The trouble I've been having giving lectures during this session is that I really don't think that there should be lectures during session. It feels okay to answer questions, but to be putting ideas in your heads at a time of a session, anyway, Saturday morning lectures during a regular, you know, when we don't have a session, it feels different because people are coming and their heads are full of ideas, so you can put a few more in, you know, and hopefully ideas that will dissolve some of the ideas they have. But in a session we should really be concentrating just on our practice, and if there is any

[01:06]

language, it's not a language of talking, it's a language like, this is Kiroshi's picture here. But, let me at least go through again those five precepts. The first one we talked about, of course, let me say that when you look at these precepts, they're for laymen and for bad monks, and they emphasize this kind of, you know, so if you're not a bad monk or you're a layman who's really fully practicing Buddhism, these

[02:13]

precepts are not so meaningful. But the other side of the precepts is meaningful, what they're based on. So not to take life is based on, you know, what is life? And to not take what is not given, if you take that in the fullest sense, it describes your relationships with phenomena, with dharma. And then, more specifically, to abstain from sensuous misconduct talks about what intimate relationships are and is contrasted with unconditioned relationships. It talks about sensuous misconduct being the most conditioned relationships. So I said that a teacher, like Suzuki Roshi, tries to show us what an unconditioned relationship

[03:22]

is. And I just, a few minutes before we had the break, I saw the Hokubei Mainichi, which is the local Japanese newspaper, and it had an obituary in it of Suzuki Roshi. And I felt a kind of sadness, a different kind of feeling than I felt when he actually died, because it was there, sort of public in the newspaper. And for the people in the newspaper, it's a different kind of loss for the people who read it. And I felt that kind of loss. But for people practicing here with him and who knew him well, his relationship with us

[04:23]

was so unconditioned that very little of him is gone. The way he really related to us is still part of our life. He's in each of us. And actually, it takes many years to know what your relationship with your teacher is. I remember Suzuki Roshi said once to me, even you forget your teacher completely for ten or fifteen years. And then suddenly you realize what your teacher was, or is. And I… And the next one is to abstain from false speech, which goes one step further from what

[05:40]

are intimate relationships to how you behave in those relationships, and which to abstain from false speech means to be open. And the nature of a relationship with a teacher and with yourself is as much openness as you can manage. Even if your teacher is not so good, you know, you have to be open to his faults, too. There can't be transmission of any kind, you know, unless there's complete trust and openness. So, you know, so if I know at the time Suzuki Roshi became my teacher, it was whether he

[06:41]

wanted to or not, you know, he was my teacher. And whether I found out he was a fake teacher or not, he was still my teacher. So if somebody had written me a letter and said, hey, this guy was kicked out of Japan and a big scandal and he's not a Roshi at all, it wouldn't have meant anything to me at all, because he worked for me as a teacher. So if you're going to be completely open to yourself, you know, you learn something about how to do that, or you become more open by being completely open to Buddha and to your teacher. Of course, all speech is false speech.

[07:48]

All thinking is false thinking, in a way, actually. But more specifically, you can use language to, even if you don't have a question for some kind of effort to make an opportunity for some kind of communication. So that's why in the sutras you often have somebody asking Buddha a question for the other people there. For the purpose of the sutra, he says, I ask a question. Not because he had some question. So in this way we talk to other people, which is like talking without saying anything. These examples are always rather funny.

[08:49]

Here it says, the seriousness of the offense in false speech depends on the circumstances. If the householder, unwilling to give something to the monk who's come begging, says that he has not got something, that's a small offense. But to represent something one has seen with one's own eyes as other than one has seen it, that's a serious offense. If a beggar, when he's going on his rounds from house to house, is given very little oil and says, what a magnificent river flows along here, my friends, when he's only given a little oil, that's only a rather stale joke. And the offense is small. So anyway, it goes on like that.

