Today I'd like to talk about some aspects of our life together and of Buddhist life. First of all, for us who practice Zen, yoga is a very important part of our practice. not the yoga of many postures and stages, but the yoga of the half or full lotus posture. And the development of your posture even perfection of your posture is not absolutely necessary but extremely important part of Zen practice. This posture can be said to be wisdom itself.

[01:30]

and it's central to maybe the essence of Buddhist life as form. Any form can be Buddhist life, but this posture that we practice in represents Buddhism more than any other single form, as we see in the posture of the Buddha. And it will, no doubt you have found out, it will be the basis for your practice and life as well. You will feel refreshed and healthier if you do, if you sit in this way. So don't mind that it takes a long time, many years actually, to develop your

[03:02]

zazen posture. And our realization of this posture is never complete. Many kinds of Buddhism Japanese, Tibetan, Chinese Buddhism, don't emphasize this posture so much, but rather a number of attitudes which are conducive to realization, attitudes or sometimes philosophy, which by retreats or visualizations or confrontation in the details of your life, you realize very deeply and begin to follow. Zen also practices this way, but emphasizes so much our sitting posture, but not to the rather mechanistic detail that everything is thought to stem from

[04:28]

how you sit and how you breathe, etc., as in some forms of Indian yoga. This posture is thousands of years old, older than Buddha. And by your development of it,

[05:41]

you develop your society. I am not practicing with you just to help you attain enlightenment. just to help you for yourself realize your existence, our existence.

[06:52]

that effort would not be enough and would be contradictory. Our effort has to always be the welfare or enlightenment of everyone. But we can only reach everything through one thing, through the things just in front of us. So I expect each of you, I hope each of you will practice Buddhism with others. Not that each of you will become a priest, and I know many of you feel some pressure that the only way to practice Buddhism is to become a priest. This is not so, but it is almost so to say that the only way to practice Buddhism is to demonstrate its way of life.

[08:43]

and being a priest and the way of life of Buddhism are almost one. So you have to understand a layman's life very well to practice Buddhism by being a layman. It may be more difficult than by being a priest. This identification of our way of life and enlightenment and practice and wisdom is complete in Buddhism. In the morning now we're saying, now I open Buddha's robe, a field far beyond form and emptiness, but the Tagata's teaching for all being. So that a teaching is identified with your clothes with your robe. And if you read ancient Buddhist texts, in the most detail they are about our way of life. As in the ordination ceremony, we pass on

[10:17]

the eating bowl and robes and bowing cloth. Is that all? Hairstyle? What else? That's most. But actually in the early text there's much more detail than that. How you prepare a seat to sit on. what you do with your bowl if it's broken. Before you can get another bowl, your bowl must have been mended at least five times. Your robe has to been taken care of or used or mended in such and such a way before you can replace it. There are ways described to make this cloth. We still use Nishidana in the ceremony. We use the early name for it. And Nishidana is sometimes made... The center is cloth and the border is made from another kind of mat which is produced by taking old fibers that you find and you lay them.

[11:46]

all on top of each other and then you pour boiled salt, boiled rice on them making a kind of glue which makes a mat. When that is worn out you cut the edge and you use that as the border for this. Anyway, the detail of how to in a very basic, simple way, take care of all the aspects of your life, is the nature of the Sangha life, the nature of Buddhist life. And the relationship to society, to economics, to your friends, is all determined demonstrated by how you eat and how you dress, not by some philosophy. How you give meaning to what you do. If you think about

[13:07]

what I've been talking about the last few times, vitalism or mechanism. Is this inert In Buddhism, since there's no idea of soul or spirit or some dualistic idea, you only have what's here. You only have this body which can be, you know, can sit full lotus or half lotus. You only have your clothes and your eating bowls. If you, when you see a corpse, what is the difference between a corpse and a live body? What is the difference between you now and when you'll just be a corpse?

[14:32]

This question is one of three famous barriers in Zen practice. So whether we are a layman or a priest, in how we live, how we dress, how we eat, how we conduct ourselves, Buddhism should be there. By those simple things, people will find out how to live, how to take care of themselves. how to give up their dreams. There's a Zen, a poem used in Zen. Hearing a bird sing, my dream disappears. Another famous story is Houen Zenji.

