I wish we could practice with this intimacy all the time. You've been, especially those of you for whom this is your first seven-day session, first real session, you've been doing quite well. The Sashin, just as it is, just the schedule, seems enough, and I hope that the feeling of the Sashin can continue. If we make the Sashin too difficult or strict,

[01:12]

Especially if you're a beginner. After the session, it's too abrupt, maybe. So this session has had a quite good pace. Maybe it can continue. The next few days or a few weeks or longer. The question that has come up for many of you is the question of vow or resolve. And so I thought I'd talk about that a little. Sometimes the vow is described as something for which certain conditions must be necessary beforehand, some predisposition to make a vow. But for us, since we emphasize your Buddha nature, predisposition is not so important.

[02:49]

The vow is understood really as something we've already made, rather like maybe a leaf in a stream. The stream, the movement of the stream is like the vow, bodhicitta, or way-seeking mind. and you're more like the leaf and you rather stick to the bank and the stream is pushing quite gently and so you for a while you stick to some branch but after a while you come free and float a little bit and you stick again somewhere something in your life that you always feel pushing you a little. Important next step then, because we feel this, it's expressed in what is our heart's content or what we feel completely satisfied with

[04:36]

privately, what we'd be willing to tell anybody. When you do something that you don't quite want people to know, or you have thoughts you don't quite want people to know, you know, you want people to have a little different image of you than you're thinking, you're not really acknowledging that resolve or that current. But the fact that you make that distinction is like trying to stick to the bank or stick to some branch or cove. That you make that distinction between what you feel comfortable with and what you don't. So at some point we give up our fears and move with what we feel completely comfortable with, knowing our true comfort, giving up what we were told to do, giving up but listening to so many voices and finding a way to know our own heart's content.

[06:02]

Second step is the thought of enlightenment. If we say first that stream is there, next step is that it occurs to you, you can enter the stream. It occurs to you, you can let go of the bank and just float, you know, free. And by your doing that, you make it clear for others that we all can just let go and float clear. So the second step is, second fact of our development is when we have that thought

[07:05]

Once we've really had that thought, our life is never quite the same again. It may become, if it stops there, it may become worse because we may try to adjust, to incorporate that by sticking to the bank. This is some false teacher. some self-proclaimed enlightenment, some self-satisfied way. If you think you understand Buddhism, you're probably wrong. If you don't think you understand, but the resolve is there, you're probably still in the stream and not stuck completely to the bank. So next step is, next fact is, in your development, is you not only acknowledge the thought, you decide to make a vow and hold the vow. You see it as the priority, as the fundamental fact. So you make a vow.

[08:45]

I acknowledge this as the most important. Everything else is insignificant by comparison. I'll do everything possible to let go of the bank. And it's not just a single vow, it's that you hold the vow, you renew the vow. A vow in Buddhism is not something you make once, it's something constantly renewed. So there are very many teachings about how you renew the vow, the granting way, the grasping way, etc. These are ways to renew your vow, to express your resolve. And so you make this vow to let go. and to continue to let go of the back, of limited views, of conditioned existence taken as the absolute. But we can't do this for ourselves. It's a contradiction in terms to be enlightened for yourself. There's no meaning.

[10:16]

You can only be enlightened for everyone, with everyone. So the next important fact is you need a good friend. You can't... Buddhism doesn't stress doing it yourself or self-sufficiency. It stresses interdependence. how when you completely try yourself you are open to everyone helping you. So a good friend is next. And a good friend sometimes it's explained that you have a good friend in this life if you

[11:20]

been charitable to the poor in a previous life. But it just means you have to have some compassion for everyone, for other people's situation, and a willingness to do something, a willingness to put yourself on the line, to put yourself to the wheel for each person. If so, you'll have a good friend. Next is, you are predicted. You receive a prediction of success, of realization. Which means, a prediction means somebody who has entered the stream acknowledges you. So, usually this is either ordination or initiation.

[12:23]

And coordination and initiation combine sometimes good friend and prediction. So the three major things, given the stream itself, the three major things are the thought of enlightenment, the vow and its holding, and the prediction. These three things together, you know, are necessary to realize the fruit of this existence according to all Buddhist schools. So here we have many opportunities for finding a good friend. for renewing our vows, for recognizing the stream, for letting go of our limited condition, views.

