I don't know whether to say anything about this or not, but sometimes I think when I see people who have a lot of experience sitting zazen, sitting on the bench, I think you're wasting such a good opportunity, because then if you're sitting zazen, even if I don't say anything worthwhile, you haven't wasted time. This morning I want to return to this theme of taking refuge in sangha. Sangha in Buddhism we have what we call the three treasures or the three jewels of Buddhism, are Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Buddha is maybe our own fundamental nature, the fundamental nature of all beings, the universal function maybe, the life force that enlivens all of us. Dharma,

[01:15]

Buddha also means sometimes the historical teacher who began this particular stream of human endeavor in which we find ourselves now. Dharma is a word that has many meanings and it means just phenomena, but in the sense of taking refuge in Dharma we say taking refuge in the truth of all things as it is, phenomenal existence as it is, or sometimes Dharma means the teaching of the historical teacher who began Buddhism, the Buddha. And Sangha means again many things. It means peace and harmony. I hear you, Roshi used to say

[02:21]

all the time, Sangha means peace and harmony. And when we chant on the full moon we have a ceremony and one of the things we chant is these three refuges and we say, bringing harmony to everyone free from hindrance, we chant the Sangha refuge. Sangha means also the community of practitioners. It may mean, you may think of it as meaning all beings or you may think of it as meaning just this community with which we're practicing now. It has many connotations. And in that connotation of this community of beings with whom we practice now, I want to think a little bit about it with you. If we are to take refuge in Sangha

[03:22]

we need to have confidence that it's a Sangha in which we feel we can take refuge. And does that mean that we expect that someone else will create a Sangha in which I can find refuge? Or does it mean that since this Sangha includes each of us, we ourselves are the Sangha. And if we want to have a Sangha in which we feel we can take refuge, then each of us wants to cultivate that which will help us have a Sangha that will feel a safe Sangha in which to take refuge.

[04:26]

We might think about what would make a Sangha safe for us to really undertake this practice of the Buddha Dharma, which as Dogen Senji says, to study Buddhism is to study the self. And to study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to be awakened by all things. But if we want a Sangha which will encourage us to study the self, a Sangha in which we will feel safe to forget the self and meet all things as ourselves, then we have to, each of us, think about what do we want this Sangha to be and how can I make this the Sangha that I need

[05:35]

in which my practice can develop, in which I can study the self, in which I can allow the flower of this life force to bloom, in which I can find encouragement. I think in order for the Sangha to be a safe place for us to be so open, then we need a Sangha which involves mutual appreciation, a Sangha in which we fully appreciate one another, a Sangha in which there is acceptance of each one of us as we are, as well as encouragement for us to cultivate our practice. A Sangha in which there is warmth and humor. We don't want to be too dry. We don't want to take ourselves too seriously.

[06:36]

I have a close relationship with someone who often says, life is much too serious to take it so seriously. I have these notes but my eyes and the distance of this podium are exactly... I can't see it anyway. I couldn't also do without the notes, probably too. In other words, we want to shape a vessel which will hold and nurture our practice and which will nurture the practice of anyone who comes to practice, which will encourage anyone who comes to practice to participate in this fashioning of a vessel which will sustain us in

[07:43]

our effort to practice. So how can we do it? Dogen Zenji has a fascicle in his work, the Eye of the... hmm, let's see, the true Dharma Eye, Shobogenzo, the treasury of the true Dharma Eye, which he calls the four methods of guidance of a Bodhisattva. A Bodhisattva is a being who has... who vows to help all beings to liberation before herself or before himself. So the four methods of guidance of a Bodhisattva are generosity, kind speech, beneficial action and identity action.

[08:55]

So first generosity. You may think of generosity as giving material things, but in this sense it's not so much giving material things, it's more giving... well, essentially it's giving ourselves away. One teacher says generosity is relinquishment. Relinquishment of what? Relinquishment of self-clinging, of clinging to an idea of self. But this generosity is maybe... maybe the best thing... way we can think about generosity is to give everyone what we want. In the sense that I was talking about before, to give everyone support and encouragement and acceptance and appreciation and warmth and humor.

