Buddha activity, Buddha, Buddha practice. The point has been made that Buddhas aren't just aren't just a state of being. They're also an activity. Buddhas are practicing. So in certain what you might call schools of the Buddha way, they teach something called practice awakening, practice enlightenment. So enlightenment as practice. And practice as enlightenment.

[01:15]

Not so much, not so much, but not so much. Practice to get enlightenment. Or practice to reach it. practice as enlightenment. And it seems like the Soto Zen school is that their practice is practice enlightenment. And their enlightenment is practice enlightenment. But it seems like other schools of Buddhism are a little bit different, maybe. like practice to get enlightenment. And then there's things that follow from practice which reaches enlightenment, and the enlightenment that's reached by practice.

[02:17]

Certain things follow from that. Like, for example, if you practice to reach enlightenment, if you reach enlightenment, then once you realize enlightenment, maybe you wouldn't have to practice anymore. But in some schools, like Soto Zen, after enlightenment you still go back and sit in a dark zendo. Somebody told me today that he went to college to study physics. because he thought physics would be a path to understanding the nature of the universe, or the reality of the universe. But he found himself in a basement debugging machines.

[03:22]

And then when he said that, somebody at the table said, oh, that's like Zen. Why don't you go into the Zen though? To realize the nature of the universe. So, I've already said that for me, Zazen is Buddha activity. Zazen is a shorter expression than Buddha activity. Or practice enlightenment is a longer expression than zazen. You can also just take out the za and just say zen. So one of the nice things about the Zen school is that zen is a short word. So, like vipassana, it's a longer word.

[04:34]

Vajrayana. Zen. So zen is a word that can be used for Buddha activity. And I think I also mentioned here, or some places, Zazen is spoken of as the pivotal activity of all Buddhas. The active pivot of all the ancestors. There's something about Zazen that it pivots. Buddha activity pivots. And so what are the elements in the pivot? Anybody? What's pivoting? Self and other. Hmm? Self and other. Yeah. That's the pivoting of self and other.

[05:37]

Any other pivots you care to mention? Another pivoting? Noise and silence. Noise and silence. Devotion and enlightenment. Pardon? Delusion and enlightenment. Light and dark. Hot and cold. Absolute and relative. Activity and non-activity? Activity and non-activity. Self and no-self.

[06:40]

Self and no-self. The time pivots also make some sense. It's a moment and it's endless. Mm-hmm. Yeah, one-night and infinite living. In practice, awakening. In this room, Sam is sitting next to Sarah. And there's a term in Buddhism called Sam-Sarah.

[07:41]

Sam-Sarah is a word for the world of birth and death. Birth and death, or birth-death. Thank you. So sometimes people have the understanding that with enlightenment you become free of birth and death. I managed to put the left one in the right ear.

[09:04]

So, the world of birth and death is an opportunity for Buddha activity. Enlightened activity in the world of delusion. There's a possibility of not getting caught in distinctions between things, not getting caught in duality of enlightenment at birth and death, or the world. So enlightenment is the world in the way that the world is seeking, all the time to realize enlightenment.

[10:22]

Enlightenment is not seeking to realize enlightenment. Seeking enlightenment, seeking something other than this, is delusion. So in the world there's constant seeking for something else, and in particular there's seeking for enlightenment in the world. And in that way, enlightenment is the world. Enlightenment doesn't get rid of the seeking for enlightenment in the world. Yes? Is becoming free of birth and death similar to not being caught in anxiety about birth and death?

[11:35]

Does it have a relaxation around these elements? Did you say, would being free of birth and death be like not being caught by the anxiety of birth and death? Being relaxed. And being relaxed with birth and death? Yeah. Not pivoted. Not pivoted? Scared to death. the pivot would be maybe that you would not be caught by relaxation either. So yeah, if you're free of birth and death, you're free of birth and death.

[12:40]

And birth and death often involves anxiety. of being relaxed would be part of being free of anxiety. But freedom would also be freedom from relaxation and being free to go into anxiety. and find enlightenment and freedom in anxiety. What is enlightenment? What is that word? Pointing. Or is it pointing? I don't know. Does it have a finger to point? If someone was enlightened, what would make them change?

[13:45]

In a state of enlightenment, if that phrase makes sense. I guess it just feels like anxiety to me is something that would be transcended in enlightenment. Well, one thought is that in a state of enlightenment, one of the causes of anxiety would be delusion. So in enlightenment there could be delusion and anxiety. In enlightenment there could be delusion? And anxiety. or just looking around to see if anybody else thinks something of it.

