The Zen teacher, Jajo, one day said, someone asked him, actually it was Jajo asked his teacher, what is the way? And Jajo's teacher, Nanchuan, said, everyday mind is the way. How is that? So, are you already within the way or not? Everyday mind is the way. Jajo said, how can I approach it?

[01:03]

He must not have thought he was there. How can I approach it? His teacher, Nanchuan, said, as soon as you try to approach it, you miss it. Where did you think you'd go? So, Jajo said, if you can't approach it, how can you attain it? How can you know it? Nanchuan said, the way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. To know is a delusion, not to know is indifference. When you attain the way, it is as if you are in the great void, free from obstruction

[02:17]

and limitation. At that time, what does it have to do with assertion or denial? Everyday mind, what is it? What is it like? How can you identify it? Can you tell? What is the mark, what would indicate whether or not it's everyday mind? Does it have a mark? Can you distinguish everyday mind from any other mind?

[03:20]

I don't think so. So, does that make any difference, knowing that? What do you think? Everyday mind is the way. Mind itself is Buddha. So I, you know, every so often I give myself these little lectures, especially when I come here to Green Gulch, I have a chance to give myself a little lecture. And you happen to be here, so I share it with you too. I need to hear this sort of thing pretty often, I don't know about you. Because a lot of the time, or frequently, I find myself thinking that this could not

[04:23]

be the way. I mean, if this is the way, it is in terrible shape. This summer, I went with my daughter, we drove to Idaho, to go river rafting on the Salmon River. We were driving, we were about 45 minutes from Salmon, Idaho, and we were right on schedule. We were due to be in Salmon at 7 o'clock in the evening for a meeting of the people going river rafting. It was about 6 or 6.15, and I was just congratulating myself for once in my life, I was going to be on time. Now sometimes I think, perhaps this is a mistake, to congratulate yourself, you know, how it is. Because I had just finished congratulating myself, out loud, to my daughter, that we

[05:33]

were in fact going to be early. Me, of all people. She was more concerned at that point with a spot of chocolate that had gotten on the bottom of her yellow shorts. Rather distressing circumstance. At some point I think she was taking them off in order to, you know, and we had some mineral water, I think she was going to scrub it or something. Anyway, I congratulated myself, and then, you know, I happened to look up, and there were beautiful mountains, and the sky was so blue. How wonderful. And then, I looked at the road, and there were some rocks on the road. These are known as road hazards. And it didn't quite occur to me to swerve, you know. So we hit them head on.

[06:36]

One in particular was about this high. It was right in front of the right front wheel. My daughter, who was busy looking at the little spot of chocolate on her yellow shorts, did not notice the rocks. And I, who was busy congratulating myself, enjoying the sky, the clarity of the day, did not notice the rocks until, you know, we were about to hit them. There was a rather, there was quite a loud noise, you know, crunch, cram. And then, that woke up my daughter, and she wondered what that was. Well, sure enough, the right front tire had blown out, and it was dead. It was very flat, so it pulled off. I was quite angry about this. At first, I wasn't so angry, but as time went on, I got more and more angry.

[07:36]

Because, you know, nowadays, anyway, this car, the trunk is, of course, full of luggage. And where is the spare tire? The spare tire is underneath the floor of the trunk, underneath all the luggage. You want the spare tire, you have to take everything out of your trunk, put it by the side of the road, it's all dirty and dusty there. And then, you have to get out the spare tire. And spare tires these days, they're like these little donuts. Have you seen those things? They're not the size of regular tires, you know, they're smaller. They're these wimpy little things that then, because, I don't know what it is, you know, it's an economy measure or something, don't give them another tire, give them this little thing. Anyway, that sort of annoyed me. And then, I looked in the instruction book, and it says, don't drive over 45 miles an hour. Anyway, so I was quite angry, and I take it all kind of personally. Now, I don't know about you, but, you know, I figure, I figure, I'm a nice person, I do

[08:39]

spiritual practice, I practice meditation, I give donations to Zen Center, I give donations to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. What do you want? I mean, lay off, you know. I've been doing all this spiritual practice, I don't deserve this anymore. I'm beyond this now, you know. Don't you understand? What's wrong with you? And I start talking to the universe like this, you know. Somehow, I think to, you know, I kind of learned that it doesn't help much to talk to people like this, you know. People, they don't care, you know. I mean, they're going to do what they do anyway, right. But, the universe, I feel like it's impersonal enough, you know, I can take on the universe, right. Well, I finally got the tire on there, got everything packed back into the trunk, you know, and then I was driving down the road, and I started exclaiming rather loudly, I

