And last time I talked about the power of the precepts, the power of the precepts with zazen in clarifying our activity and our mind so that we can practice real zazen. and how Tassajara offers us this practice as our way of life here.

[01:09]

article or essay, those words are too weak to describe, a document written by, I think, the founder of Tendai school, the school which puts together all of the philosophy of Buddhism into one system. And the article is called, maybe, Meditation for Beginners, but it means beginners in the sense of a complete statement, or from the beginning. This is a description of meditation. There's two translations that I know about. One is in Charles

[02:21]

Secrets of Chinese Meditation, and the other is in Dwight Goddard's Buddhist Bible. Anyway, you might be interested in reading that. It will give you some idea of the degree to which preparation and control of your circumstances is necessary for Zen practice. In Tendai, Dogen's thinking is particularly a Zen expression of Tendai philosophy. Dogen studied at Mount Hiei, which is the Tendai headquarters Japan. But that essay starts out with listing five concurrent causes

[03:51]

necessary for the practice of this ten things, and the first one is five concurrent causes. I didn't intend to tell you them, so I don't know if I remember them, but... Can you hear me in the back? When it's raining, I... Okay. A little difficult. One is you should have enough food and clothing. And another is you should have good friends. and another is you should have some quiet place or leisure, or what that means is freedom from worldly connections. One is a strict practice of morality. There must be a fifth.

[05:20]

Anyway, it basically is a description of the life we have here, the opportunity to practice here. But it doesn't mean our opportunity to practice here doesn't mean that we're accumulating some merit by just being here. And when you leave, things will be better for you. That attitude is the same as saying, well, two weeks of sunny weather will make me feel good the rest of the year. It doesn't work that way. Being here is only an opportunity to start practicing. So after the five concurrent causes are supplied for you, or you put yourself in a situation where you have those five causes, five opportunities, then you have to start your own practice.

[06:46]

And most of the activity and work of Zen Center is to assure a situation with those five concurrent causes – enough food and clothing for each of you, and some protection from too much activity for some period of time. But then you have to come into actual confrontation with what your desires are, what the various, in this article it says, screens are, a screen of desire and of doubt and hatred, various ways we screen ourselves, or are screened from. actual situation. One of the ten is regulating food and drink and sleep and your body and your mind and your situation.

[08:19]

And this is true in very little things. And I'm not so strict, you know, with you, actually. My philosophy of life is more to give you enough rope, you know, to do whatever you want with it, you know, tangle yourself up or hang yourself, whatever. And I also indulge myself a little in your good practice, because I benefit from it a lot, and I'm quite moved by your actual practice. And so when you, like the last couple of weeks, every morning quite a few people are late, and I should do something about it actually, I feel sorry for you. It's such a small thing, but it's a very area in which we have to practice. And I told you when I was late, and I have some problem myself with being late, you have to stand in Seiza, not Seiza, excuse me, Shashu,

[09:51]

Anyway, you have to stand like this outside the door the whole period. So if we were going to do that, you'd all relate, we'd have to stand outside the door till the next period began. Anyway, we have trouble with sticking to some image of ourself. And so it's pretty hard to actually regulate our walking

[10:54]

sleeping and eating, etc. Sometimes you feel you're practicing here and you'll save up for it, or later you'll have some change which will make up for being here. I know they had a meeting in the city recently and someone said, quite an honest person, said, well, we don't want to have parties in the building because if we have parties in the building, what we really want to do at parties is to dance for four or five hours and smoke some grass and sip a little pot or Coke.

[11:57]

That's a rather interesting idea of practicing, just to practice, and then every now and then you have to go out and have a party and let loose or something like that. It's not very important, you know, if you... I mean, it's not... If a person wants to do that, it's all right. It's no more important than wearing dull shirt or a loud shirt or whatever, but it does, that kind of inability to regulate ourselves all the time is pretty much makes practice impossible. And our body has some, as this article says, has some fondness for walking and strolling, but feels some uneasiness sitting, and has some fondness for talking, etc., but some uneasiness from silence. And our mind has some fondness for activity. But our practice is just the reverse of that fondness.

