I want to talk about the path of the precepts. I actually want to pick this up as a focus over the next several months, largely because some of you are making some version or another of the Buddha's road. And the ceremony for receiving a robe and taking the Bodhisattva vow is primarily focusing on the precepts. But also, of course, the precepts are up for me, especially today, because this is the full moon. And in the Buddhist world, there's confession and regret and renewing of vows with respect to the precepts on the new moon and the full moon. A practice which is, it's the oldest continuously practiced ceremony in human life.

[01:14]

Anything that people keep doing, I'm interested in. But before I get into what we mean when we talk about practicing with the precepts or the path of the precepts, I'd like to set a context, which I think is very important. And I have a quite practical example of the context. The context being the condition of interdependence. of interrelationality that whatever we do affects all of us and in fact not just us human beings but the entire world and all beings and things in the world as we know it in an ordinary sense. So the particular example that is very much in our

[02:19]

laps, if you will, has to do with this creek that runs just on this side of the house on the property. It actually marks our property line and has been known to actually come indoors. In the 25 years I've lived here, we've flooded twice. Interestingly, before we bought the house, so it was a kind of informed What's particular about this creek is that one of the two species of fish that spawns in this creek, the silver salmon or coho salmon, are endangered and this is the only creek in the world where they spawn without benefit of being hatched in a fisheries. So they have a kind of fragile toehold on the natural order of things, if you will, in this particular creek.

[03:27]

And of course, one of the challenges for those of us who live along the creek, living near beach and the ranger stations between here and Muir Woods and Muir Woods itself, our big challenge is how to live sensitively in relationship to this whole ecosystem. One of the things that we can do that will, that does make a big difference is to put less water into our septic system. So one of the ways of taking care of the fish is to put the toilet paper in the paper bag, not in the toilet, and not flush the toilet unless there's some major a vent which causes you to want to flush the toilet. For us to use the dishwasher and not dutifully rinse out our cups.

[04:32]

Everything we do, how long we take a shower, how we brush our teeth, all of those things can make a difference. So I want to ask your help. and being especially mindful of our relationship with water when you come here for a few hours or for a longer retreat. And we are making a big effort to rethink how we do things like laundry and what we do and don't water in the garden, etc. And I invite you to help us when you come here as a way of helping yourselves keep in mind this relationship that is flagged or articulated with this term interdependence.

[05:34]

And I think that one of the reasons for following the precepts at least one of the potential reasons, is out of some recognition that what I do or don't do has an impact on those around me. And because I understand the interdependent nature of the world and myself in the world, then I may pick up this set of descriptions about behavior that is said in the Buddhist world to be a description of what a Buddha, someone who's fully awake, what their life would look like. So the precepts are presented as a description of what a fully realized being's life looks like. That's a very important distinction, I think, between the ethical principles that are articulated

[06:39]

in the great world religions, in Christianity in particular the Ten Commandments which have quite a high resonance with the precepts in Buddhism. But they are prescriptive and in the Buddhist tradition the precepts are offered as descriptive. So one of the ways to become a Buddha is to begin to work with one's behavior so that one's behavior has this description we call the precepts. So the precepts can be seen as both cause and effect. And it's one of the situations in which we can think of ourselves as doing a kind of as if. The precepts can help us take on acting in a certain way as a way of becoming familiar with and even setting a kind of groove for certain kinds of behavior or the absence of certain kinds of behavior.

[07:45]

Over the years of my own practice, I have worked with one or another precept. I would say within the first year of my beginning meditation practice, I also began working with the precepts in the following way. I went through the precepts the first time, not in any order, not in the conventional order, but to let the precept that kind of jumped off the page at me be the one that I would work with. And so the first three precepts that I worked with in that sense chose me, rather than me choosing the precept. And I worked with each precept slowly, The first three I worked with were between a year and a year and a half each. And what I did when I say I worked with a precept, I would take a precept, not taking what is not given, for example, and say that precept to myself five, six, eight, ten times a day, paste it up around my life so I'd run into it.