[14:48]

Disturbing. You find what I said disturbing? I guess I just feel like I... You say the nicest things. I said within enlightenment there could be delusion. And once you've got delusion, it's not difficult to come up with some anxiety. So if everything was enlightenment, within enlightenment, delusion is possible. Yes. But we get... And, yeah, so if the delusion is within enlightenment, it's not really delusion. And enlightenment is understood. As it says in the chant we do on Friday at Kenjo Kwon, Buddhas are greatly enlightened about delusion.

[15:57]

Sentient beings are greatly deluded about enlightenment. So within delusion there's enlightenment, and within enlightenment there's delusion. I always feel like I have attachments. I guess I have expectations that... that practice with practicing enlightenment, like practicing thinking that I'm not a single unit in a big universe. You know, if I can... They say you get over this idea of you get free of birth and death.

[17:06]

They say that, yeah. They say, you get free of birth and death, right over here. Why anybody want freedom from birth and death? Right over here. They say that. But one kind of freedom from birth and death is to be intimate with it. Intimacy with X is freedom with X. Intimacy with anxiety is freedom. Intimacy with dis-ease is ease. There's other kinds of ease too, like suppression with chemicals of dis-ease is a kind of ease, but it's not reliable.

[18:23]

But intimacy with dis-ease is reliable ease. Intimacy with anxiety is reliable freedom from anxiety, or freedom with anxiety. It's reliable freedom. It's reliable. Practice freedom. Practice of intimacy, freedom with whatever is involved in the intimacy. Did you raise your hand? No more call? I did. Two questions. Intimacy, then the pivot itself. No. Intimacy is the pivotal activity.

[19:28]

Intimacy is an activity. The pivot is where opposites meet and turn on each other. So I'd say intimacy is pivotal activity. It's not just where delusion and enlightenment pivot on each other. It's actually the pivoting, too. Next question? What I've had on my mind for a few weeks now is, would you say that Buddha activity and great compassion could be interchangeable terms? Yes. Because Buddha activity is great compassion. And great compassion is usually reserved for Buddha's compassion. Lesser compassions are sometimes called just plain old compassion, or pretty big compassion.

[20:41]

Great compassion means enlightened compassion, means you're not caught by the duality between even compassion and suffering, or suffering and freedom from suffering. Compassion embraces, doesn't fall into the duality of suffering and not suffering. So the great compassion entails enlightenment. That's Buddhist compassion. Yes. So the intimacy and compassion are the same. You can't have one without the other. Well, intimacy and great compassion. There can be compassion which is not yet realizing intimacy. All compassion is actually living in intimacy.

[21:44]

But before the intimacy is realized, the compassion can still maybe kind of get trapped by duality. But intimacy is compassion, great compassion. Intimacy is compassion, and great compassion is intimacy. But if there's some duality in the compassion, it's not yet intimate. Like, one can feel compassion for somebody and try to control them. You know, try to get them to stop doing things that hurt themselves. That would be like... Maybe caught by... I'm not saying you... You might be caught by the duality of yourself and others in that case. Is it helpful to think about these different terms in this way?

[22:52]

You practice compassion and it's maybe working in the direction of great compassion. You practice concentration, it's working in the direction of great concentration. Intimacy is becoming more and more intimate. it's sort of, they all are pointing in the same direction, maybe different paths up a mountain, let's say, but they all end up at the top, so that great activity, great compassion, complete concentration, perfect intimacy, they all meet at the top and basically are all the same thing. Great wisdom, great compassion, good activity. I thought you said at the beginning, could great compassion be... and then you talked about some stuff after that? That's correct. Yeah, so, great compassion is all that stuff you talked about.

[24:09]

And all the stuff you talked about, all the stuff you talked about is trying to get great compassion. It's working towards it. Which is what great compassion is about. So great compassion is intimate with all the stuff you talked about. And that stuff, in that way, all that stuff includes great compassion. But in a way, great compassion isn't trying to get anywhere. But within it, it's trying to get somewhere. And even getting somewhere. So Great Compassion doesn't remove itself from various projects of getting better at something.

[25:11]

But getting better at something, not to mention getting worse, but getting better at something is the world. And being caught by trying to get better, or being caught by better and worse, is the world. But that is enlightenment. That world includes enlightenment. So we don't go away from where somebody is trying to improve. We don't fall into affirming that or denying that. But we are trying to realize intimacy or the middle way between affirmation and denial of the world. So enlightenment would be intimate with the process you just described.