[13:31]

And so if we divide practice into four, as I said last time, I state it a little differently, but views and practice or preparation and action, you can say, I'll say this time, action and realization. So we use the precepts and zazen to to clarify our situation and to stop our situation, and to allow some other way of acting to occur. Last night in our conversation I stated that whatever you study, it's a version, a version

[15:16]

And that's a very interesting word, because it means something like to turn toward, or to turn, or to translate, while aversion, the other one, versus aversion or something, aversion or avert means to turn away from, And when we say the wheel of the dharma turns and turns, that has many meanings. One is that everything changes. But just to say everything changes is quite philosophical, so we can say the wheel of the dharma turns and turns, which means, on the one hand, the teaching is always going on, like the wind-bell poem,

[16:25]

And then the wind bell name is based on Dogen's poem of hanging by your teeth, by a rope like a wind bell, and north, south, east, west, the wind swings you and you're teaching the dharma without opening your mouth. but it also means the activity of turning toward, turning with. You know, there's a great deal of wisdom in our language which often denies our usual belief

[17:36]

For example, the name for the sky is the firmament, the firm place. The stars, etc., we call the firmament. As I said the other day, you can go out and look at the stars as some wider scale of reference, some base. And likewise, we can say in our practice So we have the five concurrent causes, still you have to make up your mind. On the one hand, that also is interesting, you have to make up, determine, but make up also is like making up a story. You have to make yourself up. So there's an actual creative process of making yourself up. As I said last time, talking about the precepts 6 and 7, I think, when we criticize others or criticize ourselves or blame others for ourselves, we reinforce beliefs in self,

[19:11]

and a substantial reality, and we interfere with that creative process in which we are creating ourselves and others. And as long as you see a substantial self or reality, you have the problem of aversion of turning away from. And you have the kind of situation we were talking about last night with Dr. Konze. You know, the smarter you are and the more observant you are, the more you see a world which is very difficult to believe in, whether it's facts which disturb you about Gandhi or about the Catholic Church or whatever. you avert yourself from them. But to come into conflict with such a thing means that you yourself have some substantial sense of self or reality.

[20:29]

So our practice is not to say the Catholic Church or Buddhism or something is good or bad. We don't look at it as a particular thing, good or bad. I don't know, if I say so, what I mean It becomes a thing when I say it, you know? Anyway, you don't identify with these versions. You learn to

[21:42]

return with the versions. How to turn with the versions, you know? One of the things he says in the document I've been talking about, he describes the various kinds of doubt which are hindrances, and then there's doubt which is not a hindrance. But to doubt, one of the first one he mentions is to doubt yourself. I'm no good, I can't practice. And the second one he mentions is to doubt the teacher. He doesn't understand the Tao. His behaviour is not so good. And the third is to doubt the dharma. These three are the major hindrances. So how can someone like Dr. Kunze, for instance, practice

[23:11]

when he doubts in that way himself and people who practice and the Catholic Church or Buddhist Church. You know, there's no way out of this trap, because if you give things substantial reality, naturally you'll doubt them, you know, that way. So we use the precepts and zazen to clarify and to clear away. And then we make up our mind to practice, to regulate our sleep and food and to control our senses. because we want to give up, as Dr. Konzai said, being deluded by the five senses, being caught by a fondness for form and smell and taste and touch, hearing.

[24:36]

And making up your mind to do this itself prepares you to be able to stay with what you are, with your sitting, or silence, or stillness. Then you can begin to actually make up your mind, to allow that creative process to function, to turn toward or with things. So, Suzuki Yoshi said, for instance, once, you hear something. You and some sound comes, and you hear it, and something new is created. You understand what I mean? It's not the sound, and it's not you, but that relationship is something new. You hear the cat cry. That's something new, which actually influences the cat and everything. But I don't mean just something mechanical like that.

[26:25]

Ted Baston, when he was here, the physicist, said quantum physics, the insight of quantum physics, he said, was that the observer and the observed is the same process. And I would add that actually we are, Too hard to say. So our effort is not at correcting the Catholic Church, or correcting some process,

[27:35]

but rather, how can we exist without being caught? If your emphasis is in this direction, how to exist without being caught by the five senses, this kind of way of perceiving things is quite different and you avoid the problem of aversion, or good or bad. It's some other kind of reality, like the thing you hear is something new. And, Suzuki Goshi says, there is the real you. Not the sound or the you that hears, but the something new, the real you is there. This is how we study and how we look at things and how we participate with things. The dharma wheel, turns and turns, is the second line of

[29:27]

the Sampatchi day, you know, the third day chant verse. And I thought, since we chanted in a slightly different version this last time, I would talk about that for a minute from two points of view. One point of view, see, it can be looked at both as a kind of Japanese Shinto statement, and it can be looked upon as a Buddhist statement, and it's actually an overlay of the two. And from the Shinto point of view, Japan, as I stated yesterday, By the way, what I said last night was so condensed, I don't know if it was useful to you, but the Japanese divided up, you know, which areas are for Shinto and which areas are for Buddhism. In the end, Buddhism, because it's such a powerful