[09:09]

set my intention first thing in the morning to work with this precept, to keep it in mind as fully as I can. Wondered about it, wondered about what does this mean, used it as a kind of frame of reference that influenced what I was particularly attentive to. With the understanding that I would not move from that precept to another one, until I felt like I had really run it dry in a certain way. So it took me about five years to work through the ten grave precepts. I went very slowly with the first three and then somewhat more quickly with the rest of the list. And in the process then began practicing the precepts in this way with other people so that I have for many years been lucky to be in a group of us taking on the precepts in this way so that we would on a regular and periodic basis meet and talk about what we had noticed in using the precept in this way.

[10:27]

And I found this focus very beneficial. Not always In fact, often not easy. Often illuminating things about my tendencies and patterns that I was not so thrilled to notice, but fruitful. Now some of you have heard me mention this before, probably more times than you want to hear about it, but I'm going to bring it up again. the great list of the perfections, before ethics or morality is the perfection of generosity. And I want you to, if it's appropriate, if you are inclined to move towards the precepts in this way, I want you to begin with a focus on generosity.

[11:35]

Because if you do, If you work with the precepts in a way that is grounded in the cultivation of generosity, you won't be beating yourself up. You won't be hard on yourself about the things that you notice. And that is very important. To work with the precepts with a degree of kindliness and tenderness with oneself is very important. Otherwise, we won't get very far. We'll be caught with telling ourselves stories and having excuses about why we do this or that, or what is perhaps more likely for some people, get on a kind of tirade of self-deprecation and self-judging. So, Most of the time, people, when they work with the precepts, seem to pick the Ten Grey Precepts.

[12:44]

They don't start with the Three Pure Precepts. I think that's because there's more heat around the Ten Grey Precepts, although I think there's some potential heat in the Three Pure Precepts. One way the Pure Precepts are translated is as I vow to, or a disciple of Buddha, does good, avoids evil, and vows to seek enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. The Bodhisattva vow. The translation that I find very helpful for avoiding evil is the vow about living non-violently and non-possessively. That focus is, of course, articulated more specifically in the Tantrayana precepts. And then the translation of disciple of Buddha vows or promises, or has it the intention to do good, may be translated as a vow to live awake in the Madrid.

[13:59]

And then the Bodhisattva vow, which is, I think, for most of us quite challenging, this notion that my biggest intention in formal practice is not just for my own benefit, but for the potential benefit for all beings. Some declaration of willingness to stay in the world of birth and death until not only am I liberated or released from suffering, but so are all other beings. A kind of mind-boggling notion. And it may be it's very mind-bogglingness that sends people to the 10 great precepts where we feel like, well, at least we know where we are. So the 10 great precepts go not to kill or intentional, sometimes translated as not to intentionally harm, not to take what is not given, not to lie, not to engage in sexual misconduct,

[15:09]

not to intoxicate mind or body of self or others, not to slander oneself or others, not to praise self and disparage others, not to be possessive of anything, not even the truth, not to harbor ill will, and not to abuse the free treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. What I'm hoping is that for those of you who are making robes, you will be done with them by the end of May. And that we might, at the end of the Memorial Day, retreat to the Bodhisattva Ceremony. And I think I figured there's something like 12 or 13 weeks between now and then. And that for all of us, whether we are

[16:13]

planning to do the Bodhisattva vow ceremony or not, we might take on, for this period of time, taking a precept a week. And if we hit one that's particularly rich, we have enough time to linger with that one for a couple of weeks. And that you let yourselves have the benefit of just going through the precepts and just hang out with each one, one at a time, either in order or in the way that I was describing as letting the precepts pick you. I think this particular focus is especially useful for those of us who get caught up in the world and in particular in our work. and have a hard time sustaining a regular meditation practice.