[09:41]

kind of, you know, bleep the universe, you know, bleep the universe. And then I made a gesture out the window of my car. Not out the window, but in the car. It just so happened there was this pickup truck. With some young Idaho natives. I was just talking to the universe. It was nothing personal, you know. I wasn't gesturing really towards them, you know. Anyway, they took it rather gracefully. The fellow on the passenger side just stuck his hand out the window. And they went on driving. I was a little worried that they'd stop. Or try to run me off the road or something. I didn't know what Idaho was like, you know. I was going to have to explain, you know. I was just talking to the universe. I just had a flat tire. Well, I've been having a lot of these kind of experiences lately. I don't know what your life is like. Maybe your life goes really nicely, right? But I somehow, you know, I get the picture that the universe is not going to behave the way I would like it to if I had the choice.

[10:49]

You know, that's another version of Murphy's Law. In fact, Murphy's Law is just another version of the First Noble Truth. Okay, we're back to Buddhism, you see. And the First Noble Truth is life is suffering, you know. It doesn't work out the way that you would like it to if you had the choice. Alright. But then, you know, you might think that if you did some spiritual practice it would do you some good, right? And that it would be kind of like, I think, you know, I used to think spiritual practice is like an insurance policy, right? It's like a spiritual insurance policy. You do a little meditation and then things are going to go better. Did you, you know, right? I mean, otherwise what's the point, right? Why sit around on a black cushion and face the wall, you know, and then you sit there and you have to put up with whatever is happening, right? Oh, my. Are you going to sit still for this? What would be worth sitting still for after all, right? Well, maybe if it was, you know, calm or blissful or something, I could sit still for that. But this, you know, my mind doing this stuff and my knees and my back, I don't know.

[11:55]

You know, what's the point of sitting still for that? Unless, you know, you're going to get some, you know, things are going to be better in the future, right? It's kind of like you pay your money now and then it gets better later. Well, I don't think it works like that, you see. And this is terribly frustrating to find this out so late in life, I mean, you know. And having put in all this time and effort into spiritual practice and find out it's, you know, what's it good for? So, I wanted to bring this up for your consideration today. So, of course, this all reminded me of a story that Stephen Levine and other people like to tell about Sister Teresa. I don't know where they get this story, but they say that Sister Teresa, when she was quite old, she got tuberculosis. And she began exclaiming to God, how could you do this to me?

[12:57]

I've been your faithful and devoted servant all my life. And now you give me all this pain. And she heard a voice saying, Sister, but I give pain to all my friends. And she is reputed to have replied, perhaps that's why you have so few. So, you see, we have this great question now. Is spiritual practice the way out of suffering or is it the way in? You know, what is spiritual practice about then? Well, so I think about this a fair amount. And there was, well anyway, I have lots of stuff to talk about today, but I'll skip a few things.

[14:05]

I'm going to keep you here too long otherwise. So, what I wanted to concentrate then on focusing on about this is, I wanted to actually talk to you about work. About work. And spiritual practice is work. And what is this work and what do you do when you do this kind of work? And work has a kind of, I don't usually talk about work. I usually talk about how you're already within the way and isn't it okay? You know, another story about Zhao Zhou, he said, Buddhahood is defilements, is passion. Passion is Buddhahood. A monk says, who does Buddha give passion to? And Zhao Zhou said, Buddha gives passion, defilements to everyone.

[15:09]

The monk said, how do we get rid of them? Zhao Zhou said, why would you want to get rid of them? So usually I say to you, hey, where did you want to get to? What did you want to make your mind over into? Did you want to do some more violence to yourself, to your body, to your mind and say, no, that's not good enough for me and I'd like some of that. And we do this to our own bodies and minds, to our own feelings, physical sensations, thoughts, various things. And we kind of tell ourselves about, you know, we judge it and criticize it and label it and then we evaluate it and then we come up with, well, I guess you've got a ways to go, don't you? You know, that kind of thing. I guess your spiritual practice isn't advanced enough, because otherwise you wouldn't have problems like this, would you? And various things, I don't know, do you do that stuff? You're all so silent, like maybe you don't do that stuff, I'm the only one. I believe it.

