Recently I've been talking about all kinds of things as far afield as your social ego or your realm and not talking exactly about Zazen. So this morning I thought I'd talk about Zazen but Really, when we're talking about zazen, we're talking about shikantaza. And actually, in all the other times I've been talking, I've been talking about shikantaza. We say, you know, when we say shikantaza, we say just sitting. But that's pretty meaningless phrase. If we take it to mean seeing everything just as it is,

[01:37]

That ignores the relationship between things. It doesn't mean, you know, one undifferentiated whole. But you see everything. Maybe that's some kind of quietism. Just sitting also means to see the sitting in everything, how everything sits, does something. Usually we see the relationships between things from our own point of view, not from the point of view of the things themselves. Or we see

[02:54]

some superficial relationship between things. But until you can get rid of the idea of self, you can't see things from their own point of view. So you can't see the actual relationship between things. And when you see the actual relationship between things, you see that there's one whole being. which exists as the divided being. Usually when we start out practicing zazen, we count our exhales, usually we count our exhales, but you can count exhales or inhales both and sometimes actually you probably try you get bored with exhale so you try inhale and we give you this kind of practice because you get bored you just sit you get in a rather bored state of mind so

[04:24]

You feel you have to have something to do. So counting your breaths helps you notice that there's a you there that you have to keep entertaining. I mean, for most of us, we're like... Maybe Big Mind is like a zookeeper taking care of monkeys. constantly has to keep these monkeys from being bored. So you tell the monkey to count. Count, okay. So the monkey tries to count its breath. Anyway, after a while you begin to wonder who's counting. And when you stop counting, you know, you wonder.

[05:27]

So as long as when you stop counting, some you starts wandering about, you know, then to tie it down, to notice it, you can start counting again. But Shikantaza means there's no idea of you or counting or anything. So first we notice some difference, the differences in the world. And then we notice the samenesses. And then we notice the differences again. And we don't want to clear a path. First, we see the differences, or we see the you. And we try to clear a path. We try to push aside our desires. We try to push aside our pain and zazen.

[07:15]

But if you push aside your pain and zazen, if you overcome it with willpower, it makes you somewhat arrogant. Oh well, I did it. Why don't they do it? So, people say Zen practice is hard practice. Usually, They mean it's so difficult to get rid of your desires, so difficult to stand the pain in Zazen. But hard practice actually is to know how terrible the pain is. Don't just confront it or try to overcome it or accept it in a way that tries to overcome it. Actually, this pain is terrible. If you don't know how terrible pain is, or how terrible desire is, or how wonderful pain or desire is,

[09:03]

how consuming anger is. If you don't know that, you can't have sympathy for other people. You can't enter into other people. So if you're always clearing a path, knocking the bushes down this way and that, you'll never see the actual spaces between things, through things. So the way to get through the brambles and briars, first step we see brambles and briars, entanglement. So, second, we try to put them aside. And third, we try to move through them without touching them, so not a leaf is disturbed. And fourth, we are actually the bushes. are actually the past itself. We have Christian ideas, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Maybe this practice is, do not let others interfere with you as you don't interfere with them. And to not let others interfere with you means to not have much ego.

[10:33]

Usually we think of ego as the way of some thing that goes out in the world, pushes the world around, and organizes it for our own benefit. That's true, but it's more true that ego is the way other people interfere with us. It's the way we're controlled by the world. So if you want to get free and have your own practice, you have to get free from evil. And we can forget even about Buddhism and Zen. If it's true, it's true, even if Buddha didn't say it. And Buddha attained enlightenment when he decided to have his own practice. Give up asceticism. So you have to know yourself through and through. I mean, there's certain kinds of facts you have to accept. One is you're going to die, but not just that you're going to die out there sometime, but that you're going to die now, maybe next moment, or at least tomorrow. But also that each moment you're dying,

[12:09]

But also, the other side which we ignore too is that, you know, the simple fact you actually forget is that you're going to live with yourself all your life. Absolutely. I mean, if you're going to embrace anybody, you better embrace yourself. Completely. First, you know, you have to know yourself through and through. Otherwise, you can't know anything about yourself or any other person or life or death. To know yourself is to know your pain too, not just to push it aside. And to know your desires and your anger and be able to enter into them and find the faith in them. How difficult it is to enter into our so-called briars and brambles and attachments, and find faith in them. And I don't mean just sort of, I'm trying to, well, this is a little, a test. When you take a new name, becoming a Buddhist, when you take a new name,

[13:43]

You don't say, well, I'm just taking a new name to free myself from my old name. That doesn't work. You have to completely take a new name. It doesn't matter, actually, what new name, maybe, or what practice, what color your robes are, but just what kind of robe. But what, who can give you a new name? What practice? What practice are you already involved in? You can't give it to yourself. How do you find the way to it? do that. I'm not talking about being a priest, I'm talking about being neither a priest nor a layman, or being both.

