Good morning. Can you hear back there? It's okay? Well, it occurs to me it's 777, right? That's not actually going to be the subject of my talk, but it's worth noting, and I went and looked around, and it occurred to me that if the universe were a big slot machine, which in fact it is, we would all be winning big today, we'd all hit the jackpot. In another context, I guess it's a significant number in Kabbalistic studies, the Kabbalah, the mystical Jewish tradition, and one of the things that it is meaningful to us.

[01:03]

777 also is a signifier for the world of shells, shells, the world of appearances, the physical reality which is only part of the true vast limitless reality. So it's just worth noting on this day. Is anyone getting married today? I think, I think, I think, what? Yeah, but no, yeah, I know lots of them, but nobody in this room, right? Yeah, you're not in, are you? Right. What? That's a first. No, actually, it's not a first. Not a first. There was a proposal in here at least once. Anyway, it's just worth noting. For the last few months, some of you know for a long time I've been

[02:10]

leading a meditation group at a prison at the Federal Correction Institute in Dublin which is a women's federal prison and Bob two other women Delia McGrath and Bonnie O'Brien Johnson and this is something that Meili began maybe about 10 years ago and or more and I've been going in for about eight or nine years and as the group has evolved from being a somewhat ecumenical meditation class, that's what they call it the class, there's been more and more interest in a number of months when I go, I've been reading with the women and talking about Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And I confess I don't think I picked it up for about five or six years, except to look for one or another thing in particular.

[03:18]

But just reading through each chapter, reading it aloud, and thinking about it, and also thinking about it as I'd be reading it for the women, in my mind would be wondering, well, how are they hearing this? and recognizing that Zen Mind Beginner's Mind is on the one hand it has this very warm open spirit and energy and on the other hand it's really pretty difficult teachings really you know not not difficult like you can't do them although you can't but difficult in the sense that it keeps feeding your mind in practice in such a way that you can chew it endlessly and unlike double mint gum, the more you chew it, the flavor keeps emerging and it's one flavor, it's one taste that's quite wonderful.

[04:38]

I thought that it's also worth recognizing this some people have been some of my friends have been discussing whether we're Soto Shu, you know, Soto Zen, or what is it, what's the Zen that we do? And someone proposed that we're Shogaku Shu, Shogaku Shunryu is the name of Suzuki Roshi, his Dharma name, and that it's behooves us to be really aware of his teachings and to figure out how we use them in our life. So I thought I would read and talk from one of these chapters of Zen Mind and Beginner's Mind today. And I think it's, I find it really relevant. This is the chapter that's called Control. And the epigraph drawn from the middle of the text says, to give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him.

[05:55]

So I'll read and then comment and really make an effort to try to leave time for discussion. And I'm not going to read the whole thing. I'm going to read sections. To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment. When we lose our balance, we die. But at the same time, we also develop ourselves, we grow. Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. As we lose our balance, so we fall out of balance with our life or our emotions or our body, we die. As we exhale, we die. And in the next inhalation, we come back to life. We find our balance again. We're constantly falling in and out of balance.

[07:03]

This is actually the nature of the life that we have. Suzuki Roshi says the reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance but its background is always in perfect harmony. This is how everything exists in the realm of Buddha nature losing its balance against a Perhaps background is not even exactly the right word. It's an enveloping reality of perfect balance, a totality of existence of the universe as perfect balance.

[08:04]

But in these bodies and minds that we have, we feel ourselves falling out of balance you know we feel like you know and I'll tell you when you get to be older there's some younger people here when you get to be older you find you really don't want to lose your balance that much especially when you don't want to do is fall down I remember when I was a kid, I used to ski a lot, and I totally didn't mind falling down. You just like zoom down the hill and take a turn, and skis would go out from under you, and you'd fall down. And it's like, oh, I'm wet, or that hurt a little, but you just get up. And I remember even when I was about 30, I went skiing, and I did that. Oh, I don't want to do that again. background and the reality that we live in is one of perfect balance.

