all 00:14:42
sort of without blushing violet 00:14:45
techniques bougie you see is this 00:14:50
mysterious quality of nothing special no 00:14:56
special method because if there is let 00:15:00
me repeat if we do know the method and 00:15:02
we know it infallibly it ceases to be 00:15:06
interesting 00:15:08
there are no surprises left and the 00:15:12
moment the element of surprise is gone 00:15:15
the zest of life was gone that you see 00:15:19
is why it's very difficult to teach them 00:15:21
to yourself because you can't easily 00:15:25
surprise yourself the efforts you see of 00:15:31
this kind of spontaneity is response to 00:15:33
a surprise so the master you don't know 00:15:36
what he's going to do and he surprises 00:15:37
you start trying to cure hiccups very 00:15:40
difficult to cure yourself because when 00:15:42
you pat yourself on the back you know 00:15:43
when you're going to do it so you're all 00:15:45
ready for it when somebody else comes up 00:15:47
and slams you on the back and that's a 00:15:49
surprise and what you need it was a 00:15:50
surprise or it's like jokes 00:15:50
what makes you laugh about a joke is the element of surprise in it that's why 00:15:59
jokes aren't funny after they've been 00:16:04
explained so in the same way all these 00:16:08
end stories 00:16:10
if explained have no effect 00:16:14
they're intended to produce what I would 00:16:17
call metaphysical laughter but this has 00:16:21
to be a surprise and so as to be 00:16:26
surprised well if there's no way of 00:16:26
premeditating it so you see if you read for example was the book out here called 00:16:39
zen by organ hair ago who studied 00:16:45
archery many of you probably read this 00:16:47
book he had to learn to pull the 00:16:51
bowstring in the manner of the japanese 00:16:52
archer and let it go but not on purpose 00:16:58
he's too had to let it go without 00:17:00
thinking first I'll let it go and then 00:17:03
let go he had to let it go 00:17:08
not on purpose now that really bug 00:17:12
terrible how do you do something not on 00:17:19
purpose especially if you're aiming at a 00:17:21
target well the whole point is if you 00:17:25
think before you shoot it's too late the 00:17:30
targets moved that's why we have a thing 00:17:35
like beginner's luck you see if you 00:17:38
simply point at something like that if 00:17:41
your finger was a gun I would probably 00:17:43
have hit the light switch and so you get 00:17:49
a person who's naive about a gun will 00:17:51
pick a gun up and ban and the thing will 00:17:53
be drop dead I'll never forget the first 00:17:57
time I ever used the slingshot yes 00:18:00
friend of mine was with me and he was 00:18:02
aiming away and not missing I just 00:18:04
picked it out ping and it hit but I 00:18:06
couldn't do it again if you get a 00:18:12
certain 00:18:12
naturalness there so there was a master by the name of equ who was a great leg 00:18:21
puller and he had in front of his house 00:18:28
a very novel time tree one of those 00:18:33
things contorted and they loved this 00:18:35
kind of thing and he put a notice up 00:18:37
I've said Iook you will pay 100 yen 00:18:41
which was a fair amount of money in 00:18:43
those days to anyone who can see this 00:18:45
tree straight well soon there was a 00:18:49
whole crowd of people around that tree 00:18:51
lying on the ground twisting their necks 00:18:54
and looking at it from all four angles 00:18:57
there's absolutely no way of seeing the 00:18:59
tree with a straight trunk but if you 00:19:02
had a friend it was a priest of another 00:19:03
sect and a smart boy went over to see 00:19:06
his friend and said what about this 00:19:08
Minister icky was tree officer developes 00:19:11
is perfectly simple he said you go tell 00:19:14
him the answer to seeing the tree 00:19:16
straight is to look straight at it so 00:19:20
first fan went over to a queue and said 00:19:22
I claim the reward he said you look 00:19:24
straight at it and Ikki looked him in a 00:19:26
funny way and said he was forked out the 00:19:29
hundred-year and gave it to him that I 00:19:30
think you've been talking to rosin down 00:19:33
the street now in that way is he just 00:19:40
look straight at it in other words 00:19:42
here's the bowstring I called it 00:19:45
all this thimble fambly nimble mumbling 00:19:48
jumble humble about the right technique 00:19:52
of letting go of it let go of it damn it 00:19:54
but that's very difficult as if I would 00:19:59
say to you now everybody let's be 00:20:00
unselfconscious 00:20:00
so finally in desperation you at last learn to let go of the thing which was 00:20:08
what you were supposed to do all the 00:20:13
time and then one is this again as a 00:20:22
child this is original innocence so this 00:20:29
is the meaning of the person who was 00:20:31
asked what do you do here in this 00:20:32
