To try to talk about Zen all the time is almost fruitless. so little that can be said, which is not elusive or contradictory. Mostly, all we can do is encourage each other to practice, and to repeat ourselves, to repeat our practice. Yesterday I tried to give the beginning Sashin people a feeling for what the sutras mean by intelligence.

[01:25]

And to sum up what I said yesterday, so I can talk about the next step, intelligence is questioning plus faith, to question over and over again what is to question your teacher, to question the sutra, to question yourself, to question your activity, and yet from the point of view of faith, with faith as a basis. And the example I used was, you can ask, what is a tree? What is a tree? What is a tree? Why does a tree exist? But you don't cut it down.

[02:51]

If you cut it down, you have no faith. So that's pretty easy to understand, but not so easy to apply to, say, Zen Buddhism. What is Zen? Well, I don't need it. That's cutting down Zen, or people. or in seshin, the pain in your legs. What is this pain? I think I'll get up. That's not faith. And this kind of intelligence, questioning plus faith, is likened in the sutras to baking a jar. If you don't have your jar baked, it won't carry water.

[04:03]

So by questioning and faith, persistent questioning and faith, not occasional calmness, occasional questioning, but persistent questioning plus faith. your jar becomes baked. In Sashin or Zazen, you have this opportunity to find out how to bake your jar. And faith means some physical and mental calmness that absorbs things, that does not get upset, disturbed by things.

[05:13]

So you have to have some physical and mental calmness, and those two are one. and the ability to have an undisturbed series of thoughts. So if you want to find out what is reality, find out what is perfect wisdom, find out how to end your confusion, you need some physical and mental discipline, so that you can have an undisturbed series of thoughts, which most of you cannot do. This view of life is one in which we're always in the process of being baked or cooked. Tsukiroshi likened sashimi to various vegetables

[06:20]

from various states of cooking in each person. And to think too much about yourself was to be trying to eat firewood instead of cooking. Anyway, from this point of view, your birth does not nine months after you're conceived, that you're at this process of baking, of maturing. Your consciousness continues and requires your own active participation. So the best way I know is by Zazen.

[07:24]

and the whole of Zen practice. So, assuming you have practiced the first five paramitas, you have given many gifts. You are always giving something. You have taken great care in your conduct. And you have perfected your patience.

[08:41]

And your energy and your rejoicing in the merit of others is developed. Perfect wisdom then is your meditative trance or absorption. These things we can all do. But this is just some skill, a very helpful skill, just some skill. The next step, next paramita, perfect wisdom, goes back to the beginning and is the completion at the same time. And perfect wisdom or emptiness is not something that can be realized.

[09:50]

To realize it would be to think of it as an entity. Maybe perfect wisdom realizes you. So by this effort to bake our jar, you ready yourself for the occasion which you will receive reality. And what can you do then to ready yourself for this occasion beyond baking your jar? by persistent questioning plus faith in the activities of giving and the paramitas. There are really two things that you can do beyond those.

[11:00]

to not abandon others. This is another way of expressing the thought of enlightenment, to not abandon others. And there are many similes for it, or stories. You're going through a forest and you have your family and friends with you and there's some great danger comes. Do you, in the midst of that danger, turn around and run? to heck with those who can't defend themselves. Of course, in such a situation, hopefully you won't run, and there will be no weak spot in you for danger to find itself. But we're always in that kind of situation.

[12:14]

And we... Effort in practicing perfect wisdom is to develop this feeling of not abandoning others. This is the understanding of possessions too. It's not so important, poverty or lots of possessions, but if you have things in terms of others not having them, no. This is not practicing the non-abandonment of others. Isn't it true that most parents rejoice in their son becoming a doctor or some achievement.

[13:16]

Often in the sense that they have excelled others of their generation. But this is the opposite of perfect wisdom, the practice toward perfect wisdom. Buddhism, early Buddhism, emphasized nirvana. The other side of this not abandoning others, which the Bodhisattva does, is to realize there is no nirvana. But if there is nirvana, it means that something exists which can end. But since dharmas and you and emptiness, it does not exist, there is no nirvana.

[14:25]

So there's no end to reality. So the Bodhisattva's way is enlightenment itself. Do not abandon it. So this is one. The other is, ah, both of these are. skill, the two main ways we can describe skill and means. The other is to, by your compassion, of course giving up some nirvana, but by your compassion, focusing on some form, taking some form, for the support of others. And it means that you don't focus on it as real, but you focus on it as what, since we see everyone suffers from the apprehension of a basis.