[16:11]

All right, anyway, I find myself doing this sort of thing and I usually try to say, look, don't, you know, don't inflict violence on yourself, right? Don't try too hard, right? Trying to get rid of these things that are just Buddhahood, why don't you try to get rid of Buddhahood? You call it defilement, but it's also Buddhahood, right? So why do you call it defilement and not Buddhahood? Interesting. Jaju also said, It's like a transparent crystal. When a foreigner approaches, it reflects the foreigner as such. When a native Chinese approaches, it reflects a native Chinese as such. And then he said, I take a leaf of grass and let it be a golden-bodied 16-foot Buddha. I take a golden-bodied 16-foot Buddha and let it be a leaf of grass. So how do you take defilement and delusion? Do you take it as something to get rid of,

[17:13]

or do you take it as a golden-bodied 16-foot Buddha, which is defilement? Which is it? So how do you treat it? So this is the work. This is work. Because we don't have much choice about it. We get road hazards. And some of them are pretty big road hazards, and some of them are pretty little, and it doesn't seem to be possible to be impeccable enough to avoid all these things. They get there. They get to you. Boom. They get to you. And they get through all of the stuff that you put out. Like, hey, aren't I a nice person? Shouldn't you be respectful towards me? And then somebody comes along and they don't care what kind of practice I've been doing or anything, and they treat me like dirt. Isn't that something?

[18:14]

Well, those people must not be very enlightened or aware, right? Anyway. So we get these things, right? These are the ingredients. And sometimes we get poor ingredients. Poor ingredients. And then we have to figure out, what do we do with poor ingredients, you see? This is work. To figure out what to do with poor ingredients. And to try out something. And to pick up something that is pretty, you know, disgusting. And say, gee, maybe I can, you know, what is it of value here? And that's work, isn't it? To pick up some kind of filthy something and then say, is there anything of value here? Can I use this for anything? And then it sort of smells, you know? And there'd be a lot nicer things to do, like, you know, I don't know, MTV or who knows what. You know, walk to the beach. I don't care. But here's this smelly thing. You've got to deal with it, you know? Because if you don't deal with it,

[19:17]

it gets even smellier, right? And then you've got to have even more insulation from all the smell, right? And then after a while, with all the insulation, we get to feeling distant from our life. And like our life is happening somewhere else, right? See? That's how it works. So the work is to take down the insulation and barriers and pick up all that stuff that is so filthy and messy and dirty and say, what's of value here? Is there a jewel in it or not? See? What's of value? What can I do with it? And then to separate what's of value from what's not and to let go of what's not of value and to use what's of value. See? That's work. That's the work of picking up, handling, observing, examining, discriminating, deciding, sorting, sorting things out,

[20:18]

separating the pure from the impure, separating the rice from the dirt, you know, separating the mold from the tomato. This is work. You see? And then letting go of what you can't use. So we often think, well, I'd like to let go of it without doing all that work, right? But see, it doesn't work like that. If you let go of it without doing the work, that's called repression. That's called putting up barriers. That's called the garbage is over there, it's not here. I don't, you know, that's called my life smells pretty nice. So this is, it's hard work, and it's called sometimes shit work. You see? And it's terribly boring, and it's terribly annoying to have to do it, and it's terribly frustrating, and there's so much of it, and you start to wonder, how high can I pile this stuff? You know, before I find something to do with it all.

[21:20]

It's kind of overwhelming. You know? So I think, I've noticed, you see, that it looks like as a culture, we're not very good at working anymore. I mean, a lot of us work hard, but you know the Japanese said about Charlotte Maillard when she organized the bridge party, they said, geez, if she was working for Ford or General Motors, we'd be in trouble. And they said, you Americans sure know how to party, if you work like that, boy, we'd have a hard time. But I've told you before about those articles in the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago that one said, even canned corn stumps modern cooks, and it said that Pillsbury took the directions off the canned corn. They got so many calls from consumers wondering what to do, they put the directions back on. What did the directions say? Put corn in saucepan on heated burner.

