I vow to taste the truth and learn to talk to the truth. Morning. This morning I'm going to comment on Suzuki Roshi's talk entitled, Everyday Life is Like a Movie. You may have noticed that, or you may not have. If you noticed it, that's good. If you haven't... Which movie? Well, the titles keep changing. He says, When the movie's over, and then you see the blank screen, you say, oh, well, let's come tomorrow night and see the next movie. Actually, all the lectures in this book, I realize, are about how to understand the Heart Sutra.

[01:12]

They're all commentaries on the Heart Sutra without him saying so. So he says, I think most of you are rather curious about what Zen is. He's talking to his students, maybe a lot of new students. Zen is actually our way of life. And to practice Zazen is like setting your alarm clock. Unless you set your alarm, the clock will not serve its purpose. Every day we must have a starting point. The sun rises at a certain time and sets at a certain time, always repeating the same thing. And we do too, but it may not feel that way to us. Unless our life is organized, we may not realize how important it is to know where to start our life. He's talking about in order to be able to practice, we have to have our life organized in order to do that, which is as valid today as it was when he gave this talk.

[02:40]

I remember when I first started to practice, Up to that point, my life had been very unorganized, and I didn't like the idea of organizing my life. I always felt like I was a free spirit, and of course I had to work, you know, but I just liked to go from moment to moment. and not worrying about what day it was, or what time it was, which is nice, you know, in its way, but it was like floating around in space. And although I had many wonderful insights, I had no practice, and I couldn't keep it together. And so, as much as I enjoyed a lot of things in my life, the continuity of my life was not working.

[03:54]

And so when I started to practice, I really appreciated being pinned down to organizing my life. And the organizing my life allowed me to practice and it took all that energy that I was looking for, it took all of the insights which were sustaining me and coalesced them into a daily practice. which took some of the glamour away from what I was going after and just made practice into an ordinary daily life event, which I'm so grateful for.

[04:57]

So, he says it's like setting your alarm clock. There is no starting point. Our life has really no starting point unless we create a starting point. So we can just wander around and live from hand to mouth because we're just living in space. And what we do is take a nail and hammer it into space. And that becomes a starting point. If you're out at sea, you need something to orient you. So you take a star or something to navigate by. If you're in the middle of the desert,

[06:02]

the pioneers coming across the prairie would set up a homestead. And the homestead was the starting place. And that's the place that you came from and went to. So we have to start from somewhere. We have to set our stake somewhere in order to control our life or to make our life work. And then he likens this to the sun and the moon, you know, those planets. The planets, every day the sun comes up, every day the moon comes up. And they have their cycles and they have their rhythms. And we're part of that whole system of cycles and rhythms. And every once in a while there's a maverick comet that's out of sync and is dangerous.

[07:07]

It kind of upsets the balance. But upsetting the balance is also important. Sometimes we need to upset the balance. We get too rigidly ensconced in our rhythms. that can be kind of deadly. But it's important in order to practice, as we all know, of course, to have a starting point. So he says the starting point is Zazen, because Zazen is zero. You start from zero and enter the world, and then we come back to zero. So he says, unless our life is organized, we may not realize how important it is to know where to start our life.

[08:16]

As Zen students, our life begins with Zazen practice. We come back to zero and start from zero. Although we have various activities, the most important thing is to realize how these activities arise from zero. At the moment you decide to sit, it means that you have already set your alarm. When you have enough confidence to make the decision to start practicing Zazen, that is zero. We have to have the confidence to come back to zero. Most people's lives go from event to event. So most people are locked into going from one event to another and then always looking for the next event or looking for sustenance from the next event. But in Zazen practice, although we also go from event to event, we come back to zero.

[09:24]

And Zazen, of course, is zero. We're not creating karmic life. Event to event is like creating karmic life. And karmic life drives itself. That's the energy of karma. Volitional action, creating volitional action, meeting with circumstances, and creating its own patterns. When the patterns have a life of their own, eventually. And then, as Buddha says, we can't get off that wheel of karmic events creating their own life. Then we get trapped in the karma of that rhythm. And Zazen is to free ourselves from being trapped in the rhythm of karmic life by coming back to zero.