[09:17]

So this is how everything exists in the realm of Buddha nature, losing its balance against a background of perfect balance. So if you see things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, everything appears to be in the form of reality, if you take the reality of the world of shells as real, then what you're going to have is suffering. This is, you know, in traditional Buddhist teaching, they teach about the three marks of existence, impermanence, non-self and dukkha. Dukkha as suffering or as unsatisfactoriness or as in a sense that something is wrong or off or maybe that something is out of balance.

[10:29]

But in some of the later teachings in the Mahayana they've reframed that as the marks of existence are impermanence, non-self, and nirvana, which is to point at this perfect, the more I think about it, background is not the word, this perfect enveloping reality within which we in the context of living our life of practice. So if you understand things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, everything appears to be in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of existence you realize that suffering itself is how we live and how we extend our life.

[11:33]

That suffering in this sense is that falling out of balance, returning to balance. This is our life and it's not worth separating or we shouldn't separate. It's our mundane life as against our spiritual life. It's just our actual life. It's the whole deal. We fall out of balance and we regain our balance and the fact that we are alive and can do that is one of these astonishing ordinary miracles. So in Zen, sometimes we emphasize the imbalance or disorder of life. And then he goes on to talk about art. Well, I'll read that actually. Nowadays, traditional Japanese painting has become pretty formal and lifeless.

[12:37]

That is why modern art has developed. Ancient painters used to practice putting dots on paper in artistic disorder. This is rather difficult. Even though you try to do it, usually what you do is arranged in some order you think you can control it but you cannot it's also it's almost impossible to arrange your dots out of order and then he says it's the same thing it's the same with taking care of your everyday life it's interesting It's interesting to try to consider the time and place that Suzuki Roshi was giving these talks. Order was not the order of the day in the late 1960s. It was not what his mostly young audience wanted to hear about, right?

[13:40]

what he's saying was even if you try to create disorder some kind of order will appear but then he's not equating order with control. We think of control, the product of control is order and what he's talking about here is actually trying to do not in order and find that we can't control it, that it comes back into order and that order is the pattern of our life or the karma that we've lived, the causes and conditions of our existence. But here we get to the center of this I think. It's the same with taking care of your everyday life. Even though you try to put people under some control, it's impossible. You cannot do it.

[14:46]

So this means even though you try to get people to do what you want them to do. You try to control the reality around you. Your teacher tries to get you to be a certain way or you as a parent try to get your children to be a certain way or you encounter this in work. You keep trying to make some effort to control the reality that is outside of Even though you try to put people under some control, it's impossible. You cannot do it. Then he says, the best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. What does that mean? suspect what he was speaking to at least in part was a lot of people around the Zen Center and the Zen groups who wanted to look very good, they wanted to be good Zen students and so he spoke to

[16:16]

expressions that have come down to us like, when you are you, Zen is Zen. Or I talked to Ed Brown yesterday and said, Ed, it said something like, you know, don't try to be a good Zen student, just be yourself so I can see you. And this kind of good that we accomplish or that we try to accomplish by maintaining these forms of Zen, sometimes he would say, oh, looks like good. That's a really good expression, looks like good. It's like, do you want to know what I really think? the best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous.

[17:24]

And when you listen to, boy, when you, when you, the teachers that I've encountered here, particularly in our family, I didn't encounter Suzuki Roshi, but his son Hoitsu and Kobinchino Roshi and Katagiri Roshi. I'm not sure it was so mischievous, but he had a mischievous laugh. He was laughing. He was amused by his life. He was amused by us. People like Hoitsu and Colbin, very mischievous. They knew what the mold, what the form of Zen was from top to bottom in such a way that they could be completely free with it. How do we manifest being mischievous in our life?

[18:27]

Not in a disrespectful way but even what's the respect right at the heart of our mischief making? The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him or her. So this meadow is the field of practice. It's the Dharma field or it's the Buddha field that we live in. And once you really step fully into this practice, you're trapped. You can never get out of this field.

