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. It's a rather important point for Zen and the theme of many stories. How do you resolve reducing your own commotion and yet not protecting yourself from commotion? This is one reason I emphasize.

[01:27]

rather. I don't emphasize doing some specific breathing practice so much or stopping your 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 a instinctive, protective feeling about our way of life. But the traditional way, you know, and the way Sukiyoshi always emphasized, is

[02:33]

as described in the four jhanas, your thinking changes. As you meditate, as you practice, your thinking, the energy goes out of your thinking. As I said to someone yesterday, your thinking becomes 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 if they had brocade robes, but anyway he said so. Chinese stories.

[03:55]

Buddha, and 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. And he said, then he said, take down the flagpole outside the monastery. You may know this story, rather well-known story. take down the flagpole means, you know, when you give a Zen talk, there are various ways to announce it. In a monastery you would put a wooden plaque outside on the gate which says Teisho, or sometimes you hang some cloth. So he said, what else did Buddha give you? So Mahakasyapa said, Ananda? And he said, yes. And then Mahakasyapa said, take down the flagpole. The lecturers over. Then there's a poem, two mirrors reflecting each other without even an image between. So somehow when Seppo holds up the husk of millet

[05:29]

You're holding up the husk of millet. The whole world is held up, he means. There's no image here. 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. And if you're able to be one with other people's commotion, like Ananda just saying, yes, 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, we think. Maybe only the gods are allowed to feel joy and you'll be spirited away or something as soon as you feel good, or your feet will go off the ground. People will be jealous and attack you.

[07:00]

Or that it'll be such a comedown when you don't feel it that it'd be better not to feel it. We're quite, quite terrified of joy. So most people get drunk, you know, 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 a Buddha. at least according to the stories of his life, you know. He was meditating, you know, under the bow tree, and it was finally when he said, gee, what's wrong with feeling good? Really, and at that moment he felt really fantastic. The stars testified to it.

[08:30]

This is a profound problem, why we can't feel good. So we protect ourselves, 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. and you have to protect the small space you have. So we build various kinds of barriers to protect our small creation and effectively isolate ourselves from any real feelings. 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,

[10:15]

Whether you think that or not, or you carry that out to its 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. You feel all those things which you're separated from and don't feel this thing which seems such a treasure are going to get you, you know, for feeling. So it's for this reason that the whole world, you know, he saw the star and the whole earth he testified to his enlightenment. And the whole world will testify to your joy, too. But until we know how our commotion is one with each commotion, how Ananda and Mahakasyapa are one, we don't feel right about having some joy.

[11:41]

So you'll notice in your own Zazen practice, as soon as you begin to have some feeling of bliss or concentration, some overall content, essential kind of unified feeling, you'll interrupt it immediately. If only by saying, wow! Look what I'm feeling, you know. But that's essentially just a way of interrupting, you know, your feeling. You can't let yourself just go, you know, partly because it feels like a disappearance, you know. You lose that sense of separation and so 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 connected, you know, separateness.

[13:00]

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 as soon as we do, or take a picture of the scene. 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.

[14:34]

It is communicated. You 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 kind of articulation is something else. language or painting have their own reality. But you know when you're, say, working in the field and someone is completely consumed by Green Gulch, by this valley, by the day and the work You know it immediately. He doesn't have to come over and say, I feel really good picking these vegetables. That's a rather simple point, but if you know that thoroughly, you can begin to allow yourself to feel joy or completeness.

[16:03]

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, for instance. 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. So you always try to keep yourself a little incomplete for something else to be added. But again, by the breathing and body and 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 Non-existent Barely Barely noticeable significant even when they come up immediately dropping away

[17:27]

Yesterday I was asked about the process of making decisions or discrimination. And I've spoken about that quite often. And it's rather... 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 another person. 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, or should we discriminate or not,

[19:26]

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 hermit, if you go somewhere into retreat or isolation, which I think maybe in Center we should do sometime. 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. Well, what you find out, you know, is 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, doing something. There's no way to prevent it, you know, without killing yourself. And you will start trying to eat something, gnawing on the post, or something, you know, naturally do something. So what you find out by that kind of experiment is that long before you reach the point of discriminating, you know,

[20:49]

You have made most of the decisions, most of the discriminations, which it's 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. 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, or 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's going to be cut because as soon as you take one step you crush some plant. So it's a matter of

[22:06]

Well, let me say that when you begin to perceive things in a more interrelated way, in groups or something like that, 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 this hand? It's Seppo, I think, who said, have a cup of tea. and Joshu, Engo's teacher, who said about Joshu, he taught, he showed us by letting his arms dangle down. So this kind of question is intimately related to Buddhism as a whole. What is religion?

