I love to tell you the truth. Good morning. Well, Japanese people usually have a term for everything. And in our practice, dogens, expressions, two expressions of dogen are gyoji and dokan. Gyoji means continuous practice. And dokon means the ring of the way, the way ring, or circle of the way.

[01:10]

So I'm going to talk a little bit about these two terms. Continuous practice, kyoji, means that there's no gap in our activity. When practice is the center of your life, there's no gap between ordinary activity and sitting zazen. Everything that we do, if we actually are engaged in practice, everything that we do is an aspect of practice. And no matter how often this is expressed, it's not believed by everyone.

[02:13]

Or even if it's believed by everyone, it's still a great doubt for everyone. So, difficult. In a monastic situation, Gyoji is pretty simple. Because, you know, within the parameters of this small community, everything you do is practice, and everyone that you're practicing with is practicing continuous practice. And from morning to night, there's nothing but continuous practice. But in a householder practice, it's a much wider, as you know, much wider arena of your life, many more activities, and the parameters of your activity may not have any limits or larger limits.

[03:30]

So this makes it difficult because we get on the outer limits and we wonder what is practice. I thought sitting with your legs crossed was practice. That's one aspect of practice, but we should realize that our legs are always crossed, even if you don't cross your legs when you sit Sazen. Still, it's crossed-legged sitting. So, dokkan is more like the actual particulars of what our practice includes. So, if you're in the monastery, your practice includes getting up at a certain time, 3.40, something like that. going to Zazen for a while, eating breakfast, doing service, cleaning, Zazen, work, practice, service, study.

[04:47]

That's the ring of your practice. In a householder life, you have to decide, well, when can I sit Zazen, given all the other activities in my life? How do I deal with my spouse or my friend or my work, my school, my study, my ring of my associates, my interests? How do you include all that in the ring of the way? How do you create a rhythm and a circle that your practice runs through each one of those activities and is at the center of all those activities? So then we have to realize, well, what is practice if it runs through the center of all of our activities?

[05:51]

and is at the center of my being through all these activities. So I'm going to make a comment on a talk of Suzuki Roshi's, which I have done several times, this talk, but this talk is really important, I think. And we called it, Find Out for Yourself. That's the gist of his talk, is find out for yourself. He says, in your zazen, or in your life, you will have many difficulties or problems. When you have a problem, see if you can find out for yourself why you have a problem. Usually, you will try to solve your difficulty in the best way as soon as possible.

[07:00]

Rather than studying for yourself, you may ask someone why you have a problem. I think he means someone to help you with your problem. That kind of approach may work well for your usual life, but if you want to study Zen, it doesn't help. So our life is a kind of problem-solving activity. One problem comes up and then we want to solve this problem in some way that's expedient. So, you know, we seek help in solving our problems and so forth. But for our Zen practice, a problem is an important aspect of our practice.

[08:04]

If you don't have a problem, then it's hard to have a practice. And expediently solving a problem may help in some way. That's the usual way. So we can find relief from the problem and go on. But in Zen practice, when we meet a problem, we stay with the problem. and find out what is the real root of this problem. You know, our usual mode often is reaction. When

[09:07]

someone does something unkind to us, we react naturally. And then that person will react, and then we'll react back, and that person will react back. So often what we're dealing with is problems on the surface. And problems on the surface, we may want to resolve these problems. And so we try to resolve them on the surface, but the actual source of the problems is usually much deeper. And if we're only concerned with solving problems on the surface, the problems will continue to come up because they're rooted in something much deeper. And so even though we cut off the head, even though we chop the rose bush down all the way to the bottom, It just makes it grow stronger. So how do we get to the bottom of our problems?

[10:11]

How do we take a problem and really look at deeply what is the root? So in Buddhism we say the root is usually embedded in greed, ill will, or delusion. So when we have a problem, we should think, well, where is the root of this problem? Is it in greed, wanting too much, not wanting something? Or ill will, anger, or delusion, which is not understanding how things appear. or what is the real, the true aspect of something. Thinking that something else is the true aspect rather than the thing itself. So, so much of our life is, can be lived on a very superficial level.

[11:24]

And so we keep creating the same problems over and over again and wondering why they appear. So, in our Zen practice, part of the way ring, if you have a, relationship with practice, if your practice is continuous. And the ring of the way is to have a zazen practice, a teacher, a teaching, and your various activities. So it's important to have a practice which is has a rhythm to it, and a teacher who can help you bring your problem down to the root, including all of your activities.

[12:48]

He said something like, you know, you usually go to somebody else to help you solve your problem. But I think he means in a superficial way. When you have a teacher and you go to the teacher with your problem, the teacher helps you to see your problem as a koan. Not something to be solved, but something to help you see more deeply the root of your problem. or the root of all your problems, which usually have to do with wanting and not wanting, ill will and delusion. So, it's really important if you have a teacher, to have one teacher. who you have that relationship with.

