A few months ago someone came to me and asked about how to continue in practice. He was having a difficult time with his life and hadn't been around the Zen Do so much and I assured him that we have continuous practice. potentially moment by moment, and we don't necessarily have to be in the zendo practicing. So I thought about what I had said to him and what I recommended for him to read, which is a fascicle of Dogon Zenji's called Gyoji, which is continuous practice. And when I was asked to give the talk, I thought, well, this seems topical. So that's what I want to talk about today, is continuous practice. This fascicle opens like this.

[01:07]

In the great way of the Buddha ancestors, there is always supreme continuous practice, which is the way without beginning or end, arousing the thought of enlightenment, Practice, bodhi, and nirvana have not the slightest break, but are continuous practice which goes on forever. Therefore, it is neither one's own effort nor someone else's effort. It is pure continuous practice which transcends the opposition of self and others. A little later, Dogen says, Continuous practice is not something ordinary people are fond of, but nevertheless, it is the true refuge for everyone. Today, during Bodhisattva ceremony, we recited the refuges.

[02:13]

And these refuges are a reminder for us in our practice. When we think about continuous practice and what is ongoing, what is helpful to remember and orient ourself toward is what continues moment by moment? Where is there a thread in our life that we can identify as something that's continuous throughout all space and time. A time is broken up in, or can be looked at two different ways. There's continuous time, which is seamless. and discontinuous time, which is the time that we often think about moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months.

[03:21]

So when we think about continuous practice, we should think about the seamless quality of our life and the seamless quality of this moment. When I think about what continues moment by moment in the zendo and out of the zendo, the easiest thing to come back to and the easiest thread to find is our breath. Whether we're aware of it or not, we're constantly breathing. Inhalation, exhalation. And tapping into our breath and being aware of our posture, whichever posture we happen to be taking, is a way of waking up moment by moment. In the middle of the Bodhisattva ceremony, we recite, I take refuge in Buddha before all being, immersing body and mind deeply in the way, awakening true mind.

[04:32]

So before all being, that means before we separate, Before we develop or go into conceptual thinking, where are we at then? We're immersing our body and mind deeply in the way, completely immersed in this moment, whatever is arising, whatever is happening, and we have the opportunity to wake up and be awake to our true mind. I take refuge in Dharma." Or another way of saying refuge is, I plunge into Dharma. Before all being, before concepts, entering deeply the merciful ocean of Buddha's way. So the world of Dharma is a world of things and we often get caught by things. But what are these things before our concepts?

[05:35]

with our very life. And before concepts, we have the opportunity to plunge into and be in this merciful ocean, this opportunity to engage in this life. And I take refuge in Sangha. Before concepts, bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance. So this is a harmonizing of the world of the Absolute, of Buddha, and the world of the relative, Dharmas, coming all together and harmonizing with everyone. So in continuous time, or continuous practice, another way of saying continuous practice is sustained practice, we harmonize moment by moment with whatever is going on. I heard someone say once that they were too busy to be mindful.

[06:51]

And it struck me somewhat funny and a little odd, but I understood where they were coming from. And where they were coming from was in the world of discontinuous time and how busy our lives happen to be in this day and age. It was just too much going on, too much to do. And I think this person was losing sight of the ground of our life, the continuous, the seamless quality of our life. Because when we orient ourselves that way and think that way and tap into our breath and get an awareness of where our posture is at, then we see all there is is just this that's going on. and all the myriad things that have to happen will they get taken care of eventually. But all we have is this moment. So when we sit Zazen, we really feel and experience just this one, just this moment of the seamless quality of our life just right now.

[08:08]

And then what happens when we get up? Well, we start breaking up time, checking our watch, how long does Kin Hin last? I gotta get to work. And then our mind becomes a flurry. So our life is this ongoing practice of seamless, continuous life and the discontinuous, moment by moment, breaking up of our days, making appointments, taking care of the family. taking care of the Zafu. So my friend said that he was looking for the thread in his life, something to sustain him through his busy life and the adversity that he was going through. But what it was, was losing sight of what we do here and what our Zendo is set up for, which is plunging into that seamless, continuous this. The five skandhas are continuous practice or are sustained practice.

[09:26]

The five skandhas are the way we take in the world, the way we come to understand the world, through the world of form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness. So we're completely engaged in taking in the world through these five skandhas. that our practice is sustained. So the world of form are the four elements. The world of feelings, positive, negative, or neutral. The world of perceptions, what we're perceiving, what we're taking in. Ideas. Mental formations or volitional actions or impulses. And then consciousness, the world of philosophy. So how do we practice with the five skandhas in continuous time, in sustained time? Well what that is, is we are stimulated by something out there, supposedly out there in the world.

