I think this practice period we have realized something about no possessions, and that Ego really isn't something to be given up or gotten rid of. Actually, it doesn't exist. It's a fabrication. It wears the faces or names of greed, hate, and delusion, and many other names.

[01:08]

But it really doesn't exist in the opportunity for you to realize this is in the ingredients, is the ingredients of your own life. I don't like analogies too much, but if you look at the leaf of a tree, does it belong to the tree? Does it belong to the sun?

[02:34]

Maybe the sun thinks it belongs to me. All those leaves turn toward me. Or maybe the wind thinks the leaves belong to it, because all the leaves bow when it comes by. Or maybe the leaves, maybe the sky thinks they belong to it, because they take the form of the sky. Maybe they belong to the water, which makes them green. Anyway, we can say a leaf is where sun, sky, wind, water, tree meet.

[03:40]

And if the leaf... Since a leaf can't really compare itself to other leaves, trees, seeds, it doesn't have so much problems as we do. Still, you know, something, you have, the leaf has some responsibility, and you have some responsibility, even though your thing we call ego doesn't exist, doesn't even need to be given up. Still, you have some responsibility. But to realize our self, maybe the leaf only realizes at the moment it drops off the tree. Then there's no more discussion. The leaf won't ever grow again, that particular leaf, in a way. Milarepa says, the joy of a yogi

[05:15]

is the same as a leaf which falls off a tree, never to grow again. Or like a stone thrown into the ocean, deep into the ocean, never to return. That, you know, is the meaning of nirvana. never to return. But right now, in the ingredients of your own life, you can understand that. You have some responsibility, of course, to your parents and old friends and things. But you don't have to create any new world in relationship to them. You can, as I say sometimes, constantly turn toward emptiness.

[06:41]

participating in whatever is there, but turning toward emptiness, not toward more form. So you don't have to dig back into the lineage and study Buddhism, you know. and recreate yourself as a Buddha, coming forward step by step through all the stages, and realize enlightenment. Right now, you are where the lineage, and your parents, and your life, situations, and karma meet. And this very soup that you are, are the ingredients of enlightenment. So it can be done on, you can realize on the surface. You know, if you know what I mean by that.

[07:49]

The Diamond Citrus says something about, in the morning, if a man or woman of such and such family give up, that's all. In the morning, any particular morning. Like a stone dropped into the ocean. It's important that Buddha gave up being a king. Twice he gave up being a king. I think various stories, but I think we can say maybe twice I know of such stories. Of course, when he gave up his father's kingdom. So he chose no... It means he chose no recognition. So if you choose Buddhism because you want to be a great hero like Buddha, that's choosing to be a king, not a Buddha. We do have some sense, you know, I say there's no Buddhism, you know, but actually I think practicing Buddhism we have a sense of trees and

[09:41]

roads and air and people and stones and Buddhism. Where is it? But we do have that kind of sense. That which for us reveals how it all exists. Without which our life is no meaning. We're just constantly pushed around. How many beach stones shall we keep? Should we have this or that? Should we eat this? We're constantly pushed around by things. I have a wonderful stone that I found, and it's shaped like an egg, but it has many cloud formations of how it was formed in, and one You can see one came on top of the other, and then another came on top of it, and another came on top of it, you know. And it's, there's kind of like swirls of clouds and comes down, and then there's another layer that comes over and swoops down. But the stone is just one surface. All those events which happened in sequence on the stone are just one surface.

[11:03]

cut through at that angle, they all occur on the same surface. You know, Buddhism is something like that, some experience we have of one surface, where time and space and such differentiations come together. Anyway, Buddha decided not to be a king. And later in life, there was supposedly some war between two kingdoms, maybe his father's kingdom and another kingdom. And he felt, I could go back and stop

[12:20]

and take charge and be a king and rule very justly and stop the fighting. And soon I could rule justly as other kings have ruled in the past, he thought, supposedly, and there would be enough for everyone and not much sickness. And there would be a man could leave a bag of gold in the street and it would still be there the next day. Anyway, he thought this way. And then it said he realized these were temptations of Mara. that actually our responsibility is not to satisfy people's desires, to make sure the other leaves of the tree have enough sun, but just to realize our own nature.

[13:44]

which is a meeting place of everything. I think that's a pretty hard decision to make, that to choose not to be a king and somehow not to be a king. to choose not to have some relative importance in the world, even for the sake of other people, but just to realize our non-possessive nature. And to know each person in their non-possessive nature.

