Good morning. To practice Buddhism, we need what is sometimes called an enlightened attitude or bodhichitta, the thought of enlightenment. To practice Buddhism, we have to practice face-to-face with Buddha, with the patriarchs. And how you practice in this way is, from a practical point of view, is becoming familiar with the

[01:18]

possibilities. Zen is not something that requires practice, actually, nor do you have to practice here in the building or outside the building or anywhere. But that's also easy to say, but actually we need some practice. But you should know that you also don't need to practice, or Zen doesn't require practice. Usually, we spend quite a lot of time being pushed around by

[02:33]

feelings, as simple as, you know, I have to have a cup of coffee. Today will be terrible if I don't have a cup of coffee. I must do such and such in order for myself to feel right, or one part of you is always involved in appeasing the other part. And that's quite natural. It's, you know, working with our karma. But if it's too important, you know, really feel it strongly, that, oh, if I don't have a cup of coffee, then, you know, you don't have any freedom when you have that kind of feeling. There are so many feelings in us that are hard to see. Some of you feel, need to feel

[03:55]

so much that you are better than other people, or at the head of the line, that you make your practice sound pretty good to yourself. You feel your practice is quite good and you don't have to worry too much. That's okay, but often it's just that you need to have a good practice, not that your practice is actually good or bad. And some of you have a very persistent idea that something actually exists in this world. And some of you don't have such a strong idea and you're rather practical. You change, you do what's necessary to make things work, you know. If you have that kind of attitude, then your life may

[04:57]

be easier for you than somebody who believes something actually exists. It may be so easy that you don't ever actually practice. So that's one kind of problem, you know. The other kind of problem is the person who's very serious about life, is convinced that it matters. I mean, they take so for granted that something exists that they never question it. And when we talk about emptiness or how insubstantial the world is, they hear it and they believe it, but they only think it is in a certain range. Still they know that they exist and that things exist and what they do counts. And if they don't do such and such, that will matter. But you can't practice with that, really practice with that kind of feeling. How insubstantial this world actually is, you can't find out until

[06:04]

your ego covers everything. You know, you look at the moon and the moon exists in reflection in the water or shining on things or a feeling in your own, a perception in your own existence, but all those moons are not the real moon. So what's the real moon? Are there two moons or one moon or many moons? Some things like that you have to make sure about. As long as you have some doubt about Buddhism or maybe an I actually exists, you can't practice with a real sureness. We're practicing Buddhism to save all sentient beings. And if you have

[07:20]

some doubt about that you're practicing this particular sangha even, actually what it's doing is saving all sentient beings. You have to have that kind of confidence. If you don't have that kind of confidence you can't really practice. If you practice to save yourself you actually can't get behind it, you know. I mean you can think you want to save yourself but unless you're practicing to save all sentient beings you can't really get behind your practice, into your practice. Usually when we say save all sentient beings the usual response is that you're too concerned with whether you can do it or not or whether this sangha can do it or not or whether it's actually possible. That's irrelevant, you know, kind of thinking. You can only start. Without starting there's no saving all sentient beings. And luckily you're included

[08:31]

in all sentient beings. So if you save all sentient beings you're saving yourself. If you want to be first in line, you know, I'll get saved first and then I'll save the others, you know. It just, it simply doesn't work. So you have to have some kind of confidence in the world as Buddha explained it. As long as you have some negative feelings about other people or it means you don't really understand other people. Anything you actually understand you can't feel negative or positive about. So an enlightened attitude, I don't know, it's not, no words are

[09:46]

very adequate but English translations of Sanskrit terms are pretty confusing. So I'll try to talk about bodhicitta from various points of view. But if you recognize, you know, that an enlightened attitude is, or the thought of enlightenment is something, when you see how important that is, then you have the question of how to practice it. And you, there's no way but to start with the easy things you can do first. So you have to think about what, what realms, what fields of actualization, what fields of possibility can I actualize