[13:42]

while the stream is very gentle near the edge of the banks. Almost you don't notice it. If you're really stuck to the bank, you don't notice the pressure of the stream at all. But in the center of the stream, it's very fast and smooth and powerful. Maybe this is where Buddhas are floating along. everywhere at once. But their compassion extends to this little pushing that you always feel and yet hesitate to listen to. Not sure it's right. Afraid to try something

[15:08]

that you haven't tested. Afraid it will sweep you away from your friends and family, which it will do. You may find they appear all around you, but the first experience is you are being taken away if you let go. Who knows where it will take us. But all of us have seen the weakening of that bond to the bank. And we've all come here, you know, asking to be let go. Sort of departure station. Maybe we should push you out without the parachute or ferry boat. Do you know that wonderful story about Kassan, I believe, and who was...

[16:42]

I don't know, Tozan's teacher's brother's Dharma brother, I think. I can't remember his name. Anyway, he was sent to him, and he was a ferry boat man. And he asked him some question, and he knocked him in the water. And when he came up to say something, he hit him again. That's really taking away subject and object. You are Tozan right now. We began this Sashin talking about find your state of mind. Tozan has tried to point out to us what he is, what he found out he was.

[18:16]

beyond being and non-being. And he said to us, you are that too. His disciple, Sozon, was asked, what is there before the sun rises? And Sozan said, Sozan also appears that way. And the monk said, but what about after the sun has risen? Sozan said.

[19:24]

Already Sozon is half a month's journey ahead. Sometimes this is interpreted very symbolically. Half a month means half moon and the sun means, rise means enlightenment or something like that. But I think it's much more physical than that. What about the sun coming up? What about enlightenment or the teaching? He says. And Sozan says, I'm also the sun. Sozan is also this way. you know, as I expressed it a few months ago in the city. We get up not because the sun comes up or because of astrology or something, but we get up because we are the sun. The sun is in us. The sun doesn't come up because of us, and we don't get up because of the sun. Each thing has its own independent existence. So,

[20:55]

The monk then says, well, what about after the sun comes up? He's still trying to think in some sequence. And Sosan wipes out all idea of beginning and end, or sequence, or time, or 1800 years, or one instant. He says, I'm already half a month ahead. Enlightened or still attached on its independent existence. Another story of the same kind, some poem goes, very simple poem goes, a pine tree is usually straight. Brambles are bent and crooked. Crane's legs are long, duck's legs short. It was just like this for the ancients, ancient ones. They cared neither for success nor failure.

[22:22]

Duck's legs are short, crane's legs are long. They cared for neither success nor failure. Failure is just something that's very useful to us. Our resolve or vow would have no meaning if there wasn't the bank and the stream. or failure, attachment, or confusion. So, grasping and granting way, you know, granting way is like acknowledging everything as Buddha. Grasping way is like to cut off, to try to grasp the essential nature, or to find some antidote to your distracted mind, to try to have some practice which wipes out your, clears up your distracted mind. You will have this opportunity all the time, but this kind of practice makes no sense unless you acknowledge your resolve, which is always present. You know, granting way, again,

[23:51]

means detachment. It means you acknowledge but are detached, so you acknowledge everything as Buddha. This kind of practice is some temporary expedient, but necessary when you are manifesting your resolve, your acknowledgement of that pressure, which is no pressure at all once you let go. It's just the actual stream of our life which makes everything grow and decay and come and go. Flowers to bloom, breezes to move, etc. Where everything arises in this moment as origin. Dogen said that practice is one continuous mistake. And while I've spoken about failure, you know, before, but failure is so important, being willing to fail, which is just to recognize our existence.

[25:38]

You can't do anything new if you aren't willing to fail. You'll just be stagnant, stuck in some dreary scenery, which you'll always be painting anew. At first we start to practice because we fail. We feel some imperfection or discomfort. Maybe it's not so much a sense of relative and absolute or transiency, but just old age, sickness and death as something you want to avoid. So we try to perfect ourselves. But after you've practiced quite a while, you welcome failure, because failure is your guide. Acceptance and doubt, failure and resolve are what allows you to follow, to realize your path.

[26:59]

And as I've said, you know, our ability to fail is always the same. So the more you practice, the more you find you are able to fail over smaller and smaller things. First you have big gross failures. You fall on your face. But later you just stub your toe. You don't fall on your face anymore. But you can fail just as completely, just stubbing your toe. So that failure finally is some shift, relative or absolute. some ability to sustain yourself in the midst of a world in which you're always destroying something and creating something, always separating something from itself and always joining something again. And this is a kind of suffering to know this.