[15:01]

that it's our possessive nature which is the source of all ill, greed, hate and delusion. So to be a king is just, even a just king is some provisional solution. I suppose if a king came and asked me, should I give up being a king, I'd say, govern just as a leaf drops from a tree. But I'm not really talking about what kind of

[16:38]

expression you have in the world, what kind of particular job, king or professor or farmer, whatever. But how right now to let go of your possessive nature when my gay leaf drops from a tree? I think it's pretty hard to understand, except this, you know, as Ed said yesterday, except in a, maybe a sashin, everything else is some

[18:16]

For most people, I think, you may have some intuitive feeling, some aesthetic feeling or some sensation. That keeps you practicing. But the actual physical, emotional, mental opportunity is most available to us, I think, in a situation like a session. where you can, you have an opportunity to be just there, without any idea of anything about when the bell will ring, what or who you are, or if you should be doing something. That rare

[19:24]

opportunity where we can, as Dogen says, drop away mind and body, should be found in everyday activity too. wherever you are, finding yourself standing there, sitting there, walking there, as if the world was just completely newly created. And you knew nothing about it, almost. Like it was someone was rolling a rug out for you, a world out for you, to take one step into. or seven steps. That's until you know that freedom from ego

[20:55]

that delusion we create, there's no way really to help people, no real way to participate in that world of delusion. so just to let it drop away. And as Suzuki Roshi used to say, he thinks mostly it takes some dire circumstances to make one do it. Some fatal illness or great suffering or being forced into a situation where there's no way out and you start to feel a great churning in you. Your whole world churning. All the edifices, it's balanced on it.

[22:25]

Like one of those rotating stages in the theater, just turning upside down and everything falling off. You can't believe it's happening, but you feel your stomach and body and emotions churning. And it's all gone suddenly and you are willing to do anything. Why not? And by what scale was there some reason to prefer one thing over another?

[23:33]

we can actually find our own responsibility when you've had this kind of experience. Until then, we worry only that we can't find our responsibility in such a changing world with no idea of obligation or the future, how can we find our responsibility? We can't give up completely, because it's not moral, it's not right. But when you've had that experience, that kind of experience, you'll know suddenly what your responsibility is. In order to give Suzuki Roshi a hard time, some of you may know these stories, but I think you don't mind if I tell them again. His teacher tried to cause him some problem when he was quite young. Suzuki Roshi was quite handsome, you know.

[25:14]

And he did everything quite well. He was sort of an AC Zen student. Got up early and did extra Zazen and all that stuff. And gave himself no... Made no concessions to himself. Always tried to do what was best for others. But he had some pride. in doing it well, and the kind of attention he got because he did it well, and being attractive, etc. So his teacher told him one day he was going to die of a terrible disease, which, that kind of disease which you may, some of you know, where your bones begin to grow irregularly and distort and twist, and then crush your brain, you know? And I've known one or two people who had that disease and it's quite, you soon look like Frankenstein or something. I mean your cheekbones start growing and your head gets knobby and it's quite, there's no, the bones growth is not controlled anymore. So they begin growing irregularly without any particular pattern until they crush something.

[26:37]

Suzuki Roshi's teacher was quite an outstanding Zen master. Suzuki Roshi was pretty young, twenty or so, twenty-one. And so he, such a man has a reputation for knowing what he's talking about. Suzuki Roshi believed him completely. He felt terrible and he was quite upset. He would examine himself in the mirror in the morning to check out if his bones were changing. He was quite sure they were changing. And he finally, after about six months of trying to put it aside, decided he would have to accept it and just be distorted and ugly. Of course his teacher had made it up. I don't think you two are all too sophisticated for me to do that, too old. But anyway, it's rather interesting. For Suzuki Roshi, it was a rather important experience. He may have been younger, I don't know, but I think he was around

[28:09]

19 or 20 or 21. Do you have some particular question? Yeah. I'm not so sure how these terms relate and how they apply to data. limited to the fifth paramita is that practice which leads to a concentrated state of being, which can include anything. Okay? Samadhi is that state of being, no matter

[29:21]

in your everyday life or in zazen or a collected, unified, empty state of mind or being. Actually the meal chant shouldn't say the practice of samadhi, it should say the practice of jhana, because you can't actually practice samadhi. I mean you We can say that, but we practice jhana, or we practice... we do our life, and samadhi is a description of it. And mindfulness is one way of practicing, in which you, without qualification or comparison, just note what you're doing, what at any particular moment your state of mind is. So it means, being present in each moment and not qualifying that moment. So first of all, mindfulness is a practice of being present. And when you can be present, then not qualifying any particular state of mind.

