Within the people's experience of spiritual practice, there seems to be a history of faith types and doubt types. Faith type is a person who is always from an early age seeking something and kind of knows that there's some underlying reality which they trust.

[01:13]

And a dog-type is someone who, from maybe an early age, never quite believes it, or has to have it proven all the time. and creates a skepticism and needs to have some kind of deep experience to open up to their true Self. Whereas faith type, although a faith type may have wonderful deep experiences in the same way, Those experiences are not necessary for the faith type in order to continue on a path.

[02:17]

Sometimes this is called once born and twice born. Twice born refers to someone who has a lot of doubt and makes a heroic effort and through that heroic effort has a great opening experience and to realization of their true nature. Whereas faith type always believes that their life is being lived within this realization, and doesn't always need to have proof. The proof is in the living. So, in Zen practice, these two aspects are very prominent.

[03:31]

When Zen was being introduced to America by D.T. Suzuki, the literature that he introduced to America was all about awakening experiences, dramatic literature. Most history books are full of dramatic events, because it's the dramatic events which draw our attention. So in Zen practice, Zen literature, it's the dramatic events which draw our attention, or which are introduced as aspects of Zen. to be followed.

[04:38]

So a lot of people, when they came to Zen practice in the early days, 50s and 60s, were looking for these key experiences, peak experiences. Literature doesn't talk about the undramatic experiences of everyday life, according to Zen practice, which is where practice actually takes place. The ordinary life of a Zen student is where the practice takes place, day after day. regardless of whether there is a peak experience or a dramatic opening or not. So when Suzuki Roshi came to America, at the same time as some of the other teachers who were emphasizing having satori

[05:57]

and Kensho, great opening experiences to enlightenment and working very hard toward those experiences, Suzuki Roshi was emphasizing ordinariness, ordinary everyday life as the true experience of enlightenment. But these two aspects do exist in Zen practice. And they don't necessarily contradict each other, although they're often presented as contradictory. You know, there's the famous story of Kyogen, who was a student of Yishan in China, and he was a very brilliant student of Yishan.

[07:06]

And one day Yishan asked him a question, something like, show me your face, original face. And Kyogen was stumped. So he became very discouraged. Very discouraged. So I've been practicing all these years. My teacher asks me this question and I'm stumped. And he just gave up everything and moved out. And he wandered around for a long time. And then he ended up taking care of a monument to one of the national teachers, sweeping the grounds. That's what he did. He just kind of became a caretaker, sweeping the grounds. Instead of being one of Isan's key teachers,

[08:19]

He became a sweeper of the grounds. He said, this is my fate. This is where I belong. So one day he was sweeping, and as he was sweeping, a little stone hit a bamboo, and there was a crack. And at this crack, his mind opened up. And his whole ego totally fell apart. And he realized his true self. kind of like cracking a walnut and the shell opening up. So this is a wonderful and dramatic story of realization. And it's a very good example. Kyogen, realizing that he couldn't answer the question, and taking a low position, and letting go of his striving, and letting go of everything, set the conditions for this to happen.

[09:48]

When he completely let go of everything, his mind was ready to open. This is actually a necessary condition for the mind opening. But also, So practice or opening doesn't have to be so dramatic. As a matter of fact, Master Esan said, gaining enlightenment is like, or realization through practice is like walking in the fog. Walking in the fog, your clothes get wet, unawares. This is a kind of description of realization in Soto practice.

[11:15]

Without anything dramatic happening, just without realizing, actually, that realization is happening, you suddenly realize, oh, this has been happening for a while and I didn't notice it. You reach down and you feel that, oh, I closed it away and I didn't even realize that. So, these are two aspects of how one realizes. Sometimes very abruptly, and with a jolt like lightning, the whole world opens up. And then sometimes just without anything dramatic happening at all, you just realize that you've been walking this way for some time without even noticing. Hakuin is an example of a teacher who is a twice-born type, one who is full of doubts and fears and self-incrimination.