[17:20]

And I think that it can be quite illuminating to discover the degree to which one can have a sense of a very lively and vivid spiritual life and spiritual practice when you take on this kind of focus that you can do in the midst of daily life no matter what one's daily life is like. So, I think for lay people, this particular path is quite rich. Many years ago now, when Bill and I were first together, One of the questions that came up for him, really in response to his exposure to the precepts, was this question, can a real estate lawyer practice the Eightfold Path?

[18:29]

And he was really looking at the precepts as the challenging point. I know actually other people who've gone through a similar process of struggling with, can I have the life I have, have the work I have, have the responsibilities and obligations that I have, and have a spiritual life that follows the descriptions and articulations in the philosophical and moral system that we call Buddhism. And one of the things I encourage people to do, because I think we sometimes don't do this enough, is when a question like that comes up, don't brush it away, don't ignore it. Let the question have some integrity. Respect the questions that come up for you, no matter what they are.

[19:30]

I know for Bill, letting himself have that doubt about whether the work that he does could harmoniously coexist with the spiritual life he yearned for. Allowing that question to actually sit there in his life and have him bump into it and work with it for over a year was very, very fruitful because he was engaged in a quite organic process of coming to the point where one day the question arose differently. The question arose as, how can a real estate lawyer follow the Eightfold Path? Not great doubt, but a sense of it is possible, and the challenge is to work out the details for doing so. And he then proceeded for a number of years, particularly of the years that he was working at the big law firm in San Francisco, where he was a partner for a number of years, and where he didn't have the kind of freedom to pick and choose his work in the way that he does as a solo practitioner, which he is now.

[20:58]

that the precepts themselves, the combination of mindfulness practices and the precepts were what helped him begin to articulate and illuminate what the details of a spiritual life would look like. Would come up in very specific situations, having to do with something a client might ask him to do. that would have to do with the way he would speak to someone about someone who wasn't present. The way he would conduct himself in a negotiation with the attorney for the opposing side in terms of his language or the way he would speak to the person or speak about them later. The detail of that was what came up in a way that gave him a sense of a very specific set of challenges day by day.

[22:09]

One of the first examples that came up for him had to do with what I used to call the water cooler joke material. He would come home virtually every day with yet a new joke that he heard at work. Sometimes seemed like that's all he and his colleagues did was to swap jokes. And they were often ethnic jokes. And I started giving him a hard time about them. And he started to think about these jokes in terms of the precepts that have to do with slander and praising self by disparaging others in particular. But I think there's a way in which certain kinds of jokes bring up a whole cluster of the precepts. And out of his beginning to pay closer attention to the tone of the jokes and the degree to which they were at someone or some group of people's expense,

[23:27]

he began to be inclined to not tell them. And it really was a challenge when he began to not listen to them because of course then he had to go public with what he was doing. But that really, that focus on the joke telling at work came out of this inquiry that began with the precepts. And I think, in a way, it had something to do with the way in which Bill became a little bit the village priest in his law firm. He was the person that people would go and talk to when something terrible happened. Some of the other younger associates said things to me that reinforced my sense that it had to do with Bill slowly becoming more and more willing

[24:29]

when somebody would start to tell a joke, say, if this is an ethnic joke, let me know, and I'll excuse myself. And in time, his colleagues telling more and more jokes about, there were these three guys. They started cleaning them up with respect to this quality of being at the expense of somebody. interesting how when we work with ourselves something shifts in our relationship with the people that we work with all the time. I know a woman who is a public health nurse who was working in a hospital in the East Bay and she said very often we transition from a shift going off duty and a shift coming on duty where they have a half an hour overlap and that would be the time when all the information about the patients in that particular unit, what was going on with them, all that information would be exchanged.

[25:35]

And she said it was a time of great tension and often misunderstandings and flare-ups of one sort or another. And she finally did what at the time felt very risky to her, she suggested that they have their meeting standing in a circle and that they greet each other at the beginning of the meeting and at the end of the meeting. Something that's common in a Buddhist retreat context, if you're doing something like some work, you begin and end the period of work by standing together, greeting each other, bowing in and bowing out. She said not only was she not laughed out of the unit, but her colleagues were willing to try it and found that these two very simple things actually had some positive effect.