[15:41]

Isn't that an interesting turn of phrase? Apprehension of a basis. That they think, most people suffer from thinking there's some basis, or some absolute, or something fundamental they can get to which will support So, the Bodhisattva focuses on some form, takes some activity to participate with others and to support your own practice, but at the same time to turn this over to enlightenment. So it's in this sense that our activities are understood. We can say even trades are understood, you know, working in an office or carpentry, or working on the farm here, or working with people in any way. It's understood not to have some possession of a skill, but as some way to work with people, realizing they have

[16:54]

the apprehension of a basis you decide to act in such a way that there will be no so they can't feel that so this apprehension of a basis cannot be manifested So what I'm saying is pretty simple, that whatever you do, you understand as a way to practice with others, that's all. But to do this thoroughly, without any break in it, to do this thoroughly, without any interruption,

[18:01]

and at the same time to be questioning with faith brings you to the point where you can't go any farther, you know, you're stumped, you see. And at that point we turn over, hopefully we turn over. Some occasion causes us to turn over. So wisdom is not something we can do, we can accomplish or realize. Wisdom is when you and reality are one. There's no more dualism, no more discrimination. Without discrimination there is complete comprehension. But this comes from developing the Paramita. deeply deciding not to abandon anyone.

[19:06]

Not to achieve something when others don't. Or to achieve something so others can achieve it. And to take some form. So in Zen, of course, we work in the kitchen and garden and office, etc. as intrinsic a part of practice as the zendo. But I think the zendo is the necessary part of the baking process. Without it, I don't think you can give up somewhere in your activity the sense that there is a basis. To turn yourself always toward complete knowledge, the Sutra says.

[20:19]

It means not to get stuck thinking. Emptiness or giving or enlightenment is a sign or is something realizable. To realize it would make it an entity. An entity is something limited. And in no way is space limited by the permanent. In no way is perfect wisdom limited by form. This basic understanding of Buddhism I don't think can make much sense to most of you. And if it does make sense, I'd be a little wary of your understanding. If you have, though, the feeling for something simple but vast,

[21:32]

which can take all of your energy, can be your great adventure with everyone. Then you have, I think, the proper direction toward practice, toward perfect wisdom, which will allow you to call forth your And it can't be done in one great rush. Over and over again you just repeat your effort to practice, repeat your effort to remind yourself to not abandon others.

[22:37]

Repeat your effort to be the shelter and refuge and resting place for yourself and others by finding out how to rest yourself Anyway, this is all there is to the Buddhist practice. If you try it, you will go through many turnarounds in which the same things are completely different and many what seemed at first unusual experiences in zazen and as you drop more and more the boundaries in your thinking

[24:01]

But no particular station along the way, no particular experience is practice. But the general orientation I have just given you, plus effort, is practice and is enlightenment, since there is nothing to realize. When you go off on a gambit or a wild goose chase, you know you'll come back. Well, you've come to see that there is no choice, no other fact than that you find yourself in everything you do.

[26:05]

Is there something you'd like to talk about? What do you mean by an undisturbed train of thought? What do I mean by an undisturbed train of thought? Just like that. Doesn't make sense to you? Better than that is to have an undisturbed train of no-thought.

[27:29]

But without that kind of ability we can't find out things. You couldn't hear what he said?

[28:40]

I think just the way I respond would include I think what's necessary is to recognize the futility of the thought, my effort is wrong right now, I'll go back and do it over again. Or now I'm interested in, I find myself, I'm doing this to achieve something. Well that's too late. to undo that. So, all you can do at that point, which is practice, is, oh, I am trying to achieve something. I will turn this achievement over. Do you understand?

[29:45]

You don't have to worry about what you're doing. Just when you notice what you're doing, that vow, and maybe we have the vow that comes in many packages, and it will come up in various forms. In this case, it might come up, I will turn this, if I attain enlightenment, I will turn this enlightenment over. If I get lots of money, I will give it all away. Somebody who kept telling themselves, oh, if I get lots of money, I will give it all away, might not earn so much. If they really intended to give it all away, they'd start right away. So, you always just deal with what is. Already that's back. You can't remake yourself.

[30:50]

or maybe the most effective way to remake yourself is at that moment, when you say, okay, I'll give it away, I won't abandon anyone. When you say, I have not made any effort, oh, okay, at that moment you make an effort. You don't say, well tomorrow I'll start doing such and such so that tomorrow won't be like today and I'll make an effort. No. You can do that, but better just at that moment you make an effort. What is effort is a pretty complicated question. But that's enough. Yes? I have a little bit of a feeling that if we found ourselves, or if we begin to find ourselves in what we do, it would be rather terrifying and quite fearful.