[10:31]

So during Zazen, you may hear a bird singing. Something is arising in your practice. In the same way, in our everyday life, many things will arise, and you will know where these things arise from. You will not be disturbed by them. Because you don't know how it happens, you become confused. If you know how things arise, then at the moment something happens, you will be ready. Oh look, something is arising. It's like watching the sunrise. Oh look, the sun is just coming up. In other words, Because you don't have any conception or preconception, everything becomes a new event, just arising. And you see how things arise. As a matter of fact, Buddhist meditation practice basically is to be aware of how something arises, how it presents itself, and how it leaves.

[11:38]

But basic Buddhist meditation, and it goes with feelings, in the feelings, thoughts in the thoughts, consciousness, how consciousness arises, how thoughts arise, how feelings arise, and how mental states and physical states arise. So we're always aware how things arise from zero, and also how they arise from causes and conditions. But if you are grounded in zero, then without being disturbed by how things arise, we're always amazed or conscious without being taken by surprise.

[12:45]

For instance, sometimes you'll be angry, but anger actually doesn't come all of a sudden. It may come very slowly. When you feel anger come all of a sudden, that's real anger. But when you know how it comes, anger is arising in my mind. That is not anger. People may say that you are angry, but actually you are not angry. If you know you are about to start crying, oh, I'm about to start to cry, and then in the next two or three minutes, oh, I just started crying, that's not crying. Our practice is to accept things as you accept various images in your sitting. The most important thing is to have big mind and to accept things." Well, what he seems to be saying here is, while you are aware of anger arising, that's simply the concept or the idea of anger arising. When anger just comes up, that's anger.

[13:52]

But while you're thinking about it, while you're having the, oh, I'm going to cry, that's simply, it's not simply, but it's thinking about crying. It's not fully engaged as a, without anything left out. So, You know, when somebody asks Suzuki Roshi, what do I do about anger? He suggests that they think about anger. He says, you should count from one to ten. While you're counting, you're not angry. You're simply counting. So the counting to ten takes the place of the anger. Or if you say, I'm about to cry, count to ten.

[15:06]

When you're counting to ten. You know, children can be distracted, right? They're crying and you distract them. Oh yeah, that works. They're little, little kids. So anyway, Whether this is true or not, this is what he said, but it may not always be true. But this is what he's trying to say. I'm sure what he's trying to say is, while you are When it comes up full-blown, then it's anger. Or when you're just crying, then it's crying. But before that, it's thinking about anger or thinking about crying.

[16:11]

It's a mixed thing. If you practice Zazen to obtain enlightenment, it will be like using an alarm clock without setting the time. It will go off anyway, but it doesn't make much sense, the alarm clock. Like this morning, my alarm clock went off at 5 minutes to 5. It didn't make much sense. I set it for 4.15. So, to sit every morning at a certain time makes sense. to know what you are doing at any particular time is the most important thing. This is to make effort according to the situation you're in. So, sitting waiting for something to happen, you know, like, I hear this a lot, you know, people, even though we emphasize over and over again, we do not sit to obtain anything or to attain anything.

[17:21]

Everybody wants to attain something through sitting. That's right. This is why none of you are enlightened. Because you want to get enlightened through sitting. You know, I get tired of this, you know, seven days, you know, and nothing happened that I wanted to have happen. That's in parentheses. A lot happened. But you didn't see it, because you wanted something else to happen. You didn't see that the thing that was happening was what you really wanted. But you thought you wanted something else. So we said, and because nothing happened, that it was a waste of time.

[18:28]

Like, you know, the story of the hunter who was out hunting one day and he was sitting on a tree stump and a rabbit came running by and ran right into the tree stump and died. And the hunter picked up the rabbit and said, I got a rabbit. So I'm just going to sit here on this stump and wait for another rabbit to come by. So, you know, we kind of sit here waiting for something to happen, waiting for our rabbit, a rabbit to carry, our enlightenment rabbit to come and hit us on the head. So if you practice zazen to obtain enlightenment, it will be like using an alarm clock without setting the time.

