I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. So, Jin Roshi asked me to give this talk a couple of days ago, and fortunately I had a couple of minutes during Kinhin to prepare.

[01:14]

That's not true. I worked on it yesterday during work period. So this is the third day of Sashin, and the tail end of practice period. things are coming to some kind of fruition. During practice period, I've had tea with most of you. Some of you I missed. And I've talked to a lot of people about problems So I thought I would talk about problems today. So sometimes we have a big problem and we try to get rid of it.

[02:47]

And when I gave a Monday morning, the first talk I gave on Monday morning, the Way Seeking Mind talk, I talked about my big problem. And some very kind people, some of you, came to me afterwards and said, I'm so sorry for your big problem. But actually, I don't mind my problem so much anymore. I've just tried to make it my friend. So sometimes I feel very uncomfortable with it, but When we pretend we don't have a problem, it's just adding a problem to our problem. So if you try to escape your problem in this way, you will never understand it.

[03:53]

So if you become curious about it, and examine it in every way. Someday you'll begin to understand it. And then maybe someday you'll even forget about your problem or you'll say, gee, I'm not doing that anymore. and you'll no longer be clinging to it. So, when we try to throw our problem out in the garbage bin, it just goes someplace else. And sometimes it creates problems for other people.

[05:05]

It's like how we try to get rid of our nuclear waste by drilling a big hole in a beautiful mountain and hiding it there. This is not getting rid of the problem. Or sometimes we think we can put it in a rocket ship and shoot it into outer space. So it's necessary to completely dissolve our problem and pull it up by the root. But in any case, our problem will always be with us. And that's a good thing to remember. Usually if we have some big problem, it will be with us to the end of our life and we'll always have to take heed and remember the potential for it to arise at any time and just start a cycle of suffering all over again.

[06:29]

Speaking from experience, Sometimes Zen won't help you with your problem. So you might need to do talk therapy or do a sweat lodge or a vision quest or qigong or all sorts of, there's all sorts of things. And we can blow this balloon up in our mind but then One day, pow, we have to face ourself. So this is when practicing with our problem begins. You may think you see someone else with a problem.

[07:44]

and you might want to tell them about it. But that's okay. We don't have to tell people about their problems because their problem will take care of them and teach them, just like our problem is teaching us. And we can't decide when someone else should wake up to their problem. That's not for us to decide. And chances are what you see in another person is more about yourself than about them. So it's best to leave other people's problems to themselves and let their problem help them.

[08:57]

And this can take a very long time. So it's good to be patient with ourselves and our friends and help them. not with their problem, but just to help them because they have a problem just like we do. Sometimes people come to practice in order to be a good person or live a good life, and that's probably the main reason why I came to practice. But if we think in terms of good and bad, like, oh that was good, this is bad, we can become very rigid and anticipatory and attached to some result.

[10:27]

So it's not that anybody is ever just good or just bad. These opposites are always together. And it's the fluidity of so-called good and bad that make us human and not gods. I don't see gods here. So sometimes practice is so difficult and so painful and we think that, you know, we feel disconnected or like we're not practicing, but actually we're always practicing no matter what we're thinking or feeling. There's joy and there's suffering.

[11:41]

There's easy times and very difficult times. And that's called life. One thing I wanted to clear up was or say more about was in this same Wayseeking Mind Talk I talked about one of my grandfathers, who was a very unsavory fellow. And the thing is this, I had another grandfather, and I'm going to tell you a little about him. Some people, some of you, were very surprised by my story. It's kind of a hard tail. So I thought this would make you feel better.

[12:43]

So my father's father's name was Olimar. And somehow that name came about from a family name lawyer. So they rearranged the letters and turned the W upside down into an M, and it became Olimar. And he was a very slight man, 5'1 or 2", and weighed no more than 125 pounds. And he was a painter, a watercolorist mostly, and was somehow affiliated with the group of seven, which is a group of painters in the 20s to about the 60s of Canadian wilderness and landscapes. And they were influenced by the post-impressionists, such as Gauguin, Cézanne, Van Gogh.