[14:02]

And of course, you must have trust. If you don't have the trust, then you should probably go see somebody else. But one person that you trust. If you go to different teachers, then it means you're trying to find out something that will help you. But someone else can't help you. You can only help yourself. So the purpose of having a teacher is that the teacher keeps you on track to help yourself, to go deeper with yourself. So sometimes we don't think the teacher is helping us. And then we go to somebody else. and someone else makes us feel good, and we think, well, that's really much better.

[15:03]

But it's not better. It just prolongs the problem. So, in the process of working with a teacher, we often come up against our problem, seeing our problem as the problem with the teacher. That's often the case. So to be able to stay with that problem and to work deeply with that teacher, even though you come up thinking that there's something wrong with the teacher. Because when we get to a certain point, we don't like to see ourself. So we project outward, and then we look for something more comforting. So, it's not always this way, but often it is.

[16:08]

And having the, you know, if you work with like a Rinzai style teacher, and you have a koan to work with, and you see the teacher for three minutes, or three seconds, and you give your answer, and the teacher's dong dong, get out of here. over and over again, get out of here, get out of here. Pretty soon you may think, well, the teacher's nuts, or he doesn't like me, or, you know, I should go see somebody else and get the, who will verify my answer. So to be able to stay in relationship Even if the teacher is not good, it's okay, because it's about you, not about the teacher. You know, we talk about, Suzuki Roshi later in this talk talks about good teachers and bad teachers.

[17:18]

If you have a teacher who drinks a lot, or misbehaves in some way, then you may think that you should do that too. That happened in the past where there were teachers, actually they came from various places outside of our country, drank a lot and were promiscuous and blah, blah, blah. And then the students were doing that too. thinking, well, that's the way to do it. But actually, it's not the way. But it doesn't mean the teachers were not good teachers. They were good teachers, but they had these problems. So you should see, well, what is to follow the teacher's real teaching and not follow the teacher's problems.

[18:26]

You have to be able to sort that out, otherwise you never have a teacher. Because if you put someone up on a pedestal and think they're perfect, then you have a problem. You can never find that perfect teacher. Even Suzuki Roshi. People say, well, he was the perfect teacher, because he didn't do anything bad. But actually, he was always apologizing for his bad actions. He would say, I'm not a perfect teacher for you. And he would always look at whatever problems he had, even though we didn't think they were problems. He did. So he's always open about his life. So when a person's open about their life, you can trust them. because you can see this part and you can see that part. You follow this, but you don't follow all their idiosyncrasies. But when we have a teacher, we usually follow their idiosyncrasies. I remember when Suzuki Hiroshi was alive, his students started talking like him, you know.

[19:36]

I remember Bill Kwong and I, he was teaching at Sonoma State, Zazen, and I took over his job, over his doing that when he went to Tassajara to be Shusop. But there was a time when we were there together and giving a talk, and this woman said, there's something strange about you two. You talk in a certain way. And I realized, you know, we were both using Suzuki Roshi's idiosyncrasies when we were talking. Anyway, so If we go to too many people for consultation, then we're trying to get something from outside, and we're not really doing the work of finding out for ourself through our own effort.

[21:04]

So he says, the moment you are told something by someone and you think you understand, you'll stick to it. And you will lose the full function of your nature. When you seek something, your true nature is in full activity, as if you are feeling for your pillow in the dark. If you know where the pillow is, your mind is not in full function. Your mind is acting in a limited sense. When you're seeking for the pillow without knowing where it is, then your mind is open to everything. In this way, you will have a more subtle attitude toward everything and you will see things as it is. So, you know, there's this koan about Avalokiteshvara with a thousand arms. and hands, and each hand has an eye in it, and each hand has a different function to save beings, right?

[22:10]

And so in this koan, one of the teachers says to the other, it's like, one asks the question, how does he know what to do with those thousand arms and hands? And the other one says, well, it's like reaching for your pillow in the night. You don't know where it is, so you have to really search around for it. That's why he's saying, if you know where it is, you don't have to do anything, right? If we read a lot of books about Buddhism, then we know all about it, we don't have to do anything. That's why we take all the books away at some point. We don't do that, but we have to get beyond knowing about Buddhism. Suzuki Yoshi once said, Buddhism is not like something that you put into a drawer and keep it, and then when you want something, when you want to know about it, you take it out of the drawer and use it.

