I now take the truth of that which I transgress. all the dharmas that are present in our consciousness and activity, the most important actually is effort. The most important thing is effort. There are many factors which are necessary for realization, but the most important one is effort, and effort appears in various forms in the lists of

[01:23]

associated dharmas, and no matter what you know, or what you may find out still, the central, the pivot, or that which makes realization possible is effort. And without it, there is no realization. In Buddhist time, there's a story about a man, a monk, who was not so bright. And he couldn't remember anything. Buddha would give a lecture, a talk, and he couldn't remember anything that Buddha said.

[02:35]

And he couldn't remember what to do or how to do it. And so Buddha said, well, why don't you just take this broom and sweep? Just sweep the front, the back, and the courtyard, and that will be your practice, just the practice of sweeping. And it's all you have to do. But do it well. So this monk took his broom and really practiced diligently, practiced sweeping with his whole body and mind. And in two weeks he was enlightened. And there's a list of associated factors, which is called the seven powers.

[03:57]

And they're associated with the eight indriyas that Ron talked about on a Monday morning a few weeks ago. when their indriyas are called controlling factors of mind. They control our behavior and activity and kind of dominate our consciousness, give it direction, give our consciousness direction. And the indriyas are Faith, energy, that's effort in a different form. Mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom, that's five.

[05:02]

And then there's the mind element and vitality, joy and vitality. Those three are at the end. Mind, element, joy and vitality. And these are controlling factors of the mind. And they direct our consciousness or our activity. And when they're very, very concentrated or when you can't, when you get to a point through practice where these faculties are not influenced by their opposite. They're called powers. So we have, when you get to a certain stage, you have the power of faith, and the power of effort or energy, and the power of mindfulness, and the power of

[06:16]

concentration and the power of wisdom. And there are two other powers called moral fear and moral dread. Those keep you in check, keep you from doing something wrong, making some action which creates difficulty for everybody, for you and others. And these seven powers, in order to be effective, must all work harmoniously with each other. The power of faith In Buddhism, faith is a little different than in Christianity or in some other kind of religion.

[07:26]

Faith is something that is developed through investigation. So in Buddhism, no one asks you to have faith in Buddha or to have faith in some power, but in Buddhism we study ourself and when we come to some understanding then we begin to have some faith in ourself, in our true nature, what we call Buddha nature. We do say You should have faith in Buddha nature. But what we call Buddha nature is our own true nature. We should have faith in our own true nature. But it doesn't mean to have blind faith in something.

[08:39]

It means when you practice and investigate and gain confidence. Confidence is a associated term which you can substitute for faith. Faith and confidence are different aspects of each other. When you have real confidence, then you can have faith. And the opposite of faith is doubt. And when you have the power of faith, then doubt doesn't overpower faith. So energy, or effort, allows us to have faith, or gives us the ability to have faith. I saw a movie the other night.

[09:47]

I don't know if you'll get this, but the movie was about the Pacific, the war in the Pacific. It was like Channel 2, 8 o'clock movie. And it was about, let's see now, what's his name? the marine pilot who was very famous in World War II and they were out in the Pacific and this pilot was a kind of maverick and he got all the, he was very tricky and he worked, he worked it so that he got all the pilots that were in the South Pacific that were about to be court-martialed for disorderly conduct, and he got them all together in a squadron, and they became a very famous squadron of hard-fighting pilots.

[10:58]

But there was one pilot who, kind of young, and he came up to him when they were about ready to, just the night before they were going to take off for some mission. And he said, he said, did you ever see the light? And that's the kind of term that means, I think I'm going to die. And the boss to him a little bit about it, you know, and the guy was, he was sure that he was going to, that he had this feeling that he wasn't going to come back. So the head pilot slugged him, and then the other guy slugged him back. They had this knockdown, drag out fight.

[12:02]

In the end, you know, that feeling was kind of released, that it changed, the whole thing was changed. And the guy, the young guy, had some faith in himself, had some faith in his nature, and not just in, not just, didn't give himself over to this fatalistic idea, So this is an example of energy or effort to overcome doubt or to overcome skepticism. I thought about that and I thought, this guy could be a Zen master. Real teacher.

[13:13]

Maybe in the old-fashioned style. I used to have, when I was younger, I had a lot of dogs, not all at once, but one after the other. And when my dogs were sick, you know, their nose would get warm, and I would take them for a walk around the block. taking them for a walk around the block or for a run someplace. When we come back, then those would be cold and wet and they'd be okay.

[14:19]

The effort, you know, and the energy flowing cured them. They didn't have to take any pills or go to the vet or get worried. I didn't have to worry so much. And it's taken for a walk, taken for a run. Sometimes they're sick, but it's amazing how just letting energy flow and getting your energy up will make everything, will make you well. And in the same way, will lead you to realization. The third power is a power of mindfulness.

