I love to taste the truth and the truth is worse. Good morning. Today, we commemorate or celebrate, actually, Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment, which traditionally the date is the 8th of December, but because we have Rohantsu Sashin, we do it today, which is 1st or 2nd or something, 2nd. six day or seishin, seven day seishin, which commemorates Buddha's enlightenment.

[01:02]

So I'm going to talk about Buddha's enlightened practice, and I'm going to talk about it as a commentary on a talk of Suzuki Roshi's, which we called find out for yourself. Now, I could just close the book and walk away, but I'll make this mistake and continue to talk. He says, in your zazen, or in your life, you will have many difficulties or problems. We all know that. When you have a problem, see if you can find out for yourself why you have a problem.

[02:10]

Unless you try to solve your difficulty in the best way, I'm sorry, usually you will try to solve your difficulty in the best way as soon as possible. Rather than studying for yourself, you ask someone why you have a problem. That kind of approach may work well for your usual life, but if you want to study Zen, it doesn't help. So, when we have a problem, it's usual, normal, to want to solve the problem or deal with the problem. And if we can't solve the problem ourselves, we try to get some help. we ask somebody, we go to a therapist maybe, or we want to get over this problem. But in Zen practice, it's the opposite. If you go to your teacher with a problem, if your teacher is a good teacher,

[03:21]

the teacher will throw you back on yourself. And many students complain about the teacher. He never answers my questions. He doesn't treat me well. He sends me away before things are finished. He never really compliments me. He just complains. He never gives me a compliment. He just tells me when I'm wrong or not doing something right or correctly. So this is a common, you know, situation. The Zen teacher encourages you to find out for yourself.

[04:24]

This is why we have something called koans. The teacher will never answer your koan. The koan is given to you to struggle with, to deal with, to search yourself thoroughly, to find, not the answer, but the way. So, dealing with the problem is how you find your way. This is why the problem that we have is our treasure. It's not something to be solved. So, there's such a thing, you know, two styles of Zen practice. One is koan practice, where the teacher gives you one koan after another to deal with. And the other side is shikantaza, which is just practicing, just doing, which is actually the basis of koan study.

[05:36]

But it's a different kind of koan practice. It's like seeing the koan in your daily life as your problem. I mean, seeing your problem as a koan in your daily life. The problem you have is your koan, and the teacher helps you to realize or to see that, not answering or solving your problem, but using your problem to deepen your understanding. And if you don't see it that way, you'll be very discouraged. So he says, the moment you are told something by someone and you think you understand, you will stick to it and you will lose the full function of your nature. So when we are told the answer to something, we no longer have to deal with it.

[06:41]

So losing the full function of our nature means we're not searching anymore. We have the answer, so there's no need to stretch ourself. So when you seek something, your true nature is in full activity, as if you are feeling for your pillow in the dark. This refers to this koan. asks Master Dawo Dogo, he says, he's referring to the thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara, do you know that figure, Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Mercy, who has a thousand arms and each arm, and each hand has an eye or a tool to help people with. So Dawu says, asks, I mean, Ungon asks Dawu, how does the bodhisattva of a thousand arms use those hands and arms to help people?

[07:59]

And Dawu said, it's like reaching in the night, in the middle of the night for your pillow, not knowing where it is. He says, if you know where the pillow is, your mind is not in full function, because you don't have to stretch yourself. Your mind is acting in a limited sense. When you are seeking for the pillow without knowing where it is, then your mind is open to everything. When you travel to a foreign country, all your mind and senses are open to seeing something new but when you're in your surroundings you limit yourself to what you know basically and only deal with incidentals as they come up but basically we're dealing with stuff that we know and we put ourselves into a comfortable position so that we don't have to make too many decisions more than we need to

[09:12]

So we become accustomed to our surroundings. But when you go someplace new, it's all new, and you have to make an effort to find yourself. So in this way, you will have a more subtle attitude toward everything, and you will see things as it is. One of the dangers of having too many teachers, it's not a bad thing, but one of the dangers of having too many teachers is if the first person, if your teacher doesn't give you a satisfactory, a satisfying response, then you go see somebody else. you get some comfort, you get your problem answered, but then you stop dealing with it.

[10:19]

So, it's a big problem. So, it's not so easy to have a teacher who always throws you back on yourself, because you feel that you're not being dealt with fairly, often, or correctly. So you have to have real trust and faith in yourself and your teacher in order to practice. And your teacher may be wrong. That's also a problem you have to deal with. But that's not necessarily a bad problem. So if you want to study something, it's better not to know what the answer is. Because you are not satisfied with something, you are taught, and because you cannot rely on anything set up by someone else, you study Buddhism without knowing how to study it.

