I come to taste the fruit. Last Thursday, I went to Green Gulch.

[01:02]

I've changed my day from Wednesday to Thursday. And the lecture is in the evening instead of in the morning now. So it's a little nicer. And so when I went to Green Gulch Thursday, they were cropping lettuce in the field. So I went to down in the field to help cropping the lettuce. And when I went down there, there was a kind of motley crew of people. Some of the Zen students and a lot of kids, people's children, were working. Even seven, eight-year-olds were in the field. The feeling was, we have to crop this lettuce and put it in these crates, and then it goes to various places.

[02:09]

To me, there was something very wonderful about this crew of people cropping lettuce and putting it into wooden boxes. there was not much feeling, no self-consciousness about these are Zen students, these are children, these are old people, these are young people, these are men, these are women. Distinctions like that weren't apparent. What was apparent was that everyone was just doing this. Everyone had their own knife, and they were cutting the heads off the lettuce. It's quite nice, you know. A lettuce cutter knife has a flat end. So kind of a long knife with a flat end, and very sharp. And you just go, chk. It's very satisfying to cut the head off the lettuce.

[03:17]

It's just very, just chk, very simple and easy. And then you put 24 heads of lettuce in a small box. Big heads of lettuce. So you have six rows on the bottom, on this side. I mean, a row of six on this side and a row of six on this side, facing up. And then a row of six on the top and a row of six on the bottom, facing down. That's 24. And to me, what I felt about that was a sense of real practice. And even though people weren't thinking of it that way, it was completely unselfconscious as to this is practice.

[04:20]

But the actual reality of it was, this is the culmination of practice, or this is something very real about this. It seemed very informal, like such a contrast to what we do in the Zen Do as formal practice. But yet, it had a wonderful kind of formality to it. It was as if the field was the zindo. And everybody was working in a very concentrated way. Children, little kids, everybody. Cutting off of it, putting it in the boxes, walking back and forth with the crates.

[05:22]

in a very disciplined way. Not self-consciously disciplined, but naturally disciplined. And the arrangement of the lettuce in the crates was very formal. Very formal arrangement. In order to make everything fit just right, all the lettuce had to be placed just right. You couldn't do it if you did a sloppy job. So the conditions imposed a kind of formal, careful form of activity on everybody. And it just gave me the sense of How do you practice in the world?

[06:25]

How does a Zen student practice in the world? How do you carry your practice into life? And what do you look for? That's what our question is always, what do you look for? And when someone leaves the Zen Do, one goes, I get lost up there. So how we find the formality according to the way conditions arise is how we practice. How we respond to conditions and create our own formality.

[07:27]

which means how we make things work in the best way with things and people. But it was very encouraging to me to see everybody working like that because Our practice is always so restricted to adults. The form of our Zen practice has come to us from a monastic model. And the monastic model doesn't pay attention to children and families and so forth. There is a model, of course, a Japanese model for laypeople, but that doesn't fit us either.

[08:35]

That leaves out zazen and so forth. So how do we include our children and families and friends within the framework of what we call our practice is an important question. And if we don't do that, then what we call our practice becomes stale. And I think that we feel this staleness, this You know, if you're just a monk, you can go for a long time in a certain way because you don't have to answer to, or you don't have to relate to children and families and so forth.

[09:48]

But if in our practice where it's not so defined. We find ourselves in various binds because of that. So when we find ourselves in a bind, it gives us the impression that there's practice over here and the rest of our life over here. And it's the bind that gives us that impression. and makes a division, where actually a division doesn't exist, shouldn't exist. Because if our whole life isn't integrated as practice, then our practice isn't working. And then we look for various ways, you know, new ways or different ways, or we think there's something wrong with practice or something wrong with me, or you.

[10:53]

So I think the most important thing facing us is how we integrate our whole life so that there's no gap. And how it includes families and children and friends. whatever it is that we do. Not exactly a monastic life, but not exactly lay life. One of the problems that always comes up is how do we relate to people around us when we work as practice when those people know nothing about what our practice is.