[22:23]

A lot of people couldn't figure that out. And a friend of mine said, well, I'm like that. She said, well, do you drain the corn or not? And the other article said, how much will people pay not to cook? Plenty. And then people will pay three to five times the price of ingredients, if you buy them separately, to have them prepared, you know, frozen scalloped potatoes, or pizza, or all these things, right? Then you don't have to do the work. And it said, that nowadays most Americans are unwilling to spend any more than 20 minutes preparing dinner. And it said something like 20% or 25% of families, it's estimated, never eat dinner together anymore. The housewife buys all the packaged goods, puts them in the pantry, everybody in the family has their own television set in their own room. During the station breaks, they have access to the pantry, the microwave, and the stove, just like anybody else does. And they can put out, you know, put together their favorite

[23:26]

within the commercial breaks, and they can have their dinner, and that's that, and they have disposable dishes, and, you know, no problem. You see, now this is called happiness is not having to really deal with anything. To really deal with anything, to really have to pick up anything, to have to handle it, to have to experience something out there that you don't know what it's going to do. Right? It's much easier to get something that's packaged and prepared for you already, right? See how easy that is, how nice, how simple, how pleasurable life can be. And there's not only all the packaged goods, you see, but all the packaged entertainment, and then packaged shopping malls, and packaged places to live, and you can even come to a Zen center, it's a pretty nice package too. It's pretty hard to get away from this packaging, you see. So happiness is having a nice continuous supply

[24:27]

of packaged experiences of the sort that you go for. You know, you don't want it to be, you know, you'd like it, sometimes, you know, entertainment, nice and scary, oh boy, but, you know, it's just entertainment, right? It's not really happening to you, but you can have some vicarious entertainment, you see. Isn't that interesting? So this is, again, you see, it's work, it's work to have to, to have to experience something that's not packaged, and to have to deal with it, and to have to respond to it. This is called work. And it's also, interestingly enough, you see, it's not just, since work has gotten a bad name, but this is also called a labor of love, you see. This is to labor with love, a labor of love. And nobody, none of us, we don't really do this, finally, for anything, but out of love.

[25:27]

You know, to pick up something, to handle it, to look at it, to spend some time with it, and then to sort out exactly what to do. Isn't that tremendous? That's a tremendous amount of work there, you see. It's a labor, and it's love that does it, you see. And the interesting thing is, I mean, so much of the time, love, our love is rather lazy, you see. And we think, I'm a loving person, but actually when it gets down to it, you know, I'm pretty, I can be pretty lazy about it. I don't, my love is not actually laboring, right. And actually, for it to be love, it has to labor. You can't have just love, you know, yeah, love, you know, in some abstract.

[26:28]

What makes it love is this labor of picking things up and examining and responding with some exactness and carefulness and thoroughness to what's in front of you, what's outside of you, what doesn't do what you would like it to do if you had the choice. What are you going to do with that stuff, you see? And so there's a certain amount of labor, of work in refining love, in refining this effort to meet what's out there. So I want to give you a couple of poems by Rilke about this. The first is, I've told you about these poems before, but, you know, again, I don't, you know,

[27:31]

I can stand to hear them again, so, you can too. And some of you haven't heard them, so. You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything. The darkness of every infinite ball. The shivering blaze of each step up. There are those who live on and want nothing and are raised to the rank of prince by the slippery ease of their light judgments. But what you love to see are faces that do work and feel thirst. Most of all, you love those who need you like a crowbar or a hoe. It is not too late, and you are not too old, to dive into the increasing depths of your life, where it calmly gives out its secret. Okay?

[28:31]

So that's the image of diving into the increasing depths of your life. You think that's not work, you see? If you sit, if you practice sitting meditation, you have not much possibility of doing anything else but ending up in the depths and floundering around. You see? And then, it's a certain kind of work to support and encourage yourself to do that kind of work in the first place and to understand how to bring your love into that circumstance and situation and to have your love labor there in the depths. The other poem by Rilke

[29:39]

is a little different focus on this. He says, Whoever you are, take a step outside of your house that you know so well. Enormous space is near. It lies where your house begins. Whoever you are, enormous space is near. Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves away from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes, slowly, slowly lift one black tree up against the sky, skinny, alone. With this, you have made the world. The world is immense and like a word still growing in the silence. The world is immense

[30:51]

and like a word still growing in the silence. So this is tremendous work that any of us can do and it takes a lot of it takes all of us. You know, it takes everything you have to do this kind of work. Otherwise, it can't be done. It can't be done with less than everything you have. But what you love to see are faces that do work in this way, you see. Because the world is immense and whatever we pick up, you know, I take a leaf of grass

