He didn't make jokes. He would give a talk and at the most sublime, not really sublime but at the part of his talk where he was talking about something, some complete tragedy in life, he'd giggle. It's really funny. Why don't you kind of think about where he was coming from? When you meet somebody like that, you have to be careful because you want to offer him your life, you know. You want to offer him your life. So, be careful. I've heard it said, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this talk. I have to calm down.

[01:08]

Or maybe not. I've heard it said that the most important matter is the matter of life and death. Why do I always talk about these kinds of things? I used to think that that meant that there was a problem to be solved. I mean, that's how it's kind of presented, right? The matter of life and death. So, I sort of thought like it was a problem, like a mathematical problem, and I was good at solving things. So, I was going to go right ahead and solve it. And what they said was, you know, just if you get enlightened, then you can... I mean, when I first started, I started studying in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Zen Center. And at the time, they were doing, it was Mayuzumi Roshi, he was doing Colin, Colin Ridley. The fellow named Yasutani Roshi came, and he was doing Seishin.

[02:17]

He would come every year, I think. He came, and Hirata Roshi one time came. Anyway, when you were sitting with them, they gave you a Colin to do, like Mu. So, I thought, kind of the way they presented it, like in the Three Pillars of Zen, that book, if you got enlightened, it's kind of like that. If you get enlightened, your problem of life and death will kind of be solved. It's sort of a little bit how it's presented. Anyway, that's how it was presented then. I think now it's different. I think there's a kind of a softerness, a kind of a modified Colin practice. Is that right? It's a little bit less... A lot less. A lot less. When I was there, it was really something else, but it was really strict. We'd stay up all night, you know. One time I stayed up all night, and it was like I was just rosy, and I was really tired. Anyway, I was making a tremendous effort, but the effort I was making was grasping after...

[03:23]

I'm digressing. So, let me get back to my talk here. Anyway, I thought life and death was something to be solved, and I would just go ahead and solve it, and that would be that. But it turns out life is not like that. Life is not a problem to be solved. You know, I think when you're young, there's lots still of possibilities. But when you get older, you get a kind of a taste that life is a little bit more... not serious, but it's actually happening. I think when you're young, you kind of feel like the idea of life is sort of happening,

[04:27]

but because it doesn't exactly clearly have an end, you don't quite get that it really is actually happening now. Does that make sense for people who are a little bit older? So anyway, life is not a problem to be solved. It's a mystery to be lived. We live it moment by moment, and it goes on until we're dying, and then we live death moment by moment. Perhaps for some people they have mentors who help them along, or who they can watch, who live life well, like Suzuki Roshi. You wanted to live life like he did. And for other people,

[05:29]

they don't feel like they had that kind of guidance. I've come to believe that being able to live a life of integrity and maturity takes a lifetime of attention, courage, patient determination, and hopefully an abundant sense of humor. It's not easy to live well, I think. It's really difficult to stand up in your own life as it has come to be, and to take responsibility for all of the things that, all the karma is an easy way of putting it, all the things that came together, you and everything else,

[06:31]

that created you, us, at this moment in time. I think the difference between a child and an adult no matter how old they are, is that a child still doesn't take responsibility for their life, their feelings as their own. They're still blaming, they're still putting it out there, finding fault, making excuses, feeling self-pity, and so on and so forth, indulging in various kinds of distractions and I'm watching your faces and I know that you know. An adult, no matter what the difficulty, no matter how much the appropriate blame, in a certain way, finally says, it is my life

[07:34]

and I must stand up here and I must live, I must make of this life an offering, a gift. With our own wounded hearts, with something inside us that knows in a physical way that we are truly and ultimately at home in the mystery, still, we reduce the word, we reduce this mystery to the word life, to some idea, some concept of me, of other, of whatever. But we must walk forward

[08:39]

into the fear, into the sense of separation, letting loose our hold on whatever it is, walking best we can upright into the complete unknown. There are others who have done this in the past who can guide us there are some who walk with us now who offer a hand for stability and they can only do that. We can only walk with each other in the suffering or when people are actually engaged with the practice just encourage them in their joy and insights. And there are those of us here in this room who will do the work

[09:44]

that must be done to end little by little the trail of karma, the dualistic world that causes such suffering for us and for others. As we do this work we get glimpses, big glimpses sometimes, small glimpses. We get insights. And then again we're thrown back into our usual, habitual stuck places. Eventually, if you do this long enough what becomes real or at least what becomes apparent is not the insights as truth