[10:35]

And before the world of concept, before we start grading and attaching to it, there's just that stimulus, there's just that experience. And if we stay with that, and we're completely engaged in that, then that's our continuous practice, and that's what will sustain us. Invariably, we fall off of that, and we break into discontinuous time. I'm too busy to be mindful. I've got to hurry up and get to this place, or the lights are too bright. I wish they would darken down. Too cold. I don't understand Eastern philosophy. All the various things that come up in our life take us away from complete, total immersion or engagement in this life. So we have to remember something that's going to bring us back to the ground, and that's going to sustain us in our continuous practice. Back in the old days in China there was a Zen master named Pai Chan and he was very old and he worked in the field with his fellow monks and his fellow monks felt he was getting a bit too old and shouldn't work so hard.

[12:11]

So one of them hid his tools and he was looking around for his tools and he couldn't find them. He didn't eat at the prescribed time when the monks were eating. And a monk came over and said, why aren't you eating, master? And was passed down over the years. His response was, a day of no working is a day of no eating. So the monks were very concerned about his health and well-being, and they returned his tools. And he went about his work along with his fellow monks. Now in this day and age, where are our tools? In order to make that story real for us today, we have to think about how can we be completely engaged and involved no matter what's going on.

[13:18]

A week ago we had a memorial service here for a young woman, 31 years old, who had died in a car crash. And the Zendo and the grounds were quite full with family and friends, about 200 people. Many of you know the father of Sarah's young lady who died, Doug Greiner. He sits with us in the mornings. And Doug was here preparing for this service and the day of the ceremony he was here with his family and friends working alongside the other people who you would think would just be taking care of the ceremony and he could just come, offer himself up at the ceremony and leave. But here was our Dharma brother mourning

[14:27]

The loss of his daughter, working alongside those in attendance, making sure things were taken care of. Completely engaged, just taking care of what needed to be taken care of. Dogen later on in the fascicle says, Don't idle away the time needed for practice, but rather practice in the spirit of a person trying to extinguish a blaze in his hair.

[15:32]

Do not sit and wait for enlightenment, for great enlightenment is to be found in everyday activities such as eating or drinking tea. Simply making an earnest effort to practice continuously and to get rid of fame and fortune is a continuous practice of making the life of the Buddha eternal. This present continuous practice is nothing other than just that, just committing oneself to continuous practice for no other reason than to practice continuously. Therefore, you should love and respect this mind and body which support continuous practice." So there's no goal, they're just taking care of the next thing. Suzuki Roshi says that right effort is to get rid of something extra. We should appreciate what we are doing.

[16:34]

There is no preparation for something else. Well, we've all had times when it's been very difficult for us to practice. And while the Teachers of old have said, there's just this moment, there's just this thing to wake up to. Still we have difficult times and it's difficult to wake up in the morning and sit Zazen. It's difficult to come home or come to the Zendo after a busy day at work and continue our practice when we're tired and we just want to rest or go out to dinner, see our family. And in acknowledging how difficult it is, we have an echo. during one of our chants, and it says, to encourage us to continue our practice even in adversity, where adversity arises, not in continuous time, but in discontinuous time, and that's very real.

[17:43]

We have adversity in our life. Things happen. And how are we able to continue to practice even at adversity? Will we offer incense? We ask for help when the Kokyo says, or ask to encourage us during the chanting. So what happens is, in our lifelong practice, is falling off, losing ourself, losing our thread, and then getting back on the cushion, either physically on the cushion or in our hearts wherever we happen to be and find that thread and tie into it and be supported by it. It's a really difficult practice to stay on it moment by moment. and harmonizing with each and every one of us through Sangha practice is a way where we are able to support each other in times of adversity.

[19:01]

In the poem, The Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which we recite here by an old Chinese Zen master, The very last lines, as we translate here, if you achieve continuity, this is called the host within the host. And another translation of that by Master Sheng Yen, if only you are able to persist, you will be called a master among masters. Well, they recognize how difficult this life can be and how difficult practice is. And they wrote about it to encourage us. Another name for this world in the old sutras is the world of endurance. I didn't understand what that meant when I first heard about that. But if one lives long enough, you feel that there's a quality of enduring and trying to stay on it.