[23:12]

It's like you have to find it every moment. Even though we have all this talk about Buddhism, thousands of books written about Buddhism, All the books are about how you find yourself moment by moment. The most important thing is how you find yourself moment by moment in your surroundings. There's a lot of things that we know, and then the more we know, the more used to the world we become. you know, like if you've been in bed sick for a month and you feel well and you get up and you go outside and the world is brand new. It's a wonderful feeling. But we should have that feeling moment by moment. But the reason why we don't is because we get used to the world.

[24:14]

We get used to how things are. When we walk down the street, If we go from east to west, there's an ocean out there, but you don't see that ocean because we're looking down or we're thinking about something, but we know our way. We don't have to look at the sidewalk or the street, we know our way. So if you know your way, you get used to it, and you don't have that immediate coming to life with your surroundings. So life becomes a little bit dead. So not knowing is really important. Not having, this is why, you know,

[25:17]

In Buddhist practice, of course we think and we have imagination and ideas and so forth and discriminating mind, but our discriminating mind becomes so overpowering and we depend on it so much that we miss the wholeness of things. If we just look up a little bit, we can see the trees, and we can see the water, that little triangle of water up there in the sky. But we're usually down here. The thinker. So he says, if you want to study something, it's better not to know what the answer is. because you are not satisfied with something that you are told. What he means here, I think, is we're brought up with certain ideas, and then we're not satisfied.

[26:21]

If you're brought up in your religion, and then you think, I can't believe this, so we take up Buddhism. That's what he's saying. Because you are not satisfied with something you are told, and because you cannot rely on anything set up by someone else, you study Buddhism without knowing how to study it. In this way, you find out for yourself what we really mean by Buddha nature, practice, or enlightenment. So, these are just terms, right? But what do they mean? What is the actual essence of the meaning here? That's what's hard. Since you seek freedom, you try various ways. Of course, you will sometimes find that you have wasted your time. Then he talks about the Zen master.

[27:22]

If a Zen master drinks sake, you may think the best way to attain enlightenment is to drink sake. But even when you drink a lot of sake, as he does, you will not attain enlightenment. It may look like you wasted your time. But the attitude is important. You investigate that. And the attitude of investigation is important, even though the activity is not. So if you continue to try to find out in that way, you will gain more power to understand things. And whatever you do, you will not waste your time. You know, sometimes if we obey the rules and obey all the precepts and are very good at practice, we may become very arrogant and then think, I'm really a good practitioner.

[28:38]

I obey all the rules and do everything right. And then you start judging the people around you, that they're not so good, they're not doing everything right. And then you attain an arrogant attitude, which is worse than doing everything wrong. That's because that's the hardest thing to let go of. In the end, arrogance is the hardest thing to let go of because we have this high opinion of ourselves and we don't want to lose it. But until we lose it, we can't be real. It's very hard. So we have to, it's important to see everyone's practice It's a kind of dilemma, you know. On the one hand, to acknowledge that people have difficulty with practice and difficulty with themselves, and see that as bad, and then to realize that person's actually practicing as hard as they can, even though they can't do it the way they're supposed to, so to speak.

[30:01]

So you have these two sides. So the problem we have in that way is judging good and bad, right and wrong. So good is an interesting word. We want the good side. So what is good? Good means God, actually. But, and then we say God is good. But good is simply, most of the time, is our preference. So when things match our preference, we say, oh, that's good. And when they don't match our preference, we say, oh, that's bad. But if God is good, then God is both good and bad. Because it can't be, it's not preferential.

[31:06]

So good is not preferential. So to let go of our opinion about what is good and bad, we don't really know what is good and bad. Unless we can eat the bad with the good, we don't know what good means, really. We just have preference. Preference is okay, you know, we all have preference. We'd rather eat one thing than another. But in this with this kind of understanding, true understanding of seeing things as it is, we have to realize that the good contains the bad, and the bad contains the good, and not fall into preference, discriminating mind. Then we can really investigate

[32:08]

because we can see our bad as well as our good, and we can see our good as well as our bad without judgment. One of the problems why it's hard to see ourself completely is because we are always falling into preference. Hard to get down to seeing ourself completely as it is, as we are, without falling into judgment. But unless we can do that, we can't see things clearly. And when we can see ourself clearly, then we can see other people clearly, and that's called compassion. So seeing ourself completely is wisdom, and wisdom is compassion. Then we can accept everyone because we know that everyone As bad as they are, are also good.

[33:12]

And as good as they are, are also bad. So, beyond good and bad is where we have to get to see things clearly. So when you do something with a limited idea or with some definite purpose, what you will gain is something concrete. That's usual. Of course, we have a purpose. I want to do something. I get it. This will cover up your inner nature. So it's not a matter of what you study, but a matter of seeing things as it is and accepting things as it is. In other words, You know, this is called non-gaining mind in our practice.