[12:19]

I think that that question comes up when we have some rigid idea about what our practice is, that it's sitting cross-legged or chanting, something like that. But in a normal situation, how do you harmonize with someone next to you? How do you harmonize with someone that you meet on the street? It's actually quite simple. We create the form of practice as we go along, because as I said before, there is no special form of practice. This form that we have in the zendo

[13:26]

helps us and encourages us. Suzuki Roshi's talk that we printed in the newsletter, he talks about our formal practice, formal side of practice. What we call formal is We have that in order to help us and encourage our practice. But if we stick to that too much, then it becomes a bind and we lose everything. We become too attached to some special form. And the wholeness, the completion of our practice, is how we create that, how we keep creating the form of practice as we move in our daily life, as we move through our daily life.

[14:39]

How we keep creating the forms that come to us, how we make those forms into practice. If you're a carpenter, it's how do you handle your tools? How do you relate to the people that you're working with? How do you go about, how do you move within the situation in a way that takes into consideration whatever it is that is around you? And how do you deal with people and with things in a careful, non-attached, egoless way?

[15:50]

If someone criticizes you, what comes up in you? And how do you take care of it? If you don't get what you want, how do you take care of the feeling that comes up in you? What do you do with that? If something comes to you that's more than you wanted, how do you take care of that? And how do you take care of supposing you're feeling real good up here and then suddenly the bottom drops out and you're down here? How do you take care of that? That's practicing zazen 24 hours a day.

[17:06]

The things that happen to you in your life are not different than what happens to you in zazen. Basically, whatever happens to us in zazen is the same as the things that happen to us in our daily life. And how you take care of that in zazen should carry over into your daily life. It doesn't mean that your daily life will be perfect ideally, or that you'll get everything you want, but you'll be able to handle the ups and downs quite easily. When, through life's subtle and drastic changes, you can accept and feel comfortable By comfortable, I don't mean that things won't hurt you, but how you always find your way.

[18:19]

That's the value of zazen. It won't make you richer or poorer, or it may not even make you a better person. An enlightened Zen master can still be a kind of yucky person, so to speak. It's true. You may not like him. That's why, you know, enlightenment is not our goal. It's how you develop yourself after enlightenment that's really important.

[19:26]

You may feel, I've been working very hard, but I still haven't gotten enlightenment yet. But I know our practice is backwards. Because we work hard, we're working out of enlightenment rather than toward enlightenment. Something that is hard for a lot of people to understand. Because of enlightenment, we practice. Because of our enlightenment, we practice. It's not that we practice in order to get enlightenment. I know that's hard to see, but I'm not enlightened. We don't necessarily have realization.

[20:36]

That's true. As Dogen says, some may realize it and some may not, but we're all Buddha. We have to have this kind of faith in ourself. But I'd like to know what problems are that you see in your daily life. How you see hindrance in your daily life to practice or to realization of

[21:43]

your way of life as practice. What hindrances or problems do you see in that? And also, how do you feel that things could be different or better? You know, you ask the question, I start thinking. Everything, it seems like, could change and be better or softer or more, you know, things could be easier. But I don't feel like changing or making it different. It feels fine, actually, the problems that I have.

[22:55]

I wish I didn't have a cold. I wish the baby didn't cry at night. These various things. The cold goes away. Sometimes the baby sleeps through. The baby's there. Sometimes she hasn't cried at night. I sit in the Zendo in the morning, listening, waiting for her. I guess for me the hindrance to practice is this idea of having faith that things will turn out alright even if I don't have complete control over a particular situation. And to think that losing control is What do you mean by turn out all right?

[24:17]

Things will turn out all right. Faith that things will turn out all right. Yeah, I'm not so sure exactly. It's almost an idea Any kind of trusting? Maybe it's more like the inability. You know, turning and being turned is a very important term that we use in our practice for harmonizing with life.

[25:35]

To be able to let go and be turned and at the same time to hold on and turn things. Pat? Well, I think that creates a real problem. A real problem. What's going to be is going to be. I'll be turned and not get really attached to this, not really involved in this. And it turned out that, I mean, I can maintain my equanimity in a thrash, but what really needed to be done was that there was a decision of, what I really need to do is make a decision about the situation.