[13:50]

He also was a sign painter and a boat striper. So he spent a lot of time and did a lot of paintings in the Vancouver Marina, I guess you would call it, boatyard, and was known for his very steady hand. The thing is, people talk about him to this day like we talk about Suzuki Roshi. One time I was up there visiting at my aunt's where he lived for quite a while with my grandmother who was quite the opposite of him. And they said, did you know your grandfather? Because they knew I'd grown up in the States. And I didn't see much of him because we lived here and they all lived there.

[14:57]

But I remember him as being a man of few words and very quiet and calm and he used to paint and ponder and smoke a pipe. And he taught me how to play piano when I was quite young. So I guess I would say I remember his essence. and there wasn't really anything extraordinary about him. And yet he really touched a lot of people with his way. One time people thought, oh, we should capture this on tape. Let's make a tape recording of him having a conversation with somebody.

[16:02]

So they made a recording of him having tea with my grandmother to kind of preserve his spirit or whatever you want to call it. And it was on a disc, a record, what do you call those things? No, it was like a record, vinyl. LP. And my father made a tape for me, which I listened to. And it was just him having tea with my grandmother. And you can hear the teacups rattling in the background. Tickle, tickle, tickle. And he's just talking about everyday activity. So it wasn't even really what he said, it was his composure. And I think yesterday or the day before Sojin, Roshi was talking about how he entered the zendo and

[17:20]

how we come in the door with our hands in Shashu and bow, and then put our hands again in Shashu and walk to our seat, assuming the atmosphere of the Zen Do, bow to our cushion, bow away. So this is the way to be in the Zen Do, but actually we can be this way everywhere. So we can take it out to the gate, compose ourselves before we come in the gate and walk calmly and quietly to the Zen Do. And we can take it to our car when we walk from our car to the gate. and then how we drive on our way to work or having breakfast before we go to work or getting up in the morning so we can have our composure, maintain our composure wherever we go. I think it doesn't matter how much enlightenment you have

[18:38]

but you're sunk if you don't have composure. And I don't think that necessarily composure follows enlightenment. Maybe you have a lot of enlightenment, but I'm not sure composure follows with that. So what is this composure? What is being composed? I think if you want to understand the precious mirror samadhi, the dharma, thusness, the

[20:05]

you have to be aware of how you are in the world and how you relate to objects and how you're moving around. And through that practice you come to understand it. yesterday, or someday, Sakyong Rinpoche said, in order to understand water you have to jump into it. Which reminded me of this wonderful poem that, actually, he wrote. Anyway, this is a wonderful poem that our very own Sojin Roshi wrote quite a few years ago, I think now, or some years ago anyway.

[21:37]

It's called Like Water. Someone asked me, what is the practice of a Zen student? I said, like water. Water always seeks the lowest place. It goes with gravity. It takes the shape of whatever boundaries it meets. Sometimes it looks like a cup or an ocean, the sweat on your hands, the snot on your nose, clouds, raindrops, lifeblood. constantly flowing in and out of your body. We meet it with plumbing, strong pipes with tight joints. Water is truth. Plumbing must be honest. Water can't be fooled. Water makes everything truthful. That is its pure activity. Sometimes it appears as slime or poison or tears.

[22:43]

It goes through infinite transformations. When it dries out, it appears somewhere else. It is never lost or gone. It is purified by coursing through rocks and boulders. Water is drawn to the rarefied realms by the sun. Gravity pulls it to earth. It has the qualities of spirit and matter. Water becomes vapor, becomes cloud, retreats from earth, loses its shape, lets go, returns to the dusty realms to nourish all beings as drops, mud, hailstones, snow do. The monk is called unsui, clouds and water. The unsui sits upright. Doesn't lean right or left, backward or forward. Gravity pulling down with all its force.

