If we let ourself indulge in it, at some point, hopefully, we can begin to realize what this teaching is really about. Mostly, when we enter, we're concerned about ourselves. We want something for ourselves, and that's natural and understandable. But at some point, when our practice matures, we realize that what we're doing is not just for ourselves, not just to help ourselves, not just to save ourselves, but to have our own form of understanding. The truth about practice is when we can forget about our own needs, If we think too much about helping ourselves, that becomes a kind of self-centered practice.

[01:08]

So then we feel, well, we should help others, which is very good. But that becomes a kind of self-centered practice. I am helping others. So, do we do practice for the sake of ourselves, or do we do practice for the sake of others? Either way, it's a little problem. So, when our practice matures, we realize that we just do it for the sake of self. When we take care of Buddha, when we take care of Dharma, and when we take care of Sangha, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha take care of ourselves and everyone else. This kind of space and practice is necessary.

[02:14]

The point of our practices and practice is to realize our self-assertiveness. And then just deal with that. Selfishness in Buddhism is a little different than selfishness ordinarily. Ordinary selfishness is kind of on the surface, when you think about self-satisfaction. But in Buddhadharma, selfishness refers to the fact that there's actually no self. No self to be centered around. Selfishness is a kind of self-centeredness.

[03:17]

But in actuality, the reason why it's a problem is because there's actually no self to be centered around. So when you know who you are, when you realize that there's no self-percentage around you, you can begin to live your life with some real freedom. Because everywhere you go, and everything you eat, you realize it's not yourself. You don't need to steal, because You don't need to kill because you're killing yourself. You don't need to lie because you're lying to yourself.

[04:22]

So, when you're done, the master's bowing, so you're 70% done, and you're in the meditation hall. Take care of yourself. They're not so worried about themselves, about what they like. And their old, classic life is dedicated to the welfare of all beings. So, sometimes we say, what do I do with my ego? We're very concerned about our ego. We're concerned about greed.

[05:35]

We're concerned about anger. And we're concerned about delusion. These three so-called forces come from It's like if you try and shake it off, it just clings more and more. with the morning training. If you try to stop thinking, you'll die then. And tell yourself, stop thinking. The more you try to tell yourself to stop thinking, the more you'll die. And the more you're not relaxed, the more you start nervous.

[06:44]

So the more you're trying to get rid of the ego, actually the more you focus on it. So, for us to know. Come on. It's really investing their money in our mind. That's a higher mind. But we offer our mind, our mind, greed, anger, and delusion, which we make an offering to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Our delusion is a delusion. When we truly make an offering, we have no ego. Sometimes it's called confession.

[07:50]

Catholics, people who don't like, former Catholics don't like this very much. I hope you're very involved. But actually, a confession means to acknowledge what you've done, to make an open acknowledgement of what you consider to be false. And once it is acknowledged, what you consider to be your fault, you can start from a clean place. So starting from a clean place is called beginner's mind. And the basis, the root of practice is beginner's mind. Meaning, moment to moment, you start from a clean place, from zero. And so, this practice, Zen practice, is a practice of renunciation, the practice of giving up.

[09:08]

Mostly, our life and security is based on acquiring. We need something to support ourselves. We need some kind of support in his life, and so we create a sense of self, because there is no self, and we create that personality, an ego personality, out of little bits of this and that, like a bird goes in, go around and take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and create a nest, then we can do the same thing. A little bit of schooling here, a little bit of schooling there, and we learn a little bit of this, and this kind of technique, and that kind of technique, and we take them station-wide, and we try to get ahead.

[10:12]

We try to make something of ourselves. And that's exactly it. We end up making something of ourselves. And what we make of ourselves is 10,000 people. To make something where something doesn't really exist. And at some point in our life we feel there's something missing here. And then we try to find his missing. And one of the problems is that the more that we try to build this person out of these pieces, the more isolated we become from life. We become very isolated from life, and we see all the things around us as an object.

[11:22]

We see ourselves standing, frankly, and everything around us is an object, outside of ourselves. And then, we wonder about our problems. Because we've lost sight of reality. We've lost sight of the fact that we don't really stand outside of this. So, renunciation is giving up what doesn't belong to us. giving up what's not necessary to hang on to, so that we always have our freedom. Freedom is actually to be unburdened.

[12:26]

And it's not so much objects that we're burdened with. We're burdened with desires, we're burdened with anger, feelings, And we're burdened with the fact that we cannot figure out what's going on. So we become burdened. Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha always says, lay down, he said, lay down the burden. Lay down the burden. When you're burdened, you lay down and you feel some relief. So we can go along for a long time with this burden. And then when we can finally lay it down, we feel some great relief. It's pretty hard to lay down this burden, given the complexity of our society.

[13:30]

The more complex it becomes, the more we feel relief. So, it's a problem. If we don't have so much, people will criticize us. But, real freedom is to be able to lay down Whatever comes up, immediately, and stand up, moment by moment, in reality. As soon as we have something, then we're partial to it. This is the problem. As soon as we own something, or as soon as we have something that we think is good, we become partial to it.

