If anybody's sitting behind a pillar and I can't see them, you can't see me, you can shift around a little bit. I've been thinking about Suzuki Roshi's analogy of our practice to a kerosene lamp. It's not just Suzuki Roshi's analogy, but he used it.

[01:01]

He says, when you have a kerosene lamp, the wick and the kerosene and the shade and the adjustment all have to be taken into consideration. Otherwise you get a smoky lamp. If all of the parts aren't working together correctly, in just the right proportion, you get a smoky lamp. It doesn't smell so good. And if the flame is too high, then the chimney gets black. And if the flame is too low, then you don't get enough light.

[02:14]

And if you run out of kerosene, then the wick starts to burn. And if you don't clean the chimney, the light is very foggy. So there are a lot of things to take into consideration when dealing with a kerosene lamp. So if you want the lamp to burn at its best and to really emit its full light, if you want to bring the lamp to enlightenment, then you have to keep it in good shape. Then you have to pay attention to all the details of the lamp. If you cut the wick at a point, then you get a pointed light, which is not so desirable.

[03:18]

So you want to cut straight across on the wick and then just knock off the edges, knock off the ends. And then you get a nice round light. So he says that our Practice is just like taking care of a kerosene lamp. And how we pay attention carefully and take care of all the parts of our life in our practice is what makes the lamp function. When the lamp is functioning perfectly, it doesn't smell. It doesn't smell so much and it doesn't smoke. And you use the wick.

[04:20]

The wick gets used up very slowly. And the lamp is expressing itself perfectly. It's Buddha nature, perfectly. Buddha nature of the lamp is being perfectly expressed. You know, when the flame is in perfect combustion, then it looks very still. It doesn't flicker or move around, even though combustion, you know, is tremendous energy being used. It's fully functioning.

[05:23]

All the elements are fully functioning at their most capacity, but they're all relaxed. All the elements are relaxed. There's no contention or no compensation. So the flame has the appearance of standing still. And it's like, Kali Giri Roshi used to use the example of a top. When a top is spinning, perfectly balanced, it looks like it's not moving. You say, is that top moving? You know it's moving, but it's so perfectly balanced that it doesn't look like it's moving. It's just standing still. expressing itself perfectly.

[06:26]

And when we sit Zazen, our zazen posture is just like the top spinning, or like the lamp burning. Even though there's complete functioning and great dynamic activity, it looks like we're just sitting still. Right now it looks like we're just sitting still, but there's tremendous dynamic functioning. But there's very little flickering because we're so well balanced. All the parts are in harmony. So sitting in zazen is the easy part of our life.

[07:45]

Sitting cross-legged is actually the easy part of our life because we eliminate all the problems and just take care of this total situation in a very easy way. It's like, maybe like some kind of dynamic toy. And you put it into a box, put it all away, and it's no problem. But when you take it out, it starts to move all over the place.

[08:48]

Then you have some problem. So when we leave the zendo and take ourself out of the box, It's hard to keep that equilibrium and to keep our balance and to harmonize all the parts with our environment. So when we have some problem, we start to study ourself a bit, and we study Zen practice, and we look to a teacher. We say, he must know something, or she must know something, and can help us to do something.

[09:57]

A teacher can help you to maybe see what part of the lamp is out of adjustment. Maybe the main function of a teacher is to help you to see what part of your lamp is out of adjustment maybe the wick is too high, or maybe there's not enough fuel. Most of us have a problem with just keeping all those parts in balance, harmonizing our life with our sitting practice, and with our responsibilities.

[11:09]

When we first come to practice, we have some idea, I think we, most of us, not everybody, but we think about, we hear about enlightenment, Buddhist enlightenment, and Zen enlightenment, and that excites our ego. We get very interested because we like the idea of enlightenment. We like the idea of anything that makes us feel good. But when we actually start to practice, we find that we don't talk about enlightenment so much. We don't strive for enlightenment. what we strive for is unselfishness. And that's hard practice. Why I say unselfishness is in order to balance our lamp or our life, the most important element is clear seeing.

[12:34]

and no preference. When we begin to study Zen, we begin to learn about no preference. No preference means that we can shift to the necessary position If we have no preference, we can shift to the necessary position in order to create the balance, the right balance. Preference, what we usually call desire in Buddhism, or preference, tends to keep our lamp unbalanced because we want something excessive.

