I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagatagarbha's words. Morning. This morning, the first part of our talk is addressing our kids. We have a good number of kids today. One, two, three, four, five, six and a half. How many? Is that so? Wow. You're getting up there. Well, what I'm going to talk about today is what is a cookie? Is that a good subject? You do? What is it? If something is round, it's crunchy and has chocolate chips.

[01:08]

Well, some cookies have chocolate chips, but not all cookies. I will know. What's this? What's that called? It's called a Fig Newton. God, imagine naming a cookie something like a Fig Mouton. That's because it's filled with figs. You know what a fig is? No, some do and some don't. This is a chocolate cookie, kind of, but the chocolate is very refined. This one is a Oreo cookie. It's got cream and milk. OK, so I don't see any cookies with chocolate chips.

[02:12]

But anyway, there's still cookies. So what is a cookie? What is this cookie? What's this cookie made out of? Chocolate. Boy, all these different things, but they're all right. Everybody's correct. Dough. So, what is dough? Dough is like... it's with that thing. Okay. So, what... Let's see what else is in this cookie. Dough is... kind of grain called wheat. Right? Like bread. Wheat. And wheat comes from where? The earth. Wheat grows up on like grass.

[03:18]

Tall grass. And it has seeds. Okay They shake all of the seeds out of the grain and grind them up and it's called wheat and then you put The grain is like all powder and that's all dry So then they put what into it? water, and that makes it wet. So, then they, but if it, when it's dough, it's heavy, because it's water and earth. Then they have to put air into it to make it light. So, you knead it until it becomes very fluffy with air, because all this air in makes it very fluffy.

[04:28]

And then you put it in the oven and it makes it very hot. And that cooks. So a cookie is made out of five things. Earth. Earth. Water. Earth. Water. Air. Fire and one other thing. Water! No, I said water. Chocolate? Well, there's one other thing that really makes it into a cookie. No. No. No. My idea. Without my idea, it's not a cookie.

[05:33]

My idea invents the cookie. So, earth, water, air and fire and mind. My mind makes it into a cookie. If you didn't think this was a cookie, If you didn't think this was a cookie, what would it be? So we call this a confection. Can you say that? Confection. That's a big word. Yeah, that's right. It means something put together. means something put together with a lot of different elements, and if any one of those elements is left out, it's not a cookie. Think about it.

[06:42]

But cookies need other things, it needs sugar, right? Sugar, sometimes a little oil to help it along, some eggs maybe, milk, yeah. But, what is chocolate? Chocolate is yummy! That's right! Chocolate and sugar! But what is yummy? Chocolate. What is yummy? Chocolate. Tell me, tell me. Yummy is chocolate and chocolate is yummy. But that's just going around in a circle. What makes it yummy? My idea. My idea makes it yummy. My idea cookie?

[07:46]

My idea cookie. That's right. So this is my idea cookie. That's exactly right. So, Earth fire, water, and air. Earth contains fire, water, and air. Air contains earth, fire, and water. Air contains fire, water, and earth, and so forth. So they all contain each other. Therefore, there's no such thing as just earth by itself, or fire by itself, or air by itself, or water by itself, or mind by itself. all those are necessary to make a cookie. And what's the conclusion? Yummy. So, you have earned the result. One by one you may come up ... Will you pass these out, Alex? You've earned your cookie.

[08:48]

I hope it's enough. Okay, one left over for me. I'm sure everybody got one. What about taste buds? Taste buds. What about taste buds? In your mouth there are these little buds. They're called taste buds. What are taste buds connected to? Your tummy. It's connected to your tummy. But it's also connected to your Mind?

[10:00]

Mind. It's also connected to your mind. Because you think, this tastes good. And so is your mind a taste bug? And is your heart a taste bug? What? Is your heart a taste bug? Oh, that's an interesting question. Well, let's look at your heart. Your heart is earth because it's solid. I mean, not solid, but it's part of your body. But it's also wet because your blood is water, earth. I mean, it's wet. Did you know that your body is mostly what? Mostly water.

