Good morning. June, I mean, on May 8th, our spring practice period, our six-week practice period, begins with the one-day sitting. And I want to talk about the characteristics of practice period and what we could be concentrating on. And it really covers a lot of our understanding of how to practice.

[01:06]

I'm speaking about the practice period a little bit early, but unfortunately, I have to do that, because next weekend, we have our mountains and rivers, Cixin, Point Reyes, And I want to encourage you to come to that if you can. If you haven't done it before, it's quite wonderful practice to hike in with a pack over the hump and down by the seashore and spend the night. And during the day we do some zazen and we cook and study the Mountains and Rivers Sutra and sit zazen on the beach in the evening.

[02:14]

So it's really quite a wonderful thing. It's a little bit strenuous, but it's good for you. Take a little strenuous hike. once in a while. So I see that the sign-up sheet is down because of when we have sashin, which we're doing today, we usually take down the signs, but I want to urge the sashin director to put the sign back up so that if you... If you feel like signing up, you can. Anyway, so today I'm going to talk about our upcoming spring practice period. So I want to cover what we can focus on

[03:18]

during the practice period, how we pay attention to bringing our life together during those six weeks as a focus for practice. So this practice period in the spring helps us gather together our energy and our focus. hopefully helps us carry our practice through the whole year, sets us up for practicing for the rest of the year. So I have a list of characteristics and practices that will encourage you. So the first one is not to think of your practice as being in competition with other people.

[04:30]

You know, there's equality of practice and there's differentiation of practice. In equality, we're all the same. In differentiation, each one of us is in a different place. So when we sit Zazen, we're really all the same. But when we get up and start moving around, we see our differences. So we have a tendency sometimes to compare ourselves or our practice to other people. And that's a big mistake. I think that when we see how other people are practicing in a strong way, we can be encouraged by that. And that's a good quality to find encouragement when we see how strong someone else's practice is.

[05:33]

But we have to realize that someone may have been practicing 20 years in order to have that kind of quality. So we have to be careful. and know exactly what we can do, what our ability is, and what our experience is, and not try to do too much at one time. Our teacher Suzuki Roshi used to say, if you make a little bit of progress, that's a lot. You shouldn't try to make big strides in your practice all at once. but to practice little by little, making small accomplishments and not try to push yourself to get ahead in some way in competition with other people. So practice is not competitive, even though other people's practice can encourage us.

[06:39]

So if we understand that, we won't be intimidated by someone else's good practice, but encouraged by it. Another way of practice is to limit our activity. When we do practice period, this is six weeks, so there are certain requirements that we have. Given a lay practice, situation, you have to take into consideration your work, your family, your study, or whatever important activities are the building blocks of your life, as well as zazen and zendo activity. So we have to balance all those qualities, all those activities together in order to make a complete practice called Zazen practice, Zendo attendance, work, family, are all elements of practice.

[07:50]

And how we pay attention to all of these factors and balance them is what we call our practice. So we go back and forth to Zendo and to our daily life. so that our zazen practice and our zendo practice is integrated into our daily life and the qualities that we develop in zendo practice appear in our daily life as well. So in order to do that we have to limit our activities. In order to do practice period, you have to limit your activities so that you're not straying off. You have to make some commitments. So Zazen practice, Zen practice is based on commitments. If you don't have commitment, it's not really practice.

[08:58]

You may be sitting Zazen, once in a while or whatever, but unless there's a commitment, it's not real practice. Because real practice, true practice, is practice which is not, which has determination. In order to set yourself up, in order to set up a practice, you have to decide which days you're going to sit Zazen. And then you put that on your calendar. If it's for the practice period, a six week period, you put those days on your calendar and you mark them there. And then when that comes up, that's what you do. Instead of saying, well, I don't think I'll do that today. That's not commitment. Commitment is honoring your

[10:00]

promise to yourself. So this is the underlying strength of practice. So you should be careful what you commit yourself to. In our busy lives, you know, there's so many things demanding our attention that we have to make a limitation. So practice period means making a limitation on your activities. And you have to be willing to do that so that the practice period becomes a real focus for that period of time. And you have to do that taking into consideration all your other activities. So how you balance all your activities together. And then you realize what you can do and what you can't do.

