I vow to taste the truth of the photographer's words. Morning. Morning. Last time I was talk that was a week before last. Last week. Last week. I talked about how in the beginning of our practice we are carried along with everyone's practice and we follow the practice. until at some point we make a certain point of maturity in our practice, we make a turn and instead of just following the practice, we lead it.

[01:13]

And I want to talk a little bit more today about how in our given the nature of the lives we have, the way we live as laypeople mostly, how we can actually make practice a part of our lives. Or, to put it the other way, how we make our lives a part of practice. As I say, usually everybody comes to practice having some idea about it, but not knowing really what it is. So we come for various reasons.

[02:16]

So in order to really find out what practice is, we have to make ourselves present. We read about Zen or Buddhism and maybe have some thoughts about it, but the real Dharma is beyond thinking, beyond our ideas about it. So one of the things that makes it difficult to practice is the fact that in order to practice we have to be present in our situation. So in the beginning, it's really necessary to involve ourself in zazen and to stretch ourself beyond what we think our limit is.

[03:20]

And when we have some mature understanding, then we can help others and also bring our practice into our daily life. When I say leading practice, it doesn't necessarily mean, I don't necessarily mean that in the sense of doing, helping with a service or something like that. That's not what I mean by, that is leading practice and helping others, but it means being able to practice on your own two feet. You lead yourself. Until you can lead yourself, you can't really lead others. I was, last week, my family took a vacation we went to Yosemite, Wawona, which is the lower end of Yosemite.

[04:31]

And just before we came back, we were taking a walk along the river, Daniel and Liz and myself. And Daniel said, I want to be the leader. He's only five. We said, OK, you be the leader. So we were walking along. He just started, you know, winding around, you know. And we were winding around. I said, no, wait a minute. And he said, no, no. He's the leader. And then I started thinking about, well, who's the leader? What does it mean to be the leader, anyway? And then I thought, well, it's OK for him to be the leader, but he should have some advisors. There's leadership and then there's the game of follow the leader. So in the game of follow the leader, you decide who's going to be the leader and then everybody tries to do exactly what the leader does.

[05:37]

If the leader jumps over the stream, then you jump over the stream, the creek. If he stands up on a boulder, you stand up on a boulder. That's following the leader. But leadership is a little different in that you have to know where you're going yourself before you can lead others. So he started wandering over the field and I said, no, you have to follow the creek. He said, oh, OK. So I thought, well, leaders, it's OK to give leadership and have leadership but it's also good to have advisors some kind of elders that you go to for advice and in the beginning of our practice we're all kind of babies you know we're like really babies and we just go wandering off in all directions easily wander off in all directions and in order to

[06:43]

follow the river, so to speak. Sometimes somebody has to say, no, no, the river's over there. It's not over there. Somebody once was talking about the game of checkers, that in the game of checkers, I'll try to remember this, you can only move forward and you can't move backward. But when When your checker gets to the other end of the board, then it can move anywhere it wants to go, wherever it wants to go. So practice is kind of like checkers. You keep moving forward in a certain direction. And then when you get to the back of the board, when you get to a certain place of maturity, then you can move in any direction you want.

[07:46]

And it's still in the game. It's still practice. It sounds a little like step-by-step, but it's not. Actually, when we begin to practice zazen, we still have to start taking care of our lives as if it's practice, as practice. So the beginning of practice starts right away, but it's difficult. It's hard to know what we're doing and what we should do. Although we have lecture and we have books on Buddhism, books on Zen and so forth, how we learn our Zen is through our pores of our body.

[08:47]

What I mean by pores of our body is by actually engaging in practice and laying down our thinking or putting practice before thinking, putting actual sitting and engagement in practice before our thinking. I'm not saying we should stop our thinking, but jumping to make a leap is the most important thing. It's just like swimming. You can stand by the side of the pool and talk about swimming, but until you get in and actually swim, And continue to swim, and keep swimming. Swimming is, you learn through your pores.

[09:57]

Skiing, you learn through your pores. Through your immersion. And Zen is the same. But it's not easy for us, you know, given our busy lives and our distractions, to actually engage in a way that really is immersion. But there is a way of practicing that people feel sometimes discouraged because practice is very continuous. The nature of Soto Zen practice is not so much listening to lectures and going and or studying a particular koan or and going to sushins, but daily practice, daily

[11:06]

day after day after day of practice forever. That's the nature of Soto Zen, so that your whole life emerges from Zazen. Zazen is like pruning roses. In a sense, it's like when you have a rose bush You like to treat it kindly, but at the end of the season, you cut it down all the way as far as you can. And when you cut it down as far as you can, then all of the, except for certain kinds, all of the branches grow out in a very unified way and with vigorous growth. So, in a sense, you take the rose bush back to zero, and during the winter it invigorates its roots, and then in the spring it goes... But if you don't cut it back enough, it becomes unbalanced and kind of patchwork.