[28:20]

And yet no thing is possible without it. There's no time and space without suffering, without separation and joining. And we are at the middle of it, joining and separating, living and dying, creating and transmitting. giving and submitting. we can give up our dead idea of life conceived from other people's minds and made of plastic or aluminum or something dead and take responsibility for our creating and failing joining and separating

[30:03]

So your vow is a vow to join, to continue to try to join, recognizing that as bodhicitta, the thought of enlightenment. So we vow to save all beings really means all beings vow to save or all beings vow to be all beings. You can't even make that vow independently.

[31:09]

Could you hear what he's saying? What does Buddhism have to say about our parents, or how as Americans should we practice and relate to America, maybe, to our parents? pretty complicated question. Most fundamental thing, I think, is that your parents, unless just practically, not some philosophical thing, just practically, your parents, unless they're crazy, they might be, I don't know, unless they're crazy, they want you to be satisfied with yourself.

[32:13]

They may think they know how you should be and they may put a great deal of pressure on you to not practice Zen or to do something or other. But the power of one who knows what he's doing is quite sure. is so convincing. Your parents are just two human beings, and unless they're crazy, they can't deny that. So generally, you'll find when you have entered the stream of whatever you're doing completely, your parents will accept it. It's only when you leave some door ajar, you're ambivalent, that they will continue to not accept what you're doing. That kind of power, it's like... I was speaking with someone recently, last night. There are various moods. Negative thoughts don't communicate to other people. I've spoken to several of you about this. But we don't notice it. But you can sit in zendo.

[33:43]

And you can have tremendously negative thoughts. And mostly people will just be sorry for you. He or she looks like they're suffering. But if you just, if you have some positive thought, some loving thought, people feel it immediately. That's very true, you know. I don't think the world would work if it wasn't true, maybe. But you can sit and you can try it out if you want. Sit in a bus and think dreadful thoughts about the person across from you. Their brains dripping out their ears. Anything you want to torture yourself with, you know, think about it, right? Everyone will treat you like you're some kind of a nut, you know, or just in a gloomy mood. and they won't be a bit disturbed by it, you know, unless you start hitting them. But if you're sitting in the bus and you're feeling quite friendly toward the person across the way, he will start, even if you don't look at him or her, he will start smiling or something, you know, probably.

[35:01]

So there's some power when we're in accord with. When we're in accord with, there's communication. When we're in discord, there's not much communication. It all is bottled up, backed up on ourselves. It's the meaning of discord or negative or ignorance. So when you are able to be in accord with yourself, you'll find everything will be in accord with you. But it doesn't mean to challenge your family or your country with Buddhism. I am Buddhist, shape up and come around. I'll be waiting for you.

[36:17]

That kind of attitude, well, that's a sitting duck. I think to just accommodate yourself to people's lives and to let them know, to not hide that you're practicing, but not force it on them in any way. I told you the story about when I first visited my in-laws, and I tried to find a place to do zazen, and I thought I was being inconspicuous. And I overheard them discussing how, why he creeps around looking for corners. And that made them think I was a little strange. They live on a lake, and when the clincher came, when they were docking the boat, I thought I'd found a good place. And the house sits up on the lake, and there's an embankment and a dock, and I was in the bushes of the embankment. And the boat came up, and they looked into the bushes, and I was sitting there. They all looked away, rather embarrassed.

[37:48]

And pretended they didn't see me. And they kept a nail in the wall of the guest bedroom for me to hang a scroll on. So whenever I visited, I could hang a scroll. I always had a scroll of Buddha or something. So I did that and at the same time tried to pretend I was not so serious about Buddhism. And that didn't work. Eventually I didn't say anything, but just tried to accommodate myself, to listen to what people were saying. I didn't pretend to be something, I just listened and responded to people. And from that time on, there was no problem. And in fact, many of the family have become interested in Buddhism, and even the

[39:16]

family's Presbyterian, Congregationalist. The family's Congregationalist minister was one of the two or three top Congregational ministers in the country. Now, and he's their whole family's minister. He now wants to come to Tassara. So you don't know. what kind of effect you'll have. The initial, you know, situation was my mother-in-law wrote a long letter to everybody in her family and all her friends, which stated everything good she could think about to me. And near the end of the letter, after about four pages of trying to think up good things to say, she said, now comes the hard part. They were married in a Buddhist wedding. So, quite different, because this year she asked me, and the family asked me to do so, and so when she died, this year I did a Buddhist funeral for her. In addition, with the Episcopal, with the Congregational Minster.