[26:16]

And you could have described some not-such-nice stories too. That was pretty nice, but you were talking about a pretty wholesome path. It seems like you were describing a path of wholesomeness. Yes. Okay, so I'm wondering if I'm getting all this. I'm trying to connect the dots. You are? I am. Okay, so you're wondering if you're getting it, and you're trying to connect dots. I know. All right, here we go. All right. So I'm hearing that great compassion and Buddha activity are synonymous? Is that what I heard?

[27:20]

You might have heard that, yeah. Okay. Did you hear that? Somebody says, yes. I know. My question is, what's that? I heard you say, we have that. Okay. So my question is, I'm hearing, maybe others are, that great compassion, Buddha activity, zazen, zen, intimacy, so these are all synonymous is what I'm hearing, no? If you're hearing it, that sounds good to me, and I agree with what you're hearing. And you what?

[28:20]

I agree with what you're hearing. Those are synonyms. So I'm wondering if absolute acceptance is also, like for me to understand all of those terms, because I'm not familiar with many of the Buddhist terms. So for me, in a language that's more accessible, if I could say, absolute acceptance, would that connect to what you're saying? Yes. Absolute acceptance. Do you see? Yeah. Yes.

[29:24]

So I think I remember you saying at one point that if you realize productivity, you wake up with well-being. And so if I didn't realize productivity, I would also wake up with well-being. If we both realized productivity, we would also wake up with well-being. The challenge happening is... why much matters then if I were to realize good activity for all those games. It just seems like in some way it's just, you know, it might be awfully nice for me if I realize good activity, but in the grand scheme of things, either way, you know, someone, maybe you're doing the heavy lifting, realizing that activity. And it's a little challenging because I think you get the kind of interplay between this maybe big picture understanding of realizing good activity, awakening with all beings, and kind of all the little reasons I have to practice and to do this thing.

[30:39]

The proper interplay of those understandings is beyond me right now, for the moment. But I'm left with what feels like a lack of reason to practice, because at the moment all I can see is this big picture. You're realizing that actually that seems like now we have this wonderful ineffable whole and what I do doesn't matter. You just say what you do doesn't matter? Do you say that? Okay, so I didn't talk so much about it in this giving Buddha activity classes about what's most important to you. But if what was most important to you was, for example, Buddha activity, then my next question would be, do you aspire to realize it?

[31:54]

Because, you know, like, I don't know what to say. Something might be really important, but you know what? You don't particularly want to work for it. You don't know it's the most important thing. It seems hard to aspire to realize something that you don't know what it is. And maybe even if you were one day to realize it, maybe today to realize it, you wouldn't even know that you're realizing it. You still wouldn't necessarily know you're realizing it. That's true. So it's hard to aspire to that. But even though some things might be hard, it's hard to something... You say it's hard to something if you don't know what it is. Hard to what? Aspire to it. It may be hard to aspire to something when you don't know what it is. That may be hard. Okay? I accept that. However, many people do aspire to things and they don't know what they are.

[32:59]

But they often don't know that they don't know what they are. So did I use the example last week? A little girl might aspire to be a mother. But she doesn't know what a mother is. But she thinks she knows what it is. You're different from the little girl. You won't mature. But anyway, a little girl might aspire to be a mother or a nurse And they might even be more specific. They want to be a really good mother or a really good nurse. And they aspire to that. And they might have some difficulty aspiring to that. They might. But it might not be that hard at the beginning. They might just say, I want to be like mommy. And that might be kind of like really easy for them. Right? Or a little boy could say, I want to be a great doctor or a great football player. Right? And that might be easy for them to do. And also, they might think they know what a doctor is, what Buddha activity is.

[34:07]

Or like the physics student, he might aspire to be a physicist, but he doesn't know what it is. And then as he gets into it, he thinks, well, I don't know about this. But anyway, you can aspire to something with or without thinking you know what it is. Usually children aspire to things and they think they know what it is. As you become more mature, you become more aware that you don't actually necessarily know for sure what it is you're aspiring to. What is a really good psychiatrist? What is a really good physicist? What is Buddha activity? So now, if you aspire to Buddha activity, which you don't really know what it is, if you by any chance did, why would you do that? Because you think, you hear about Buddha activity, you think, I think that's really, that's the most important thing, and I aspire to it. And also, if I realize I don't know what it is, you could say it makes it harder. But it also makes it much more alive when you are aspiring to something that you don't know what it is.

