Well, we're entering the last phase. I can see that we're wearing people out. But at this point, I always encourage everyone to practice up to the last moment. And I think that I felt the power of our sasheen and the strength of our practice. Every time we do sasheen, we're the same people doing this. And I just see this kind of maturity and development of our practice with the stable sangha. It's very impressive to me.

[01:02]

So today, I'm going to talk about the head gardener. I've talked about this before. This is one of my favorite parts of the Eheshingi, the head gardener. I think it's a wonderful example of practice for everybody, lay practice, priest practice, monastic practice, whatever. I think this is the fundamental thing for practice. And Suzuki Roshi wrote a, gave a talk on cultivating the ground, which I think the more I, study this Ihe Shingi, the more I am convinced that this is what Suzuki Roshi based his practice on, and I can see the allusions here to things that Suzuki Roshi talked about.

[02:42]

So Dogen says, the position of head gardener is most difficult and toilsome, and should be served by someone who has the way. This position should not be filled by someone who does not have the way mind. This person is always in the garden, sowing and cultivating according to the seasons. In this position, Buddha face, ancestor face, donkey feet, and horse feet are manifest. It's like being a farmer or a peasant. All day long, she plows and hoes. All day long, he carries excrement and urine for fertilizing, free from self-concern, awaiting the right moment of ripening for harvest, careful not to miss the right time. So I'm going to go over that. The position of head gardener is most difficult and toilsome and should be served by someone who has the right, who has the way mind. As gardener, you know, what is the garden?

[03:52]

Garden, you can see it on various levels. This is the gardener in the monastery, right? But you yourself are the gardener in your own garden. Your life, your surroundings are your garden. I once, I saw in a book on Theravada Buddhism, the preface was cultivating the Dharma in the garden of the heart. So this position, cannot be filled by someone who does not have the way mind, rather than should be, I think. You can't do that.

[04:52]

You can be a farmer, but you can't do it this way. Maybe should is okay. I can think of it in various ways. What is the way mind? When we talk about desire in dharma, everyone has desire. Desire is, without desire there's no life as we know it. And the scriptures always say, you know, get rid of desire, get rid of desire. But you can't get rid of desire. Desire has to be directed in some way that is not just directed at vain things.

[05:55]

So when desire is directed toward the Dharma, then it's called way mind. So one cultivates the ground One cultivates the garden for the sake of those who use it. You cultivate the garden for those who use it, for the Sangha, and for yourself, of course. When you cultivate the garden for the Sangha, you cultivate it for yourself as well without thinking of yourself. especially, but you are included. But then you forget about cultivating the Dharma for the Sangha, and you just cultivate the garden for the sake of the garden. It's nice to cultivate the garden for the Sangha, but that still has a purpose.

[07:07]

He just, when you have maturity as a gardener, you just cultivate the garden for the sake of the garden, which is pure activity. So he says, this position should not be filled by someone who does not have the way mind. This person is always in the garden, sowing and cultivating according to the seasons. So always in the garden, means that continuous practice. We're always in our garden, we're always in our field with continuous practice. You know, someone said, I just have this hard time applying practice to my everyday life. Don't try to apply your practice to your everyday life.

[08:16]

It's a big mistake. If you try to apply your practice to your everyday life, then you have practice and everyday life. That's two things, and you will try to apply one thing to the other. So it's always two things. When you come to the Zen Dojo, just do Zazen. Chant the sutra, meet your friends, harmonize. When you go out in the world, just drive your car. When you get home, just eat your breakfast. When you go to work, just go to work. Don't worry about applying the practice to your life. Just totally engage in everything that you do in the same way that you totally engage in zazen. then Zazen is not something different or something special. But don't miss it.

[09:19]

Don't try to apply one thing to the other. Because Zazen, or the practice in Zen, is not something special that you apply to your life. If your practice has a regularity and a circle, coming and going, coming and going. Then practice will become all continuous. There'll be a continuous practice of just one practice. Of course, we have the precepts and we have right behavior and we have selflessness and all these things, right, which you should be applying to your life all the time as guidelines for your life. But when you get out in the world, it doesn't look like the Zindo.

