I come to teach the truth and not just words. Good evening. joining me in the practice period and the way that you can do it, and supporting Juso. Ryo-tan. Sokaku Ryo-tan. Sokaku Ryo-tan first started practicing with us in Berkeley

[01:02]

You're what, 17 or 18? 19. 19. And I spent many years studying with Baker Rushing, where she brought her practice to maturity. And then with tensions, and now I have this opportunity to again practice with you. It makes me grateful. when Norman and I talked about the practice period, we were trying to think of some kind of theme, something that would express what our practice is really about. And so we came up with, because of the nature

[02:09]

of our different practices here at Grigos. We thought that some way of studying the Avatamsaka Sutra, the essence of the Avatamsaka Sutra, would be very appropriate. The interdependence and interpenetration of all phenomena. And since there is such a wide and varied the number of practices that everyone is doing, to tie all those practices together into one practice that we can all do, was underlying our idea. When we practice at Tassajara, a place like Tassajara Monastery, everyone is doing the

[03:12]

It's pretty clear. There's no coming or going. And our lives are pretty simple. But here at Green Gorge, our lives are very complex. And we could do a practice period where just a few people do a lot of zazen and limit their lives. In other scenes like this, we want to have everybody included in some way, to feel included. Without having to do exactly the same thing, how do we all feel included? How can we include each other when our lives are so diverse, when our so-called practices are so diverse?

[04:15]

And yet we all feel that we want to do something together, do right practice together. So, in trying to give some actualization to that feeling, we thought that we'd look at the Anavatamsaka Sutra, which expresses that so well. So I understand that in the service you're reading the ten practices of the Enlightener, or the Bodhisattva. And that the first one of those practices is called something like giving joy.

[05:21]

That's the first practice, giving joy. But if you turn it around, it's a joyful giving. I was thinking about, how can you give joy? How do you do that? How is that possible? And the sutra talks about it in various ways. And the sutra talks about it in a very extreme way. that you should let beings devour your body. If you've read some of the old sutras, the old Pali sutras in literature, you find that there are many monks in Buddha's time who allowed themselves to be devoured by lions and tigers. the kind of example of generosity.

[06:28]

But when we hear about allowing ourselves to be devoured by lions and tigers, it gives us a kind of creepy feeling. We say, wait a minute, generosity is okay, but how far do you have to go? If we come back to this term, giving joy, how do we give joy? And what's the advantage of that? Why should we do that? I think that one reason why we do it is because it makes us happy. I wonder why nobody loves me. I'm a pretty good person.

[07:32]

Why does nobody love me? Maybe we feel like we're generous and so forth, but we don't feel that something comes back to us. Something's not coming back to us in the way that we want it to come back. So the sutra talks about what is giving. How does a bodhisattva, what's the generosity of a bodhisattva? And it mentions that generosity of a bodhisattva, bodhisattva giving is giving without reservation. In other words, without reserving something. Not holding back something, just giving, and giving without expectation of return.

[08:41]

You know, if somebody gives us something, or say someone gives us love, so-called love, and that may feel pretty good, but if we feel that they want something from us because they're giving us love, It makes us feel a little funny, you know. Sometimes when people give us love, instead of feeling that we want to return it, we feel like we want to run away. You know that feeling? Sometimes people say, why are you running away? I'm giving you something wonderful and you're running away. Sometimes we don't quite see that we want something a little too much. So to be able to just give without any idea of reward or getting back something or result, to live our life just doing, just giving in some way, but without thinking about result

[10:10]

practice with the Sangha for the rest of my life, what will the result be? Who knows what the result will be. Where does that satisfaction come from? Where does satisfaction come from? Joy is an expression of satisfaction. How can I feel satisfied or joyful? If we try to create joy, we can make ourselves happy for a while, or maybe make others happy for a while, but it's pretty hard to create joy by trying to create joy. It's pretty hard to create happiness by trying to create happiness. Because joy and happiness are a result, they're not an object.

[11:23]

So joy arises as a product or as a result of some satisfaction. So the sutra says, without withholding, And without expecting any result, just practice giving joy. Or, if you turn it around, joyful giving. As we all know, generosity is what gives us happiness. But it's really hard to be generous. even though we may think we're generous, very hard to be generous, to have real generosity. To be able to constantly live your life in a way that's constantly giving.