[11:27]

Now that sounds like a complaint, but it's actually, to study Buddhism without knowing how to study it is correct. we should study Buddhism without knowing how to study it. There are schools of Buddhism which are step-by-step study of Buddhism, which teach you how to study Buddhism, but in Zen practice we don't teach you how to study Buddhism. In a way, it's okay not to know anything about Buddhism. So this is a funny sentence because it seems to say something the other way. Because you are not satisfied with something, you are told, and because you cannot rely on anything set up by someone else, you study Buddhism without knowing how to study it.

[12:39]

In this way, you find out for yourself what we really mean by Buddha nature, practice, or enlightenment. In other words, we use these terms, but it's up to you to find out what that is through your experience. These are just names of something, just, you know, Buddha. There's a koan in which, at the end, the teacher says, if you use the word Buddha, you should wash your mouth out with soap and water. You know, it's fine to use the word Buddha, but if you rely on that and think you understand that through the words, You're fooling yourself. So he says, since you seek freedom, you try various ways.

[13:46]

Of course, you will sometimes find that you have wasted your time. In practice, sometimes you find you feel like you're wasting your time. If a Zen master drinks sake, you may think the best way to attain enlightenment is to drink sake. You follow your teacher. If the teacher does this, you do it. If he does something bad, you do something bad. But that may not be so bad. There was a Tibetan teacher who drank lots of sake. Matter of fact, I remember being invited up to, after a talk, upstairs, and everybody was drinking out of these glasses of clear liquid. But it turned out to be gin, I think.

[14:48]

But because the teacher was doing this, everybody was doing this. But they learned something. They learned something. You know, you didn't have to learn that way, but that's the way it went. So if a Zen master drinks sake, you may think the best way to attain enlightenment is to drink sake. But even though you drink a lot of sake, as he does, you will not attain enlightenment. It may look like you've wasted your time, but that attitude is important. The attitude of making the effort to follow the way, even though it's the wrong way. If you continue to try to find out in that way, you will gain more power to understand things. Whatever we do, you will not waste your time. I remember hearing a jazz musician one time saying, you know, when I make a mistake when I'm playing, I make a big mistake, a total mistake, but then I just keep playing and I know where I am.

[16:05]

Follow the way with searching for the way. You will make mistakes, but the mistakes will help you. Our mistakes hopefully help us. Make a big mistake and then you make a big turnaround. Sometimes people say, I don't know which way to go. Which way shall I go? Shall I go this way or shall I go that way? I would say, just pick a way and go. And you'll find out, oh, that's the wrong way. Then you'll turn around and go the right way. But if you don't make up your mind, you just stagnate. So better to make a big mistake, sometimes, than not do anything. Sometimes better to not do anything. But in this line of thinking, it's better to make a big mistake. So, what you do, when you do something with a limited idea or with some definite purpose, what you will gain is something concrete.

[17:31]

This is our usual way of thinking. We have a purpose, and so we do something, we act in order to have a result. That's usual. But this will cover up your inner nature. So it is not a matter of what you study, but a matter of seeing things as it is and accepting things as it is. Sometimes people say, well, what shall I study? We have a whole library full of books, you know. What shall I study? God, where do you start? Just pick up any book and start reading it. And it will give you almost everything you need to know about Buddhism. I mean, intellectually. Just start anywhere. It's just like your practice. Where should I start my practice? Well, take a step. Some of you may study something only if you like it.

[18:39]

Most of us are like that. If you don't like it, you ignore it. That is a selfish way, and it also limits your power of study. Good or bad, small or big, we study to discover the true reason why something is so big and why something is so small, why something is so good and why something is not so good. If you try to discover only something good, you will miss something, and you will always be limiting your faculties. When you live in a limited world, you cannot accept things as it is. So this is a very important point about enlightenment. We think enlightenment is something good. We think that enlightenment is the opposite of delusion, or our illusions. But our enlightenment is also within our illusions and delusions, and our delusions and illusions are also within our enlightenment. If you try to separate them, it's not enlightenment.

[19:44]

The good is within the bad, the bad isn't within the good. The right isn't within the wrong, and the wrong is within the right. So this is what's called not picking and choosing, even though we're always discriminating and picking and choosing. This is not a rule. It's an attitude. And when we have an argument with this, We try to think of it as a rule, and then we argue with the rule. It's not a rule. It doesn't always happen in the same way. Nothing ever happens in the same way. It's an attitude toward our life. Even if a Zen master had just two or three students, he would never tell them our way in detail. The only way to study with him or her is to eat with, talk with, and do everything with together.