[10:25]

It never will. But there is, there's a thread that runs through everything. which is called settled mind. Stillness. So this person is always in the garden, sowing and cultivating according to the seasons. According to the seasons means according to, can mean, according to how things change. always going along with how things are changing and evolving. In this position, Buddha face, ancestor face, donkey feet, and horse feet are manifest. Now we know that horses and donkeys don't have feet, any more than chickens have lips.

[11:28]

Your horses have feet, yeah, but most other horses have hoofs. Yeah, they have one big toenail. Well, Kaz and I had a little, you know, trouble translating this. He translated it as feet. I said, but horses and donkeys don't have feet. They have toenails. One toenail. They have legs. I like it anyway, horse feet and donkey feet, that's okay. I've decided to accept that because it's okay. But it's like being a farmer or a peasant all day long. All day long, you plow and hoe. All day long, she plows and hoes. Like being a farmer or a peasant, you know, nothing special, no special position. You don't say, I'm a Zen student. You just do what you have to do.

[12:37]

All day long, she carries excrement and urine for fertilizing, free from self-concern. So, you know, you carry out the shit of your life. You take care of all, and you know, I remember Suzuki Roshi in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind talking about composting. all of the stuff that you, all of your junk is compost to help you grow. And so you just keep putting that stuff in the ground around your tree, and it's the compost from which, it's the muck from which the lotus grows. So, you know, there's an old saying that what is sour turns sweet.

[13:42]

And unless it's sour, it won't turn sweet, like persimmons. If you eat persimmons at the wrong time, the soft ones, the big soft ones, they're astringent. the worst possible thing you can eat is a stringent persimmon. But at the right time, persimmon turns sweet. So we should, you know, our sourness, our problems, the stuff that we don't like, the stuff that irritates everybody, that's the raw material If we keep working with that, it turns sweet. Without it, you don't get the sweetness. So we say Buddha nature, you know, or big Buddha is big delusion.

[14:47]

Big delusion makes big Buddha. So free of self-concern is the key. You're not worried about yourself. Not concern, self-concern. You take care of yourself, but there's, you know, we should be careful not to be overly concerned about ourself. There's another saying. The sage sees everyone as herself. The fool sees the self. Sage. Sees everyone as other. The sage sees everything as self, and the fool sees the self as other.

[16:04]

Yes. So, free from self-concern, awaiting the right moment of ripening for harvesting. Careful not to miss the right time. So, As practice, it means having the patience to be right in time with things, not to rush, not to hold back. It's like riding the wave and driving the wave. Riding the wave is to go along with the way things go and let yourself be turned. Driving the wave is to assert yourself so that you can actually get on top of the wave.

[17:12]

So you have to assert yourself and at the same time let yourself go. There are assertive types and passive types. Assertive types tend to push things. And that type has to cultivate letting go. And then there are passive types who need to push things more. So in practice, we encourage passive types to do more, you know, get up there. And assertive types to hold back, you know, cultivate some patience. So to cultivate that balance between assertiveness and passivity so that you know when to turn things and when to be turned, when to take hold and when to let go.

[18:20]

This is also, you know, this also is about a teacher, how a teacher is in Soto Zen. You see, Soto Zen is like a farmer raising his crops. Rinzai Zen is like a general moving his troops. So Soto Zen is like a farmer raising his crops, her crops. And if you see it that way, the position of the teacher, who is the head gardener, is most difficult in Toelson, and should be served by someone who has the way mind. This position should not be filled by someone who does not have the way mind. This person is always in the garden, sowing and cultivating according to the seasons. In this position, Buddha face, ancestor face, donkey feet and horse feet are manifest.

[19:29]

Buddha face, ancestor face is like the spiritual aspect and donkey feet, horse feet are like, you know, the grunt work. It's like being a farmer or a peasant all day long plowing and hoeing, all day long carrying excrement and urine for fertilizing. You know, the teacher carries a lot of the excrement. Free from self-concern. Actually, the teacher should be free from self-concern, you know. Awaiting the right moment of ripening and harvesting, careful not to miss the right time. So with a student, the teacher has to be very patient. And we talked about the long term and the short term, not expecting something in the short term, but working with student over a long period of time, waiting for the right moment to say something or to do something.

