I'm surprised so many of you are here because there's a session at San Francisco, a seven-day session, and a one-day sitting at Berkeley. I'd like to continue some of the things I talked about yesterday, the first day of the session, where some of you were there yesterday at the lecture. Sessions are pretty important, if not almost absolutely necessary practice sometimes for getting a taste of real Sazen. And as you know, Sazen is not the point of our practice but an imperturbable mind and

[01:17]

being, which can't have any object, is our practice. And practice means... no, there's not even such a thing as practice, but practice means our way of reminding ourselves of our deeper life or true life, connected with, at one with everything. As Nansen killed the cat trying to get the monks at his monastery, who were squabbling over a cat, to not kill their Buddha-nature.

[02:21]

A Buddhist precept like... the first precept is don't kill. And in the one level of meaning it means don't kill anything, and maybe another meaning is don't harm anything, and a third meaning is don't assert yourself, don't argue. So, this is something I had quite a lot of trouble with, because I thought it was necessary to try to make things clear, but at that time I didn't realize how we are all arguing with ourselves and making things clear for ourselves. And if we are doing that for ourselves too, then each one of us resonates with that.

[03:38]

Anyway, the fourth meaning may be don't kill your Buddha-nature, which then means kill your small nature, kill even the Buddhas, if that's some object of attachment. And then there's a positive meaning, which is encourage your practice or your realization of your true life. Sometimes we hear nowadays the phrase, we are all one. And this kind of statement is, I think, pleasant to hear, but we would not say that in Buddhism,

[04:59]

we are all one, because perhaps it's even misleading. And Dogen tries to express the same thing by saying something like, when the Dharma is not fully present in a man's mind and body, he thinks it's sufficient, but when the Dharma is fully present in a man's mind and body, he thinks it's insufficient. This is the same meaning, almost, as we are all one, but it's a way of stating it which expresses our own experience of it, or our way of trying to practice. For to realize, actually realize and act on the reality of our interconnectedness, which

[06:08]

we perceive as interconnectedness, but is more than just interconnectedness, is nearly impossible. It's easy to say, but quite difficult. So, Dogen, first of all, the word Dharma, when the Dharma is fully present or not fully present, Dharma means, for now we can take it to mean, that which we perceive, when we perceive from no-self, when we're not organizing our perceptions to create a self, and when we don't perceive things with a self or own being, translated sometimes, then we can

[07:11]

speak about Dharma. But Dharma also just means, for a Buddhist, any perception, for to call it anything else you'd have to call it delusion, something which ends. So, when the Dharma is not fully present, he thinks it's sufficient, and here it points out that thinking, where our body can't contain the One, the big mind. So to achieve wholeness, if we want to achieve some whole sense of wholeness, for Zen that's

[08:17]

therapeutic, that's some therapeutic level, but to practice with the unknowable, that is the aim of Zen. So it requires certain things we can talk about. We can say it requires detachment, but detachment is, again, a word. How do you actually have detachment, or detachment can't be had, so how can you exist not getting

[09:21]

caught by one thing after another, not identifying with one thing after another, not giving anything any substantial reality, even your own past, or being. Anyway, as Bill can point out, you have to stop thinking about it, or attempting to contain the experience, your experiences. Taking a boat out onto the ocean, you perceive the ocean as a great circle, but the ocean

[10:41]

isn't a circle or four-cornered, to a dragon it's one thing, to you it's something else. You might as well call it a necklace of jewels, or a palatial residence, he said. For whatever we see is already our own, and you only know that with assurance when you know how much we don't know, yet acts with us. And he points that out by saying, next, the remaining virtue, though you see a mountain as a mountain, the remaining virtue of the mountain which you don't see is great, inexhaustible. And, as you know, we talk about karma.

[11:43]

Karma is the fruit of your actions, good or bad, while you are a possessive being, a being which is maybe even whole, but accumulates the effect of your actions. But when you are no longer some particular thing, when you're no longer bringing your past to each moment, but allowing the present, not even being different from the present in any way, then the effects of your actions we call merit, because the effects of your

[12:47]

actions don't belong to you anymore, there's no one there to accumulate them. One of the most pernicious effects of Western psychology is, it's given us the idea that the meaning of our life is locked up in our past, and we have to search around in the past to find the key. This is very interesting, but for Buddhism the key is just this right now, and no other. And by this you give meaning to your past, each moment, and it may have a different meaning even. One thousand acts of weakness may become, at this moment, strength.