[19:28]

That's, to my mind, that's a good thing. Everybody may not feel that way. So within that field, to have a very wide pasture, but to recognize that there is a boundary. You may not be able to see the fence. It may be way, way off in the distance, but there is something around it. You can call it Zazen. You can call it our practice. All of the elements of practice help to create this field, but this field is endlessly vast. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control them.

[20:37]

So it is with people. First, let them do what they want and watch them. That's the best policy. To ignore them is not so good. That's the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is just to watch them to watch them, just to watch them without trying to control them. So maybe some of you have had this experience, maybe you've had it this experience with your teacher or in early on, I think the first few years that I was here, I don't think Sojon said much to me by way of direction or criticism or even communicating what the boundaries of the pasture were.

[22:01]

I do know that he watched me and he's still watching. But after a few years, my sense of time is kind of collapsed, but I think it was a few years, it certainly was a few years until my lay ordination, but I think it was before that when one day he told me, just let things fall apart. I think that my penchant, and this has to do with my background and my emotional upbringing, was and out of fear that they were going to fly apart.

[23:05]

I used to have a recurrent dream of where I was on some kind of vehicle that was going around a curve very quickly and I would feel myself being flung off into the void. Very scary. I never landed in the dream. So I would try to control things. You know, I would try to, I would actually try to create order, not disorder. I would try to control things and what I didn't, what I think now I didn't get was that by trying to control things, you know, really, first of all, I couldn't. It can't be done. And second of all, it's just pissing people off. It was not appreciated. Although on some levels it was appreciated or some things that I was taking care of but it wasn't it was about the things It was turning things into things rather than reckoning with my brothers and sisters as People with the same yearnings and carings as myself and so he just said Let things fall apart And then

[24:27]

when it came time for lay ordination. Lay ordination will receive names, Dharma names and more or less it's not always true. Your second name carries some meaning of a quality that resides within you but that you actually have to practice to bring forth. So the Dharma name that he gave me was Kushiki. Ku and Shiki are prominent in the Heart Sutra that we chant every day whether in Japanese or in English and Ku means formlessness or emptiness and Shiki means form. So it's like yeah Mr. kind of name is that but that was I'm still trying to understand the meaning of that name but what I've come to is that the meaning of that name is the challenges how do you manifest the form of Dharma the form of practice

[25:55]

in a completely fluid and perhaps mischievous way. So that was, I feel like my teacher watched and watched and watched and then you know he didn't come down on me hard, he just gently prodded and gave some words of advice and I had something to work with. I must say later he came down much harder on me, but that's another story, that's maybe another lecture. So this is the best, well, so it is with people. First let them do what they want. and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good. That's the worst policy. The second worst is to try to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them without trying to control them.

[27:01]

Then Suzuki Roshi says so that that's presumably that's a way of looking at the reality that you see as outside yourself if we're going to make a false distinction between inside and outside. But then he says the same way works for yourself as well. If you want to obtain perfect calmness in Zazen you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. then they will be under control. But this policy is not so easy. It sounds easy but it requires some effort. So this is the way we try to communicate Zazen. The Zazen that we're teaching is really about accepting everything that comes up in our body and mind, to give those things, those horses and cows of our mind, a very wide pasture, but to let them go, not to try to control them, to let them be free within the space of our mind, within the space of our body and brain.

[28:20]

not to hold on to them, not to keep them on too tight a rein, but to let them arise and recognize that they are part of what he speaks of earlier. They are that all of our thoughts which seem out of balance are part of the balance, the total harmony of the the background or the environment of mind. So can we sit there with these things? And it's not an abstract question. How can we sit there when things hurt? How can we sit there when we're grieving? How can we sit there when we're angry? So that's why he says it requires, it sounds easy, but it requires some special effort. How to make this kind of effort is the secret of practice.

