or how are you, or anything like that. You just bow to each other, and that's communication. So we recognize each other, we don't pass each other. It would feel very rude to pass somebody and not make an acknowledgment of that, that we're meeting, or passing, or whatever. So there are ways of acknowledging each other without talking. And so that, we should try that. We don't have to say something all the time. And we read each other pretty well, actually. After a while, after we get to know each other, we really read each other's minds. In Tsingtao's time, 5th century or 4th century, 5th or 6th century, something like that, he was the third ancestor of Zen.

[01:13]

He inherited Zen from Taiso Ika. Zen practice was monastic practice. And more people come to monastery to join SSE. But basically it was monastic practice, and the monks were practicing in a great way. You know, Shinshu means faith in the great way, but it characterizes faith in mind. So, the great way is to open up big mind and let go of small mind, and a sense of leadership. Big mind leads, and small mind follows. rather than small mind reading and big mind following.

[02:19]

Big mind won't follow, small mind does. Small mind wants to get across. So, The practice of ordinary people is to pick and choose, discriminate. Discriminating practice is what is meant basically by not picking and choosing, whereas the Great Way is the mind or the practice of non-discrimination. Saint-San is saying, don't fall into one side or the other. Actually, our practice from Suzuki Roshi is more like Saint-San's practice, or his understanding.

[03:24]

Don't fall into one side, don't fall into the side of leaving the world, because basically Buddhism was developed by people who left the world. Home leaving means not just leaving your house, home leaving means leaving the world, leaving behind the world. So the monks become, to become a monk, you leave the world and you go to the monastery and you just practice in that world, in the world of non-discriminating, You have a rollable bowl and so forth. Can you give me one of those meal chits, please? Thank you.

[04:28]

The monks were totally dependent on what was offered to them. So, that's non-discriminating. That's whatever belongs in the bowl is what you eat. Sometimes the monks would eat what's in their bowl, but usually they share the meal. They come back after begging and share the meal. And so, why should people support them? That's their work, is to practice. And the lay people supported the monks, and the lay people supported the monks because they felt that they were doing pure practice, which the lay people could not do. So they were kind of put up on a pedestal. But they had to earn the money through their virtue.

[05:36]

So this meal chant, this is the old meal chant. The second part says, this is the monk's practice. Inalienable labors brought us this food. to appreciate that, and every time I eat it, to realize that how much effort has been made to bring this food to this person. And why do we know how it comes to us? Well, seeing this offering, let us consider whether our virtue and practice deserve it. So that's the key. The key is Does our virtual practice deserve being served this meal? Desiring the natural order of mind.

[06:40]

Well, the natural order of mind is like, it's a great way. So let us be free from greed, hate, and delusion. We eat to support life and to practice the way of Buddha. So we don't eat. The eating of the monks is simply to support their life, not to pick and choose what they eat. And the monks only eat one meal a day. They go out in the morning with their bowls and beg for food. We call it begging, but actually it's more like... Japanese, I don't know what the Chinese were, but probably similar, they put their head down over their eyes, sort of, and make a chant to connect them to people, and people put

[08:15]

It's like the giver and the gift make that connection. And then we say, no giver, no gift, and no giver, no receiver, and nothing given. It's all just generosity, pure generosity, and pure receiving, where it's understood things are falling in a way that supports both the giver and the gift, and the receiver. So, I want to have a little dinner. This food is for the three treasures, for the teachers, family, and all people, and for all beings in the six worlds. The first portion is for the precepts, the second is the practice of samadhi, the third is to save all beings, the fourth is to awaken with everybody. So, the gift is to support the monks who are giving their whole life to the three treasures and to all people and to all beings.

[09:34]

and to the awakening of everyone. So this is the monk's gift. And so the monk is supported in this way, forgiven. So this is the great way, but it's not the way of picking and choosing. But Suzuki Rinpoche used to talk about begging. I did begging in Japan. It was really funny, but it was a really great experience. And one time when I was a little boy, you know, they'd go out with the monks. Yeah, not a little boy, but a young guy. And they'd run us through the fields, and people would give them food and whatever went in their basket. And someone would put a watermelon in their basket. I always complained about having to walk several miles. Walked a couple of miles in a big watering hole. I missed this part. Who was this?

[10:38]

Suzuki Roshi? Yeah, yeah, yeah. chant, we say the water with which we wash these bowls tastes like ambrosia. So everything tastes the same. One tastes ambrosia. And we share the wash water. with all the gaki. It says that the various spirits, the various spirits is actually the gaki, the hungry ghosts. So, we share this with the hungry ghosts and then we, we're hungry ghosts ourselves, so we drink the other half. We only offer half, you know, don't offer it all, because you want to save some for this ghost.

[11:43]

So, that kind of, I think that figures into this particular chant. I mean, particular sensei name. It's a great way, but the way of learning the world, and the well-being in the world, but Zen practitioners should not be split. In Buddhism, often there's a split between the monks and the lay people who support them. In China, of course, the monks, for various circumstances, reasons, for various reasons and circumstances, had their own fields and they worked in their own fields and made and grew a lot of their own food, which in India was totally taboo because in India the monks had left the world and couldn't work in the fields.