[26:49]

you should have turned the situation instead of being turned by it at that point. But it's a matter of knowing when to do what. It's not that the equation is wrong. It's knowing when to turn and when to be turned. That's a problem. It can be a problem, that's right. I think Maile's got her hand up. Yeah. Well, I think it's a koan, and we're certainly always very intensely involved in it. There's no possibility of being passive in that situation. And I think Nora said it very well, that my difficulty is in imagining that I do have control over things, and not being alert enough to, when there's a problem, to seeing how I'm contributing to the problem.

[28:00]

Because when there's a problem, one is always contributing to it. And that's very hard to see. Very hard to see, you know. And someone will say, well, you're contributing to this problem in some way. And it always comes as a surprise to us, or often comes as a surprise to us. I didn't think I was doing that, but we are. And we have to be able to accept that. The hardest thing, I think, is to have an unassuming mind. Because we want to be right, and we want to have knowledge. And this is our security. Our security is in having knowledge and being right. And we'll do anything for it, you know.

[29:01]

Even say we're right when we're wrong. So we get very mixed up. And to have an unassuming mind, just, I don't know, gives you the space to see something. And in our Zen practice, I don't know mind is the most fundamental. That's the mind which we should carry with us into our daily life. That's Zazen mind. I don't know. which gives us the opportunity to know something, gives us the opening. Otherwise, when our mind is full of something, or when we're always ready to attack, nothing can flow through us. So, that's always being ready to turn things. That's the aggressive side, which is our weakness, because it's defensive and doesn't let us flow.

[30:14]

The other side, of course, is passivity, not ever knowing anything, just being pulled around by things. So the balance between knowing and not knowing and keeping the mind open, even if we think we're right, we can always come back. And that's hard to develop. I think we need to develop that consciously, the ability. Instead of coming in with what we know, with what we think we know, to step back a little bit and allow for the possibility, for other possibilities. You said earlier about this matter of self-improvement. Well, I can see that women easily be trapped into being attached to the idea. It seems to me that the result of just trying to handle the difficulties of life in a non-attached and accepting way would inevitably produce

[31:30]

a kind of human being that is able to deal with his fellows more successfully. So I find the disagreeable priest hard to harmonize with the principles of Buddhism, the whole idea of compassion. I wish you'd talk about that some more, because I can't understand that. I'm not sure. Self-improvement. Do I see that? You said self-improvement, as I understood you, was not necessarily the result of practice. Did I misunderstand? Yeah, maybe. You said you don't necessarily become a better person. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily make you a better person. And I said that more, you know, so that we wouldn't get this idea that If you're enlightened, it necessarily makes you, changes you to a better person, as we think of a person.

[32:40]

But usually it does. But it could be that a person wouldn't necessarily be what we consider a good person or what we like in a person. And I think that's important because we're judging by our own standards. And someone's enlightenment isn't something that can be judged by our own standards of whether we like it or don't like it. An enlightened person may be someone we don't particularly like. But that's our own subjective value. We may all like Michael Jackson, but he may not be enlightened. He may be, I may not be, but there may be someone that's enlightened, but we don't like him at all.

[33:52]

It's strictly subjective. He had someone like Suzuki Roshi that everyone was drawn to. I think I remember when I was first interested in Buddhism, I remember being at Tassajara and hearing the young man say, I couldn't understand why anyone could go through the rigors of seishin and whatnot, but I would go through anything to be like Suzuki Roshi. And I think it was because this young man was expressing his wish that he could be the kind of person he was, and it seemed to me that was an example of... Well, the wonderful thing about Suzuki Yoshi was that he was enlightened, and everybody liked him, too. That's great, see? That's wonderful. But, you know, Pacheka Buddha... Have you heard the term Pacheka Buddha? It's a Buddha who doesn't necessarily help people.

