INTRODUCTION
IN THE LATE 1980, during my term as abbot, the Tibetan teacher Tara Tulku came to teach at the San Francisco Zen Centre and asked me some questions about our practice. He asked me, "In your meditation, what is the object?" I said, feeling a little embarrassed, "Well, we don't have any object. We practice objectless meditation." And he said, "Oh. We have that objectless meditation, too, in Vajrayana, but it is the most advanced meditation. Usually, practitioners work for many years before they can do objectless meditation,"
He also asked me, "What stages are there in your training?" I said, well, in a way, we're mostly concerned with not falling into stages. It's part of our tradition." I told him the story of Seigen Gyoshi going to the Sixth Ancestor and asking, "How can I avoid falling into steps and stages?" And the Ancestor said, "What have you been practicing?" Seigen said, "I haven't even been practicing the Four Noble Truths [that is, I haven't even started the beginning practice]." And the Ancestor said, "Well, what stage have you fallen into?" And Seigen said, "How could I have fallen into a stage if I haven't even practiced the Noble Truths?"।
Then Tara Tulku said, "Wow! That's very advanced, to be working on not even slipping into or clinging to the various stages of meditation." And I thought, How subtle, how pure Zen is. Then he said, Well, I talked to some of your students, and there are certain things about Mahayana Buddhism that they don't seem to know." While Tara Tulku was teaching at the Zen Centre, he emphasized some basic aspects of the bodhisattva path, such as paying homage, mak-ing offerings, practicing confession, and the precepts. At that time, several people came to me and asked, "Why don't we make offerings
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