I'll try again to talk about that which can't be talked about. It's easier to bow, actually, to that which we can't bow. Until we can create our own life, you need some kind of priority, some priorities to allow you to practice. And you have to give up wanting. You have to give up your, actually you have to give up your life. Suzuki Roshi said that our practice arises from our corpse. Our true life arises from our corpse or great death.

[01:34]

You want to practice, but you don't want to give up your life. Just give up and do zazen, or try to help others, or do whatever you're doing just now. Whatever kind of life you have, just what is there now. Because your ideas are killing you. Shakyamuni used to say that sickness can't destroy our life, but not practicing can destroy our life. If you practice and don't enjoy practice, it's a drag, actually. But if you practice and

[02:53]

enjoy practice, that's some help, but then if you only practice those parts of our practice which you like, then pretty soon you can't practice. And if you don't practice at all, that's not, most of you know that's not satisfactory either. So you have no choice but to give up wanting. I can say, knowing to find out what you really want, but if I say that, that's too easy. You have to give up wanting. You know the, when the wondering, layman, who became the sixth patriarch met the fifth patriarch. He said to him, anyway there's various interpretations of what he said, but supposedly he said that

[04:20]

His mind is a field of blessedness from which wisdom arises. His self-nature doesn't stray. And that's a certain priority, your state of mind. At least you should I mean, maybe you don't know what we mean when we say your mind is a field of blessedness. But at least you know what your state of mind is, distracted or upset. But you always let your state of mind be upset. I mean, you don't seem to be able to cut through the shit Over and over again you allow things to pile up on yourself. And then you feel terrible but you can't do anything about it. You just complain.

[05:43]

Sometimes you have to take a stand. You know, you think your life is around the corner. Some of you are, your life, each of you has some different situation. Some of you are surrounded by knives, a kind of cloud of knives around you. You can't move in any direction. And some of you have so many, without knowing it, so many ideas about what life is and when it's going to start for you. So you can't decide, you know. So you wait to be told. And then when you're told, you can't hear. So you wait to be forced. And then when you're forced, you don't like being forced. or you don't, it's not what you wanted it to be, it's not good enough. Last time we talked about Joshu's four gates, North Gate, South Gate, East Gate, West Gate,

[07:27]

He was asked, what is Joshu? And in that same story, the commentary says, to understand this you need a barrier-penetrating eye. How do you, what do we mean barrier-penetrating eye? How can you see? Some years after Tozan and Rinzai, who I've talked about a lot, about in the seventh generation of Rinzai, there was the Rinzai line split up into two schools, and one was Oryo.

[08:31]

not Oreo crackers, but O-R-Y-O, I guess. Anyway, he lived from about the second year of the 11th century to 1069. And he's famous for what are called the three barriers of Oreo. And one of them is the question, you are born from a concurrence of causes. Show me your concurrence of causes from which you were born. The traditional answer given to that is, just as we had this morning in the Zendo, this morning I had white rice soup. Now I feel hungry again.

[10:16]

It's so difficult here in the city to avoid being distracted from your power, or your practice, or how everything arises from your mind. Suzuki Roshi, and most of you know Beginner's Mind, I think, and in one of the stories, the lectures, he talks about the way to control your cow is to give him a spacious field, I think, in that lecture. He says that the reason everything is beautiful

[12:24]

is because it's imperfect, because it's unbalanced against a background of balance. And then he says, when you don't see the background, you see everything as suffering. But when you see the background, then suffering becomes the only way we realize our nature. Even some Buddhist sutras say that those that treat Buddha as a god say that Buddha says, well, I created the world in this mess so you can realize your nature. Anyway, you're inadequate, and this world is inadequate, everything is inadequate, and there's no sense to try to

[13:51]

Think it's perfect. Inadequate is perfect. You know, when the... When we see a sunset... Last night, I drove back from the Sierra, and as we drove along, the sun kept setting. in front of the car. And what makes the sunset beautiful is because I have my one inadequate viewpoint. Because I have my viewpoint, you know, the sun serves me. If you went the same speed as the sun, you'd be in the midst of a continuous sunset or continuous sunrise. The sun is always rising or setting simultaneously. What you see as sunset, someone else sees as dawn.

