Looks like the lady next door, or a lady, I don't think she lives there, but has been cultivating a garden on the roof of the shed. So, TV, people are over there shooting pictures. Probably appear on TV. It's pretty interesting, squash, flowers, whole vegetable garden just growing out of the roof of this old shed. Well, there's a new book that's been published called Zen Lessons, The Art of Leadership.

[01:26]

And this book was translated by Thomas Cleary and it was written in the 12th century. There's a compilation, an anthology, sort of, not an anthology, but a collection of sayings by certain old masters in China about leadership, about the virtues and faults of leadership in the Zen communities. And it's very interesting. The original Originally, it was called Precious Lessons from the Zen Forest, which is a much nicer name, in my mind, than Zen Lessons. As a matter of fact, when I saw Zen Lessons, I was a little bit turned off. But I have the manuscript for this book, which is about three times as long, and a lot of the nicer things are left out in this publication.

[02:41]

the meaty things, but it focuses on, it gives us a glimpse of how the ancients viewed their conduct. It's an unusual book in that it's about conduct. It's not so much about understanding in lofty ways, but it's about character. So I think, indeed, it's precious lessons. High concern for for character is something that we don't hear so much about these days.

[03:50]

You know, we're all so greedy for enlightenment and right understanding. So I want to read you These are very short, some short little parts here. This one is called Sincerity and Truthfulness. Chan master Yuan Wu said, The study of the way is in truthfulness. The establishment of truthfulness is in sincerity. Only after you can maintain inner sincerity can you free people from confusion. By maintaining truthfulness in yourself, you can teach people to shed delusions.

[04:56]

Only truthfulness and sincerity are helpful without drawbacks. So we know that if sincerity is not whole, the mind cannot be safeguarded or trusted. If truthfulness is not whole, one's words cannot be acted upon. An ancient said, food and clothing can go, but truth must not be lost. So a guide should teach people with sincerity and truthfulness. If one's heart is not sincere and one's acts are not truthful, how can one be called a guide? The Book of Changes says, only when ultimate sincerity prevails in the world can nature be fulfilled. The ability to fulfill nature means to be able to fulfill human nature. If one cannot fulfill oneself and yet expects fulfillment of others, the people will surely be deceitful and uncooperative.

[05:59]

If one is not sincere beforehand and yet speaks of sincerity afterward, that people will surely doubt and will not trust. This is the meaning of the saying, when you shave hair, you should get it down to the skin. When you cut nails, you should cut them down to the flesh. Truly, if sincerity is not complete, people are not moved by it. If there is no decrease, there will be no increase. All in all, it is quite clear that sincerity and truthfulness cannot be dispensed with for a moment. But it's possible to cut the hair down to the skin and still be deceitful. And possible to cut the nails down to the skin and still be deceitful. And then another one says, correcting faults.

[07:01]

Yuan Wu said, Who has no faults? To err and yet be able to correct it is best of all. Since time immemorial, all have lauded the ability to correct faults as being wise, rather than considering having no faults to be beautiful. Thus, human actions have many faults and errors. This is something that neither the wise nor the foolish can avoid. Yet, it is only the wise who can correct their faults and change to good, whereas the foolish mostly conceal their faults and cover up their wrongs. When one changes to what is good, virtue is new every day. This is characteristic of what is called the ideal person. When one covers up one's faults, the evil is more and more manifest.

[08:03]

This is characteristic of what is called the lesser person. So it is that the ability to follow what is right when hearing of it is considered difficult from the standpoint of ordinary feelings. To gladly follow good when seeing it is what is esteemed by the wise as virtuous. He says at the bottom, I hope you will forget about the outer expression of the words. I think he means Excuse my clumsy expression And the short one says Yuan Wu said to Yuan Bu Dai In filling the role of a leader, assisting the spread of the Buddhist teaching, always be thinking of giving help and salvation and practice this without pride. Then many will be those reached and many those saved. However, if you have pride in yourself and an inclination to flaunt your abilities, then thoughts of ambition arise and an impure mind results.

[09:13]

So this book kind of goes on in that vein. And I'm sure that ever since the beginning of Buddhism and Zen, problems have arisen due to faults or flaws of character. where he says, it's not that we try to be faultless. This is an impossible task, to be faultless.