[11:03]

I knew that. You knew that? Well, you're putting your hand on your heart, right? But, well, there are two different hearts. One is the heart that pumps your blood through your body. Except it's not shaped like a heart. And the other one is the way you feel about and things. So we say, my heart goes out to you, means I feel sympathy for you, or I love you, my heart goes out to you. So the love heart and the physical heart, they're two different hearts. Some people say, my liver goes out to you. But we say our heart. So yes, our body is the same as a cookie.

[12:08]

Our body is the same as a cookie. Because we have to have water, we have to have solidity, earth, and we have to have fire, which is heat, and we have to have air, which is breath. And all of these elements together make our body, mind, cookie. We used to have a song, when I was a little kid, it went like this, Lookie, lookie, lookie, here comes Cookie, walking down the street. I don't know if you've ever heard that song before. But that's our cookie body. And our body, our cookie gets cooked. I never thought of that before. But why is it called a cookie? Why is it called a cookie? Maybe because it gets cooked?

[13:10]

Yeah, because it gets cooked, probably. But when does it have a... It's a little thing that gets cooked. You know, so it's a cookie. But I don't get it because it's called a cookie. A cookie. How about a cupcake? How about a muffin? A cupcake is a little cake in a cup. A little paper cup. So it's a little cake. OK. I think our lesson is over. It's just beginning. Thank you. It looks like a little cake, but it's little. Do you want to continue? You can stay if you want. Thank you. Turn it over.

[14:14]

Thank you, Alex. So now what are we talking about? Donuts? Well I was going to say a cookie is not, it could be a hockey puck. I thought they'd laugh at that. I forgot it. So a cookie actually is just like us, except that without a mind of its own.

[15:17]

Confection. We say a person is a confection of various elements put together without a solid core, just like a cookie. I have a lot of crumbs there, sorry about that. So we have problems with this because we want to feel that we're more solid than we are, you know, more substantial than we are. What I've been thinking about is how do we This is not exactly changing the subject, but it's putting it on a different level. How do we practice after practice period?

[16:23]

We just finished our six-week practice period where we practiced a little more intensely and more focused. The purpose of practice period, one purpose of practice period, is to bring us together and refocus our practice so that to give some inspiration for how we practice for the rest of the year until we have our Rohatsu Sashin. How do we renew our practice and keep it fresh and vital? That's maybe the question. How do we keep our practice vital and fresh? As we get older, we tend to think about our life in a different way.

[17:25]

We tend to think maybe we get ill in some way or something happens in our life that changes. And the way we've been moving, so to speak, or conducting our life as if it would never end, suddenly we see things in a different way and we have to adjust to the reality of life, of our life. And then we start thinking about how we are losing certain parts of our life or certain parts of our vitality and maybe we're going to die at some point. That could happen. So we don't have to be too old to actually get to that point if we get sick or when we see people around us having problems.

[18:29]

So how do we make that adjustment to looking at life in a real way, because we live our life in a kind of dream. We dream and think up all kinds of things to do, and we even have what we feel are secure ways of adjusting our life so that it looks like things are going pretty well, but it's really easy to avoid the reality of our life, the fundamental reality of our life, which is that we're all confections, where elements put together with no actual inherent existence.

[19:37]

So we have to understand that instead of being self-centered we have to find out how to be life-centered. kind of thing. Self-centered is to feel that we have this real self which is, we'll just keep on going. But life-centered, to be life-centered is to allow ourself to see that all of the aspects, all of the elements of life are my real self. So, we have this fear of when the elements come apart. There's a koan with a commentary, I can't remember the koan exactly, but the commentary is when all the elements come apart, if you don't understand what's happening you'll be like the crab or the lobster put into the hot water.

[20:55]

when you're still alive. So crabs, that's the way they cook crabs, is they put them in live, the hot water. So you get into hot water if you don't understand what's really happening in your life and who you really are, who we really are, and what our true self is. The purpose of our practice is to understand and practice in a way that is based on our true self. So we're always talking about true self, fundamental self. What does that mean? We say there is no inherent self in things, there's no inherent self in things. So what we call my self or my I is something that's put together through various elements, and those elements will come apart and disintegrate.