[12:31]

So, Zen practice is like that too. You know, if you don't get down to a certain point of zero, you don't grow up completely from that zero point. So, daily zazen means every day you start from zero, and your life begins from that point, even though we have a backlog, you know, we have our history. But essentially, when we sit zazen, that's why it's so, it's nice to sit in the morning. It's nice to sit zazen in the morning, because then your whole day proceeds from zero, just like the rosebush. doesn't necessarily mean that our lives go well, but we have the opportunity of starting from zero point.

[13:44]

And our practice is to take advantage of the zero, take advantage of that fact. We may be mindless, you know, but even so, the continuous practice of daily zazen and as it permeates our daily life and how focused we become in our daily life as practice over a long period of time. I think it's good for people to practice in the morning, new people, if you can't come to the zendo, to practice at home when you get up in the morning to do zazen.

[15:07]

if you can't sit in the morning to sit in the evening and at certain times in your life to make a set aside a week or two weeks or a month or some definite period of time when you say when you can commit yourself to a certain kind of practice that you wouldn't commit yourself to the whole year. So you can say, well, this particular week I'm going to get up early in the morning and practice Zazen every day with the Sangha. And at the end of that time, you stop, or you can intention.

[16:13]

But I think if you can practice that way, then you get a deeper taste of practice without feeling that you have to change your entire life in order to do it. So I really urge everyone especially people who haven't done it, haven't practiced in the morning, to try practicing zazen in the morning at the zendo. Just to feel what that's like and see what effect that has on your life. It'll make you sleepy. That's one effect. It'll make you sleepy. I think that even if it makes you sleepy, I urge you to experience it.

[17:19]

And I also encourage you to take advantage of our Saturday morning practice. The purpose of Saturday morning is to give people the opportunity to really find an immersion practice in more than just one period of Zazen or two periods of Zazen. But Zazen, the Saturday morning schedule, the way we arrange it is to give us a rounded sense of practice. Rounded in the sense of Zazen, Service, eating together, how we eat together, is a practice. And how we work together is a practice. And hearing the Dharma, listening to a lecture.

[18:32]

And those aspects we encounter in our daily life all the time. So, also taking care of our practice place is important. On Saturday morning, we work together taking care of our practice place. And I really invite everyone to come and do that. So Saturday morning gives us a well-rounded, kind of rounded picture of what our practice is. Not just sitting with our legs crossed. That's one aspect. But eating in Zendo is Zazen. Bowing and chanting is Zazen. Working together is Zazen. So there are many aspects of Zazen.

[19:35]

Many ways of practicing Zazen. And if we only just sit together, it tends to divide our life into sitting and then there's the rest of our life. And we tend to make, it's easy to make a too much of a special thing out of just sitting cross-legged. We put a lot of emphasis on sitting cross-legged, but we have to be very careful that we don't separate it out from the rest of our life in a way that divides our life, our life's activities.

[20:42]

So the koan for us, the big koan for us, is how we sit Zazen and then how our life is extended from Zazen and in Zazen, all of our activity. So Zazen becomes the center of our life. And all of our activity centers around the fundamental point. Then we have what we call practice. So we have an opportunity to practice sitting together practice chanting together, bowing together, eating together, working together, which helps us to realize what all those activities are as Dazen.

[22:00]

So we have the visible side and the not-so-visible side of our practice. And most of us spend most of our time practicing the invisible side of our practice, and not necessarily together. So when we come together, we have an opportunity to practice in a visible way with each other, and to strengthen our practice through practicing with each other, and to understand what our practice is through practicing with each other. But I really recommend setting aside certain periods of time in your life when you can practice more fully. Sesshin is one of those kinds of setting aside a certain time.

[23:11]

But besides Sesshin, which is a very radical side of practice, where we just sit for seven days, I'm talking about a time when you just decide to sit every morning at the zendo with the sangha. Practicing with the sangha is a rare opportunity. Sometimes it's easy to take it for granted. It's like books become published and we think that they're always going to be around. And then suddenly, they're not published anymore, and we can't get a hold of them. We said, jeez, I thought that that would always be around. So I don't know.