[31:54]

and let it be a golden-bodied sixteen-foot Buddha. I take a golden-bodied sixteen-foot Buddha and let it be a leaf of grass. Whatever you pick up, it's immense. It can destroy you. It can satisfy you completely. You don't know what it will do to you, what you will do with it. This is terribly, you know, precarious. Terribly, you know, at that time we are completely vulnerable and exposed and we don't know what will happen next, what will happen to me. And you can feel it just if you start to follow your breath, you know, and then go, wait a minute now, why don't I stop deciding

[32:55]

how my breath is going to go? Let's just see how it goes if I don't figure it out ahead of time. And then it turns out, you know, my body is not mine, right? My mind is not mine. Wow. There's not much possibility of controlling it. What's going to happen to me? What will I do? And to be willing to be with yourself in that way, with somebody else in that way, with food in that way, with dirt in that way, with anything in that way, is tremendously valuable work to be doing. And it is work, and it's a labor of love. And it's how, it's love that labors to be loved. See? So do you suppose

[33:57]

this is anything different than what you've been doing all of your life? Everyday mind is the way? Jajo Ino also said, the student asked him, what is the true self? And Jajo said, have you had your breakfast? The monk said, yes. And Jajo said, well, wash your dishes. And one day, a visitor to the monastery, Jajo was sweeping the temple, and the visitor said, you're a great enlightened Zen teacher, how come you still have to fool around and deal with the dust? He said, it comes from outside. He was clever, that old Jajo. Someone also asked him,

[34:58]

why do you have to work at sweeping when your temple is already so clean and pure? And Jajo said, look, there goes another one. So that's really interesting. You see, this kind of work does not end. You know, he said, the great way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. The great way is not something that you attain through intention. It's not something that you can discriminate from other moments which are not the great way. When you realize this, it is like being in the great void where there's no obstruction and no limitation. Do you suppose there's also no work to be done? You see, suddenly, somehow,

[35:58]

that time, it seems, I wonder about this, you see, it seems like at that time work is not such a problem. And this effort and labor flows forth. Anyway, I would say this kind of work is endless. Spiritual practice will not bring you to the end of this kind of work. Spiritual practice is the way to do this work. And spiritual practice is not about some recipe that's going to give you a delicious experience. Follow the recipe

[37:01]

and then you get blissed out or you have some nice experience. You know, you feel real good or something. I don't think so. Gosh, I must not have followed the recipe right. My back still hurts. My knees are still the problem. So I think it's more like, as I've been saying, spiritual practice is kind of work. And this is the kind of work as you can see, it's like a labor of love and it's love and work like this that connects us with the world, which is the kind of work and connecting with things like that that makes us whole also. And it's necessary to do that work to be whole, you see, to experience your wholeness. Already you're whole. Already we're each whole.

[38:02]

Everyday mind is the way. And still it's possible when we do this kind of work we experience our wholeness. Sometimes I wonder why does it have to be so hard? Why? But it doesn't seem like there's any answer for that. But it is. It is hard. It is hard work. And yet it's the kind of work that we find is very rewarding and fulfilling the kind of work we're doing. Even if in the end we have not much to show for it. You know, your kids grow up. Leave home. Whatever, right?

[39:03]

Oh, I was going to tell you one other thing. No, I'm just going to stop. So later in the summer I was with my daughter. We were driving back from Tassajara. And she said, You know, Dad, there's nothing in life that you can depend on. Oh, really? I said, Wow, I'm already 14 years old. She's, you know, learning fast, huh? Kids are pretty smart these days. And then she said, Yeah, you know, the people that you, you know, the people, they grow old. And then there's people they move away. And there's people that when you call them on the phone they're not there. You can't depend on them. And the place where you used to live it's not there anymore. It changes. And then there's more highways and things.

[40:10]

And there's not trees where they used to be. There's nothing, there's nothing you can depend on. And I couldn't help, of course, saying to her that, Gee, I guess you understand something about the First Noble Truth of Buddhism. Sounds like it. She said, What's that? I said, Think about it for a minute. And then we both said together, Everything changes. But you see, this is the same thing. That, you know, we all have addictive personalities and we'd like to have a steady supply of something to depend on. And yet we don't. And so we have to work to respond to the stuff that comes along. So good luck. Thank you.

[41:18]

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