[13:52]

As Dogen's shooting, one hundred arrows, missing ninety-nine, but the hundredth hits. Each one then is hitting the target. But at this moment, if the hundredth misses, then you have just misses. So this moment, your actions, articulate your existence. The Lotus Sutra defines a Bodhisattva as one who finds no laws. That's hard, again, to express what that means, but it's rather like Newton's law of gravity. There's some law there, and the apple falls according to that law.

[14:52]

We wouldn't express it that way in Buddhism. The apple itself is gravity. There's nothing outside the apple. The apple itself is gravity, and you find gravity by examining the apple. You yourself are Buddha. There's no way to find Buddha outside yourself. And as I was saying yesterday, if you practice Zazen, you find there is such a thing as being in proportion or out of proportion, and you experience yourself as disparate parts, or as something that you can't describe, because everything is in proportion, and it's greater than the whole. And if you find your own gravity, actually, your own, what can I say, apple, own up and

[16:01]

down. As Dogen said, eyes are horizontal and nose vertical. Each thing actually has its place. This isn't so important, but it's interesting that the root of gravity and grave is G-W-E-R, which also means guru in Sanskrit. So that which is grave, or serious, or our subsidiary, our basis is guru, or grave. And how to find in ourselves our own gravity? So, in addition to detachment, this practice requires alertness.

[17:07]

When Bodhidharma and the Emperor met, Bodhidharma was completely alert each moment, attempting to teach the Emperor, finally leaving. And when Bodhidharma said, I don't know, when he asked, who are you? Later on in the story, the minister asked the Emperor, did you know who he was? And the Emperor said, I don't know. Same words, but meaning is completely different. On one hand, it's another way of looking at it, both are the same. But even though Bodhidharma sat for nine years saying, don't look to wisteria, actually, words and sutras for those entanglements outside the scriptures, but he meant in each act,

[18:12]

when the apple is gravity itself, when this present moment is everything, your past, present and future. And when you know the extension, not, hmm, you know the statement, Dogen was, I mentioned yesterday that I also had difficulty with when I was first practicing, Dogen said, you should not offer incense with the hand you wipe yourself with. As you know, my feeling was, both must be equally sacred, and one is more necessary. But what Dogen is talking about is how you can't separate out this act from some other

[19:27]

act. That at this moment, you realize all your actions. And this moment itself can't be a moment that you're thinking about, but you're already 90% not present then. So it means you have to give up fear and hostility and unsureness, so that you aren't always comparing and thinking and worrying about the consequences or meaning of a particular activity. As Dogen says, when you meet one Dharma, or when you meet one practice, you achieve one practice or achieve one Dharma.

[20:28]

And there may be 1,000 Dharmas this moment, if you're alert enough and not out to lunch. And if you can't get rid of your fears and comparing, you have to do something like Sashin or Zazen, until your ordinary thinking mind disappears into some first, some kind of smooth thinking that we hardly notice, and then something that flows completely at one with our activity. And one way is to begin to trust our body. Our body is steadier than our mind. Sometimes I think we're rather like those early record players, when they hadn't worked

[21:42]

them out and they played three speeds, and they would sometimes drop three records at once, two, and play them at 45 instead of 33. One of our biggest problems seems to be our deepest urges, our most fundamental desires, are mixed up with our most petty desires. So our urge to know the absolute, or that which we know if we are completely, if we are actively detached. But we, our most ordinary thought, casual thought, we attribute some absoluteness to it, some permanence to it. And it's simply a mistake. Or we do the opposite.

[22:55]

From everything we get a sense of, some insight, we build a program. We find some practice that works, so we make a generalization. And we carry around many generalizations, since our mind can generalize, and we keep acting on these generalizations. It's equally to be out of touch or untrustworthy. So one way to practice with this is to try to begin to trust your body. As you know, we do nine bows every morning in the service. And you must have noticed that your body knows when nine bows are up, but your body doesn't know when seven are up, or six. If you ask yourself, is this the sixth bow, or seventh bow, you won't know. But at nine bows you will know, this is, oh, this is, I know not, this must be last bow.