[20:20]

So it feels right, yes, this is the world of endurance. Last week Rebecca was talking about Thich Nhat Hanh in the context of being reminded when we hear the sound of a bell and bringing ourselves back to practice and waking up to the sound of a bell. And I think that's why it's easier for us here in the Zendo to practice because we have a nice smelling incense, it's a beautiful structure, and there's a sweet sound of a bell at different points during our service. So these tools are not hidden. They're out here and they're being used and they're helping us. They're encouraging us. And I think when my friend said that he was having problems in his practice and he was kind of losing that continuity, the feeling of not being at the Zen Do and around all this support is what I wanted to address about the sound of the bell.

[21:37]

Out in the world, we don't hear so many bells. We hear jackhammers, we hear cars screeching, We hear people yelling. Once in a while we hear a nice sound, maybe a little bit of music coming from someone's window. But by and large, the sounds out in the world in discontinuous time are somewhat abrupt or abrasive. And in our practice, what we need to strive to do is to see the seamless quality of sounds and how we have the opportunity to wake up even with horn hawks and jackhammers and the busyness in our life. It doesn't sound so good. We don't like those sounds so much often. We're kind of rushing to the Zendo, slamming the gate, putting our shoes off and sitting down just for some quiet and peace. But we should try to listen and hear the sounds, the sweet sounds,

[22:44]

the music and all those instruments out there. Because there's 24 hours in the day, discontinuously, and if we're lucky, we're in Zendo for about an hour of those 24 hours. So for 23 hours, we have other sounds and other things to experience. And as we practice, and as we deepen our practice, And we see and feel that thread, no matter what's going on, there's inhalation, exhalation. There's a posture that I'm keeping, slumping, upright, tired, whatever. Through all that, through all the sounds that we experience and the feelings that arise, there's something that's constant throughout all that. And that's our zazen. Not just while we're sitting in the zendo, but outside the gate moment by moment. Dogen says that the universe is our monastery.

[23:54]

He was talking about life in the monastery, which is the sort of ideal laboratory to practice, and that there was a great amount of benefit to being in that setting. And I think there's a way of looking at this jewel of a zendo as our monastery, as our temple to support us. We need to look at the universe as our monastery, no matter where we are. There's a story of the sixth ancestor. When he met the fifth ancestor, he pounded rice for about eight months. He was already pretty awake. And his teacher sent him down to the rice shed to stay away from the other monks and practice continuously, but somewhat secretly and not being so obtrusive.

[24:56]

So he pounded rice for about eight months. And then there was formal transmission. And then he left the Fifth Ancestor with his help. He rode across the waterway. And he continued carrying this mortar and pounded rice for another eight years. According to Dogen in his fascicle, he recounts this. And what Dogen was encouraging us and telling us that even after enlightenment, they're still pounding rice, they're still wearing, they're still working, they're still maintaining that thread of practice, no matter what, no matter when. After the ceremony, the memorial service last week, we needed to put the Zendo back together. And because there was such a large crowd of people, we actually had to take these two frontons out also.

[25:57]

And these things are extremely heavy. So they were out for the ceremony, and they needed to get brought back in. We were all folding up chairs and doing this and doing that. And the next thing I know, I see Mel and Bill Milligan, who is one of our ancestors. Bill predated me. He came here in the early days from Dwight Way and did a lot of work helping to get this temple built. get this property up to a temple standard. I don't know all the particulars of that. He did a lot of physical work. And during the day of gardening for the memorial service, he and a crew of people were raking and cleaning. It was just quite a phenomenal amount of effort being made by him. And so I see he and Mel

[26:59]

carrying up this ton up the wheelchair ramp and bringing them bringing them in and then they went and got the other one and brought it in and I was struck by that because once again those circumstances are different between the the father who is here helping for the memorial service of his deceased child, and the abbot and an old Zen student here helping to put the Zendo back together, it's the same. It's continuous practice, taking care of what needs to be taken care of, no matter what level of attainment. Of course, Mel is here quite often, sitting with us and supporting us, and Bill physically isn't around so much. but a foundation was laid years ago, and he's still connected and still continuing to practice. I wanted to end my talk reading a lecture that was in the newsletter back in 83.

[28:12]

And it's just a part of this lecture by Mel, and the title is The Heart Sutra and the Mantra of Our Life. I used to think of Suzuki Roshi's life as a mantra. We tend to think of a mantra as a phrase which we repeat over and over again. Sometimes people ask, can you give me a mantra? something to repeat over and over in order to evoke or to maintain a certain concentrated or pure state. But when I observed Suzuki Roshi, it seemed to me that the way he lived his life was a mantra. His life has a very obvious form, or had a very obvious form, and continues to have a very obvious form. Every day at the old Sakoji Temple at Bush Street, I would see him enter the zendo from his office and light the incense, sit zazen, and do service.