[30:56]

sophisticated teaching really changed the minds of the Japanese. But the Shinto retained control over attitudes and social power. Anyway, Shinto has the idea that the people of Japan are the result of a birth. I don't remember exactly, but it may be a making between the sun and the actual earth. And the sun, Amaterasu, sort of the goddess at the beginning of everything in Japan. I haven't studied Japanese history for a long time, so I may be a little mixed up, but I think this is roughly right. Anyway, Japan then proceeds to identify the sun with Buddha. So, Vairocana Buddha. Vairocana Buddha.

[32:28]

becomes in Japan, Dainichi Murai, Great Sun Buddha. So, the Japanese painting of the sun all the time is a painting of Buddha and a painting of the symbol essence of Japan. And likewise, you often find in Japanese Buddhist scrolls, a waterfall. And the waterfall stands for a Shinto deity and for Buddha. That scroll, some of you have seen in my room, is the Shinto deity who is the ancestor of the emperor. So in Shinto you have this idea of a providence. Alan Chadwick, in his work he says a providence, a kind of providence of sunshine and uncontaminated situations and purity and light and growth.

[33:33]

So that translation, you know, first translation said, Buddha's son, maybe. Buddha's son shines increasingly. That's a funny idea, increasingly. That's not a very Buddhist idea. Buddha's son shines increasingly. The wheel of the dharma turns constantly. The Dharma resides in the temple, resides everywhere safely, and donors in ten directions. So that's sort of Buddha-Dharma-Sangha. The Sangha in that case is called the Dharma residing here. And the donors, the supporters, in ten directions, that's the eight compass directions and up and down,

[34:35]

know an increase in joy and a growth in wisdom. So there's a kind of image of a sun shining and we clean up the temple, which in Japan is very shinto. Kirei means to clean and beautiful. Both cleanliness and beauty are the same word in Japanese. So to clean the temple. causes a gross increase in wisdom. It's a very Japanese Shinto idea that we do. But you see, from a Buddhist point of view, Buddha can be thought of as infinite light, and that infinite light fills everything, or shines in everything. So we can say, in that sense, Buddha is a sun,

[35:38]

in that he's the Buddha of infinite light, shines in everything. So that's okay. And then the dharma wheel turns and turns, I just talked about that. Everything is a version, we take care of things. We regulate our mind and body, so we regulate this temple and take care of things. Anyway, you see, in any particular culture, the ceremonies will take on these various meanings, various versions overlaid on top of each other. So without criticizing or defending Dr. Combez, or Dr. Abbe,

[36:44]

us or whatever, we should turn with things. Turning with things requires giving up a substantial idea of self or reality. So until you know what we mean by the real you, your practice is just to give up, to find some situation which you can give up to. Willingness to take orders. Ultimately, you have to take orders from life. So you take orders from the schedule and from the precepts.

[37:49]

7, 8, and 9, I believe, of the 10 headings he gives under which our practice falls. 7 is after you've done all these things like regulate your behavior and things like that. Six is your main practice, the main practice of controlling your mind and getting rid of sleepiness and various problems which occur in meditation, and how not to be caught by your mind changing, to reach that place where you begin to know your unchanging mind. Then seven is the manifestation of good qualities, and that means you begin to have some marvellous feelings for people. You know, you just find without effort, you're thinking very positive, kind of flowing thoughts about each person,

[39:52]

And your meditation is very still. And everything seems to cooperate with you to achieve whatever you might have imagined you wanted to do. Anyway, there's many good qualities that begin to occur at this time. And you feel like you've dropped away mind and body. You can no longer perceive the usual limitations of thinking and body, etc. But then it's very interesting that 8 and 9 are... 8 is Mara, and 9 is ailments, and then 10 is realization. So you have this manifestation of good qualities, and then you have a new subtle problem which occurs with demons or mental problems of various kinds, and you have a problem with sickness, various kinds of ailments which occur, and you can't seem to get rid of. At this point,

[41:27]

You can turn to some way to solve the mental problem or physical problem, and if it's necessary, it's okay, you know. But ideally, you use the same practice to work with your ailments, continuing to try to not get too much sleep. continuing to follow your breathing, continuing to regulate your mind, keep it from following distracting thoughts. And there are ways, you know. He lists several. The one he lists first is the one I find most useful.

