Today is Sophia's actual official birthday. So she will today, as of today, yesterday she said to somebody, I'm seven. I said, no, you've completed eight years except for one day. Some kind of sense calendar, calendrical sense. What's it like to complete or live eight years? Yeah, and each of you, well, you've completed some number of years, yes. And I, in a few more days, will have completed or something, half completed 73 years and counting. And, but in what mind has Sophia, or in what mind have you completed or lived these years?

[01:04]

And of course I'm, you know, I can't help but watch and listen and observe Sophia as, you know, clearly even in a few months her mind relates to things. differently, more fully I can say things which she is already ahead of what I say instead of behind what I say. At what mind are we living our life in? And I said this morning Zen mind, if Zen mind has any meaning, not just a description of some table or mood like anger or something like that. It's the mind through, it's meant to be understood as a transmitted mind, not just a feel-good mind or something, no.

[02:13]

The mind through which we discover our life through which we unfold our life and through which we validate our life, confirm our life. Now, can we really do this? I mean, all Western literature, virtually all Western literature and philosophy presents the world as disparate from us, as something separate from us, a container of some sort. Something we live in, live within. And yet, define life primarily through consciousness. And a consciousness which is formed by this stuff that's different than us, supposedly. That's basically different than the Buddhist view of the world, in which this is us.

[03:15]

This is the same stuff as us, another version of us. And our nascent minds, nascent means emerging minds, coming into being minds, not consciousness, not the order of consciousness, but the mind on the edge of disorder, So we're not talking about the world as it should be, but the world as it is, or as things are, and the world as it could be, yes, also, but not so much the world as it should be. Now, could be is like an attractor in chaos theory, like when water goes over A waterfall over a cliff or something, it does all kinds of things, but it's attracted by gravity to keep falling down. But it falls down in a variety of ways. It's not like a clock, which goes in a very prescribed way.

[04:17]

You don't know quite what's going to happen, but you know it's going to fall. So should is a word in consciousness to try to give the world order. That's the way things should be. But should be kind of separates us from the world and us and other people. So if you can have more of the world just as it is, and yet as it could be, what could it be? We could all be Buddhas or there could be more Buddhas or But that doesn't become a should, it becomes something that attracts the way things, a kind of gravity that attracts the way things are, things as they are. So your mind, your energy, you're defining is in things as they are and with the attractor of how they could be, but not much time should be, ought to be, shouldn't, should be wasted, wasted in

[05:27]

the way things should be. An order that we feel better with. Because practice is really about the skill of being on the edge of disorder. Now I'm... I'm... pertaining myself. Something like that. With this question of... that the biggest difference between Asian Buddhism and Western Buddhism is the lay adept sangha, the adept lay sangha. Now, what does that mean? I don't know. I mean, I do know. I mean, we're the living experiment of it. We and Yohanasoff are the most of my life and it's they're both experiments for me in what will this lay adept sangha be? What can it be?

[06:28]

Now, as you know, Suzuki Roshi, I mean, the simplest way to describe Suzuki Roshi's life is he came to America knowing that basically he was a priest and a monk, but kind of a lay person. I mean, they lived in a temple in a village. It's like a big house in the village, you know. You went to college, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he was rather disappointed with monastic life in Japan. Institutionalized. He didn't like the way monastic life was institutionalized as a career. And so when he first came to America, he tried just living in the city. After a while, people came to sit with him. He made no announcement of himself or anything. Just people found him and sat with him.

[07:34]

There's no public definition. And after a while, he found that people weren't getting it. People needed monastic life, some kind of monastic life. So that's the beginning of the story, and it's still the story. How much monastic life do we need? Yeah, I mean... I mean, you don't need any monastic life. You don't need anything. But if you want to define your life, validate your life, not through consciousness, but through Zen mind, let's call it that, to speak simply, yeah, you're going to do that. I mean, if that's your intention, if you feel that, if you feel that through Zazen, etc., through insight, through realization experiences, then how do you manifest that in your life?