[20:41]

It takes lots of patience. And it also means just forgetting and having faith that the right moment will arrive. Not anticipating anything, and not even worrying, maybe it never will arrive, that's okay too. It's called sometimes pecking and tapping. There's a koan about pecking and tapping. The chick pecks from the inside, and the mother hen pecks from the outside when she hears that, so she helps the chick. And just at the right time, the chick pecks and the hen pecks. I don't want to make a pun here. And the shell breaks open when they peck at the right, just at the same right moment. So that's the moment, you know, of not missing the right time.

[21:46]

But it's not just the teacher doing something or the student doing something. It's the teacher and the student and the right moment, the right circumstances, and everything coming together at the same moment. So when the head gardener plows the ground and sows the seeds, he does not wear formal dharma robes or okesa. He only wears white under robes and a work robe. However, at the time when the community gathers to chant the Buddha's names or sutras, or zazen, I put that in, he didn't say that, but he must mean that, listen to lectures or have interviews, she always joins always puts on the dharma robe and joins the community.

[22:54]

She is not supposed to miss these activities. So if you apply this to your daily life, you're out there in the world, and you just have ordinary clothes, but at the right time, you come to the zendo with the sangha, put on your robe, sit zazen, chant the sutra, and then go home. And when in the garden, every morning and evening, he offers incense, bows, and chants the name of Buddha, and makes a dedication to the dragon spirit and to the ground without ever being negligent. At night, she sleeps in a cottage in the garden Assistants and workers often change at the direction of the work leader. Well, this applies to the monastery, monastic work.

[24:08]

The dragon spirit is like, the dragon spirit. I can't explain that one. You must know what it means though. And the spirit of the ground. When people were closer to the ground, they were aware of the earth spirits and tree spirits and we've lost that kind of connection. And the assistants and workers often change the direction of the work leader. That means that different people are assigned to work with this person.

[25:12]

And this person, whoever comes, is accepted. And then you have to work with this person. whether it's a new person, or an old person, or a woman, or a man, or a troublesome person, or an easy person, the head gardener has to relate and make it work. How do you make it work with everyone you meet? You know, we may say, oh, I don't like this person, or I work easily with that person, or blah, blah, blah. You have to be able to work with everyone you meet and find a way to do that. That's, for a Zen student, that's your work. How do you relate to everybody without getting upset? You know the Bodhidharma doll, Daruma doll, with the round bottom?

[26:17]

You know, push it over, come back up. That's the way you have to relate. Even though you get pushed over, you come back up. Or getting pushed over means having flexibility and then coming back up. So you'd never get pushed off your place. That's daily practice in the world, to never get pushed off your spot, to always have that stability and composure in stillness. Indeed, the position of gardener has been served by renowned people who have way mind. Those who have small capacity or are ill-suited have not been put in that position. In the community of my late master, Tien-Tong Ru-Jing, Old Man Pu of Western Shoe District was first appointed to this position when he was over 60 years old.

[27:22]

During this time, the positions in the community were stable for almost three years. and the monks were joyful. My late master was deeply pleased. If we compare this old man Pu with the abbots of many monasteries, they cannot come up to the practice of this head gardener." So here's this old man who becomes head gardener, and he has these qualities. And it stabilizes the monastery. It stabilizes the practice. a practice always needs to have these kinds of pillars in the community, people who just do their, who just practice. They don't have any special position or, just quietly go about practicing. That's what holds the community together. And that's what inspires people. And they may not realize

[28:24]

who it is that's really holding the community together. Because there's nothing special or outstanding in appearance. But if you have an eye for practice, you can see who those people are. They don't make any claims to enlightenment or to knowing anything, and they may not know anything, actually. They may not even know anything about Buddhism, but their practice is very pure and very steady and sincere. When I started practicing at Dwight Way, and I established at Zendo, my practice, I was into organic gardening.

[29:37]

And I just studied everything I could about it. It was the beginning, kind of like the height of the organic gardening movement. And I was really turned on by it. So I had this huge yard to work with. And so I just spent all my time doing zazen, relating to people, opening the zendo for people to sit, and doing organic gardening. I even had a pipe system running out of the kitchen for, what's it called? Yeah, gray water system, but it didn't work too well. But to me, that's the ideal kind of practice. You're working, you're making food for the, you're growing stuff and you're in the ground, you're connected. And there's the sky and the ground and the plants and it's just kind of a wonderful life.