[10:04]

To give people what we ourselves want and need. And kindness or kind speech, you know, to make this effort again and again to be careful in our speech. To not use speech which will hurt others. To try to notice before we say something that might be hurtful, oh, I don't really want to say that. And beneficial action is action which helps others. In this context perhaps, action which helps others to develop the practice which they want to develop. And identity action is action which does not see a difference between self and other, which does not put up a barrier between self and other.

[11:15]

But action which... in which we act... in which we act toward each being as ourself. But, you know, we practice very hard and however much I try to be generous, however much I remind myself to be generous and however much I vow to be generous, stinginess comes up. Before I know it, there is stinginess. A stingy thought or a stingy action. And however much I want and try to be kind, unkindness comes up. And however much I want to be beneficial, some action comes up which I see as harmful. And however much I want to base my life on identity action, something comes up which is clearly based on a feeling of separateness. I find myself such a hopeless case. What shall I do? What shall I do?

[12:40]

But just seeing this hopelessness, just seeing how often the actual way in which I conduct myself is different than how I want to, is what... you know, that's how I began searching and found this practice. However much I wanted to be a good wife and mother, I was lousing it up, you know, and however much I wanted to be a good friend, I kept messing it up. And in my anguish and desperation, I started looking for somebody, somewhere, somehow, who could help me understand my life in some way, understand how to approach some cultivation of living with more kindness and more care.

[13:53]

And in that search, I hopped into Suzuki Roshi. And I had the conviction that he could, you know, that whatever it was he was doing, and had been doing for the last 50 years in his life, looked like it might help me. So I began to sit Sazen and I began to study this way. And the more hopeless I feel, the more it spurs me on to practice harder. So I can't feel too bad about this hopelessness. It just helps me to keep practicing Sazen and to keep studying the Buddha Dharma and to keep paying more attention to my actions of body, speech and mind, so that perhaps I can be more careful.

[14:56]

I was recently at a two-week period of intense study at Tassajara. And one of the teachers there was a teacher named Akiyama Sensei, a Japanese teacher who is now teaching in Milwaukee. And I found him very inspiring. And I want to include in this talk some notes that I took from his talk. In talking about Dukkha, Dukkha is a Sanskrit word which is often translated as suffering.

[16:04]

And he says, Dukkha is when the world doesn't go the way we want it to. That's when we suffer. The world just doesn't go the way we want it. In Nature, he was talking about a video that his brother sent him. I don't know if it was the same one that I saw, but there was, this past year, a wonderful video on the development of the universe, the Big Bang and all that followed. And he said, in Nature, whatever happens, it's okay. There was the Big Bang, and then there was all this matter and energy, and the matter began to form a little, condense into bigger pieces.

[17:10]

And then bigger ones came together, and sometimes they came together and they would break apart, and sometimes they came together and made a bigger one. Somebody says, they come together and they break apart, it's okay. They came together and they made a bigger one, it's okay. Whatever happens in Nature, it's okay. But for us, what happens to human beings, if it doesn't go the way we want it to go, we think the world is going to come to an end. So, he says, what's the problem? The problem is this fellow, he says, pointing to his head. The problem is this fellow. We just need to chop it off and put it down here and just sit. This is what his first teacher told him. The problem is this fellow. Just chop it off and put it next to you and just sit. But we have these thoughts, and we think these thoughts are real, and then we get into trouble because we attach reality to these thoughts.

[18:29]

What I want is, you know, I need more money. We get this thought, I need more money. And it becomes very real to us. And then we worry and we fret about it. He said, a woman came to me and she said, we need more money. And I said, why? She says, well, if we don't have more money, we can't eat. He says, we're eating now, aren't we? Yes, but our daughter is going to be old enough for college in a few years, and we don't have enough money to send her to college. He says, but someone who's intelligent enough to get into college and doesn't have enough money, I think in this country can get financial aid and get into college. But what if someone in the family gets really sick, you know, what will we do? Well, don't we have insurance? Yes, we do. And on and on. He says, unfortunately, this woman was my wife. But he says, this is the way our minds work.

[19:40]

He says, this fellow, this mind of ours, you know, it just produces thoughts. That's what it does. And if we attach reality to them and really believe them, then we get into a lot of mental suffering. And if we just sit without thinking of anything, thoughts arise. Many, many thoughts occur. Or we go to sleep. So if we think we're not just sitting, and after all, this practice is just sitting, and if we sleep, we're not just sitting. What are we going to do? Thinking is just what the brain does. It just does that. And we can't stop it from thinking any more than we can stop blood from circulating.

