I vow to taste the truth about my death's words. I understand that you've had a rather full week. And, uh, you know, you get really satisfied. It's kind of you wishing it was hard at the problem. So, this evening, I don't want to talk so much to you, but, um, This morning, we talked about field health in a kind of general way.

[01:16]

So tonight, I would like to talk about our practice, questions about our practice. Also, I think it's nice for people who don't know me, who I don't know, to know each other in some way. So I'll just tell you a little bit about practice, what I've been doing the last 20, 30 years or so. Yeah, quite a number of people here, though. I mean, Suzuki actually studied with me. way, somehow, to continue the way that we were inspired to inspire them.

[02:34]

sense of being in time. I think we could almost reduce the essence of his practice down to always being in time. A musician is always in time, never losing his sense of place, time and place. Don't be, don't get behind and don't get ahead. And to me, that's like essence. Kinjogo, which is Dogen's practice, transmitting

[04:09]

Very simple, nothing to it. But how do you do that? I'm still fumbling along. So it's not that you learn something and you forever know it. In a sense you do, but every moment we have to find ourself. about how I practice and how I relate to our practice and what I'm trying to do. If we're going to close the doors, can we open some of the transients, some of the credit stories?

[05:46]

Well, I don't know about an example, but in my daily life, my daily life is full of examples. is the perfect example, because in Zazen, our effort is to stay in time, completely in time, so that so much in time, so completely in time, that time disappears. And we're constantly getting out of time in the sense of losing our place. So if I'm watching my breath, sitting straight, watching my breath, and then my mind wanders, when my mind wanders, I'm no longer in time, in that time, in a different time.

[06:59]

When I recognize that and let go of that thought and bring my attention back to in time, then I'm waking up to time. So we practice that over and over again. And in our daily life, it's the same way. We're paying attention to events. And our life, we have main events and minor events. Major events and minor events in our daily life. So a major event is... The first major event is when the alarm rings. in the morning.

[08:06]

And when an alarm rings, just to respond to it is to be in time. And then to get up is the next thing. But sometimes, you know, you go back to sleep. So we're no longer paying attention, no longer in the time of our activity. We're in some kind of time. Even losing time is time. Dogen talks about this. I don't want to get into a philosophical stuff. But just being there. OK, so the major event is that. The next major event is going to the bathroom. But the steps that we take going to the bathroom may not be so important to us as the fact that we have to relieve ourselves.

[09:06]

So if I want to relieve myself, it's the next main event. But there's a process of getting to the bathroom, which is taking steps. And the steps, if we don't pay attention to our steps, then we miss a part of our life, awareness of part of our life. We're only concerned with the next activity, we're not concerned with this one, of walking to the bathroom. So, we're out of time, we're out of step. So, the main events of our life is what we're mostly concerned with, but we're not so concerned with the connecting links. And the connecting links of our life We spend most of our life making the connections between one place and another. And the going and coming needs to be paid attention to if we're going to really be, in time, living our life completely.

[10:15]

And if you think about it, Suzuki Roshi was never in a hurry. It's very interesting. Even though, do you ever remember the feeling and getting in a hurry, even though things always had to be done. He never went too slow, never went too fast. There was a certain rhythm of his own which was always at ease. Really remarkable. That's why our whole learning experience with him was just by watching him. And there was nothing to it. There's really nothing remarkable. The most remarkable thing was that he was just always in time. And he was worried about things. He had this vision of moments in time. He didn't get ahead of himself.

[11:18]

Or he didn't lag behind himself. When I came over this morning, Early this morning I came over the Richmond Bridge, and when I got over to this side, the rain side, and I was going around the curve, I thought, boy, you know, did I go over the bridge? I could not remember anything. But I thought, actually I already knew that. I just couldn't remember the experience of going over the bridge. But I must have done it. And I really remember thinking about that this morning, about how that whole thing completely eluded me. So, you know, the trick of our practice, the point is to always beat it.

[12:24]

not lose something. You know, something happens in our life, but we don't fully experience it always. And that's why silent practice is really important. I know that we all have a need to communicate verbally, but to be able to practice in a silent atmosphere. Today I was working, we were planning lettuce and flats and everybody was very silent. I could feel people holding back. Usually in that kind of situation where you have five or six people working together, somebody wants to say something. And I found myself saying something, talking to a few people here and there. But I was very careful because I could feel were really making a big effort not to talk. And I could feel it, putting his experience, experiencing fully, putting his little seeds in his little pots.