[10:46]

and not the stucknesses as truth. It's just swinging back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until finally we get let go of holding to some kind of insight as the truth. And we let go of our sadnesses and wantings, our mountainous wantings. We even eventually let go of practice. And having gathered a certain amount of strength we begin to actually stand up as the person we have come to be. When this happens

[12:02]

the burden of the self is lifted slightly or more so and then life presents itself in its pristine purity no matter what the condition of what it is. Whatever it is, it sparkles with the vivid energy of thusness. Just the light of the sun coming through the back of Chris's ear making it red, from my view. He has blood coursing through his whole body. He's alive. His heart is beating. He breathes. Is that enough? At the sixth day of session

[13:12]

that place in us that already knows the world of thusness can hear the Dharma can accept the Dharma not with the intellect but with the body and we say something in us says yes, yes I know that to be true. So today I'd like to share with you some of my favorite words pointing to a place that we already appreciate in the deepest heart of our true selves. These are the words of Dogen, our ancestor. The word magician impossible to understand anyway. The profound healer and Soto Zen master. This is a paragraph from

[14:13]

One Bright Pearl or sometimes it's called The One Bright Jewel. Being thus is the one bright jewel which is the whole world in the ten directions. This being so and though it seems to go changing faces turning or not turning yet it is a bright jewel. Don't try to understand. Just listen. It is precisely knowing that the jewel has all along been thus that is itself the bright jewel. The bright jewel has sound and form. In being already at thusness

[15:13]

as far as worrying that oneself is not the bright jewel is concerned one should not suspect that that is not the jewel. Worrying and doubting grasping and rejection action and inaction are all but temporary views of small measure. Isn't it lovely? Such lusters and lights of the bright jewel are unlimited. Each flicker each beam each luster each light is a quality of the whole world in all ten directions. Since it is not action or thought

[16:15]

caused by something existing which is not the bright jewel the simple fact is that forward steps and backward steps in the ghost cave in the mountain of darkness are just one bright jewel. The lusters and the lights I love how he says that. It's us, you know. We're a luster. We're a sparkling beam of life. We are this one bright jewel. As you know, Dogi's main teaching is that practice and realization are not two different things. His teaching continually points to that truth. It's a teaching of total commitment to each activity. Total commitment to sitting.

[17:17]

That's it. You just take your body down to the Zendo and you plop it there and you sit and you're totally there no matter what's going on in your mind or heart or body. You sit there letting the stuff of your life, of life be what it is. Nonsense or not nonsense whatever it is. Complete commitment as Blanche would say wholehearted practice. Just sitting. Nothing special. My first teaching when I was in L.A. was from Mizumi Roshi. It was during Soji, I think work period, during a session and I was on the stairs, I think with a vacuum and he came by and I asked him some

[18:20]

frustrated Dharma question which I don't even remember what it was and he looked at me just like in one of these you know, Blue Cliff Record stories or whatever. I asked him this great question he looks at me and he says just vacuum. It was too subtle for me. I was still into being enlightened and I struggled for years I'm a very stubborn person. Years I struggled to get enlightenment. Luckily it didn't happen because my bigger problem my bigger problem was that I thought I was a failure and so therefore I was able to look at that for a very long time. This suffering that we have

[19:23]

is the motivation for practice so don't poo-poo it. It's very important to stay with the suffering because it is the first of all the reason we're suffering is because it's our small separate self that's the reason why we're suffering. So we have to study that in the first place and many things happen when we study it besides eventually being liberative it also is the source of our compassion because when you can really accept your own suffering and know where it comes from that it's dependently co-reason and not your fault then when you see other people suffering you really don't want I mean you really want to carry them gently or be strict if that's what seems to be appropriate because you know how much it hurts. But the other thing is

[20:25]

it really is our motivation because when you're finally tired when you've paid your dues and this takes a while when you're finally tired of all the grasping of all the wanting things to be different than they are of all the suffering from avoiding relationship when you're really tired of it that will motivate you and it's almost the only thing that motivates people unless you have a great enlightenment experience and then you're also motivated but it's really tricky because people get caught there because what they are motivated to do is go back to that old experience and that's exactly what doesn't work so in some way it's easier if you just don't have that experience and just slog through your suffering bit by bit maybe not as much fun but very effective this is Dogen's groups of emptiness

[21:28]

you have to study the self because you have to know that it's a delusion well, you can study anything it doesn't really have to be the self but the self is the bottom ignorance but you have to pass through either a really deep understanding of impermanence which you can do right now for the next two days keep looking at the stuff coming and going coming and going or dependent co-arising everything is completely dependent on everything else there is no you there or emptiness all of that is emptiness just different ways of finding it so here is Dogen's peak small, short peak listen carefully I'm only going to say it once you might know this one I like it a lot you ready? no wind