[30:47]

And then there's the practice with people. So to me, that was ideal. And even when we moved here, I had the garden next door that was rented to us. And then, and I planted there for a long time. And the kids would go out in the garden and they would graze on their hands and knees. They'd pick strawberries and eat them, you know, and break beans and eat them, you know, and get underneath, in the shade of the, bean poles. It was wonderful. But we don't have that anymore. But I was really turned on by that. And I feel it's, you know, now agribusiness has taken over from the small farmer. And the Jeffersonian ideal is hard to uphold, but it's a great ideal.

[31:48]

And I never thought of it as that, but in retrospect, I see that's what it was. But the metaphor of the garden, this is, practicing in that garden is an example of how we live our life. To make our life, wherever we are, even if we don't have a plot of ground, That's the place that we cultivate, even though Zen practice, in our tradition, is not called cultivation. In China, it was called cultivation. In Japan, it's not called cultivation. But we do cultivate. And wherever we are, we set up our garden or our space or our Buddha field. and just live our lives cultivating in our Buddha field.

[32:55]

Suzuki Roshi, my favorite talk of Suzuki Roshi, I'll read you that. You know this one already. He says, I think most of us study Buddhism like something which was already given to us. we think that what we should do is preserve the Buddha's teaching, like putting food into the refrigerator. And then you open the door and you take it out, and oh, this is what Buddhism is. Or you put it in a drawer, you know, oh, take it out of the drawer, this is what Buddhism is, I know what it is now. Like putting food into the refrigerator, that to study Buddhism is to take the food out of the refrigerator whenever you want it. Because it's already there. Instead, Zen students should be interested in how to produce food from the field, from the garden, should put the emphasis on the ground.

[33:59]

If you look at the empty garden, you won't see anything. But if you take care of the seed, it will come up. The joy of Buddhism is the joy of taking care of the garden, and our effort is to see something come out of the ground. That is why we put emphasis on the emptiness. Emptiness is the ground where you cannot see anything, but which is actually the mother of everything, from which everything will come. All of us have Buddha nature, and the teachings which grow from Buddha nature are the same. So actually, the teaching of different schools of Buddhism do not differ so much, but the attitude toward the teaching is different. When you think that the teaching is already given to you, then naturally your effort will be to apply the teaching in the common world. For instance, Theravada students apply the teaching of the 12 links of causation to our actual life. That's putting something over the teaching.

[35:01]

To how we were born and how we die. But the Mahayana understanding is that the original purpose of this teaching, when Buddha told it, was to explain the interdependency of different beings. more like finding release instead of eliminating all the defilements until you get to nirvana, to find nirvana within the defilements. So Buddha tried to save us by destroying our common sense. Usually, as human beings, we are not interested in the nothingness of the ground. Our tendency is to be interested in something which is growing in the garden, not on the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make rich soil and to cultivate it well. The Buddha's teaching is not about the food itself, but about how it is grown and how to take care of it.

[36:10]

Buddha was not interested in a special given deity, which is something which is already there. He was interested in the ground from which the various gardens will appear. For him, everything was a holy thing. Buddha said, if people are good, then a good Buddha will appear. That is a very interesting remark. Buddha did not think of himself as some special person. He tried to make the most common person, he tried to be like the most common person, wearing a robe, going begging with a bowl. That's not so common, but just wearing the most ordinary less than ordinary clothing. Nothing's no big deal. He thought, I have many students because the students are very good, not because of me. Buddha was great because his understanding of emptiness and his understanding of people was good. Because he understood people, he loved people, and he enjoyed helping them. Because he had that kind of spirit, he could be a Buddha.

[37:13]

You know, if you really get into gardening, you realize that your interest goes more into how you make the ground. To a good gardener, the smell of the compost, the sweet smell of compost is as interesting as anything that comes out of the ground. So, you know, this practice is like cultivating the ground, not putting Buddhism over it. We study Buddhism, we try to understand what the Buddha taught and so forth, but actually our practice comes, our understanding and our practice comes out of, the way we live our life comes out of our practice. It should come out not just being directed by Buddhism, But Buddhism should manifest within ourselves.

[38:24]

The true Buddha Dharma should manifest within ourselves. And then it may not look like what it says in the book. But what we do should match what the Buddha's taught. We always go for verification to the scriptures, but we don't try to take the scriptures and impose it on our life. Otherwise, you're always looking at the book to see if you're doing the right thing. And then if you get attached to the Buddha's words, you get it, which are not the Buddha's words. Scripture is finger pointing to the moon.