[30:42]

Mostly I think you'll be mindful when something's wrong, when you find yourself quite angry or something. But you won't know when that anger occurred, at what moment, because you weren't mindful at that moment. So mindfulness, which doesn't mind whether you're angry or not angry, can observe when you became angry and when you ceased to be angry and what it was like to be angry. And if you can practice mindfulness, then you should be able to practice mindfulnessness. That's my own term. You won't find that in the Buddhist literature anywhere. Actually, you should be able to practice mindfulnessness. Forgetting, not knowing anything. Being present, but not knowing. Anger or not anger,

[31:46]

Anything in particular? My question during Choson, and your answer was the same as my question. During Choson? Choson. Yeah. All right. Sometime ago I asked you about thoughts, and you said don't try to get rid of them. But Suzuki says if you want to, you should never stop the sound of the stream. Suzuki Roshi? So how do you practice mindfulness? Is it a matter of concentration? Can you practice mindfulness? Sometimes it comes. Mindfulnessness, what I mean by mindfulnessness is you don't keep track of your experience. Mindfulness has some sense as I'm mindful, now I'm angry. Mindfulnessness has no tracking, no cognition, now I'm angry. Is there cognition in mindfulness?

[33:14]

Less mindfulness, less. But you're present. You're not. No, you've disappeared. Completely. Someone will speak to you though. and say, Lamont, that's a joke. We've been talking in Cho San about The Shadow, who's named Lamont Cranston. It's you who don't know, who grew up with television. In radio age, there was this man called The Shadow. His name was Lamont Cranston. And wherever criminals were talking, they'd be talking, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But no one knows you're going to knock that bank over, and then you'd hear, And that was Lamont Cranston. He had this cape he could put on. So someone would come up and say, Lamont? Why does stopping the stream, what does that problem, does that cause you? Well, I find I can stop it if I just don't give it my attention. Why would you want to stop it?

[34:47]

to be mindfulness. Mindfulnessness means you don't cognize your experience. But I thought we should be present. Yeah, but present doesn't... Okay. Present as an experience of being present is only a temporary form of practice. As Lucius used to say, you actually only notice your stomach when it's sick. Usually you don't notice your stomach at all unless you've eaten something that you shouldn't have or are disagreeable. So there's no reason to experience yourself either, unless you're sick. And when you experience yourself, you know you're sick. That's true.

[35:51]

Unfortunately. So, we're sitting here and we have all these thoughts, and we're trying to watch our breathing. Is that, well, okay, that's a stupid idea. That's a medicine. Who's observing? Why do you want to figure it all out? It's like you want to figure it all out in advance to make sure where you are right now is okay. You don't have to worry about all that just right now. What's happened? You want something else?

[37:16]

You do, but you don't dare say. Slough off thoughts and what? So that would be a practice? Most of our practice is in medicine. If you're a doctor, you know that medicine is just another kind of sickness. Medicine makes you sick, counteracting another kind. Too much of it is quite sick. So Buddhism is a kind of sickness.

[38:22]

So we shouldn't get too addicted to Buddhism. Anyway, mindfulness is just medicine. It's to bring, you know, before you're, it's, if you're going to be, it's maybe better to be, have some sense of your wholeness. is maybe not so sick as identifying with some part. So mindfulness is a way to give you a sense of your wholeness. But you shouldn't become attached to that new identity, or attached to the identity that comes from practicing Buddhism. Or being part of this big whole being, that's me, that's another identity. You can't even conceive of the big whole being without imagining something other than the big whole being. So really there's no way to actually say anything about anything. It's all 99%. We provisionally say this is a leaf. But actually you can't say anything. And to be able to

[39:56]

act and live in that not being able to say anything is wisdom and the realization of our life or practice. David you were going to say something? Oh my gosh. I make up all the things that go along, you know. I can't go back.

[40:59]

I can remember, corrosive doubt is the second one, and the antidote for it is, I don't remember. I have to explain how I ... See, I don't know anything about Buddhism. I feel something, my own experience or your experience. I feel something and I say, oh, what's happening there? It must be, oh, that's what it is. And then I think, oh, that problem. Oh, if you have that problem, then I have some understanding what the antidote is. And I freely use Buddhism to help me. to identify my feeling of my own experience or your experience. But later, I forget everything right away, completely. I don't remember. I mean, I still can't name the four holy truths. Maybe I could work it out, but I have to start with, that is, suffering. There's suffering, yes, if we suffer. What do we experience when we suffer? Ah, okay, number two is,

[42:30]

That's the way I do everything. I'm sorry. So I'll remember. Yeah. What's the value of it you mean? It helps the person practicing. Do you all understand what we mean by therapy Buddhism? If you say to me, you know, I have some doubt about such and such, how can I work with that? But I can't remember what I said in the past. Therapy. Therapy Buddhism, I mean,

[44:01]

the practice of Buddhism which gives us some joy and satisfaction. Suzuki Roshi sometimes called it Mercy Buddhism because mostly in Buddhism, Buddhism is just available to people. The zendo is open, you know. The teacher, teachers are available to people.