[24:12]

Sangha seems pretty stable, pretty strong here in America. But I don't know how long it will be around. So we say Buddha, Dharma, Sangha are the three treasures. Buddha is you and me. Dharma is the law. If we know what the law is, it makes our life easier. Law of universal law. If we understand what that means, what that is through our study, it makes our life easier and allows us to follow a way that doesn't get us into trouble, doesn't get other people into trouble, but enhances life and points toward the truth.

[25:17]

And a Sangha is recognizing our mutual way and supporting each other and teaching each other. So actually the opportunity to practice with the Sangha is rare, even though it looks like we can maybe just always do it But it's rare, especially to practice with a sangha that has a certain vitality, good vitality. Sometimes we have

[26:27]

practice period, short practice period of a month or six weeks where we commit ourselves to a certain kind of practice which we wouldn't be able to do the whole year. So I'm thinking maybe this year or next year having a short practice period where people can, the Sangha can commit themselves to a certain kind of practice that they wouldn't be able to do necessarily during the whole year. So I'm thinking about that. Maybe you have some kind of question, you know, maybe I've aroused some question in I want to discuss it, or if you have something to say about it.

[27:29]

I have sort of an old question, but you were talking about a leader needing advisors and so forth, and I wonder if a leader seems to become imperial What's the student's responsibility? Well, what is the leader supposed to be? I'm not sure. Maybe that's... There are different leaders. If you have an imperial society, then the students are doing the right thing. But if... the leader is not in an imperial position, then you should... it's the responsibility of the student or advisors to say, that's not your position.

[28:29]

You're assuming something that's not to be assumed. So be careful. It's a responsibility. If you read the newspapers, you'll see that the president was taking an imperial position, but his two chief advisors didn't strongly enough let him know about it. That's exactly what it says in the headlines today. if I'm your advisor, how can I, if I feel that you're taking an imperial position that makes me feel uncomfortable, that doesn't seem justified in some sense.

[29:44]

Are you talking about me in particular? No. Anybody. You're in a position of being a student, which is what I think, I'm guessing what Shannon may be saying, that if I'm a student, but I don't feel like I'm a seasoned senior experience type student, say. How do I convey that? Usually you go through, there are two ways. One is you go to someone that you feel, someone else who you feel is an advisor, and say, what do you think about this? Is that so? And so that's the first step. You take preliminary steps so that if you take too big a step, you may feel intimidated. or it may not be correct, so you find out. And then maybe the person will agree with you and say, yeah, you know, we've been working on that and I'm glad to hear what you say because that helps me, you know, to know what you're thinking.

[30:49]

And then that person can advise, you know, and say, right. Or a person can just say, be direct. That's the other way. probably the first way is good because it's a little more cautious than circumspect. I'd like to know what marks the transition from being a beginning student to a non-beginning student. Well, in the sense I've been talking about, in the sense of being having your own fire. So what we do is we take the fire from someone else, and that helps us to light our way. And then when the fire actually starts in you, and the light comes out of your own eyes, then that's the transition.

[31:57]

And so you know what your way is, you know how to find your way. It doesn't mean that you go off necessarily by yourself. That means you can find your own way, even though you may be confused or have problems and so forth. But it means that the way is your own. So you become the driver instead of the passenger. Or you may still be a passenger, you know, but you also know how to drive. So you have your own sense of responsibility. in your own sense of direction and confidence. Does this apply to life in general? Well, I'm talking about our practice, but it also applies to life in general, of course. What is our motivation in both practice and life?

[33:01]

You know, we catch on to something We learn something, and then we catch on, and then pretty soon we're doing it, right? We're inventing. It becomes a creative process rather than just a following, a long process. And then if you have a lot of energy, it should kindle that energy so that you can really engage. And then you feel alive. So it's possible to go through life half dead, not really kindled. So, in Zen practice, passion is necessary. Even though we say desires are endless, I vow to end them all. That's one of our vows. But actually, that desire is really necessary.

[34:06]

But ending desire means, instead of desire just being pulled around, instead of being pulled around by desire, our desire becomes focused. And we don't get, it doesn't get dissipated. It's very focused. And then, because without desire there's no motivation. There's a kind of, desirelessness in Buddhism, you know, and some people take it kind of literally, and desires, you know, like zombie-like, but that's not what that means, actually. Desire, instead of letting desire have its way, strong direction for desire to focus.