[20:55]

And sleeping is just a natural function of the brain also. When we're trying to sit and we start thinking, the moment we realize I'm thinking, we have returned to just sitting. When we're sitting and we fall asleep, the moment we realize I'm sleeping, we've returned to just sitting. Always we find this repetition in Zazen of thinking and returning to sitting, sleeping and returning to sitting, thinking and returning to sitting. Just this repetition is what we can do. This is our just sitting. This is our Zazen.

[22:05]

When we think of it in that way, when we understand it in that way, it's not so defeating every time we think, Oh, I've gotten caught up in my thoughts again. Oh, I've fallen asleep again. It's not that Zazen is only when you're completely alert and awake and in this moment and not thinking of anything. That's Zazen. And all of this stuff of having thoughts arise and noticing thoughts arise and returning to sitting is not Zazen. Zazen is big enough to include all of that. And that's what our Zazen is. It's just being willing to stay with yourself as you are. Not setting up some expectation of some ideal or perfect being who is not bothered by thoughts or who is not bothered by falling asleep or is not bothered by discomfort in our knees or whatever.

[23:20]

Just to be willing to stay with our life as it is and not move away from our life. That's this immobile sitting that Dogen Zenji talks about in Fukan Zazenji. This immobile sitting is not being a rock without thoughts or feelings. This immobile sitting is being a living, breathing human being trying to stay with our life just as it is. With all of the circumstances and causes and conditions and karmic accumulations of this life as it is. And when anger arises, noticing that anger has arisen and trying to let it go. When a selfish thought arises, noticing that a selfish thought has arisen and trying to let it go.

[24:29]

When greed arises, when judgment arises, when all of these thoughts that we would be more comfortable without perhaps arise, these afflictive emotions. When they arise, to see them and try to let them go. Try not to be caught up in believing that each one of them is the truth. But just that this is what I'm thinking now. Uchiyama Roshi had an expression. Uchiyama Roshi was a teacher in a lineage that is very dear to me because my sewing teacher, the teacher that taught us how to sew these Buddha robes that we wear here, was from that lineage. And I practiced with her. We all practiced with her here for many years and I loved her a lot.

[25:41]

And she was, I don't know if all of you know this gesture which we call gassho, palms together it means, but it's a gesture which emphasizes non-separation or no difference. You can say like these the two dichotomies right and left or right and wrong or good and bad or up and down or black and white or man and woman. All of these dichotomous ways in which we think of the world in gassho we put them together and drop them. So often we bow to each other in gassho as Buddha recognizing Buddha. And late in her life when she had had a stroke and had cataracts and was not really able to do what she loved to do which was to sew these Buddha robes.

[26:54]

She wrote to me from the new Antaiji Monastery that had been recently built. The Antaiji Monastery that her teacher had founded had been on the outskirts of Kyoto when it was first built. But the city kind of grew up and encroached around it and the monks decided they would like to have, this is kind of unusual monastery, they really just sit zazen and go out with their begging bows begging and had a garden and they didn't do any ceremonies at all. They just sat a lot of zazen and they wanted to move out of the city. So they sold this property in Kyoto and moved out into the mountains, the deep mountains and built a new monastery. And she wrote me and sent me some pictures of this new monastery and her little house. And she said the monks have built me my own little house and they take very good care of me and I live a life of gratitude and gassho.

[28:00]

And I was very, very moved and impressed by that. I thought at the time, if when I get toward the end of my life and I can't do any of the things that I used to do that were useful and I have to depend on other people to take care of me, if at that time I can say I live a life of gratitude and gassho, wouldn't that be wonderful? So it really made me appreciate the practice she had by that time been practicing since she was a teenager. I was middle-aged before I ever heard of zazen. So perhaps this lifetime won't be a time when I can feel myself living a life of gratitude and gassho by the time I get old and infirm. But still, it made me feel very good about this practice to receive her letter.

