I wasn't really planning to give a talk this evening, and somehow I find myself here and all your faces, I have to say something. My practice is how to penetrate into our lives so the scale of the event is different.

[01:15]

Whether you practice or not, your life looks pretty much the same to anyone, maybe to somebody who doesn't practice it looks a little strange because you seem to stick to things which don't have any meaning, you seem to follow rules sometimes which don't have any meaning, but if you have a sense of practice, we don't need the word practice, in fact

[03:02]

for a person who practices, practices means not being pushed around, maybe practice is a resistance to being pushed around, so we learn to stay with something, just to stay with it, and Suzuki Roshi used to emphasize more and more over the years, his lectures largely were encouragements to continue zazen. Right now is Zen Center in some kind of transition, because

[04:15]

our practice is not in transition, I think we need to get a feel for how we penetrate our daily life. It means not being caught by particular points of view, but able to take any point of view successively, any point of view that exists must be real. As soon as you

[05:16]

find yourself in confrontation or argument with someone, then there's no communication. I told the story in the city and in Green Gulch, and maybe I should tell it here too, a favorite story of Suzuki Roshi about Matsu, Nanaku. How

[06:19]

Matsu was doing zazen day after day at Nanaku's temple, and Nanaku finally came in, asked him what he was doing, and he said, I'm practicing to become a Buddha. So Nanaku went and got a tile and began rubbing it, saying, when Matsu finally asked what he was doing, he said, I'm going to make a mirror, a jewel, that you can become Buddha by practicing zazen. But sometimes we forget, you know, the story for the point. We forget that Nanaku, that Matsu did zazen day after day after day.

[07:23]

Partly we need to do zazen just to get strong enough, you know, to be able to accept what comes to us. Who does it happen to, you know? You're in trouble as long as there's a who which it happens to. But when you don't see every event as happening, you know, as a focus for your own elucidation or destiny, detriment, then you can accept everything as it happens. Practice means some kind of

[09:28]

detachment, but commitment at the same time. You feel something in your stomach, maybe. We say, for people who are working, of course we have many rules about working, about putting the tools away and various things, but how we work, how we center our body, how we sweep and do things, how we keep our consciousness here, we say, when we work. It's especially interesting to see

[11:05]

the Santa Mala and Shakti Mala dance because of the distinctness with which they could put their hands together and move their body in various ways. Many of you, you know, can't even when you make gassho, put your fingers directly together. And it's pretty difficult just to keep our mudra straight while we're sitting. And we think such little rules are cockeyed, you know?

[12:24]

But if you can't keep your mudra straight, what point is there in talking about big mind or universal consciousness or something like that, which we like to hear talked about, if you can't keep your consciousness in your hands even? Why do you, after sitting a while, get too tired? Stay with your mudra. Consciousness doesn't exist, you know, just in our head or some place. It exists everywhere, you know?

[13:33]

Until you give up trying to locate it in a particular place, you can't do things easily, following situations, you know, that are not happening just to you. So, stay with your mudra. Why have the word practice at all?

[14:47]

How is it different from some other kind of life which doesn't have the idea of practice? But most, actually, most people have some idea of practice without naming it. Some rules, you know, we blame people for having, but you need to give you some detachment, actually.

[15:54]

Well, here at Tassajara, especially, it's possible not just to be committed to practice that develops in the city, but to penetrate. So, that's why we are here. But there's a great deal of space between what you do, in what you do. So much so, maybe the rules are all that remind us that we should do something. It's like untying, untying a boat or something.

[17:21]

The rules we take, you know, allow us to untie everything. Allow us to find in whatever we're doing some rhythm or meaning that's connected with what has a very whole feeling. As long as you don't have, as long as you're tied, you know, you can't have that feeling.

[18:36]

Without some kind of rules that are characteristic of practice, you can't be untied enough to sort of float in a situation. You know, they've done some tests with people who meditate, and most of them are not so interesting. They have completely wrong ideas about what their approach is. As I've said before, the most difficult one is that they think that some certain state exists, called zen, or higher awareness or something, which they see in somebody who's

[19:41]

practiced a long time, or they see something different. If they measure, you know, the brainwaves of somebody who meditates a long time, actually there's some difference. There's some more variety of consciousness. But they immediately try to reproduce that, rather than realizing that. Such consciousness comes from giving up trying to reproduce or to have some particular state of mind. But one of the interesting things they've discovered is that particularly a person who meditates in zen way doesn't habituate, so that if you give a person who's been practicing

[20:51]

zen a long time a stimulus, you know, he has a reaction to it that's very immediate, and then goes back to his state of mind before the reaction. And the 10th or 20th or 30th time, you have the same reaction. Well, most people, if you give them a stimulus, they react, and then it fades, and the next time they react, and it fades, and the next time they react, and it fades. But when you give a person who's been quite well-trained in zazen, it just goes, there's no this, it just goes zoop-zoop, and it returns to like that. Another stimulus, and it goes zoop-zoop, and it comes back.