[23:57]

So if you want to know at any particular moment what your situation is, you need to have your tracking mind constantly comparing, oh, this is sixth, now it's seventh. So if you have that kind of fear that you want to know each moment, you have to have that kind of tracking mind. But you shouldn't base your life on that kind of tracking mind. So first maybe is to try to trust your body. If you wanted to run 1,000 steps, again, with your mind you could tell whether you were at 599 or 700. But especially if you run a few times 1,000 steps, you know, somewhere 1,000 back, say, your mind will know when 1,000 is up.

[25:00]

Just as, I think most of you must have had the experience, your mind knows when it's time to get up in the morning. Whatever time it is, you can say, particularly if you're not full of fears, you can say, I want to get up at 10 o'clock or 6 o'clock or 5 o'clock, and just at that time your mind will come awake. If your more brutish side, the overextension of G-W-E-R, which means gravity, means brutish, if your brutish side comes out, you'll ignore the signal and go back to sleep, as we're always ignoring these signals, this knowledge, this deep knowledge we have, which is the most powerful thing in the universe, if we want to describe it that way, and yet the

[26:03]

most weak thing, too, for it's so easy for us to ignore it. But it's actually, in its finest, everything that is, and the particular, when you try to perceive it from the point of the particular, as a particular, you lose it. You know that phrase I like so much, although you do not hear it, do not hinder that which hears it, or the Lotus Sutra has wonder-sound bodhisattva. So you can start by trying to trust your body, and you will make various mistakes,

[27:35]

and you need some period, maybe, of seclusion, or monastic life, when you can trust your body. If you try to live that way, at first you may, an ordinary job, you may get fired, because you bumble about something, but you should try, more and more, to just trust those signals, which we, at first they're like signals, what time to get up in the morning, and when it appears, you have to act on it, that moment, you can't hesitate, should I get up or should I not get up. But you begin to trust that kind of signal. This trust will free yourself from your thinking, tracking, discursive mind. But this is only, still, what I meant by therapeutic Buddhism. For, as Dogen says, and every patriarch says, you have to trust that which is bigger than

[28:44]

that. Dogen says, we practice, how does he say, we practice with the ultimate culmination of Buddha's way. So Buddha means, not you, but you who are able to practice with the ultimate culmination. Not knowing it, but acting with it. So it's like, we know various parts, and we become familiar with our various parts, and then we find ourselves as one whole integrated being. So, again, in each act, you must make, mostly even in simple acts, we are afraid, so we

[29:47]

sabotage ourselves, doing things incompletely, for fear of some kind of death, for fear of completing things as if it will leave us empty, without any strings to go to the next thing. But even if you then can make that activity, so that you complete everything in each moment, with no wake, no wake, then you can see the insufficiency, greater than the whole. How your completeness is, has to be given up then. Anyway, this kind of trust is again expressed by Buddha, where he says, the remaining virtue

[31:16]

is inexhaustible. Mountain, we see mountains, but beyond what we see, the virtue of that, the remaining virtue is inexhaustible. So it requires, for each of you, coming to know your world as your world, what you see as familiar. Even if a Martian appears, someone asked me about this, someone telephoned me and said, a Martian has come and wishes to be my teacher and will meet me only at 3 a.m. Quite a usually coherent person asking. So, maybe so. I don't know. Recently, I haven't been asked.

[32:17]

But at 3 a.m., I don't know if I would agree, but maybe at 5 a.m. would be all right. He happens also to be Japanese, which, I didn't know Japan was another planet, but sometimes it seems so. Anyway, even if a Martian comes, it's not unfamiliar, actually. No, it's unfamiliar because you act from generalizations. You know, if you don't act from generalizations, what you see before you is your own mind. And as you become familiar with how you are actually already familiar, because you know how your mind and body and perceptions work, and the limitations of that, and how much

[33:23]

you are acting in accord with something beyond any ability of yours to perceive it in ordinary ways, more and more you can quit distressing yourselves, trusting the revelation of this moment. All right.

[34:37]

Do you have some questions? Something we should talk about? I didn't understand when you said that actually we're all arguing with ourselves in that difference. What do you mean by that? We're arguing with ourselves, is that something, do you mean by that something that we should stop doing? I think this is right. I think it's rather difficult to point out with words what I mean. To argue with yourself is okay, maybe.

