On February 15th, this Thursday, is the date that's usually traditionally set aside for Buddha entering nirvana. And as you know, there's some confusion about what is enlightenment and what is nirvana. And sometimes we use nirvana as a synonym for enlightenment. Nirvana is not death anyway, we can say dying is nirvana.

[01:10]

Usually we mean something more specific that dying by your own will or entering nirvana by your own will is nirvana. And Buddha is said to have entered nirvana by his own will. Some consciousness and participation in your dying. And since enlightenment means the extinction of your ordinary self, extinction of your desires, we can call enlightenment nirvana. Anyway, Buddha, this coming Thursday we celebrate Buddha's nirvana day.

[02:13]

And in his last sermon, he emphasized small or little or few desires and calm or serene life or nirvana. I think we have a lot of trouble with this idea of extinguishing desires. And the problem isn't just that we don't want to give up our desires. Because even giving up our desires, if we could, doesn't seem to be. Something attractive feels lifeless.

[03:16]

Not what we mean by nirvana, but something dead while being alive. But our practice is actually a kind of dead while being alive. Anyway, maybe by small desires or few desires, we can say that Buddha meant that you shouldn't be dominated by desire. By...

[04:44]

The word desire and the word suffering in Buddhism are almost like technical terms. They include everything you mean by desire or suffering, but they have a much wider meaning. Desire includes discriminating. But there's no way to come to know this wider meaning unless you confront your own desires and find some freedom from them. You want to.

[05:53]

Actually, you want to give up your desires. But that desire gets mixed up with your other desires. And you can't single out that desire and act on it. I mean, the world of... A world of non-desire or something like that is not one you can will yourself into or act into. Giving up desires doesn't just mean to... I desire this so I stop doing it. It means finding out what drives your desires. Where do your desires come from? Anyway, from your... we can say your innate nature gives rise to your desires.

[07:09]

So, if you can give yourself up to your situation, giving up your dominating desires and maybe only having small or few desires, by trying to give up to your situation, not forcing anything. Anyway, you want to use your desires. If you give up to your situation, giving up dominating desires, you'll find your desires...

[08:24]

maybe you drive your desires instead of being driven by your desires. And you can use your desires. But to say that is so close to an excuse to continue your desires that it's almost impossible to know what that means unless you actually confront really the possibility of giving up desires as you see them. For many people who practice Buddhism, it's actually easier to give up desires. But anyway, we can have anything if we're free from it. And practicing Buddhism is based on a desire, a desire to practice Buddhism, a desire to

[09:40]

save all beings. So, that maybe is the most fundamental desire. And how do we give that some existence? Wang Po says something like, excuse me, the Diamond Sutra says, everything, all is originally pure or void. Why are there mountains and rivers and the great earth? Knowing this, we activate the big mind.

[10:50]

And this means the main desire that creates everything. I think you all know the story of the Chinese story that Suzuki Roshi liked about the girl with the birds and who committed suicide by drowning herself. And so the birds carried grains of sand, one at a time, to fill the ocean in order to find the body. And of course, the story is that they didn't find the body. But they created a beautiful land. So, Suzuki Roshi's teacher, Adeheji, when he was there, said, I do not talk about the

[12:14]

beautiful land. Why not pick up a grain of sand? Dogen, in a similar way, said that for an archer, every time he hits the mark means 100 practices. If so, each practice is hitting the mark. This way is, this is how we understand things in Buddhism. So, from that way of looking at things, the grain of sand is the beautiful land.

[13:16]

Each practice is hitting the mark. In that way, we know our desires, or we vow to save all sentient beings, or bow to save all sentient beings. One bow, one grain of sand, picking up one grain of sand saves all sentient beings. And even if Buddha's teaching is, you know, some supreme teaching, still we vow to accomplish it or attain it. So, this kind of effort is our over, you know, riding, our main fundamental desire.

[14:28]

And as you can activate this desire, arouse this potentiality to be at one with everything, all your desires become part of this stream. And we say you have small desires, in that case. You know, in a similar way, the Sixth Patriarch said, originally, not a thing. Where can dust collect? Not from this point of view, you know, there's no desire. Suzuki Roshi said, sometimes said things as it is, and sometimes he said things as they are.

[15:40]

Things as they are means accepting everything as they are, or receiving everything. Receiving, receiving is actually better than accepting. When you begin to receive, how much you receive, giving up your dominating desires for some and having few desires, you begin to receive some power that's not your own power. As long as you're confined by your mind or by some spiritual idea or practice,

[16:54]

you're confined as a human being in the usual sense. But when you give up your boundaries, when you give up trying to make a beautiful land, like science, you know, tries to do things too fast, by science I mean our attitude, our scientific way of looking at things, to build a great dam and dry up a valley and make some beautiful land very quickly. Or our attempt with pills and etc. to make people happy. To make people, to try to make people happy is not to save them. You make people sleepy and they're not careful.

[17:57]

And that's, you can't exist that way actually. It's worse than being, it's worse than suffering. So our way of practicing is to suffer with others, to give up your small, even your small desires, to give up your small ego, and to the situation, to the suffering of others, willing to receive the suffering of other people. And not being, one way to practice, you know, if you find yourself caught by yourself, is to, instead of bringing the conversation around to yourself, ask the other person how they are, but with no attitude of interfering with them or any benefit from asking.

