They vow to taste the truth of the Tathāgata's words. He was born in Denver and enlightened in Berkeley. He is a massage therapist and the office manager at the Mindful Body, which is Only I can live up to all that.

[01:54]

It's really encouraging to see so many people here today on such a nice day, middle of summer. People are on vacation, and so many people here in this room. Today is the first day that we've changed the way we do Zazen instruction. This is the first day after many, many meetings and discussions and committees and so forth. And it used, as you probably know, it used to be that we would do Zazen instruction in the community room during, well at the end of work period more or less. And then after that we would come in here for lecture. The problem with that was that it was very noisy. With the end of work period, a lot of hustle and bustle, dishwashing in the kitchen, clattering pots and pans.

[02:56]

toilet flushing, everything. And plus, the other problem was that the people who were getting Zazen instruction didn't have a chance to sit, really, before a lecture. So we'd come into Zazen instruction and then directly adhere to a lecture with no real chance to have any kind of sustained period of just sitting, even just for 15 or 20 minutes. So after many years it dawned on us that maybe we should do something about that and try to improve it. So now this is the first morning we try the new way. We have two graduates this morning. And the new way is that we do it in the Zen Do during work period. And then they can stay and sit during this period before Zazen, before lecture, and then come to lecture if they want to. History of this, briefly, is in the old days in Dwight Way, Sojin did all of the Zazen instruction. and usually did it like five in the afternoon on a weekday.

[04:04]

And then we'd have zazen at 5.40. And then when we moved over here to Russell Street in 1979, the zendo was where the community room is now, because this was not a zendo, obviously, when we moved here. So, we did zazen instruction, I think, in the zendo that was in the community room, again, probably in the afternoon. And at some point, I think we did it up in Tamara and Catherine's apartment, which is now their apartment, in the front room facing the courtyard. But this was always on weekdays. And then it occurred to us, well, if we did it on Saturday, more people could come because more people have the day off. So, we swished it over to Saturday and wound up in the community room. day and evenings in here. Right. I thought that I said that. Yeah, that's true. So we shifted from the community remedy in here, but always in the evenings.

[05:14]

And then the other thing that we decided, amongst other decisions, was to down Zazen instruction so that it was light on the Dharma aspect and more strong on just how you actually do it, how you sit, how you arrange your body, the different ways that you could cross your legs because a number of people have trouble sitting with their knees down, so just how you take care of yourself physically when you're sitting. the way that ... how things work in the Zen Do, you know, how you bow and so forth. Put more emphasis on that, less emphasis on the kind of history of BCC or Dharma and so forth. But still we need to ... there's some method to sitting, not just your body but also what you do with your mind, so we use ... we express that during Vows and Instruction. And for me that's always been a really, in giving Zazen instruction, that's been one of the most critical parts of it, and the part that I actually enjoy the most.

[06:24]

Because I really want to convey to people that we're not trying to get to some particular special state of mind. And I imagine, which may be erroneous, but I imagine that people who are new to meditation practice, would naturally have some feeling that by doing meditation we're going to get to a better state of mind, which is actually, it is true, but it's not the way that we think it might be. So, what I would want to do in zazen instruction is just drop your idea of what a better state of mind is going to be, or that you're going to get to a better state of mind, just drop your idea about it and just do it. And the less expectation you have, the better. Rather than having a kind of romantic idea, a hopeful idea that I'll be more peaceful, I'll be more wise, I won't be so angry, I won't feel so sad, whatever it is, rather than think that way, just

[07:29]

see what happens. Obviously there's some suffering and confusion, otherwise I think we wouldn't be interested in taking up meditation to begin with, at the beginning. But trying to imagine what it might be like, or hoping what it might be like, You can't really help it I suppose but it's not particularly helpful and it's not particularly accurate either, mostly. So I always feel good saying that because I feel like, okay, we don't want to lead you on, we don't want you to You know, this is not so easy. We don't want to make it sound like it's glorious. You know, you'll be so great now that you're meditating and you'll be saved and everything will be okay, because not necessarily at all. It reminds me, it's not exactly the same tone, but when I first started, my first organized meditation experience was with Chogyam Trungpa, back in the early 70s, a really great Tibetan teacher, Sri Lankan, and they taught, like we do, they taught breathing, following your breath as your primary practice.