[42:29]

is you bring your mind to concentrate on that particular place where the ailment is. And find out some way where your activity can change, you can regulate your life so that your situation, your circumstances, your physical body circumstances, so that the ailment goes away. Then comes realization. All of this, anyway, requires a sureness and a persistent effort. The ability to drop everything and just be walking. Just be concentrated in your heart. Just be at one with your breath. Just have your mind undisturbed by thoughts.

[44:15]

and bringing yourself back to this, constantly letting go of activity which seems pointless or an aversion or an avoidance of something. It's just a matter of your doing it, given you have all these concurrent causes, which are actually extremely rare. If you know your actual situation, you can't feel anything but gratitude. Some complaint about, I don't have what I should have, or something, is completely the opposite, practically.

[45:38]

to not understand our actual situation at all, and it's to engage in fruitless, waste-of-time activity. So much is making your life possible. Like that much, when you complain about little things like that, So you have this opportunity, and all you have to do is make use of it, by knowing what your true activity, mind, is in everything, turning with everything, giving up to everything, merging with everything.

[47:05]

So we practice meditation and we practice wisdom or action. Meditation stops us, opens us. Action, this new kind of action, is wisdom. Do you have any questions? Say that again. And I'm keeping on listening to the first riff. This is where she sings the second.

[48:32]

I don't know why. It seems related to that. But I can't do anything about it. You all hear what she said? She said briefly that she did tea ceremony for a while, a year or so ago, and found it quite a strict situation, and she finds she can't be strict with herself in that way, and she's noticed that she has the idea that she can't exist

[50:17]

Without anxiety, how can you be alive without anxiety? Okay? But your anxiety keeps you alive. But first, you know, to make that kind of observation, all of you actually, whatever your situation is, a very wise and useful way of looking at it is to realize that whatever your situation is, is exactly what you want it to be. And if you have a lot of anxiety, it's because you want to have anxiety, because it performs, as you imply, some function for you. It's useful to you in some way. And so, just as you're doing, you have to imagine how can life be possible without anxiety. One way of following the precepts, you know, maybe easier than learning them, is if you're in a situation you have doubt about, imagine what Suzuki Roshi would do. Can you imagine Suzuki Roshi saying, I'm going to go to this party and dance for four or five hours and sniff some cocaine?

[51:48]

I mean, if you compare yourself to Suzuki Roshi in this way, using him as a teacher, you can be quite sure that that's a precept he wouldn't even have to ask himself. Likewise, you can say, Suzuki Roshi didn't live with anxiety. How did he do it? It must be possible. Anyway, without talking specifically to you, Prajna, we do have some... We want to identify ourselves really deeply, badly. We want to identify ourselves badly. I mean that in all senses.

[52:52]

And we want to so badly, we'll use bad things to identify ourselves, if necessary. Anxiety or difficulties or anything. Bumping into a wall gives us some sense of our body and people who are quite disturbed often just bang against the wall. But if you're not quite that disturbed, you bang against other people. Oh, there I am. Because you're so afraid of slipping away, what will be there if I stop banging? But once you know this, if you can continually remember this, remind yourself of this, the problem will solve itself. But it may be useful to, if you can, notice what identity you want that

[54:22]

what it is that you're trying to protect. And also, you know, Georgette may be right that we can't exist without anxiety. But that thing that she names anxiety may be actually some other activity, which is only anxious because you're averted from it, not giving up to it. Some other questions? And they talked about ventricles. And they had a very good description of how it occurs and then various remedies for it. And you're talking about the eight mental and physical ailments that I'm in right now. And the feeling I got was that it was just

[55:49]

It's recognized as something that comes up, maybe. And that doesn't necessarily lead to the realization, but it may come up before the realization. And then I was thinking about Christian kind of ethics that I'm very familiar with. Realization comes through this, or through a signal. Suffering. Almost a pivot on that. Maybe it would give you more of a tendency to cling to that. Suffering. It seems like two different feelings. Somehow,

[56:51]

I was thinking out there about... I don't know if that makes sense to you, but that's what... You mean, the Christian idea that we may realize ourselves through suffering, but that may be also a way that we cling to suffering? That's a way to realization, whereas the other side of that is one problem. like Rimbaud's idea of deranging the senses to produce poems. Suffering, that Buddhism means, through which you realize yourself, is the very activity, the very turning. The specific kinds of suffering of eight and nine in that list I talked about, are more general than occur to everyone, mostly. Zen sickness, so-called, we've had very few instances which I would identify in Zen Center as Zen sickness. It's more specific