institution 00:20:33
he said we eat when hungry and we sleep 00:20:36
when tired but he said that's being just 00:20:39
like everybody else they all do that 00:20:41
he said they do not when they eat they 00:20:45
don't eat they think of all sorts of 00:20:48
extraneous matters and they tire they 00:20:51
don't sleep they dream all kinds of 00:20:52
dreams 00:20:52
[Music] 00:20:56
nobody ever transforms himself into an enlightened pattern of life by dividing 00:21:21
himself in two pieces good eye and bad 00:21:28
me we're in good eye preaches too bad me 00:21:33
and tries to make me over as if a human 00:21:37
being were divided were like a rider on 00:21:40
a horse and the rider is the soul and 00:21:43
the horses the body or the rider is 00:21:46
reason and the horse is passion the 00:21:48
rider is control and the horses the 00:21:51
uncontrolled in other words we've got 00:21:54
the opposition of the ego allied with 00:21:57
the super-ego trying to ride the ego 00:22:01
aligned with the it'd and Freud's 00:22:05
metaphors and Freud's construction of 00:22:07
the sort of psychic anatomy of mankind 00:22:09
it is really derived from Plato 00:22:13
with the image of the soul riding the 00:22:18
animal horse now all this is a total 00:22:25
failure because there is a secret 00:22:31
connection as it were a sort of back 00:22:34
stairs between good eye and bad knee 00:22:40
would I can look down at bad me and say 00:22:43
are you Orton to be like that but all 00:22:46
the time bad knee is sending its energy 00:22:49
up the back stairs the good eye and 00:22:52
motivating good eye to go a bad me but 00:23:00
for the reasons of bad knee I ought to 00:23:05
be better because then I could be more 00:23:07
proud of myself so in this way there is 00:23:13
something about spirituality 00:23:15
self-conscious spirituality all kinds of 00:23:18
religion involving preaching and 00:23:20
moralizing and talking to oneself in a 00:23:23
split and divided way who died against 00:23:26
bad me that is profoundly phony 00:23:26
one of the main streams of Buddhist way of life to be what one might call the 00:23:37
religion of non religion to find to 00:23:49
demonstrate to convey what is the most 00:23:53
highly spiritual through what is the 00:23:59
most everyday and ordinary and to make 00:24:02
no division between the two so it you 00:24:06
might say the more everyday it is the 00:24:10
more truly spiritual it is that the more 00:24:14
it appears to be spiritual that is to 00:24:16
say something different from aside from 00:24:19
apart from everyday life the more false 00:24:22
that kind of spirituality will be 00:24:26
and this reaches a peak in the history 00:24:32
of Japanese culture in the 17th century 00:24:39
when in this country there were three 00:24:41
you know I'll say four superbly 00:24:45
important men 00:24:45
Basho the haiku poet 1k is in teacher kakuhen another Zen teacher and sin guy 00:24:59
is in painter and I want to say 00:25:09
something about the work of these four 00:25:11
men and they are genius and the movement 00:25:15
in Japanese history which they 00:25:17
represented which you might call the 00:25:19
democratization of the esoteric and 00:25:25
there's something about this of 00:25:27
extraordinary interest to Americans 00:25:31
because for good for better or for worse 00:25:34
we as Americans live in a culture in 00:25:38
which there is nothing esoteric there 00:25:41
are no secrets 00:25:41
except those things which cannot be understood in a way they are always you 00:25:47
so tarik only a few people can 00:25:53
understand them and they don't need to 00:25:55
be guarded because even if you for 00:25:57
example you publish a textbook on 00:26:00
nuclear physics and only very few people 00:26:04
can understand it but in the sense that 00:26:08
it is published it is no longer in so 00:26:11
tarik 00:26:11
in our world for example a teacher tries his utmost to make himself understood he 00:26:21
knocks himself out to make his message 00:26:30
assimilable without tears but as I've 00:26:33
explained to you in oriental cultures 00:26:37
teachers expect the student to make the 00:26:40
effort to attain the understanding so a 00:26:44
teacher is difficult and you must put 00:26:49
yourself out to understand what he says 00:26:52
he's not going to make it easy for you 00:26:55
because of the feeling that what comes 00:27:00
to you too easily 00:27:01
doesn't really come to you now however 00:27:06
there was in 17th century Japan a 00:27:09
movement among the people you might call 00:27:13
esoteric to make their understanding 00:27:17
available to the masses in a sense 00:27:23
arising out of Buddhist compassion the 00:27:26
idea that the aim in life of a 00:27:32
bodhisattva is to bring enlightenment to 00:27:36
as many other sentient beings as 00:27:38
possible and always the problem is you 00:27:42