[34:15]

Not seeking for something, but simply seeing everything as it is. So he says, some of you may study something only if you like it. If you don't like it, you ignore it. That is a selfish way, and it also limits your power of study. Good or bad, big or small, we study to discover the true reason why something is so big and why something is so small, why something is so good and why something is not so good. If you try to discover only something good, you will miss something, and you will always be limiting your faculties. When you live in a limited world, you cannot accept things as it is. So, even if a Zen master has just two or three students, he would never tell them our way in detail. The only way to study with him is to eat with him, talk with him, her, and do everything with him or her.

[35:24]

In other words, just to be, just to practice together. That's the best way. When you have a large Sangha, then you have to have rules, you have to give talks, but actually the best way is just to associate with each other day after day and this is how you pick up and practice together. So, there are a lot of difficulties in that. And through association and through the way ring, that's the practice. Not so much information.

[36:27]

Information is okay, but it can easily cover up, because we think we know something, it covers up our investigation. So, you know, sometimes I will work with people with a koan, but I'm never in a hurry for that person to understand the koan or to give an answer, but working with a koan is like working with your problem. Instead of trying to solve the problem the koan keeps working you. Your problem keeps working you and keeps solving you. So, you know, if we see our activity as our big koan, every part of our activity is our koan, one big koan that has many parts.

[37:42]

So it's like, What do I do in this situation? How do I practice in this situation? So in the zendo, we say, well, there are lots of rules in zendo, but actually they're just procedures. They're not rules, just how we organize things to make it work easily. So we don't have to talk all the time. tell people what to do. As soon as we know what to do, we just do it. And everything is done in a fresh way. As soon as we step into Zendo, even though you think that it's repetition, you've never done it before. Every moment is brand new. No matter how many times we do something repetitively, each time is new. Otherwise, we can't practice. We just think we're just a mouse in a turnstile.

[38:47]

Every time you bow, it's brand new. Every time you walk down the aisle, it's brand new. Every step is new. So then you go outside and there are no rules about practice. And you have to find out. How do I practice in this situation? If everything is practice, how do I practice in that situation? Not just allowing yourself to get flummoxed by circumstances. If we see every activity 24 hours as practice, then we have some space from our limited understanding And it all becomes one ring of practice. It's not dependent on being in the Zen Do. Most of our day is not in the Zen Do. So he says, even if a Zen master has just two or three students, he would never tell them our way in detail.

[40:06]

The only way to study is to blah, blah, blah. So you help the teacher without being told how to help him. In other words, we must use our intuition. Discriminative thinking covers our intuition. There's nothing wrong with discriminative thinking, but because we're so dependent on it, we doubt our intuition. The teacher will not say, here's how you help me, but the student has to know, how can I help the teacher without being told? So mostly, he will not seem very happy. That's not true. And will always be scolding.

[41:08]

That may be in Japan. Without any apparent reason, this is typical of a teacher in Japan and a student. Without any reason, just scolding. What did I do? What did I do? What's wrong? Then you have to find out what's wrong. because you can't figure out the reason you will not be so happy, and he will not be so happy. So if you really want to study with him, you will study how to take care of him. He says please, but that's not a good word. Take care of him to make your life a happy one together. So how do you create a space where both of you are happy? And not just your teacher, but everybody. But this is how the teacher teaches. It's not just, you know, in a monastic situation, the abbot has a jisha and an anja.

[42:12]

The jisha is like, you know, takes care of his business, and the anja makes the bed and makes tea and stuff like that. But actually, The abbot doesn't need to be taken care of, but he has this so that he can train these people. It's for them, it's not for the abbot. Training, how you take care of somebody, how you take care of not just this person, but how do you take care of everybody around you. That's what it's about. So, you know, I myself take care of myself better. I like taking care of myself. I don't like people taking care of me. But I do it for them. I don't do it very well. I don't do it very well. I really don't like it. I take care of myself. This proximity helps us to take care of each other.

[43:22]

Do I have a question? Why don't you like it? Well... It's hard for me to ask people to do something. If you like helping other people, then... It's good training for me to learn how to use somebody in that way. It's true. So I'm learning how to do that. Is there something bad about asking for help? No. No. Just that, you know, I have to learn how to do that. So that's my training. It's good training for me, actually. To be able to let people help me. Really good training for me. So that's what I'm working with. So it works both ways, actually. How do you let somebody help you? Because a lot of us don't like that.

[44:24]

And so it works both ways. It's a good point. People maybe who don't let themselves be helped, often there's a sort of arrogance around that. Yeah, I can do it myself. How do you deal with your arrogance? Yeah. So, you know, they're going to have to deal with mine. How do you deal with it? I will try harder. Too bad we don't have more time.

[45:04]

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