[10:18]

But since both sages and common people have faults, have good, on one side are faultless and on the other side have faults. This is applicable to everyone. Where a person errs is when they feel that they have gotten to such a high place that they no longer have faults. That is the biggest fault. A dangerous place. So Our practice is not to be faultless, but someone asked me, what is your practice? I said, like water. Water always finds the lowest level.

[11:22]

It doesn't try to get itself up someplace, but always rests on the lowest level, safe ground. If when water finds its lowest level, then we can say water knows itself. Water doesn't try to be like sky, although sky is also water. Suzuki Roshi used to say, everyone has a good side and a bad side. Each one of us has a good side and a bad side. And he didn't leave himself out and say, all of you have a good side and a bad side, but I have only a good side, which

[12:34]

is one of the faults, I think, of a lot of leaders in spiritual communities today. You have a good side and a bad side, but I have only a good side. Everything I do, it's okay. No matter what it is, it's okay. And in understanding the non-duality of good and bad in our life, when we understand or are completely immersed in practice, then everything we do is practice. Which doesn't mean that there's not a good side and a bad side. Everything we do is practice. Everything we do is Buddha nature. arises from Buddha nature, but there's a good side to Buddha nature and a bad side to Buddha nature, which the wise don't understand.

[13:53]

Everything I do is right because I'm enlightened. This kind of understanding is sheer delusion. So in this kind of understanding, we ignore the most fundamental basic understanding of Buddhadharma, which is every effect has a cause. And every action produces an effect. And it's called the law of karma. Karma is, literally speaking, means action. A volitional act. And whatever action we take,

[15:00]

combined with the circumstances under which it's taken creates an effect. And that effect is either beneficial or not beneficial. It's either a so-called good action, a bad action, or an indifferent action. Neutral. So the consequences of our acts always return to us in some way, either now or later or a lot later. So we can't ignore the law of causation. There are many stories in Zen about ignoring the law of causation.

[16:07]

So, sooner or later, our actions, the results of our actions, become apparent. It's not that there is some old man with a long beard in heaven judging our actions, but the result of our actions are judged by their result. It's called consequences. So every action has its consequence. So for a Zen student, what's really important is to be aware, always,

[17:32]

our actions, the way we think, the way we speak, and the way we act. So these ancient masters and also Dogen Zenji are always warning us not to practice for the sake of fame or the sake of gain, but only to practice for the sake of the dharma, to keep ourselves honest, sincere, and humble. When we have enlightenment, The true, you can always tell an enlightened person because they're always very humble, not ostentatious, not flouting their authority, not trying to dominate or possess because they have a true sense of awe at their understanding

[19:01]

because of their understanding and treat everyone with respect and treat everything with respect because enlightenment means that you realize that you yourself are who you are in this universe. So there's nothing to gain. When you see people who are always trying to gain something you know that they're not yet enlightened, even if they claim to be. So in our practice, the main thing is to always keep a balanced mind. our mind has many faculties.

[20:05]

And to keep all these faculties, these many faculties, in balance is how we should use our awareness. Buddhadharma talks about the five faculties. The five faculties are Faith, Energy, Mindfulness, Concentration, and Wisdom. And these five faculties are always working together. And Our practice is to always keep them in balance so that they can work together and not allowing anyone to predominate at the expense of the others.

[21:17]

For instance, faith is confidence. Faith has many meanings, but basically it's confidence. It's confidence in ourself, or confidence in some power, or confidence in some work, or In Buddha Dharma, faith is confidence in ourself and in our Buddha nature and faith with the realization that there is nothing permanent in this world.

[22:27]

Faith in impermanence. not faith in something substantial as people try to grasp for something, but confidence in the interdependence of life. So this kind of faith is necessary. When we say have faith in Buddha nature, it means to have faith in the interdependence of all life. And when we have faith in the interdependence of life, we can let go of clinging to ourself. So this faith is the most essential. When we have enlightenment, then we have faith. Faith and enlightenment are really the same.