[29:05]

So her dharma brother was Uchiyama Roshi. And he's a teacher who has done a lot of his writing is in English. I don't know if you know the book Refining Your Life, there's a book which he wrote. Approach to Zen is another one. Several other books in English. He studied Western philosophy in college and he's one of not so many teachers of his generation in Japan who welcomed Western students. And he had an expression which he said, opening the hand of thought. In Approach to Zen, it was translated as letting go of thought. But Uchiyama sensei said, literally it means opening the hand of thought. So that when we're sitting and we notice that we have grasped a thought and it's dragging us around or we're being compelled by it.

[30:22]

And our state of mind is being disturbed by it. If we notice that we have grasped it, then perhaps we can open the hand of thought and let it go. So that our work in Zazen is mainly to notice. Mainly to bring our attention to what's happening and notice what's going on. It's not to fix something that's wrong. There's nothing wrong with us that our mind produces all of these thoughts. It's just the natural functioning of our mind. And the contents of the thoughts that our mind produces come from the circumstances of our particular life. All of the causes and conditions and circumstances of our particular life. But what we can do is when we notice that we are causing ourselves suffering by grasping onto a thought and attributing reality to it.

[31:34]

Then we have some opportunity to let it go. I happen to have been on a fairly restricted diet for the last few years since I had a heart attack. And for the first few years that I was on a diet, I really would get... You know, I live in a community where somebody else does the cooking and we all come down and eat together. And I would get very kind of upset feeling when the meal that was offered to the whole community... I mean, on a rational level, I didn't see any reason that the whole community should be on as restricted a diet as I am. I mean, I know that. That's ridiculous. But on an emotional level, if something delicious was served that I couldn't eat, I would get a very grumpy feeling, you know. And I would not eat it, but I would feel, you know, dissatisfied. Actually, I would sort of feel dissatisfied for the whole rest of the day until the next meal.

[32:35]

I was kind of looking around and looking for something good I could eat. Because everybody else got something good I couldn't eat, you know. And I would just have that feeling of irritation and dissatisfaction. And, you know, I knew it was kind of silly, but it kept happening to me, you know. And I didn't exactly see what was happening. And down at Tassajara, one of the things that I really like a lot is baked custard. And it's something that we sometimes have for breakfast when we're eating in the Zendo. And down at Tassajara, where we eat all of our meals in the Zendo and we don't eat anything between meals except tea, which is pretty amazing at Tassajara, I must say. We had this breakfast and we had oatmeal, which I happened to like very much. And we had a fruit salad, which was wonderful. It was full of grapes. It was a real great fruit salad. And we had baked custard. And I sat there looking at my, you know, we eat in the Zendo and we have these three bowls.

[33:37]

And I sat there looking at my bowls before it was time to eat, after I'd been served. And there was this empty middle bowl, you know. And my sort of habitual thought came up. And I thought, come on, I mean, look at this meal. Look at all the oatmeal you can eat, all this fruit salad you can eat. People come and serve it to you. You know, how many people in the world would be overjoyed to have people come and serve them a meal of oatmeal and fruit salad like this? What are you doing? And I noticed that I was not, I did not go around all morning feeling dissatisfied. Oh, my mind was dissatisfied, you know. When I entertained that thought of, gee, all of those guys are getting something good I can't get, my mind got dissatisfied and I would feel as if my, you know, I would feel dissatisfied all morning. So, when you discover that kind of thing for yourself in your own thinking habits,

[34:38]

that gives you a little opening, a little freedom to make a choice. Well, you know, do I want to entertain this thought and feel like that, which I know how I'll feel, you know, or do I want to drop it and feel different? It gives us an opportunity to make those choices. It isn't that it's right or wrong to entertain whatever thought, it's just notice the result, you know, notice what your own experience is when you begin to notice what it's like when you grasp a thought and see if it's, if your life, you know, if you appreciate your life better, if you let go of some of the negative thoughts that you tend to grasp onto, just try it out and see what you see. And, you know, so in developing this Sangha,

[35:51]

see what it is that we need to make this Sangha a more welcoming place for you and try to offer it. If you think that there's something that some of us here who've been here longer could do that would make this Sangha a more welcoming place for you, try to find some kind way to let us know. Okay? And let's take on together this activity of fashioning a Sangha which will help us to practice, which will encourage us to do what we want to do, which will encourage us to bloom as we are, which will encourage us to manifest our Buddha nature on each moment.

[36:54]

May our intention equally...

[37:05]

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