A story I've always liked is about Chuan Tzu. You know, the founders of Taoism in Japan, in China, are of course Lao Tzu, who supposedly wrote the Tao Te Ching, and the most famous person who came after him is a man named Chuan Tzu. Actually, I think maybe they're not sure who came after whom, but traditionally Chuan-tzu came after Lao-tzu. And Chuan-tzu's wife died and a friend came to his little house after hearing the news and Chuan-tzu was behind the house, he found him behind the house, sitting, banging on a bowl and singing.

[01:06]

And his friend said, how can you, after your wife just died, how can you sit there and bang on that bowl? And Chuang-Tzu said something like, well I lived a full life with her and she had a good life and now she's gone and that's all. But I'm sure that every day he didn't bang on the wall. That was some expression of his grief. And this morning I noticed even though we continued our sesshin, continued our practice and our regular meal, we banged on the bowls a lot in breakfast this morning.

[02:19]

There was quite a lot of noise of people dropping things, not picking things up quite right. So Suzuki Roshi who taught us so so much steadiness, even when we try to follow his way. There's some, particularly today. No matter how we try all our life, there'll always be some some banging on the bowl. But of course we should still try as carefully as we can to continue Suzuki Roshi's practice.

[03:23]

He's given us so much, I'm sure we can't The other day I went to his room to talk to him about something. I guess he asked if I would come every day and say good morning or something. And some days I hadn't come because he was so unwell that it was an effort for him to see people, so I had missed some days. And he asked that I should come anyway. So I went and so maybe three or four days ago I saw pretty clearly that he was getting less well and he was, at this point, we had some brief conversation and he was getting so he was unable to talk.

[04:34]

And I had to, the questions I had about something or he wanted to talk to me about, I really had to talk to his wife, Oksan. And I can't remember exactly how the conversation went, but Oksan said, he can't hear so well, and it's so difficult for him to talk now. So I turned to him and I said, where will I meet you? And he looked at me and he went. And I returned the bow. And so, that's where we'll meet him.

[06:05]

We'll meet him all the time. I was going to talk about, perhaps because Sashina is five days and there's five precepts, I was going to talk about the five precepts, each day one. And the first precept is, do not take life. But before we can know what it means to not take life, we have to know what life is. Do any of you actually know what your life is? We think, Buddhists think, if you don't practice zazen or don't have some kind of practice, you don't actually have your life.

[07:47]

Without practice you are taking your own life. So the principal meaning of that precept is don't take your own life. And of course if your idea of life is an idea or some thinking about things or some plans of the future or past and not this, then you've taken your life. When he's talked about the precepts himself, he says, actually there's one precept and it's this.

[08:49]

And how we divide it into ten or sixteen or eight is really not possible. There's only one precept. I really don't have much to say. I hope we can keep before us in this session this one precept.

[10:00]

And as you practice zazen, And saschins are pretty difficult, you know. Even if you've been doing them a long time, they're still pretty difficult. Who is it that's practicing zazen? What is it that you feel while you're practicing zazen? Is that life? What is life? Does anybody have any questions about anything? Could you explain more about how not practicing is taking your own life?

[11:05]

If your life is... The more unconditioned your life is, not some specific limitation, the more your life, nirvana and samsara, are the same. And nirvana means unconditioned. So the more your life is limited by conditions, the more you don't have any life. Of course, your life finds its expression in conditions, as we banged on the bowls this morning during breakfast. But if we practice zazen and practice in a sasheen like this, we can find some freedom from conditions. Can we ever fully realize the meaning behind the words death as a part of life?

[12:44]

You can't ever fully understand anything. But life and death are not different. if you have some experience of life and practice, then death is not, you know, it's not so difficult for Suzuki Roshi to say what he said. It's easy for... I don't know, easy is not such a good word, but it's not so difficult to give up the conditioned things of our life. But each moment, you know, actually we're born out of emptiness.

[13:54]

If you think you're born from the past cause, then of course there's some connection between, but actually as Dogen Zenji says, ash is ash and charcoal is charcoal. So charcoal is charcoal and oak tree is oak tree. Oak tree is not just acorn or air or water. Oak tree is just oak tree. You can't find the causes. So each moment our life is based on death. Last week you said, Sambhogakaya Buddha. What is this Sambhogakaya? Suzuki Rishi, Sambhogakaya Buddha, or Dharmakaya Buddha.

