Is that good enough there? I think so. Although Charlotte and Charles have been my good friends, I couldn't have better friends, for twelve or thirteen years now. I don't know their work so well as you do, but they're more to me than friends because they're my first real teachers. Up at Suzuki Roshi's ashes site,

[01:03]

there's a pagoda in the back, and each side is marked, meaning one of the four gates of practice. And the first and most important gate is the awakening the mind of enlightenment, or your first thought of enlightenment, and when you're first turned around. And Charlotte and Charles first turned me around. So what I want to talk about a little is how what I do know about their practice, how that's similar to Buddhism. What do I mean by turned around? Up until the time I met them,

[02:04]

I was trying to figure out the world as best I could, with everything our society offers you to do it with. I had access to most of the tools, or education, or whatever that's supposedly useful, or attitudes, or people, and somehow none of it came together. And then I saw this little brochure. And I read it on a friend's table, like many of you must have read a brochure. And I'm not so interested in brochures, and so normally I just throw them away. But there was something in the language of the brochure.

[03:08]

You know, you mentioned a lot of people, Alan Watts and various people, but I wasn't interested in the names. There's something in the language of the statement about practice. Maybe that was the first rumor. And then I went to their seminar on Broadway Street. And I immediately knew there was more possibility to life than I had felt before. Not something new. It was a recognition of something that was there, but confined, or not accessible to me. So what did I see?

[04:16]

What did I see? First of all, I saw straightforward, clear behavior, without worrying so much about what other people think. Some internal confidence. So I asked myself, where does that confidence come from? And I looked at the two of them, and I realized it's because they reside in their bodies. Well, we can't just say bodies, but something wider than our idea of body. And they gave me a practice to begin. To realize that. But for Buddhism, the important...

[05:18]

This is an extremely important point, the point at which you make this recognition. And we call it bodhicitta, or the thought of enlightenment. And bodhicitta means many things on many levels. In physical terms, it means an actual transformation of energy, which you begin to awaken to. There are many aspects to bodhicitta. You know, I could talk all day about bodhicitta. But just on the simplest level, it's the thought of enlightenment. The thought occurs to you. Then what do you do with the thought? Well, the first thing we do is we... The thought is accompanied by actually an inner vow.

[06:20]

If it's a deep recognition, you make some vow that this transcends or is wider than what you previously thought was possible. And so you commit yourself to it. And it's not just necessary to notice it and make some vow, but you have to learn how to enter the mandala, to stay in the mandala, not just enter, but to stay in the mandala. To stay with the vow to enlighten all beings.

[07:26]

You can't be enlightened just for yourself. You have to give up enlightenment or give up your own ideas about your own self to work with others. Whether you're alone in the mountains or in a group or in a city, still there's no separation between you and others. Others is not something outside yourself. So you make some vow and you find some way to maintain, to renew that vow. And usually there's some kind of repetition. We use our mind in Buddhism not so much for its ability to think, but for its ability to make a vow and to continue a vow, to repeat. There's something very deep that happens when you find some way to repeat,

[08:27]

not just verbally, but in everything you do, some deep repetition. You maybe have to wear away your tendencies. So they gave me the example of a teacher, of someone who can practice, and the continuing example of a teacher. Actually, if they'd stayed in San Francisco,

[09:28]

I would have stayed with them. But next door was Suzuki Roshi. Someone came to the seminar who told me about Suzuki Roshi. So she went away, so Suzuki Roshi was there. And Suzuki Roshi seemed like a pretty good substitute. So I waited many years to introduce Suzuki Roshi and Charlotte and Charles. And they gave me,

[10:28]

started me on a practice of letting go of monitoring. We monitor ourselves. Even when you nearly have given up thinking about yourself, noticing what you're doing all the time, still you don't have a real sensation that you're alive unless you're leaving some vapor trail. You want some record, at least in your own memory, that you've been alive. So this tendency to monitor our activity is very pervasive. And they also, with the most mild statements, throwaways,

[11:34]

little throwaway statements they'd make that were so quiet, you know, turned out to be concept-shattering thunderbolts. It's good. She wouldn't just say, stand up, she'd say, come to standing. That's something entirely different. What Charles last night raised, the interesting problem of, is it your hand feeling your head or your head feeling your hand? It's rather interesting. And who's observing that? So, in Buddhism,