[10:49]

this thought of enlightenment? It's like, I guess some of you know Paul Disko. Paul Disko is in Japan studying carpentry with one of the best carpenters in Japan. And he can't, he's very good here in America, he's quite a good carpenter, about as good as you can get. And, but in Japan he's very clumsy and unskilled because they're using Tang dynasty Chinese techniques and Muromachi period Japanese techniques and they're quite, they require a completely different way of working than Paul's used to. And you really have to get

[11:52]

into what your carpenter's doing, it's not a matter of a simple explanation or a gaining skill by just doing it over and over again. So what you do and what Paul does is he starts with what he can do. For instance, in Japan everybody wears this little fingernail longer than the rest, some custom. So Paul, at least Paul can do that. He may not be able to saw exactly like this carpenter but he can wear his little finger longer. So he wears his little fingernail longer. And he comes to work just when his carpenter comes to work and he follows exactly the same kind of schedule and lifestyle. Trying to get into the shoes of his tools, the skill, the being of his carpenter, teacher. There's some transference

[12:57]

which occurs when you do that. So likewise in Buddhism we want to get into Buddha's shoes or your teacher's shoes or your friend's shoes. You can't, this is one meaning of saving all sentient beings. A favorite story of Suzuki Roshi was of a carpenter who he knew. I don't know whether he knew him here in America or in Japan. I just remember the story. The carpenter was on his way to visit the grave site of his father and who was also a carpenter

[13:59]

and his teacher. And Suzuki Roshi was either going with him or something. But anyway, the carpenter said he was going to the grave site to get some advice from his father and teacher. And somehow he explained what he meant, was when he was quite young his father wouldn't explain anything and just worked with him and actually never said anything with his mouth, you know. And I don't mean something simple like, you know, body language or nonverbal communication or just making you more alert. But anyway, he tried to do, finally, he came around to actually deciding to be a carpenter, to work with his father in the same way Paul's

[15:04]

working. Finally, he opened up a space in himself where his carpenter teacher father existed. And there was real communication going on between his father. He knew exactly what to do. He knew how to find out exactly how to do something, which he didn't know how, but his father knew how without asking his father. And that's really being able to be in someone else's space. So occasionally he would go to his father's grave site and he no longer, just whether alive or dead, it was the same. You know, he didn't need his father there to communicate with his father in that way. So he'd go and stand before the grave site and get and be

[16:07]

able to actually know what his father would say. And the same is true, of course, with practicing Zen with Suzuki Roshi. Suzuki Roshi at some point knows it doesn't make any difference anymore whether he's with you or not. Then he may push you away. So anyway, there's maybe five fields or areas in which we can actualize the thought of enlightenment. Enlightenment isn't ontological. I mean, there isn't a beginning of it and an end of it or a arrival.

[17:08]

So the five areas maybe are your will and your conduct and emptiness and samadhi and your physical body. And, you know, when we say the sutra at the end, almost all when we chant something, actually what we are chanting is dedicated in the echo, you know, the priest or whoever does it, the Doan, says, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, negawakuwa, whatever, you know. He's almost always, they say, we dedicate this merit. We dedicate what we've just done to all sentient

[18:17]

beings. We did it for all sentient beings. That's the practice of bodhicitta. We say, we, you know, vow to save all sentient beings. This kind of putting everything you do in the context of all sentient beings is a way we are hinting to you how to practice. You know, in one way it's not any different from, I guess, isn't it Dale Carnegie, the power of positive thinking? That's like, you know, since you're a religious gourmets, you don't like Dale Carnegie, you know. But it's like coleslaw, you know. Everywhere you go you can get a hamburger and coleslaw or something. But coleslaw is also a gourmet dish, you know,