[26:44]

I actually think doing what we do in terms of spiritual practice in ways that are more invisible is quite wholesome. I think particularly if we get very enthusiastic about what we're doing, we can tend to be a drag, a proselytizing drag. And distract ourselves, have our energy pulled away from staying with our own mindstream. So I think being a little bit discreet about what we do can be very useful. But there will come a time where we may have the opportunity to be a little bit more visible about what we're trying to do. Bill had one of these figures of the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara, the Compassion Bodhisattva, in his office in the law firm that he was in. And every Monday morning he would open the week and open his office and set his intention for the week by doing three bows in front of the figure along with the picture, offer a stick of incense, and then at the end of the week he'd bow out.

[28:10]

Now virtually all of his clients and most of his colleagues just thought it was art. But there were some people who realized there was another dimension to the presence of this figure. And people would sometimes ask him, what is that? So I want to encourage you to consider taking the precepts as a series of focal points over several months and see what shows up. Again, as with so many other practices, take on the inquiry as an inquiry, as a source of curiosity and interest, as a source or focusing with an investigating mind to see what's so and what's not.

[29:18]

Maybe quite interesting. So, anything any of you would like to bring up this morning? of town with the crack dealers and prostitutes and so forth and got raped and was just into the worst degradation of all I could imagine.

[30:55]

Well, you know, in the Shantideva teaching, which I love so much, Shantideva talks about why be unhappy about what I can do something about and why be unhappy about what I cannot do something about. Sounds vaguely like the serenity prayer. And he unpacks that to discuss the fact that the only mindstream we can tend is our own. And to suggest implicitly that we find a way to keep reminding ourselves about that. And to be curious about what constitutes help. And how often is my motivation in helping because of my own discomfort? with what I'm present with. The whole challenge of being present with, staying present with suffering and not rushing in to try and fix it, when it's essentially suffering I can't fix.

[33:03]

The only person who can fix it is the person who's in the midst of the suffering. I think there are all kinds of things that we can do in terms of being witnesses, being willing to stay present through thick and thin, even when things are difficult, but to also be clear about what we can change and what we can't change. And I think there's certain kinds of suffering which doesn't change except through self-diagnosis. And for those of us who have a strong rescue muscle, Being present, knowing about the suffering of someone and meeting that helplessness to fix what only they can fix is a real practice.

[34:04]

It's in a way what the precept about not taking what is not given is pointing to. One of the dimensions where that particular preset can really illuminate what's going on, especially for those of us who, you know, have a fleet of ambulances driving out there, fixing and rescuing, which of course, you know, though caregivers' professions are loaded with those of us who grew up feeling this great responsibility to take care of and fix and rescue and make happy others. And it's extremely tricky, that path. And I know for myself, one of the focuses that's helped me is to keep checking my motivation.

[35:08]

What's my motivation? When I have the impulse to stop somebody. I've participated in a number of interventions over the years and finally came to the conclusion that I couldn't do that anymore. That I wasn't actually convinced that they were effective. That there seemed to be something crucial missing if the person who was abusing drugs and alcohol themselves didn't have some sense of their own suffering. And until that happens, it's very hard to have much change. You know, it's why in the Tibetan Buddhist sacred art tradition, the fact that compassion is articulated not just in peaceful forms, but in these very fierce forms,

[36:12]

You know, the tough love version. Which is really what you're talking about with your friend. I know someone who, um, for the first time in her life, just recently decided to stop bailing her kids out whenever they get into trouble. Her kids now being, you know, adults in their mid and late thirties. and stumbled on the fact that she was doing that instead of taking care of herself. And what she was modeling was actually not wholesome. If she really wants to be a resource for her kids, she can be the best resource in demonstrating what happens when you take good care of your own life and understand what is reasonable and what is overextension and all of those things that come up around taking good care of ourselves.