[16:12]

says, Shakyamuni and Maitreya are servants of another. Who is he? Who is this other? And Mumon has a poem for it. Do not draw another man's bow. Do not ride another man's horse. Do not defend another man's fault. Do not look into another man's affairs. Who is this other person? Finding out what we are, how we exist is, of course, the point of this practice. The difference you'll notice between when you're depressed and everything is

[18:15]

vague, you're barely able to distinguish things, and when you're quite comfortable with no thought of yourself and everything has color and clear, precise form and feels in its place, And this allows you to feel some closeness to everything. Because you find out your own participation, just as someone you have some intimate feeling with, they reflect you. Their eyes may shine. With this close feeling, everything shines. So Buddhist life, whether layman or priest, is how to be

[19:45]

relaxed in the details of your life and to know this substance of our body and cloth and eating and by your realization of it to reflect everyone's life in it. So our way of life is so extremely important. Wherever you find a Buddhist person, you'll find a sense of a way of life, as Gary Snyder, living in the mountains. Not living as he did in Japan in a monastery, but everything he does has an awakened awareness, a feeling of a way of life that he is.

[21:18]

acknowledging in itself. So we practice this way of life beginning with the simplest things. How to fold our legs. How to get up in the morning. How to wash. How to eat. How to take care of our clothes. How to fold our clothes.

[22:24]

like a child being taught by their parents, but now with no dualistic feeling of it being something separate from us, some awakened corpse. once dead but now dressed in traveling clothes and giving lectures or demonstrating the Dharma. Do you have some question, something you'd like to talk about? You said that

[24:43]

I didn't. Could you hear what he said? He said, I said, A layman should be more familiar, a Buddhist layman should be more familiar with a layman's way of life. Actually, I didn't mean to emphasize layman's way of life, but just with how we live. It's not so difficult to take care of Buddha's robe, but to take care of your ordinary clothes or find some way to express yourself, which helps others. And wearing ordinary jeans or something is more difficult. I don't think about it myself.

[26:10]

But recently I wore a suit somewhere and I got some criticism. Not because they didn't like the suit, but in robes or in the way I usually dress when I don't wear robes, they felt some Buddhist feeling, some practice or something. They said, I don't know. But when I wore a suit, they didn't feel it. And he felt some loss or disappointment. Yes? Can you speak just a little louder?

[27:37]

You couldn't hear it, right? And she, as a mother, taking care of Nevada, doesn't have the opportunity to practice with such forms. How what? Anyway, it's more difficult. Something, right? Being a mother is not so different. Maybe we can divide all activity into things we do because we want to do and things we do because we have to do them, whether we want to or not. We don't change diapers.

[29:26]

because we want to. Though sometimes we may enjoy it, I don't know, but it's not exactly because we want to do it. We do it because we have to. And our way of life, our pursuit of happiness and material freedom or enslavement, is seeking after a world in which we only do what we want to do. And we need something in our life. A large portion of our life has to be have-tos, or we get rather crazy. And one of the things that crazy people do is they create lots of have-tos. they create all kinds of neurotic, compulsive things they have to do. Or they feel uneasy. So, in just the people, often people who have the freedom of a great deal of money,

[30:51]

get into unusually compulsive behavior full of have-tos. So one aspect of Buddhist life is a recognition of the have-tos and the conscious addition of some have-tos. You do have to get up in the morning, we could say, but you don't have to chant. But we create it, like I have to, coming to service, going to zazen. And it's not something we do because we like to do it or don't like to do it. Sometimes coming to service is like crying. Some

[32:18]

emotional expression. Some satisfaction, which you can't quite adjust to or explain as having to do with chanting or zazen or anything. Some kind of relief to do something that's not in the realm of wanting to do it or not wanting to do it. A kind of something you do by choice that isn't in the realm of wanting to or not wanting to. This is some deep, wise part of our Buddhist life. And such a feeling characterizes how we take care of our robes and many other aspects of Buddhist life, as defined by tradition. But we can, if we understand this way of life thoroughly, how you handle or exist with everything,

[34:03]

in whatever form is there. So in that sense, Nevada has been given to you. Isn't that so? Pretend she's the baby Buddha, but don't dump cold tea on her. How can we tell when our have-tos start becoming neurotic? Neurotic? Well, if you... I don't know. Most of us, if you practice here, you don't have time for neurotic have-tos.