[19:22]

but the ordinary restaurant just has coleslaw, they chop up some cabbage. So what Dale Carnegie is talking about, you know, is the only problem with it is that it's to achieve a particular point of view, to benefit yourself in some way. But the power of positive thinking in Buddhism is for emptiness, or it doesn't have any point, it doesn't have any goal, and no one's doing it to achieve anything. But the power of positive thinking is actually an esoteric tantric teaching. I mean, that's really true. But how to actually enter into this kind of thinking without repressing some other part of yourself or thinking you have to do good

[20:24]

rather than bad? It's not so easy, you know. Anyway, the first is you make some effort to see things in this kind of context. That's your will. And will is something in your initial zazen you struggle with quite a lot. You're sitting there and it hurts a lot or you're bored or whatever and you want to get up, and the only thing that keeps you there is willpower. And for a while you may think, what's the point of this, just to learn to strengthen my will? Well, partly the point is just to strengthen your will, that's true. Will is not a will to power or anything, just will, I don't know. It's the actual possibility of extending your experience to include everything.

[21:34]

Without that condensation, without that ability to hold a presence larger than the shifts back and forth of your wishes and ego and desires, it's essential to practice. So actually, to practice Buddhism you have to develop your willpower. Well, or your will, you know, it's not exactly a power or even a strength, it's the ability to stay with something. So you can remind yourself about an enlightened attitude or this is for everybody or how can I do this without a sense of I in it, I did it or I want this result, you know, or just notice

[22:36]

that you've just done it with an I in it, you know. Anyway, that's how you can extend the thought of enlightenment, being at one with your will. And the second one I mentioned was conduct. You also have to extend this in your conduct, how you actually do things. There's no meaning about it if it's just something you think about, you know. It has to be in your conduct, you know. And if your conduct is not pretty good, if you're not sure of what you do, you can't practice face-to-face with Buddha, you know, he'll go away right away. You won't feel comfortable, you'll feel, oh, I don't deserve to be here, you know, or something. I'm sorry, Buddha, you know. But as long as you have that kind of feeling

[23:39]

you can't really practice Buddhism, so you have to take care of your conduct. So we try to create a place here in Zen Center which emphasizes conduct, how you exist moment after moment and what you do. Anyway, the first maybe we could call the causal, you know, the thought of enlightenment from the point of view of will is something that gets our practice going, and conduct is the path itself. Let me say at this point that partly in relationship

[24:42]

to Michael's question last week, I like certain questions, particularly ones that ask me what I'm doing, you know. It's interesting when somebody listens carefully enough to what I'm trying to say that they can say, well, what are you trying to say? Isn't there always some kind of message or push, or aren't you excluding the practice outside and saying practice inside is better? Isn't that implicit in what you're saying? Any questions, real questions, you know, are very much essential part of our practice. You have to ask very even silly questions. Many of you have read A Separate Reality and Teachings of Don Juan, and what makes Castaneda a good student up to

[25:44]

a point, you know, is he asks really silly questions, but that's actually what you do with a teacher. You know, you don't think, well, this is a good question or this question will make me look dumb, you know, or something like that. You just, whatever, you know, you ask silly questions, how do you brush your teeth, you know, I don't know, anything. It's sort of, it's quite, you don't worry about any considerations, you're just like that. Anyway, I ask myself this question a lot, because when I first started practicing here, and when some of the people here first started practicing here, there wasn't anything like a sangha life. As you know, we just came to Sokoji and did zazen and left, and although some of us found a need for more sangha life, like we

[26:54]

wanted to sleep in the zendo during seshins, still we also had a very powerful feeling, which remains with the older people, that it shouldn't be any different from your ordinary life, your ordinary workaday life. So I've been in the midst of zen center from that period to this period, where this is certainly not your ordinary workaday life, and I've participated to some extent in creating this thing we're all living in, and each step along the way I wondered, and many times I said, this is getting away from us, this is too much, I quit. Who wants to live in this way? But Suzuki Roshi wouldn't let me get away, and

[27:56]