[09:05]

And at that time I felt like, well, why should I bend my mind in a certain way to focus on breathing? That just seems kind of contrived, that was my feeling. So I had a little interview with him at the end of the little weekend workshop and I said, well I don't see why I have to follow my breathing. And he said, well, the fewer whys, the better. So, it's one of those sayings that will always be with me. You know, it's just, that was, the fewer whys, the better. So ... No, call, call and he's got a special answer, you can't just ... If I could think about how to include mud into that answer, it's like mud in your wise. So, you know that when we're sitting, when our instruction is just

[10:20]

Whatever state of mind you're in, that's what you need to pay attention to. Just pay attention, wake up. So our instruction is, pay attention to whatever you're experiencing. That's the most important thing. Don't worry about you're not experiencing the right thing. Don't worry about that. Whatever you're experiencing is fine, but just pay attention to what you're experiencing. rather than something special. So there's a koan that's probably maybe the best known for Soto folks, the best known koan from the Mumon Koan, or the gateless gate collection of koans, ordinary mind is the way. And ordinary mind is the way, I think, gets at this truth.

[11:23]

So here's the case for those of you who haven't heard it. So there's these two, there's a teacher and student. The teacher is Nansen and the student is Joshu. And this happens, I think it's about in the 800s, two Chinese, these are actual people that actually existed, monks that existed. Whether it happened just this way, we don't know. But in the 800s, two Chinese practitioners, Nansen's about 50 or so, and Joshu later became probably one of the greatest Zen masters of all, was a young man. So Joshu asked Nansen, what is the way? And you know in Chinese culture, the word is Dao, and Dao originally meant like a pathway, you know an actual corridor or an actual pathway, but then the Chinese expanded that to make it bigger. So it was like the way of the universe or the way of nature, the natural order of things.

[12:35]

So way in the biggest sense as well as in the smaller sense. So Joshi's actually asked, you know, what is the way in the larger sense? And Nansen says, ordinary mind is the way. And so Joshi says, well how can I realize ordinary mind? How can I get to know what ordinary mind is? And Nansen says, you can't try to get to know it. The more you try to get it, the farther away it'll go from you, you can't try to get ordinary mind. And so, Joshi says, well if I can't try to get it, if I can't try to attain it, how will I know it? And how will I know what it is? And Nansen says, it's not a matter of knowing, and it's not a matter of not knowing.

[13:41]

Knowing is just a delusion. If you think that you really know something, particularly in what we're talking about, if you really think you know it, you're deluded. On the other hand, if you just don't know at all, that's a blank mind, and that's not particularly helpful either. So when you really experience ordinary mind, you'll find that it's vast, and that how could you possibly talk about it from the point of view of knowing or not knowing, or good or bad. And so, Joshu had some big realization at that point. So I think why we like this case so much and why it's so popular is that it's ordinary, that it's plain, that it gives us the feeling, I mean on the surface it appears that way, it gives us the feeling, or it gives me the feeling, that rather than ...

[14:51]

than rather trying to pursue something that's very esoteric, complex, deeper than I could possibly ever be, or something that's just beyond me, that actually ... that my actual experience and the experience of others is the ground with which we can practice, rather than something special with which we can practice. And I think that's actually the reason why I took up Zen practice in the 70s versus other kinds of practices that were available. What I liked about Zen practice, and Berkeley Zen Center in particular, was that it was very regular schedule, and not particularly colorful. Actually, we could use some color probably. But it was just very ordinary, just every day you can go as much or as little as you want, but here's the schedule and you just follow the schedule.

