In Buddhism we emphasize momentary time more than sequential time. As more fundamental. And where we actually exist and actually make decisions. And I think this point is hard to get a feeling for or understand. But it characterizes the difference in the way precepts are practiced. and the way we understand the precepts.

[01:08]

For instance, the precept, I vow to save all sentient beings. Of course, it's obvious that the word save as salvational has some problems, but, you know, we have to use English words. Now, in sequential time, none of you are going to save all sentient beings. I'm sure some of you had hopes, but, you know, I'm... But we have to be realistic, you know. You'll be lucky if you save even yourself. But that's sequential time. But in momentary time we say, yes. This is a kind of power. It may reach to all sentient beings. We don't know. But does it make sense to say, I'm going to save two and a half sentient beings?

[02:32]

Or five? Well, I'm the sixth guy. What about including me? All right, six. It doesn't make any sense to count them. There's no power. I'm going to save six sentient beings. Or, I don't know. So, all, like that. This is some power. Mm-hmm. So, you know, if I straighten your posture, I know you're thinking, why does he straighten my posture, not hers? My posture, I thought my posture was quite good. Mm-hmm. So you have some idea like this.

[03:40]

It's impossible. If I think that way, I can't straighten any of your postures. You know, mostly I'm straightening your posture just to know your posture. There may be nothing wrong with your posture at all. It's just, I think, I'd like to know this person's posture better. So I might go around the sendo and straighten a number of postures. And I'm walking, I can feel myself walking in waves of thinking, will it be me or was it him? Why did he skip that person? Sometimes I feel like coming up close to somebody and then walking away, causing problems.

[04:46]

Sometimes I come back and someone's posture is now quite good or different. So for a second time I correct their posture. And they think, oh, and then all kinds of ideas, why twice? But I just want to know their posture. Now it's somewhat different than before. So, now, it is true sometimes I'm correcting your posture because you're bent over or sitting like this or something. But mostly, even when I do it for that reason, really I'm doing it just to know your posture. Mostly I don't have any comparative idea about your posture.

[06:00]

I mean, it's not because I'm really a nice, free from comparative thinking guy that I don't have any comparative ideas. It's because I'm lazy. Comparative ideas take a lot of energy. I just don't have the energy for that kind of mind. I'm quite lazy. There's someone in front of me. Oh, I straighten posture. That's all. You know, the Japanese word high, for instance. As you know, and I've said before, it's translated as yes. But it doesn't mean yes.

[07:10]

It just means I hear you. That's all. Tatsugami Roshi, he would mention, what about your shoulders? And what he wanted you to say was, height. He didn't want you to think, is there something wrong with my shoulders or should they be straight? He just wanted you to say, yeah, I hear you. There's nothing wrong with your shoulders. He just wanted to put high inside it. Yes, so, how is your posture? So, how is your posture? Are you following the precepts? That's all.

[08:10]

Well, no, yesterday I broke three and... You know, we have some idea that precepts are commandments. And the Buddhist police are somewhere checking up on us. And somehow a record is compiled somewhere that's going to determine our whole life merit and whether we get into heaven or not. We don't think this way in Buddhism. How's your life at this moment? Okay, fine. I don't care about what happened in the past. There's no psychology of guilt in Buddhism. There's shame. I feel ashamed of what I did.

[09:19]

I'm sorry. But do I feel guilty? No. I feel ashamed? Yes, okay. So there's no evil in Buddhism. There's ignorance. Which means if a person really understood what they were doing, they would do something else. Now this may be sort of innocent, but there's levels and levels of ignorance. An evil person is certainly hurting, harming themselves. And maybe they don't understand this, but this is the way it's viewed in Buddhism. So one of the, you know, how to translate, how to present the precepts is, for me, I find it quite difficult.

[11:12]

Every day, every time I do the ceremony, I change the precepts a little bit. No, I just made a, I just did a two-priests ordination, monk-priest, it's the same in Buddhism, monk or priest. And just before I came, we ordained a Russell and Mark. And I gave lay ordination to a few people. And some people just took the precepts. So we'll do the ceremony tomorrow afternoon, right?