[23:30]

But faith comes through understanding Not just blindly. Not because I say so. It should come through your own experience. Confidence. I can't give you confidence. You can only get confidence through your own experience. I can tell you about something, but you have to find yourself. that confidence. But there's a part of faith which is, okay, I'll go find it. That's also faith. Before you find it, you know that it's true. But you have to prove it to yourself, even though you may know it. So there's the faith which gets us

[24:36]

going, which is a faith that we're going in the right direction. And then there's the real confidential faith, which is, this is it. So faith, energy, or determination. Energy has a lot of connotations. Determination belongs to energy and the ability to work with something, make things work. And then mindfulness is to always be aware.

[25:40]

Mindfulness is neither good nor bad. Mindfulness is right there in the middle of these five faculties. And it's not subject to good or bad. It's the pivot point. of our mind. That's why we always emphasize mindfulness in Buddhism, because it's the pivot. And all the faculties can relate to it. And it holds, it's the glue which holds it all together. And concentration allows us to stay with one thing, to stay on our path and not get pulled around.

[26:49]

It's the ability to abide and continue. And then wisdom, of course, is great understanding. But in this case, it's also knowledge. And knowledge can be a very dangerous thing, or it can be a very helpful thing. Actually, any of them can be dangerous or helpful. Mindfulness doesn't change, but is not Mindfulness is not modified by conditions, but all the rest can easily get out of hand. So if we become very, if we're a very intelligent type of person, then we can easily forget the rest of the faculties and rely on intelligence alone.

[28:04]

And there's a kind of sickness, a sickness of the mind, which is to allow intelligence to rule the mind, to overbalance the mind, and we get top-heavy. And when we get top-heavy with intelligence, then we get arrogant. And when we get arrogant, we start to see ourselves as so intelligent and everyone else is kind of stupid and then the mind starts to run away with itself and invent all kinds of fantasies and pretty soon we're just out of control mentally even though we may be inventing wonderful things one thing after another so when one of the faculties predominates too much without the help of the others it tends to cause misery for ourselves and for others and it's easy to fool people and it's easy to become very successful through intelligence but

[29:34]

It's leading for, or it's heading for disaster. These faculties are called controlling faculties because they control each other. They balance each other out. So the controlling factor, the main controlling factor for intelligence is faith. Because faith is grounded in reality. Faith is like the feminine side and intelligence is like the masculine side. So faith puts an anchor onto intelligence.

[30:38]

Otherwise, intelligence gets to be like an airplane without a rudder. And faith without intelligence can easily just run away with whatever comes along. It doesn't, faith doesn't necessarily have discernment and needs intelligence to guide it. But, so faith is like, without intelligence we'll believe in almost anything. So we have faith types on one hand and intelligence types on the other.

[31:42]

And either one, which doesn't have the other as a balance, will not work. So in our leadership, this balance is always necessary between faith and Intelligence. Intelligence is like the ability, has the ability to see things very clearly. And faith has the ability to be embedded in, see things directly. Intuition is the quality of faith. And it directly knows. but it doesn't necessarily know what it knows. So it gets sorted out through intelligence.

[32:51]

So if we only are faith type, even though we have great intuition, we have to develop the other side. which is intelligence, knowing. Knowing what it is that we understand and guiding ourself correctly. Energy and Concentration are also controlling factors of each other. Energy wants to get out and do something. And if it's not controlled by concentration, then it jumps from one thing to another.

[34:01]

Because, you know, you notice kids, little kids are always jumping from one thing to another. They have lots of energy, but not a lot of concentration. that concentration is something that has to be developed. And when we first come to practice, we see just how limited our concentration is, our ability to just put our mind to one thing and stay there. And we realize how our mind is always being carried off by something. So, concentration is the controlling factor for energy. And energy is the controlling factor for concentration. And they must work together harmoniously. Concentration, left by itself without energy, tends toward laziness and spaced-outness.

[35:14]

It's easy to have a spaced out concentration, but it doesn't have any energy behind it. So, spaciness of concentration needs energy to motivate it. So all of these factors have to be working together in a well-balanced mind. These controlling factors of the mind are something that we should always be aware of. And when we start getting too unbalanced on one side, we should bring the other side in to control it. And we do it naturally. We don't think about that so much. We don't think about them as factors, but we kind of do it naturally, or we don't do it. And when students has one side too much overbearingly, then we always try to push them to the other side, you know?