[24:28]

holiness or practice. In what way are we religious or not? So, when you're looking at your own activity, what is practice and what isn't practice? What makes this a religious activity? What makes it a secular activity? Or, you know, if you're trying to protect your commotion, protect yourself from commotion, then you're trying to you're favoring the Absolute. And yet Absolute and Relative, as these various Hekigan Roku Blue Cliff Record stories have been talking about, are one, or not relevant, except in some expedient. Samsara and Nirvana are one. So how to make a decision, how to decide You know, again this case is 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 darn thing. So sleepy. So even though you know exactly how to do your eating bowls,

[25:55]

Because you're too sleepy to think about it, it's quite spontaneous. Where is that ego? So if you're not thinking so much, this kind of question of how you do things on purpose will be simpler for you. So for a Buddhist, the whole thing is religion or religious. You can't separate out something. The whole thing is a field of merit or a field of blessedness, as the sixth patriarch said. There isn't some act which is meritous. Everything you do, when you see this, everything is a field of merit. 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 Buddha. If there's no cause, if you can't find a projector somewhere,

[27:34]

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 this. So what we're talking about again is Zen, 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, very profoundly about, it's a magical illusion sustained by you, by Buddha. 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 separate from you. Everything you meet is quite familiar.

[29:07]

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. So you can quite easily

[30:37]

succumb to any situation, willingly submit, or be one with, or leave space for everything to happen, then your own evolution is some like a cloud. Anyway, you have your best chance to have this made clear to you by Zazen practice, particularly by some extended time like this Sashi, which you can just observe without thinking about how you exist. Even the observation isn't necessary. Some deep confidence that this right

[32:12]

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 millet. And you don't have to recognize this. And we don't actually have to bow down.

[33:39]

but we bow down. And the person who doesn't recognize it feels some sudden opportunity to join our bowing. So we have Manjushri. We have a husk of millet. We have this valley and fields at each person we meet. Is there anything you'd like to talk about? Yes. A little louder please.

[35:27]

If we could learn about the next evolution, would you say, what is going to be the difference between the gods and human beings? That means you're not seeing any of the controls and things connected, I think. So, there's an idea that sometimes when you get out of your hotel room and you need to use your standby, a lot of people will be able to stop you. So, as we are all in the same environment, But I don't care if you say it or not. I just want to ask you to do yourself a favor and send somebody to your region and ask if you ever did one.

[36:40]

Well, why it should be any different I don't know about, 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? Well, this is exactly what I'm talking about, that we're, it's 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 Doss, is head of WHO, 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

[38:22]

His family is Pakistani and they are the representatives of some European airline in Bangladesh. And they live with servants and quite comfortably. But outside their walls there's these horrible epidemics and of course the results of the war. 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 it was, and 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. So they were just acting like human beings act.

[39:51]

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. 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

[41:21]

maybe were present when Suzuki Roshi, someone said in a lecture, something about the Vietnam War. I wasn't present, so I don't know exactly what happened, but Suzuki Roshi either started hitting him, or... The story has the kind of force like he almost knocked him off his chair, but anyway, in a quite startling way, hit him and said, don't talk about 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 anything. You can incapacitate yourself with such considerations. So right now I'm speaking about it rather practically. I don't know how much time we could spend on it, but it's an extremely complex question.

[42:55]

have this Buddha, or this farm, say. Someone else should have it, or we should, if we have some money, we should spend it on... Well, when you're talking about spending it on yourself, at a certain point, it's clear, it's excessive. A little more complicated, you're talking about spending it on something like Zen 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, and there's almost nothing you can do.

[44:38]

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 he concentrate on doing Zazen with people who are rather together or should he spend all day on the steps with someone who's quite crazy? But the person who's there on the steps is there because we're doing Zazen and 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 know, you have to console yourself with some such considerations.

[45:47]

Notice how much you yourself need Zazen. If you can't take care of yourself and your own commotion, 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 There is a door. You don't bash in the walls, you know. 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.

[47:32]

So how to see that reality of each moment in which a door opens is the purpose of zazen. 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 activity. Otherwise you 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.

[49:00]

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 Bangladesh, 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, I was just in Japan. There's so little you can do in a country or in a situation in which you're not familiar. Our whole idea of mobility is somewhat suspect to me. It's all right to, as a youth, to wander about, you know? But the mobility that technology has given us and a mind put on a pedestal is

[50:26]

has made our culture quite primitive, I feel. That, in each situation we're 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. When you realize you are completely linked, one with everything, and you decide your life then will be

[51:36]

to sustain this magical illusion with everyone, and you take the Bodhisattva vow intuitively. Acknowledging this link, you know, 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 you can have that sustaining, complete feeling that First Bhumi describes. It's often preceded by some enormous feeling of sorrow, some inner weeping.

[52:50]

sometimes outer weeping, sometimes inner weeping. Do 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 precedes 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 conflict, it seems, with the very things that brought us to Buddhism. So this practice is not easy.

[54:08]

It requires giving up everything and not being afraid to give up everything, even those things which seem essential to life sometimes. So we are really a kind of newborn baby. Ready to go out with the bathwater. Thank you.

[54:56]

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