[14:57]

Buddhism has an elaborate iconography of various Buddhas. Hinayana Buddha or Theravadan Buddhism. When am I supposed to stop? What time? Okay. I want to follow the session schedule. Buddhism, the Southeast Asian Buddhism, has the idea of, or supposedly from the Mahayana point of view, has the idea of Buddha as a man. And you worship Buddha as a man and you practice to become Buddha in the way Buddha is a man. And Mahayana Buddhism says

[16:04]

a Buddha couldn't arise if the potential for being a Buddha wasn't there. So Mahayana Buddhism worships or calls Buddha the potential for being a Buddha or emptiness out of which we arise. So a Buddha arises out of emptiness or a Buddha arises out of the potential to be a Buddha. to give some form to this or way we can experience it in our conditioned way, there are many Buddhas. The most cosmic Buddha for most of Mahayana is Vairochana Buddha, and he's Dharmakaya Buddha or considered to be all things. And the Tibetan schools often call the most cosmic Buddha Vajrasattva or Vajradhatu.

[17:09]

Same idea, but Vajrasattva is perhaps in such deep contemplation that you can't even worship him or you can't, there's no image of him. You don't disturb him with even making a form for him. They have that idea. So to express this and express the aspects of this and compassion and wisdom and various aspects, Mahayana has many kinds of Buddhas. Zen has gone back to the man, Buddha, but in a little different way from the Hinayana or Theravadan way. Zen has gone back to the man by emphasizing the three bodies of Buddha—Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya. So, Vairochana Buddha would be a Dharmakaya Buddha. Nirvana, you can say, is the same as Dharmakaya Buddha.

[18:14]

It's Mahayana still in the sense it talks about the potential to be Buddha, but it talks about it from the point of view of our own realization, our own potential to be Buddha. So there's not a progress from an ordinary human being and you practice more and more and you become Buddha. But rather when you cut off conditioned things, there's Dharmakaya Buddha. And maybe our slight experience of it, of emptiness or samadhi, is maybe we could call Sambhogakaya Buddha. So that's the overlap, that's the potential, that's the experience for us. And our activity in the world then is Nirmanakaya Buddha. You had a question? As we grow up and leave school and whatnot, we see a lot of friends go into businesses and whatnot, and for some of them it's sort of like watching them die one by one as they do it.

[19:40]

Is it possible to also die in that same way by going into study Buddhism? I suppose so, sure. If you're not really studying Buddhism, it's possible. Buddhism is a practice which, it isn't actually some thing, it's a practice which warns you, if you're a businessman, what is right livelihood? So, the precepts or the Eightfold Path or the various rules about life are to warn us not to be caught by conditioned things. So, of course, you can be anything, a businessman or whatever occupation, but some occupations catch you more than others.

[20:47]

Suzuki Roshi always, one way of interpreting the precept, don't intoxicate yourself or don't alter or cloud your mind. Another way of looking at that from your own point of view is don't sell intoxicants. So, if you're, as Suddhikarishi always said, so don't sell Buddhism, because you push Buddhism as an intoxicant to excite people or something like that. So, if you're maybe a liquor store dealer, maybe it's more difficult. I don't know. I'm not selling liquor, so I don't know. Anyway, traditionally in Buddhism there are certain rules that say, if you have this kind of life or you do this kind of thing, you're more likely to be caught by conditioned things than if you do something else.

[21:59]

If you steal, you know, you're more likely to be caught by conditioned things if you try to take what other people have, you know. It doesn't mean you're still not Buddha or something. It just means you're more caught. what we can do for friends and ourselves. You can't treat friends, you know, like, my friend over there is more caught than me and so I'm going to show him how to be less caught, you know. That won't work at all. But if you see your friend as yourself and you see how you're caught in the same way and you express your own way of trying to not be caught, you know, that will help your friend who's a businessman or your friend who's whatever. except you don't take life. You talked about it in terms of our life, the human life.

[23:04]

But I was thinking that the only way to do it is, of course, to step on the grass and to squash the garden pests. And the very nature of eating is all life. It must be life to live. And I wanted to do that and comment on the other aspect of not taking life. Well, conditioned things feed on conditioned things, so as long as you're, you know, alive, you crush blades of grass, you know, and you eat food. I always liked what Alan Watts, somebody asked Alan Watts the same question, either in a book or in conversation, I don't know exactly where it came from, but they said, well, you eat lettuce and lettuce is alive or something, but why not eat meat? He said, well, meat screams louder. We can't make any real distinction between lettuce and a cow, you know.