[35:14]

For sure. I mean, you're not sure. So although it may be more difficult for you to aspire to it, you could still aspire to it and have difficulty with the irony which enriches your aspiration and makes it more susceptible to humor and enjoyment. If you know what it is that you're aspiring to, it's kind of not very lively. So we say this word, Buddha activity or intimacy, but it actually can get quite difficult being intimate with certain things and certain people. Like, for example, yourself. So the question is, do you aspire to great compassion? And if you do, it might not take you very long to realize you don't really know what it is. And you still aspire to it. Because you understand that if you don't practice it, that if you don't exercise the aspiration, it won't be realized.

[36:29]

Because you kind of already know it's not realized. Like little girls know they're not mothered yet. And young bodhisattvas know, they kind of know, they hear about Buddha's great compassion, and they kind of say, no, I haven't realized that yet, but I want to. And the process of aspiration is challenging. It's challenging to remember my aspiration, and it's challenging to practice in accord with this aspiration. And so I tell him, I tell Rep that it's hard, and he tells me that that's normal. But then the thing comes back to, do you actually wish for something that's really important to you? Is great compassion, is Buddha activity, is being in the process of saving all beings, and is the process of realizing peace and harmony, is that really the most important thing for you?

[37:35]

And if so, difficulty might be part of realizing it. But the energy and the motivation comes from you think something's really important, You think something's really like where it's at, and you want to realize that. That's the way you want to live. And then you find out that it's hard. And then you consult back to what's most important to see if by any chance it's important enough to do the hard work. So that's part of realizing what's most important is to keep checking back that you think it's really important and that you aspire to it, because that's where your energy comes from. And then if you practice, you get tired, so you have to go back again to your aspiration to drink

[38:36]

the well of your aspiration and feel refreshed and hydrated and go back to work. How's that working for you, what I said? Okay? Yes? I'm curious of, like, taking the story up to, like, the little girl, she aspires to be a doctor, and she knows she needs to go to grad school... He doesn't even necessarily know that yet. She doesn't even know that that's involved, but she thinks she knows what a doctor is, even without knowing about medical school. So the thing is, she does know, and she's going back to that. I'm curious about going back to where the energy comes from. Yeah, she goes back to her picture of a doctor, which she thinks is really beautiful, and she wants to enact that beauty in her life, and she thinks she knows what that thing she's looking at is, even though she doesn't know anything about medical school. In my case, I went to pre-med, I didn't go to medical school, and then in pre-med I realized I didn't want to go to medical school.

[39:45]

I didn't like... I thought I would, but I did not like dissecting animals. I did not like certain laboratory classes, and I thought, medical school's going to involve more of this, so I changed my mind. But the little girl doesn't know about what's involved, but she thinks she does. As you mature, you realize, oh, yesterday I thought it was this, today I realize it's not. The further I go, the more I know that there always will be some uncertainty, even as I get really close to being a doctor. I guess I can see I'll never really know for sure what a doctor is, and I feel more alive in my wish to be a doctor, realizing that nobody ever really knows for sure what that is. And that's more of an adult, alive aspiration. Yeah, I think that's where my question is coming from, is when there's this idea that can be energizing, and then sometimes the unknowability of something can be rather disheartening, because it's, oh, it's not what I thought it was at first.

[41:02]

Yeah, that's part of the difficulty, is getting your heart broken in the process. When can that turn into something that's energizing, and what would that look like, you know, I guess that's where some of the faith could come in, because the unknown often can just be very scary, and we've got to hold onto our ideas more so, but there's... Well, again, the faith is what you think is most important. If you thought great compassion was most important, that wouldn't be the same as you believing that you've achieved it. it would be that you want, you think achieving having that in your life or living a life dedicated and realizing that's most important. Then as you get discouraged and so on, if you need to, you should go back to what's most important and that will help you deal with the discouragement.

[42:05]

You know, like... I often think of mountain climbing, you know. You want to climb the mountain, you know you have some experience, and as you climb you get disappointed. But it's so important to you that you keep going. There's this movie called Mero about these guys who climbed this mountain called Mero. And one of them had almost a fatal brain injury. And they called off the climb, partly because of him. And then they went back and did it again. He barely recovered from his brain injury. And he said he wanted to do it again. And they let him do it. And they made it. So this is like major discouragement. But it's so important to him that he did it.