[15:06]

Just the idea of taking a new name gives you some space that you didn't have before. But the real space is the space between old name or new name or any name. And then it doesn't make any difference what you do. So at that point, if you continue with your new name, you continue to show other people, to help other people make that transition. Whether it's made by actually becoming a priest or not is unimportant. If you can enter into things in this way,

[16:44]

If you only clear a path and live on that path here at Tassajara or as a priest, you can't understand other people. To be at one with other people means, actually, not some game of pretending to be like other people. pretending to take a new name or pretending to remain a layman. So if you're doing Zazen and you want to move, you should move. And if your mind is thinking, you should think. But when you see that there's no you thinking, that even if you move, that's also you. And if you stay and don't move, that's you.

[18:35]

then there's no place to move to. Everywhere you go is you. At that point, you can actually sit. Actually exist in your desire, or in your anger, or in your pain. Until that point, you're struggling in some way. And there's some idea of self, someone who's struggling. And there's ideas of stages in Zazen. From the point of view of self, it's very useful to have stages in Zazen. But if there's no self, there's no stages in Zazen. Bad practice or good practice is the same. If your mind is full of visions of some kind, or any kind of thinking, If there's no idea of you, we call it pure thinking. But if you have some idea, oh, this Zazen, my mind was full of it, already there's an idea of you. So, we start Zazen and we find ourselves, the first stage is thinking. We think during Zazen.

[20:00]

And then we have pure thinking. Thinking but no idea of you. This is, they say, I mean it's said that Buddha supposedly preached when he first spoke about Dharma. He spoke from this point of view of pure thinking. If you have pure thinking, pretty good already. So shikantaza has this kind of meaning. No you at all in your zazen. Accepting, you know, we say accept everything. Accept everything means accept and not accept. And, you know, it sounds like words, I think. It means you know your actual limits. You may not accept, you know. Dogen says something like, hindrance hinders hindrance. Being alive is hindrance.

[21:41]

Accepting is accepting not accepting. But actually you have no alternative. So it's not a big deal if you go on. But you stay with the pain. Or you stay with your situation. Practicing this way, there's no difference between the one who practices and the one who doesn't practice. Both have pain. Both think it's terrible. And both go on with it. If there's any difference, maybe the one who practices is maybe awake to what he's doing. But first of all, we notice our situation. And then second, we try to clear some path, see some space. What Shikantaza means to

[22:47]

Give up clearing some space. Just the thing itself is you. And within that you find your space. Without avoiding anything. Accepting everything as it comes. Thinking thinks or unthinks. So, when you practice Zazen, you should know your body completely. Not have some portion of you directing your Zazen. You know, getting through the Sashin. When you start a Sashin, maybe you won't get through it at all. That's how you should start out. It's okay. You have some confidence that you can get through.

[24:15]

But you shouldn't go into it thinking, I'm going to get through. You shouldn't have just that idea. We should know our body is both limited and unlimited. When you know your body, you find there's no limit to knowing your body. When you know your body too, you know its actual limit. Like being, you know, here. People usually are not quite here, actually where they are. Because they're sort of thinking about this or that, or they don't want to be here, they want to be somewhere else. That's pretty persistent, you know, idea. That you're not quite present because you're thinking about your situation. But even if you stop thinking about your situation,

[25:46]

And you're completely here. That's maybe pretty good. Completely here. But what's here? After a while, I mean, okay, you're here, but does it make any difference whether the wall in front of you is the wall of Tassajara or the wall of San Francisco? What is here? At least here is your body. Don't you, maybe, So you have to find out what this here is. What is this here? What's here? Where is here? Almost no attitude. We practice shikantaza. Doesn't even mean doesn't. Whatever you do, you just do. No idea of you. So why do zazen? One reason is because an actual fact.

[28:00]

It's almost impossible to get free of the idea of you if you don't do Zazen. When you're walking around, you know, you're just breathing without any idea of breathing. But when you do Zazen has some idea of doing breathing. For some people that's a more interesting experience than walking around with no idea of breathing. Ah, finally you feel your breathing. But then maybe a more interesting experience than that is in Dazen to give up the idea of breathing. And that's again the same as just walking around without any idea of breathing, but there's some a kind of distance in our ability to enter into things without our thinking interference. So when you're doing zazen, you know, you can hear hearing, instead of hearing the object, instead of hearing the stream. And the stream is, what is the stream?

[29:30]

There's rocks, you know, on the bottom. Dirt. Water. And some activity. But when you hear it, you think, oh, I'm hearing a stream. But the rock is just a rock in the stream. And the water is just water. And the sound is just sound. And your ear is just an earring. So when you see, you see seeing. When your mind, you mind minding. You don't mind minding. And you feel. Feel without object. Do you have any questions? Yeah.