[29:17]

Every day he did the same thing, which was amazing to me. I had never seen anyone do that kind of activity before. His life was devoted to sitting zazen, bowing, lighting incense, and the various other things that he did. When there were so many other things to do in the world, here was this person simply doing these things over and over again every day. And he had been doing them over and over every day for most of his life. I never thought of myself doing anything like that in what seemed like a narrowly disciplined way of life. So I was impressed by it. After a while, it occurred to me that his life was a mantra. Every day he had these tasks that he would do. He was always concentrated and went about his activity in a light and easy manner. Somehow, it was not just repetitive. It was a dynamic that was always producing light. One way to produce energy is to have something going around in a circular path. If you hook up a conductor to that energy producer, the energy flows from it as a dynamo.

[30:24]

That's why he had so much spiritual power. Well, that's pretty much all I have to present today. Are there any questions or comments so we can dialogue for about 10 minutes or so? Yes, Mark? You know, Japanese calligraphy, you see the Zen masters who draw circles, but those leave a little gap.

[31:31]

Because it's not complete, you know, it seems like it's not completely seamless, assuming a gap. Well, some circles are not closed, and some of them are. I've seen closed circles. But without picking and choosing, we call this practice practice, meaning that we're not finished. So the making a circle, I don't think the calligraphers are thinking, am I going to close the circle or leave a little space in the opening? It's just what's created. But can you see even the openness in a closed circle, the potential for

[32:43]

I think there's some symbology behind the circle, making a circle like that, but with a gap. It can symbolize different things. It can symbolize the end of the breath, where there's a gap between the next breath coming in. I think it also can symbolize the circle being the self, vary between inside and outside the cell. I just threw that out there because you said seamless, but here's something that's apparently not seamless. I don't know, maybe it's not a good question. No, I think it's a good question. The circle, as I understand it, symbolizes oneness or wholeness. I think while there is this gap or space between inhalation and exhalation, we need to see the seamless quality that in fact there is no gap between inhalation and exhalation.

[33:56]

It's just one continuous flow. It's like the wave that comes up and then it's undertow and it's this constant flowing. But we can look at and see and measure the height of the wave or the force of the undertow, but actually they're dependent on each other. I was cutting cantaloupe this morning for breakfast, and I sliced it down, cleaned up the seeds, and then cut the rind from the pulp. So that's in a way dividing or separating or making discontinuous this continuity between pulp and rind, right? Okay, they're separate now. Okay, you guys can eat this, this goes in the compost.

[34:58]

But where does it all end up? The people eat this, they poop it out, and it goes in the compost. So it all comes back together again, right? But we constantly are dividing up our our cantaloupe, because that's what we need to do. We need to divide up things. We need to make our dentist appointments. We need to prepare the food in a way where people can consume it and be sustained by it. But from a practice point of view, we need to look and see the interconnectedness of all that, and that's what sustains us. Yes, Jorge? I think it's about a different way of saying the same thing, but I'm not so sure. Yeah, well, patience ties into our effort. And the more patience we have, the easier it is, I feel, to see all this that we've been talking about.

[36:08]

When we lack patience, there's shortness of breath. There's a feeling of not being present, wanting to be elsewhere. And because we have this idea that we need to be someplace else and we're looking at our watches, all this discontinuity. But when we start developing more patience and fuller rounder, deeper breaths and realizing there's no other place to go than right here in this moment, then our practice is supported and sustained and we feel that. We sit more upright. But that's really difficult to do because the world out there where we work and play is not supporting that kind of life. So how can we remember and be reminded? Just be patient. and sit, and breathe.

[37:15]

Because when we do that, we actually have all the time in the world. All the time in the world is right here. But, you know, punching a clock, I got breaks, you know, there's all these things that come up. And that's how it is for me. How do other people work with patients? or not. And neither should we be attached to closing the circle.

[38:28]

Yeah, it's still there. The circle is still there as a reminder that it's all one piece. Thanks. Yes, Moffitt? that he seems to be referring to a continuous, how to say, cosmic practice that somehow goes on, that seems to be what he's referring to, or what I call continuous time, or maybe timeless, that seems to me to be what he is referring to. that our practice is a practice of joining that continuous something that goes on which is important to us.