[09:53]

I've been amazed, Sukhyoji would have used the word amazed, or I'm impressed or something, with your individual practice. You know, many of you have, not just a few of you, but many of you have a real understanding or experience of what practice is. In fact, many of you, some without knowing it and some with some sense of it, are in what for Zen people is the most difficult stage of practice. See, mostly it's much easier to practice in a monastery or in a community. And so we create a situation like Tassajara where you don't have too many distractions

[11:16]

and you can trust the schedule and the life completely, you know, because the rules there and there's, you know, it may not be perfect, but it's not too bad. And you can give yourself up to it. Like here, you can give yourself up to the sasheen schedule. But to be open like that in the so-called outside world is much more difficult. And so that's the more difficult practice. And Suzuki Roshi always talked about, he said, there's form and emptiness, and form is emptiness, and form is form. And those four things are four stages of practice. And actually, it's one way of, there's another way of stating it, which is the five positions of the Soto school,

[12:18]

which is the way of teaching developed by the founder of the Soto school in Japan, in China. Anyway, so it's called the fourfold world, and the fourth way, form is form. Indian Buddhists describe it rather abstractly, you know, form is form, something like that, which means the mutual interdependence of all things, how each thing expresses every other thing, and that whatever you do fully is practice. Or you can say the pure is in the impure. So, form is form is, you know, it sounds so simple, it's just taking care of your life, you know,

[13:19]

not making a distinction between zazen and sashin and your job, say. If you have some job, you just do it, you know. Chinese Buddhists rather don't put it into abstractions, but it's in a kind of, it's expressed in activity, and it's taught in a rather different way. And an example of it is in our eating bowls. When we eat with the eating bowls, you wash out your bowls with tea or water that's brought to you, and you take that same water and you drink some of it, you know, but you don't drink all of it after cleaning your bowls.

[14:22]

To drink all of it would just be form. That's all right, maybe, you know, you can say, I drink, but we don't drink all of it. We take some of it and dump it into the bucket, and that is for hungry ghosts or for, you know, that which you can't imagine easily eating or needing water, and you dump it on the plants or something. So some of it goes there, you know, and you drink some, and it's the water with which you wash the bowls. And also, when you take the bowl that you're dumping the water out from, you touch it to the side of the bucket. You don't just dump it in, you have to touch it to the side of the bucket and dump it in. You know, there's no contamination. That's form is form. It means you perceive, act on everything as if it were light or Buddha nature or something like that.

[15:58]

I can't explain. But actually, most of you are, without knowing it, and some of you with some sense of it, engaged in this kind of practice. . Another interesting thing is that in Japan, Japan emphasizes completely group practice. I mean, you can't even be a Buddhist if you're not really part of a group. Almost nobody goes off and practices by themselves. In Tibet, it's rather the other way. Well, at least there's an emphasis in some schools on practicing completely by yourself,

[17:04]

almost completely by yourself. But in Japan, they always want to know the identification of your sect and your temple. And there's almost no provision made for individual practice. But here, we are much more individualistic, and part of our development is individuation. And I think in America, there will be both kinds of practice, group practice and individual practice. . Individual practice is often stronger and deeper in some way.

[18:07]

I don't know. I often used to find, I mean, Suzuki Roshi sort of tricked me into hanging out at Zen Center all these years, through various ways, because often I would have left. Particularly one koan he gave me was very important in keeping me, because I answered it in a way which didn't take responsibility for the nonsense cat. And I answered it okay, but I answered it in a way which didn't fully recognize the responsibility involved in the two groups of monks. And he caught me on that. . But I often found, I always have had a small zendo in my own house, where I've sat, in addition to sitting at Zen Center. And my zazen is often calmer or some different feeling anyway.

[19:13]

And I found in sitting in Zen Center that my practice was always as bad as the worst person in the zendo, but not as good as the best person, Suzuki Roshi. But it also included some of Suzuki Roshi's practice. . There are two factors here. One is that it's group practice, well, that's me, that out of this group of people here, you know, if I look at you and say you're pretty much the same as the group of people that was practicing, say, ten years ago in Zen Center, the ones of you who ten years from now will still be practicing will almost surely be the ones who have developed a relationship with the group.