[39:26]

It's like a hint, big hint. And the scholars are always trying to make it exact, right? present in the scriptures or in the commentaries and so forth. And they never will, because that's not where it is. It's a hint about what's inside. And it helps us to, you know, guide us in a certain way, but not to be hung up on it, not to be detached to those words. So if we rely on those words more than we rely on our practice, then that's more like scholarship. If we rely on our practice and use the scriptures to bounce off of and to help as a guide, then it works.

[40:34]

But the main thing is the practice in our own Verification, self-verification, and then checking it with the scriptures so that you know you're not going off in some other wrong direction. So, don't think of Zazen and your daily life as two different things. Don't try to impose this thing on that thing, or that thing on this thing. It's just one thing. When you drink your tea, just drink your tea, but don't try to put the tea on your pillow, or the teacup on your pillow.

[41:58]

When you go to bed, put your head on the pillow. Do you have a question? One thing that comes to mind is how much you emphasize living from your Hara, as the sort of place wherever you are. It's the same as cultivating the soil. This is maybe the ground, right here. This is where your legs go out this way, your body goes out this way. That's the midpoint. And the solar plexus and the Hara, I like to think of them as the same. But some people, well, the hara is two inches below the navel and the solar plexus is three inches above the navel or something like that. But it's this area, right? This is the key of C, the sea of key. The sea of key.

[43:01]

Key is, it's breath, but it means more than just breath. It's vital center. And it's the center of intuition. If you want to talk about chakras, which I don't, it's the chakra of intuition, which means that's where you connect directly without having to think. This is the umbilical, right? where you're connected to the Mother. And even though you're no longer connected to the Mother here, your Earth Mother, you're connected to your Buddha Mother, Buddha nature, still here, still the same place. So don't cover up your belly button. Keep that open.

[44:08]

We tend to operate, we develop the intellect, which is fine, but the problem is that you fill the head too much, then it gets top heavy. So this is the balance point. It's fine for it to fill the head up to a certain point, but it should not get any heavier than this. This is the weight that keeps the head from rolling off in the wrong direction and overbalancing and so forth. this is first and this is second. Well, this is first, this is second, and this is third. So, intuition comes first and then the head intellectualizes it. Ross? You spoke very lovingly What's the ideal now?

[45:17]

Well, the ideal now is to work with what we have wherever we find ourselves, in whatever place, position, that's the place. So I don't have some ideal beyond that. Sometimes I think, whenever I go to Bolinas, I think, I really wanna live here. But, and my wife says, gee, I'd really like to live in the mountains. But I live here. and I live with all of you, and that's where I am. I once lived here. And then my wife said, you know, I really want to have a house.

[46:24]

And I said, oh, we can't do that. And then a year later, she said, you know, I really want to have a house. I said, you know, that's nice. And then one time she said, I really want to have a house. And I said, okay. I didn't think about it. I didn't think I can't do that or this is where I really want to be or anything. I just said, okay. So we bought a house and moved. What I missed living here was being in the midst of the sangha, you know. when I was living here, people coming in and out all the time, you know, and it's just everything moving really nicely and just being in the middle of the activity.

[47:25]

So I miss that. But on the other hand, I get to ride my bike here every day. And that's kept me healthy. And also, I live outside, which is where most people live, so that helps me be an example of how to live outside and still practice, still come to the Zen Dojo every day. So, you know, there are good things, I mean, I don't know about good and bad, but there are things that work well in both situations. So although it's nice to have the ideal that I had, I don't regret it. I don't have it. I just have other circumstances, that's all. And that works well. So that's my ideal, is to just make wherever I am work.

[48:35]

Thank you. Muddy water? No. The lotus doesn't exist without muddy water. It's like fish can't live in pure water. You know, the lotus and the mud are not different. They look different. They have different qualities. But they need each other. So we need our delusion.

[49:39]

If we didn't have our delusion, we wouldn't need enlightenment. So the trick is to go beyond delusion and enlightenment. Enlightenment is a highly exaggerated commodity in our time. We get very attached to it, you know, and we think, oh, Buddhism is about enlightenment. It's good. Enlightenment is good. Don't get too excited about it.

[50:22]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