[22:11]

So there's something, some vortex that brings those elements together, which we call myself, and then they will disintegrate, and then what? Where am I then? So if we only relate to ourself as a self, then we have fear and dread of losing the self. But if we realize that our life is the life of the universe, not just this particular life. to study the Buddha Dharma is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. So forget means dropping body and mind. But it doesn't mean throwing something away.

[23:15]

It means simply seeing how everything in the universe is your self. And not being self-centered This word self-centered or selfish is to be preoccupied with this self. So when we allow ourself to drop the self, actually, then the true self shines through. We are connected to everything. We're totally connected to everything. We are everything. In most religious practices, God is outside and we are inside, so to speak, or we are outside God, or someplace. There's this division. So, we don't speak about some deity, because if we speak about a deity, it means that the deity is separate, something outside.

[24:26]

We can speak of the deities being inside, as well, but for a Buddhist understanding there's no separation, so we don't speak about something outside. We can think about separation only when we think about myself as something substantial. I think about myself as something then everything is separate. So, for Buddhists, there's no inside or outside. We can think about inside and outside, but inside and outside are just comparative values. The inside of one thing is the outside of something else. The outside of something is the inside. There's no real inside or outside.

[25:28]

It's not like God is within you or something. We say God or Buddha. Some teachers say God or Buddha. They include God in the same way they would speak about Buddha, but Buddha is not a deity. Buddha is the Dharmakaya, which is the whole thing. And there's nothing outside of the whole thing. There's nothing inside of the whole thing. The whole thing is not a thing. But at the same time, it's total fullness. So, nothing is really lost. We may feel that we're going to lose something or gain something. We don't have the idea of gaining or losing. then it's simply the transformation of life.

[26:38]

Life is just always transforming itself through these various manifestations called ourselves. So if we identify with life itself, which includes what we call death, there's nothing lost or gained. It's just all one piece. In zazen, we let go of everything. The purpose of zazen is simply to let go of everything, drop, the dogma called dropping body and mind. And then, what's left? Breath. In this particular life, it's breath. It's beyond thinking. beyond our feelings and our thoughts, a bigger sense of things.

[27:46]

So we become very concerned about our life in this world and about how we can manage ourselves. Because we're born into this world and at some point we get stuck in the fact that we won't be here at some point. How can that be? Life is a trick. Some people have said that. Life is a dirty trick. We can't continue in the same way. But if we allow ourself to live through all the manifestations of our life, all of the changes, we can see that there's some logical reasoning, even though it's beyond our logic, of how the cycle of what we call birth and death is continuous.

[29:02]

I mean, if we look around at our world and how it works. We can see how birth and death is just a continuum. And it happens on each moment. Each moment's breath is a whole lifetime. Inhaling, we come to life. Exhaling, we let go. I remember Suzuki Roshi talking about exhaling is more important than inhaling. And I thought, well, wait a minute, aren't they both important? One is as important as the other, but if we allow ourself to exhale, then without expecting to inhale, we know a little something more about life.

[30:10]

Because, okay, now what? But if we're clutching to life, then we get excited about, when am I going to inhale again? I remember I was on Maui about a week ago and I was snorkeling and I got a little bit of water until I snorkeled and it kind of, you know, I got excited about that because I didn't want to inhale and I didn't want to, I could exhale, but it makes you, it gets you a little bit panicky when that happens. So I realized, you know, this does happen to everybody. We get a little bit panicky. when we think about exhaling and not inhaling again. Air. Inhaling something else besides air. Not so good. So this is something that we're all faced with.

[31:16]

But at the same time, if we practice letting go, and also practice coming back, we get some feeling about how to let go and let life take its course, because even though I let go of my breath, it comes back. It's something that happens without my trying to do anything. So to say I am breathing is a little bit off, because breathing is me, breathing is Breath is life itself sustaining itself. I don't have to do anything, unless I have a problem doing that.