[24:12]

Maybe it's a more complicated form of life or something, but anyway. My own feeling is about, I remember I saw a little boy stepping on snails once some years ago, taking garden snails out and smashing them on the sidewalk. And I was walking along the street and I saw him and I stopped him and I said, you shouldn't break anything you can't put back together. And he looked at me and I went walking on up the street, you know. But of course you can't put a piece of lettuce back together, you know? Maybe you're putting it back together when you eat. There's no answer for that kind of question. You just have to make some choice. There are many choices, you know. I know for a while I tried, every time I saw broken glass on the sidewalk or street or paper, I picked it up.

[25:21]

And I was quite careful about it. But I did nothing pretty soon but pick up paper and broken glass, you know, and the city didn't even pay me, you know. So, I had no other occupation, you know. So, I decided that that wouldn't work, you know. I had to draw a line somewhere, you know. So, I decided for myself, if there's a broken glass in the street and it's going to give somebody a flat tire, I'll stop. Maybe if it's in the middle of a freeway and I'll probably get killed stopping in the middle of a freeway, I won't do it. In some neighborhoods it's more difficult than others, you just have to look away in some neighborhoods, because the whole neighborhood is broken glass or something. But anyway, you have to just for yourself make some distinction. You can look into Buddhist texts and there are many rules about the higher order of being and how complicated and what line. There's more demerits if you kill a cow rather than a blade of grass, and if you kill a human being, if you kill one who's not a developed human being or not a priest or something, it's not so bad as killing a priest, you know, I don't know.

[26:40]

I can't make such distinctions, so for yourself you have to make some distinction about I mean, our whole society puts cement down on everything. So, my way is, I try to live in a way which might, maybe in the long run, will encourage people not to put so much cement down, but I can't do much about it. I went today to the funeral home with Suzuki Roshi and they will prepare, clean his body or whatever they do

[27:44]

I've asked them not to use any particular cosmetics and things. And so, starting from Monday, from 9 o'clock to 9 o'clock, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., it will be possible at Martin and Brown, I guess that's the name of it, on Van Ness. It's about, I think it's between Clay and Jackson, maybe, on Van Ness. You'll be able to go and see him and incense. And next Sunday, a week from tomorrow, there will be a ceremony here in this building at nine o'clock, or at ten o'clock for him. Now, traditionally in Japan the ceremonies are at night. Whether we will do an additional ceremony in the Saturday night, I don't know at this point. I'll have to discuss that with And then Monday, after the ceremony here, Suzuki Roshi will be cremated.

[28:53]

Any other questions? Yeah? I don't know exactly if it's always done or only sometimes done, but I know it is sometimes done. No reason except to express, I think anyway, no reason except it's a way to express your feeling. But there are services related to a 49-day period. So traditionally in Japan you have ceremonies at the end of a 49-day period. and various intervals during it, and occasionally, though I don't know how often, a sasheen is done for 49 days.

[30:29]

And I don't know all of the history about the 49 days. My mind is like a sieve, you know, and I I read about these lists and hear about them over the years and I always forget everything, you know, and so all the information about the 49 days, most that I've been exposed to, I forget, you know, unless I have something that makes me recall it. But primarily, at least in Tibetan Buddhism and in Japanese Buddhism, I'm not sure how conscious they are of this, but it's related to the 49 days in the Bardo. in which there are 49 days of possible times when you can get various kinds of rebirth. And I guess the last period extends 49 days, so there's 49. So, this morning we rang the bell 49 times.

[31:38]

and we haven't made any decision yet, but I think we may, since we have our ordinary life to go on with and breakfast to have in the morning, we probably will not have a 49-day sasheen here, but we may have sitting every morning starting earlier, say, maybe we'll start at 3 a.m. for Roshi for maybe 49 days, but right now I don't know. Yeah? I don't either. The Han you hear, you know? The Han traditionally has written on the back of it something which in Japanese must sound, it probably has some rhythm, but in English it roughly translates into, the problem of life and death is a serious one.

[33:00]

And the problem of what's conditioned and unconditioned is a serious one. But when you practice zazen more, you know, and your ordinary mind and thinking and activity, which goes from cause to cause to cause, begins to cease, you know, you'll have some idea of what unconditioned means. What would you call too much practice? Well, that's one reason we had breakfast this morning. So, Suzuki Rishi has always emphasized, you should practice each moment as if you were in a sasheen, with that kind of awareness and attention.