[11:03]

You may, you should, it's not a good idea to make promises to yourself which you can't keep. We may think, well, I'll do, you know, sit zazen every morning and every afternoon or something, but then it's unrealistic. So please be realistic. If you do something unrealistic, you become discouraged. So, Balancing your activities is practice. And maintaining that balance. And you have to realize that you're doing this for a certain length of time. And then at the end of that time, you can reconsider what your commitments are. But during that time, you should keep your commitments. So that means creating a reasonable schedule for yourself, and it has to be enough so that it makes a difference, but not so much that you can't do it, that it's beyond, over your head.

[12:15]

And then there's home practice. family practice, work practice. So to apply the principles of zazen to all of your activities. And then there's helping others and helping yourself. Sometimes we think that bodhisattva practice is just to help others, but it's actually to help others as well as to help ourselves. Sometimes when we think that we're practicing, but not overtly helping others, we think that it may be selfish practice. But when we practice for our own development, it also helps others. And when we're helping others, it also helps ourself.

[13:21]

we may feel that helping others is selfless practice. But selfless practice also includes helping ourself. If you don't help yourself, then someone else is gonna have to help you. So you have to take care of yourself and you take care of others as well. So that's very much a part of our practice. Take care of your, don't neglect your family, don't neglect your friends while you're practicing, but also don't neglect yourself. And then there's paying attention to how greed, ill will, and delusion arise. When you see, when you're paying attention, you can see how greed arises in your life. and we can see how ill will arises in our life, and we can see how delusion, it's harder to see how delusion arises.

[14:30]

If we see how delusion arises, it's no longer delusion. If you say, I have no delusion, that's a delusion. So we recognize the delusion in our life, of our own mind. This is most important. thing is to realize how delusion arises in our own mind, and how we don't see reality, and we don't pay attention, and how we do things mindlessly. So paying attention to these, these are called the roots of evil, evil roots, greed, ill will, and delusion. And then we should also notice how loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity arise in our mind, in our practice, in our activity.

[15:31]

So both sides are important. Loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity are called the four divine abodes in Buddhism, the Brahma-viharas. So we should really pay attention to that. Loving kindness means to actually dwell in kind state of mind, a loving and kind state of mind. So that whoever you're relating to, or object, not only people, but objects, animals, whatever your surroundings present, you treat with love and kindness.

[16:37]

So that becomes your abode, the place where you live. And compassion is to feel what other people are feeling. To identify with the feelings of others. Sympathetic joy is to feel pleased with someone else's success. That's a difficult one sometimes. You know, sometimes we feel jealous or envious or whatever, but to actually feel joyful when someone else has success and to allow that to make you feel joyful. And equanimity means, is a kind of love

[17:43]

Actually, it's pure love because it doesn't take sides or it doesn't have any preference. And it's simply the balanced state of mind, which isn't swayed one way or another, but simply dwells in, your mind is simply dwelling in pure goodwill. It's even beyond that. It's not being swayed or not getting overbalanced by success or failure. And then we take the time to study. You have to take some time to study, even if it's a little bit. When we have our practice period, we're going to study Master Dogen's Genjo Koan, the koan that Dogen developed, which is the koan of our daily life as it appears moment by moment.

[19:00]

So we have five classes Thursday nights. Then there's being mindful. Being mindful means to always know what you're doing. Always being aware of what you're doing. And being aware of when self-centeredness arises, being aware of when me arises, myself and I, the three, we're three people, me, myself, and I, being aware when these three arise, these three qualities, which are egotistical. knowing when you're being egotistical, to have the bare awareness.

[20:06]

This is mindfulness. Mindfulness is bare awareness without prejudice, without partiality, but simply seeing everything very clearly as it is, not trying to escape or modify. You know, when we look in a mirror sometimes, the first glance If we come upon a mirror by accident and see ourself, we really see ourself clearly for a moment. We say, who's that? And then we recognize who it is. And then our mind modifies it to wanting to look like what we think we should look like. And then that's what we see. It's very interesting. We can see things, our mind can change the appearance of things that we're looking at. So to be able to see clearly without partiality or modification, not so easy, especially when it's looking at ourself.