[20:21]

But some of you who practice here now, who've practiced mostly on your own, practice is very real, maybe better than many of you who just practice with a group. So why ten years from now will the ones who for some reason or other stay practicing with a group still be practicing Buddhism? I'm sure that's true. And that's the history of Buddhism, actually. That's why Buddhism is so completely fallen into the hands of the monks. And why everything you read in Buddhism is for monks' life and not for layman's life. Because it's the monks who actually find out how to teach Buddhism. And that's partly because your self-nature, your ego, is so strong, almost impossible to be free from,

[21:29]

that if you practice by yourself, mostly, it eventually leads you astray. Even though you become quite strong and independent, you know, something will be missing. And the other side of it is that the difficulty of practicing with a group, and it really is difficult, you know, if you stay around many years, it's very difficult to stay. And maybe for many people not worth it. But if you can and can continue your practice, you know, particularly within the monastic community, or we're sort of half a commune and half a monastic community, on the basis of form is form, without discriminating, then you become very opened up to other people.

[22:33]

It's not such, but it's the practice may not look so good, actually, you know. But in the end, you'll know how to practice with other people, and you'll know how to be a teacher. And a great deal of the practice in Buddhism is not aimed at enlightenment or whatever, but at how to be a teacher, because that's almost a separate kind of practice, you know. One thing is you have to be available for people, but you also have to stay an ordinary person. You can't be caught by the archetype of being the teacher or the poet or the whatever, you know, painter.

[23:40]

And you also have to accept things like this, you know. And it looks like this is some, you know, sort of means, I don't know what it means, but anyway. But actually, this has some power over me, not you, you know. So, I've fought against all these things, you know. And here I am, stuck, you know. All right. And... So... So, pretty strict limitations are put on you if you practice Buddhism fully.

[24:52]

And like with the bowls, how carefully we do the bowls, and even to touching the bowl to the side of the bucket as we dump out the water. So, in Chinese and Japanese non-verbal tradition, teaching is in things like this, not in words. And so, most of Suzuki Roshi's last conversations with me, many of them were about students, you know. But most of them were about, you know, things like this stick, you know, and whether it should be held this way or that way. Very strange little details, you know, about things. You'd say, why is he wasting his last energy on such a detail, you know. Any questions?

[25:58]

Yes, on the ego thing. It cannot be avoided no matter whether you practice in group or whether you practice individually, it seems to me. In a group, the group itself can, very tough, give you a feeling that you belong to an elite. And I don't see, it seems to me that what the teacher serves is really to knock your ego right and left. And you have to be very much wary of it. But it doesn't seem to matter what circumstances or under what teacher you practice. If you practice with a teacher, you almost always practice with a group, though. Pretty hard, yeah, because if the teacher's any good, soon there's more than one student, you know. Then suddenly you're in a group. And when we first started practicing with Suzuki Roshi, I know that the first people, I was sort of the second group that came.

[27:00]

And when I came, there was already a small group. But there was a feeling of each person wanted Suzuki Roshi for himself, you know. And who are these other people, you know. But, you know, lots of people know a good thing when they see it. So, soon Suzuki Roshi's time was rather divided. But if you have unconditioned relationships, it's not so difficult to share your activity. But you're right, you know. Also, in Japan, the way they practice is you give up your ego in a way to the group. But also a group ego is created, which seems to me to have as many difficulties as individual ego. And not so many checks on it, you know. So, some balance is good, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

[28:25]

Okay. Okay. Whatever is a good word. And I'm practicing alone. Yeah. Well, if the whatever portion, you know. See, we're developing a secret language already. You know, most lectures in Buddhism in Japan, you see, they take a group of people like this and they weed it out until it's six or ten people.

[29:36]

And then the lectures are about, you know, sort of whatever language. But you can't give that kind of lecture here because nobody knows the language. Anyway, it's okay because actually some of you are practicing pretty well, you know. Well, the problem is that when you practice by yourself, you have an idea of a whatever, which gets rather knocked out of you if you practice with a group of people. And if you practice a long time, you need a lot of checking up, you know. You need quite a lot of association with a teacher. There's, in Buddhism we talk about Pratyekabuddhas, which are Buddhas which have been enlightened by circumstances, by conditions, not by a teacher. So generally there's an actual fact, the examples of people who've been enlightened, say, the story in one of the examples is you're enlightened by the sound of a tile hitting a bamboo or something like that.