[13:07]

They were not supposed to do anything for themselves, to feed themselves or to house themselves. And they were totally dependent upon the lay people. I don't know if there was a story, various stories, but... There was a band of monks who were walking along the road, and they were accosted by, this was a long, long time ago, accosted by, no idea, robbers. And robbers, because I don't know what you get from a monk when you rob a monk. Anyway, that's the story. Not very smart robbers. But one of the robbers said, I used to be a monk, and you know, we don't have to kill them.

[14:18]

All we have to do is tie them to some plants, tie them up to some plants, and they won't be able to move. because they don't want to pull up the plants. That's pretty extreme. So a lot of harming, and even plants, right? So then the king and his entourage came along and said, what are these monks doing, you know, and he released them and brought them off of the palace and gave them big, you know, But that's a very extreme – in India, there are really extreme examples of things. That's the way their mythology works. So, this is Zen mythology. I think Shinshu is Zen mythology.

[15:22]

I think that Shinshu Rin is actually a great essay for our time, because Qingqing is about how to bring together the harmony of heaven and earth. And how to, this is addressing your question about harmony, because it really states our philosophy of saving the world. from greed, hate, and delusion, and how to actually harmonize with our surroundings. And that encourages us to take care of the Earth and be in sync with everything.

[16:22]

without falling into one side or the other. That's about great tolerance, and it's also about universal love. You were looking at James when you said harmonize, and I think that was Ellen's question. And I'm wondering if the Enlightenment activity kind of speaks to this process of harmonizing kind of shifted work. I think it's not really there. It's not really there. And that's since I'm in. It's not really there. There's Enlightenment and there's Enlightenment.

[17:29]

And there's finality and there's no finality. It's never finished. It's not something that you get. Enlightenment is our nature. That's why it's said, everyone is enlightened. Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree for seven days. not seven weeks, but seven days, I think seven days. On the seventh day, he saw the morning star. So, and then he became enlightened. But that's just some kind of, you know, somebody's description, which everybody accepts. But he's already, in other words,

[18:30]

he realized his enlightened mind. Right? So that's being enlightened, that's getting enlightenment, but it's not that you get something, because you can't get anything that doesn't belong to you already. So, I know you want to say something. No, no, I'm still talking. I don't want to. So, what I, one of the questions from when Jose was talking, he kind of described what he thought, and then he asked me what I thought, and I said, well, it's your talk. So I didn't respond to your question. But I would say he realized his enlightened mind, which is universal love.

[19:38]

So, that's my understanding. Everyone has their own understanding, but my understanding is that he realized He said, I and all beings am the Tathagata. So he realized that together, all together, he realized the universal love, which is the glue that holds everything together. It's the glue that holds everything together. Universal love means that it raises love to the level of impersonality. It's not describable, but it's not personal in the sense of being limited.

[20:48]

to personal love. It's not limited in that way. It's totally unlimited. And since it's unlimited, it's not describable. But for me, it's Satori. When you realize your unlimited mind of universal love, it's Satori. I wish I don't find that. Open ourselves to that. It's a great tutorial, Shakyamuni. You know, Maitreya is supposed to be—Maitreya is sitting up in the Tushita Heaven.

[21:52]

We may come down someday, you know, and Maitreya means love. The bodhisattva of love, the Buddha, they will introduce the era of universal love. That's Maitreya. So my understanding is that each one of us is Maitreya. The one Maitreya is going to come down and do that. Sorry, he's not up there. He's in here. So for us to open ourselves to that, that's our satori. And it's something that I will feel. And it expands your, I don't know what it expands, but it expands your connection to everything as one.

[23:01]

So this is universal and particular. But it's always, that's the basic thing, is when it unifies a the universal and the particular. And it's just our nature. Some people don't have it. So this is a big question. Do all sentient beings have the Buddha nature? Some dogma says yes. Yogacara school says no. Not all beings have the Buddha nature. look at some beings, examine some beings. I think that's right. There are some, some of us who have no remorse, no sense of empowerment.

[24:08]

The guy with the ring on his fingers? I don't really know. Yes. I don't really know. Yeah. So, yes. So, we... When our experience tells us that or not, we still hold it open. We still... allow ourselves to... that that's true. So some people can convert anybody to reality, to their true nature. That's what Shakyamuni, that's why he's the Buddha. So, Buddha is called the compassionate Buddha, right?

[25:20]

That's one of his epithets. The compassionate Buddha. So, compassion is to suffer with people. Passion means suffering. Suffering with is compassion. And we suffer the suffering of And that's what Shakyamuni said. He said, Oh, I just suffered the suffering of Maitreya. Not Maitreya. So, when I was a kid, there was a hojo, which is six by six, but all the bodhisattvas are there, and it makes room for everybody in this little, in this small room called the hojo.