I now feel somewhat differently about it, which is that having a place like this exist actually helps people, both outside and inside, is that the reason we're creating zen center is not so that you can live here all your life, or that so people can practice here, but so that everyone can practice under any circumstances. But somewhere in the society, the fullest possibilities for practice should exist as a kind of example. It's helpful actually to participate in it for a while, a few years, more helpful to commit yourself to putting practice first for quite a number of years. But if you have a sense of how, if some people can say, okay, well we'll live in such and such a way

[29:08]

so that we try to put conduct of an enlightened attitude first, then everyone can get a sense of how you, how your conduct and an enlightened attitude are the same. Then your conduct is the same anywhere, here, outside, or anywhere, there's no outside and inside. And the third is emptiness, which means that actually this enlightened attitude should have no form and actually doesn't exist, and in every circumstance there is nothing really to be achieved, so you remind yourself at this level. Anyway, that's also the path. There's three kinds of levels that I've mentioned, or not levels, but

[30:16]

ways in which you can try to, you know, like have a long fingernail, the way you can try to take practice and find in the actual experience of your life ways in which you can practice moment after moment. Then the fourth is what I called samadhi, but I could also call it the Buddha practicing Buddhism, Buddha practicing with Buddha. And you have to practice face to face with Buddha. And you don't practice Buddhism, Buddha practices Buddhism. So in the first ones I mentioned, your will and conduct, your experience is that you're practicing Buddhism, but this one I'm mentioning

[31:18]

is Buddha is practicing Buddhism. So samadhi, you know, or emptiness, or Buddha practicing Buddhism, it's not so easy for you to figure out how to do actually. It's not something like you can notice your conduct or something. Trying to become Buddha, it's not ontological or something like that, but it's just Buddha facing Buddha. And in ceremonies you do with your teacher, you take your bowing cloth and you bow with each other, as if sometimes I'm the teacher and Suzuki Roshi is the student. So there's no difference. So there's no difference between you and Buddha and you and your friend.

[32:23]

Now how to remind yourself that Buddha is practicing with Buddha? And there are many ways, you know. And sometimes you can view everybody you meet as, or countries which emphasize reincarnation and mother love would say, you view everyone you meet as somebody who in a previous existence had been your mother. Then you treat them in that way. Anyway, you treat each person as Buddha. And the last is your physical existence. And this is even more difficult, it's not something you can do yourself on your own. But if you are practicing with this kind of thought of enlightenment, this compassion or offering everything you do to everybody,

[33:46]

being the only way you can get behind, actually, your practice, then there'll be some realization or something in your zazen. It's like some kind of deep love experience or being in love with emptiness or something. It's when the usual hindrances which block you are gone. There's some way in which you exist physically. Anyway, none of these five ways require Zen Center. Maybe only the second way is very helpful,

[35:11]

how conduct, practice relate. Although actually, all of them, it's maybe helpful to have a place where you can concentrate on zazen or have a teacher. But no way of practice requires anything but you. Do you have some questions? Something we could talk about? Yeah. When you were talking about CVI in your activities, like you said, you're not in zazen for

[36:18]

to accomplish something. Well, anyway, I told Roshi that I couldn't get out of this kind of egocentric circle. I couldn't get out of trying to get rid of this idea in my sitting. Anyway, the details kind of evade me, but I felt that everything I did was very gainfully directed, you know, for self-gain. But I couldn't get out of this feeling at all that this is the way, this is what my sitting was. I couldn't sit any other way because when I tried to, that was also

[37:22]

a gainful motivation. And he told me not to try and cope with the small self. He said, I've told you many times not to cope with the small self. And anyway, actually, I never felt I really understood what that meant. Not to cope with the small self? Yeah. As though what I was experiencing shouldn't have been a problem, an obstacle. Of course, he's responding to you in a particular situation, after a particular session. But we don't want to solve the problems of our small self with our small self. So usually in your practice, if you're trying to cope with your small self, you see your small self as a nuisance, so you try to do something about it,

[38:28]

which is a gaining idea in itself. So how you get out of that, you know, is, there's no way to think your way out, you know, or to… And it's also true that your small self and your big self are not different. If you actually know what your small self is, it's just your big self under small conditions. So there's nothing wrong with your small self. So, you know, you have to sort of sneak up on it. And you can try that by trying to enlarge the conditions, you know, this is for everyone.