[12:53]

fear of being evil and so forth, who had to take hold of his life and strived really hard for a breakthrough. And Duggan is an example of someone who, from the very beginning, had great faith in Buddha nature, in his own Buddha nature. And although he had many doubts, lots of doubts, still the doubt never obscured the faith that he had in his own nature. But these were questions that he had which led him on to greater understanding. when he came to America, realized that Americans, you know, were always looking for some, something, some way to get high.

[14:23]

He came into America during the 50s, or the 60s, I mean, And when everybody, when people were starting to use a lot of narcotics, and everybody around him was getting high off of LSD and pot and cocaine wasn't being used very much then, but it was mostly pot and LSD. And a lot of the students, you know, he knew that they were trying to get high, And then they were using Zen practice as another means to get high, the natural high, as it was called. It's just a natural high. And so they were asking questions about getting high on Zazen. And so he said, if you want to get high and have some big experience, you should take LSD.

[15:35]

But if you want to practice Zen in an ordinary way, if you want to experience ordinary mind, then you can practice Zazen. So Suzuki Roshi kind of deflated people's expectations. And the mystique, kind of deflated the mystique of peak experiences, looking for peak experiences. Because the more you look for something dramatic, the further away you go from realization. Looking for something or expecting something dramatic to happen means that you can't experience or appreciate what's happening now. If you look for anything, if you expect anything or want anything, you can't appreciate what's happening right now.

[16:43]

And of course, nobody wanted to appreciate the pain in their legs. Of course, you suffer through this in order to get something. Why am I suffering through this if I'm not going to get something at the end? I once had a woman say, I've been doing this for 12 years. And I had my equity in, you know. Something better happened. So Suzuki Roshi's emphasis was on nothing special. If you have a wonderful peak experience of opening up to enlightenment, that's wonderful. That's very wonderful. But at the same time, it's nothing special. It's just another experience.

[17:46]

If you have some great, awful, depressing despair, pretty bad, but it's nothing special. So, Suzuki Ryoshi was not interested in your experience. He was interested in your experience, but not in any special way. And he felt that you should not be interested in your experience in some special way, either. To experience realization is to have this evenness through all experience. Even-mindedness through all experience. And Siddhic Zazen, practicing Zazen, is to have this even experience.

[18:57]

or even practice through all of your experience. If you have wonderful opening and enlightenment, it doesn't disturb this calm mind. If you have terrible despair, it doesn't move this calm mind. So this calm mind is the immovable aspect of your true nature. It is not affected by ups and downs, good and bad, right and wrong, how you feel, what you think. If you go looking for something special, then you leave behind the calmness of your mind, and suddenly your mind is disturbed.

[20:02]

So, people think, often they think that this kind of Soto Zen practice, which I don't want to call Soto Zen actually, this kind of practice of Zazen only, maintain the calmness of your mind, seems like just sitting in tranquility and calming everything around you. But that's a misinterpretation. The calmness of mind, it's easy to have a calm mind when everything around you is calm. When nothing is happening, well, what's the problem? But the real practice is to maintain the calmness of mind through every condition.

[21:09]

This is grappling with the tiger without grappling. It's taking on the tiger without fighting it. It's actually taming the tiger. Rather than fighting the tiger, it's taming the tiger. I remember when I first went to Sokoji, the old Zen center in San Francisco on Bush Street, there was a drawing of a tiger and the tail. big tail, and underneath was the caption, Riding the Tail of the Tiger. And I realized, this is, this refers to the fourth day of seven-day Sashim.

[22:24]

When you go into Sashim with great faith, And in the middle of seishin, you have great doubt. Why did I do this? Is this really something I should be doing? You start rethinking here. So, faith and doubt, you know, come up together. And there's always this tension between the faith and the doubt. And there's nothing you can do except to tame the tiger. If you start to grapple with the tiger, you're lost. The tiger will easily eat you. Devour you. Totally. The only way you can survive is to pet the tiger. Put your arms around the tiger. Put your head in the tiger's mouth. Don't bite.