[34:18]

So, zazen is just to help you, and actually zazen is just to check up. When you find that your being in a sasheen is not much different from everyday life, your practice maybe is going along okay. But if you find to enter a sasheen is a big difference between your ordinary life, then that shows you, that's checking up for you. It shows you that actually you're not practicing fully, with some attention to what you're doing, one thing at a time. Just doing that one thing completely, without loose ends. And so your zazen checks up in that way. But if you think life is to just sit in zazen all day, that doesn't have any meaning, you know. Though there may be a time in each of our lives where a lot of zazen helps us, you know.

[35:27]

And certainly I think that all of us are so conditioned that to do zazen once a day or twice a day all your life is not very much. It's pretty good to do at least once a day or twice a day all your life. Not so hard to do. One more question somebody had? Sometimes, I don't know, I've more or less forgotten zazen comparatively recently. It seems like every time I did zazen, you know, once in a day for about 15 minutes or however long it is, there was a certain kind of a mind feeling that was associated with it. Doesn't come or does come?

[36:46]

Doesn't. Well, the trouble with fine feelings is generally we look for them with an un-fine mind, you know. Our mind is not, you know, we don't. So the problem is often you're zazen, you may be having some really fine feeling which you don't even perceive. So, or even the difficulty may be the fine feeling. The pain may be actually the fine feeling. So we don't actually think about whether it's good zazen or bad zazen or fine feeling or not fine feeling. And if you get involved in that, your practice stops pretty quickly. If you get involved in grasping, you know, wanting to have, you know, what some, then that's your ego at work. And the whole point is, you know, to let go of that kind of activity. No, it's not necessarily so.

[37:50]

When you don't notice much difference between fine feeling and not fine feeling, then okay. So, anyway, okay. A few, A few days ago I told Suzuki Roshi that we would do this session for him, and let's do it for him, and let's make a real effort to practice with some clarity and awareness in our practice all the time. Thank you very much. You know, I asked my wife this morning, jokingly, what should I talk about today?

[39:23]

And she said, well, don't say you don't have anything to say. It's a bore. But actually, that's my problem right now. I saw a number of students today, and there's no problem when I see you individually. because you're there, you know, but to talk to all of you at once, you know. And also, I'm afraid of saying too much or misleading you in some way, you know, because Buddhism is a kind of joke, maybe, you know. At least there's something absurd about it. Okay, sure.

[40:29]

If you can't hear, just say something or put up your arm or something. Okay. Anyway, Buddhism is a kind of joke or a kind of secret. It's a secret because you can't tell anybody about it. Even my wife I can't tell about it and there's nothing to tell. But wisdom is I think related to humor or a joke. I mean, when you really see that everything passes away, even a great person like Suzuki Roshi, what point is there in some special powers or attainments or anything at all?

[41:40]

But if you think life is just absurd, that's not right, you know? But if you think life is just serious, that's not right. Certainly, Suzuki Roshi was very serious in what he did for us. But the trouble is, one trouble is, Buddhism is so easy to understand, at least fairly easy to understand, if you're fairly smart. If you're fairly smart and also you have no difficulty in sitting, you'll probably never understand Buddhism. I don't think any of us understand anything, know as much as we think we know, and we're not as bad as we think we are, because it's not in the realm of thinking

[42:52]

Some of you are actually, by usual idea of Buddhism, have a pretty good understanding of Buddhism, but you don't know you do, because you're not satisfied with your life as it is. So you think it's something else, this can't be it, this isn't enough. So, the second precept is not to take, don't take what is not given, and that's almost the same as yesterday's. Don't kill or don't take life, because as Suzuki Roshi said in his lecture on the precepts, there's really only one precept.

[43:55]

They're just different aspects of looking at it. So, not to take what is given is the same. Don't take what is not given to you is the same. That means don't seek for enlightenment or don't take pencils from work. So on a practical level it just means be honest. But often the hardest thing for us is the simple things like be honest. So I sometimes hear people talking about some big understanding or some big ideas of things or how everything is impermanent and there's nothing to do or some such thing.

[45:04]

And then they say, now I have to go down and pretend I'm not working to collect my unemployment check or I'm going to do something else. And often what they're going to do is a little bit dishonest. And if you say something to them they think you're uptight or if somebody says something to them But the Buddhist way of looking at such rules is not the same as being uptight. If you have some rules like, I'm not going to take pencils from work because, you know, it's better to be honest because that's what it, I don't know, something, because you hurt other people or something like that, that can be rather uptight. But when you see that you can't possess anything actually, and that what taking what's not yours comes from, then it's not uptight.