[36:26]

Someone wants too much too soon, then we say, wait, just wait. Or if someone hangs back too much, we say, go ahead, go ahead. If someone is too brilliant, and arrogant. Don't think so much. Don't think so much. Just sit. Sitting is good for us because we're all so intelligent and arrogant. Zazen is very good for us, especially Sashin. We can't think our way out of it. Although we do try to escape in lots of ways.

[37:27]

The main thing is to know ourself. To be a leader of the community, you must really work on yourself. You should maybe be a little reluctant to take on too much, but also allow others to move you forward. This is always a good sign. Not to push yourself forward, but let others move you forward and be a little reluctant. The old masters say,

[38:53]

Don't work for fame and gain or to get yourself some position or to look good. But just know yourself. This is the most important thing. Take care of balancing the mind, balancing the body and mind. Don't get too heavy on one side or the other. Don't let something stick out or predominate. When all the faculties, the controlling faculties of the mind are working together harmoniously, we can feel very good and people will trust us. And we can trust ourselves. and confidence comes in this way.

[40:04]

If we're too intelligent or if we let intelligence predominate too much then it leads to cunning and we look for advantages and opportunities for dominating. This is not our practice. Our practice is to free our own mind and free the minds of others. Not to captivate or take something. So sometimes people are confused, confused by the leadership of practice places.

[41:26]

I always felt very good about my own teacher. because he was always aware of his faults, never promoting himself, never claiming ownership to anything, never putting others down and trying to raise himself up, never making excuses for himself, always apologizing for his poor behavior. He would apologize for his poor behavior, but we always felt that if our behavior was as good as what he was apologizing for, we would be okay. only interested in sincerity.

[42:39]

He was only interested in sincerity and truth, not fooling people or not being needy for something. And as it says here in this precious lessons, Not that we're perfect or should try to be perfect or try to be faultless, but to recognize that we have faults and what they are. And when they come up, to realize what they are and to be open about what they are as much as we can. Sometimes it's hard to be open about our faults. we should at least be open about our faults to ourself. I may not be open to my faults about you, to you, but I hope that I'm open to my faults to me.

[43:47]

Because you can't do anything about it, but I have to. So, I don't claim to be virtuous, I think there are faults that I have that I don't see and that I refuse to look at. But little by little, right? We don't do everything at once. But I always trusted my teacher because I knew he was working on his faults and he didn't deny them. So, he was working on my faults, which encouraged, on his faults, which encouraged me to work on my faults. So, all of us are the same, pretty much. The difference is we're all pretty much all the same.

[44:54]

And to deny that we're not all the same is to overlook something. So sometimes a teacher will wonder why the students are not responding. And so when the teacher realizes that the students are not responding, The teacher should look at his or her faults. What am I doing that's wrong? And not blame the students. The easiest thing to do is to blame others. As soon as we start blaming others, that should be a

[46:00]

a little bell sounding in our mind that we're not in tune. The way we correct the world outside is to look inside. You can't fix the world That's just patchwork. Trying to fix the world is just putting patches on top of patches. The way to fix the world outside, so-called outside, is to be in tune with ourself. That's where, as a STEM student, that's where we always have to look for balancing the ship. And we have to look at our own internal gyroscope. And just keep coming back, back and back to the source.

[47:12]

So practice, our practice is rather endless. And Over time, our life will change or mature with our practice. This is most important. People look for quick results, but without looking for results at all. It's enough just to stay on the practice. It's hard enough just to stay in the practice without looking for some kind of result. Results, our maturity, blossoms in its own time. Do you have a question or two?

[48:34]

I've been wondering, listening to you, where compassion is involved. Well, first we have compassion for ourself. So if we have compassion for ourself, it means that we realize our own suffering. We realize that our unbalance is our own suffering. Compassion means suffering, and compassion means to suffer with. So first we have to be able to accept our own suffering. So, it's all compassion. Completely compassion. Not blaming others is compassion.

[49:40]

Looking at our own faults is compassion. Then we can extend that to the world around us. When we experience our own deep suffering without blame, then compassion flows out of us toward the world. Thank you.

[50:40]

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