[13:32]

And there was tremendous energy, tremendous feeling of being present. So there's something to be said for silent practice, in that we really get a deeper experience, because our mind chatter doesn't perpetuate itself. I know we have a need to verbalize a lot, but when we hold ourselves in check, it actually helps us. Because we become mindful of our tendency. I also enjoyed eating this morning in the garden.

[14:41]

It was just like sitting in a window. I had the same, you know, wonderful energy. And really, there's a lot of good energy in this practice period. Very, very strong. And if you're not, you know, to come into it from outside, you really see it. When you're doing it, you may not feel it's as strong. But when you enter it from another place, you can really see the contrast. I'm sure. And serving people, very powerful people.

[16:38]

We can't just look right at the situation. And then there's no question whether it's... I mean, it's much less of a question of whether it's certain or not. I missed my... you believe me or not, we have a lot of days of walking, We call that seeing everything exactly the same. When you see everything exactly the same. It doesn't mean that everything looks the same, appears the same. But to let go, you know, the most difficult thing is, as you say, letting go of our desire to do something for ourselves.

[18:05]

And you come up against that all the time. And to see everything the same means whatever you face and whatever situation comes up, you give it the same kind of attention. You give yourself to every situation in the same way. It is really difficult not to feel some frustration about it. Recognizing that this practice of Zazen is exactly the practice to do it. Still, you put so much emphasis on the fruit. The fruit. The fruit is this final, not final, but this... Result. Result. With this ability to be I saw that as the effort.

[19:17]

But the result is the effort. Yes. It's a question of skill. Well, yeah. It is, in a certain way, a skill. But actually, it's beyond skill. And I think that's where we have to be very careful. I remember sometimes we tend to think of zazen as a technique. But it's not a technique, although every act we do has some technical, some way to go about doing it that's correct. I can give you Zazen instruction for two hours without exhausting what I have to say, but at the same time it's not a technique. Doing this, just being in time, is not a skill.

[20:20]

It's losing fear. Getting rid of fear. Dropping fear. There is some skill, but the skill, you can do it without skill. You don't have to have skill to play. All you need is a sincere desire

[21:29]

play. And the most important thing is the sincere desire to play. And if you have that, and you really apply it, your music will be beautiful. It's like everybody has a beautiful voice, without exception. Everybody here has a beautiful voice, but why don't we hear it? And it's not a matter of skill. It's not a matter of training or skill. We talk about Zen training, and there is that Zen training, but it's not And it does come out as a kind of skillful thing, but the training is not in skill.

[22:38]

It's actually in letting go of everything. It's unattainable. That's right. You know, it's somebody else who's a Muslim, rather than you, and has experience, and can describe for you, and you're not there. So you just kind of... It's a... It'd be really nice to have someone describe where you are, instead of where you are yet there. I mean, that's the depth that you have to contemplate. That's good, because the point is that... Just be yourself. Yes. acknowledge your inability. And when you do that, then you get a wonderful response. If we talk about how good we are, or present ourselves in some way, then we all accept each other when we're really straight about who we are and what we are.

[23:56]

And then we're quite perfect. But that doesn't mean that we stop there. We keep making effort all the time. So, the important thing is not where we get to. It's what kind of effort we're making. That's why we don't talk about a goal or about getting enlightened. We talk about how much effort we're making. But that's not what I mean by effort. What do you mean by that? Well, in Zazen, you know, we make the effort to wake up moment by moment. And we're constantly falling asleep. And we're falling asleep and we wake up. We fall asleep and we wake up. Our mind wanders and we wake up. So waking up, making the effort to continually wake up is the effort. It's moment by moment, continuous.

[25:02]

We're not ever always awake. We fall asleep and we wake up. We wander and we wake up. We keep coming back. We keep pulling ourselves back. We're falling off. We come back and we fall off. That's done. That's life of practice. And they say, oh, my mind always wanders in Zazen, and I'm like, man, boy. That's natural for our mind to wander. You're not bad. But practice is to keep pulling it back. It's not good, necessarily, not succeeding every moment.

[26:05]

That's right. It's not succeeding every moment. It is succeeding every moment if you acknowledge that it's not succeeding every moment. That's really true. If you really acknowledge where you're at every moment, then you're immersed in practice. So we can have continuous practice, you know, that includes both sides. That includes success and failure. And failure is success, not in the sense of the success sign, but in the sense that it's included as part, you recognize it as your life. I think about this in terms of what Buddha says about unsatisfactoriness. Life is basically unsatisfactory. When we talk about staying in the present moment, it sounds like we're saying, well, there is a satisfactory thing there, which is being in the present moment.