[30:42]

But generally the specific cases, famous cases of such, are somebody who for years practiced with a teacher, and then the teacher says something to him which he doesn't understand at all, or says leave or something, you know, so he leaves. And puzzles about this for many years and then the bamboo is hit by a tile, you know. But Pratyekabuddhas don't teach Buddhism. They're enlightened for themselves. What? They're enlightened for themselves. They don't teach Buddhism. They're isolated. That's the tradition, anyway. How can they be isolated if they're enlightened? That depends on some idea of enlightenment, you know.

[31:56]

Yeah? You said that when you practice alone you get some idea of whatever it is. And when you practice with a group you get that knocked out of you. But I found that also when I practice with a group I get an idea that the only way to practice is by the schedule. And then when I find that my life doesn't fit into the schedule I feel that I have no practice. And then I feel torn because there's something positive that I'm doing that's keeping me up late at night, that keeps me from getting up early in the morning to go to the doctor. So I think vastly that before you really think about this schedule and try and make a decision on my own

[33:06]

where I find I don't do very well. Yeah, I understand. Well, that's what practice is, you know, actually. I don't mean that you always should practice in a group. And if you practice with a group you find the same problems. Eventually, I remember at some point Zen Center became rather active. Too many people came. And Graham Petchy, who's one of the first students of Suzuki Roshi and I, ended up having to take a lot of responsibility. And it was pretty difficult because we were fairly new at practicing. And many times we had to miss sesshins. And Graham really recognized the missing sesshin as equal, as the same practice as going to the sesshin.

[34:11]

In fact, it may be more difficult to miss the sesshin. And that's form is form. And I know that I had a great deal of difficulty learning how to sit. And everyone said to me, just as I said, don't move. And I literally couldn't sit without... I mean, I can't explain to you what I used to do to try to get my legs together. And to even sit in a little bit so I could make some progress in sitting. I had to, for about a year, move at the middle of the period and change. But I can remember other students coming up to me and saying, Suzuki Roshi says you shouldn't move. And you shouldn't. And Suzuki Roshi always said in lectures, you shouldn't. But I had to decide for myself that in order to continue my practice I had to move.

[35:16]

So I didn't care. It was like deciding that Suzuki Roshi was going to be my teacher. I just decided I had to move. So I moved. And eventually I got so I didn't have to move. So... You know, as I was talking to somebody about milkshakes, sometimes you think, I shouldn't have a milkshake. You don't have a milkshake. That's one form of practice. Then you think, I shouldn't have a milkshake but I'm going to give in and have a milkshake. So you get a milkshake. That's another form of practice. That's just exactly as much practice as not having the milkshake. So you see what your life is like if you have milkshakes.

[36:19]

If you just have milkshakes and there's no idea of practice, you know, then it's something else, you know. But if you have the milkshake with a sense of... That's more a kind of tantric way of practice. But Zen and Tantrism are very closely related. So you find out what it's like to miss Zazen. This is Suzuki Roshi's way. I'm not making this up. So you find out something like that. Then there's a third one where you decide, I shouldn't have the milkshake, I won't have a milkshake and yet you find yourself putting the money down on the counter to buy one. Oh, so I'm drinking a milkshake. That's the third kind of practice, you know.

[37:23]

And then, you know, there's the fourth kind of practice where you decide you shouldn't have a milkshake or it does not... and you don't... there's no willpower involved, there's no problem, you just don't have a milkshake. Or if someone offers a milkshake, you have a milkshake. There's no effort at all. But if you're going to practice strongly, you know, you must know all four. But there's some danger, you know, of course. If you're not so strong, you practice, I'll never have a milkshake. And if you're not even that strong, you always have a milkshake. So, anyway, you should have some milkshakes, you know. And actually, they're not milkshakes, they're just...

[38:32]

you have to... there's no difference between what you do. And in that sense, zazen is a way of checking up. You come to sesshins or zazen. But that's still not the same as living always, I mean. But for some time, it's good to have some experience of practicing with a group. There was another question? Yeah. I just want to add a little moment in which I would like to comment on. The fellow who hits the hardest of all with a stick was smashing people with it. The tarred girl who lives across the street was beating her dog again. And the dog was yelling. And the stick was crashing. And I wanted to shout out, stop all that violence! And I didn't do it, but I felt like running out of the zendo. And I felt some confusion about the...