[39:35]

Even if you don't feel it, you remind yourself, well, this could be for everyone. Why would anybody say such a thing? The fact that you have… See, the fact that you're here means that you have the thought of enlightenment. The fact that you ask yourself such questions means that. The fact that you could conceive of saying, even remotely, I vow to save all sentient beings, means that you're on the path, that you have the thought of enlightenment. But then you don't believe it, you know, I don't mean you, but we don't quite believe it. Well, I'm not really interested in saving all sentient beings,

[40:37]

jeez, I've got to get a job. So, so the problem is you don't see how big the thought of enlightenment is. That's your small self coping, you know. You don't see how big the thought of enlightenment is. It covers getting a job, you know, it includes getting a job. I think it's very, it's useful in this kind of Buddhist practice to not think causatively. In other words, don't think about, if I do this, it leads to that, or that because I remind myself this is for all sentient beings, that you have to do, have to make what you're doing for all sentient beings. If you want, you can just say, this must be for all sentient beings,

[41:41]

you know, as you have another can of beer or something, you know. But there's some difference between just having a can of beer and thinking, this must be for all sentient beings, you know. What is all sentient beings? It means your biggest self. It means everything you include. And you include everything, and you forget about it, and you think you're just you, you know. And then when you forget about other people and other sentient beings or other things,

[42:48]

people get mad at you. Why have you forgotten about me or yourself? If we have a bigger self, which includes all beings, then how do we become a smaller being? How do we, how does the smaller being exist in a bigger being? If who has? If the bigger being exists, how does the smaller being happen? How can it exist? You can't talk about it in such terms because if it exists it means there's something outside its existence. What? I don't know what to say, you know.

[43:50]

You can't think about it from your point of view. How does it exist? Or how does a small self exist? Small self and big self are the same. They're just convenient terms, you know, to get you out of thinking the small self exists in a way that catches you, you know, a way that forces you to have a cup of coffee when you really, you know, ought to be doing something else. Yeah? Last week you were talking about Suzuki Roshan's English. I remember he used to say, things as it is. I said to him one day, do you mean things as they are? No, I mean things as it is. Yeah, I know. So if you want a good mantra, you can go around is, [...] is.

[45:01]

Yeah? You said at the first lecture, something about practice isn't necessary. I didn't understand quite how you meant that. But what came to my mind was Dogen's phrase, practice being enlightenment. It's not so useful to compare what I say to Dogen. I'm not here to defend myself, Dogen's not here to defend himself. Sometimes you might say practice is necessary, and then you said practice is not necessary.

[46:08]

I had no sense of him throwing it off. But again, it's not useful to compare what I say at one moment to what I say at another moment. But sometimes what you say at one moment, I have some feeling for it, you know, even if it contradicts something else. But not comparing it to anything else, you say it in some other way. You find practice is necessary. You find practice is necessary. Are you taking the fifth bhumi? Well, you know, we know, most of us, that practice is necessary.

[47:17]

But if you think practice is different from just being alive, then you have quite a limited idea of practice, which may help you for a while, but not really very much. So what does it mean if I say practice isn't necessary? I mean, you exist right now in a particular moment, or on a particular moment, or you are a particular moment. And if you feel pushed around, you know, like you've got to get to the next moment in a hurry, then you're not existing that way. Something's pushing you around. Some part of you is pushing another part of you around. So what can you do about it? You can go through life being pushed around,

[48:22]

but to remind yourself that it's not necessary even to practice is to get out of being pushed around by practice too. Just right now is completely empty. You don't have to have any idea of what you want to do in the next moment, or what you did, or who you are in this moment. There doesn't have to be any sense of anything existing, even. I exist, you know. And when you find something existing in the moment, you can say, hey, what are you there for? You don't have to do anything about it, but you wonder how I got in the door. That's practice. Not even practice is necessary. Yeah? If you feel like you can't practice face-to-face with Buddha, should you go ahead and practice anyway?