[40:44]

Suzuki Roshi always said, don't become Japanese, you have to be Americans first. You can't give up your own, deny your own culture to become a Buddhist. And for you who are beginning, it may be scary for the first year or two, you every now and then will think, oh my God, what am I doing? So Japanese. so foreign. But it's not so foreign. Whatever you do will be partly foreign. You remember the poem of Ajo. Maybe you remember it. Let's see if I remember it. I talked about it several times. He says, just a festering, talking about himself, just a festering lump, more the most bestial of persons. Something, always something in a Chinese fashion.

[42:34]

Walking? No, that comes later. Always walking in, for 20 years maybe we'll say. For 20 years walking in a Chinese fashion. Barefoot, straw sandals. Brand new, I touch my nose. So when you feel suddenly it's too foreign, too Chinese or Japanese, and you're walking in a Chinese fashion. Touch your nose and you'll go up the chimney. Excuse me. Yeah. Oh, hi. You know, I could not stop thinking of having a baby. And I thought about it. That's very good. But I think more myself. I'm trying to be brave.

[43:58]

Yeah. Sometimes the stream flows straight up. Sometimes, as we say in Zen, we ride backwards. Yes? I don't know if it's... so useful or wise to think in that way. Each person may have his own way of being unstuck. Doesn't necessarily mean Buddhism. Our grandparents or parents or great-grandparents may have had some quite good way or wonderful way of living. Probably they did or you wouldn't be here.

[45:45]

Usually something's working in most family lineages that's continuing. But nowadays, I think, in this present historical situation, some undermined of Western culture is coming to the surface, which is acknowledging or meeting, or similar to an oriental way, And it's taking many forms, but so, for us, the historical circumstances are suggesting Buddhism. But to assume, you know, also from the other side, that everything has always been the same, would be to say, eye and eyebrow are in exactly the same place. Because they're in the same place, they don't meet. And yet,

[47:05]

are one. So, you know, if you... you know that yesterday was different from today, so it's no wonder that 500 years ago is different from today. But still, the basic conditions at any one moment are the same. And everybody... Buddhism isn't something related to the Orient, you know. Buddhism is the fact of our life. So, every existence is based on Buddhism. If it's not, we shouldn't practice Buddhism, if it's only partly true. Buddhism has many names.

[48:11]

we are practicing a way which emphasizes acknowledging the fact of existence as the primary fact of our living with each other. But really there's no absolute or relative or Buddhism or anything. We just get dressed in the morning, eat, When you have some ideas about that, or paint it some color, you have some problem. That's all. To be concerned like that is, in some ways, to try to make an excuse why we shouldn't practice.

[49:22]

We don't have to regard this opportunity as some historical halfway house. You have, as Sozan said, Sozan also exists this way, also comes this way, appears this way. And you, right now, can appear as completely new being. So you can help me when I forget? As I said in the Siddhi practice period, memorization, didn't I say that, is the most important aspect of learning or study or mental activity for Buddhists. Because the idea of repetition is not a dead idea, but a very live idea, experience. So we want to be able to know the sutras by heart. So in diverse

[51:34]

momentary circumstances, they are different. Because you know them by heart. If it's always changing, you know, if you don't remember, then it's not different. But if it's the same, in each circumstance it's different. So you can begin to understand the Sutra from many, many points of view. And this kind of story, so this kind of story should become embedded in you. Not so much as exactly the details, but some feeling. So that you know Sozan from inside Sozan. And inside you. But I don't know, I think if you're going to be practicing Buddhism, eventually you'll know the stories, or you'll be able to make up your own. Or when you read a story, it will be like you've just made it up, because it's very fresh and possible and real. Someone else? Well, the story you gave last night, the first two images

[53:05]

very clear to me. The last image was kind of pictorially, but I was closing my eyes when he told it. But I don't understand it so well. Maybe we have to find out about the gatekeeper. The gate, I'm not sure. Maybe I'm... Yeah, I said no news. What did I say? No news has been sent beyond the gate or passed. No news has passed. Yes. Has come from the gate. from beyond the gate. I don't know, I made it up just then. So I'll say it differently. See, I told you. Actually, what I said is part of our lineage. You know, that way I chose some way of expressing something. But I just said it my own way. But it's quite clear, I think. There's no news. I said, I think anyway, I said, Tozan, Tozan, and Sozan, and Setjo, Engo, Baso, are no farther from us than our eye from our eyebrow, something like that. The, in the moonlight, the stream