[21:53]

One hundredth time, it just goes zoop-zoop, and it's just that. And that means, you know, that means the person can be present each moment for what's happening, uniquely happening that moment. Because actually, each time the stimulus comes, it's not the same. You know, the fact that you habituate it, it's some laziness, or some tendency of our brain to want to make everything the same, or consistent, or manageable. So most of us figure out a pretty good life, you know. That works within certain boundaries, and it's satisfying within those boundaries.

[23:01]

And if it gets wide enough to include most of the things we want, we stop at that point. But sometimes, for some of us, for some strange reason, we decide to, and feel impelled to not stop. And yet, we don't know, you know, there's no territory, there's no way to go there. The point is not to try to become, for Zen, the point is not to try to become more highly

[24:26]

developed, or something like going from monaural to stereo, or hi-fi to super hi-fi, or something like that. That's not the point, you know. Though some practices in Buddhism emphasize learning how to use your energy, and focus your energy, and stuff like that. If that happens by practicing Zazen, that's very useful. It makes us stronger, you know. The point is just to be ready without any idea. So we suggest, you know, something like Buddha nature, your Buddha nature, which you already

[25:27]

have, which you already are, so that you can give up looking around. Give up thinking it's just around the corner, beginning to trust that it must already be happening, it must already be here. How could it be over there, you know? Is over there something different than here? Where's over there? Everything you need, you have on this moment, you know.

[26:30]

Anything that is, you have on this moment. That doesn't mean you shouldn't know something, or learn something. But that learning or knowing itself will make sense only if you know you have what you need on this moment. Then you can understand anything that's presented to you. But if you have some doubt, well, I've learned this much, but I need that much more to know. Right now, understand that, you know, that's before you completely.

[27:39]

You need some confidence to be able to do that. And some ability to see what interferes. If it's already there for you, what's interfering? What's the barrier? What's the problem? As I say, you always arrive after your problems. Look back. And wonder how they got there before you did. And if you practice as it, especially in a mountain place like this, you'll get between

[29:07]

things, between the events of your consciousness, you'll be able to penetrate into your life. And you'll see arising some idea of this, or some desire for that. And you'll laugh at it. Because before you saw that, you were always caught. And before you knew it, you were going there because of that, doing this because of something else. And your consciousness becomes something that is just there, you know? Waiting to take the form of something.

[30:23]

Waiting for some problem. Waiting to do something. But sometimes we find ourselves flooded by worry, you know? Which some person can help with, or a few more days will help with. But if a person can help with it, or you can help with it, some passage of time will help with it, right now that resource is there, you know? But how do you find that resource, you know, when there's no label, you know? No little box it's in, or no handle. There's no way, you know?

[31:28]

It doesn't exist in any book, you know? Sometimes it can be taught to us if we're not trying to learn, or by difficult circumstances. But without knowing quite what to do, we, because we don't know quite what to do, we do zazen. With our, penetrating our consciousness, with our consciousness, whatever it is, you know?

[32:31]

Without discriminating it as good or bad or boring or indifferent, just sitting with us. All of ourselves. Letting them all sit down with you, instead of being pushed around by one at 10 o'clock in the morning and another at noon, and another at a different time of day. So we don't have some greedy consciousness. Trying to produce something.

[33:47]

Which excludes others. You'll find out who's there, you know? He's there. And you won't have any doubt about it. Most of us, so many of us, carry an identity based on being hurt, or excluded.

[35:17]

Because we falsely, you know, compared some self, which doesn't really exist, with some other person. You know? Sometimes we think it was done to us by our parents, but actually, you know, you can't blame someone whose parents. It comes from our own greed. You know, when you take off what we call greed, the same feeling is there, but it's not...

[36:29]

Maybe we can say it's love then, or some... Actually, some kind of affection. But, because of insecurity, we turn it into, maybe, greed. And it's ridiculous. There's nothing to grab hold of, nothing you can actually possess, nothing you can appropriate. You can only share for a certain passage of time, with others.

[38:01]

You know? So, at some point, we decide to act on those problems which can't be acted on. To confront that area of our life which we've always left unconfronted. Not knowing how to begin to start, you know, we do zazen. And, hopefully, we become conscious enough to refrain from grabbing, refrain from trying to make reality fit our own categories.