[08:42]

No, I don't think we can just conflate monastic life into the adept lay sangha or into lay life. Monastic life is different. And how is it different? really is monastic life about? How is it actually different from lay life? Now Sukhiroshi, and I'm still commenting on this epilogue of Then My Beginner's Mind, as I started last time, Sukhiroshi speaks about you should make rules and you should follow them. Absolutely, something like that he says. Well, that's kind of hard for us. And we have quite a different relationship to rules. I mean, rules, there are maybe three categories of rules in Buddhism and in monastic life. So I'm speaking about what, in reference to what he said. Both, you're not quite monks and you're not quite laypersons.

[09:55]

That's some new kind of Buddhism, he says in the beginning of this epilogue. And then he talks about rules. Now, the most basic rules are like your arm, your elbow can't bend backwards. That's a very basic rule that you don't break very often. You try not to, but you ride a bicycle, skateboard. So that's the non-arbitrary rules. Most of the rules are arbitrary. But you follow them completely in the monastic life. And the non-arbitrary rules are... Well, then there's a third category, instructive rules. A lot of our rules are instructive to make you notice that this is us, which is basically what Dharma...

[10:59]

Dharmic rules are rules that make you notice things, find the pace of the world, the physical pace of the world in other people. So you're not just running through a container. Or conceiving of yourself through consciousness and, you know, idealizations of who you are in this container. Now, because we're practicing Zen in a new culture, we really have to rethink the whole of Buddhism, and that's why we are pioneers, and probably several generations of pioneers will be around here, I hope. We've already got a couple here, anyway. We have to be more explicit.

[12:03]

We have to really kind of feel through, experience through, think through, and conceptualize through. I mean, the concepts, we want to use concepts like a net. Once you've caught the fish, you throw the net away. You forget the net. Someone said, I want to know a person who's forgotten words. Uses words, but forgets words, like the net that's thrown away. The words of Annette. It's an old saying. So what constitutes monastic life? That's what I'm trying to speak about. And I don't know whether we're doing it well enough here. I... So let me try to speak. So the arbitrary rules that you follow absolutely are very... Knowing they're arbitrary, like walking across the altar, you bow when you cross here.

[13:08]

But we don't do it when you're doing kinyin. But we do it other times. That's also an instructive rule because it makes you relate dharmically to the... And hence... familiarly with this non-container world, this world of activity, this hidden landscape. And I think this idea of a hidden landscape is one that we should ponder within ourselves for some time. So, of the arbitrary rules, many of the rules in monastic life are just to allow us to practice together. And they're not rules you do in your ordinary personal life somewhere because they don't make sense. But they make sense here because they do allow us to practice together. The second sense of rules is to establish sufficient order that allows disorder.

[14:20]

almost to protect you from the disorder of nascent minds, of emerging minds, of minds you're not familiar with. And another, a third aspect of the meaning of the rules is to wear you down. Destroy you I mean no that's too strong But really and In fact you should even have that attitude in each period of Zazen that you know sometimes I feel I'm being chopped up into pieces I Mean if you have that feeling failure in the outside world means almost nothing compared to being chopped up into pieces and You're so worn down by the bloody rules, so this aspect of the rules is no alternative to the rules.

[15:24]

In other words, you don't allow yourself an alternative to the rules for three months. It's kind of like dying. And the more serious practitioner, the real or something practitioner says, oh, it's terrible, we can only die for three months. I'd like to die for six months or something. But we have this three months, your seven days Tashin, three months, after the three months, yeah, then you do something else. It's a little bit, you know, again, we talked about the water, viewing the water as an activity and the hidden landscape of the water as an activity. It's also kind of, you know, Dogen speaks about And the fish never reaches the end of the water.

[16:27]

The bird never reaches the end of the air. Each in its element. And then he says something like, and the fish will die in the air and the bird will die in the water. But the kind of koan aspect of that and juxtaposing those two images and typical of Chinese way of writing is, yeah, but what about what's unthinkable when the bird can swim and the fish can fly? That's not spelled out in koan. In fact, it's spelled away from koan. But the real spell is what about when bird and fish are the same? That's for you to make that leap. What about when we are Buddha and ordinary being?