[35:11]

And even though it may get pulled around, it stays there. You know, sometimes wobbly, but then sometimes very firm. It just goes. And then everything else follows behind that, and you feel fully filled or fulfilled. It takes a lot of juice to really concentrate. When I tried to concentrate, I was getting tired and started going to sleep. The nature of concentration is tiresomeness. Concentration needs energy. Concentration and energy have to work together with each other.

[36:19]

Otherwise, concentration leads to sleepiness, or tiredness, or laziness. Even though we think that concentration needs to be attentive, and it does. But it has to have energy to really manifest. So once you have to be not too sleepy. It seems like it's sort of a continuum. You have to concentrate to get the juice. And the juice leads to concentration. That's right. Yeah, it is a continuum. because they all go together. There's seven factors of enlightenment. It's only five. No, there's seven factors of enlightenment. There are five. I was going to say eight, too.

[37:22]

Eight? Maybe so. But anyway, seven. You're talking about the five controlling factors of the mind. They're seven, right? And concentration and energy are two, two of them, and they have to balance each other out with the other factors as well, mindfulness and so forth. So a lot of factors have to be present together in order to really concentrate. But energy is... without energy you can't really concentrate well. So, but what brings about energy?

[38:25]

Where does energy come from? Now we have energy, but it's easily dissipated. How do we focus? with desire. I want to do this. This is what I really want to do. So then we put all our energy into it and energy becomes focused and you have good concentration. Even though the concentration, you can see how your mind works because you're losing concentration all the time. But even though you're losing a certain kind of concentration, you still have a basic concentration. You know, we think that the concentration of our mind should be pinned to something and never waver. That's what we think about. Like a candle, you know, like the light of a candle is just real unwavering. Then something happens and it starts flickering, right? I remember one time looking at a candle when I was doing Zazen, and when my mind was moving, the candle started moving.

[39:35]

started wavering, and when my mind was calm, it became calm. I don't know whether my mind was moving or not, but I really felt that the vibrations of my wavering mind was somehow influencing that light. But anyway, our mind tends to waver a lot, but still, you know, it's like a pyramid. And when we're sitting, your body is sitting zazen. And at the very tip of your mind, which is what you call concentration, it's always going like this. It's never really pinned to something. And even if it was pinned to something, that wouldn't necessarily be the end of concentration. Because we don't focus our mind to be pinned to something. If you leave your eyes open during zazen, You don't try to focus on some pinpoint or some special point.

[40:41]

Even though your eyes are open, they're just seeing. And sometimes you nod off, sometimes something goes by, sometimes a fly will walk across the wall. But you're not necessarily concentrating on something special on the wall. Just seeing, just eyes are open. And there's concentrations on the whole body and many, many different parts. And to actually move your mind, to move your concentration from one point to another helps you from being tired, keeps you from being tired. If you try to just maintain concentration on a little point for a long period of time, you get very tired. That's not really zazen. There are meditations like that. But it's not zazen. Zazen, even though your body and mind are concentrated, your mind is moving around over the various parts of your body and also to your breathing.

[41:49]

If you just try and concentrate on a pinpoint for a long period of time, you get very tired. It helps your concentration, but that's not the point. I want to go back to the thing you were talking about, about leading and taking practice as your own. Could you say something about the difference between making it your own and setting up your own standards for doing your own thing? Yeah. Setting up your own standards can mean various things, right? I've been having some idea about Sitting up your own standards means having a kind of partial understanding of Buddhism. Sitting up your own, you say, I understand what Buddhism is, but you don't understand. And so you set up some kind of thing based on partial understanding.

[42:57]

And the other point which was owning your own practice. It means that you relate whatever you're doing to practice, or you see it. Even if you don't see it, it's still your practice. Whether you see it or not, it's still your practice, but you know that. How do you know when you understand? But when you become mature, when your practice is mature, when you fluctuate a lot, then you don't understand very well. It's like grabbing the tail of the tiger.

[44:01]

The tail of the tiger goes like this. grab it, pretty strong, and it really throws you, you know, and you hang on. If you let go, you don't understand. But if you hang on, no matter which way the tail goes, you really sink your teeth into it, everything you've got, you're hanging on. Then you understand. As soon as you let go, you don't understand. But as long as you're hang on to that tail, whichever way it goes, then you understand. I find that I certainly have fluctuated a lot, and I sit regularly for a while, and then I go away for a long time.