[29:24]

Suppose you are sitting under some extraordinary circumstances. If you try to calm your mind, you will be unable to sit. If you try not to be disturbed, your effort will not be the right effort. I don't know yet I've never found a way to try not to be disturbed. If some of you has a method for that, I'm interested in knowing. But to sit under these difficult circumstances, you can't calm your mind. All you can do is sit. I'm sure that all of us have done this, are doing this, it's not every moment, it's not the entirety of our Zazen, but sometimes Zazen is the only thing that you can do.

[30:35]

How do we open to these difficulties? haven't in our tradition they don't teach us a methodology they just teach us how to physically how to sit how to be with our breath and mind and I think this is common to other traditions. I don't remember where I got this but a wonderful quotation from Chogyam Trungpa, the Tibetan teacher, which speaks to how do you sit under these really difficult circumstances, what's your attitude towards your life, what's your attitude when you feel like you are so out of balance that you're about to fall into the deepest abyss. So Trungpa writes about I don't know, Lori, can you give this to me?

[31:41]

Yeah. I'm pretty sure Lori gave this to me at a time, this is about maybe 17, 18 years ago when I was actually having some periodic panic attacks. I imagine some of you have had panic attacks. and perhaps it goes without saying they're really scary. But what Trungpa says turns it really on its head. Panic is the source of openness and the source of questions. Panic is the source of open heart and open ground. Sudden panic creates an enormous sense of fresh air. And that quality of openness is exactly what Tantra should create. It's actually exactly what Zazen should create. If we are good students, we open ourselves each moment. We panic a thousand times a day, 108 times an hour.

[32:51]

We open constantly and we panic constantly. this is you know Trungpa Trungpa and Suzuki Roshi had had a wonderful affinity for each other and both of them in their own really brilliant and kind ways they're just like they didn't fool around you know they were really just could really get to the point so I think this is this is what he's talking about suppose you were sitting under some If you try to calm your mind, you will be unable to sit. If you try not to be disturbed, your effort will not be the right effort. The only effort that will help you is to count your breathing, or to concentrate on your inhaling and exhaling, or to sit up, maintain this upright, open posture, to maintain openness

[33:55]

in the face of fear, in the face of anxiety, when our whole body wants to curl up like a fist, can you open your body physically, open your hara, so that you allow your feelings to flow in and out, and you allow the world to reach you, rather than to hide. We say concentration. I'm sorry, the only effort that will help you is to count your breathing or to concentrate on your inhaling and exhaling. We say concentration, but to concentrate your mind on something is not the true purpose of Zen. The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. This is to put everything under control. in its widest sense.

[34:58]

You know some Buddhist practices really are concentration practices. Some Zen practices are concentration practices. My way of thinking about concentration. Concentration is one of the factors of enlightenment. It's one of the things that we have to cultivate. We cultivate Samadhi, we cultivate concentration, but the concentration I think in our Shogaku school of Zen is it's a bit of a conundrum because I would suggest the In other words, keep a really open mind that allows everything, like the tide, to flow in and out. Can you follow that tide of thoughts?

[36:03]

Can you follow that tide of feelings? Can you follow that tide of breath and mind? And if you can just follow that tide, then you have this perfect calmness, this perfect composure that allows you to see everything just in its place. And then, simultaneously, everything is in control and nothing needs to be controlled because everything is just as it is. You see, I was thinking about, we watched, we had a movie night here the other day, we watched Ikiru to live by Kurosawa, early Kurosawa movie from 1952 and one of the shots that really struck me is exactly what I think Suzuki Roshi is talking about.

[37:12]

There were no people in this shot, it was a shot of a a sunset and so the frame was the sunset this perfect glowing background and across that frame was angling up across the frame was a bridge with cars going across it and people almost silhouetted and telephone wires you know these conventional standards one might think this is ugly, this is ugly urban life, but in the context of that movie it's exactly this seeing things out of balance within this whole And in that context, how could it be out of balance?