[32:19]

So, how do we practice? We were studying Prajnaparamita, Prajnaparamita Sutra. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. That which is form is emptiness. That which is emptiness is form. How do we practice that? You know, somebody was saying to me, I get tired of chanting that sutra, you know, can't we make it into a song or something that makes it more interesting? I understand that. You know, you chant the same sutra over and over and over again. But we have to realize this sutra is our koan. People say in Soto Zen, you know, people don't have koans, which is not right because the Prajnaparamita Sutra that we chant every day is our koan. We chant this, our koan, every day and then leave. And this koan is just embedded in our consciousness and works within us without having to think about it.

[33:35]

And it's Dogen's Genjo Koan, which is the koan of daily life. It's the koan of each breath, form and emptiness. It's the koan of form and emptiness. In each breath is that koan. Every activity is that koan. What is the emptiness and the form of each moment's activity? So if you look for emptiness, you will not find anything, because emptiness is not a thing. It's simply the life that permeates everything. So if we want to look for emptiness, we have to find it in form. But we think the forms are solid. The forms are not solid, just like the cookie.

[34:42]

cookie is just a beautiful thing, tasty thing, like our life, and then it gets eaten up. We're constantly being eaten up by the universe. We're just another cookie for the universe, frankly. And our eyelids are thousands of little creatures that are cleaning our eyes. Every time we do this, we're killing something. So everything is eating everything else in some way, everything being devoured by something. And so the universe sustains itself through birth and death, what we call birth and death. It's wonderful, but we think it's awful. We can think it's awful, but it's not so awful. There are interesting stories about in the beginning of Buddhism, I don't know if these stories are really true or not, but they're indicative of something, of how if you read the early sutras, the arhats who are Buddhist disciples and their disciples

[36:08]

would sometimes feel so much compassion that they would offer themselves to a nursing lion or a nursing tiger as food. That's going too far. But there's a kind of example of understanding how everything is really food for everything else and offering how do we offer ourself to this as food for the different kinds of food, you know, there's thought food, there's feeling food, there's physical food. So we're always offering. Dana is, Dana Paramita is Prajnaparamita. Dana Paramita is the basic practice of the Prajnaparamita Sutra.

[37:11]

It means totally giving yourself. And when you totally give yourself to every activity and to everyone around you, you forget yourself. Sometimes we say, if I have a big problem, what do I do about it? from obsessing on a big problem. Well, help somebody that has a bigger problem than you. We think our problem is the biggest, but it's not. We do have problems, and they are important. If we extend ourself, the more we extend ourself, the more we can let go of ourself, and the more freedom we have.

[38:16]

And we have the freedom to live and die. So dana means giving yourself away. I mean, money or possessions are part of it, but the main thing is how you give yourself. and how you give yourself away so that you're just not hanging on to yourself. So you're free to be at the service of life itself. So this is how we practice. So it's called, when you can do that, it's entering the samadhi, the komyozo zamai. Komyozo samadhi, which is samadhi of infinite light. It's simply expressing light all around you and allowing that to manifest in the world, free of self.

[39:28]

So this is really our practice. And when we can do that, we will be afraid of dying, but it's not the same. It's really not the same. If we practice breathing and letting go, if we practice letting go, and of course, taking up is part of letting go, then we have a lot of freedom. And when we practice breathing in zazen, when zazen is very painful and you don't know what to do, simply the only thing that saves you is breath, following the breath, one breath at a time. You're living one breath at a time rather than moving. And we go deeper into ourself and forgetting ourself, letting go of ourself.

[40:36]

This is what zazen is. We don't want to say you should have a lot of pain, but pain is just part of life. If we don't experience pain in life, we're missing something. But we all do, so not a problem. So, we can find our composure in Zazen, and we can find our composure in all the activities of our life. by knowing where we live, we can let go of clinging to ourself. We should take care of ourself like we would take care of anybody else. But it's not the same as clinging. It's not the same as self-clinging. Do you have any questions?

[41:47]

Yes, hi. That's your name. Well, I think you can say, I'm a good person, and let it go. If you say, well I'm not a good person, I shouldn't think of myself as a good person, then you're thinking of yourself as a good person. So if you accept the fact, yes, I'm a good person, okay, that's all.