[15:23]

but because you're slower than the sun. Everything gets redder and redder and redder and redder. And pretty soon that huge thing is behind the houses. and the sunlight has stopped in the leaves. Suzuki Roshi always said, our experience of the sunlight is when it's interfered with, when we see it on something. So your life is some kind of interference, not something that's perfect. And it's arising, you know, each moment. Even if you have breakfast, pretty soon you'll feel hungry again.

[16:48]

Do you understand what I mean? Even when you're doing zazen, and maybe you have a lot of pain in a session or something. After you have some experience with sitting, and you can sit pretty well, Maybe you should even, if your state of mind is so distracted, and that you're sitting and your face is, you know, something, or you're completely distracted by your pain, maybe you should give up zazen, or give up your position, or change your legs.

[18:55]

You have to be willing to be sensitive enough to notice what disturbs your state of mind and be willing to cut it away, even Buddhism. But if cutting it away just leads you into some other restlessness, some other disturbed state, that's not what I mean. There's some phrase in Buddhism that's translated sort of strange, sort of in various ways, like the patience of the uncreate or uncreated. And Suzuki just used to say, patience or waiting. But it's not waiting for things.

[20:39]

waiting for something to happen. But waiting which is the field of blessedness Do you have some questions we should talk about? Yeah? You said the world isn't beautiful. How could it be beautiful? It is beautiful, because it's out of balance. The sun sets beautiful because we have our own viewpoint.

[22:15]

or because we're slower than the sun, because there's some disharmony, or we're out of relationship with things. But actually, everything exists like the sun exists. From every viewpoint, you can't say what it is. Sunset, dawn, where is the sun going? If you see a cloud overhead, Is the cloud over that building? Or is it from there? Is it over the moon? What do you mean, just is? Yeah. Yeah. You can say the cloud just is. But you exist that way. You can't say, I'm over this building, or I'm here in this building, or I'm over there, from various viewpoints. But we, how do you not get caught by one viewpoint after another? This is why we practice.

[23:40]

If your practice exists in the realm of your preferences this part I like, this part I don't like. And that's not really practice, that's just doing something you like. And if you like zazen or practice better than most things, I suppose that's better than liking something else, milkshakes. I like milkshakes very much. Anyway, that's an important point which I don't like to push too much, you know? Because if I push it too much I'll be too critical of all of you. And I don't like being critical of you because

[25:14]

To me, your lives are quite beautiful. So I'm not critical of your life. Whatever you do is okay. Seems okay to me. And I shouldn't push anything too much because you should see it. Practice should be, you know, have some aspect of being forced on you, but not too much. Because if you... For some of you it's pretty difficult to practice, or your life situation is that probably you only practice a short time or one year. So I don't want to say there's only one way of practice to give up your whole life. If I say that, then I'm being critical of those of you who don't do that. And I don't feel critical, you know, of that. So, and we can't lay a trip on ourselves of, okay, so today I'm going to give up everything.

[26:40]

What you can do is you can realize certain priorities. And the more you realize certain priorities, my state of mind is of some importance. If I try to do this and that and add that to it at such a way that my state of mind is disturbed, nothing you do can be worth that. So our practice is to find some way, hopefully, for a time which we give up doing things, too many things, until anything we do arises. No matter how much you do, it doesn't disturb your state of mind. It's a very interesting point because I can also say, do anything you want, do exactly what you want to do. If you're going to be alive on this planet, you know, existing now as such and such a person, you might as well enjoy yourself.

[28:20]

Usually we find when we try to do just what we want, we don't enjoy ourselves, actually. Anyway, if you have certain priorities, certain sense of, well, practice is such and such. If you see you're involved in doing this because you want to and not doing that because you don't want to, if you have some sense of, yes, but I could cut through that,

[29:50]

and do things on some other basis of whether I want to or don't want to, then the more you know that, when you're ready, you can do it. Because our practice isn't in the realm of doing. But there is some, as I've said before, some real problem in being on the side, sidelines of practice for a long time, doing this part of it or that part of it. It's okay, unless you have a big crisis. And if you have a big crisis, some real confrontation with your own life,

[30:55]

then practice won't help you. You use it up that way. So, strictly speaking, you either do it completely or you can't come in the door. They don't let some people halfway in the door. We let everyone halfway in the door. And so, as a result, partly no one knows where the door, what's all the way in the door, what the door is. We don't, you don't need some, if you're creating your own life, you've given the world back to life, then you don't need this or that priority.