[17:37]

What about, what's monastic life and lay life? and to be worn down until you're just happy to be alive. And that, you know, the word for practice in Japanese is shugyo. But shugyo really means that worn-down feeling where the person is, moment after moment, simply happy to be alive. And that's hard to do. I mean, it's because you've built your life on the container of consciousness. And you're thinking about it, and it's very difficult to come here and die to the outside world. And that's what lay practice can't give you. And, you know, when I was responsible for Tathāsara, and Sukhya Rinpoche founded and created Tathāsara, The rule was, as soon as we were able to do it, nobody was accepted who couldn't stay continuously for two years.

[18:44]

And it should have been more. Because then you really do give up on the outside world of defining yourself through the consciousness framed in the container. The outside world is a container in which you imagine your life. Doesn't mean you don't also have that life. Boy, when you've been so worn down that you don't identify with it anymore, you're alive in a different way in the world. As I said, you're... If you can find yourself in the spine and in the breath without the... and that... And the container, as I said, the space as a container disappears. It's a, again, a freedom.

[19:51]

What happens is fundamentally how you feel in your spine and in your breath. I mean, I'm just putting it rather crudely. And not what happens in such... But if things bother you outside, it's a very good indication. Immediately return your mind to the spine. Things won't bother you anymore. I mean, you may be concerned, you need to take responsibility, etc. But the outside world is not in the spine. There's minds that arise that are not... don't fall into the categories of consciousness. And so monastic life is meant to introduce those, and until finally, and we have a fourth rule, or a fifth, I guess fourth, that the rules are meant to make an entire element here, like the air for the birds, the water for the fish, in which this is the world.

[20:59]

There ain't no other. Practice period should be, there ain't no other world. That's why, traditionally, there's no letters, there's no phone calls, there's no email, and there's no tradition. I wasn't a part of the tradition. But basically, there was no relationship to the outside, period. For the initial period of practice. I don't think we can do that in a lay adept song. We have to have another kind of adeptness, but can it really transmit Buddha mind? I don't know. But we can start on your... on your cushion, kind of dying, willing to die, to disappear.

[22:02]

Every period. There's no other reality. then there's an aliveness. Let's just go back again to waking mind in contrast because I've decided to use that as a way to speak about this waking mind as not the same as conscious mind. So when you try to notice when you have some experience that you wake up and somehow you're just aware It's a kind of boundless awareness. Boundless awareness is sometimes how Zen mind is defined.

[23:08]

And then, at some point, consciousness comes in. And as consciousness comes in, it kind of leaks in pretty soon. And this boundless space becomes a container. And the world you live in becomes a container. And the shoulds become your footsteps. Okay, fine. Bird or fish. But there are alternatives. And alternatives are the most fundamental way we can be alive. not maybe the most pleasurable in terms of our usual expectations, etc., but the most deeply moment-by-moment satisfying. As Sukershi said, the world flows moment-by-moment, changing form and color.

[24:14]

What else do you need? Well, I'm still going to define myself by that out there. Yeah, sometimes when you're out there, Can you for three months not define yourself by any out there? And if you can't in three months or two years or three years, you bloody well, excuse me, stay in the monastery until you can. And it usually takes 10 years. 10,000 hours, 10 years. or ten years or so of practice which you don't give yourself any alternative except unfolding your life through tzazen and mindfulness practices. If we're going to transmit Buddhism, I'm afraid this is the way it is. If we're going to transmit a nice way to be and think about the world, okay, then it's like any belief system. So when we meet each other, it's great if we can find a way to meet each other.

[25:28]

And part of the rules that we practice together are to find a way to meet each other in, let's call it, waking mind and not conscious mind. So you meet a person. There they are. You can see the construct of their personality right there. Right behind that is waking mind, awareness. Right behind that and around that is simple aliveness. Maybe that's the entrance, simple aliveness in the spine and in the breath. So the monk ideally has this grandmotherly feeling or a soft feeling of just meeting each person in their aliveness and in that meeting calling forth the other person's aliveness, not their personality structures, structured in consciousness. So then it's great if you, it's wonderful to be with people you're irritated with, et cetera, and modest, because it helps rub you down until finally you relate to each in simple aliveness.

[26:39]

Simple aliveness. The way things are and the way things could be and not so much the way they should be. Okay? Okay? Thanks.

[26:58]

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