[20:52]

You help your teacher without being told how to help. Mostly, the teacher will not seem to be very happy and will always be scolding you without apparent reason because you cannot figure out the reason you will not be so happy, and your teacher will not be so happy. If you really want to study with your teacher, you will study how to take care of the teacher and how to make your life as a teacher a happy one. That's kind of sweet. This is Japanese practice. But it's kind of like apprenticeship. Being a student is like apprenticeship. And I don't know, the building trades are no longer so prominent in America anymore.

[21:54]

But in the building trades, there were always apprentices. The apprenticeship was four years. And if you were a painter's apprentice, you washed brushes for four years, for the first year, I'm sorry. And you learn how to take care of everything, you know, and if you're a carpenter, you hold lumber for a year, you know, and learn how to take care of things. And then before you actually start doing something. So, and you learn how to take care of your, you know, the painter's sangha, or the carpenter's sangha, or the plumber's sangha. So, and it became a kind of family Apprenticeship is like a family. In many parts of the world, which they still do this, and the way it used to work, is the apprentice would become part of the teacher's family and work together, live together, do everything together, and you just, by association, you learn everything.

[23:04]

So it's the same way in Zen practice. That's why it's nice to have a small sangha. where you have access to a teacher, and formality is only ... I'll come to formality later, but ... I remember the kind of method of apprenticeship is that you watch the teacher and you try to decide, how can I do something? What am I supposed to do next without being told? So that's being in full function. I'm waiting for the teacher to tell me what to do. He won't tell you anything. You have to find out through your intuition, what does he need?

[24:08]

What does she need? What's next? I remember when I was Siddhuki Rishi at Jishya at Tosohara and him walking into the cabin and taking off his koromo, his robe, and dropping it on the floor, which just totally surprised me. I didn't know what to do. I realized I was supposed to figure out what to do. He didn't say anything, you know, which is such an unusual thing. you get in tune with the teacher's intuition. You attune yourself to the teacher, and that's how you study. So I had a wonderful time working in the kitchen, this sashimi, because I was so in tune with the cook.

[25:09]

tell anybody what to do. We're so in tune that it was effortless. That's the kind of activity that's so wonderful, just knowing what's next without saying anything. Or if we say something, it's just one person with two minds. So you may say that this kind of practice is very old-fashioned. It may be so, but I think you had this kind of life in Western civilization too, although not exactly as we did in Japan. The reason why people had a difficult time with their teachers is that there's no particular way for us to study. Each one of us is different from the other, so each one of us must have our own way, and according to the situation, we should change our way. You cannot stick to anything. The only thing to do is to discover the appropriate way to act under new circumstances.

[26:15]

And this is the basis of precepts. The living precept is to find the way to act under various circumstances, given some guidelines called precepts. So, for instance, in the morning we clean. If we don't have enough rags or brooms, I guess it's impossible to participate in our cleaning. Under these circumstances, it's still possible to figure out what to do. I don't scold you very much, but if I were a strict Zen master, I would be very angry with you because you give up quite easily. Oh no, there's not much cleaning equipment or There's nothing for me to do. You are prone to think this way and easily give up. In such a case, please try hard to figure out how to practice. If you are very sleepy, you may think it's better to rest. Yes, sometimes it is better. But at the same time, it may be a good chance to practice.

[27:17]

So when I was at Eheji assisting my teacher, he did not tell us anything. But whenever we made a mistake, he scolded us. The usual way to open sliding doors is to open the one on the right. But one time when I opened it that way, I was scolded, don't open it that way, not that side. So the next morning I opened the other side and got scolded again. I didn't know what to do. Later I found out that the day I opened the right side, his guest was on the right side. So I should not have opened that because I revealed the guest when I opened it. So before opening the door, I should have been careful to find out which side his guest was on. The day that I was appointed to serve him, I gave him a cup of tea. Usually, you fill 80% of the cup, since that is the rule. I filled 80% or 70%, and he said, give me hot tea.

[28:22]

Fill the cup up with very hot, strong tea. So the next morning, when there were some guests, I filled all the cups with hot, strong tea. Almost 90% and filled them and served them. I was scolded. Actually, there's no rule. He himself liked very hot. tea filled to the brim, but almost all the other guests didn't like hot, bitter tea. So for him, I should serve him bitter, hot tea, and for the guests, I should offer tea the usual way. So even though we have rules, we should not be bound by rules. Within the rules, we have to figure out what's actually important to do. So, in the kitchen, the other day, someone said, we're filling the teacups, and there are these little balls that you put the tea in, and then you put the ball into the teapot.

[29:25]

But the ball, when you put the tea into the teacup, the tea leaves don't have a chance to expand. So, the tea doesn't have a full opportunity to be infused into the water. I said, I always just dump the tea in the teapot. Everybody said, well, you're not supposed to do that. It'll just come out the spout. But it never comes out the spout. Tea always goes down to the bottom, and the tea comes out the spout. So, then somebody said, gee, you know, like, that's a rule. I thought we were always supposed to do that, you know. It's something according to the way it works, not just stick to the rule. Sometimes you should stick to the rule, even though something works better a different way. That's also true.