[16:01]

And really downplaying various ceremonies and shrines and colors and mantras and all the rest of it. So for me that was attractive because it felt grounded and felt like rather than just being on the ground. However, when you start, you know, lest you just find comfort in this case, When you begin to really think, you know, I think when you take on a case like this or a koan, we have to just consider it and not necessarily analyze it, although it may be not able to help analyzing it, but somehow we just have to take it in and see what happens when we take it in and just hold it in our mind, in our body, and have confidence that

[17:02]

whatever arises in us is a kind of a doorway or a Dharma doorway into some kind of understanding that we don't know where that goes necessarily. You can read commentaries on the Kongs and you can read commentary, there's actually about seven or eight really good commentaries on the and you can get a pretty good intellectual idea about what the issues are but that only goes so far and we have to actually experience it. So when you read the commentaries and in terms of discussing it somehow we do need to sort of stay in a sort of relative realm that we need to stay in, that the commentaries You wonder, well what is ordinary mind?

[18:02]

What does he really mean by that exactly? And commentaries will generally point to two different aspects. One aspect is just what you would think, which is just your everyday life, just your everyday experience is your ordinary mind. rather than some special experience like you might think that, or we might think that we have to go up to a special two-year retreat and just become a monk in order to actually understand what Zen is all about, but here they're saying, no, your everyday life, your everyday experience is the way, no matter what you're doing. So that's more the relative realm. But the problem with that, you might think, well, if that's true, if my ordinary mind is the way, then why am I suffering? Why am I confused?

[19:04]

Why don't I not feel so good? If I'm already in this ordinary mind, then what's the problem? Why do I feel like I have a problem? The other aspect of it would be is the ordinary, not in the sense of average or ordinary not in the sense of what your particular circumstances happen to be or activities happen to be, but kind of more of fundamental ordinary. That's when our minds stop discriminating and craving and judging. So to see ordinary in the sense of before we try to make something happen, what's our experience?

[20:06]

And if you think about it, if I think about it, I'm always trying to make something happen. It could be gross or very nuanced and very subtle, but I constantly would like something to be a little bit different than it is, something a little bit more pleasant, or, yeah, just something a little bit more pleasant than it might happen to be at that time. So, kind of a constant kind of desire, even if it's very minute, it's there. So maybe ordinary is what is it when we're able to let go of that and stop discriminating, stop judging, stop desiring or just let that go or just relax, that kind of ordinary which doesn't rely on necessarily what your circumstances are during the day. It seems that, you know, Zen in particular is emphasizing, is bringing these two aspects, these two aspects of ordinary together, so that it's not, we're not just sitting in one, we're not just sitting in the other.

[21:22]

And this is something that we need to find out and experience. It's not a philosophy or a theory. We have to verify, is this true or not? We have to find out. This isn't quite exactly what I'm talking about, but it reminds me enough about it that I wanted to bring it up as an example. My mother, Helen, died about two months ago. She was 84. She had gone to Tassajara. We used to go to Tassajara before it was a Zen center, when it was just a resort. And she knew Meili, and she liked the whole ambience of Zen practice, although she didn't want to ever give up her desires.

[22:39]

She thought that was just terrible, to have to give up your desires. But she really liked Zen gardens, and she liked the bathhouse, and she liked the aesthetic of Zen. So, you know, she had an onus for Zen, and was supportive of me doing it. And I won't say I was real close to her, as I was older especially, but I just say that she was really inside of me. I really felt and still feel that what I am is a lot of what she was in some way that's hard to really understand. So when she died I got a phone call and was able to be over there at her house within half an hour of when she died and could just be alone with her in her room. And this is the first time somebody really close to me has died in my life. I have these two feelings, sitting there and still today I have these two feelings.

[23:50]

One is that this is just like, something is just, this is surrealistic, this really can't be true. It can't be true that my mother has died, this person who is so much who I am in some body way, I can't believe that she's actually died. It just doesn't make sense, it's unreal. And the other feeling was looking at her lying there on bed, still warm, was like, this is the most ... this is so plain, this is so ordinary, this is so ... this looks so natural. What's all the fuss about? She's not fussing. She looks pretty comfortable, actually. She looks like she's asleep. And I know, intellectually, I know that every living being dies. So what could be more plain than that? What could be more usual than that? So on one hand, there's this feeling of death being momentous.