[39:25]

You know, but what the kind of life you lead isn't what anybody actually lead, isn't what, you know, novelists tell you it is, or people generally tell you it is, or everyone wants you to believe it is. It's a big con. A very subtle, unconscious con. Because everyone's just afraid enough to want to keep pretending a certain way. So that, hopefully, the way they've structured the world will continue to work. And, within that, they'll get the prizes available. And, so, no one is going to let the secret out.

[40:36]

We won't tell ourselves. We won't tell ourselves. It's hard to believe when we see things in their actual context, how we place so much importance on certain kinds of things. So it's necessary to give up your old eyes.

[41:44]

And be ready to see things just as if you looked for the first time. And zazen, you know, actually are ceremonies. A whole practice period is a kind of ceremony. Ceremonies, you try to take a stand, when we do chanting, we take the stand of Buddha and chant as if we were Buddha. Old Shariputra. Speaking to Shariputra, we take that stand. And zazen, you know, if you study ceremonies, fits all the patterns of ancient rebirth ceremonies.

[43:09]

And when you open your eyes after zazen, it's like seeing everything completely new, because you've forgotten everything during zazen, abandoned everything. Everything, your skin feels completely refreshed. The hindrance, you know, the kind of hindrance in your consciousness isn't just in your consciousness, but is in your skin and body and organs. And if you do zazen completely, everything feels so fresh and surprising. Zazen. And now...

[44:30]

Stop trying to, sometimes desperately, make the information we receive, or what's happening, conform to what we expect, what we need. Giving up all categories. You can't do that while you're engaged. So, tasahara, or zen practice, or zazen, is a time in your life when you can disengage the tracks. Some people try, but they, you know, by some technique they think up themselves, or drugs.

[45:44]

And almost always, one does disengage the tracks. You know, you can't use the tracks freely then. It's, anyway, it's everything you need is right now. And to have that confidence, deeply enough, is zen practice. Do you have any questions?

[46:55]

Do you have any questions? What do you get out of confronting? If I perceive something to be wrong, that someone, some institution,

[48:01]

the government, is doing. I'm tempted to confront. Sometimes I wonder what form this confrontation should take. So I'm asking you, whether you think confrontation should occur at all in this practice. I understand your question. It's a very good question. First of all, I'm assuming you're making a distinction between,

[49:10]

or let's say I'll make a distinction between, is it possible that, although confrontation may be useful, for the sake of practice we give it up because it's not useful for practice? I don't, I don't... There are things that we give up early on in practice. Please sit however is comfortable. It's moving, moving. Things we give up in the early part of practice, because they interfere with practice. But later,

[50:12]

we think later we can, we'll do them again, but actually it's different later. So it's a little difficult to say, I can't say, that we don't give up things for the time being, or the time of practice. But actually I don't think we do. So, you know, closely looked at, practice and survival, or life, you know, in any form, are identical. You can't separate them out, you know. Trying to pad your nest is not survival or practice. Excuse me. But this question you've asked, I've asked myself many times,

[51:21]

and I had quite a lot of difficulty with, well, with arguing. Yeah. I used to feel that I had to argue to make my point about something, something that somebody should know, I felt. And Dogen, Dogen, most of you know who Dogen is, right? Anyway, Dogen was a great old Zen master, and founder of this lineage in Japan. Anyway, Dogen always said, don't argue. So I would find myself in a position of, maybe I should argue.

[52:26]

So I'd say to Suzuki Roshi, Dogen says, don't argue, but I feel I have to argue this point. And Suzuki Roshi would say, please argue so I don't have to. But actually he didn't mean I should argue, you know. But he let me do it, you know. But now I don't. Maybe some of you find me argumentative, but I don't feel I argue at all anymore. At least it's considerably different than ten years ago. People actually argue themselves out of positions

[53:36]

if you give them the space, you know, to do so. Once they want to argue, they're already taking the other side. And if you keep stepping back, they argue themselves out of it eventually. But with, you know, gulf oil, I don't know. I know, see, he's talking about, should you confront a large company with a proxy vote of some kind. I don't know what to say.

[54:45]

I think if I was in your shoes, I would. But in my shoes, I don't. That's all I can say. If someone confronted us over something, I would give up, I think. Up to a certain point, you know. But if they really were insistent, I'd say, Oh, okay. But... I'm trying to imagine situations. I think partly it's a choice of there's so much you can choose to do. Whatever you do, actually, is a kind of confrontation.