[27:08]

If only you could have that satisfactory thing, then all your problems would be over. And then we think, oh, yeah, well, this situation I'm in is unsatisfactory. So over there, there's a satisfactory state that I could be in. And I'm pulling and hauling now to get from where I am to that satisfactory state. And I keep failing, and that's unsatisfactory. But Buddha's teaching is that there is no satisfactory state. It's just the full acknowledgment of the unsatisfactoriness of where we are. And embracing it is enlightenment, is the satisfactory state. So when we set it up in our minds, it completely eludes the way we set it up. That's what we think. That's why our life, that's our calling. Satisfactory and unsatisfactory sides of our life, you know? When they come together, you know, we bow. That's why I'm always bowing. We bring the two sides of our life together, or the ten sides of our life together.

[28:20]

Ten sides of our life. It seems to heal this kind of frustration around the unsatisfactoriness that you get with the religious life. And I've sort of been wondering if there's some common part in the San Josean tradition that is recognizable. It seems to be a pretty high item in the Vipassana tradition. What do you think? I think that's the reason for me to be here. Well, I don't think it's part of the Soto tradition, but we're not bound by the Soto tradition.

[29:30]

It's like a vocabulary word that arose somewhere else and you don't get to hear it. What are you thinking? Maybe it's greater than this. I don't understand. I don't know how to respond to that. The thing that I see is boundless love. And that's where the method is. It is boundless love. But there are other ways of expressing it. And the nap time meditation is good because it makes you conscious.

[30:45]

You're actually expressing something in a conscious way. Sometimes people, even though that's the expression of Zazen, people are not aware of that. So it's simple. But I do believe that's the counterpart, you know, in Sakha tradition, if you like. But it's not a verbal expression. But then, of course, that's a thinking expression. express love for yourself. This is a simplified version. First you express love for yourself. If you can't express love for yourself, it's pretty difficult to express it to others. And then you express it to someone who is close to you.

[31:57]

Then you can express it to someone who you're indifferent towards. And you express it to someone who is your enemy, who you consider an antagonist, which is very difficult. And this kind of meditation has many facets and various ways to do it. And you get better and better at it the more you do it. This is more of a Theravada type meditation, but it's not something that It's part of so-called Zen or any Zen tradition that I know of. But that doesn't mean you can't do it. As a matter of fact, I've done it quite a number of times in various places, because I think it's worthwhile thing to do, just to give people some awareness, you know, that we recognize that we're capable of sending love out into the world.

[32:59]

It kind of raises your consciousness in a certain way. Because it's easy, even though we do a lot of zazen, to get kind of stuck in a certain mode. To not recognize other ways of doing things. It seems that, although it's not as explicit as that meditation, woven among the precepts, there is that finance of Metta. Oh sure, of course. And also the particular generosity of the Minnesota tradition. Yeah, well Metta of course is completely interwoven in the fabric of everything we do, truly. But it's not stated. And so, you know, to state it in that way I think is good.

[34:09]

One thing that I immediately think of in this conversation is expression of loving-kindness. Right, exactly. And an inspiration to friendliness and compassion. Over and over again. Over and over again. That was the thing that you remember about, that people remember about C.R.G. always, that loving-kindness, that living expression of loving-kindness and compassion. What makes me think of Della's story, which I think was in the e-mail, about how every time she saw Sisyphus, the message she got from him was that she was a wonderful person. goal-oriented work.

[36:20]

How do you measure success? How do you conduct yourself in the presence of that which measures success in a certain way? For instance, one time we had a practice period here, and it was stressed that the students would do non-goal-oriented work. They would chop wood, but there's never any end to the chopping of the wood. Or they would sweep. There was no end to the sweeping. interesting thing. If you set yourself up to do non-goal oriented work, everything you do is on one side. You're setting yourself up a goal. So the trick is to have goal oriented work and not worry about the goal.

[37:20]

Not get caught by the goal. It doesn't mean that your work is useless. Everything you do is useless and doesn't have any result. But if you become attached to result, then you have a hard time because everything ends up without being finished. Our lives end up without being finished, so to speak. But yet they're finished when they're over. And we have to live our life as if there's a goal. But you can't be attached to that goal. You have to live your life as if there is one, or you just wander around. So what is the meaning of our life? How do you move in it with confidence?

[38:33]

How do you move in your life with confidence, being alive, knowing that you're going to die? Just in time. Don't get ahead, don't get behind. Anxiety is getting ahead. Despair is getting behind. How do you stay rounded without anxiety and without disturbance?

[39:37]

That's a sign to you. You have to dance to the tune. Sometimes we don't want to dance to the tune. And one of the mistakes with me in particular, I just can't get any kind of hands up at all. And that is to beseech Buddha to remain in the world. And I want him to not come. Is it Shantideva? And he said you should beseech him not to come? Who said what?

