Yesterday we were talking about our commotion and reducing our commotion. That reducing our commotion is very different from protecting ourselves from commotion. Of course, to some extent we create a sashin, even, and try to protect ourselves from commotion or you could say try to give ourselves a undisturbed chance to see our own inner commotion Anyway It's a rather important point for Zen and the theme of many stories, this... How do you resolve reducing your own commotion and yet not protecting yourself from commotion? This is one reason I emphasize

[01:24]

whether I don't emphasize doing some specific breathing practice so much or stopping or thinking by various devices. That gives us sometimes too great a taste for the bliss of no commotion, and sometimes a kind of arrogance, and an instinctive, protective feeling about our way of life. But the traditional way, you know, And the way Sruti Goshi always emphasized is, as described in the four jhanas, your thinking changes as you meditate, as you practice your thinking. Energy goes out of your thinking. As I said to someone yesterday, your thinking becomes

[03:01]

smoother and smoother. Rough thinking subsides. And that's the first stage. There's a story about Ananda and Mahakasyapa. Supposedly Ananda said to Mahakasyapa, Buddha gave you his brocade robe. I don't know what a brocade robe is, but it's a Chinese story. Buddha. What else did he give you? He said, Buddha gave you his brocade robe. What else did he give you? And Mahakasyapa said, Ananda. And Ananda said, yes. Then he said, take down the flagpole outside the monastery. You may know this story, but I don't know the story.

[04:34]

Take down the flagpole means, you know, when you give a Zen talk, there are various ways to announce it. In a monastery, we put a wooden plaque outside on the gate that says Teisho, or sometimes you hang some cloth. So, he said, what else, what else would we give you? So, Mataji said, Ananda? He said, yes. So, Mataji said, take down the flagpole for lectures. Then there's a poem, two mirrors reflecting each other without even an image between. So somehow, when Seppo holds up the husk of note, You're holding up a husk of milk. The whole world is held up. There's no inner people. In this way, your commotion is one with other people's commotion. And if you're one with your own commotion, there's something calm there.

[06:04]

And if you're able to be one with other people's commotions, like Ananda just said, there will be some calmness there. But one of the very big problems in Zen practice, in any person's life, is how afraid we are of joy. It's much easier to suffer than it is to feel good, or have some bliss. We're quite scared of it, as if we'll be punished. Retribution will be quick. Maybe only the gods are allowed to feel joy, and you'll be spirited away by something as soon as you feel good, or your feet will go off the ground. People will be jealous and attack you,

[07:07]

Or there'll be such a come down when you don't feel it, that it'd be better not to feel it. You're quite, quite terrified of joy. So most people get drunk. Or they do something which has its own hangover built in. So then you feel you're, you know, punishing yourself for this joy. But it's quite easy to feel joy without alcohol. We think we must have the alcohol for joy, but actually we must have the alcohol for the hangover. Otherwise we don't feel so comfortable with joy. And even, this was true for Buddha, at least according to the stories of his life, you know? He was meditating, you know, under the bow tree. It was finally when he said, geez, what's wrong with feeling good? You know? Really, and at that moment he felt really fantastic, you know? The stars testified to it.

[08:37]

This is a profound problem, you know, why we can't feel good. But, so we protect ourselves, you know, we create, we have, I think, some feeling that it's all terrible, we're all going to die, of course, and everyone is suffering, and you have to sort of struggle to even earn a living. the small space you have, so we build those kinds of barriers to protect our small creation and to effectively isolate ourselves from it. And as long as you have the kind of thinking I was speaking about yesterday, where you think that the objective world exists, which is a thought, and where you think that things can be perceived in some objective way,

[10:27]

Whether you think that or not, or you carry that out to a logical extreme, your mental process is that way. You tend to solve problems by carrying things to a certain extent, separating them into this and that, and acting on them as if those separations were real. As long as you have that kind of thinking, you feel quite guilty if you feel some joy. If you feel all those things that you're separated from and don't feel this thing which is such a treasure, I'm going to get you. So it's for this reason that the whole world that we saw at the start, the whole earth, And the whole world will testify to your joy, too. But until we know how our commotion is one with each commotion, how Ananda, Mahakasyapa are one, we don't feel right about having some joy.

[11:55]

So you'll notice in your own Zazen practice, as soon as you begin to have some feeling of bliss or concentration, some overall, condensed, essential kind of unified feeling, you'll interrupt it immediately. It's only by saying, wow, Look what I'm feeling. But that's essentially just a way of interrupting. You can't let yourself just go, partly because it feels like a disappearance. You lose that sense of separation and you're quite afraid you won't be able to regain it. So there's some interesting interplay here between trying to find some order in our life when chaos is so disturbing, so we create some order, and then the loss of that order in a feeling of joy. Or the loss of it.