[24:54]

On the other hand, it's like the thing that's the most usual. and having those two feelings at the same time. And somehow feeling uncomfortable with these, you know, like you should have one feeling or the other, it'd be easier. But having these two feelings at the same time is, how do you hold both of those? So coming back to these two ways of looking at what or understanding what ordinary is, one being more fundamental and kind of intrinsic, the other being more what we do in our daily activity. I'll be more comfortable talking about what we do in our daily activity, the relative side.

[26:02]

I'll leave the absolute side for others to discuss, I'll just discuss the relative side more. So what is it to really pay attention to our ordinary mind? in our daily life and to actually honor that quality in our life which is not particularly special, not particularly outstanding, not particularly what we'd even like our lives to be like. Because of my mother's death there has been a A lot of paperwork and a lot of responsibility connected with sort of taking care of things for my family. And it's difficult when you're working to do this, take care of that, be involved with Zen Center and so forth, and it gets onerous. I wish I didn't have to take care of all these things.

[27:02]

And there's not a person in this room that doesn't have some similar experience about having to do something that you don't want to do, or take care of things you don't want to take care of, or having a body that's not working the way you'd like it to work. So, but this is what our life is. So, if nonsense is saying this is the way, even and including what we don't like is the way, ordinary is the way. I even take it to a more moment by moment aspect Which is that what I experience moment by moment, at that moment that's what's ordinary. Not ordinary in comparison to something else, you know, but ordinary just because that's what's occurring at that moment, this particular moment, this particular state of mind

[28:14]

it's ordinary because that's all there is right now. It's not something special. Something special is when we try to make something happen. But when we don't try to make something happen and it's just at this moment, that's ordinary mind. And the important thing to really, you can't help but notice, is that it's incessantly changing. that is not a static experience. So, there's this moment, and then this moment, and this moment, and just to accept, to be able to accept this particular moment, whether we like it or not, or whether it's uncomfortable is our ordinary mind at that moment, it's the acceptance of it, the acceptance of its existence, rather than trying to get to a better place.

[29:25]

And again there's this dilemma, we know or we feel that we're suffering, I think everybody is interested in meditation practice, actually, no matter if Zen or whatever it is, has some sense of their own suffering, and that's why they're interested in meditation practice. So, knowing that we suffer, why wouldn't we want to try to get to a better place? That's as natural as you can get. And yet, that's just some desire to get to a better place. fact is, at this particular moment this is what's happening. Whatever you think about it or whatever you feel about it, this is what's happening at this moment, whatever state of mind we happen to be in. But in order to recognize that to even be able to accept it, I think it's necessary to have a quality of mindfulness or paying attention. So that's the difference, because we could live a life, and many people do, where it's a life that's kind of on automatic pilot, which is just nothing but habit, doing what everybody thinks they're supposed to be doing, get into kind of an automatic routine, and take things for granted without realizing it.

[30:47]

It happens to all of us. every day, but if we're interested in being mindful there's a little space there to be able to just to pay attention to what's happening without sort of constantly driving onward to accomplish something, just simply to pay attention. I left out a little ... I knew I was going to do this ... I left out a little poem of ... or not exactly a poem, it's a little saying from Dogen. that was coming back a minute to the difference between kind of everyday ordinary and intrinsic ordinary.

[31:51]

I'm just making those terms up. This is from a fascicle that Dogen wrote that's related to the Lotus Sutra that Lori happens to be teaching right this month. she has two more classes to go on Thursday evenings but this is a fascicle about the lotus sutra and it's called the flower of dharma turns the flower of dharma which sets your mind sort of going the flower of dharma turns the flower of dharma. So he says, do we realize in practice is about ourselves or do we realize in practice that it's about others? There are times when the truth is realized as an individual body and there are times when the truth is realized as the whole body.