[45:16]

And you don't discriminate, this person is a good student or that person is not a good student, or this person may realize Buddhism through and through and this person may not. Whatever comes and whatever happens, you know, is the way it is, and you don't choose your disciples. But you... I can make the distinction, but you don't understand the distinction unless I talk something about the importance of it. The importance of it is, do you create a practice place which favors mercy Buddhism or transmission Buddhism? Some lineages only concentrate on transmission Buddhism. Some lineages concentrate primarily on mercy Buddhism. In other words, they may have one disciple, but they won't have five or six or ten disciples. And people will just

[46:52]

as we saw with Suzuki Roshi, many people just came. Japanese people and American people came and just liked being around him and felt good. And this is one of his responsibilities. So, from the point of view of Zen Center, say, having an open Zenda for people just to come, not having, as some groups do, only members come to lectures, only members can come to Zazen. And membership is quite limited and very strict and expensive. So, Zen Center has, just leaves its Zenda quite a bit of Zen Center just open, you know, to anybody. But Tassahara is closed. So certainly that, from the point of view of Zen Center or Suzuki Roshi, that practice helps people, wouldn't you say? To come and do Zazen if they want. And if such people are helped, I suppose it helps other people.

[48:15]

But strictly speaking, in Buddhism, you'd say only transmission Buddhism really helps people. Because you're practicing to relieve your own problems. Of course, if you can relieve your own problems, other people can relieve their problems. But if you... It's mostly just to solve your problems. Your activity doesn't exist, you know. So free, you know, that it actually helps other people to be free. So this kind of question, normally we don't talk about this because we don't like to make distinctions. Therapy, Buddhism around mercy, Buddhism for joy and satisfaction rather than Buddhism for no purpose. But it actually has to do with Zen Center's existence, why we have Tassajara Green Gulch in San Francisco, and what kind of responsibilities we will have.

[49:34]

But there's another understanding, which is that I discussed all this at some length with Suzuki Roshi many years ago, and his feeling was that I was quite critical of Japanese Buddhism. But I also was asking myself the question, how did Suzuki Roshi come here? How did he arrive here? How did he come from Buddha to here? Well, in some ways, all of the Japanese Buddhism is understood as an opportunity for a few people like Suzuki Roshi to exist who, for some reason, are crazy enough to give up everything, just exist in other people's terms, for them, but knowing himself through and through. Lou Hartman was at a lecture in which somebody asked,

[51:16]

Well maybe a hundred and fifty people were there and he said, who will actually drop away mind and body or attain samadhi or something like that, some question. Suzuki Roshi looked around the room with a smile and said, maybe two. And Suzuki Roshi said to me once, out of a hundred people who devote their life to Buddhism, their whole life, maybe one ever understands Buddhism. pretty well. So it may be that we should cooperate to help one person understand. That's enough. We can't each understand Buddhism through and through. It's really interesting, isn't it? At the beginning of the lecture, I'm talking about just now, if you can realize, like a leaf drops off, you yourself can be Buddha. That's true. But practically speaking, you won't do it. But if you try, you can. Actually, you can. And if you try,

[52:52]

Even if you don't ever completely let go, your life will be completely different. And we don't know, you know, what will happen. Maybe you, maybe you, who knows which one of us will be helped by everyone in some way, because you can't do it exactly by yourself. It requires everyone helping you. So how do we know, you know, when Buddhism will really be realized by someone? My effort, you know, is to keep making it possible for a Buddha to appear. And I ask you to join me to work and practice together so some one person or two or three or each one of us or one hundred years from now someone can realize Buddhism through and through.

[54:16]

And we together are the real, our real Buddhism. You know, today the board is coming here. I guess you know there's going to be a Zen Center board meeting here. Which is most, which is the Most of the oldest students and the directors and other people are on it, on the board, while they have certain positions, and some people are permanent members of the board. And the board is more... Even though you look and you say, Oh, I know this person and that person, they're not so interesting, they're not so smart, I do or don't trust them. But actually I feel myself some auspicious moment when they come. Maybe it sounds funny but I feel that way. Because they're the accumulation of the experience of us for 12 years or 15 years. And they're so much more important than

[55:57]

the abbot, or Suzuki Roshi, actually. And even for Suzuki Roshi, he was just really participating, like everyone else, in the board meeting, in the meeting of the Sangha. So it's Buddha-Dharma-Sangha, not Buddha-Dharma-Suzuki Roshi. So although you don't know it exactly, you yourself are the strength of Buddhism. If I were to pay homage, I would pay homage to you.

[57:04]

And we will each try to know what Milarepa calls the joy of the yogi wind you have, like throwing a stone into the sea or a leaf dropping from a tree. But actually, together, we are trying to drop a great big stone into the sea. And maybe one or another of us will be able to realize this practice, and each of us should help the other.

[58:30]

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