[19:01]

. If our attitude is to benefit others without interfering with them, almost anything we do is okay. We can trust that feeling. . So, . saying we, to suffer with others, is to say things as they are.

[20:10]

But when Wong Po says, every day is, Buddha is just that ordinary person, you, who goes through the day, not apart from, but not suffering in, everything, something like that. There's no accurate way to translate it. So, this is, things as it is. From this point of view, everything as one whole being, which is at rest.

[21:15]

As I talked about yesterday, the big host. From this point of view, there's no suffering. But, and from this point of view, you can be free from every bind, limitation. And from this point of view, you have great power, actually, to accept the suffering of other people. And this week, you know, I can't give you the same kind of feeling that Suzuki Roshi was able to convey when he bowed to Buddha, or when he celebrated Nirvana Day on February 15th. You can't say, Suzuki Roshi never said,

[22:23]

Buddha is a god, or Buddha exists. But his body bowed completely to Buddha. And there is some feeling from many years of doing that, and many years of being a Buddhist, and his father and teachers, from childhood, practicing and bowing with him, that he could give himself up completely to Buddha, to bowing. And this relationship to your teacher and to Buddha, the way in which our vow to practice with all sentient beings, and to save all sentient beings, the way this vow merges with the vow of the patriarchs, merges with the vow of your teachers. There's a 9th century Zen master named Dai Chu,

[23:32]

who said something like this, original desire is actually our Buddha nature. Anyway, this kind of relationship with the patriarchs and our teacher, and this basic original desire, this vow, is very important to maintain, or to be careful with, if we are to practice. So you're always, no matter how much you practice, and how great a Zen teacher you may become,

[24:39]

still, your relationship to your teacher is always as disciple. So, although I'm required to wear some brown robe to practice with you, still, in my own altar, in my own house, where I do Zazen, I have only black Bokkesu, and I don't use stick or anything. I don't carry a stick, because there I have no... just the way I was when I first met Suzuki Roshi. Anyway, Suzuki Roshi always had this feeling

[25:53]

of returning to, and continuity with, you know, when he first bowed to his teacher and to Buddha, he always had this feeling of returning to, you know. Originally, nothing. Originally not a thing. Nothing to rely on. Just your own self-sustaining independence. The...

[27:03]

Emperor Wu, you know, after Bodhidharma left, I guess he's, according to a traditional story, is supposed to have had some... understanding of Bodhidharma's visit. And so he made various... supposedly made various inscriptions or tablets, and one of them says something like, if you conceive of the mind or anything as substantial, if you give anything substantial reality, you know, your desires or anything, you'll eternally remain a human being. But if you don't abide anywhere,

[28:15]

nothing to rely on. You'll be no complete emancipation, freedom, enlightenment. If you don't abide anywhere, as the Diamond Sutra says, then you activate your big desire. That creates mountains, rivers, this great earth. That giving up to the stream of a situation, of each actual situation you're in, and giving up to the stream of your teachers,

[29:20]

we say stream of blood, giving up to the stream of your vow to save all sentient beings, to take one grain of sand, to just pick up one grain of sand, is to... is what we mean by freedom from desire, giving up your desires. I think each of you can do it, but you have to find that... ...and creates the next moment.

[30:34]

Thank you. Do you have anything we might talk about? Any questions? Question? I mean confronting... I don't mean to have the idea that desires are bad. I mean confronting the degree to which they push us around, to which we have no control over them. Yes.

[32:07]

Yes. Our practice, which I'm trying to describe, we can't really give it a word like faith, or practice, or experience, or desire, or any word. But we have to enter it from the realm we know. So if we say we give up desires, still there's some desire to save all sentient beings. What's that? If we say nothing from the beginning, nothing exists, but there are rivers and mountains. What's that? So we can say maybe a whole universe is created from some big desire, which is non-discriminating. Something like that. Maybe it's the biggest love affair.

[33:24]

Yes. It's now some 2,500 or 6,000 years since a person, not so different from yourself, ate some bad pork, which seems to be maybe true, and died. And today, and next Thursday,

[34:42]

we are acknowledging his existence, even here on this coast, which he of course knew nothing about, in this valley, in a barn, practicing his way. And actually there is no difference, no separation between you and Buddha. Right now, his experiences are your experiences. Your experience is his experience, right now. There's no separation, not even a hair. With no separation.

[35:53]

Why do we go astray? Why are we unawakened? Because of some dominating desire. So we're practicing here, and actually every day we should dedicate ourselves and dedicate this place to Buddha, dedicate our practice, our effort to practice, our rather actually crude and inexperienced effort to practice Buddhism, to Buddha. He was so remarkable in what he was able to give to us,

[37:00]

so it continues now. It's remarkable actually that you and I, and you, all of us, exist now simultaneous with each other, and that Buddhism and Buddha exist simultaneous with us. If you know actually how the world is, how the world is, so in order to practice Buddhism we must try pretty hard. Maybe you shouldn't look like you're trying too hard, but inside you should try pretty hard, and inside that, you know,

[38:00]

someplace you should try completely, some diamond-hard, immovable assurance about your life practice, some fire that's no longer even burning, just something very bright. It can come alive in you and be passed by you to someone else, and in this fire all desires are burned up, extinguished. Please try,

[39:02]

and each of you should on Thursday in some way celebrate Buddha's entering nirvana. Thank you.

[39:28]

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