[39:38]

It's obviously two different kinds of violence, but at that moment, it coalesced and just became violence, and it seemed so senseless to me. So, you could... yeah. One way is to have the milkshake. You could have asked for the stick at that point. That's one way of practice. When you feel that way, bow and ask for the stick. What about taking the stick and breaking it and throwing it across the floor? I used to sit in one monastery where I sat, where they really... I mean, we don't hit anything like they hit. First of all, you sit facing up. And some of you, I told you about this. You sit facing up and the guy walks with the stick, you know.

[40:41]

And you bow down this way, so your whole back is open, right? And they hit four times on each shoulder, straight across the back. And they hit, you know, they take the stick and they bring it back and they touch it to their bottom. We hit sort of this way, you know. They touch it to their bottom and they lift up on their toes and... And it goes... And then... And then, whoops, it goes on the other one four times, you know, right? And I can remember the first time I was... I thought, Oh my God! It's the first time that I've actually wanted to get out from underneath the stick. You know, I could... It hit me and the wind was knocked out of me. And I could... Oh, I'd really like to...

[41:47]

Anyway, but if you just relax, you know, it's not so bad. It's not so bad. And in a place like that, everyone knows what the rules are. And I only got a little angry, the way you did, when there was some high school. But this is a wisdom in this. This other example I'm going to give you, there's some wisdom in this, which is interesting but very difficult for us. Some high school boys came in to see what a monastery life was like. They had no idea what the rules were. Very little. They didn't know how to dress. And some of them had, you know, these puff jackets on, you know, because it's cold in the monastery. They don't heat at all. So you're just sitting there. It's winter. It's pretty cold in Kyoto. Snow on the ground. And so they had these puff jackets on and the head monk ordered them to take them off. And underneath they only had a thin shirt. And the winter is when they use the heavy stick, because the monks wear several layers. So they use this big oak stick. It's really thick.

[42:50]

The worst time to be hit is spring and fall, because it's the transition between the winter stick and the summer stick. So anyway, they had this big thick stick. And they applied the rules exactly to these young boys as they apply to the monks. So the boys didn't know exactly. You know, you get hit in a monastery like that for not being alert. So if you're sitting perfectly awake and straight, but maybe your chin's a little forward or it doesn't look like you're totally on your practice, you get hit. So it's quite common to get hit three or four or five times in a period. They just walk up and hit you. But after you can sit fairly steadily, you're not hit very hard. I mean, you're not hit at all, practically. The head monk isn't hit. Anyway, these high school boys, one boy was hit maybe, what,

[43:53]

it must have been a total of, say, four times in each shoulder, times ten, eighty, forty to eighty times. He was hit ten times, I guess forty times, in a period of thirty minutes. No, I mean, you know, they break sticks on people. And they hit anywhere. They don't worry about your bones or anything. And I was, I was a little piqued, I must say. You know, I thought this... But the way in Japan is, in this situation particularly, is everything applies equally to everybody. You don't discriminate about what's good for this person or that person. And it follows throughout the society, it's consistent. You know, if you're a lousy, you know, jerk, shall we say, and you're in the hierarchy, you become president. That's not completely true. They have a way of weeding you out near the top. But you become a vice president because it's your turn. And there's a kind of great thing in that,

[44:55]

that it's your turn. Anyway, that's where we're getting off the point. Anyway, this practice comes of hitting with a stick. It comes from China. And religious practice is difficult. And in Christianity you have the cross as a kind of... and the crucifixion as a kind of reminder of the seriousness of practice or something like that. And in the Zendo they try to create an atmosphere with the stick. And I know some people don't like it, you know. But generally we hit only when people ask. And we don't hit hard enough to do physical damage. And I don't know what to say more than that. I don't personally mind the stick. I think when it's used too much it creates a feeling in the Zendo

[45:55]

which is too much involved in trying to not be hit. But we don't hit that way anyway. So... But there's a larger question behind what you ask. And which involves the difficulty of the world as a whole. How we relate to each other. I can't talk about that. Excuse me, I'm a few minutes over.

[46:33]

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