[12:35]

if you have this kind of recognition, which usually it's almost impossible to have deeply, without some contact with a teacher. You can read about it, but it's not the same. It's just nowhere near the same. So we talk about three bodies of Buddha. Dharmakaya, Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya. And the usual idea of practice is some kind of step ladder idea. You practice and practice and practice

[13:38]

and pretty soon you have some more and more together way of behaving. But Buddhism doesn't think that's such a useful way to think about it. But actually you give up your past or your family or your ideas of yourself and you're reborn from Dharmakaya. Dharmakaya means emptiness itself. Or the ground of being. Or the mind out of which all minds arise. The spaces between words. When you reside in the spaces between words rather than the words, there's an entirely different space you live in. Things are... No matter how fast things go, things are very slow. So Bodhicitta and Dharmakaya in some ways mean the same thing.

[14:42]

So it's like a flower, that emptiness flower, that from then on you open out. And you open it out to next Sambhogakaya, which means bliss body or that wider sense of being. That Charlotte and Charles are bringing you into. In meditation we know it and in their work you know it. As many of you said last night, you could feel people. It means the subtle level of communication too, beyond words. And then Nirmanakaya is how you exist in this world, how you act out of that potential.

[15:44]

Every moment a potential for infinite possibilities is turned into some action. It's the same thing. Instant after instant. So Nirmanakaya means your actual activity in the world. But how to stay with this, how to continue this kind of practice, doesn't just mean coming to seminars every now and then or even on a regular basis or coming to Zazen or to live at Tassajara. At best that way, Zen practice anyway, is a kind of therapy which alleviates your problems. And often people use Zen practice to remove the surface disturbance,

[16:53]

but as a way to protect the root of the disturbance. You find yourself in some neurotic situation or some frustrated life, or some life which you can see through, enough to know that it's bottled up or tied up in some way. And so you use practice not to cut deeply through and turn yourself completely around, but just to alleviate it enough so you can continue your fundamental views, your deluded views, your desires, your anger and hatred. Practice used this way maybe is beneficial, but actually it eliminates the possibility

[17:54]

for you to have some deeper practice. So, to prevent that kind of superficial using of practice, to protect our opinions, we have to have some vow to achieve enlightenment and simultaneously to give up enlightenment. Both exist simultaneously. That is your fundamental experience. And so what do you need to continue this kind of vow? You need enough food, adequate clothing, some kind of energy, so you have to take care of yourself in some way.

[18:55]

Actually, we talk about the most basic form in Buddhism, of course, and this is the Eightfold Path, which if you're going to practice Buddhism, we say, there's a wonderful phrase, that if you try to practice without following the Eightfold Path, it's like a bee flying into an unclean hive and turning around and going out again. Now, you may have some taste in a particular seminar or in Zazen of some deeper or wider being, but if you don't take care of your whole life, you'll be like the bee that flies into an unclean hive and turns around and comes out again. So the Eightfold Path says, you should have right views and right intentions. Right views means the thought of enlightenment.

[20:00]

Right intentions is the same, I don't want to explain too much, but basically those two mean that in the beginning you need wisdom. Then you need the practice of morality, right action, right speech. If you're not careful about how you speak, you entangle yourself with people. You should notice how your flow of energy works in language and what leads to more entanglements and what leads to escapism. How to be there. We say everything you do should turn toward emptiness, not toward more causal events, not toward rebirth,

[21:02]

but toward emptiness. You do whatever you do completely, but it's complete and ends without lots of tangles, entanglements coming from it. So right speech and right action mean you take care of that. And you need right livelihood then. Right livelihood means not just how you speak and act, but how you act with others. If you work with others in a way that entangles others, you're in some kind of trouble. The most common examples are don't sell liquor. What kind of problems you can get into. For instance, one of the heads of Zen Center's husband owns a restaurant and serves liquor, and someone there, a friend of many people we know,

[22:04]

got very drunk, went home, door was locked, and he climbed up to get in and fell and killed himself. And he feels pretty... The person who owns the bar feels pretty funny. Should he have stopped him? Should he have let him drink? You get into that kind of problem if you sell liquor or make armaments. And of course, it's much subtler than that. How does your activity benefit others? Is it just for your benefit or is it for others' benefit? Are you doing it just to accumulate more for yourself? Well, one of the... The second precept, you know, that was taken by Gary and Nellie yesterday is don't steal. But really, that means do not take what is not given. But actually, you can't take anything because you can't possess anything. Really, you can't possess anything.