[32:55]

So what I'm talking about now is the individual body, not so much the whole body. And bringing them together is what our practice is, but sometimes we need to focus, sometimes it's good just to focus on one or the other. There's a... At the end of this case there's a little poem, because Mumon always puts a poem with each of the cases in the Mumonkan. And this poem is pretty well known. Where's my Jisho? How about I hold them on your head? Yeah, thanks.

[34:06]

I'm getting this repaired after this talk. Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon, summer with the breeze and winter with snow. When idle concerns don't hang in your mind, this is your best season. one more time spring comes with flowers autumn with the moon summer with breeze and winter with snow when idle concerns don't hang in your mind this is your best season so The way I understand that in terms of what I'm talking about is that in terms of our seasons, I see our seasons as our states of mind that are constantly changing, constantly moving from one to the other.

[35:15]

We don't exactly know where one starts and one ends, but there's change. So when we don't fuss, when we stop fussing about this season or that season or what we like and what we don't like, when we just stop fussing then that particular state of mind that we happen to be in is our best state of mind. This is just a radically different way of understanding our life rather than trying to get to a good place just to appreciate the place that we're at. Not because Dogen said so or because Sojin said so or anybody said so, but because we start to experience that the other way just doesn't work very well. So if you'd like to say something. Go on. a lot.

[37:19]

But he also, I think he says, Dogan says in other places, that you don't exactly know when spring starts. So even though... Yeah, yeah. This is the middle of summer. How do we, within this relative desire that we always are dealing with, how do we kind of fixate or aspire towards something that caught our attention with an ordinary mind and not something like gaming or extra?

[38:56]

By paying attention, by being interested. Well, because if you're really interested in something, I mean, interest comes first and then you try maybe to do something around after the interest, but the actual moment of being interested, you're just paying attention, you're just interested, you're not trying to make something happen. In other words, whatever it is that's attractive to you, you pay attention to that, and then we try to grasp, then we want to hold on to it, you know, and do something with it. But that first moment is just being interested in it. And Krishnamurti talks about that, that something like that, where it's like if you see a sunset, you might just really appreciate the sunset, you're really very attractive, but then you just want to hold on to it, you don't want to let it go.

[39:57]

or some beautiful, attractive person, you know. It's the first moment is just being attracted, which is no problem at all. To be attracted, to find something attractive is not a problem. It's the wanting to keep holding on to it because we don't want to let go of that pleasure that starts the problem going. Okay, Linda? I have three things about it. Okay. Okay, thank you. You know it's particularly heartwarming for Linda to say that for me because there was one talk I gave when your daughter came and afterwards You said something like, Linda's always giving feedback in a way that's very vivid.

[41:05]

People really care what Linda thinks because she's got this acute kind of perception. you said something like, oh, I think I asked people to ask them to work on a particular question. And so it was a more interactional kind of talk. And you said, oh, I was glad she was here. But my sense was you weren't so glad that you were there, but I just may have been projecting it. Anyway, thank you. Mm-hmm, and vice versa. Who's supposed to do that? Who? Well, whatever your particular physical brain and all the rest of it, that's who, whatever that happens to be.

[42:10]

But if you have some idea of it, that's the problem. So if you mean it like a definition, You know, the only definition I'm comfortable with is, well, we have this physical apparatus to work with, which includes a brain, which can sense and feel and think and perceive, but other than that, I wouldn't want to define it. Maybe it's something we could define, though. What do you think? Like, mean to have volition. Yeah. That's true.

[43:13]

I think that we do need to have volition. In order just to come here on Saturday morning, we need to have volition. So volition is part of it. So volition is just volition, but embellishing volition with some kind of identity that's sort of fixed is a problem. Is it an ordinary mind, a mind of desire, and is what you're saying just keeps flowing, that there's no problem with that? Well, if you're hanging from a branch and somebody asks you to explain it, no.