[38:18]

It was just beautiful. I was very moved. It's a very emotionally moving film, but there was something about seeing that shot with this bridge and telephone wires that was one of the most moving parts of the whole film for me. So I think I will stop there. there's a lot more in this lecture but I encourage you to explore it for yourself and keep reading and keep practicing and remember that this perfect background that that's what we're and that we have the power to create it. So that's the control, the measure of control that we have. So we have a little time for questions, answers, and I open the floor.

[39:21]

Yeah, I knew you can ask that. Does anyone know? Yeah, no, yeah, but the Shogaku, I tried to look it up this morning and I couldn't find it. Yeah? Yeah, but inversely. Our temple is Shogakuji, but that's his name. We got the temple I don't think so. I think the second name or second name is Old Plum. Ross, do you know? Maybe. Old Plum is a funny name. No, I mean Old Plum. I doubt that would be his dharma name. and not just that resilience, you know, because it's the first thing to blossom in the winter.

[40:41]

So here's this new fragile-like berry head for snow. And then also, as it ages, it has this very characteristic gnarled appearance. So most of the spores you see are like birds, you know, unclogging off of a kind of gnarled tree. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, we should research it. Yeah. No, no, I don't think so. I wish I could remember. This is really embarrassing. We have a mountain name and we have a temple name. Our temple name is Shogakuji and we have a mountain name and I can't remember what it is.

[41:42]

It's Oplum Mountain, however that translates, but I could be wrong. It could be Shogaku, could be Oplum, but it just doesn't sound like a name you would give a guy. Sorry. Right. Right. Well, there could be another way. Anyway. Yeah. [...] I think that's it. Thank you very much. It was very helpful. Ron. Frankly, that's mostly true.

[43:14]

They love it. I mean, talk about how a overwhelmed Catholic respond to all of them? Just in a human way? I mean they do they respond that's the thing it's been they have been the ones who have been pushing for more Dharma and they integrate it in their own way you know the images we used to check in a lot and the images that would come up for them in Zazen were rather different than the images that would come up for me. But, it's interesting when we talk about the wide field, we did some drawing and painting projects.

[44:20]

paintings were of their homeland. They were of this kind of expansive reality that they also had within them. So they relate very much and most of them, the Hispanic women, most of them are deported and quite a number of them as their about to finish their time and go for deportation, ask me for references to practice centers in Mexico, in Colombia, you know, so there's some affinity that they find there, which is, you know, I'm not proselytizing, that's how I move very slowly. in doing this and checking with them, checking with the chaplain, but I feel like and Bob can confirm this, we're sort of giving what people have some appetite for. Sue? Yes.

[45:27]

No, and I encourage them to do that. I think that one's intent, and this is I say from my own experience, I think intention is simultaneously what you bring to practice and what comes from practice. when I'm in a difficult state, a difficult state of mind or a difficult state of body or pain, I think the intention is manifest by the fact that at this point in my life I remember that I'm in this wide pasture and that

[46:46]

knowing that wide pasture as the field of practice, that if one really senses oneself in the field of practice, then one understands that the intention comes up like, oh I'm not going to stay right here in this, I'm not going to stay anywhere. But this pain or this suffering that I'm feeling right now has within it impermanence. Can I let that arise? And so there is some measure of intention in just the arising. It's like it's the thought of enlightenment. The thought of enlightenment is the nature is looking into the nature of impermanence. But it's not an abstract thing. It's actually letting it change. Maybe one more. Jake?

[47:49]

Well, they are an enormous field. That's the rakasu and the robe that we wear is the field, you know, it's literally put together like a field, right? It's put together and sort of modeled on rice fields, on a very wide, endless rice field. And that's the perceptual field. The precepts we hold in a very wide way. And this is something that Suzuki Roshi talked about a lot, that if you hold them as rules, like the Ten Commandments, then your field is very narrow and probably you're going to knock up against the walls and edges of it. And you're going to have some trouble. If you keep the precepts in a very wide way, but you keep them in mind,

[49:05]

then you always have them to return to. They're like the grass and trees that grow up in that field that support you, create food, hold water, create oxygen. I think that's one way to see the presence. Well, thank you very much.

[49:29]

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