[13:13]

Through our practice we should be open to successive, maybe I should say successive fulfillment, sometimes completely sad, sometimes completely joyful, sometimes some deep abiding satisfaction that you don't need to note We feel good so rarely that we want to write a poem about it, since we do. Or take a picture. And we also want to communicate our feelings so deeply that we want to take a picture or tell someone. But we don't have trust that we are one with everything. And if we feel something, everyone knows it. It is communicative. We don't have to do something. To write a poem or paint a picture or express it in some way, to carry it one further, our kind of articulation with something,

[15:15]

language and thinking of their own reality. But you know when you're, say, working in a field, and someone is conflicted, and consumed by the indulgence, by this balance, by the day and the work, You know it immediately. He doesn't have to come over and say, I feel really good. That's a very simple point, but if you know that thoroughly, you can begin to or completeness. But, you know, as long as you characterize it, you know, if you characterize it just as I did, now as completeness, each characterization has its own fear. In completeness you resist because you rather want to be more than you are, so you don't want to think you're complete right now.

[16:49]

So you always try to keep yourself a little incomplete for something else to be added. But again, by the breathing, body, visual concentration I spoke about, and by just sitting in a session, you should be able to come to be so firmly rooted in where you're sitting, That such considerations are quite non-existent. Barely, barely noticeable. Significant people come up immediately. Yesterday I was asked about the process of making decisions about discrimination. And I've spoken about that quite often. And it's rather, you know,

[18:47]

There's various ways to talk about that. I don't feel any need to go into it particularly. But I talked with someone else about it yesterday too. So I'd like to say what I said then when I talked to the medical students. If you try to not make decisions, not to do something, one way to look at something like what kind of decision I'm making, should we discriminate or not, it's useful to try to see actually what you're talking about, what the scale of what you're talking about is. So you can take it from the point of view of what if you don't make any decision or do anything? And that's one of the practices of being a hermeneutic, if you go somewhere into retreat or isolation, which I think maybe in Center we should do sometimes.

[20:18]

There are two ways to do it, you know. One is to have a specific regime you follow, and the other is to have nothing to do. You can sleep all day long if you like. But what you find out, you know, you can't, it's very hard not to do anything. After a while, no matter what your mind says, you will get up, you know. Your body will get up and start walking around or banging into things. You eat something. There's no way to prevent it without killing yourself. And you will start trying to eat something, gnawing on the plate. Or something. It will naturally be something. So what you find out by that kind of experiment is that long before you reach the point of discriminating, you have made most of the decisions, most of the discrimination, which is hard to call a kind of discrimination, because you've just done it. So you're going to get up, exactly what time you get up is rather a minor part of it. So we're dealing, usually when we make a decision, with the very fringe of a situation which has already been, which has already existed.

[21:47]

So it's rather foolish to think, should I do this at all? Get up or not? Or cut this tree or not? Because that's not the question. Whether you like it or not, you're up. You're going to get up. So it's just a matter of do I get up at this time or do I cut the tree today or tomorrow? Or not cut it? But something can be cut because if you take one step, you crush some plant. So it's a matter of Well, let me say this. When you begin to perceive things in a more interrelated way, groups or something, most of these kinds of problems don't occur. They occur when you're still trying to perceive something as an isolated thing. What is is

[23:13]

He taught, he showed us by letting his arms dangle down. So these kind of questions are intimately related to religion as a whole. What is religion for?

[24:58]

holiness, practice. In what way are we religious or not? So, when you are looking at your own activities, what is practice and what isn't practice? What makes this a religious activity? What makes it a sexual activity? Or, if you're trying to protect your commotion, protect yourself from commotion, then you're trying to... you're favoring the absolute. And the absolute and relative, as these various Hekigan Roku days of record stories have been talking about, are one, or not relevant, except in some fields. Samsara and Nirvana are one. So how to make a decision how to decide, you know, again in this case, how to do something on purpose. Partly you can see it if you're very sleepy. If you're very sleepy and you have to do something you know very well how to do next, pick up your eating bowl. You do do it quite spontaneously. You know, you can't quite find the diamond.