[58:21]

a very intense practice in certain people, if there's too much emphasis on one side of practice and you're practicing really intensely, it can exaggerate itself. And then you have to figure out what to do, because you're more open to certain kinds of things from practice. And I don't think... Most of us don't practice that intensely, actually. But I know, finding my own terminology for such things as Zen sickness and the ailments that come from practice, the phrase I came up with years ago was a radiator banging. I used to try to... like a radiator banging. And you know when you turn the heat on in a radiator and the heat first starts going in, the radiator goes bang, bang, chonk, chonk, as the steam begins to go into it? Well, in zazen, as the steam of your energy or your practice begins to start to flow through you, and many of us there are certain resistances, and if it's not physically manifested, things inside get funny.

[59:49]

But anyway, there is a tendency, if you think suffering is going to help you, to cling to it, and that's not very useful. Q. You spoke about taking orders from life. They're not clear to me all the time what they are, It's too... Within that, I don't find that you are anything in here. And the feeling of it is being alone. I'm not having contact with a teacher or just somebody to tell me what to do. Now, that's what I said about giving you too much rope, but I feel the ideal practice situation limits itself to the five concurrent causes, and then it's up to you to do the rest. And so there's some period in there

[61:23]

of which how do you... I mean, it's like a jewel, maybe, you know? There's the world and then there's a setting, and we create a setting, and then the jewel itself is your practice. And all this is, is the setting. And to even get some suggestion within that setting, you have to make an effort yourself to get it. And so that allows you, actually, to try out various things. This doesn't work, that doesn't work. You know, we have this idea... You know, I mentioned that poem of, Alone I came into the world. How alone can you be when you come into the world? And what is... How close can we be?

[62:24]

to each other. How close am I to each of you? Or to a person who's dead? No. What is the actual nature of our separation or closeness? It's certainly not in the usual realm of body or mind or space and time. And as long as you're trying to arrange it in those categories, more close or less close, you have a great deal of difficulty. Actually, we're completely alone. And you have to be quite confident in that place, falling through space, actually. But there's an awful lot of us falling together, actually. How can you get through self-doubt?

[63:38]

Well, I mean, you can encourage yourself in various ways with reminding yourself it's not so bad, you know, to taking the opposite, to taking the view that you're perfect, that you're already enlightened, and practicing with that and trying to act that way as a practice, and noticing that with each thing, with some tiny progress, and to be satisfied with very small progress. But more fundamentally, self-doubt doesn't make any sense. What is the orange cat? I guess the orange cat's called Docho. Does it make any sense if Docho doubts cat self? And what good would it do for Docho to sit there and say, oh? Or a tree, or anything. Docho has no opportunity to do anything except be an orange cat. So it would be completely unreal of Docho to sit around saying,

[65:18]

That other cat got the warm place on the stove. Because I didn't get it, there's something wrong with me and I'm propped up here in this ledge and I only have the candle underneath me. I found him the other morning as I was offering incense, sitting over the candle up on the ledge. There must have been a minuscule amount of heat. If you took the form of Docho, you'd be an orange cat to me.

[66:31]

Okay. That's all right, isn't it? It has to be. In Buddhism, a good friend is technically a teacher or a dharma brother or sister who helps your... who practices with you. Friend, from the point of view of Buddhism, is defined from the point of view of dharma. A teacher, a friend who practices with you, or someone who helps support your practice in some way. Your parents or friends who encourage you to do it or something.

[67:55]

because the idea is, of course, that through the realization of the Dharma is the only way you can have true friends. Buddhism may be just a practice, nothing more than a way to have good friends. I think so anyway. That's true. That's true, but we have to be careful not to start backwards. These people right around me I don't like so much, and I'm a little mean to them, But those people out there who I don't know, or my enemies, are helping my practice. So, we don't usually... When we're talking about a friend, we mean your teacher or your close friends or people who are directly supporting you. When we talk about the wider sense, then we talk about how you practice with somebody who is hindering you.

[69:24]

From the absolute point of view, of course, everyone is actually turning together. Q. Can you speak louder? There is a certain relationship which hinders you. Remember the second... Well, you have to be careful because remember the second precept, don't throw away that which you already have. So, if you have that kind of relationship,

[70:54]

Not so good to cut anything off in that way. Best if you can turn it into a relationship which helps you. What? You have to want it pretty badly, or pretty goodly. Pretty much, anyway. Thank you very much. I'm sorry I talked so long.

[71:55]

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