[26:33]

So this is an example of making a big mind. A big mind makes room for everything, for everyone, includes everything. That's what Suzuki Roshi, when Suzuki Roshi talks about big mind, he talks about a mind that's big enough to accept everything. So when I was in Cape Town, I was with Hojo, which is about six by six, which also means his mind, right? And it includes everything, everything that fits into his mind. So this is also an example of Buddha's enlightenment. All of the sutras and all of the examples through the ages of Buddhism is what Shakyamuni experienced when his mind opened.

[27:55]

So, Shakyamuni's mind opened and the rest is commentary. The whole thing is commentary, all of our practices and all of our literature. It's all commentary on what happened when Shaquille O'Neal got his mind opened. So it makes me feel like I'm that living room. I can feel whoever I want to.

[29:00]

Oh and then I'm just trying to... I want to speak up. Speak up a word. Speak up. The Chinese word for light. I want to talk about the lesson I gave you earlier. A simple master had been learning. He used the word 絕末开悟. Sure.

[30:03]

Some people relate to enlightenment, others to awakening, but they're all the same meaning. Enlightenment means to allow yourself to be a vehicle for light, which is awakening. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. He never said that. He said, instead of talking about it, do it. Yeah, practice. And when Suzuki Roshi was around in the beginning, especially back in the 60s, there were a lot of, a number of teachers who came at the same time.

[31:11]

But then when Suzuki Roshi came, when he came, he didn't go anywhere. He just stayed in one place. And everything, the practice revolved around him. Most of the other teachers would come and do sessions and encourage people to have Ken shows. And so he didn't do that. He just said, instead of talking about enlightenment, he said, the main thing is practice. You can talk about enlightenment forever, and it's just talk. So instead of talking, just practice. So we emphasize practices instead of enlightenment. That's all. Yes? You say you might not like it. Yeah, I said, be careful of what you want. If you want enlightenment, be careful of what you want, because when you get it, you may not like it. Which is probably true.

[32:16]

Because then you see yourself as you really are. Thank you, Sajid. You mentioned earlier, at one point in your talk, you were speaking of more strict home-leaving practice in India of the monks. separated themselves from the world. And I think maybe you were implying that, well, clearly our practice is not that way. You said that the Shinshin King and Suzuki Roshi's teaching is not that way. It's more, I don't know what it is, but it's not just both leaping, it's seeing and leaping at the same time.

[33:21]

It's not favoring one side over the other. It's not favoring one side over the other. It's not eliminating the two sides, but it's not favoring one side over the other. And so this is the right practice and that's the wrong practice. Or that, you know, without discrimination, there's no discrimination. And within non-discrimination, there is discrimination. So, not being stuck in one side or the other. I think I'm rushing a little bit, but at this age, Buddhism goes through various changes and manifestations.

[34:30]

And for this particular age, as you can see in our practice, priests and lay people practice together the same way. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. But it's just the way it is, because of the circumstances of our particular age and place. So Suzuki Ueshiba, he didn't say it should be this way or it should be that way. Because people wanted to have, some people wanted to have a monastery, they created Tassahara. And because a lot of lay people were coming, mostly lay people were coming to practice, We created a layperson's practice place, and both existed and does at the same time.

[35:32]

He didn't try to impose anything on us. He didn't say, you should do it this way, or you should do that. He saw what we wanted to do and kind of guided us into helping us do what we wanted to do. That was his genius. and not trying to put us into some special practice or divide the practices. It just occurs to me that with lay practice or with choices avoiding the pitfalls of preference maybe each path of practice i'm sure has its own difficulty but as a layperson i really feel like getting caught by preference is more difficult when you have to make so many choices so i need to actually be careful

[36:47]

But he wanted to help us to find our own way of practice, given what his understanding was and what his own practice, the practice that he came from. He offered us what he had. He said, this is the way we do it. And a lot of people would say, well, let's just do what we want, you know. He said, you're not ready to do that yet. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. He wouldn't say that, but he would have. So he wanted our practice to develop slowly and not just, you know, put, just throw a bunch of ideas forward, you know, but to grow out of, to actually grow out of what he presented to us.

[38:00]

And that would work here. I thought that, had this image that he came here and he planted himself as a plant. And then the stream, the branches are growing out of that root. And that to me, that's the progress or the development of our practice from that root. So I always go back to that route. And it goes, I'm an apple tree, loving and personal and particular and beautiful lady.

[39:18]

I don't know if this is the right circumstance to sing a song, but you might like to listen to that song sometime. It goes, if you love me, plant a rose for me, I'm an apple tree. If you think you'll love me for a long, long time, I'm an apple tree. And then it speaks of the sun and the rain and the blue and whether you come or whether you go. I'll have an apple and I'll have a rose. Should we just sing it? How many people know it? We too can sing it. That's fine. We don't all have to sing it. We're the listeners. If you love me, if you love, love, love me, plant a rose for me. And if you think you'll love me for a long, long time, plant an apple tree.

[40:23]

The sun will shine, the wind will blow, the rain will come, and the tree will grow. And whether you come or whether you go, I'll have an apple, and I'll have a rose, lovely to fight, and nice to my nose, and everything we live will be, a sweet reminder of the time you loved me, and planted a rose for me, and an apple tree. Well, I have a lot more to go, but we're going to stop there.

[41:16]

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