[23:44]

Spirit rising with all its strength. Mind open. Vast as space. The life force blooming like a flower. Equilibrium of all the forces and powers. The unconditional realm in the midst of all conditions. The lowest place is the highest place. The shape of the cloud and water person is determined by the direction of the wind. Water has no special shape or form. It responds to prayers. Its love pervades everywhere and is not limited by self-interest. Eno says, that one is like the sun. shining its light in all directions, illuminating the way, facing challenges, not turning away from difficulties with purity like a lotus in muddy water.

[24:48]

So for the last several weeks we've been practicing together with our difficulties and our problems and continue to do so in Sushine. And I've really had a wonderful practice period and we just have a few days, a couple days left. So I hope you can keep your composure and maintain your spirit for practice until the bitter end. So it's always easy to lose it. This is kind of the hump day of Sashin. It's kind of easy to start wanting to... I know myself, I'm like... But let's just try to take it a day at a time.

[26:31]

And I think that's enough for now, unless you have a question. Because I think of composure as being very formal and sometimes kind of distant. Well, intimacy has its formalities too, don't you think? Maybe within, maybe if you mean by composure.

[27:36]

uh... simple awareness uh... Courtney to me composure is operating out of the vital energy and being centered so you can if you have that in the center of your activity can be intimate or it can be wild or, you know, it can look different on the surface in all these different ways but right in the middle of it is that composure where you never fall down. That's how it comes across. That's right, that's right. Thank you. But I had a question actually. You were talking about helping people and wish that I could have had tea with you, because that's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.

[29:07]

When you see someone suffering, someone you love, or anyone, let's just say a friend of somebody you love, are suffering, and you think you know why, and you think if you could tell them something, then they could have less suffering. And I know that sometimes it doesn't matter, it doesn't work. You can't tell somebody something a lot of the time. It just doesn't work. But I do have this inclination to want to help. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. But your advice today was helpful. And maybe you should just carry on. let them come around to it whenever they will. Sometimes there's time limits. Like, I had a friend visiting, and she was only here for two weeks, and that made me feel even more, I've got to say something good in these two weeks, you know, I want to help.

[30:18]

And also she's sick. So again, a time thing, a feeling like, Well, we can't fix everything. Sometimes you just have to let things play out, even if it looks ugly. So, just be patient and pick your moment. You know, when it's coming from here and it seems right, say something or do something. But until that moment, just practice your way, which is a really nice way. if someone has a lot of composure, if enlightenment will naturally come from that, or in the midst of all that composure, enlightenment is in fact there?

[31:52]

Well, it's always there, right? You can't escape enlightenment. But we can escape composure. Only if you put it in the salad. It doesn't often seem to be that good character doesn't come from enlightenment? So you see, you know enlightened people whose character is not. Yeah, but also, it's probably better not to, when you have that thought arising that someone's not, their behavior is some, go like this.

[33:49]

I don't know what time we, but okay. Rondi? No. I was thinking about composure. I think that it's... I realized when you were talking and other questions that it means something different now to me than it meant to me before I came here. That maybe composure was something that was sort of formal. And now, Just listening to this I realized for me, and I was thinking composure means being formal and stoic and blah, blah, blah. I think that for me composure now means operating without ego. And that allows for a lot of room to not be formal. You know, because I was thinking about something Sojan said yesterday that I thought was pretty funny. And it felt completely composed to me and stuff, and I thought, that's what it is, is you can say something really goofy, but if you're operating without ego... I do it all the time.

[35:07]

You're going to get down your tree. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that, Dean. Yes, Linda. about befriending your problem. So if your problem is going around doing things that aren't of such good character, can you still befriend your problem? I mean, this may be personifying the problem too much, but the problem is a problem, you know? that something is happening that is unwholesome. We still befriend this problem.

[36:12]

I knew you'd say that. It just seems challenging. Yeah, it does. Something to chew on. Sometimes your teacher gives you a big problem, right? So, do you run away? Do you get rid of him, her, him, her? I guess don't turn away from your suffering. Things are numberless.

[38:09]

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