[19:40]

It will go off anyway, but it doesn't make much sense. To sit every morning at a certain time makes sense. To know what you are doing at any particular time is the most important thing. This is to make effort according to the situation you are in. In other words, there is no perfect situation. Every situation is the right situation, even though you may change your situation. Then that's the right situation. Just to make effort in the situation you're in, completely, without thinking, you can think this is a good situation and this is a bad situation, but it's just the situation. It's just where you are. It's not spectacular, but it is enlightenment.

[20:44]

We don't necessarily want enlightenment. We want something that fits our idea of what would make us feel good. But we don't necessarily want enlightenment. This is what Suzuki Roshi is always talking about. We wouldn't know what to do with it if we had it. Matter of fact, we have it and we don't know what to do with it. Our everyday life is like a movie playing on the wide screen. Most people are interested in the picture on the screen without realizing that there is a screen. When the movie stops, you don't see anything anymore, and you think, I must come again tomorrow evening. I'll come back and see another movie. When you are just entering into the movie on the screen, interested in the movie on the screen, and it ends, then you expect another show tomorrow.

[21:53]

Or maybe you're discouraged because there's nothing good on right now. You don't realize the screen is always there. And in Zazen, the screen is zero. The screen is where we settle. And then the movies go by. This is called watching, observing the scenery of our life. That's the way Zazen is characterized in the Soto school. is observing the scenery of our life as it goes by, like riding in a train and you're looking out the window and you're watching the scenery go by. But you feel things, right? So it's not just watching, it's also feeling the scenery of your life. That's why we say watching. But in zazen, it's, you know, the scenery, the movies keep playing themselves out.

[22:57]

Some are interesting and some are not. it's hard to stay with the screen, which is okay. But when you are practicing, you realize that your mind is like a screen. If the screen is colorful, colorful enough to attract people, then it will not serve its purpose. So to have a screen which is not colorful To have a pure, plain white screen is the most important point. But most people are not interested in the pure white screen. If the screen has too much going on, then you can't see the movie. Sometimes I use, in my printer, I use the backside of already printed paper. And I'm supposed to turn it

[24:00]

printed side up in order for the printer to print it on the blank side. But sometimes I, by mistake, I turn it the wrong way, you know, and it prints over the printing, you know. So it needs the blank side in order to come out right. So if the screen is too colorful, colorful enough to attract people, then it will not serve its purpose. So to have a screen which is not colorful, to have a pure, plain white screen is the most important point. But most people are not interested in the pure white screen. Of course not, it's not interesting. That's why Zazen is not interesting. I think it is good to be excited by seeing a movie. To some extent you can enjoy the movie because you know that it is a movie. Even though you have no idea of the screen when the movie is on, still your interest is based on an understanding that this is a movie with a screen and there is a projector or something artificial, so you can enjoy it.

[25:03]

That is how we enjoy our life. If you have no idea of the screen or the projector, perhaps you cannot see it as a movie or a drama. You know, Shakespeare says, our life is a stage and all the people on it are acting out their little dramas, which is so true. But here we go deeper and to have an idea that the drama of this life is taking place on the screen, on the empty screen. And the most important part is the screen. The movie is also important. but without the screen there's no movie. So, the events are always changing on the surface of the screen.

[26:09]

You know, we say screen and movie, but screen and movie are not two different things. Form and emptiness are not two different things, but in order to illustrate, we talk this way. Zazen practice is necessary in order to know the kind of screen you have and to enjoy your life as you enjoy movies in the theater. You are not afraid of the screen. You do not have any particular feeling for the screen. which is just a wide screen. So you are not afraid of your life at all in the movie. If you enjoy something you are afraid of, I'm sorry, you also enjoy something you are afraid of. And you enjoy something that makes you angry, or makes you cry, and you enjoy the crying and the anger too. So in a movie, we enjoy all these things, you know, this drama, you feel the joy, and you feel the anger, and you feel the fear.

[27:13]

People love to go to movies to feel fear. That's one of the big attractions, is you can actually allow yourself to feel fear without knowing that it's not really touching you. It's just a movie. But yet you get into it as if it's really happening to you. So we forget ourselves and get into the movie and we feel the fear, we feel the joy, we feel the love, we feel all these things. But it's just a movie happening on a white screen. So if you have no idea of the screen, then you will even be afraid of enlightenment. What is it? In other words, if you have no idea of the screen of your life, then you'll be even afraid of enlightenment because you feel that you're going to lose something if you let go of attachment to emotion, thinking and feeling.