[37:20]

Not selfishly, but adequately. And I think the bodhisattva vow in Buddhism gets misused as an excuse for being a rescue operative. Isn't there a presupposing, strictly speaking, enlightenment? The Bodhisattva vow? No. No, I don't think so. You mean that you can't take it until you've become enlightened? Well, something around there. Well, it certainly is about going for enlightenment. That's certainly true. But I know, for me, the Bodhisattva vow came off the map and became actually a vow I could imagine taking with my experience of being around someone for some while who was remarkably realized. And to have a sense of, oh, this is what's possible, was the necessary missing piece for me.

[38:28]

So in that sense, realization is certainly a very important But I know for myself and I know from listening to other people and observing people in dharma practice that the bodhisattva vow gets to be the excuse for overextension and rescue missions that may not be in fact the most appropriate thing we can do. The wisest, most skillful. And I think that that place of really coming to meet our helplessness to stop or interfere with the suffering of others casts a whole light on what it means to be present and compassionate with the suffering of the world.

[39:34]

You know, the Compassion Bodhisattva is described as the regarder of the cries of the world. He doesn't come with an ambulance. He's present and sees and hears. Doesn't fix. And of course, you know, stop and think about all the times in our own lives someone just being present and listening. how helpful that is. How helpful it is when someone has enough confidence in me to not come and rescue me, but to have the confidence that I can do that for myself. It's essentially very respectful stance. But I think getting there is really painful. Really painful. Jenny? I was thinking about the same thing, and I was thinking about really wanted to work with a precept, and... Not taking what is not given.

[40:40]

Right. But I was going to reframe it for myself, which is not giving what is not asked for. Well, it does... Yes. Do you know what I'm saying? Yes, I think it amounts... Is it the same? It essentially amounts to the same thing. Great. And then I need some advice, because... I feel I've been... facing this in so many levels and what I'm left with when I don't get that is I'm not the regarder of other people's suffering. I'm suffering and I'm grief-stricken and I feel helpless and that's just where I am. And discovering our capacity to abide in that state of mind is a practice in and of itself. Because for so many of us, our impulse to move towards others is a way to move away from being present with that condition.

[41:49]

I mean, I can remember when I began to take on as a practice, if I'm in a meeting, with a group of us who are responsible for the practice life of the Dharma Center, and I see a big mess. And my commitment is I am not going to be the first one to rush in there and see the mess, name the mess, and clean it up. It's one of the most challenging practices I've ever taken on. And of course, one of the wonderful things I discovered was the hubris in thinking that I was the only one who saw the mess could name the mess and could clean it up. And that there were a whole lot of other people ready, willing, and able. And I didn't have to always be there, the first with my mom, so to speak. Bart? What was the word that you used, hubris? Yes. And that's? Pride. And when you had said,

[42:58]

When you compared the ambulance to the vow of not taking, what is given is that? What is not given. What is not given is that the responsibility then? You're taking the responsibility that was not given to you in this case where she needs to go through her things and it's not your responsibility, so you're taking on something that is not yours? Correct. But what I noticed with that particular precept is if I just keep saying it, I keep wondering what does it mean, I keep it just as a kind of backdrop, I began to see instances of taking what is not given that I just had no awareness of. So it had the effect of being incredibly illuminating about habits and patterns that I had no recognition that I was participating in. I mean, it came up for me particularly around affection, appreciation, that kind of stuff.

[44:08]

And I was appalled at the degree to which what was motivating me in a lot of situations was kind of cornering somebody into liking me. And of course, what I began to see very quickly was, doesn't work. I just wanted to mention out loud that one of the things about this rope sewing class has been that Saturdays is my day to go to my Al-Anon meeting and I have a home group and it's been kind of a tug of war inside of me and having kind of a decision in me that I needed to kind of split up my time and be able to do both somehow this last week. And then coming today and realizing that really everything in me, what I'm working with, and everything about my Alanon program and my spiritual program are all basically one thing.