[15:30]

And mindfulness is a little different than concentration. Concentration is the next one. Concentration is like fixing on an object or merging with an object. But mindfulness is the faculty that balances all the other faculties. and is the reminder of, what am I doing? When you say, what am I doing? That's mindfulness. When you say, is this practice? That's mindfulness. And when anger comes up, you say, this is anger.

[16:35]

That's mindfulness. And when you make a promise to yourself to come to the zendo at five o'clock in the morning, at five o'clock in the morning you remember. That's mindfulness. Mindfulness of practice. Mindfulness of what am I about? And if your whole life is practice, then your whole life is mindfulness. It's reminding or recollection of what's important and what am I doing. And it balances, it keeps all the other factors together.

[17:39]

one of the powers or factors gets too dominant, then mindfulness brings it back into perspective. If faith becomes, gets out of hand, you know, faith is like devotion. Devotion is one of the characteristics of faith. And if devotion gets out of hand. One of the ways that devotion can get out of hand is when we have this wonderful feeling of devotion and then we turn it to, it becomes caught by some interesting object. Faith in Buddhism should be devoted to practice, but if faith gets out of hand, it can be devoted to some insane cause or some trivial activity.

[18:57]

So the power of mindfulness brings faith back into perspective. And energy can easily get out of hand. Energy is really a powerful factor, and if it's not controlled, if we're not watching it with mindfulness, it can easily become attached to all kinds of unwholesome activities. faith can become easily radicalized and you can do all kinds of embarrassing things if faith gets out of control and the same with energy if faith gets out of control you can become a religious fanatic

[20:10]

like a Zen student. And when energy gets out of control, it's easy to manipulate. And I think one of the problems that happened at Zen Center in San Francisco is that energy got out of control. tremendous amount of energy, but the power of wisdom wasn't so present. After mindfulness comes concentration, which is, for us, or samadhi, or paying attention to whatever we're doing.

[21:14]

And wisdom, in this sense, is not strictly speaking prajna. This kind of wisdom is paññā, which is knowing the difference between what is practice and what isn't, and what is wholesome and what isn't, and what is correct and what is incorrect. that kind of wisdom. And that kind of wisdom controls faith, keeps it in balance, keeps it from getting fanatic. And so these five powers are the, when they work together, when they balance each other and are working in harmony, give us a real sense of control and practice.

[22:37]

Concentration. Sometimes we put a lot of emphasis in Zen practice on concentration. And we think that Zen is concentration. Zazen is concentration. And it is. Concentration is a big factor in Zazen and in our practice. And we talk about when you go out into your daily life, that you should be concentrated on your activity and merged with your activity. And that's true. But concentration has to be in harmony with wisdom, mindfulness, energy, and faith. And lurking there in the background, or in the foreground, has to be moral faith, moral dread and fear.

[24:04]

You know, in the Western religions, they talk about fear of God, And a lot of people, I hear this so often, people say, all I ever learned in my religion was fear of God, and I didn't want to be fearful all the time. But these two factors have that quality. But the meaning is you want to be careful because when you do something it means something. I see so often in our lives we do something and we just have no, absolutely no idea about the consequences. We don't think that there's consequences to the things that we do. And we feel that if we're not caught by somebody, that there's no consequence.

[25:20]

And sometimes you may feel that even though there's nobody watching, that somehow there's some consequence to what we do anyway. And in Buddhism, because of the law of cause and effect, everything we do has some consequence. There's karma, or action, and the fruit, which is the consequence. Action and its consequence. consequence, something that happens afterward, something that is caused by what we do. So we have, in Buddhism, when you become very involved in practice

[26:35]

Then you have to be, the more involved you are, the more careful you have to be. When we're not so involved, you know, when we don't pay so much attention to what we're doing in usual life, it doesn't matter to us so much what happens. We don't realize that what happens to us is the concept is caused by what we do. But in Buddhism, when you begin to get the awareness, when you practice and understand and get the awareness that what you do has consequences, then you become very careful, much more careful of what you do. So that's why these two, moral fear and moral dread, are very important. And the more responsibility and the higher you get in some position, the harder you fall.

[27:52]

So it may not seem so important. But it is very important to pay attention to these two, to have some fear and even some dread of the consequences of our actions. The Zen practice that comes down to us from Japan is not so moralistic. Our usual Zen practice, you don't really, when you read books on Zen and listen to Dharma teachers, you don't get so much the feeling of moral responsibility.

[29:01]

But it's very important in Buddhism generally, in Buddhist practice. Not in Shin Buddhism. Lots of different kinds of Buddhism. Shin Buddhism, you know, Shinran, in the 13th century in Japan, felt that it was impossible to have realization or gain deliverance through practice. But he said, you know, he tried. He said, practices are just too hard in this day and age. It's just too hard to practice and gain deliverance. But if you chant the name of Buddha, Buddha will, with sincerity, then Amida Buddha will invite you into the pure land.