[35:11]

There are so many other afters. It sort of warms them up. I don't know. The line is a fine one sometimes. Sometimes our practice can be a neurotic hefter. But it's a better neurosis than most. Yes? Wasn't Alan Watts' main criticism of formal Zen that it didn't allow spontaneous play, joy,

[36:41]

Or craziness? You agree? If you don't agree, why? You're doing it well. Why are you exclaiming like that? It's so... I'm just... I don't know.

[38:05]

Do you have to have some special place or space to feel some joy? No, you know, I don't know if I do, but sometimes I feel that I want to sleep, but also sometimes You can. Just go up outside the gate and run up, screaming up the road. Don't run into the forest stranger or something. It will confirm his suspicions about us. I don't know, we don't do anything to produce sadness or produce joy. I mean, specifically, this is to make us feel good or this is to make us feel bad. In fact, we try to have a way of life which gets away from thinking that we need to go sit by the stream to be reflective.

[39:50]

that we need some special time in order to feel good. Any time is all right. Alan's feeling primarily came from his experience of Japanese Buddhism, which is the most visible aspects are like college fraternity. If you went to a Western Christian college and looked at their fraternities, it wouldn't look much like your idea of a Benedictine monastery. And that's what Japanese monasteries mostly look like because they're young people, 18 and 19 and 20, and they're there mostly like equivalent to going to college. So it becomes very much just a cultural phenomenon. But Alan, you know, also, he had to have his have-tos, and he didn't have them the way we do.

[41:16]

So the last years of his life he was drunk all the time. If you wore robes, you put bottles in your robes and you say, look at that over there. He was always drinking like that. I'd spend time with him go places with him in the car. He was always pointing something out and lifting his coat. But at the same time, he was very open. I enjoy drinking. Don't anyone criticize me about it. But he did it so much that he sometimes, 60% of the time or 70% of the times, hid it. Anyway, we each choose our have-tos, I suppose. That was his. It may be better in ours, actually. Your life is shorter and more delirious. Can you say that by having all these have-tos,

[42:39]

Yeah. That's true. You could hear him, right? No. He said, having all these have-tos relieves you from the shoulds. That's true. Of course, I don't feel they're have-tos at all, myself. For me, coming to service is just a chance to be with you. But when you're first starting to practice, it's quite good to have lots of have-tos, more than we have. We don't have so many. what a relief this life is, you know, after you get used to it, compared to other kinds of lives most of you have found out. But after you've had lots of have-tos, and you get so you don't mind, right, you don't have personal preferences one way or the other, then when you're in a completely unstructured situation,

[44:20]

Life is quite easy. You're not pushed around at all by, I should do that, I want to do this. Quite easy to just take whatever happens as that poem. When hearing the sound of a bird, my dream is gone. Yes. Was I saying that? Yes. If you can't do it, it's okay. I guess I'm a little confused about developing a priority. Like for me, and perhaps for some other people, I have a lot of self-imposed demands on where to stay.

[45:44]

The end of the session isn't really important, but as long as that does, part of what I'm trying to do is be creative and scratch it. Well, in my opinion, if you're going to be a Buddhist all your life and practicing, and you're not 50 or 60 or 45 or something, it's better to sit in an unstable posture, moving toward half lotus or full lotus, than it is to sit in some other posture. And the way your legs are,

[46:50]

It's going to take you a long time, maybe 100 years, to learn to sit perfectly. So you're quite lucky, because you'll have many other practices along the way. By the time you sit full lotus, you'll be perfected, beyond any of us. Me too. I still don't sit full lotus. My legs won't do it. If it was based Depends what you mean. She said, can I be more specific about what this way of life is actually based on? The way we live at Passaha. It's based on enlightenment, on the way a person who is enlightened could live easily.