[21:11]

Sometimes we see ourself in a movie. Ooh, that me, ooh. Do I look like that? Interesting. So, One thing that we can do, that I urge you to do, is to take on a personal practice, such as a precept, like not praising yourself and lowering others. Sometimes, this is one of the precepts, I think this is the sixth precept, not praising yourself at the expense of others. So that sometimes we want to be a little bit higher than others. So in order to get a little bit higher, we put somebody else down. And that kind of makes us above, right? So putting people down is a kind of habit sometimes that helps us to feel like we're a little bit higher or a little bit better.

[22:22]

So we have to be careful of that. So there are 10 precepts that we can practice. You can just take one precept that you feel would be helpful and practice that precept, like not to withhold spiritual or material aid, not to harbor ill will, or not to lie, not to steal, so forth. What do those mean? So if you take one precept and just concentrate on that one, it will be a good focus. And then, there are other practice choices that you can concentrate on, like opinionatedness is one.

[23:48]

If you feel like you always have to add your opinion to something obnoxiously, You can be mindful of when does, do I have to say this? Do I have to put that in? Is it necessary to say that? And another is taking over, like taking over a conversation or inserting yourself into a conversation, needing to be heard or needing to be, take control in some way. And then there's retreating, like hanging back, you know, being kind of afraid to assert yourself. So if you feel that you're always kind of hiding and you never say anything, to actually take a chance and come out and say something. Risk being seen, risk being heard.

[24:51]

I think that's important. And then there's critical mind, which is always finding fault. Whenever anybody does something, you always find some fault with it. This one's always doing that, and this one's always doing this, blah, blah, blah. So it's really self-criticism projected on other people, mostly. So when you find yourself criticizing or being critical, all the time, be mindful that that's what's happening and see why that's coming up. And then there's making value judgments about things. This is good and this is bad, this is right and this is wrong. And then there's gossip. Gossip, you know, talking about other people all the time and just can't wait until you find something to talk about.

[25:52]

concerning other people. So when that comes up, to be mindful, to notice when that comes up. Then there's the, you know, sometimes the inability to say yes, which is a kind of being recalcitrant to take a stand or commitment. Can never say yes, you know, to something. And then there's the one that can never say no to anything, which is the inability to feel left out. If you can't say no, you always want to be included. And just see what it feels like to not have to do that. You don't have to be present for everything. And then there is forgiveness.

[27:03]

Can you forgive? Do you hold grudges? Do you hold anger, resentments, and so forth? Forgiveness enables us to have some freedom because when we hold grudges, when we are angry, when we are too assertive with criticism, then we become attached to that feeling. And then we become captivated by it. So it limits our freedom. To be able to forgive is to unattach so that we have some freedom. But often we don't want the freedom. And then often we feel loyal to our resentments. If I let go of my resentment, I won't feel loyal. This is a big problem.

[28:04]

This is, you know, revenge, right? Vengeance. And so everybody, people, you know, destroy each other through vengeance when all they have to do is act out of forgiveness to let go of the necessity to destroy each other. But we have to be loyal to our vengeful mind. That's a big problem. So what is this loyalty? It's ego, loyal to egotistical feeling, self-centeredness. So that's very important in our Buddhist practice, is forgiveness. So, you know, the thing about all of these practices is letting go and starting over again.

[29:10]

This is called the practice of shikantaza. Practice of shikantaza, which is the same thing as kenjo koan, and goes by many other names, means to appear fresh and reborn on each moment, freshly appearing on each moment, vitally new. And it also means letting go in each moment, letting go and appearing new. So, it's renewing your life moment by moment without hanging on to anything and allowing the life around you to be renewed moment by moment without relying on anything, without being attached to anything.

[30:17]

And so then there's forgiveness. I mean, there's repentance, right? Repentance means to see a fault and then let go of perpetuating the problem. Let go, when do you stop? Someone has to stop. And then, Repentance means, in our practice, to see the problem, let go of the cause, and turn around and go in the right direction. So it's simply logic. You let go of the cause, you turn around, and you go in the right direction. Then there's practicing with a vow of intention rather than being pulled around by karma.