see when you've popularized something 00:27:44
how to do it without making it vulgar 00:27:47
cheap watered-down insipid and these 00:27:53
four men were in their own quite 00:27:56
different ways geniuses at doing it 00:28:00
let's start with Varsho Varsho didn't 00:28:08
invent haiku poetry but he brought it to 00:28:13
a certain degree of development whereby 00:28:18
it was possible for ordinary people who 00:28:22
were not very literate to become poets 00:28:26
now you to understand the situation in 00:28:29
which bar show arose you must realize 00:28:33
that Japanese poetry grows on the tree 00:28:41
of Chinese tradition and that by the 00:28:45
17th century Chinese poetry was as 00:28:48
difficult to follow as say TS Eliot is 00:28:52
today now he to understand TS Eliot's 00:28:58
poems before quartets you have to know 00:29:02
an enormous amount of world literature 00:29:08
and some very very obscure books because 00:29:14
TS Eliot's Four Quartets is a complex 00:29:18
texture of allusions to other works and 00:29:23
you have to know what these other works 00:29:25
are in order to get the point so this is 00:29:29
poetry written strictly for literati and 00:29:33
the Chinese brought this to a high 00:29:37
degree of perfection so that you see 00:29:39
poets were writing only for other poets 00:29:44
they weren't getting anything across to 00:29:47
people who just as it were spoke 00:29:52
everyday language and so the development 00:29:56
this this happened also in Japan if you 00:30:00
read say a novel like The Tale of Genji 00:30:02
and read all about the light-footed 00:30:07
armors of those very very cultivated 00:30:10
people and with their little poems and 00:30:13
things the subtle kinds of allusion they 00:30:15
had and also when tea ceremony became 00:30:18
over refined you know there were 00:30:23
suggestions in the shade of a cup which 00:30:28
was intended to remind you of something 00:30:30
you know a complicated set of 00:30:33
associations which the master plan 00:30:36
and you were supposed to get the point 00:30:39
and so people indulged in all kinds of 00:30:42
fantastic one-upmanship in seeing who 00:30:46
did or didn't recognize the subtle 00:30:49
chains of Association which recognition 00:30:52
of which depended upon a great deal of 00:30:54
learning but you see what that is that's 00:30:57
a very elaborate game and the intent and 00:31:02
the object of the game is not really 00:31:04
delight but seeing who can out associate 00:31:11
whom so these 17th century masters 00:31:16
rebelled against all that kind of thing 00:31:18
and they wanted tea and poetry and 00:31:24
painting and zen to be appreciated for 00:31:28
itself and to be appreciated by anybody 00:31:32
with human equipment so basho said in 00:31:38
order to write haiku you should be 00:31:43
taught by a child three feet high 00:31:47
because a statement which such a child 00:31:50
would make would be a poem and a 00:31:57
profound poem to the degree then 00:32:00
especially to the degree that what the 00:32:02
child said was a simple image and had in 00:32:08
it no kind of philosophizing but was 00:32:12
just that vivid statement which children 00:32:17
you light the fire and then I'll show you something wonderful I've great balls 00:32:30
no that's a haiku poem and all these 00:32:45
poems each one simply takes an image and 00:32:51
says no more the brushwood gate and for 00:32:58
a lock this snail leaf fallen flying 00:33:11
back to the branch butterfly you see 00:33:18
there's something a little bit clever 00:33:19
about those ones and for that very 00:33:21
reason they are not the best kind of 00:33:23
high-proof better still is something 00:33:30
like this 00:33:31
in the dense fog what is being shouted 00:33:35
between hill and boat you see the image 00:33:42
of a river estuary and you can't see 00:33:50
anything but you know there's someone 00:33:52
down there in the boat talking to 00:33:54
someone up on the hill and you can't 00:33:56
hear the conversation you can't quite 00:33:58
put your finger on the quality which in 00:34:02
Japanese aesthetics is call you again 00:34:06
you again made up of two Chinese 00:34:10
characters both of which mean the dark 00:34:14
the deep and the mysterious but you 00:34:19
again is not like is not like a great of 00:34:26
this full of black clouds and lightning 00:34:31
in which there might be a dragon that's 00:34:33
not you again 00:34:34
you again is the suckling mysterious and 00:34:38
is described by the poet say ami as to 00:34:43
wonder on and on in a great forest 00:34:45
without thought of return to watch 00:34:49
flying geese appear and be hidden in the 00:34:53
clouds to watch distant fishing boats on 00:34:57
the ocean disappear behind islands and 00:35:06
what is in all these images is the 00:35:08
connecting me 00:35:08
[Music] 00:35:12