[55:49]

Like in San Francisco, if we choose not to try to confront the city government about their parks, but we establish a park instead, that's a kind of confrontation. But it's not so direct. But if there was a direct confrontation, I think if there's some purpose in it... I know I don't want to extrapolate to generalized situations, because maybe we should talk about this some other time, but I think my own experience has been that I can't extrapolate to general situations like that, because each situation in its minute form, some answer is in it. But between individuals, confrontation is almost always

[56:53]

useless, I think, unless you know the person so well that 90% of what's happening is something else other than confrontation. Excuse me. Anyway, please don't generalize when anybody... The kind of way I'm speaking about things, if you take one little bit and generalize it and try to apply it, it doesn't work that way. If you have good motivation,

[58:07]

good motivation is good. And I always feel this, I don't know if I'll say this, I've never been able to have questions like that, but it seems like that's a good thing that it's happening. Just a second. I never remember what I said exactly, but she reminds me that I talked about thought clusters. I must have said that when you see how thoughts begin to appear and disappear, you begin to see how they're clustered around something, that you can't see what they're clustered around, but they're clustered around something. So they look like separated thoughts,

[59:08]

but actually some pattern emerges when you get some distance on... That's true. That's true. Can you see such clusters? I see such clusters. Then what? Then I accept it. What if you accepted the thought clusters as Buddha nature? Anyway, that would be taking an attitude not of confrontation.

[60:12]

Thank you. Yeah. Someone asked me that in the city the other day. It seems to be a popular topic, you know, recently. Thank you. I'm still...

[61:58]

I want to say something more about confrontation. You know, I've never... I haven't thought about confrontation on the scale you're talking about from the point of view of practice, so I don't know quite how to express it, but... It's clear if you practice zazen, so I limit it to personal, it's clear if you practice buddhism, that if you confront another person out of fear or being threatened or out of some wish to destroy what you're confronting, it almost always backfires.

[63:04]

But if you confront with some... love, I mean, excuse me for saying so, but some love, you know, then it's all right, because then, of course, we confront... the more you practice, then sometimes, you know, we... we really get confronted, you know. Ah, sleepiness. That will be the end of the lecture, I think, will be. Bedtime story. It's pretty difficult, you know, to stay awake. And Suzuki Yoshi always said it was the most... the biggest enemy to practice. And I suppose it's one of the most effective ways

[64:15]

to keep ourselves from practice, practicing. The fear to practice takes various forms, the fear of going crazy, you know, the decision to quit, the decision to block your practice, you know. Most of us get to a certain point in practice, two or three years of steady practice, and then we do our best to stop it. And... if you continue practicing, sleepiness is the most common. There are various ways to discontinue practice. One is to... to stop. But another way is to continue

[65:15]

but to allow yourself certain exceptions. Well, today it's all right, I'll do this or that, or I'll chase a pretty girl, a nice man, or I'll... go back to... working out my destiny in some way. That's exactly the same as when you finally can sit down very well and you begin to be able to have no... no... form arise in your mind, no sense of identity or thoughts or anything.

[66:20]

You disturb it immediately when that happens, with some thought or desire or feeling. And when you get so you can lead your life in that way, you disturb it immediately, you create any problem. You know? Because it... on the one hand it threatens us with giving up something that's so dear to us, you know, everything we've built up as our way of hoping for so many years. And also because we think we're not... it's too much. What would happen to us if we did that? How would people treat us? We'd be too good, you know. I'm not good enough. Anyway, at that point, when our practice begins to actually require something of us

[67:26]

other than the decision to practice, we fall asleep. Most commonly we fall asleep. So you can't find out, you know, unless you know that you're getting enough sleep. So you should make sure you get enough sleep. Maybe at least six hours to check up. If you need more, seven. Five or six anyway. Less than that, it may be just you're tired. Then you just... there's no way. You just have to try to stay awake.

[68:28]

And at each stage in your practice, there's some different way. I can remember I used to... One way I used to do it, I'd sit there and I'd say, Awake! Over and over again. Wake up! And I would say, Wake up! Not out loud, of course. And I'd try to wake up. And I just used some verbal thing. Stay awake, stay awake. Particularly in didoxia where they carry this huge stick. I could sometimes say, Wake up! But... Other times there's other ways. When someone asked me a question in the city, what I said, Now I think if I'm sleepy, I haven't had much sleep.

[69:30]

Still I want to stay awake. I put my consciousness here. My attention there. But in some other stage of practice, I've done something else. It depends on where the sleepiness is coming from. Where you can bring your energy alive. In practice, of course, we want you to be sleepy enough that your defenses are down. And your unconscious is a little active. And in the midst of that, you should be able to find some way to stay awake. You have plenty of energy. So how to find some way is up to you. Politely, it can help by looking more and more closely at your practice.

[70:45]

Why is it boring or uninteresting? What are you not seeing between you? But as I said, in the city, for most people, they don't practice Buddhism because of ignorance or delusion, or something like that. But for us who see the point of practice, why we don't practice is because our potentiality is not aroused. How to arouse our potentiality is the secret of practice. www.mooji.org

[71:40]

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