[43:09]

So we have practices for people who want to try something really hard called Buddha activity. And we have practices which deal with discouragement. Discouragement and fatigue. That's part of the practice, is to be discouraged and fatigued. It's normal. So we have practices specifically for the discouragement and fatigue. Basically the fourth paramita. In the fourth paramita you go back again and again to what's most important, what you aspire to, and that energizes you again and patches up your broken heart enough to go back to work. And part of the reason you want to do this particular job is because you heard that when you actually realize Buddha activity, it will completely fix all your broken hearts. And that once your broken heart is fixed, you realize that the fixed broken heart or the healed broken heart includes innumerable broken hearts.

[44:21]

And that's what Buddha activity is. It includes innumerable discouragements, frustrations, discouragements, anxieties, fatigues. It includes them all. And it's intimate with them all. And liberates them all. And then, yeah, that's what I want. And I will run into that stuff. That will be normal, that I'll run into it. It's going to be hard. And one of the hard things is that it's not always hard. Sometimes it gets easier, which makes it harder. I tell the story that one time, I noticed that I wasn't having a hard time practicing and I went to Suzuki Roshi and told him that I wasn't having a hard time and I wondered if I was, you know, going into a state of denial. Because I had a hard time pretty much non-stop up to that point.

[45:27]

But he said, no, for a while you may not have a hard time. And then the next day I started having a hard time. Did that make it easier? Mm-hmm. Yes? With finding out what's most important to you, what if you think a person can maybe know what's most important to them, or aim for something in that respect, and maybe forget why, but still feel like that's the most important thing? Your example again? With the whole, you know, we're going back to what's most important to you. maybe someone knows what's most important to them, but they forget why, and then they can't remember exactly what it was, or maybe it changes, or this or this or that. Yeah, so I would send them back. If they forget, I usually, if I'm talking to them, I keep sending them back to find it again.

[46:37]

It may take a while. Again, it can be many, many things. It could be most important to different people. But I propose that if you find what's most important, As Tim was saying, if you find what's most important, you will eventually realize that your most important and my most important and Tim's most important are actually going to the same place. But right now it looks like for you it's to climb Mount Narrow, for him it's ecological recovery, for somebody else it's harmony, for somebody else it's having a healthy baby. Different people have different things that are most important, but As you work on whatever it is, you go through the same process of realizing that you don't know what it is and it's difficult. And then you have to do the same, if in order to move forward you have to do the same practices, whatever you say the thing is, in order to realize it.

[47:37]

This is talking about the most important, right? Not seven important things, but the most important. As you move towards the realization, you're going to have to bring in all the Buddhist practices in order to realize whatever it is. So whatever it is, you'll start doing Buddha practice, and then you'll realize basically all these things which are synonymous. They're all synonymous. You'll realize intimacy with whatever it is. Okay. And going back to the place you get your energy from, the well, or something like that? The well is your aspiration to realize what's most important. That's where your energy comes from. And if you don't go back there, your energy is going to just basically get used up. Because you haven't gone back to eat your spiritual food, which is your aspiration to realize the most important thing in your life.

[48:39]

And many people have not found the most important thing, and they don't have the aspiration to get energy. So that work is to be done in order to gather together all your stuff, all your life, and all the practices for this one activity, which is your full life, which is another synonym for Buddha activity. complete, total life, which of course includes delusion and enlightenment, which includes everybody. And you include it in everybody. That's your full life. But the word you use for what's most important, it can vary endlessly. But if it's really most important, then again, do you want to work on it?

[49:46]

And is there anything more important to work on than this? Well, the answer is no. This is most important. If there's anything to work on, this is it. And if you think about that for a while, you start to feel not just, yeah, I aspire to it, and I'm willing to do the work, but you start to feel more and more full of that willingness to do the work. Are there specific reasons on why you think it's the most important? Or like, to the reasons they might change? I would say there are specific reasons, and to make a long story short, the specific reasons are each specific thing in the universe. So the reason why I would aspire, the reason why I would think this is the most important thing, whatever it is, the reason I think that is because of you, Sam, and Sarah, and Marie, and John, and Michael, and so on.

[50:49]

All of you are the reasons why I'm the way I am, and why I think such and such is most important. And not just you, but who you were yesterday also. And people who are not in the room, who I knew when I was a little kid. All those things have led me to finding what I thought was most important. At each moment, all the things come together to make me who I am who thinks this is most important. And those are specific things which make a specific person with a specific number one, which is like the keel of the boat. Yes. I'm not sure how to word this, but I kind of feel like instead of having an idea of something that's most important, I feel like

[51:59]

I feel like what brought me here, for example, is a certain total fatigue and devastation in life. Instead of thinking, oh, having an aspiration for something, it was more like, You know what I mean? I guess I don't really want to say it, but it was like an aspiration to get away from the things of the world or something like that. Okay, so there could be an aspiration to get away from the world, and that's what we call the world. The world is the aspiration to get away from the world. There's other ways to put it, but that's an example of the world. And so you did discover an aspiration to get away from it.