[12:37]

We have a precept, one of the ten precepts is about giving. Even though it's a negative precept, it says Don't be avaricious. Don't withhold. I think it's a precept. Don't withhold either the teaching or material things. But be generous. And one of the seven factors of enlightenment is joy. I told somebody about what we were doing here. And I said, well, what we're doing is trying to practice what our life is really about.

[13:41]

He said, what's the theme of the practice period? And I said, we're trying to practice what our life is really about, without trying to change our life in a radical way, to really look at our life, look at what's going on with each other, to just kind of step back and be what we're doing, completely. Try it without reservation. Try it without withholding. And then I said, you know, we're doing all this stuff. We might as well enjoy it. And he said, well, we do it whether we enjoy it or not. And I thought, well, that's true. We do it whether we enjoy it or not. We don't put ourselves there because we think we're going to enjoy it. But on the other hand,

[14:44]

We should enjoy our practice. If we don't enjoy it, there's something wrong. It doesn't mean that we don't have difficult times, or that we don't run into a lot of trouble. But underneath, maybe not on the surface, but underneath, it's necessary to feel that we enjoy what we're doing. If that feeling underneath isn't there, of deep joy, then we should look carefully at what we're doing. Many things can be going on on the surface of our life, which doesn't look like joy, Joy is a sustaining factor of our life, really necessary.

[15:49]

And when we have it, then it influences other people. So Suzuki Roshan, when he talked about our practice, But if our own practice is correct, and if our own practice is joyful, then we're really doing something for somebody that really helps people. Yet each one of us can find joy in our own practice.

[16:50]

We don't have to try to make other people happy. If I am happy in my practice and you are happy in your practice, we feel some common bond in our practice. That's the main thing. It's not so much what we say to each other or how we do things. How do we feel about each other? How do we feel together? What's that common feeling that we share that allows us to communicate without even talking? is also the first paramita, the first wisdom.

[18:04]

And it's the first wisdom because without it you can't really experience the other wisdoms. Dhana Prajna means in one sense giving something, but in another sense it means totally giving yourself. When you can totally give yourself to yourself and to each other, great joy arises with wisdom. It's not a matter of being smart or knowing anything in particular, but just deep immersion in reality.

[19:07]

My feeling about this practice period is somehow I would like all of us to find out how we can appreciate each other. I want us to find out how we can appreciate ourselves. If we can appreciate ourselves, then we can appreciate each other. And it doesn't matter whether people are your friends or your enemies, whether people have done good things to you or bad things to you, or whether you like them or don't like them. Just to find out how we can appreciate each other without trying to change each other we've done something, even if we just try.

[20:36]

And also, since each one of us has a different life, varied lifestyles, some people are parents, some people a parent's practice as practice. When Norman takes his kids to the baseball game, the baseball practice, that's his practice. It's not something outside of our practice. If we know how to appreciate continuous practice, it means whatever we do is our practice.

[22:01]

Within this environment, there's nothing outside of it. Our mistakes are our practice. Our stupidity is our practice. Our stumbling is our practice. Our confusion is our practice. All of our relationships, moment by moment, So, if we can just keep waking up to that fact, moment by moment, consciously, appreciating whatever we do, we can appreciate other people's, everything that other people do, without judging very hard.

[23:16]

But possible. I don't say that I'm good at it. I'm not very good at it. But there's nothing else to do. That's why we're here. And that's what Zazen is about. That's what Zazen is teaching us all the time. So I must say that I've been sitting Zazen for not so long.

[24:23]

maybe 23 years or something. To some of you it may seem long, but it's not so long. But sometimes I get tired of it. Sometimes I say, here I go to the zendo again. I think I'm tired of this. But actually, when I sit down, I'm not tired of it. It's not something that I decide to do or decide not to do. I would like to encourage all of you to sit zazen, too. The more I sit zazen, the more I appreciate it, even though sometimes I don't feel like doing it.

[25:26]

something. Life gets simpler. Life just gets simpler. Sometimes I think I'm really getting simple-minded. What's wrong with being simple-minded? pressure we have is to be intelligent and learned. Not so many of us want to be simple and stupid. to follow it to the end. Do you have any questions by the way?