[23:29]

Great trust, actually. So, within faith, there is a doubt. And within the doubt, there is the faith. But sometimes one is stronger than the other. Faith and doubt are actually complementary. And faith leads us with some optimism. Without faith, we can't move, really, in any good direction. But if you just have nothing but faith, then you easily get, jump, or run off on get caught in brambles, because there's nothing controlling it.

[24:40]

So doubt helps to control, like an airplane, it's like the tail. Faith is like the motor in the wings, and doubt is like the tail that keeps it on course, and keeps things in balance. So it's good to have doubt. But when doubt becomes too strong, and overpowers faith, then it becomes skepticism, and then you can't move. So, even within calm mind practice, one has very dramatic experiences. In the beginning, when we were first starting to sit, learning how to sit in the 60s, people couldn't sit very well, like they do today.

[25:44]

People had a lot of pain and there weren't many examples around us of students who could sit well. And I remember thinking about this room, this Zenda, where we used to sit on Bush Street, and thinking about all the silent dramas that had gone on in that room. Day after day, session after session, people dealing with faith and doubt, and their own Heroics, actually. Sometimes Hakuin criticized Zazen as dead-sitting. But he was a very restless person.

[26:54]

And if he had just stuck it out a bit, he would have had to calm down. But sitting is not just being tranquil. It's coming up against all of the obstacles in your life. You come up against all of the obstacles of your life in Zazen and have to deal with them. And sometimes they don't come as individual obstacles. They come as one obstacle. The one obstacle contains all the obstacles in your life. We think of the individual obstacles that we have, but they can all be reduced to the size of your ego. And that's what you're dealing with.

[28:00]

That's the obstacle. You yourself are the obstacle. Sometimes we say, oh, my legs, you know, I can't put them down, or my back, or... We attribute a lot of problems to our physical condition. And there are problems in our physical condition. But most of the problems are up here. And they affect our physical condition. And you'd be surprised what you can do when this obstacle is gone. So, we always have a problem. Remember, Suzuki Goshi is saying, in Zazen, there's always a problem. You always have some problem in Zazen. And, you shouldn't be too eager to get rid of the problem you have.

[29:02]

Because when you get rid of that, then another problem will take its place. And it might be worse than the one you already have. I think that... Basically, I've always been a face type, and although I've had a lot of doubt in my early life, and I knew I had a path. I knew I was making this path, but I didn't know what it was connected to. So it was like, I had this path, and I was looking for the continuation of it over here, or someplace.

[30:06]

And then finally, I found this practice, which was the continuation of my path. I didn't have any doubt that I would find that. I was just always looking for it, and my life was always a search for that path. So when I found it, I knew that I'd found it. I didn't have any doubt at all that I'd found it. And that was a wonderful experience, finding Zazen, This path itself was an opening, a realization experience. And it's important to realize that what we're looking for is something that we already know.

[31:20]

Rather than seeking out some experience or seeking out our enlightenment, we do have a way-seeking mind in which we're seeking something. But the way-seeking mind itself is the enlightened mind. When we are looking for the path to realization, that's already enlightened mind. for itself, riding the ox to find the ox. All you have to do is look down and say, oh, you are the ox. All this time I was looking for you, and you were already here. Our practice actually begins from realization in this way.

[32:50]

even though we don't realize it. We don't realize our enlightened mind. And we're always looking for it, because we're looking for something beyond what's here. So the most difficult thing is to realize, you mean this is it? Yeah. When we drop our expectations and stop looking for something else, we realize that this is it. This is the only thing there is. But that's hard to accept. I mean, this is it. Yes. And then the next moment, that will be it. And the next moment, that will be it.

[33:50]

So, enlightenment means to appreciate everything just the way it is. To be able to appreciate everything just the way it is. Sleepiness, pain, pleasure. But these are just momentary manifestations of life. The main thing is to know the calmness of our mind. Calmness of our mind doesn't just mean calmness of mind. It means realizing that immovable reality. When we're down to zero, then one looks wonderful.