[48:14]

Yes and no. As something you do, it's not. As a recognition of the way it really is, it is. But from another point of view, if this way of life was based on something, we wouldn't need this way of life. It's because there's nothing to base it on. There's just robes and eating and washing. That we have a way of life. Do you understand that? If there was some inner meaning, we wouldn't need a way of life. We could just express some inner meaning. The meaning of wearing Buddha's robe is just wearing Buddha's robe.

[49:18]

There's no other meaning to it except the doing of it. No meaning to washing our face except washing our face. From what? Struggling? How is wearing Buddha's robe different from struggling? Struggling to get it on? Struggling to keep it straight? I don't know. Same thing. Struggling is struggling. Yes.

[50:40]

One of the, whatever happens, things that was difficult for me to help was, many people that were in the city, they bought four more drinks. So, they keep four more drinks. And they keep refilling them. And I kind of enjoyed it, but it was getting quite hazy by the time I got back here. And they didn't seem to... They kind of objected, but I refused. And I never had accepting that form. It seemed kind of contradictory to the lifestyle which I wanted to embrace.

[51:59]

Could you hear what he said? He said when he went home, I guess at Christmas time, everyone kept offering him a drink and keeping his glass filled. And by the time he was ready to come back here, he was quite hazy. There's one story in the early canon of Buddhism. One of the rules is you're not supposed to sleep in the same enclosure with someone that you're not married to. And one of Buddha's closest disciples,

[53:40]

was invited to sleep in this place when there was no other place to sleep with this woman. And in the process, she took the refuges and became a Buddhist. And yet Buddha heard about it and criticized him. You spent the night in the same enclosure with this woman to whom you weren't married. So it didn't make any difference that she became a Buddhist in the process. So we had that problem. I remember going with Tsukiyoshi You know, Zen Center has more sense of the priest's life than any other Buddhist group, I think, in America, because Tsukiroshi emphasized keeping us together with the Japanese congregation, and to see, as a kind of prediction for us, what happens when many people become Buddhist. So I used to... he would bring me

[55:11]

to various Japanese members of the congregation at Sokoji when he had to do a memorial service or visit them. So I had a lot of experience of that kind of relationship, which I think most groups in America don't have because they didn't have that situation. And Japanese people You have two aspects of drinking, the Japanese people. One is they like to drink. The other side of it is they have a value system about drinking. One of their values, particularly for men, is a kind of macho thing that you drink it straight. So the Japanese manage okay in Japan. Also, Japanese people are very weak when it comes to drinking. one tiny drink and they flush red and get quite drunk. So they arrange that in Japan by having rice wine, which isn't very strong, and they drink out of teeny cups. But when they come to America, and they drink it straight, when they come to America they're supposed to drink whiskey and things. And they're not supposed to drink it in teeny cups, but water glasses.

[56:39]

They don't mix drinks, particularly the older generation don't mix drinks much. They have their values apply to whiskey, the same. They pour these big water glasses full of whiskey and they drink it down straight, you know. So when... And he would never criticize the people by saying, because they want, you know, it's the same old thing always, you meet somebody and they A crazy person tries to make you crazy, and you're trying to make him sane. Guests in the summer try to make you into a gestalt therapist or something. You're trying to make them into Buddhists or something. Whenever you meet somebody, they're trying to adopt you into their way of life. So Suzuki Yoshi is coming to their house to perform some Buddhist ceremony that they want, but they want him to be converted to their usual way of life, too. So they put that kind of pressure in front of you, as your friends, your family did, testing you. So they would put these big water glasses of whiskey. So it's almost another kind of matcha. If they are going to accept Buddhism, he must accept the whiskey. That kind of thing starts.