[26:49]

Okay. I think we don't want to use it up. Uh-oh. She said there's a question that comes up here at Gringotts that she thinks might be interesting for us to talk about.

[28:12]

I like to encourage people to sit side by side, too. How would you recommend people to balance work and physical tiredness I think that's a great question. People work very hard. Mostly because I drink alcohol. And it's hard to get up in the morning and exercise and so on. One thing is, maybe not work so hard. And if we're too tired to sit, then we shouldn't work so hard.

[29:17]

Because we should know what is our priority. What's the first thing I love? What is it that we really want to do? Why are we here? And if you, this is my feeling, if you decide what your reason is, and you don't deviate from it, and you know what you really want to do, then, and do it. then life follows you. And if you think that you have to do a lot of other things, and you can't do that, then you're just following after life. And it doesn't work very well. You say, why am I so unhappy? Why am I not doing what I want to do? Why aren't we doing what we really want to do? Of course we have to work, and life demands a lot and puts a lot of pressure on us.

[30:24]

So we have to think about it. What are we doing? How can we do this so that we can actually do what we want to do? And it's very easy to get overwhelmed So you can't do what you want to do. I've arranged my life so that I can sit zazen every morning and every evening. That's just the way I arrange my life. And so everything follows from that. And if that's what we want to do, I think we have to arrange our lives to do it. But if you think that you have to do something else in order to do that, too much, then you never get to what you want to do.

[31:27]

And it's always on the other side of the fence. Too tired to see what's happening. Too much work. Too tired. That's what happens in some of the monasteries in Japan. So much work. It's not that we should sit too much, though, isn't it? We can sit too much. But just to be able to do the minimum thing, that shouldn't be so hard. But we have to want to arrange things around that. Anyway, that's my answer to your question. Arrange your life around what you want to do, and then everything will follow from that. How did that then become consciousness?

[33:12]

There are two levels. you work to accomplish something. And the other level is when you're working, you're just working. In other words, every act of working, every momentary act of working is just what it is. It has no accomplishment in it, other than just to accomplish this moment's life. It has no future and no past. And those two levels do exist simultaneously.

[34:18]

But when we're only oriented toward a goal, we only see one level. Right? So we call that goal-oriented. Every activity has some result. We're trying to do something, right? I mean, you open the door in order to walk through. You don't open the door and then stand there and close it. When my son was three years old, he used to do that. He used to open the door, and then he'd close it again. Kind of useless activity, you know, but just there. You know, that was enough. It was enough to just open the door. And then it was enough to just close the door. But as we get older, we want to accomplish something. And it's okay, you know, we shouldn't. We don't want to accomplish something. But at the same time, to maintain the mind that just opens the door and just closes the door, just takes a step, just lifts something, just drinks the water, just eats the food.

[35:30]

They go on at the same time. But in our training, sometimes we don't pay so much attention to the goal in order to let us understand the other level. of just being. So, zazen in practice, yes, you can do your job, do all the things that you need to do with an unselfish mind, which is just there. One part of your effort is to make continuity. The other part of your effort is to just be there, in each act. And when you have both of those, then it's zazen. You're practicing zazen, or mindfulness, or pure being, pure existence, in all of your activity.

[36:39]

That's what we're talking about, mindful activity. And if we're that way with each other, we're not being so selfish, or so grasping, or so wanting and needing. We don't get so needy when we can do that. But when we're following one goal after another, when one thing ends, we need something else to go to. It's very hard to just come back to ourselves. and just be with ourselves. And so we develop, otherwise we develop a kind of selfishness without being able to help it. I thought it was rather nice when Thich Nhat Hanh was here.

[37:45]

bell during his talk, and everything would stop, you know, and everybody would remember, we're just here, all this stuff is going on, but here we are. That's how we practice. No question. What's going on here? What are we practicing in the village? Every activity leads to the source. Unfortunately, I won't be able to be here so much with everybody, but I come on Monday and Tuesday.

[39:17]

I have tremendous confidence in the older students here, the older members. I know that I really have a strong feeling that we know how to take care of ourselves. And I'm just happy to come and be with you when I'm here. Just because I enjoy practicing with everybody so much, I'm really glad they let me do that.

[40:29]

And please, trust the Shuso, and give her a lot of support. Because I know that she'll give you her heart. We are in danger.

[40:52]

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