[13:40]

In Buddhism, desire has two meanings. Not two meanings, but kind of like two parts. One part of desire is the desire to sustain what's necessary. In other words, we have a desire to eat. We have a desire to sleep. And we have basic fundamental desires, which are necessary. But when we talk about, quote, desire in Buddhism, we're talking about something in excess, or in the realm of preference. I want, or I think I need, or I would like to have. This kind of desire is OK, too. But it always gets us in trouble and keeps us unbalanced. And it's the kind of desire that one thing leads to another.

[14:45]

And pretty soon we're no longer concerned with the balance. We're only concerned with our desire. And the less we have, the more we want when we get caught by that desire. So all the practices in Buddhism are to help us to see that and control it. As we know, desire is the second truth of the four truths. That's what gets us in trouble. So we always have to study the nature of desire. and know how to balance. We say get rid of, but get rid of means know how to strike the balance, how to harmonize all the parts. So preference means to have some excessive fixation on one of the parts.

[15:55]

And unselfishness means to give up our preference for fixation on one of the parts and to be able to take any part or adjust any part or be in any position in order to maintain the balance. So our lamp is not just ourself, but it includes everyone around us and everything around us. and to be able to adjust to all the circumstances as they change, moment after moment. Not only our self is changing, our so-called self, but each one of us is changing at the same time, and all of our surroundings are changing at the same time, and some things are very obvious and other things are very subtle. So to have the awareness of where is our place, in this constant change.

[17:02]

How do we take our place in this constantly changing, slippery realm? If we have too much desire, or if our preference is too excessive, then we get caught in our suffering, because we start losing awareness. of change and we start flowing with it. And when we start flowing with change, it causes suffering. If we hang on to anything too much, So one of the key factors of balance or harmony is involvement.

[18:38]

To be able to be involved in where you are on every moment. This is how we practice Zen practice. If you're not involved where you are completely on every moment, then you're missing your life. And there's no way that you can find that harmony. It's partly mental, but mostly it's intuitive. We find our way intuitively. If we have to think about everything down to the minutest detail. There's no time to do that. And there's no way that our thinking mind can comprehend it. So through Zazen, we develop our intuition, which senses, or knows, when things are unbalanced.

[19:56]

When you sit in Zazen, You don't have to think about it, you know. You know when the balance is wrong or how to compensate or when you lose your balance, you come back. And it becomes an intuitive kind of understanding. If suddenly you slip, you know, you intuitively find your balance without thinking. If you have to think about it, it's too late. So, through zazen, we should develop this kind of intuitive What can I say?

[21:02]

Harmonious feeling. So, our Zen practice is hard work and effort. If we hold back, we never find it. It only comes from deep involvement, which means risking your neck. Sometimes we talk about three levels of consciousness. One level of consciousness is pure consciousness, which is completely involved where our subjective self is completely involved with the object of confrontation.

[22:25]

whatever we're facing, we're one with that. And there's no particular reflection, just no discrimination. And we experience that at various times during Zazen, when everything's very still, and we're not thinking particularly, and we're not discriminating. There's just a completely harmonious feeling, no reflecting. And then the next level of consciousness is where there's some reflection. And we recognize that we're what we're doing in a reflective way. And the third level of consciousness is when we're thinking about thinking, about doing.

[23:30]

All three are okay, but the first level of consciousness is completely intuitive. We don't have to go through another step in order to experience. And this is what we develop in Zazen. Not that it's the only way, the only level of consciousness, but it's the most direct. And it's a total involvement. is completely giving up and being totally involved so that there's no separation between our activity and our subjective mind, body and mind.

[24:36]

And that's when we feel most whole and most complete. So when we do something, we do it without hesitation or without preference or without selfishness. We just naturally take the right place or do the right thing. But we can't always stay in that place and we're not always in that place. And so our practice takes the effort to direct ourself and to work very hard until we can break through to that place. And it's like, before you can become well balanced, you have to work at it.

[25:58]

You know, we say at the end of practice is effortlessness. But everybody wants that effortlessness before. You have to earn the effortlessness. You can't just have it. means putting yourself into that position over and over again until you become it. And then your practice becomes effortless without you didn't know it. You know, one day you realize that your practice has a kind of effortlessness to it. You can't know when that is. And it doesn't mean that the effortlessness has no effort in it. Effortlessness also has effort in it.

[26:59]

But it's on the level of effortlessness in that it's natural to you. And there are problems in effortlessness. Even when you get to the level of effortlessness, it still has its own problems. But what I mean by effortlessness, I'll define my term, what I mean by effortlessness is when you're completely involved in practice. What I mean, I don't want to use the word practice, but completely involved in life. There's no holding back and there's no wondering, what should I do? Or should I, shouldn't I?