[12:15]

And none of you have relatives coming or anything like that from Holland, you know. We could call a few if you want. In America, usually people, we have to fix the time very exactly because various people come So we can be a little flexible about the time tomorrow. Nobody flying in, okay? Yeah. Can I be your guest? I want you to have one or two. We'll all be there. But I worked on the precepts for that ceremony, and I didn't transfer it to my portable computer, so I called Crestone and asked them to fax it to me, so they faxed me the recent ceremony.

[13:25]

So this morning I typed out just the precepts and the refuges. We call it the 16 precepts. And I found typing it, I changed it some more, so... Not much, just slightly. The problem is, how do you say them so they don't fall in too clearly into the way we think about commandments? Because they're not commandments, they're recommendations. And how do I, if I, If I try to present them so that you can understand them, how do I do it so it's not too explanatory?

[14:41]

Because if it's too explanatory, you can't practice with them in a mantra-like way. Mm-hmm. Intention, attention, breath, and posture. Everything is included in this. Intention or lack of attention, lack of attention, and so forth. So who are you? What are you?

[15:45]

You are a mixture of intention, attention, posture and breath. All your thinking falls into attention and intention. There's a mixture of intentions or no intention or conflicting intentions and so forth. And so forth. And practice is just this. Clarifying your intentions. deepening your intention, simplifying your intention, bringing that intention into your attention and bringing that attention into your posture and your breath.

[16:56]

This enters you into this fundamental and and powerful momentary time. This doesn't mean that, of course, sequential time still exists. It's just that you're concerned with each moment in this sequence. In discovering each moment free of the sequence. It's like if you're sick. Do you say, I'm sick? Yeah, I like to say I'm sick. I always get a vacation when I'm sick. Okay, I'm sick, so I go to bed and sleep.

[17:56]

That's quite nice. But if I want to get well, then I have to pay attention to the topography of my sickness. I don't know what to say. Topography, okay. But I'm not always sick. Some moments I'm well. So I notice what moments I'm well and what moments I'm sick. Mm-hmm. So I, you know, this is true, I really do this. And then I decide, okay, I've got to get better because the sheen's coming up or I have to get on an airplane or something, you know. So I'll do much better if there's more of these well moments.

[19:11]

So I identify the well moments and get a feeling for them and then I try to continue them. So I bring intention into this and attention and I usually, I don't get sick very often. And the more you can notice this soon, the better. Because at any moment, even when I'm completely well, there are sick moments. I can be really in seemingly perfect health and feeling good and everything, and yet every 15 minutes or hour a few sick moments float by.

[20:20]

I see them. So if someone asks me, how are you? I say, I'm a mixture of sick moments and well moments. So if I notice these sick moments, I can feel it in my cheekbones and in my... energy and my thinking and other parts of my body. If it gets to the point that my fingertips are cold, then I know quite a lot of sick moments are lurking here and there. So then I identify the sick moments If they look like they're gathering forces.

[21:24]

So I identify them if it looks like they might get too many. And then I concentrate on bringing energy to those sick moments. And I warm up my body. And I kind of create heat in my body and squirt heat into the sick moments. Maybe we shouldn't record this. It sounds kind of crazy. Anyway, something like, I don't know how to describe it, but something like that. And after this, telling you this, I'll be sick all the rest of the day.

[22:27]

But this is working with momentary time, not sequential time. It's avoiding looking at myself through generalizations. I'm a good person, I'm a bad person, I'm a sick person, or whatever. I'm always a mixture. Am I following the precepts? Yes. Am I following the precepts? No. there's a mixture but in fundamental time I follow the precepts yes like that genauso genauso yeah so One of the precepts is the first we do the three refuges.

[23:45]

And I've tried to give you a feeling why the three refuges, this taking refuge in what you can really trust. It means to find out what you can really trust. And when you find out what you can really trust, because we're Buddhists, we call it Buddha. So we first find out what we can really trust. And we bring the power and energy of that into our life. And that creates the conditions for continuing the precepts. So then we take the three purifying precepts. And I will ask you, now will you receive the three purifying precepts?

[25:03]

And those of you who are taking the precepts, what do you say? I feel like a very good teacher right now. You could also say ja, if you want to. Yeah, that'll do. But understand, it's not a yes-no answer. It's yes, I hear you, in that sense. At that moment, there's no no. And so... I ask you this now, you take the three purifying precepts, and what they are is, this is the hardest of the 16 to translate. It's most commonly translated, in the past anyway, I vow to avoid evil.