[39:46]

comforting thought when we're talking about it. Although we get sometimes whipped around by the things that happen to us in life, things that simply throw us around. And we may feel that we're not practicing because we're not practicing in a formal there is presumably this something continuous that goes on, whether we happen to pay attention to it or be consciously paying attention to it, and that we can rejoin it. And it seems to me that part of the purpose of our practice

[40:55]

to rejoin that reality and be sustained by it. That's a good point. He says that in so many words, about three paragraphs later from the opening paragraph, whether you believe this or not, this is how it is, in his usual Dogen manner, and encouraging us to practice, and that we're not going to get anything, we're actually just going to tap into or realize something that already exists. There would seem to be some benefit to this that it would be in harmony. Yeah. It would be non-separate. It was kind of like fighting upstream and then at a certain point you realize, why am I doing this? And you just turn around and you just kind of go with it. You know, there's arousing the thought of enlightenment, and there's the enlightenment, and then there's nirvana, there's all this stuff, and meanwhile, all you do is just turn the boat around, and then just go with it, and then all these things just arise moment by moment.

[42:05]

You try to swim, and you don't swim so well, and you keep thinking you're gonna drown, because you're in the deep water, and then it may occur to you again. You're not really. You're not, and it's also, although he didn't say it in this particular passage, but it was an echo of his revolutionary concept of practice is enlightenment. That wherever we're practicing, whatever we're practicing, however we're practicing, that in and of itself is enlightenment. It's just a matter of waking up to that. job where I had to make a lot of copies for a couple weeks. I was working like 8 hours a day doing it. And I was like, God, this is so boring. Let me out.

[43:05]

But, and I, I tried to, I tried like maybe a half hour where you really are practicing like you're sitting, you're gonna do Zazen for a little bit, but not try to take off 23 hours of your time doing hard practice. I mean it helps to break up a little bit of time and work at that. Well, we need to take a rest every now and again. And the ideal of practicing 24 hours a day is what the masters of old have set up for us to aspire to. We all aspire to be practicing 24 hours a day, and the fact is we need to rest. And say, practicing all those awareness practices that you had just mentioned for maybe a half hour, an eight hour day is a good start, but what I would encourage

[44:10]

And what I encourage myself to do, because I also have a job that's very repetitive, is not get caught in, okay, I'll be mindful and aware now, and then I'll take a break, and just kind of see where you're at without judging it ahead of time. And you'll see, just as with sitting practice, we encourage people to sit, you know, have a regular sitting practice, maybe 10 minutes a day. and then build up on that and then it becomes seamless, you're just sitting, you're just making the copies. Because actually no matter what the job is, be it making copies or writing speeches or any of the numerous jobs that seems enticing or interesting, on some level it's just activity. It's just some level of activity, and no one's over your shoulder except your boss about being more efficient, about something that's bigger and grander and more healthy overall, which is waking up each moment. So we all have the opportunity to wake up, whatever we happen to be doing.

[45:16]

And in some ways, those mundane jobs are even easier just to wake up because the work doesn't require a lot of thinking. And you actually can let go of a lot of your concepts and really be present with each moment. And we have to remember that mindfulness doesn't mean slow. So we're just mindful and aware in what we do moment by moment. Jorge? I think that might be the last question. I have a question on this question if I may. Would it be part of good practice and mindfulness and awareness to realize that perhaps such a boring job should not always be done, but one should perhaps at a certain young age to study to get away from this kind of job? Well, I think it's important for the individual to think,

[46:17]

Why is this boring and what do I want to do? Am I better than this? Do I have a greater potential? Can I help more people if I do something else? Is this below me? But we all have certain aptitudes and the causes and conditions of all the various vocations that have found us. In this room, there's quite a wide variety of vocation here. I think without getting into sort of career counseling, we should examine what's coming up in our mind at whatever age we're at, what's going on. And when boredom sets in, why are we bored? Why do we want to be elsewhere? And look at that. And it might mean I need to change a job and go to something else. But fundamentally, there's certain things that will carry on with us no matter what career or what relationship we happen to be involved in.

[47:21]

And I think as we get older, we start seeing sort of the habit energy that follows us from job to job or relationship to relationship. And in the early days, there's lots more grand ideas of what we could be doing. We could be doing this or doing that. That's why it's an encouragement to sit every day because that's the ground and the neutral place where we can find some continuity in all the various ideas that we want to follow. What's continuous in all that? Not necessarily that all is revealed, but we're operating from a deeper place where the direction that we go tends to be more, it feels more appropriate. It's not such a reactive thing. I'm bored, so I'm going to do this. Or I don't like you, I'm going to be with this person. That kind of thing.

[48:23]

That's a good question. Thank you.

[48:28]

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