[58:01]

But anyway, Sudhakirishi was too polite to not drink it, but he would drink it very slowly. And as soon as he took a sip, they'd fill it up. So I would, as soon as they went out of the room, I'd take his glass, and if I could find a flower pot around, I'd go... I don't know if... Does it kill flowers to do that? No. You know, they have some big potted plants. Or I would pour his into my glass when they were making it. I've told you the story of the times Luke usually got very drunk when he was young, haven't I? Some of you. He went to some, he became a Zen master when he was pretty young, thirty-one or two, and he went to some woman's house who was a famous koto player, I think. Is that right? Anybody remember the story? I think famous painter? Maybe she's a famous painter, that's right. Okay, I forget. That's right. And she got him to keep drinking, and she could completely out-drink him. He'd never drunk, practically, in his whole life. He'd been living with his teacher since he was about 14, and his father was a

[59:26]

a Buddhist monk and also a Zen master, and they were very poor. It was during the Meiji Reformation, and the Meiji government attacked Buddhism and destroyed many temples and turned many temples into Shinto shrines, and no one had any money. Sugyoshi's father used to collect old candles and re-melt them into candles and then sell them. Suzukiyoshi used to have to go out and, like the proverbial stories, wait on a bridge for old vegetables floating down and collect them for them to have enough to eat. When Suzukiyoshi went to school, he didn't have a hakama. A hakama is a kind of skirt that you wear that over your kimono to make it look slightly more formal, and when he'd go to school for some special day or ceremony, he didn't have a hakama. And his father, it took him quite a long time, saved enough money for a hakama, finally, and got him a hakama, and then showed him how to tie it.

[60:48]

But he'd put so much effort into getting this hakama, he wanted his son to wear it just right. So, Tsukiyoshi had to. He showed him how to tie it quite formally, as you really wear a hakama. And probably his father knew that kind of thing, because priest has that kind of training, better than the other kids in the neighborhood's fathers. So he tried it very formally, and Tsukiyoshi was embarrassed by how it was tied, because the other kids didn't tie it that way. So as soon as he got outside the temple gate, he stopped and retied it. And his father saw him. And he said, next thing I knew, my father was running from the temple with something, I don't know, a stick or something. And you must know I was already running." But he said, his father being so angry with him was, he understood later, was because they were so poor and he tried so hard to get this Hakama for them. Anyway, Tsukiyoshi had never had anything much to drink, so this woman got him completely drunk.

[62:12]

And then he was so drunk he couldn't go home. So they brought him to various friends' houses. Somebody was with him, carrying him. And they would knock on people's doors, and no one would take him in. Oh, you're too drunk. Go home. Finally, at the fifth house, they went to someone. Fifth, isn't it? I think fifth. You have to help me keep track of these things. Someone took him in and he slept the night. He was quite humiliated by how drunk he became. Anyway, I think if you accept a drink and drink just as much as you want, there are ways you can prevent, unless there's some kind of trip going on. When I first went to Uchiyama Roshi's temple, they did that to me. One big glass after another filled to surface tension of sake, until I'd drunk a whole big bottle of sake. And Uchiyama Roshi and the head monk were

[63:37]

having someone fill my glass. The only way I stopped it, knowing their capacity must be less than mine, I hoped, I started going up. Every time they filled my glass, I filled both of their glasses equally full. And they stopped filling my glass. Usually I think it's, you can just drink some, Just wearing of it? But how, you know, Buddha means awakening. He said,

[64:39]

If wearing Buddha's robe had no meaning, is that what you said? I actually said the meaning of it is the wearing of it. But if wearing Buddha's robe has no meaning, what meaning does wearing layman's clothes have? No meaning. But Buddha means awakened one or conscious one. So to make ourselves awake or to be awake to what we are, how we dress, what cloth is, you'll dress in some different way. Then everything becomes Buddha's robe. At first you'll find this out by the difference between your distracted, dreamy state of mind and a concentrated state of mind. When you finally realize how wonderful a concentrated state of mind is compared to a distracted state. You won't be distracted anymore. And you won't have any questions about why are we confused or what is our mind for. It's quite clear.

[66:07]

that the nature of this human being is to be awakened. Only in that way does this human being realize itself, and by awakening others. So our way of life is our way of awakening others.

[66:45]

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