[46:11]

And you have to be extremely careful in this point, actually. Because it's the very way you create karma. If you're not very thorough in the way in which you're honest, your practice will never really work. It'll give you some relief, but it won't really work. So in little things you have to be very careful. So you don't reject what's given to you and you don't take what's not given to you.

[47:37]

And if you follow this kind of rule in everything, that's emptiness. But practice is to actually try to follow a rule like that. You can't just start out, oh great, there's emptiness. That doesn't have any meaning. You have to have some rule. some way of expressing it, expressing your life. So if you're very careful not to reject what's given to you and not to take what's not given to you. So in your zazen practice that means If thoughts come, you take them. If pain comes, you take it.

[48:40]

If it goes away, you don't rejoice that it went away, it just went away. When you're sick, like Suzuki Roshi was, you're just sick. Suzuki Roshi couldn't run away from it. And the other day he told me, a few days ago, he told me, I feel like someone's torturing me. Actually, you have a much worse problem because you can run away from your pain in the Sashin.

[49:49]

Do you have any questions? Yeah. The things on the altar, the new things, you mean the photograph? The photograph, of course, is just a photograph. And what's in the bag, in the cloth, the froshki, are the robes that Suzuki Roshi will wear. Some people asked about the funeral arrangements, and we're following the custom of the Japanese community here in San Francisco.

[51:36]

Does that answer that first question? Okay. About the second question. That's the kind of question which, and I thought of this yesterday when we were talking about questions, one of the difficulties with answering questions in Buddhism is even if my answers are clear, you know, and you have some understanding of what I say and what I'm still it doesn't have any meaning unless it exists in your activities, in your actions, and that takes a long time.

[52:57]

Or it takes understanding it, some understanding Buddhism from some other way than understanding the question and the answer. are not answerable but are a kind of practice. In other words, you keep the problem of life and death. Buddha Gosa says that the two best meditations that are good under all circumstances are the meditation on friendliness and the meditation on death. And the meditation on death or in friendliness is a lifetime activity. So rebirth is a question like that for me. I'm wary of systems and

[54:15]

ways which give programmed answers about things, that if you do this there's this level and this plane and etc. It's okay, you know, but mostly we don't know, you know, we're guessing about such things. And even if you have some knowledge of that, when you say it, you know, and when it's understood by somebody who doesn't really experience it, it's It's worse than not saying it at all. So if you have some ... and then really it's best to hide your practice, to have secret practice. If you have a sense that your practice is getting pretty good, you should hide it even from yourself. Some of you, I noticed, get a little bit good and then you impress the girls with your practice, you know.

[55:20]

So, rebirth is a question I don't like to talk about too much. Suzuki Roshi himself has talked about rebirth. Rebirth is a very common Buddhist idea, most Buddhists have it, and Dr. Konsei says, you know who Dr. Konsei is? He says, of course there's rebirth. You don't argue about that, there's rebirth. But a few years ago, Suzuki Roshi, we were having a discussion about ... well, it's not so important. Anyway, we were having a conversation in which we're talking about rebirth and he talks about it in just traditional Buddhist terms but without ever saying exactly how he felt.

[56:46]

And it came to a point where there was some importance in knowing exactly, because somebody who was interested in Zen Center was asking me directly. And I said, should I say I don't know? And Roshi said, he usually says he doesn't know, or he just talks about it in traditional terms. And he said, but personally I don't know about rebirth. It's an idea of Buddhism adopted from Hinduism. and I have no experience of it, so for me it has no meaning." Now, this is what he told me. Then, in recent years, while I've been in Japan, I've been told by some students that Suzuki Roshi has talked more about rebirth as if he was more sure about it. I don't know. he's never really been exactly clear about it. My own feeling is, see partly the reason is I'm not interested, you know, if I'm curious about rebirth, you know, I don't know, I'm not worried about what happens to me, you know, I'm not worried about what happens to me next moment, let alone rebirth, you know, so I'm not curious at all about it.

[58:08]

So when I'm not curious about something I just don't bother with it. So, but my own experience is that when you really know yourself and all things, as we mean in Buddhism, that that doesn't die, but that's not something you can lay hands on and say, More than that, there are a number of things which have occurred to me and have occurred to other people that I know that would be easier to explain by rebirth than in any I'm not looking for explanation, so.