[31:31]

Being pulled by karma means simply following your instincts or following your desires and creating habitual problems, habit energy problems. Practicing with vow or intention is called way-seeking mind. So it means taking our desire and turning desire toward way-seeking mind instead of just following one desire after another. So it's so easy to be pulled off. The thing about, it's easy to be pulled off of the path because there's so much enticement.

[32:36]

We're being sold a bill of goods overwhelmingly, moment by moment, and things look really interesting. There are more books than you'll ever read. There's more music than you'll ever be able to listen to. There are more stuff that you want to do that you can't do But you try to do it anyway. So to be able to limit, know what your limitations are, and practice through intention rather than simply taking up one thing after another and never really seeing anything through. So then there's doing one thing at a time, to do one thing thoroughly. There's the samadhi of simply doing one thing thoroughly on each moment.

[33:44]

My old teacher, Suzuki Roshi, used to say, you people have a saying to kill two birds with one stone. But what we do is kill one bird with one stone. And then there's patience, which is the ability to just be still without anticipation. So to practice just being still without anticipation, you can practice that moment by moment throughout your whole life. And it goes with being centered, to always be centered and to pay attention to breathing. So being centered, having long patience, practicing Shikantaza and mindfulness and so forth.

[34:51]

And then there's setting an example. When we have practice period, we have a head student called the shuso, means the head seat, persons that sits in the head seat, which will be Greg Denny this year. And the practice of the head student is to set an example for practice for everybody. And so it's a position of responsibility. But it's an example for everyone. We should all have responsibility. We should all take responsibility for the practice. It's not, you know, it looks like I'm leading the practice period or something like that. We're all leading the practice period. Everyone is. As long as you take responsibility and really set an example for everyone, set an example for yourself and for all of us, you're leading the practice period, as well as following.

[36:03]

So leading and following, you say, to follow the wave and drive the wave at the same time. So then I have here, practice period is like a tune-up. that gathers us together, gathers your mind together, gathers your practice, which tends to spread out over the air. We tend to leak. So this is like bringing it all together and plugging up the leaks and making a good effort. So I wanna encourage everyone, all of our members, to attend the practice period. So, do you have a question?

[37:05]

Anybody? Bill? Well, first you recognize what the problem is. And then you realize that your feelings about your grudge or your hard feelings, so to speak, or an impediment to your freedom because you're tied to this person through those feelings. So it doesn't mean that you'll necessarily be friends or that everything's all made up, which could happen, but it means that you release

[38:18]

yourself from having to be tied to this person. And you release them from being tied to you. But at the same time, what that does can create a bond that is not ill will, but a bond of goodwill. Usually forgiveness creates a bond of goodwill rather than a bond of ill will. So it's called transformation. Forgiveness is transformation. We have ill will, but the same energy that creates the ill will is the energy that creates the good will.

[39:32]

So it's simply a matter of transforming energy. And when we hang on to our old perceptions, we keep the person who we have, toward who we have ill will, in that place. So when we can transform ill will into good will, we let go of that, those perceptions and allow for movement. You can all write a letter home and forgive your parents It's transforming. Yeah.

[40:38]

I'm feeling kind of tired and that I'm already making a lot of effort. Yes. How can I make extra, what sort of extra effort should I make for my practice? Well, you know, some people are already making the same effort that they would be making that you would ask someone to make for a practice period. If you're already doing that, you don't have to do much more. But just continue to do that. So you have to be careful here. We're not asking anybody to do more than they can do. So some people are already at their maximum, so just stay there. But you might want to add a little something. What you do is find your limitation, find where the edge of the envelope is. If everyone is doing the same as what you're doing already, that would be good.

[41:59]

So you just stay as an example of good practice. Oh yeah. You said something a few years ago. Zen student, and you thought a little bit and you said, well, if on January 1st, you make a resolution to sit Zazen three hours a day, and for 364 days of the year, you sit Zazen three hours a day, and on December 31st, you sit Zazen two hours and 59 minutes, you're a bad Zen student. You make a resolution to sit 5 minutes, sometime in the year.