[26:25]

And even though you know exactly how to do your eating goals, because you're too sleepy to think about it, it's quite spontaneous. So, if you're not thinking so much, this kind of question, how you do things on purpose, will be simplified. So for a Buddhist, the whole thing is religion, or religion. You can't separate out something. The whole thing is a field of merit, or a field of blessing, as the Patriarch said. There isn't some act which is meritorious. Everything you do, when you see this, everything is a field of merit.

[27:28]

So we call the whole show a magical illusion sustained by Buddha. Maybe this is the most accurate scientific description of reality. It's a magical illusion called the Buddha. If there's no cause, if you can't find a, you know, projector somewhere, which is projecting all this, or some first cause, then this which we find ourselves itself must be creating itself. And so you yourself are creating. So what we're talking about again is being one with this energy which creates you each moment. We can't say energy, even, which creates everything at this moment. So, the sutras talk about it, but profoundly about it. It's a magical illusion.

[29:04]

sustained by you, by this. And when you have the confidence to know that, without thinking about your attainment or I'm not ready to understand that or something, when you have the confidence to know that, you will feel some joy, some deep satisfaction, some lack of fear. embracing everything as an old friend. Nothing will feel second from you. Everything you meet is quite familiar. So you're quite at ease in a world which is always new and familiar at the same time. and how much easier it is to participate with others when you see it as a magical illusion in which you don't, you know, your own stocks aren't going up or down according to the situation

[31:08]

and how much easier it is to participate with others when you see it as a magical illusion, in which you don't, you know, your own stalks aren't going up or down according to the situation. So you can quite easily Succumb to any situation. Willingly submit. Or be one with. Or leave space for everything to happen. Then your own evolution Anyway, you have your best chance to have this made clear to you by Zazen practice, particularly by an extended time like this, which you can just observe without thinking about how you exist.

[33:43]

Even the observation isn't necessary. Some deep confidence that this now is your life. Everyone will bow down before you when you feel that. We'll all be so relieved. It's not just funny, it's true. At last he or she found herself. There is a great big husk of milk.

[35:05]

And you don't have to recognize this. And we don't actually have to bow down. But we bow down. And the person who doesn't recognize it feels some sudden opportunity to join our bowing. So we have one issue. We have an obstruction. We have this valley, field, that each person needs. Is there anything you'd like to talk about?

[36:56]

A little lighter, please I don't know what to say. [...] And that means you have to be able to communicate in a very relaxed and peaceful way. You have to be able to find peace. You have to be able to work in a way that empowers you in any way that you can. You have to be able to work in a way that empowers you in any way that you can.

[38:15]

I'm just trying to figure it out. I'm just trying to figure it out. Not why it should be any different at a mobile, but the magical illusion, yes. But it's a magical illusion which you yourself are sustaining. So you have some responsibility for it. But even so, let's say we don't view it as a magical illusion, what are you going to do about it as you get off your airplane?

[39:18]

Well, this is exactly what I'm talking about, that we're almost the same as we're afraid to feel joy, if so many people are suffering in India. I just spoke to a man, one friend of Zen Center's, Dr. John Das, is head of the WHO, World Health Organization, I guess that's what he's doing, in India to fight the smallpox epidemic. And I just talked with a man from Bangladesh who His family is Pakistani, and they are the representatives of some European airline in Bangladesh. And they live with servants, and quite comfortable. But outside their walls, there's these horrible epidemics, and of course the results of the war.

[40:49]

And he goes to college here in the United States, and he was going to go back for two or three weeks, and he could only take one or two weeks, instead of four weeks, I think he did. He came back. But still, he's a young, quite intelligent man. He completely justifies what Pakistan did, and the situation. quite incredible to me. It's like the man banging his head. There he is in his country and he's involved with the head banging. He said, well, they were excessive, he said, but they were cut off and felt isolated and they weren't being treated properly. The Bengali shouldn't have been doing such-and-such an addition there, such-and-such type of people. So I realize that from our usual Western point of view, to say something like this is rather immoral, maybe it feels immoral.

[42:22]

And I had quite a problem with this myself, doing zazen. There are many steps in Buddhism in which you in your practice where you have to let go of things, which seems like a kind of immorality. And yet, if you don't do it, you're completely hamstrung, and you can't help anyone. Some of you know, maybe were present when Sugiyoshi, someone said in a lecture, something about the Vietnam War. I wasn't present, so I don't know exactly what happened. Sugiyoshi either started hitting him, or... The story has the kind of force like he almost knocked him off his chair. Anyway, he quite, in a quite startling way, hit him and said, don't talk about

[43:53]

something like that, unless you can actually do something. In this case, perhaps the person is someone who often hamstrings himself by thinking about what to do and being unable to do. you can incapacitate yourself with such considerations. So right now I'm speaking about it rather practically. It's such a, you know, I don't know whether, how much time we could spend on it, but it's an extremely complex question. Why should we have this Buddha, or this farm, say? Someone else should have it. We should, if we have some money, we should spend it.