[34:52]

He's an enlightened person. nobody pays attention to them and they don't necessarily have any particular charisma or any desire to help people but they have a certain understanding about life and death and the meaning and how to deal with it but they don't have much ability to help people or no particular particularly good personality or abilities. Are they teachers? Not necessarily, no. They're not teachers. So, excuse me, there's a certain combination of factors which would make a person a teacher. But not all enlightened people are teachers and not all

[35:53]

People on a certain level are teachers. A teacher has certain qualities that make them use their understanding, that allow them to use their understanding and help people too. Sometimes in other I mean, a good football coach is not necessarily a good player. What I was going to say, for me, the greatest hindrance that I find to practice is the desire to do well. It creates this kind of anxiety to be always grading yourself, and it creates too much dependence upon your standing, you're taking too much of your standards from other people.

[37:10]

And for how to improve things, I don't know, I don't know exactly how it to me, rather than to be concerned so much with our own practice and development, if we should have more heart for other people in our sangha and everywhere. Just more caring. Yeah, I agree with that. Competition is good, but it's not, it should be, we shouldn't let it get out of hand, you know. It's good because it helps you to move forward. You're bouncing off of each other, you know.

[38:16]

But there's a certain point where it gets out of hand, and that's what we, need to avoid, and saying, well, this is my pace. Being able to know, this is my pace. This I can do. I feel right this way. That's a very good place to be able to know. But it usually doesn't come until after a long time. The problem with that is that it can lead to complacency. Say, well, this is it. I can do this, but I can't do any more. So there's nothing pushing you, you know. So balancing all those factors, they are all necessary. A little competition, knowing where you are, not being pushed too much, and

[39:17]

the desire to help people, all those things, you know, should balance each other out. Annalee? Yeah, maybe I'm just, I haven't experienced the competitiveness as a positive thing. Competitiveness has always been Competitiveness as a thing is not so good for us. Not competition, but maybe I like to think of it as encouragement. By our practice we encourage each other. rather than competing with each other.

[40:20]

I think that's, I like that better. You do something wonderful, and it encourages me, and so I want to do it too. It makes me do more. I like that better than competition. Yes. I find that my life lacks intent. Intent? Intent. In my practice, it's like I've become very quiet. I'm able to bounce between the highs and the lows, yet I don't seem to have any direction in life. How do you call that intent? Yeah. Well, we should have some intention and direction. And most of us have some direction, intention in our life, through our work or our family or some practice in some way, you know.

[41:38]

Intention in practice itself should be established. in some way. Why am I doing this? Where is it going? What is the direction of it? That's important to know. We all should know, why am I sitting Zazen? That should be our question. You don't necessarily have to answer it. You should have the question as if you were going to answer it. The answers you come up with are never quite enough. You know, you say, well, I practice it to get strong legs, or to make my posture good, or to make me a better person. You know, you go through all this list of reasons why you sit dozen, and you should.

[42:39]

You should go through all these reasons of why, and then in the end, it's still not satisfying. And so why do I sit zazen? Well, if you keep asking that question, it will lead you to a direction. But if you stop someplace with a partial answer, whatever answer you come up with is just a partial answer. So Whatever answer you come up with, go on to investigate a little further. But if you feel that you want to know what your direction is, then you should come and talk to me about it, and I can help you to discuss it. I can discuss it with you.

[43:46]

I'm going to help you. Okay? My comment on intention was that I found from practice that I, as an ego, don't know what my intent is, that the intention will be. I mean, I've become known to be, I've made that clear, so I've been the trigger or the That kind of thing. It's the same thing when you say something about, we may not become a better person or we may, I don't know if that's the correct term, but it's the same thing. Right.

[45:01]

That's letting go of your knowing. And not really knowing what your goal is, but knowing what your direction is and allowing it to develop is not knowing. It's possible through not knowing. Yeah. be able to understand, you know, to really feel you really understand why you're making the decision. It seems like the more you just go into discussing in yourself or with others, the reasons for making the decision, the more complex they become. Eventually, decisions seem to be just based on a hunch, on a guess. So it's a good idea to decide, make a decision, and stay with it.