[28:02]

It's just complete giving yourself. That's the fundamental step to effortlessness. And since selfishness is very low, low key, very little selfishness, then everything helps you. As soon as we step out of that selfish mode, everything comes to our aid. We find that we're supported by everything. But we're very afraid of that. So I think the root of selfishness is our fear. of being supported by everything. Because we need to hang on to something, because we're afraid to fall. If we just let ourselves fall, you know, but that's very hard to do.

[29:09]

So we keep hanging on, hanging on, And your teacher will come and hit you on the arm, stop hanging on so hard. So a teacher, sometimes your friend, sometimes your parent, sometimes your enemy, you think. Sometimes observer. many things depending on the situation. Sometimes doesn't know what to do. Sometimes gives up, but is always ready to help you. but I can't always help you.

[30:27]

Silence So, always, Srigi Roshi says, always keeping our lamp in adjustment, finely tuning our lamp all the time, is the way we practice.

[32:01]

The way to keep all the parts in harmony is to step back from our self-centered way. We had a talk about last Tuesday night about how to make decisions, how we make decisions in our practice. And one of the problems that we have is a problem of the teacher. The teacher causes a big problem in that area because the teacher says, I don't think that so-and-so should be the cook, because the cook for the students should be someone not who knows how to cook food, but someone who knows how to cook spiritual food, someone who has strong practice

[33:36]

I remember at Tassajara, lots of people used to come who wanted to work in the kitchen. Good cooks, you know, especially during the summertime. And they maybe had professional cooks, but we'd never let them work in the kitchen. Because cooking, in the monastery is not the same as cooking in a restaurant. It's just not the same. It looks the same, it's all food and so forth, and you try to do your best, but it has a different emphasis. At Eiheiji Monastery, or a big monastery in Japan, The head, the tenzo, is almost always a roshi.

[34:45]

Someone who has a very high spiritual, supposedly high spiritual practice. Because the food in the monastery is very, very important. How it's presented, how it's cooked. You're not just dealing with food, but you're dealing with people. who are working in the kitchen. So working in the kitchen for those people is their practice. And the person who is directing that cooking is also directing the practice of those people. So how you make the food is considered from many different viewpoints, and not just from the point of view of the food itself. So making that decision as to who should cook or who should do something in a certain area is not just a consideration of what's obvious in the task itself, but it's a consideration that takes in a wide variety of points.

[36:10]

So there are some kinds of decisions that can be made by almost anybody. And there are some other kinds of decisions on the other end of the scale that should be made very carefully, considering things that maybe the teacher should consider. Or maybe some of the older students or older members should consider. people with most experience. So when it comes to making decisions in a Zen practice, it's a little bit different than in our usual way of doing things. But sometimes they also get stuck in considering too much that way.

[37:31]

And we just have to go ahead and do something. That's okay too. And sometimes we just give a person a problem. Why don't they let me do that? Why can't I do that? But they want to do something. Someone will want to do something too much. If you want to do something too much, people usually say, I don't think you should do that. If you don't want to do something, people say, why don't we do that? We usually, that kind of response is what we have. So it's kind of like, Not Bugs Bunny, but Peter Rabbit.

[38:33]

Don't throw me in the briar patch. Oh, don't throw me in the... If you want to do something, then you have to use that kind of psychology. So sometimes we just have trouble here in that way. But usually we try to show, be a mirror for your own ego or your own preference or your own showing you or helping you to see your own problem with ego. Willingness to just accept.

[39:40]

Okay, I'll wash the toilet time after time. It's okay. I don't mind washing the toilet time after time. Why don't you wash the toilet? Why don't they ever give me a different job? How come I always have to wash the toilet? If you don't worry about it, accept it okay, washing the toilet isn't any different than being the Tenzo. Then you can become the Tenzo. If you don't mind washing the toilet time after time, then maybe they can become the Tenzo. They have pretty advanced practice. But when you start fuming, you know, why don't they let you be the tinfoil?

[40:41]

Then your lamp is smoking. Then your chimney is getting all black. Sometimes people go for years fuming. They never get it. Never quite get it. So anyway, we appreciate, always appreciate enthusiasm and willingness to accept things as they are and ability to harmonize. These are very important qualities. And if we practice in that way, we can very easily become enlightened.