[42:51]

Let it go. Just don't cling to good person. You are a good person. So don't deny that. Just don't cling to it. categorical, to say, well, that was a good act. Now we're on to the next thing. And that's a little less committing, you know, like, this overall thing, like, or that felt good, or I think I did the right thing there, or you didn't do the right thing there, and then go on to the next thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. Nancy? If it turns out that the Well, go ahead and stop it.

[43:58]

Buddhists understand, I mean a Buddhist understanding is that all worlds come to an end. Everything lives out its lifetime. There's nothing that doesn't live out its lifetime, including this world and all other worlds. So the end of one thing is the beginning of another. We have to understand that the end of one thing is the beginning of another. So the end of your life is just the beginning of something that you don't understand. And I won't say what that is. But we have to understand, it's just logical, totally logical that the end of one thing is the beginning of another. So although it's a problem for you, In the long run, it's not a problem. It's only a problem for me if I don't like it. It's only a problem for me if I don't like it or if I don't think it's a good thing.

[45:06]

But if I let go of that, it's bigger than me. So, just like life itself, you know, the end of the world is the, well, you know, when I am born, so to speak, that's the beginning of the world. And when I am no longer here, that's the end of the world. So, this is just little cycles within bigger cycles, within bigger cycles, within bigger cycles. And all these worlds are beginning and ending that we don't even see. All these universes are beginning and ending, which we don't even have any idea about, and we think that they're infinitesimal, but from some other point of view, they're enormous, beyond our conception. But we take the human standpoint, and we look at everything from the human standpoint, which is very limited.

[46:09]

Very limited standpoint. We have the five senses and the mind sense, and we just see the world through those doors, and our cognition creates a world given what we see, hear, think, and feel, and so forth. So, it's all mind-made, our whole world is mind-made. Well you do it all the time. What is Samadhi? Samadhi is getting out of the way, getting out of the way. It's our consciousness beyond our thinking consciousness, but it includes our thinking consciousness.

[47:33]

Concentration is a kind of definition of samadhi. There are many different kinds of samadhis, but it's concentration without the interference of ego, without self-interfering, so that our pure nature, whatever that is, it's allowed to permeate. So when we lift the veils that are actually blocking the light, then the light just is there.

[48:42]

So it's like the sun. The sun is always there, but the clouds are in front of the sun. So when you take the clouds away, the sun shines forth. So Samadhi is just simply our natural state without the interference, without the coverings, thought coverings, feeling coverings, opinion coverings, limited coverings, it's just our unlimited, not ours, it's Don't cookies also take work? Yes. Cookies take work. That's another element, is the work element. So, you know, infinite number of labors brought us this cookie.

[49:47]

We should understand that. that's another element, although it's not an element, it's an essential quality, but it's not an element in the sense of what it's made of, but it is made of work. That's right, so all the work is there, the sun is there, the moon is there, all the planets are in that cookie. Everything is included in the cookie, because everything in the universe has contributed to making this cookie. But we just, you know, well that was good. But actually, if we really look at this cookie with deep appreciation, we can see that everything in the universe has contributed to the fact of this cookie which is nothing. Because, is this a cookie? Yes. Is it still a cookie? No. Yes and no, because it's still a cookie because everything in the universe is a cookie.

[50:54]

Yes, and we used to say 72 labors brought us this rice. We should know how it comes to us. Now we say, numerable labors. Yeah, we changed it. We took that. Japanese like to use numbers. We like to use categories. So Samadhi is just allowing the universe to express itself without interference. What is consciousness? Consciousness is a deep subject, but it's awareness. We are conscious of something, means we are aware. But consciousness also has other connotations, like universal consciousness, or particular kinds of consciousness, eye consciousness, ear consciousness.

[52:08]

But consciousness in a larger sense is simply the universal awareness. Is that the first step? Well, no, true self is beyond consciousness, but consciousness is also true self. So, true self is undefinable. You can define consciousness. This is a piece of consciousness.

[52:49]

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