[34:58]

Two looks great. Three is fine. Because you're always at zero. And then whatever comes up? When we sit sashim, and then you walk out the door, all the leaves on the trees are beautiful. The blades of grass are all glistening. But they're always doing that. You just didn't see it before, because your mind was obscured. But when your mind is totally open, So in that way we can appreciate everything, even though some things are hard to take.

[36:22]

There are always things that are hard to take, but basically, we can appreciate our life. We can appreciate life. And then there's always a joy running underneath, like a deep river. And that joy is not affected by peak experiences or depression. So the constancy, Sugiyoshi always emphasized constancy of practice. It doesn't matter how you feel it. When the bell rings, you go to the zendo. The bell is your alarm clock. When the alarm clock rings, you don't think, should I get up?

[37:27]

I'm so sleepy. You just get up without thinking. Put on your clothes, hop on your bike, and you end up. That's all. It doesn't matter how you think or feel, because it's beyond thinking and feeling. It includes thinking and feeling, but it's beyond thinking, mind, and feeling. If you depend on feelings, feelings will fool you every time. So thoughts and feelings are very seductive. But the constancy of your intention is not. And that's what one has to be faithful to.

[38:27]

You should have great faith in your intention. That's the most important thing. And intention doesn't get pulled around by seductive feelings or thoughts. And keeping your intention in a constant way grounds you in calm mind. So although everybody wants flights of fancy, Zen practice is how to be grounded. It's like taking a sieve and throwing it into the ocean.

[39:32]

Sometimes we say it's like a boat riding the waves, and sometimes we say it's like throwing a sieve into the ocean. It just sinks to the bottom. There's no way to save it. That's being grounded. And when you're totally grounded, you'll have a peak experience, a great opening of enlightenment. But you may not know it. You may not notice it. You may not be aware. And you may be aware. But either way, is just ordinary. When your great enlightenment experience is just ordinary, that's true enlightenment.

[40:46]

It's not that we shouldn't have enlightenment experiences. We should. We should have. Every moment should be an experience of enlightenment. You should have an enlightenment experience within your despair. You should have an enlightenment experience within your elation. You should have an enlightenment experience within your ordinary activity. You should have an enlightenment experience sitting on the toilet. So, very special, and at the same time, nothing special at all. So, if you hang on to anything, if you hang on to some wonderful experience, and keep trying to reproduce that, or keep it from changing, then you have a lot of pain, painful delusion.

[42:15]

As soon as your experience changes, accept it. One of the biggest problems with having wonderful experiences is that they blind you. It's just like throwing gold dust in your eyes. Gold dust is very valuable, but it also Do you have a question? Yes, Don. Thank you very much for your talk. There's one criticism frequently put by those who read about Zen practice, and it is summarized in the word quietism.

[43:26]

And one might, having heard your talk, the storm and terrible things happening in the world and am I supposed to just stay calm and let it all wash over me? No, you're supposed to stay calm in the midst of it and do what you can about it. It's not like... So you can feel anger and passion and act on those in the calmness of your mind. No matter what you do, you don't lose the calmness of your mind. But it doesn't mean that you don't do anything. This is what people, you know, quietism means escape. It's not escape. It's refuge. That's it, Bill? Within the calmness of your mind, I mean within your anger, to look for the calmness of your mind.

[44:41]

And that stabilizes your anger. Maybe knowing that your anger is nothing special. Yeah, that's right. We do tend to think of our anger as something special. our spirit, you know, if we, it's just another channel for our spirit, it's anger, and it's nothing special, so you can let go of it. He continued sweeping. I can't remember.

[45:43]

But by opening his mind, he realized that nothing was apart from itself. And I don't know what he did after that, but... And he was able to see everything in his true life. And then he could teach, he could trust that.