[59:16]

Okay. Yeah. is that I personally find it very difficult to know what honesty or trying is. I just don't even know. It's very hard for me to know when I'm making an honest effort. I don't know. It's difficult. The line between being hypocritical and being really honest is very thin. So the Japanese expression SA which means well or it's one of the few things I learned in Japan.

[60:46]

You know, the difficulty with a question like yours is that there's so many words, you know, that questions work best when you're almost sure of the answer, right? And when you're not almost sure of the answer, there's so many questions and I could ask you what you mean by every word you say. So, when you're And the word is there and what you're saying is like that, see? And then you put ten of those together, you know, I don't know what I'm really answering. When I first started practicing Buddhism I'd always had some feeling that the way it is in Buddhism is the way it is, but I couldn't quite believe it, you know? Everyone told me something else, right?

[61:58]

And the whole world acts as if it was something else, right? So you look at all these people, thousands of people going about their life as if Buddhism didn't exist, but when you look at them closely you see Buddhism exists, but they're all acting like it doesn't, right? So it's very hard to have the confidence to say, hey, you know. So I was unable to have that confidence. So I would think it now and then, I'd think, Jesus, I must be crazy, you know. And so I'd try to do like everyone else did, you know, be serious and think about what I had to do with my life and things like that. And when I thought about something else, I thought, my God, I'm just a wastrel. Anyway, so I had read a lot about Buddhism for a number of years and, see, I couldn't put together how it was absurd, say, and serious simultaneously.

[63:08]

or how I could act on my deepest feelings and take activity which wasn't a contradiction in itself. So my dilemma was solved when I met Suzuki Roshi. I'd gone to lots of people, you know, when I went to college I'd gone to Paul Tillich's lectures and various people's lectures, but when I saw Suzuki Roshi Not only did he sound just like the Buddhist text, which I thought was absolutely amazing. I thought he must be putting me on at first, you know. But secondly, he was very much right there. He was just saying words, you know. And he was present, and his own body was as convincing as his words. So I thought, well that's, you know, okay. So I came back a couple times to lectures and so I got up my nerve.

[64:18]

Actually, the story is rather amusing so I'll tell you if you like. I was walking along back from a warehouse where I worked and I'd gone to two or three of Suzuki Roshi's lectures and I was thinking to myself, well, Buddhism sure sounds good, but I'm not good enough to practice. That's what I thought. And I was carrying a book of D.T. Suzuki's, one of the three Zen essay books, and as I said to myself, I'm not good enough to practice, I opened the book. I even, in those days, read while I walked, you know. So, I opened the book and it said, it's a form of vanity to think you're not good enough to practice. Well, so I closed the book, you know.

[65:24]

I've never dared look it up again to see if see if it's actually there, you know, because D.T. Suzuki seldom talks about practice. Anyway, so the next morning I decided I'd try it, you know, if Suzuki Roshi did it I could try at least. And so I went into the zendo, of course it was dark, and I stumbled across the room and sat down on the girl's side and then somebody poked me in the back and Anyway, so I kept sitting from then, that time. And the second thing you asked is, how do you try? Is that right? Well, as I said to somebody this morning,

[66:31]

when you see how you actually live moment after moment, how you actually exist moment after moment, and you see how your mind tends to, not just your mind but everything about you, tends to want to cling to each moment and make something permanent, have something there, to think there's something to have. Each moment you have to make a little effort, you know, to let go. So that's trying, and how you try is to make that effort. And also how you try is to see that that kind of effort is necessary. and also how you try is to have faith that it's possible.

[67:35]

Yeah? When Trump was here he said I shouldn't be impatient. You shouldn't be impatient. I often find that I'm very impatient, you know, just in my daily activities, you know, detail work and everything. So, if you shouldn't be impatient, if you find that you are impatient, should you just be patient with your impatience? Right, exactly. Kind of like Grin and Bear it? Well, I don't know, Grin and Bear it. I don't know. Bear it and bear it, you know. Well, that's what it really means, that second precept, only accept what is given to you and don't accept what's not given to you.