[31:55]

Or maybe I don't understand much of it myself, but since I have had that statement, then... I think most people do find it terrifying. and spend a great deal of energy maintaining a gap. So how can, when you have this being, what kind of means can you use to push through it? Trouble is you can't, you can't push through it. All you can do is bake your jar. You can't fill it. So you can remind yourself, oh, I'm maintaining this gap. But you cannot, by your own efforts, jump through.

[33:00]

All you can do is prepare yourself. Oh, okay. That sounds like gradual attainment there. In the sense of a statement like that, I get the feeling that this continual effort in making applies to what we're lacking, implies that we're lacking something. And that it's missing. Or I would like to make some more positive statement. And then that kind of statement seems rather sticky or very difficult, because it implies very strongly that we're lacking something, for one reason.

[34:01]

If you're not lacking something, why are you always seeking? Why do you want to push through? If you're not lacking something, there's no need to push through. Gradual attainment is the idea that the process of baking is attainment, but it's not. Attainment is when the jar is filled inside and outside. Instantaneously you realize it's filled. and it happens by itself. Sugireshi said, we are the flashing of enlightenment, or emptiness flashing, is just us. Yes, Chief.

[35:33]

Can becoming be done with effort alone or without effort? One is becoming all the time, so it doesn't require any effort, except to give up our Does that make sense? Yes. If you find you're gritting your teeth, you can make an effort to relax your jaw. But which is the effort, the gritting or the relaxing? Unfortunately, that's the way it is.

[36:45]

Without practicing, it's very difficult to understand this point of attainment and non-attainment, effort and non-effort. Yes? And part of it is the reaction to it. I fell into a nest of behaviors a few years ago. The idea that you're simply a reactive organism from things outside you. You have no innate self. I'm lying in this nest and I did it. I'm sane. I'm living for it. And I resist that very much, because I'm inclined to be tenacious with my own self.

[38:10]

It's nice to be a kind of paternalist about it. It's very relaxing to be in the garden and all the things. You're talking about behaviorists or Zen, now? In a way, both. I seem to be resisting the same element of the 14th still. I must participate in a dynamic way in the world economy rather than withdraw. I hear about the Zen, a very dynamic thing. In the inner area of confusion. You don't want to hold on to it.

[39:14]

It limits the sense of self. Yeah, haven't you had occasion in your own life to actively force circumstances to affect you? Yes. So, although you don't like to think that you just respond to your environment, you have allowed your environment to take you over many times. Why is that? You don't have to answer. I don't know much about behaviorism, or I forgot it anyway.

[40:22]

But Zen doesn't say that there's something out there which is causing us to act, or there's something here which is causing us to act. It's pretty difficult to explain, but if you look at it from the point of view of behaviorism, often a simile, an example used in Buddhism is two arrows meeting in mid-air. It's not so easy to shoot an arrow that meets another arrow in mid-air. Back there? Yeah. Yeah, if you asked me, you know, I wouldn't... even though it might... let's say that if you asked me about that, I would discourage you from thinking that.

[42:08]

But in fact, most of us practice with that idea somewhere in our mind. And it takes some... of our consciousness before we can actually see how to be free of signs, to see enlightenment as a sign or an entity. And that's the whole distinction between Theravadan Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, as posed by Mahayana Buddhism, in which there's a reality limit called Nirvana. We participate in creating nirvana, in creating the outside which behaves us.

[43:24]

You can actually experience that, but at first it's more a kind of effort to not get caught up in your own processing or destiny. Yes? I'm sorry, I can't hear very well. I have a slight hearing problem. But also, I just wanted to clarify something I thought. You were talking about a non-abandonment. And I was interested in that. I wonder if you could elaborate on that. I think there's a non-abandonment of others after there may be other people. And I wonder, to what extent is this a non-abandonment? To what extent? I mean, what does that mean? Where would you think its limit would be? Pardon me? Where would you think it would be limited, or where would you think you could not extend it? Where would you not extend it?

[44:33]

You said, how far can we extend it? What limit would you imagine? Well, from my own personal thing, I guess I would have to say whatever I didn't really want to do or didn't like about associating with other people. Yeah. I'm sorry, when I talk about Buddhism so simply, it becomes very complicated. So many things are there beforehand, like, this doesn't make much sense until you have an even mind toward everyone. Till you don't anymore have feelings of liking or disliking people. Which is actually, it's quite easy actually.