[22:29]

no waves an empty boat flooded with moonlight it's very nice very quiet, isn't it? very still here is another one of my favorite things it's from the Genjo Koan you'll recognize it a fish swims in the ocean and again don't even bother to understand it just listen to the you know, refreshment of the Dharma a fish swims in the ocean and no matter how far it swims there is no end to the water a bird flies in the sky and no matter how far it flies

[23:32]

there is no end to the air however the fish and the bird have never left their elements when their activity is large their field is large when their need is small their field is small thus each of them totally covers its full range each of them totally experiences its realm if the bird leaves the air it will die at once if the fish leaves the water it will die at once know that the water is life and air is life the bird is life and the fish is life life must be the bird and life must be the fish it is possible to illustrate this with more analogies practice enlightenment and people are also like this and I think I want to read just one more

[24:34]

first I'll read it with a teeny bit of comment and then I'll read it again without any this is the acupuncture needle of Zazen the essential function of each single Buddha that's us the function that's my comment the functional essence of each single Buddha manifests as non-thinking that's not thinking and not thinking it's non-thinking it's letting thinking come and go completes as non-merging we've studied that in the Sanda Kai so you know what that's about manifestation as non-thinking

[25:46]

this manifestation is intimate in itself as you do non-thinking your life arises right in front of your face it's immediately in front of you all the time completion as non-merging this completion is verified of itself completion is realization is intimacy this manifestation that is intimate in itself is never defiled okay, if you're just present now there's not duality even if it's dualistic and you're completely there it's not dual that's a little subtle but it's true this completion that is verified of itself

[26:46]

is never absolute or relative when it's realized you don't stay in duality so when you have this sense of separation you simply don't hold to that sense you renounce barriers you renounce the barrier between that you feel between yourself and whatever the thing that you're always when you recoil in a relationship when you're always sort of turning away you feel that in the body as contraction contraction itself is pain it's painful to feel separate like that as soon as you feel that contraction you just release it you don't hold on to smallness you let down the barrier and if you let down the barrier the heart is already open you don't have to work at opening your heart it's already open intimacy that is never defiled or dualistic this intimacy is liberated without relying on anything

[27:50]

there isn't anything to rely on anyway verification that is never absolute or relative not dualistic this verification is genuinely actualized without any attempt without attempt is effort but no desire water is clear to the bottom a fish swim like fish the sky is vast reaching into the heavens birds fly like birds so now I read it without my comment the essential function of each single Buddha the functional essence of each single Buddha manifests as non-thinking completes as non-merging manifestation as non-thinking this manifestation is intimate in itself completion as non-merging this completion is verified of itself

[28:54]

this manifestation that is intimate in itself is never defiled this completion that is verified of itself is never absolute or relative intimacy that is never defiled this intimacy is liberated without relying on anything verification that is never absolute or relative this verification is genuinely actualized without any attempt water is clear to the bottom fish swim like fish the sky is vast reaching into the heavens birds fly like birds we're in the sixth day our lives, as they will be in a few days those thoughts

[29:56]

are not yet necessary to think about keep the fruit of your effort going don't dilute your mindfulness now don't make contact with other people unnecessarily don't waste the next two days you've worked for this kind of concentration you can still give up everything in a moment you can surrender to the flow simply watching the constantly changing patterns of emotion-thought watching the sense of separation be gentle and patient for the next two days watch the self

[30:58]

constantly being created when you are including everything in your zazen allowing yourself to flow with each new sensation, thought, or emotion you have perfect composure you are the one bright jewel temporarily temporarily with the name Peter or Jenny or Aaron or Susan or Deirdre or Jeff or Joan it is not necessary to get rid of anything just watch the difference between wanting and how that feels

[32:02]

and not wanting and how that feels let us continue to make our best effort together let us realize the one bright jewel at the center of each of us the jewel that each of us is each one of us a facet being thus is the one bright jewel which is the whole world being so even though at times it seems to go changing faces joy or sadness yet it is a bright jewel it is precisely knowing that the jewel has all along been thus that is itself the bright jewel in being already thus

[33:04]

as far as worrying that oneself is not the bright jewel is concerned one should not suspect that that is not the jewel isn't it lovely such lusters and lights of the bright jewel are unlimited each flicker each beam each luster each light is a quality of the whole world in all ten directions it is not the plants and trees of here and there it is not mountains and rivers of heaven and earth it is far beyond such duality it is just one bright jewel

[34:05]

please let us continue and together practice diligently two more days

[34:30]

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