[45:17]

I need to be able to see that from both sides is very helpful for me. Well, I would hope that that would be true. Because both paths are very much about a process for being awake, for being able to live our lives in wholesome, clear-sighted ways. I think the resonance, resonating between the two traditions is very, very close. I'm in the process of working on my fourth step. I've been three and a half years in Illinois. It's quite a challenge and I think that with that depth of self-analyzation and then with sewing my robes and the same thing about my devotion and my longing for the spiritual path that I'm seeking, the depth of those two things have been just fruit turning.

[46:25]

This is where I think there's a certain yoga, if you will, in the Buddhist path that can be a resource in 12-step work. How to do that analysis and inquiry, how to go about looking. For example, the advice that the looking be done kindly and tenderly can be very I mean, that kind of detail, for me anyway, has really saved me. And I do think we're talking about a kind of yoga when we talk about the precepts. We're talking about practices that work us in our daily lives so that we just begin to see more and more clearly what we actually do And if I do this, this seems to be the consequence.

[47:34]

And if I don't do this, this is the consequence. So that capacity to see more clearly. Why do you call it Yoda? I don't know what the word means other than physical practice. Well, there's a kind of... the language of it. There's a specific articulation of a path, of a sequence of practices that may be physical, may have to do with the physical body, may emphasize mental activity or emotional states, but there's an articulated sequence of practices or exercises, if you will, that lead to certain cultivations.

[48:40]

Is that what it means? I just didn't know. I don't remember what the word yoga means. I'll go ask Bill while we have our tea break. Yeah, I think it has to do with yoking. So union in that sense of yoking. So when you've got an ox and a cart and the cart's yoked to the oxen, then you can go somewhere. Okay, let's go have a cup of tea and then we can rejoin and continue our discussion. So please come into the kitchen and we'll work it out. So... And it was very similar in that you know I contacted a family member of hers, and that's how I found her And I brought her back to my place eventually but Sometimes It pays to I think it might pay to sort of up the ante of What it is you're doing and really give the person

[50:27]

Before I brought her to my place, I had arranged with a hospital and a psychiatrist for her to admit herself for one month. And I had arranged all the funding for this. So when she was at my place, you know, I then gave her And she chose to sign herself in, but it was touch and go. But you're still describing a situation in which ultimately the decision was up to her. Yeah. And I think that's really important to notice. These kinds of stories always, I come back to this wonderful Amida Buddha that's there, the wooden Japanese Buddha that's there on the altar at the end of the row, which belonged to a man that I was friends with for a number of years, who was a priest at the Serenissas Kazenta, and became addicted to everything, but particularly to heroin.

[52:12]

And a group of us did an intervention. And out of that, he agreed to go into a treatment program. And he did pretty well for about three years. And he got to the point where he didn't have any money. Because, of course, the way he made money all those years was stealing. So the one thing he had left that he could sell was his connections. And he went back to Thailand to broker the deal where he was going to sell his connections after having been clean for three years and decided to have one last run I crushed to die from an overdose.

[53:14]

And whenever I look at this Buddha, I remember him. And what a big and hard teaching his life was for me. I still find being present with somebody suffering, even when it's clear to me that I can't do anything about it, that it's really up to that person, I still find that particular condition very difficult. My daughter refers to it as the mother muscle.

[54:25]

She said just leave it there on that shelf. I want you something about healing and I actually thought, I don't really mean that. I simply want to be strong and have that, have it not necessarily certain quivering heal, just to be able to protect myself, kind of be strong with it, not cover it. Well, I think that's a different condition. When we can be present with what's arising and see clearly the consequences of action that has certain kinds of motivation over against a commitment to being present. Staying present over the long haul can be quite potent. I mean, I always think of your own story where the quivering son's holiness cries.