[36:06]

I always started saying, don't argue. One meaning of the precept, don't kill, is don't assert something which denies something else. You assert one thing, you deny something else. And how, because we feel such a moral obligation to assert some things as real or true, because we see so much that's false, it's I think a pretty difficult problem in practice to not argue or not assert. Now I don't, this is again so difficult to describe, because I don't mean you should be passive or meek or something like that, but it has to do with this trust that everything is asserting, is simultaneously asserting itself.

[37:08]

As we can say, as I was saying yesterday, everything is what we actually feel is an urge toward nirvana. Almost sweet, toward nirvana. Toward knowing the whole, whether it's found as death in the dissolution of the parts, or whether it's found right now in the acting beyond some of the parts. And though it's sometimes hard to see it in ourself, or we forget about it, forget about our deeper life, or even practicing, we forget about the reminding ourselves of

[38:21]

how to enter this stream. In others we can see it, if you see someone who is suffering, they, it's usually clear, the problem is they are stuck, that they can't give up to this sweet, toward nirvana. And you can't do anything about it by arguing with them, or trying to point out Buddhism. All you can do, actually, is do it yourself. And this, maybe, this effort resonates with somebody else. If you hit one bell, another bell will ring. That kind of action. So our effort, our action, is more in that realm.

[39:26]

The, again, the Lotus Sutra says, Bodhisattva sees no rules, and this is his sphere of action. So his sphere of action is when the apple is gravity, when there's no arguing or discriminated thinking, just being in accord with that which is, and that tends to make everything in accord, that kind of thing. So, anybody practicing, but almost anybody is actually in that process. They're arguing with themselves about it, should I practice or should I not practice. You know, most, most of American life, as I said yesterday, is like a funeral parlor. Soft music, rugs, everything is, anything disturbing is tried, you try to remove. But actually, we are arguing with ourselves about it, drinking about it, various ways

[40:36]

we argue. And to enter the argument with the person doesn't help. Just, you acknowledge that, you acknowledge their belief, you acknowledge that their argument without arguing. And everyone knows. Do you understand what I mean? Even if you don't do anything, people may still want to send you away. Oh no, he makes me nervous when he's around. That kind of feeling people may have. Something else? Yeah. The remaining virtue.

[41:42]

I'm trying, maybe this isn't so understandable to someone who's not pretty familiar with Buddhism. Most of you are practicing quite a lot, but why, what I'm talking to, why does Dogen say the remaining virtue of the mountain is inexhaustible? You know, that's a very, we read that in Buddhism and we say, oh, that's, you go right over it. But if you stop, why does he say the remaining virtue of the mountain is inexhaustible? It's almost impossible to understand. But it means, you know, so I'm trying to suggest how you, how its meaning is practiced. Its meaning is a hint at how to practice.

[42:47]

Maybe it's not just, at first you see a mountain as a mountain, and then you see mountains are not mountains, and then you see mountain is mountain again, but then you see mountain as a necklace of jewels, or a fellatio residence, or some treasure, inexhaustible treasure. And you actually trust it. The activity of trusting it is practiced. Virtue, by virtue he means trusting. The remaining what of the mountain, you could say, scientifically, but he says virtue, which means you are one with it, and you should trust it as your own being.

[43:55]

So in Buddhism, we try to hint to you and find those acts in our ceremonies, and in our practice, and in our everyday actions, which are the path itself, ways to hint or express the remaining virtue that we trust, and that we act in accord with. Because we found our own proportion, our own ease and comfort in this moment. Without any historical perspective. And when you find yourself taking a historical perspective, you let it go. You'll feel your mind tighten up, look at you, let it go.

[45:03]

But to let it go requires some trust, because it's that which gives us a feeling of safety. We tend to view the present as something we try to accumulate in, or be safe in. We try to make this present safe, so no Martians, burglars, strange things, unaccustomed things enter it. But the reverse direction is needed for practice. One is practicing. The present is our infinite extension. When you hold up one, you know three. When you offer incense with your hand, you know every act of your hand. Transmission outside the scriptures means this present and no other.

[46:23]

Which you don't need sutra books or Buddhas or anything. They are just some building blocks, excrement. Just this shining lucent. And the more you give up your brutish overextension, the more you find how light everything is. How quick everything is. How glowing everything is. But we are so attached to the cause of our suffering, so attached to our desires. So attached to our comparison.

[47:31]

It may be the only way of suffering. When you suffer enough, you will decide it's a waste of time. Thank you.

[48:20]

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