[30:08]

So the Amida Buddhists, which is most prevalent actually in Japan, are not so concerned with moral consequences, moral conduct. It's a little complicated. moral people, but they're not concerned with those practices because they feel everybody has some problem which is impossible to rectify, impossible to deal with, and the only way that they can find salvation is to chant the name of Buddha and be invited to the Pure Land. But original Buddhism is not like that. Original Buddhism is salvation through practice or enlightenment, realization through practice.

[31:17]

And Zen is enlightenment or realization through practice. But in Japan, A lot of Zen people have ignored the moralistic aspect of Buddhism. And in America, they've gotten into a lot of trouble. So, we have to be careful and study Buddhism, even though we studied Zen. we have to study Buddhism first, or alongside it, or with our Zen. Our Zen practice has to be studying Buddhism to find out what Buddhism is about. Even though, you know, Suzuki Roshi said to us that we shouldn't be attached to Buddhism.

[32:26]

And that's quite good. It's true. But we should understand what it's about. And in a country like Japan, where Buddhism has such deep roots, people understand a lot that we don't understand. So we have to learn about it. It's not so easy to implant Buddhism into America from Japan. I think that in some way we have to go through a whole kind of revolution in order to turn it over. So we have a great opportunity here in America to study Indian Buddhism and various forms of, when I say Indian Buddhism, I mean early Buddhism and the development of Buddhism and what it's about.

[33:55]

Zen is a very simple kind of Buddhism. And that's why we like it. We like it because it's very simple and straightforward and direct. But we need to develop some understanding which is taken for granted in someplace else. So, in our practice, as I say, effort is the most, the underlying

[35:00]

faculty. And what you can't do with any of the other faculties you can do with effort. And that's why we stress effort so much. We stress getting up in the morning, sitting Zazen, and with concentration and mindfulness to merge with our activity. Our training in the zendo is very valuable for our daily life. I wish that more people would take advantage of the opportunity to practice We have a study period.

[36:15]

Now we're in the midst of study period. But I don't feel, to me it doesn't feel like we're making that effort that we could be making in study period. Study period is a short period of time when we really focus on our effort. But it doesn't feel to me like we're really making that effort. If you study Buddhism, you must give some effort time and effort to study. If we study hard, then we can have some good realization.

[37:24]

And if you have a difficult time, your difficulty will help you. We like to think that, or we tend to think that our difficulty stands in our way, but actually it helps us. When we sit sasheen, our legs hurt, and that causes us a great deal of difficulty. But without that difficulty, you can't get beyond a discriminating consciousness. The point of sitting zazen, sitting sushin, is to go beyond

[38:31]

our discriminating mind, discriminating consciousness. And until we can do that, until we can break through the barrier of discrimination, then we always feel, it always seems terrible to us. And we can't understand why, why are we doing this? But when we break through that barrier, even though there's some difficulty, there's also great liberation and great joy and liberation. So we must have that kind of effort that perseveres until we break through that barrier.

[39:42]

And we can't do it by thinking. And we can't do it any other way. Okay. Do you have any kind of question? Yeah, I'm wondering if the terrorist moral thread and if that might not be an apt or an old way of translating what they had in mind.

[41:01]

But I wonder if maybe conscience could be a more contemporary way of putting it, or a way that would be more Well, I think conscience is a way of talking about it. Conscience is associated with that, but doesn't replace it. But conscience doesn't express the sense of fear or dread. It's just conscience. So these are very strong terms, you know, they are very strong terms, but I don't, you know, they're strong terms to me too, but I don't mind just letting them be.

[42:03]

In other words, I can accept them. I know they're very strong terms, but I can accept them. Do you find it hard to accept them? Yeah, that's why I was suggesting it. Yeah, I don't... I'm searching. I want to see if there must be some other way of doing it. I don't quite... I don't really like that way of doing it. Oh, go ahead and send it. Isn't it, in our practice, a kind of faith that is beyond understanding? In the sense that not knowing faith beyond discrimination and beyond choice, the kind of faith that gets you through Sushita.

[43:07]

Otherwise, one might start thinking that, for example, the pain, how do you know that something's not going to go wrong with your body? It's a good point, because we talk about rational faith, but actually the most deepest kind of faith is blind faith. We don't like to say blind faith because that implies someone tells you something and then you believe it, you know, blindly. That kind of blind faith is different, but it's not blind in the sense that it doesn't know that that kind of faith, it's not blind in the sense of not knowing what's what, or just

[44:09]

But it is faith in the sense of trusting, and in the sense of not knowing. Actually, the beginning of practice is not knowing, and the end of practice is not knowing. In the middle is knowledge, but the end is not knowing. So I think that the end of faith, its culmination is faith in not knowing. and trust in not knowing. I think that's very true. But, I think that has to come about, or should come about, through investigation. Not right away. I mean, you can't say that. Not through what somebody tells you and expects you to believe. But you come to see yourself that you just have that faith in not knowing.

[45:19]

Yeah, if you have the power to hurt somebody, if you have the power to set off the bomb, or just to suddenly...

[46:17]

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