[41:48]

Do you have any questions? Yes. This week, Jane Goodall announced her most recent findings with chimpanzees that she's been studying for 30 years and found that chimpanzees were practicing warfare upon each other. And I was so depressed. And I felt like, God, they're just as bad as humans. They're just as bad as humans. And I got very confused about human nature. And trying to understand this sort of dark side, I think you'd call it, or evil side. And for moments I would be very optimistic, thinking, well, that's what Zen practice is all about. Zen is when you sit there and you look not be attached to our Buddha nature.

[43:02]

And I'm really startled that after 5,000 years of civilization, or maybe even longer, that we haven't any stronger grip or really any greater understanding upon our nature. Me too Well Somehow I know that that's true you know and It's true that human nature is what it is. Chimpanzee nature is what it is.

[44:07]

Ants, you know, battle and so forth. Everything fights. That's human nature. But Buddhism is a kind of attempt to refine our nature. as much as we can, even though that's true. And to recognize the various sides of our nature, that we have hostility, and that even though we strive to perfect our nature, to perfect ourselves, we still have the dark side, no matter how good we get.

[45:19]

And it's something that we shouldn't forget. If you look at, in Christianity, at all the saints, they call themselves the worst sinners. But he's a saint. How can he call himself the worst sinners? He does all these good things. But the saint thinks of himself or herself as a sinner. That's being very, in Buddhism we don't speak in that way so much, but we see the various sides of our life. Someone who is in that position should be seeing from all sides, and they see the dark side of their nature, which to someone else may not look so dark, but it's there. And it's there in everyone. But some people, even though it's easy to say, well, if this is what human nature is like, why strive or why do anything about it?

[46:39]

Why not just enjoy yourself killing people? But it's not so satisfying. There may be an evolution of the race. Everything may be evolving. And our constant little bit of striving is perhaps slowly evolving things, the race. Maybe chimpanzees have come to as far as they can go. And human beings still have the same qualities as chimpanzees. But human evolution is not finished.

[47:41]

So we have to do it. We have to, even though We can never be perfect. We still have to continue to make that effort. And it's not that we're making an effort to be perfect. Part of our path is, you know, in Buddhism, Buddha is like a perfectly realized person. And Buddhists, when they study Buddhism, the Bodhisattva is a person who is taking the path of the Buddha to fully realize whatever that means. So, even though human beings

[48:51]

I have various animal qualities, or fighting demon qualities, demonic qualities. There's still Buddha quality. And that's what we, where we go, you know. I was talking to someone the other day who said, why do you bow to the Buddha? And I said, well, the Buddha is a piece of wood. It's not an idol. And I said, we bow to everything. We bow to the pillar. We bow to our seat. We bow to each other. And he said, well, OK, but why not just keep bowing to the pillar instead of to the Buddha? Logically, that makes sense. But it leaves out the consideration that you're facing the Buddha, you're not facing the pillar.

[49:57]

Your intention is toward Buddhahood. And of course, we still bow to the pillar, but it makes sense to bow to the Buddha, which is ourself, our higher nature, our Buddha nature. I used to think the same thing. I used to think, well why, if Buddha is everywhere, why single something out? But we have to have some direction. Even though Buddha is everywhere, we have to have some direction for our path. So the world, you know, is a very volatile place. And we narrow our path so that we don't get caught by the ups and downs of our nature.

[51:13]

And we can develop our nature, develop ourself according to the best part of our nature. and hopefully it helps people. There's a comment on our animal nature and chimpanzees. An article by Stephan Gould said that we're so closely linked to chimpanzees that with a little teasing of some chromosomes we could make Probably so. That's how close we are. I guess we have come a little bit. Be careful who you make love to. Well, we're very close to all the animals.

[52:33]

Not just chimpanzees, we're very close to all animals. So, we don't have to become like chimpanzees, so we can appreciate chimpanzees the way they are, and birds and dogs. Without becoming them, we have enough of their characteristics. But we easily fall into being animals. This is the six worlds, you know, the animal world, the fighting demon world, the heavenly world, the hell world. And the human world is our world. We don't have to worry so much about it. If we just try to be human beings, That's really what we're doing.

[53:37]

Our practice is how to be a human being. How to be what we are. That's Zen practice. We're very close to everything else in this world. and we have all the characteristics of all the other species in this world. So it's a kind of... We know what to do. You know, if we know that our task is to be a human being, then we know what to do and it's very interesting. Very exciting.

[54:50]

So,

[54:55]

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