[23:07]

When you know what things really are, you can't possess, so you can't steal. So how we work with others, right livelihood, is very important. And there's right... I always forget about four or five of the eightfold path, anyway. Another one is right energy or right effort. And right energy means not just your ordinary energy, but there's an enormous energy available to all of us. And as long as you're doing it, you have to come up with the energy which is somewhat limited in supply. But when you give up, you know, when you give up trying to change your state of being each moment, when you realize that what you have now is complete and incomplete,

[24:11]

that whatever it is right now is enough, you give away everything. Then everything is given to you. Again, the second precept, do not take what is not given, means you can actually only use a gift. You can't use something you get for yourself. So how to enter that energy where everything is effortless, where everyone is giving you energy all the time? Everything is giving you energy. Where you can't be alone anymore even, because there's no separation. Even being just with a wall, you can't be alone, because the wall isn't separate from you. And there's right...

[25:26]

...concentration. I guess the last one is right concentration, or samadhi. Samadhi means a collected state of mind in which you've given up discriminative thinking. And... ...you may think to solve some particular problem, but that's all. When that's stopped, your mind stops. There's... Anyway, I don't want to say too much. So we... ...note three kinds of knowledge. One is opinions, sense desires... ...feelings. And the second is... ...logical or scientific or analytical.

[26:42]

And the last is... ...again, samadhi. And... ...wow. We also talk about three... ...levels... ...of the phenomenal world. One is gross... ...or complex. And most of what we see usually is the gross or complex world. And the next is subtle, the subtle world. This means... ...again, what I'm trying to show you is there's a relationship

[27:43]

between the sambhogakaya or bliss body and... ...the third kind of knowledge, samadhi. Collected... ...state of mind, state of being. You know? And this subtle... ...second, not complex or gross, but subtle... ...experience of the phenomenal world. And... Normally, you know, what... By the time you receive information, you can see something. It's already passed. It's already over. You've arrived on the event after it's happened. That may be important, like at a car accident. You can help... ...with... ...whatever's necessary. But how not to always be on the scene after everything's happened?

[28:47]

How to be on the scene as it's happening? So you don't look and see a person, some pattern, but some thing that's happening, which you can't even give a name to or give a form to. That we call the subtle level... ...perceived by samadhi. Not what, you know, we'd say the ever-present now, but something... ...the ever-present everything, including past, present and future, simultaneously arising each moment. Now, how to give up your usual way of thinking, your strategic way of thinking, a strategic mind which wants to control everything, is pretty difficult. In Zen we use a place like Tassajara, where you can be for a while and make mistakes

[29:52]

and have some kind of... ...confusion which you might lose your job over, if you worked every day somewhere. Because it's a little bit like trying to drive down the highway and deciding in a pitch-dark new moon night that you're going to turn the lights out, if you've ever done it. You know, I've tried it coming down the Tassajara Road. It's terrifying, you know. You can begin then to feel your way, and then some other kind of light is there. I don't recommend you try it on the way home, from here, you know. But something like that, there's some kind of fear like that when we first turn off our discriminative, or able to turn off. First we can't even see what's happening with our mind and activity. But if you practice, you know, Zen,

[30:54]

and I think it's the same if you practice Charlotte and Charles' work, you can begin to see what's happening. So you don't have a thought attached to feeling and images and anxiety and past and present recollections and anticipations and an ego trip laid on it before you even see what's going on. You see it arise, and you see yourself attaching the various things to it. When you can begin to do that, you can begin to let go of discriminative thinking, seeing yourself do it. We talk about, this morning I mentioned the ten ways we usually get caught. And one is a substantial idea of self. Another is corrosive doubt,

[31:55]

some kind of doubt which always erodes what you're doing. Not the wide doubt which realizes everything. This way... ... ... ...

[32:06]

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