[41:20]

Samantabhadra told the Bodhisattvas that there were ten paramitas that all Bodhisattvas practiced to pay homage to all Buddhas, to make great offerings to all Buddhas, to praise Buddhas in all their virtues, to confess and repent of all hindrances and evil deeds. To rejoice in the attainment of merit by others, to treat the Buddha as he was set in motion in the old Dharma, and to beseech Buddha to remain in the world. Well, you know, when we have service, we invite Buddha to join our practice. When you offer incense, we offer incense at service. Incense is something, some fragrance.

[42:23]

That fragrance, we offer it to Buddha and invite Buddha to join our practice. But, where is Buddha? Where is Buddha that we're inviting Buddha to join our practice? And what other world can Buddha go to? So, in a sense, we evoke our own Buddha, our own Buddha nature to be present. It's a little mysterious. we maybe take for granted that there's a Buddha.

[43:25]

It's very easy for Buddha to disappear. We transmigrate through the six worlds every day. Sometimes we're in the animal world, Sometimes we're in the fighting demon world. We're not always in Buddha's world. In some sense, inviting, asking Buddha not to leave is like asking ourself to stay. Patience has various degrees, but real patience is not... Patience seems like waiting, you know, the ability to sustain a kind of waiting mode.

[45:17]

not waiting for something, but the ability to just be in the present moment without... It's difficult, you know. But practice is always something unattainable. And you have to realize it. It's attainable and unattainable. And it's always more than we can ever do. But we do it anyway. So it seems that if we can develop that sort of patience, that we'd be able to deal with the frustration of having it yourself. Because if you have that kind of patience, you can become that patient of yourself as well. That's right.

[46:31]

Effortless effort. Yeah, it's called effortless effort. But the effortlessness comes after the effort. And when you first begin to practice, you have to, as Suzuki Roshi says, stretch yourself as far as you'll go. That's a great, I just reread that line. You have to stretch yourself out as far as you'll go. I've been moving around in my head. Right.

[47:31]

Energetic concentration. Very good. A passage through the effort. Right. But it's joyful effort. If you really have energetic concentration, you have joyful effort. You should have. Even if it's difficult. It hurts. Because you're using yourself up completely. So even through your difficulties, joy comes through. And if you only have heard it, you don't get, you have a vivid only, but you don't even enjoy it. fast tempo, you can dance a slow dance.

[48:53]

There are many ways to approach a tune and still swing with it. As a matter of fact, the possibilities are infinite. There's always a way to enjoy your life. One more? Maybe the same theme you were saying, that practice is always more than we can do.

[50:07]

And I think I've had that frustration kind of coming up for me a lot. And it seems this last week with Kevin Gary Roshi being here, In a certain sense it was wonderful, but in a certain sense it brought that up because it seemed to me like he was somebody just like Suzuki Roshi, you know, right there every second. And really wonderful, but you see this big gap between this, what you're trying to do or practice and what you knew yourself as. And so I think the week for me was wonderful, but also a certain frustration there in the practice. What can I say?

[51:28]

Frustration is just part of practice. It's part of our life. One time we're feeling frustrated. Things are beyond us. The next moment, it's all in our lap. It keeps changing all the time. You have to have some satisfaction, otherwise you couldn't continue. You've been continuing for quite a while, so you must have some satisfaction. It seems to me that Mona, in being able to recognize those qualities in category, has those qualities within herself. And you can see those qualities that are there but not yet, you know, touched in some way.

[52:39]

So it gives you something to work with. Your frustration gives you something to work with. So frustration is not a bad thing. It gives you impetus to do something. I feel like I hear his acceptance and the parameters of his practice have been so broad and deep that although I'd like to be able to sit like he sits, I really felt totally accepted and drawn in by his practice. Yeah, yeah. That's good. That's what I was, I found missing in what you said. to feel drawn in and accepted, at the same time that you feel inadequately questioned and recognized for what you actually do do. Sometimes we feel that unless we're doing a certain thing in a certain way, that our practice is not right or it's unacceptable.

[53:56]

something happens moment by moment, no matter where we are or what we're doing. And how we manage that is our real practice. not just what somebody recognizes as your practice. A good teacher should be able to give you a problem and at the same time give you a lot of encouragement and make you want to work all at the same time.

[55:25]

He includes you in his mind, and you can include him in your mind, and you're always practicing together, no matter where you are. He's in Minneapolis, you hear it, you know, every day you practice together. Hurry and...

[56:18]

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