[49:28]

Or just give it up? You don't actually want to give it up, though. So, it's not a real question, you know. It's just a way of... to practice face-to-face with the Buddha is a way of checking up on your practice. If you know how to practice now, just practice now, you know. But at some point, you'll find yourself practicing with the Buddhas and the patriarchs. And you'll find your practice is the same as theirs. Yeah? I feel confused.

[50:34]

Sorry. If you'd like to save yourself and save all sentient beings, does that mean to save sentient beings even that you've never met? Who is a sentient being you've never met? Well, I was thinking almost anybody. You've never met anybody? No, no. People that I've never visited. Well, you know, it doesn't mean you're a door-to-door Buddhist, you know. What does it mean, saving all sentient beings? It's a very interesting...

[51:36]

Why would a bunch of people for 2,500 years, or whatever it is, think up some idea like all sentient beings? What were they doing all that time? Well, I mean, like, haven't they already saved all sentient beings? Yeah, right. But they keep... more of them keep being born yet. It's actually not a matter of... You know, that's part of the question. Why aren't they all saved? What does it mean to save all sentient beings? That's a fundamental question. You know, we say it all the time in this Ayavada Samantabhadra. What the heck are you saying? You know, what does it mean? What is all sentient beings? That's a wonderful question. And why aren't they all saved? Maybe they are all saved. What is the possibility of being saved even?

[52:37]

What is saved? Yeah, what is saved? Is saved in what? Yeah, okay, what is it? I have no idea. Yeah, okay. That's right, that's also a very good question. What is saved? Why aren't you saved right now? What are we setting up this thing? The saved and the unsaved. These are real questions that you should... that that's what practice is all about. If you take for granted there's the unsaved and the saved, you're not practicing Buddhism. That kind of doubt is necessary. What is... is there any such thing even as enlightenment? Is there any such thing as a sentient being? And if we're all Buddha nature, are we already saved? It's true, we are. But do you really believe it? See, that's the problem. That's the problem, yeah.

[53:46]

Then what is realization? It's... that's unrealizable, that doesn't exist. Well, what you... you know, okay, so you can ask yourself all these questions and we can sort of fiddle with them in words, but actually you have some deep feeling. And practice is responding to that deep feeling, responding to what Suzuki Roshi called your innermost request. And that innermost request is the thought of enlightenment. Doesn't everybody have that? Doesn't... the thought of enlightenment? Maybe everyone has it, yeah. And respond to it in some... Yeah. ...in some degree? Yeah, but so when you really become aware that you have this,

[54:46]

then how do you encourage it is our practice. How do you encourage it? How do you realize it? That's a problem because it seems to me that when I try to do something to encourage it, maybe it's just impatience or it's heated up or something, I get caught in that thing of the small self and that, you know, pushing it or something. Yeah, that's number three was its emptiness doesn't exist. So you have to remind yourself, if you're trying to speed it up, that it's emptiness so there's nothing to speed up. It's rather an interesting problem that you can't make any sense of it, actually. I'm afraid it's getting too confusing, you know. But you should be in that kind of state when you practice Buddhism. You shouldn't have any particular idea, I've got it worked out, now my next step is to do zazen another period, you know.

[55:47]

There has to be this doubt about everything, doubt about what is all sentient beings, what am I? At the same time, with a deep sureness that this practice saves all sentient beings, how is such a contradiction possible? Anyway, actually you all know and you're all doing it. Thank you.

[56:17]

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