[54:40]

shining, pure and cool. The dark ancient fairy, aglow. From beyond the gate no news has come. Isn't that what I said? acceptance and such and such. Yeah, she said that. Talking about failure. Yeah. You couldn't hear what he said. He said I made several pairs of opposites. Failure and something, something else and something. Acceptance and such. Yeah. Some of them weren't opposites. Oh, okay, okay. I'm sorry. I just put some things together.

[55:53]

Some of them are sort of off. I don't remember. It's not so important. Failure and resolve. Yeah, good. Very good. This way of opposites is, you know, how the Sixth Patriarch said, if he says being, you say non-being. If he says something, that's just a variation of Tozan's way of teaching and Rinzai's way of teaching. I think at... I think Pha Yen was asked, what is the moon? He said, the finger. He was asked, what is the finger? He said, the moon. This kind of...

[56:59]

What are you? Me, or Buddha, or something. We say that so you don't get confused. Otherwise you might think someone's there. Yes? Someone there? Normally, I put together the ones that follow the script that are known. And, um, so people feel like that particular thing doesn't go down so well. In addition, the situation is kind of serious, it seems. But, um, writing a script could be an actual struggle for people. I didn't know how to actually do that. I know that there's not exactly a method.

[58:25]

You couldn't hear, right? You could hear? Oh, you could? No? All right. She said, when you're in a pretty tight situation or space, She always wants to write a script. I think it's wonderful what she wants. She always wants to write a script to make her exit, her escape. But she finds no one else wants to follow the script. And it's rather destructive or troublesome for several people, maybe. So when maybe what she shouldn't be doing is writing a script, How should she act or how do you write a script and... Anyway. I think it's useful if you... If you have a lot of mental...

[59:46]

worry about a particular plot you've written yourself into. And it's already been published. And you want to do something and there's lots of thinking about it. I think it's okay to write a script but you shouldn't write just one script. You should write a script for each possibility. And by that you can find out which ones don't make sense, that you're just mentally worrying about. Then you can find out that maybe one or two scripts, depending on the situation, are actually, could be the possibility for the next few events. Then you can concentrate your worry on two scripts, instead of all kinds of mixed up possibilities. It's just a way to concentrate your worry. And maybe give yourself some sense of what to do, but At the same time, you should be free of any script, and try to find out just what you really want to do. And then when circumstances present themselves, you do something, rather unconsciously, trusting your first

[61:15]

and being willing to fail. It's not so bad because the truth is that there's failure and also creation. So whatever we do is partly a failure and partly... You know, let me explain it, say it another way. The Sixth Patriarch saying, what will you give me to do? Or Layman Pang saying, doing just what comes to hand, there is harmony within and without, means both that he has, you know, put out his fire and he exists in the world of rupa datu or arupa datu, that form which is

[62:26]

understood by Samadhi, you might say. So whatever he does will be what he should do. He doesn't have to think about it. But it's me. I do. When you think it doesn't matter what you do, you criticize that. I probably think it does matter what I do. I would. But you said something like that a few days ago. You said, Well, of course, we just think that anything is equivalent to anything else, so it really doesn't matter what you do one thing or the other. Is this the state of that? No, no, no, no. You can do anything you want if you're fully prepared to deal with the consequences of it.

[63:33]

But most things that we want to do aren't even a real possibility. Most things are some idea and if you try to do them it vanishes or you end up backwards or something. Usually when we're thinking of a lot of possibilities and not knowing what to do. What I'm talking about is to have some feeling for what you really want to do. So, I mean, it's... One of the things all of you should be working at is trying to find out what you really want to do. Either to come to some feeling like that or come to the point that you have no particular preferences. So as long as you have preferences, you should find out what your real priorities are. If you have no preferences, then you can do anything. It doesn't matter. But this is not... What I'm saying is true, but practically speaking, it may be confusing. It means that

[64:57]

Anyway, I don't want to talk about it, too complicated. One can work this kind of thing out, but mostly you should not try to work it out, but return to your feeling, what you're content with. How to come to rest? for the rest of this session and for the rest of whatever there is.

[65:53]

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