[45:34]

Not so difficult, once you give up preferring yourself. Which it should be pretty easy if you took a good look at yourself. Yes? I don't understand Paul May's 51, because he said that he spoke of an apprehension of the papers that we all had, which was supportive of it, that we thought would be supportive, but which doesn't exist. Then he said, I think, that what you do then is you meet that by doing people practice or they structure, but then in communities,

[46:46]

That's exactly right, what you just said. Except you give them a support which you can yank out from underneath them. And Zen is designed to be the best support to be yanked out. Does that make sense? So Buddhism is entirely to design something which you can't depend on. but which looks to be the most dependable thing of all. So you give up all your other dependencies, switch them all over to Buddhism. But that's true, I mean, unfortunately. And we enjoy fooling each other.

[48:00]

The great humor is how we're caught by things that don't exist. So we, most of us, have to sort of edge up on the idea that there's no basis, no absolute. And by meditation we build our physical confidence and our ability to mentally stay with something so that we don't get disturbed easily. And when you reach the point, we can say, when your jar is baked, that you can't be disturbed, almost can't be disturbed. then you can, by chance, you usually awaken to what's actually going on. And we don't need support anyway. But there is not such a thing.

[49:08]

Everything, as I said last week, is manifesting. And we are the manifestation. And there's nothing to trust but that manifestation. So there's no way you can get a checkpoint to check on something else. So we create all these fake standards and statuses which gives us and various levels of possession which give us security, and take away our keenness, make our intelligence like something muddy and fuzzy, the sutras say like cotton wool, and cause ourselves, make ourselves unable to accept suffering.

[50:18]

and cause ourselves by that great suffering. Much easier when you realize there's nothing to gain That perfect wisdom is no growth, no diminishing, no increasing, no diminishing. And you can practice it by accepting and by response, by negative way, by positive way. Until you've exhausted, you know, found the reality limit of viewing things as real. found the limit of viewing things as real.

[51:26]

And then you can experiment with viewing things as unreal, and you'll find your accuracy of your activity is greatly increased. And finally, you don't need to view them as real or unreal, that there's no longer any word we can give to the constant, one with its own manifestation, sublime flow of everything. You can't even By that do you mean that we should lose our attitude towards people?

[52:37]

You're not practicing, right? I mean, you're not doing meditation, is that correct? Some of you do? Perhaps you're not, okay. I only mention because it's a little different how I answer, depending on whether you are or not. Our practice is always aimed this way, or toward the particular, toward our own sight, I've been saying, S-I-T-E, not toward the universal.

[53:42]

The universal lacks distinction. Some scientific idea or universal philosophical idea is not what Buddhism is interested in. Certainly it's not the direction of our practice, it's by the particular. by each own individual circumstances, by your own personality free from ego, which we find the universal. You have to have some experience with stopping comparing. yourself comparing things and stopping judging before you can get a sense of how we actually can have an uneven or even sense of things one after another.

[54:44]

And to treat everyone To see, to find everyone equal does not mean to universalize them or to erase their differences. We say form is emptiness, emptiness is form. You can't separate emptiness and say it's universal and form itself is emptiness. Again, this is a little difficult to understand until you've reached that point of bafflement or being stumped in meditation or by questioning and faith. would seem contradictory. As I said yesterday, if you keep trying to bake your jar and meet the point where there's some bafflement, eventually, if you're persistent, you turn over to a kind of new, a wider level at which the differences are gone, and you

[55:47]

One of the most immediate physical experiences of it is when you do a Sashin, and the pain is pretty bad, because you've been sitting there for six or seven days, or two or three days, all day long. And if you even just sit in one position, if you sit the rest of the day, it doesn't require this posture. If you sit the rest of the day in that chair, about four o'clock in the afternoon you'll be feeling uncomfortable. But no physical damage is there. So, you at some point find you can, this is your home and you can just sit there. This mind and body is your home. And you know the pain no longer is relevant. But you still feel it, you don't deny it, you haven't forced it out of your mind and yet your perspective is quite a lot wider. Like a second wind of a sort. So this ability, repeated over and over again, to turn over, or to be turned over, awakens one to this wider possibility, finally.

[57:04]

And not just in zazen, but in your activity you find you can begin to take many points of view at the same time. And it's the ability to take many points of view at the same time which allow you to view your enemy quite dispassionately or compassionately. Compassionately means combed out passion, evened out passion. If we're not comparing or worrying about ourselves, each person is quite extraordinary. I mean, if you pick up a... Or give it up, try, but continue. Comes only when you no longer exclude anyone from that extension of non-abandonment.

[58:06]

As long as you say, well, this is my family or that's my family, but those aren't. That joy is not possible, as long as you exclude something or someone. This is our actual experience by this meditation practice. That's enough for today. Thank you very much.

[58:33]

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