[55:27]

I mean, that's not calm. He's not getting rid of. No. No, not at all. Not at all. So it's like healing. It's like I've been meaning slightly a wrong thing perhaps by healing. Healing isn't quite what I thought it, what I'd been carrying. No, like a making of the wound go away, or making of the opening, let's call it, go away. Anyway. I'd like to just say that that comment I said about the bodhisattva actually has to do with my recognition in the face of my seeing some causes and effects in myself and others over the last months and year. the centrality of practice. I had it a little reversed.

[56:28]

I wasn't, I'm more clear on the centrality of practicing towards becoming a bodhisattva. You know, I mean, it's like, almost like I'm, because of what happened, because of my procession, maybe, you know, whatever. So, it's like going back to really practice, wanting to practice corally. Because of seeing how the causes and effects of having a lot of imperfections, Department of Understanding, the precepts, the breakdown, all those things, what they cause, and unless you're working on cleaning those up kind of first, centrally, not completed, that's where that came from, but I've I've changed, it's almost like I've changed priorities in a very fundamental way because of that. Well, you know, we talk a lot about enlightenment as though it's Chicago or Santa Fe. And I think what's much more useful is the language of enlightened activity.

[57:39]

For me, it's like a moving, moving, it's still like, I still can't, it's like, yeah, it's like working here. Well, but we've all had moments of awakeness, of a certain kind of illumination and insight where that sense of being on and resonating in a very deep and grounded way. I absolutely have a belief in it, in its reality, absolutely do. That's not Santa Fe, that's in this moment what arises. And the possibility of cultivating the mind for increasingly more and more sustained moments of that condition of awakeness is what we're really talking about. I mean, that's why, going back to what you were bringing up, about the relationship between 12-step work and Buddhadharma, both traditions are completely about process.

[58:50]

These are paths that are process-oriented. And it's very easy to get caught with the outcome orientation. But I think particularly in spiritual practice, particularly in Buddhism, people can get completely caught by being enlightened, becoming enlightened. I remember in the 60s when Kaplow's book Three Pillars of Sin was reissued in paperback and it was almost as if it had come out for the first time because all of a sudden it became a very widely read book. And in the book he describes individual people's awakening or Kensho experiences quite specifically. And for a number of years, that got to be the standard.

[59:53]

If you were really practicing, then you'd have these big breakthrough ahas. And as a consequence, Suzuki Roshi ended up, in the last years of his teaching, talking over and over and over again about the hazards of practicing with what he called any gaining idea. You know, an enlightenment can be as much the gaining idea as anything I can think of. Especially since we don't usually know quite what we mean when we use the word. One suggestion I like to make about working with the precepts is that you might keep a little notebook.

[60:53]

A spiral notebook that is cheap enough so you don't mind using it. This comes to mind, I was working out in my little writing house yesterday and I put in a certain amount of Before I start, I let myself take one box and go through it and figure out what's in this box and can I get rid of some of it. And I came upon a stack of absolutely gorgeous notebooks, including one, somebody hand-bound, marbleized the paper that faced the inside of the covers. I mean, it's so gorgeous. Of course, they're empty. They're too gorgeous to use. I think going to, I don't know, do dime stores still exist, thrifty, and getting a spiral notebook and a pencil and make very brief jottings, more like laundry lists of what shows up.

[61:56]

I mean, very useful. Extremely useful. Let's not get into gorgeous notebooks. Gorgeous and expensive notebooks. I don't know what I'll ever do with them. I mean, what quite is up for... I don't know. Bill and I had dinner last night with some old friends who I married a number of years ago on two sides of the Pacific Ocean. We did this ceremony here and then I went to Japan and did some more ceremony there. And the man is Japanese and the woman is Buddhist American Jewish. And the man was talking about Japanese Buddhism.

[63:03]

And how, as he has, he's basically been completely introduced to Buddhism in the United States, even though he grew up in Japan. He grew up in a family that was very anti-feudalism, anti-totalitarianism, and so he never went to temple, he never was involved in anything Buddhist.

[63:30]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