[45:03]

And I sit regularly for a little while, and then I go away for a long time. And I find that usually when I start up again, It's out of necessity. Right. That's a good point. And does it continue to be out of necessity? It's always out of necessity. The problem is we don't understand what's necessary. See, what we do is When things are tough, we look for the norm. The norm means the truth of life. When things get tough, we look for the norm. And so then we come to practice zazen, because zazen is the norm. It doesn't have any attributes. It's just bare reality.

[46:06]

And then when we start feeling balanced, you know, pretty good, then we run off into the fields again. And that's what happens. We run off into the fields and, oh yeah, we get into trouble again. We lose the norm. So then we come back to the norm. That's OK. We remember we come back. And then we run off again as soon as we feel good. But at some point, when we She said, you know, do I want to run off again? And you have to, you know, if you're young, you have to live out a certain real life, you know, your karma. But then at some point, she said, well, I think I'll just continue to practice and put my desire there. Hold on to the tail. Hold on to that tail and not get Not let go. Then, every time the tail goes this way or that way, you feel it.

[47:18]

And it may hurt, or it may feel like you're being thrown or something, but you got that tail. And no matter what you do, you know what you're doing. But it's easy to let go. It's easier to, you know, just, like, when you're your own leader, that's what I was talking about last time, right? When you're your own leader, then you have your own sense of discipline with yourself. And we depend on someone else as discipline, someone else to discipline us. But we have to be our own disciplinarian. We have to, you know, be able to map out our own course. Decide what we're going to do and do it. Because nobody wants to be anybody else's disciplinarian. Some people do it. I don't want to be someone else's disciplinarian.

[48:24]

And it really doesn't help anybody else. You have to be your own. And you can't practice without discipline. You can think about Zen, you can read about it, but you can't practice without discipline. And not necessarily somebody else's imposed discipline, but your own putting yourself under some restraint. Do you ever get to the point where you're not known by the tigers? That you are the tiger? When you become the tiger, yeah, you should become the tiger. You eat the tiger. So... But, you know, when we're full of youthful exuberance, and we think that there's some advantage to our material world,

[50:08]

Oh, there's just one more chance, you know, maybe this, we depend so much on the advantages of the material world and the more advantages appear, you know, we begin to think, well, geez, you know, it's just as long as we have our material comforts and everything, what do we have to worry about? We have our material comforts and we can get whatever we want, you know, We keep grinding out more and more security, but it's false security. It's not real security, but we fall for it. We keep falling for it all the time. And then we fall for something. It's just like having a love affair in a certain sense. We fall for one, and then that doesn't work out, and then we fall for another one, and that doesn't work out, and we keep hoping that it will. Things are the same, you know. We fall for a certain kind of material object and then we keep falling for more and more.

[51:18]

It's sort of like a love affair. And it occupies our mind, you know. It really preoccupies us until sometime we wake up and say, well, wait a minute, you know, that's not what my life's about. That's not what life's about. And then we look around for the norm. We look around for practice. And then we find it, and something else comes along, and we say, oh, yeah. And we take off with it again, and then that doesn't work either. Things will work for us if we know what the norm is. Then we can use everything according to its use. But when we get cut off from ourself, then we have a hard time. coming back. So at some point we can decide to have a real practice that has some discipline and we don't forget what's what.

[52:31]

It's so easy to forget what's what. In one minute we can forget what's what. Really easy to forget. When we have some discipline, then to balance discipline, we have soft mind, right?

[53:47]

So along with wisdom, we have compassion, right? So everything has to be balanced. And when, you know, it's like with teaching children, if you give them the soft side first, then it's harder later to discipline them. if you're permissive in the beginning, it's very hard to discipline them in the end because they resent upping the ante. But if you're strict to begin with, then you can let go of the strictness. And when the framework is solid, and then you can give some ease after that, and that's appreciated. So, some strictness and discipline is necessary, but within that, when that's really established, it's very comfortable.

[54:56]

But if you have a strong vehicle, then you are comfortable in the stormy seas. But if your vehicle is not so strong, then it falls apart when things get tough. And also, it's just more comfortable. You find ease within it, a lot of ease within discipline, strict practice. But if you try to enter the strict practice at some point you can't get in, you know, it's too... too difficult. But streetness doesn't always mean, you know, to be... I have a big stick. That's not what it means.

[55:58]

It just means to be watchful and careful and know what you're doing. and do what you intend. Okay. Thank you.

[56:22]

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