[28:25]

and just merge with the white screen, merge with your true nature. In other words, if you let go of everything and just be, well, that's fearful for many people. That's why we hang on, hang on and hang on. So, it's not like we're trying to get enlightenment. We're simply resuming our true nature, which is always there. Always there. The white screen is always there. And the drama is always going on and changing. So, if we seek something that looks like our idea of enlightenment, that's just another delusion. simply let go, because enlightenment is our nature.

[29:32]

Since enlightenment is our nature, it's not something to get or to gain. We say gain, you know, or get enlightened, but It's a matter of settling, settling on the Self. So if you have no idea of the screen, then you will be even afraid of enlightenment. What is it? Oh my. If someone attains enlightenment, you may ask that person about the experience that he had. When you hear about the experience, you may say, oh no, that's not for me. But it is just a movie, you know.

[30:37]

In other words, his experience, his telling you about his experience is just a movie. It's just a story. It can't be your experience. Your experience has to be your experience. That's why we have to be very careful about enlightenment stories. Because we hear about somebody's enlightenment story and we say, well, that's enlightenment. That's not enlightenment. That's just another movie on the screen. If you think your enlightenment story is going to be like that story, then it's just another delusion. Somebody had a big breakthrough and the stars fell down and the ground fell away and cracked open. That's that movie for you. That may have been that person's experience, but it's just a movie for you.

[31:39]

Your experience may be something very gentle, and unnoticeable. And then six months later, you may think, oh, something happened. I see. Or two years later. So, but it is not a movie. It's just a movie, you know, something for you to enjoy. And if you want to enjoy the movie, you should know that it is the combination of film and light and screen, and that the most important thing is the plain white screen. So, the way things come about is through causes and conditions. The movie, the film, the light and the screen, these are the causes and conditions that make something happen.

[32:46]

But the screen is not affected by causes and conditions. The story is nothing but causes and conditions. But the screen is not affected by causes and conditions. So when you reach that place that's not affected by causes and conditions, then you experience enlightenment. Did you miss the good part? Yeah, you did. So that white screen is not something that you can actually attain. It is something you always have. The reason you don't feel you have it is because your mind is too busy.

[33:47]

Once in a while you should stop all your activities and make your screen white. That is Zazen. That is the foundation of our everyday life. and our meditation practice. Without this kind of foundation, your practice will not work. All the instructions you receive are about how to have a clean white screen, even though it is never pure white because of various attachments and previous stains." So, you know, there's a little color to all of our white screens. Nevertheless, it still works. One of the best Buddhas I've ever seen was at Green Gulch, at the shop. The shop, I don't know, it's a little more cleaned up than it used to be, but you know how shops are, they're kind of messy. This is not in the wood shop, this is not in the main shop. Well, yeah, this is the main shop at Green Gulch. And they have a little altar.

[34:50]

And the altar was a little bit messy, kind of crude, funky, and wood chips all over the place. But on the altar was this little Buddha, and the Buddha had been broken two or three times and put back together. and it was never put back together quite right, you know, and so the head was a little bit off, you know. And, you know, I just loved that Buddha, you know, because it's so representative of a real Buddha. Not this kind of perfect, you know, ideal, but this kind of rough, you know, it looked like somebody had really been through the mill, you know, and still there, still expressing their Buddha nature. When we just practice Zazen with no idea of anything, we are quite relaxed. Because it is difficult to have complete relaxation in our usual posture, we take the posture of Zazen.

[35:55]

To do this, we follow the instructions that have been accumulated from the experience of many people in the past. They discovered that the posture of Zazen is much better than other postures, better than standing up or lying down. If you practice zazen following the instructions, it will work. But if you do not trust your own pure white screen, your practice will not work. So this is called having faith. Having faith in your own nature. Having faith in the pure white screen, which is not conditioned by anything and from which everything arises. all of our activity arises. So in zazen, that's the point. Not to get something, but to let go of everything. As soon as you want to get something, you've stopped the process of letting go. So over and over, something appears and we let it go, something appears and we let it go.