[46:54]

Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely trust. Yeah. No longer had any doubts. And he could teach without teaching. Adam? She said, there's a great practice. There's a great practice. I wonder if there's differences in practice for Daoists.

[48:01]

No, it's the same. Same. It doesn't have to be. There are, you know, some, like one might say that a Dao type might go toward Koan practice. And a faith type might go toward sansen practice. But actually, I don't think it makes any difference. Because whether you're a daughter or a faith type, the practice, if you take it on, will challenge you equally. No, I would recommend him to start practice and go sweep somewhere. What do you mean?

[49:11]

That's a good place to start. Sweeping is actually basic practice. for anybody, for any Zen student. If you can actually put yourself into that place of just sleeping. Many people have been enlightened that way. Buddha had a disciple who was too restless, you know, to do anything, to be able to sit or practice. And so he said, well, and he was not very bright. And he said, just get a broom and sweep. And so he got up early and started sweeping, and he swept, and within the practice of sweeping, he had a realization. He came in our hut. See, it's not that we don't have all that, but we get beyond that.

[50:45]

Not that we don't have experiences, but the point is to get inside the eye of the storm. Inside the eye of the storm is where you find yourself. Did I say that? I don't think I said a reality, but I don't particularly want to say what reality is. But it's probably the most real thing in your life. Well, I don't know what you mean by nothing happening.

[52:26]

Something's always happening. The effort, you know, itself is... We look for the resolution as the thing that we want. And as soon as we stop looking for the resolution as the thing that we want, then we can realize that the effort itself is your life. Right, we always want solutions, and the right solution.

[53:38]

And the right solution is that, frankly, in Zazen, what we think is the right solution is that there won't be any more pain. That's underlying all of our, you know, thoughts about it. there will always be painfulness. And the practice is just to do it. Because you're not going to get rid of pain. Within your life, you're not going to get rid of the painfulness. Always pain in your life. And sometimes we can accept it, and sometimes we can't. But we're always dealing with it, and experiencing what it is. to experience the pain of your life, and to actually embrace it. When there are two things, like pain and the desire to get rid of it, then you set up pain as pain.

[54:51]

But when you become one with it, then there's only one thing. So you don't set up an opposition. There's only this one thing. And when this one thing is no longer, the same problem. As long as you don't like it, you suffer. As long as you don't want it, you suffer. As long as you can't take it, you suffer. I know that sounds How are we ever going to resolve this problem of our life? I know the answer to that question. Alright. Remember the picture of Dorian Gray as you try and give your pain to Buddha. Charlie, I think you ought to think that through again.

[56:18]

I'd like to see the movie again. David? Wasn't it fundamentally coming out that he was trying to escape from his first proposition? Yeah. Yeah. You can't escape. No escape. The only escape is to go into it. The only escape is to be one with it. Great. Why did we say that this practice can end suffering? Yeah. Because we equate pain with suffering. And then when we talk about suffering, we think, well, that'll get rid of my pain. Pain is different than suffering.

[57:21]

They're not the same, but they're associated so closely with each other that we equate one with the other. So you have to differentiate. Buddha didn't say, I will relieve all your pain. He said, this will relieve your suffering. Life is pain. but it doesn't have to be suffering. Although, it is suffering, and we also need to be one with our suffering. As soon as we try to escape from our suffering, then we start suffering. So, the whole problem is the problem of duality. That's why the problem is the problem of duality. The problem of Discrimination. Discrimination is duality.

[58:22]

We discriminate like and dislike, want and not want, grasping and rejecting. This is the duality of discrimination which causes suffering. You may have suffering, even though you don't have duality, but it's not the same as the suffering It's caused by our mind split into duality, caused by discrimination in the mind. So what you learn in Zazen is to not set up an opposition, to be one with the pain in your legs. And it's a hard lesson. really hard left because it goes against everything that you want. It goes against the direction you want to go in.

[59:26]

We're a little over time, and there's a lot to discuss, so I'm going to have to stop here. Thank you.

[59:44]

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