[44:26]

No, no, I'm in the river, I'm not hanging, I'm there, I'm thinking of your mother. Please say yes, okay? But isn't it really though, isn't it? The Tibetans are really good at using desire as part of practice, actually. Yeah, of course. Some of us are really good at Not me. Yeah, I think it's, again, it's being, it's like paying attention to being mindful of the desire rather than making some pre-set conclusion about, oh this is bad or this is good. And my mother felt like desire was really good. She said, I don't want to let go of my passion.

[45:28]

And she was passionate. I read her diaries after she died and she had some real passions that I wasn't aware of. I had great admiration for her. But it's paying attention to the desire rather than just sort of being swept away. So you don't have to get rid of it, but it's like just let it speak to you rather than go galloping down the criminal's path. I just wanted to say that I appreciate that you mentioned your mother and what it was like for you when she died. And that sort of tied everything in, in this whole talk. Because to me, I was with my grandmother when she died, and I'd never been... I mean, I was scared about being in a room with a dead body. And I was really scared about the whole thing.

[46:30]

But to watch that happen, and to... It was like with you, there's all this about someone dying, and all the changes, and now that they're not here. But it was just so simple. It was just so simple. And that's, I think, I think one of the things that has held with me, and having had a couple of your experiences, is that, you know, you still hear the phone ringing in the background, and you hear dishes clattering, and you hear... And it's like, nothing has changed, but there's this big, humongous thing that we all talk about, and nothing has changed, and someone is filming a video too loud, or whatever. That to me is sort of just the epitome of ordinary and what we can do with ordinary. I mean, I realized that when my grandmother died, I could have just, oh my God, I've got to get out of here. I was horribly distraught and everything, but it was like this reminder that this is a simple thing and it's just part.

[47:33]

It happens all the time. And that's something that comes back to me with everything. I mean, I drop my favorite glass and break it, and it's sort of like, well, it's one of those things. So I really appreciate you bringing that up, because that simplicity and that ordinariness and the desire of what we want something to be is, you know, there's always a different place to go with it, to be with it. And also, you said something about a saying that someone had about, well, if you have it, you don't really have it. What was that you said something about? You think you know. Oh, right. You think you know. Yeah, you're deluded. Right. And that's the other thing, and I thought, oh, but I guess you can say, you know, I get it, but I don't have it. You know?

[48:33]

And that's what I started thinking. It's like, I get it. I get it what this practice is about. And I get it about the ordinary. I don't have it, you know, but I get it. And maybe that's what some of us do with our practice, because we don't know what we're doing and, you know, none of it is on this number two. When you say you don't have it, what do you... I'm not sure what you mean when you say you don't have it. Oh, I can't keep it. I mean, you know, I get it, and sometimes it's there, but I don't have it to hold. It just... It's like magic. Yeah. Like magic. I can't keep it. Unless you see... Oh, we're getting close. Wrong watch. Wrong watch? Oh yeah, we have about 45 minutes left to go. Just one more, Ed. because we don't really accept it, we don't really accept that we don't really accept ourselves as we are we're going around working against ourselves because we don't really accept ourselves as we are and even though we may know this intellectually deep in our bones, you know, to

[50:25]

to really accept ourselves as we are is something that we have real difficulty doing. And it doesn't just mean like, oh I'm a good person or I'm okay and you're okay. It's like, you know, the most fundamental acceptance of what we actually are, we have real trouble with that because we have suffering and we want to get away from the suffering as our primary desire to get away from it. So we're sort of going to, we're trying to get away from our suffering. It's hard to really accept ourself if we're trying to constantly get away from something. So that's why I think we need to practice. And you know, all the teachers say, they all say, oh it's just, you already have it. You don't have to go out there and get it. You already have it, but you just don't realize that you, that you're, I think that's what they're getting at. It's really just genuinely accepting what you are, but not accepting some idea of what we are, but actually really wholeheartedly accepting our experience, whether we like it or not.

[51:32]

Did I leave something out? Thank you.

[51:50]

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