[46:15]

You may think, you know, uh-oh, this is wrong. Uh-oh, this is right, something like that. If you do that, You know, say you come to a crossroads and you have to decide which way to go. And you say, okay, I'll go this way. Then you have to take the consequences of whatever happens on that road. That's like making a decision and staying with your decision. You know, it may not be so good. At some point, it may be a dead end, you know. And then you have to decide what to do. But whatever road you take, it's going to have good things and bad things with it. So the problem that we have been making decisions a lot is that we see, you know, that maybe there'll be some, we don't know what we're going to encounter along the road.

[47:30]

But you never know. You just have to go down the road and then take care of the things as they come up. And the more you can do that, the more you can take care of those things without backing off or turning around or getting knocked off the road, the stronger you get. So, what you're doing on the road is building up your strength and character. People have a tough road, they have a tough character. who have this easy road to have a kind of soft character. So, you know, in Zen practice, we like to build strong character, so we have a tough practice. Here it's not so tough, but it could be. It can be in many places. But,

[48:33]

If you see it through without getting pushed off, then you've gained a lot of strength through what you encounter. Your strength will match what you encounter. And there's maybe a 50-50 chance she'll fall asleep.

[49:46]

It's getting better. If I want it too badly, she won't. It's not okay if she doesn't go to sleep. But still, I have to put her to sleep, put her down just as But there are a lot of situations which we can change or not change, and they may not be all right, and we may just have to sit in them. And that's very hard to accept. I think that's why choices are so hard. Because a choice you make, you may have a lot of things about it that are not okay for you, that are very difficult. And there you are. They're not necessarily favorable to you, to yourself.

[50:46]

We have to make choices like that all the time. Not necessarily favorable to us, to myself. Yes? You know, I'm having trouble with time. Time? I'm doing the altar, trying to balance with the fact that I'm basically a swampy person. It comes through to me when I'm trying to make the ash level. It isn't quite level. It's getting late. I've got other things to do, and I know it could be better, and I know that I don't really It doesn't matter to me if it's not level, but it ought to be level. Maybe I should do it a little bit more scantily.

[51:51]

I've always said that the true test of patience is... You know these garlic squeezes? They have little holes? Well, I can't stand it if there's anything left in the hole. The true test of patience is to be able to punch out all the holes with a toothpick when in one minute you have to go someplace else. You know? When some of the demand on you and you just have to go and be able to stand there and still take all of the little pieces of garlic out of the holes with a toothpick and without getting excited. You know, the character for patience, the Chinese character, Suzuki Roshi said, the Chinese character for patience, in its original form, was a man with a sword held against his head, like this.

[53:05]

Patience. To be able to Just keep your calmness up until the last second. Very good exercise in patience. Don't let that anxiety grab you. It's the same thing in Zazen, you know, to just not get impatient up to the last second. Oh, I know the bell's going to ring now. But not to get into that. Just keep it, just keep it. Get excited. Don't let yourself get drawn into the next event, the next time sequence. But keep your time all the way up to the very end. And then, it's amazing how much time we actually have in one minute to do something.

[54:07]

It really is. If you use that one minute without anxiety, you can do a lot. You can straighten out any sense, tap it down, put it back, align it, in one minute. So, I would suggest practicing that. Just give yourself that space. Pat? Well, what you say seems connected, It's some kind of basic trust. Yeah. Yeah, right. The basic trust. Yeah, and what? Henry James always wrote about the same thing.

[55:17]

He wrote about different kinds of people. He always wrote about the same thing, and that was the way people built up their lives by making minute decisions from day to day to day to day. that we do sort of build up our lives. I feel like I did some things when I was younger that had caused me a lot of trouble and pain, and that I just have to accept that. That's what my life became because I did some of these things that were going to be foolish. And the decisions that I'm making today will be my life tomorrow. And there's no way to escape that. And there's no way that the decisions will all be right. There are ways to turn your life, but we have to live with what we've built.

[56:25]

I've come to accept in my practices to exist in my body as life. Yet one of the problems I have with practice is it often doesn't really focus on utilizing my body. Well, maybe you'd have less trouble if you didn't think of it in terms of either mind or body. The direction of our practice is to unify them so that there is no separation.

[58:00]

But when we're having a lot of trouble, problems, you know, it feels, they feel separate. And you feel the struggle. At some point you'll feel the unity.

[58:40]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