[43:08]

And you go all year. And then on December 31st, it's 11 o'clock. And you say, oh, right. I said I was going to do this. And you sit down. And you sit 5 minutes. Then you're a good STEM student. That's pretty good. You can see we like people to maintain their commitments. So, speaking of maintaining commitments, my guess is that it's better to set an intention, if that means making a commitment, and possibly failing, and keep trying, as opposed to not making the commitment, or either making one that is the same as what you would do anyway. Yeah. Yes.

[44:11]

Make a commitment and fail. It's better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all. That's what some people say. Very few of us know what it's like to not have done that. So, yes? I hear the word leaking a lot. Leaking. Leaking, yes. And it always puzzles me what that means. Well, if you keep your energy within the limitation that you set, then the power of your practice becomes very strong.

[45:25]

But if your energy is going off in many different rivulets and streams, then the power of your practice just gets dissipated. So when you keep it contained, there's a lot of strength, a lot of power, a lot of spiritual power. And that's not leaking. If a person has got a thousand different activities that they do every week, then that might be because they're leaking. They spend five minutes doing this, five minutes doing that, as opposed to maybe three activities a week. You know, people vary in their abilities to maintain activities.

[46:27]

Some can do a thousand and not leak and others can only do three. Yeah, so there's no formula. It's simply getting carried off in some way. So if all those thousand activities are included as commitment, then and when it's able to actually deal with them thoroughly one by one, okay, but if it's simply taking up interesting things one after another, then the center gets neglected and life becomes peripheral. even though there are many things that excite us, you know. So we feel that when we're excited, we're living, right? Well, then we go from one exciting thing to another in order to maintain our, what we call living thoroughly.

[47:39]

So we're simply lighting little fires under ourself all the time, but they don't go anywhere. And then in the end, We wake up one day and we say, what's my life about? It's called midlife crisis, old life crisis, so forth. That is forgiveness. Yeah. A lot of my energy ever since I was a child was all tied up in being upset with my mother. She died 27 years ago. And still about a week ago, I once again was talking to my daughter and told another story about something mean my mother did to me. So I was thinking, you know, it's not transparently clear how to resolve that energy and stop having it be wound up

[48:45]

So I thought I'd throw in a question about that kind of situation. But I also have an idea. Check it out. Well, one thing would be just to stop talking like that. Like, if I notice myself once again bringing up a story about my mother did a mean thing to me, just don't say it. I mean, it's not so easy to figure out how to resolve that karmic energy, right? Mm-hmm, that's right. So your mother had some reason for doing that, even though she doesn't know what it is herself. It's good to understand, try to understand why your mother was mean. But even though you can't understand it, you forgive anyway, because you know there's some reason behind it that's bigger than your mother. And I remember how I, Resented my parents and one one night I had a dream and I was in this dream and there's a golden light and my My mother my father and my brother We all had our arms around each other, which we never did ever and we were nodding Then of course, of course, of course

[50:15]

After that, I never had any problem at all. I didn't even have to forgive anybody. It was just like, you know, all this is nonsense. The whole thing is just bullshit. There's no need to resent. There's nothing to resent. So you're suggesting I have a golden dream? But we just hang on to this stuff, and we lawn it like a bone, like a dog with a bone. Once I was asked to play at my mother, and that was very powerful, just to know that it was her. Yeah, yes, that's right. And it brought out a lot of stuff, and I had to think what it was like to be my mother.

[51:17]

Yeah, we looked in the mirror. There's my father's face, my mother's face. Anyway, so, you know, we can unburden ourselves. That's practice, is to let go. You know, we say, well, in practice, what are we gonna get? Nothing. The fortunate thing is we can let go. That's what practice is, not getting something, it's letting go. That's what it's about. When we sit zazen, we don't get something, we simply let go of everything. Free fall. Into the universe, just jump into the universe. Anyway, so I encourage all of us to

[52:17]

participate in the practice period.

[52:21]

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