[26:05]

This sounds funny. I won't let it in my house. Or I vow to commit no evil acts or something. And the next one is I vow to do good Das nächste ist, ich gelobe, Gutes zu tun. This sounds good, but it sounds a little schmalzy, too. Das klingt gut, aber auch etwas schmalzig. And then you vow to live for the benefit of all being. Und dann gelobt man, zum Nutzen aller Wesen zu leben. And not all beings, but all being. Zum Nutzen allen Wesens. Yeah, just sentience, not just human beings.

[27:22]

I don't know how to translate this. It means... It means, maybe we could say, I vow to cut off corrupting, contaminating behavior. And live in wisdom. And the next one might be, I vow to do good and live in compassion.

[28:23]

Or to enter the way. And the third, I vow to live for the benefit of all sentient beings or to save all sentient beings. More accurately it would be I vow to live in the midst of all being with equality giving up everything. Something that's more accurate, but it's kind of hard to say all those things. But you can feel the power of this if you, in momentary time, can sometimes feel not that you're saving all sentient beings, you're just living in the midst of all being.

[29:30]

Killing up everything. Putting yourself into the hands of all beings. I don't mean that the next moment you sell your house. But It's a kind of acupuncture type thinking. If sometimes during the day you have this feeling just to live, you give up, you have this feeling of giving up everything. Everything comes off you. And you can stand in front of your friend or some person and just feel You're at the mercy of everything, you give up everything.

[30:37]

Something like that. You're just standing there, looking. What is it? The more you can have this kind of feeling in a kind of complete sense of equality and giving up everything, this is like some kind of homeopathic or acupuncture approach to your spiritual health. These kind of moments reach deeply into the fundamental time of our life and change the basis of sequential thinking, sequential time. Now, There's another aspect of these three which make it also hard to translate.

[31:55]

Which is, if we translate it, I vow to cut off evil acts. Or bad acts or contaminating acts. One part of it is the acts that are supposedly bad. And there are such things, of course. But the other part of it is to cut off. So cutting off is more basic than whether the act is good, bad or indifferent. And cutting off is considered the activity of wisdom. Cutting off is no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. Das Durchtrennen ist kein Augen, nicht Ohr, nicht Nase, nicht Zunge, nicht Körper, nicht Geist.

[33:12]

That's why the Heart Sutra is a wisdom sutra. No eyes, no ears, no nose. Warum das Herz Sutra ein Weisheits Sutra ist. Nicht Augen, nicht Ohr, nicht Nase. The deeper meaning of do not do evil as a practice is to cut off everything. Die tiefere Bedeutung dieses Durchtrennen von schlechten Akten ist es, alles durchzutrennen. Cut off is not right exactly, but we say to gather in, to absorb everything. So I think about, I look at that bamboo. And so if I withdraw my thinking from the bamboo, it's just green. And then if I have no idea of green or bamboo, it's hardly a sense perception. And then if it's not even a sense perception, I can even say, I'm alive, but I'm just alive, that's all.

[34:14]

This is a movement of gathering in. I don't need anything. Just now is enough. I don't care if the bell ever rings. Maybe ten minutes from now I don't care whether the bell rings. But at this moment everything has disappeared. This is wisdom. The opposite movement to To grant existence to everything. Yes, this is bamboo. Beautiful green bamboo. And this is beautiful, you know, gisela. She's pretending she's asleep.

[35:35]

She was pretending she was deep in wisdom. She was saying, what, Gisela? What Eno. So there's in actual in fundamental time we have this two movements. You are Buddha. You are Buddha. Even you are Buddha. And then And then we say Buddha is a dirty spot on emptiness. Yeah. So this is wisdom and compassion or granting way, we say, or gathering in way.

[36:36]

So this practice is in the midst of or the background of to cut off evil and to do good. And then to live in the midst of with equality. So these, taking the refuge in the three so-called purifying precepts, and they're purifying in their practice in this sense I just talked about, Then you take the ten prohibitory precepts. Disciple of the Buddha does not kill. I am aware of the preciousness of each existence. Like that. I am aware of the preciousness of each existence.

[37:56]

Thank you very much.

[37:57]

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