[45:17]

Well, when you're talking about spending it on yourself, at a certain point, it's clear, it's successful. More complicated, you're talking about spending it on something like Sense Center. But, say that we decided right now to dissolve and distribute everything. Then there'd be no place to practice. So a certain amount, some line, And I want to think more about it this year with Zen Center, where that line is. I think in the early part of practice, when you have this worry, all you can do is face what you can actually do, which is almost nothing. And there have been so many attempts to do something from the outside of the situation. There's almost nothing you can do.

[46:47]

You can try and that's some satisfaction. This question comes up all the time. In every form, you know, like Dan faces it in San Francisco. Should we concentrate on doing zazen with people who are rather together, or should we spend all day on the steps with someone who's quite great? But the person who's there on the steps is there because we're doing zazen. He feels something. So, Dan, we could all sit on the steps. It's rather complicated to know what to do. As a beginner, you have to console yourself with some such consideration.

[47:58]

Notice how much you yourself need Zazen. If you can't take care of yourself and your own commotions, how can you take care of someone else's? But when you're more mature in your practice, this world that we view from outside is not the same. And the magical illusion you're talking about is just words that you are thinking about. It's not something your body knows. So when your body knows that this is a magical illusion, when you see the actual course of events, how each thing happens moment by moment, and you yourself are creating it, then you can participate. And you participate in each discrete moment, not some big generalization. Each moment, you know, non-doing maybe means each moment,

[49:17]

There is a door. You don't bash in the walls. You don't kick down the door or even knock. Each moment a door opens and you walk through. But normally, you know, doors are swinging in the wind all around us and we don't see anything. You know, we're thinking about something. Just each moment, actually, a door is opening. And if you don't take it, there you miss your responsibility. So how to see that reality of each moment in which a door opens with the purpose of silence? And when you do that, you don't have to be so concerned with how you're helping the world, because you're just participating fully, without making some effort to do something, or not to do something. each moment, you yourself are creating the situation which you yourself are one with. There's no lag. You're not perceiving things after they've already happened. You're there before or as they take form. So this is one with that on-purpose spontaneous.

[50:39]

Otherwise you'd throw out the baby with the bathwater. Your question is a very good question. An essential question to resolve over several years of practice actually. It takes quite a long time to resolve that fully. And to brush it off or just accept what I'm saying is not responsible. You yourself have to. solve this problem, and if you can solve it, you know, you will actually be practicing Buddhism. Only in this discrete moment, when a door opens, can our commotion be one with sometimes the Dutch, or India, or America. And you can't separate suffering in one part of the world from suffering in this part of the world. In fact, one thing that's clear, just in Japan, there's so little you can do in a country or in a situation in which you're not familiar.

[52:13]

Our whole idea of mobility is somewhat suspect to me. It's all right to, as a youth, to wander about. But the mobility that technology has given us and a mind put on a pedestal is has made our culture quite primitive, I feel. That in each situation we are born into, each moment, we have our responsibility, not looking somewhere else. And if we take that, we can have our joy too, and that joy will be the whole world's joy. If no one in the world can feel joy, then why are those people suffering? And I don't mean to be isolated from people at all. As you know, joy in the first booming only arises when you end your isolation

[53:45]

When you realize you are completely linked, one with everything, and you decide your life then will be to sustain this magical illusion with everyone, and you take the Bodhisattva vow intuitively, acknowledging this link, How you and others are not different. How you rejoice in the merit of others. How you take your own flag down. Your own flagpole down. Only when you do this have that sustaining, complete feeling, the first blooming of the sky. It's often preceded by some enormous feeling of sorrow, some inner weeping, sometimes outer weeping, sometimes inner weeping.

[55:17]

You know, have you ever had that experience of, for several days, you're weeping, but there are no tears, but you feel that same bathed feeling of weeping. That kind of feeling often proceeds our ability to feel some joy. So these questions of practice are intricately or intimately involved with our morality and responsibility and fears and habitual viewpoints. And often at the

[56:21]

and conflict, it seems, with the very things that brought us to Buddhism. So this practice is not easy. It requires giving up everything, and not being afraid to give up everything, even those things that seem essential to life, sometimes. So we're really a kind of new-born baby. ready to go out with the backwater. Thank you.

[57:22]

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