[32:20]

everything exists as an all-at-onceness. There's no problem at all. Last I talked at Tassajara bit about this. So many things in Zen we say be patient or do one thing at a time. And on one side it's how you start your practice by trying to be patient with your anger or patient with this or that situation. But doing one thing at a time also means doing everything at once, or not having the duality of subject and object. But you can't start out with, okay, now I'm going to be free from subject and object. You can start out just doing one thing at a time, and you can start out being patient.

[33:56]

But after you have some experience with being patient, existing in your various experiences, patience more and more is field of blessedness. Yeah. He said that, really another way of saying what he said is that you do priorities until you realize that you are

[35:00]

How is too much? He said, I don't think you can hear what he said. He said, you need priorities until you know you're already creating your own life. and something about how you create it. Zekiroshi used to say things when I first met him, things like, his English wasn't so good, you know, And he'd say, the important point is, what is this self who practices? And you should know how not to understand yourself. And I'd think, not? No, he didn't mean not, he meant how to, you should know how to understand yourself. So I would be tempted to go and correct his English.

[36:40]

He meant you should know how not to understand yourself. Please. Why do you think it's... He says, he thinks it's, we can't completely not know ourselves. Why do you think so? You can't understand the place where it connects, but somewhere that thought feels like it comes from more of a bodily feeling, that they're both completely knowing yourself or completely not knowing yourself, or kind of like past and future. They're so far out that you can't see the end of them anywhere.

[38:12]

Yeah, but still you have the idea that if your mind was big enough, it could include both ends? It seems that things arise from our mind. part of the practice is to accept that arises just as it is. And sometimes a no-understanding or a non-understanding arises, and sometimes an understanding arises. That just seems to go on like that. So to say that there's no understanding completely seems a little unreal, because what arises in any moment sometimes is an understanding. In any given moment, sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't. Various tentative understandings arise, which you can use. That's rather nice, actually.

[39:43]

That's like jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, never jam today. Did we have jam today? No. Okay. contentment? Probably not. It's better just to give up choice. If you're content, okay. If you're not content, okay. If you choose being content over not being content, you'll have some problem. If your contentment is so big it includes everything, any kind of suffering,

[41:35]

That's contentment. It's interesting to practice because we go through our life and finally the best part of us we call, maybe we have some experience of the best part of us leads us to practice And then we have to give up the best part of ourselves to practice, to enter the actual realm of our life or our power or something. You had a question? The treadmill is wanting, of course, as you pointed out, is wanting to get somewhere, wanting to come to something.

[43:44]

Do you have any idea what the something is you want to come to? No, but I'd sort of like to get out of this feeling of just complete amorphousness. I didn't have as much at the top of my heart. Well, it doesn't help to add another thing to your life, you know, another idea of what you might want or what you might do or some other treadmill. If you can, as you describe your life,

[45:16]

just as it is, is all you have. So maybe you should try giving up wanting it to be something else. Can you do that? wanting it, you know. It's better to be in your situation, though, than the other situation. which is to say with your mind, oh, everything is just as it is. There's no place to go and nothing to do. Just to have that as an idea, that is just some way of fending off

[46:48]

You, of course, exist as a particular person with a particular life situation. And you can't avoid that with some idea that you don't exist. So first, our practice is to know, maybe, what we are. So we do zazen and do zazen in times when we don't like to do zazen as well as when we like to. As you know, if you only do zazen when you like to, then pretty soon you're zazen, you manipulate it for a good feeling or for so it benefits some part of you. But zazen should be in relation to every moment, not just those moments you choose. So we have some schedule. At such and such a time we do this or that. No matter how you feel, you do this or that. Because on the treadmill even of life in this building or at Tassajara, it's a kind of treadmill.

[48:20]

Right now you have to find your freedom. So maybe the best way is to make the treadmill worse and worse and worse. Instead of allowing you in the city as you can step on and off from one treadmill to the next Maybe the subtle idea of wanting to be perfect in the many ways it occurs is the biggest problem. If you can just be imperfect, without fear, then maybe you can do anything you want. You don't have to worry about treadmills or zazen or anything.

[49:34]

Yeah. I don't know what I mean when I say that. I'm saying something very intimate and personal and I can't describe it in such a large public gathering.

[50:37]

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