[31:08]

To choose the realm that chooses you is to turn the realm. Do you understand? To choose this practice of Buddhism, and to find it your own practice, giving up Buddhism, is to turn Buddhism. Yeah. Could you, a little louder please? so

[33:10]

What I feel is you've got two things joined together that don't quite fit. One is seeing thing means there's no you seeing. It means non-interfering with what you see. seeing the actual relationships between things from their own point of view. But it's also true that... I mean, just as much as we can say, you know, be free from yourself, we can say be completely yourself. It's a little more confusing to say it that way, but it's the same meaning.

[34:45]

And you do have to have some kind of ego. Don't you agree? I mean, you want other people to have some kind of ego. Otherwise there's just gonna be wishy-washy. But it doesn't mean that you are using that ego to control others or to control yourself. It just means, well, what I usually say is If you go in the supermarket, you know, you can't buy anything with emptiness. You have to use money, right? And if you're spending your life in the ordinary world, you have to spend ego. If someone steps on your toe, you go, hey, don't step on my toe. So, there's some kind of Ego strengthens and encourages us, but it's some different, you know, there's various meanings of ego. You certainly have to, it's useful to have some stronger cohesive way of existence. But if we tie that, you know,

[36:16]

If we tie the strengthening that does and does for us to becoming, without getting free of our desires, then Zen practice is quite dangerous. It can make you very successful and fruitful, if that's what you're interested in. I don't know if that's exactly what you meant, but... He's very interesting. He's very powerful. He takes that really tiny form to fool you. Actually, he's got huge potions from Alice, and at any moment he can become gigantic.

[37:49]

And we shouldn't see ego just as bad. Ego is also very wonderful and very deep and powerful. And it's not easy to, you know, you can reject the superficial negative sides of ego tripping, right? That's not so difficult. But then you come up against something much more fundamental, which it looks like civilization itself turns around. And can you reject that? It's not so easy. Yeah. Some people don't want to reject it. To go and want to... I talked to somebody the other day. To go and want to sit in front of the Pentagon to protest the war is to not reject it. But also, we should know in our own life

[39:57]

Because we're also civilization. We should know in our own life what caused the war. If we just put it aside out there, those people out there do that, and they're ignorant. I'm not. That's some delusion. To save the people, you know, who are causing the war, you have to be just like them and able to cause the war too. I got a little confused there. I was completely watching the thing go by. That's so nice. You sort of don't know where you are.

[42:17]

It's wonderful, I mean, to stand up from bowing, and you don't know where you are. Why is this wall in current form? It feels good. Seeing, seeing the difference between feeling, feeling. Observing feeling is step two. That's when we clear the path. In the first view, you can't see anything. So you start doing Zazen and come to Tathagata.

[43:35]

You are disordered, feeling disordered. And you try to rub some good love in. You try to count your breaths. At some point, you give up counting your breaths. Especially if there's no you that's wandering anymore. And then you have to. What's thinking comes, comes. but feelings come. But even if there's a you, you give up worrying about it. But this is rather, you know, a delicate point. It's very easy for it to be an excuse. Well, this feeling's very good, I'll just go along with it and call it a human feeling. But that's okay, too. Because that's what you're doing. Well, generally, if you're in our practice, you know, after we have some sense of a path that we're on, maybe, and it's clear, to become the path, you know,

[45:04]

Sometimes it's some big experience. And sometimes it's the big experience is the first courage to dig your toe in a little bit in the water. And you may pull back out. But just putting your toe in maybe you can stay some place. Because then you know you can do it. It may take maybe several years before you actually can do it. Just go into it. But you try, and you see yourself trying, and you see yourself making an excuse, and you see yourself having an extra chocolate. Saying, I'm just trying to see what chocolate's like. But then, you know, you feel a little funny. I just do that. How to have chocolate? Just completely have chocolate. And also know when to stop. And not get entangled with chocolate. But if you never have chocolate, you'll never understand people who love chocolate.

[46:24]

And this way of practice is the same as everybody's. They're not different. There's no special practice. But yet this is what we mean when we say Zen practice is hard practice. The easy part is clearing the past. You all understand what I mean, more or less? Anyway, getting back to work was pretty exciting.

[48:38]

Because it's so, you know, you can't do it. It's very interesting. It's true, you know, that's how it ends. It's quite similar to art, and that's why artists have so much connection with history. And at the beginning of the 10th century, especially, with the 10th century, because, you know, you can't paint, or play, or even type. You can't even type in a typewriter. If you're thinking about it, you just have to do it. But typing on a typewriter, or throwing a pot, or whatever, they're more, each one's a little different. Maybe we would say that throwing a pot, painting, writing, is more abstract than typing on a typewriter. I'm not so sure, but we might say we are. We might say, sooner or later, we might say, rather than sooner. Because we go to having some object, we have no object. So, if you're actually throwing yourself, then that's really hard, because who's throwing? You think you know when you're throwing the pot, but who's throwing you? I mean, that isn't really hard.

[50:06]

But who told you? I did not either.

[50:17]

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