[30:26]

So there's nothing that's really fixed. So he's talking about his teacher, he said, he never told us anything. When I got up 20 minutes earlier than the wake-up bell, I was scolded. Don't get up so early, you will disturb my sleep. Usually, if I got up earlier, it was good. But for him, it was not so good. Actually, Suzuki Roshi said at another time, when people would get up early to study or something, at Pansahara, he said, just get up with everybody else. don't carve out your own practice. Everybody, we all get up at the same time, we all eat at the same time, we go to the Zen dojo at the same time, we work at the same time, don't carve out your own practice. So for that situation, paying attention to that rule is right, but at another time it's wrong.

[31:32]

When you try to understand things better without any rules or prejudice, this is the meaning of selflessness. So we have rules, but we don't stick to the rules necessarily. But sometimes we do. You may say that something is a rule, but rules are already a selfish idea. Actually, there are no rules. So when you say, this is the rule, you're forcing something. You're forcing the rules on others. So the rules cover your intuition. we should be able to come to, you know, there's a rule, you should be in the zendo five minutes before the bell. That's the rule. But you don't need that rule. Not necessary. Because if you were really practicing, you wouldn't want to be in the zendo five minutes before the bell. There wouldn't be any need to say, you should be in the zendo five minutes before the bell. If we did, if our practice was really strong practice,

[32:38]

We wouldn't need any rules at all, because our effort would be to practice with everyone and support everyone's practice. By doing everything right. But we do have these rules. When you have a large Sangha, you need more rules. But if you're just a few people practicing together, you don't need so many rules, because you work together more easily. And even in a large Sangha, if you can work together more easily, enthusiasm, working for the benefit of everybody, you don't need so many rules. But rules help us with our lazy practice and with our doubtful practice. So, rules are only needed when you don't have much time or when you cannot help others more closely in a kind way.

[33:39]

To say, this is the rule, so you should do it, is easy. But actually, it's not our way. For the beginner, maybe, instruction is necessary. But for advanced students, we don't give much instruction and then try out various ways. If possible, we give instruction to people one by one. Because that is difficult, we give group instruction or a lecture like this. But don't stick to the lecture. Think about what I really mean. I feel sorry that I cannot help you very much, but the way to study true Zen is not verbal. Just open yourself and give up everything. Whatever happens, whether you think it is good or bad, study closely and see what you find out. This is the fundamental attitude. Sometimes you will do things without much reason, like a child who draws pictures, whether they are good or bad. If that is difficult for you, you are not actually ready to practice Zen. This is what it means to surrender, even though you have nothing to surrender.

[34:49]

Without losing yourself by sticking to a particular rule or understanding, keep finding yourself moment after moment. And this is the only thing for you to do. So this is like letting go. You know, an interesting thing is that Sugiyoshi, when people ask me, why do we have to do this? Why do we have to do that? I don't know. It's just the way it's done. That's just what we do. You know, in America, you know, I want to know why. I won't do something until you tell me what the reason. But for that practice, for the roots of our practice, you just do something. because you don't wash the windows because they're dirty. We just wash the windows. And whether they're clean or dirty, we wash the window. Whether the floor is clean or dirty, we sweep the floor.

[35:54]

Whether our mouth is dirty or clean, we brush our teeth in the morning. We don't brush our teeth to get our teeth clean. We simply brush our teeth because that's what we do. This kind of attitude is important, even though it's really difficult. Just do. Oh my, just do. When you can do that, then you can understand the reasoning behind things. So we have to find ourself moment by moment. And it's not so much what we're doing as how it's done. It's important also to know what we're doing, of course. We don't want to do foolish things. But it's how something is done that's important. How you use your whole body, mind, to find out how to do what you're doing.

[37:03]

If you know too much, that covers your effort, that covers your intuition. You know, Master Sonsonim, Korean Master, always used to say, just have don't know mind and don't look back. Just go straight with don't know mind. That's really our practice. Suzuki Roshi would say that as well. But this was Satsangini's mantra, go straight with don't know mind. That's Zen practice. That's enlightened practice. You're not seeking enlightenment. You're just expressing it. And since you don't know what it is, you're always in the midst of it.

[38:08]

You're in the midst of it because you don't know what it is. As soon as you don't know what it is, there it is. As soon as you know what it is, it's not there. What time is our ceremony? Okay, so we're having our Buddhist enlightenment ceremony at 11.10, and I think you're all welcome, but this room is very small. But hey, we'll make our effort, so you're welcome to stay.

[38:55]

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