[68:54]

So, impatience is not wanting to accept what's given to you. So each moment something is given to you, that's all. And if you have that kind of understanding, that's how you're honest. But there's a kind of habits, we have certain habits, to want to impress people or to want to be liked or to want all kinds of things, which are natural enough. but we think to be liked or to impress people we have to, you know, like create an image of ourselves that people like or something like that. So then we have the sensation of being hypocritical. It's a word you used, I think. But actually, if you just accept what

[69:58]

is given to you and don't take what's not given to you, then you'll be given everything you need. But the danger with those kinds of statements is, you know, if you try to practice like that because then you're going to get everything you want, it doesn't work. You know, you actually, actually have to not want. to not care, I mean actually, and that's why it's difficult and that's why I can say Buddhism's a joke and it doesn't mean anything, you know, because it's not so easy. Yeah? As a result of my conversation I made a decision about the order of things.

[71:24]

I think it was completely without validity. Don't give up so easily. Well, they work, you know. It depends whether they're, you know, I don't know whether they're out of validity or not, because I don't know exactly what they are, but thinking works, you know. You could, if you think about when the bus is coming, you know, and you go out and the bus comes, it's okay, right? But everything we see around us is a kind of thinking. I mean, you know, it's whatever it is. I think this is a stick and somebody else thought it was a stick and they made it to look like this for some reason, you know. So we call it a stick or we call it a table or a pillow, but it's just cloth and things which somebody took an animal and wanted to make from the animal cloth.

[72:27]

So we have our ideas about such things, but everything's an idea about it. But unless you see how ideas are made, you're easily caught by them. Then when you get caught by them, you get involved in a game of what's the real name, or back and forth, or what's, you know. You just see what happens as your own thought formations. I know, it's difficult. Yeah? What's the alternative? Moving. That's one alternative. Is that a kind of pain? Yes.

[73:33]

So you have to make some choice. And you have to be strong enough to stick with your choice. Yeah? Why we chant? You don't like chanting? I think, how many of you don't like chanting? We've never dared ask that question around here. Well, I don't like chanting either. But I've been at a temple where there's no chanting. Something's missing.

[74:35]

There's some things you can't explain, and Buddhist practice is rather big, you know, and people have been doing certain kinds of things for thousands of years, literally. This Buddhist Sangha is probably the oldest institution in the world, and so for a long time they've been chanting, you know. I don't know if certain things have come down to us. in the eating bowls we don't use the big bowl in the evening time because in Buddha's time in India they didn't have an evening meal. Well now they really kept stuck with that one a long time, but for some reason, you know, it's not easy to explain. So we have to That's a kind of question like rebirth.

[75:55]

This morning in Doksan, I keep expecting someone to ask me, why do I have to come in and bow to Buddha before? Why don't I just come in and sit down? And actually if someone asks, I don't really have an answer. except there's some different feeling when you do so. But also I can re-ask the question, what's the difference between walking into the room and sitting down and walking into the room and bowing? Because if the person asks the question, he sees there's some difference, so he must like one better than the other. But if there's some difference, does he really know what the difference is? Because there is a difference between coming in and bowing and coming in and just sitting down. And I can say, when you bow, you're bowing to yourself. That doesn't help much.

[76:59]

Anyway, more specifically, Buddhism talks about body, speech and mind. And we practice with our body and we practice with our mind and we practice with our speech. And speech is in there for a number of reasons. One is it's at the point at which body and mind unite. It's the activity which unites body and mind. So Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism, is based, as far as I understand Tibetan Buddhism, it's The practice is largely based on these three emphasizing speech, so Vajrayana Buddhism is often called Mantrayana because mantras, visualization, mantras and your mudras, your body postures are combined in a single practice. Now some of this background perhaps in Japanese Buddhism has been lost because in Japan people don't

[78:09]

think about things the way we do, they just do them. So the reasons why they do them are not always anymore even remembered. But I think in the chanting it will help if we knew a little more about what we were chanting. And so at least we should, I think, make the echoes, the in-between part which says why we're chanting for this or what it is, into English. then we should work on chanting in English too. It's not so easy. English doesn't chant. Sanskrit, though, chants about the same way English does because it's got consonants in the same way. Anyway, I think it's a problem that I think Zen Center and something I've thought about for many years. We don't chant very much, so it's not so much of a problem. But basically, the rituals and the chanting are the practice for your Buddha nature and not for your ordinary walking around person.

[79:29]

And until you know what your Buddha nature is, it doesn't make any sense. But that's sort of an out, but it's true. Yeah? Are you going to be here tomorrow? I think the time is we're a little over already, so let me answer that tomorrow or talk with you about it tomorrow. It's a very important question. Thank you very much.

[80:28]

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