[14:34]

And as soon as you become partial, you've lost what you didn't find. You can no longer see things as they really are. And quite a point of practice is to be able to see everything as it really is, as we are. It's not so much that we need to know it. Sometimes people think that if you read about Buddha, you say, well, Buddha is our mission. And Buddha knows very little things happening in the universe. But that's not understood. There's an old story.

[16:04]

It's a poem in a collection called New Montagne. The story is very short story. When the bell rings, why do the monks all put on their seven-piece robes and go to the meditation hall? It's a good question. There are so many wonderful things to do in this world, in this world which is so vast and wide. Why do we do some activity which limits us? like meditation, zazen.

[17:10]

As you know, zazen is maybe the most restricted activity that we can do. I don't know of any more restricted activity than zazen. Putting your folds or legs in a certain posture and don't move, no matter what happens. Why do something like that when you can just run around in this big wide world? Last night and this morning it was raining, so it's pretty nice to be inside. But maybe this afternoon the sun will come out. I don't know, but it will be wonderful just to walk around in a wet, damp city with the sun shining Why should we practice some very formal kind of duty, restricting ourselves, putting ourselves under some kind of restraint?

[18:30]

After all, what we really want is freedom. That's what this country is all about. It's freedom. And the pursuit of happiness. If you can pursue happiness, pursue it. I wondered about pursuing happiness. Happiness is a result of something. joyfulness or happiness is a result of something. But if you see it as an object and run after it, it's a kind of fantasy, a kind of delusion. So when the bell rings, without thinking,

[19:37]

or wondering about it, or questioning it. The sound of the bell, a monk's just put on his seven-piece robe, go down to the meditation hall, and get embodied, cross their legs and sit and meditate. So, we have two sides of our life. One side is great unrestricted freedom to do whatever we want. And the other side is some kind of form, some kind of form to do, to actually make something happen. Unless we have some form, for what we do, nothing will happen.

[20:41]

So, sometimes we feel that if we didn't have any form, we'd be completely unrestricted. As a matter of fact, a lot of yogic practices tend to de-emphasize form in order to free the spirit. But in our practice, we pay close attention to form, to the form of our life, and limit ourselves in some way. And within our limitation is where we find our freedom.

[21:48]

And in order to find the most fundamental, widest freedom, we take the most restricted We can travel all over the world and outside of the world in order to find our city. We can travel over all kinds of dusty roads and many pathways looking and wondering. At some point, wherever we go, there's always space outside. So at some point, we have to just settle down with where we are, who we are, and where we are.

[22:56]

And when Shakyamuni Buddha, after he wandered around for many, many years, he finally just sat down and said, I'm not going to leave this spot until I understand. So he stopped his life of wandering and just sat down and said, until I really understand and I can move from this spot, And all of our Buddhist practice from that time comes from Buddhists sitting down, not moving from the spot. So, in our Zen practice, we have a form of sitting. A form of sitting down.

[24:04]

and not moving from the spot, putting our wandering to a stop, and just coming to terms with life without retreating, without escaping, without trying to figure it out. And over a period of time, Buddha Dharma has developed various forms of practice in order to help us to understand. So when we come to a place like Zen Center, We find that it's a very formal kind of practice.

[25:06]

People act in a certain way. They wear some kind of funny clothes, and walk with their hands in a certain way, and bow to each other, and they bow to their seat, and chant in a certain way. It does end in a certain way. And this is all a very formal kind of way to conduct ourselves. But we should understand that the teaching itself is bound up with form. The form is the teacher, a kind of teacher toy. If we know how to enter the form and to Be it one with form, it's no longer formalism, it's no longer formal practice. When we can feel comfortable and move with ease within the form, we don't feel this is formal practice.

[26:12]

It just feels like this is some kind of wonderful way to actualize myself and to relate to others. and to relate to everything around you. Actually, there is no special form of Zen practice. Zen practice actually has no special form. You can't see it. And in order to recognize what we're doing, in order to make visible and tangible and workable a practice, we have to form it, so that we have a way to do it.

[27:20]

of learning Zen is to think that to be able to enter into the form of practice, the various forms of practice, the so-called formal side of practice, that's how we enter. And when we leave the form of practice, to make all the forms that we encounter straight to life as the form of practice. So these are two sides. One side, we enter into certain recognizable forms. And the other side, we leave those forms, and all the forms of life become formless, sassy. So it's not that it is not restricted to sitting on a cushion in a race car. But how we encounter, after leaving the zen-do, how we encounter the various forms of life, and mingle with those forms, and take them on, and become those forms

[29:05]

is how we extend our practice, how we extend the meaning of true practice. So practice is not restricted to some little room, meditation hall, but the whole world becomes our meditation hall. There's no place that we can't practice. And there's no obstacle to practice. Sometimes people feel that they don't have the freedom to practice because they can't spend all of their time in meditation hall. We don't spend all of our time in meditation hall. And if you really understand how our practice is extended throughout the country, and it comes up and it's up, then no problem that you have, or no incident, nothing that happens in your life is an obstacle to realizing the truth, or to establishing your life in reality.

[30:29]

So, we come to practice for various reasons. We may hear about enlightenment and But it's pretty hard for us to know what that is until we actually absorb it through our pores. Meaning absorption. It's not enough.

[31:19]

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