[37:08]

That's the process of zazen, something comes up and we let it go. So we're always emptying out, completely emptying out over and over again. Thoughts come up, feelings come up, emotions come up, and they come up and we let them appear and we let them go. Over and over again we bring our attention back to the screen, which is called posture and breathing. That's all. put our energy into sitting up straight, keeping good posture, and paying attention. And our mind wanders, the movie appears, and we let go of that story and come back. And another story appears, and we let go of that story and come back to the white screen over and over again.

[38:13]

That's all there is to do. And it may not be as interesting as the story. Sometimes we let our mind follow the story, you know. Of course we do. Let our mind follow the story all the time. But we should remember to keep coming back to what we're doing. Over and over [...] again. That's training. Training to stay focused in our unconditioned nature. which is called the screen. Do you have a question? Is it all a movie? Well, it's like a movie. Yes. It's all like a movie. and Zazen instructions and aspiration for enlightenment.

[39:26]

But even the instructions for Zazen is a story, is it not? Well, it's a story of... It's not a story because... It's not a story in the sense of... It's an instruction. There's a difference between a story and an instruction. But if you hold the instruction in a grasping way, it then becomes... I mean, the general direction of the story is to help us wake up, to notice the screen. But if we don't hold the instructions with some, I don't know what, openness or flexibility... Well, yeah, everything, you know, flexibility is... Important. We should not do something rigidly. Of course. Rigidity stops us from actually experiencing the screen.

[40:35]

Flexibility. Soft mind. Flexibility. Of course. So nothing should be held rigidly. And even zazen posture should not be held rigidly. People think that when you say, don't move, it means that you shouldn't move. Don't move in zazen doesn't mean that you shouldn't bat an eyelash or be like a statue. You're always moving in zazen. You should always be moving in zazen. but it doesn't show. We sit still, but sitting still, within sitting still, there's movement. You're always adjusting, always fine-tuning your posture.

[41:39]

If you just sit still and you're like, well, I can't move because I'm not supposed to move. Well, that's stupid. You move. And you adjust yourself. So we're always adjusting our posture in zazen. We're always moving in zazen, within not moving. If you only stick to one side, that's called rigidity. Within one side, you have to include the other side. That's non-duality. So if you stick to sitting still without moving, that's dualistic zazen. I thought that was a helpful distinction you made between someone else's enlightenment being a movie for you. Yes. That matched up, for me, with what Suzuki Roshi is saying about anger.

[42:41]

Experiencing your own anger is not a movie. That's right. That's right. When you fully experience... It's not a movie. That's right. That's right. Exactly. This may be related because sometimes I feel like practicing letting go can be a form of denial and repression of feeling. that just kind of simmers down within, if you don't, for example, experience grief fully, or anger. And I wanted you to make sense of that. Well, we do not block anything from coming up. Nothing is blocked from coming up in Satsang. We don't stop anything. We graciously accept everything that arises.

[43:47]

For example, if you read a psychology book, and the psychology book talks about the steps of sorrow and grief, how one works through loss, denial, anger, the whole thing. Are you talking about not letting go of the sorrow, but letting yourself feel those things as they Well, you know, you feel what you feel. Nobody can tell you what to feel or what not to feel. But, Zazen, when things come up in Zazen, there's a possibility of having some distance. In other words, it's possible to not be captivated by our emotions. Now, we may want to feel grief, we may want to feel various feelings, and we do that within our story.

[44:56]

It is within our story. We can feel or not feel something. It just depends on how our emotional story, or our feeling story, or our mental story, how we accept or feel things. In Zazen, we have the opportunity to let the story be the story, but to not get tangled up with it. So it's just keeping awareness that there's a screen behind it and feeling whatever you feel. You can do your story. You can do your story, but you realize It's not that you think about the screen, actually. It's that by letting everything come up and pass, you see the story. And you may even get emotionally involved in the story.

[46:04]

You may feel the grief, but then you also let that go. It's important to let things go. so that we can start our life fresh on each moment. That's actually what zazen is. It's allowing your life to arise in an unconditioned way, moment by moment.

[46:33]

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