[53:13]

So in the world there's an aspiration to get away from it. And you think that that was a factor in your coming here. Is that right? Yeah. And now that you're here, now you're here, and maybe you didn't come here because you had discovered what's most important. But you did discover that you'd like to get away from the devastating world. You know, Kadagiri Roshi, who used to be in San San Aaron, a teacher at Zen Center. He said the reason he went to Zen monasteries was, right after the war, he went to get some food. Because people were donating money to the temple. So he said he went there to get food. I don't know if he was joking, but that's what he said. So food got him to come to Zen Center.

[54:14]

And a lot of other people come to Green Gulch because they like the garden. Or they like the vegetables. We have these carts at various farmers' markets. People come to the farmers' market and they see these vegetables and they look at them and they eat them and they think, I want to go where they grow these things. Maybe they're feeling devastated and they think, if I could just go to a green gosh and eat those vegetables, I could avoid this devastation. Other people used to come to Zen Center because of our bread. Other people come to Zen Center because their parents make them go to coming-of-age programs. We have various reasons why we come here. Not everybody comes here because they've found what's most important and they think, oh, Zen Center would be part of the training program.

[55:18]

But now that you're here, that's not why you came. Now that you're here, somebody says to you what's most important. And maybe what's still most important is to avoid the devastating world. And we can work with that. But in the process you might discover something else that's even more important than avoiding. Because you might start realizing that avoiding is basically going back into the same thing. That avoiding the world is worldly. And also trying to control the world is worldly. So then you might come up with a, you know, if you keep Being in my presence, I'll keep asking you, and maybe the most important thing will come up. And it might be something kind of synonymous with some other things. We'll see. How are you doing?

[56:22]

I'm practicing being in the plant, but being devastated. Wow. Yeah, and for some people, some great Zen masters, the most important thing to them was intimacy with devastation. That was most important to them. They lived in devastating times. We do too, you could say. There's devastation going on in our world, right? But in the past, too, there was devastation. Like Dogen Zenji, when he was walking around Kyoto, he would see bodies floating down the river. Because there were wars going on. People throw bodies into the river. Here's a peaceful monk walking down the street and bodies going down the river next to him. So the Zen masters of the past, they vowed to realize intimacy with devastation. living beings who are in various forms of devastation, they had that aspiration.

[57:32]

And now it sounds like you're considering that aspiration to be intimate with devastation. And there's other stuff too to be intimate with, but that would be one great thing to be intimate with. And So, I just want to ask you, when you go to meditate, like when you go into the Zendo, those of you who live with you, and some of you live here, and some of you visit, when you go into the Zendo, maybe you could consider the possibility of going into the Zendo to help those miserable people in the Zendo. Those people in the Zen door are having a hard time with life. But you're going to go in there and you're going to sit there to support them in realizing Buddha activity.

[58:38]

Of course, supporting people, suffering people, and we have suffering people here, supporting suffering people to sit and practice Buddha activity is Buddha activity. So do you want to go into the zendo and sit as an expression of great compassion to help those other people practice? Yes? I'd like to say something more, too. I'm here in recovery, like devastation from the way I've been living my life. And I'm in the 12-step program and it's partly that I want to practice meditation in order to turn my will and my life over.

[59:42]

On my own, as my egoic mind, my idea of self, the things that I thought were important turned out to be wrong or got me in bad places. And I find it's really helpful in zazen, the activity of opening up, turning it over, trying to be open to not knowing what is best for me to be doing. that try to manage my little life. Could I say something? I just wanted to say that you said something which I really felt yes when you said it. You said something like, to open to maybe I don't know what's best for me. Yeah, in that same way, yes, that is right.

[60:46]

So, maybe you do think that it would be good to eat breakfast. Do you ever think that? Yes. So you think, I think it would be good to eat breakfast. Or you have various ideas of what might be good or wholesome. But it's also good to open to that maybe you don't know for sure what is good. That's good. I support that. It doesn't mean you don't know anything. You know something about what you want to do, but you're not so sure what you want to do and you're not so sure whether it's good. That's an ethical life where you call your ethical practice There are some people who think something's really important and have had devastating consequences. That's right. I mean, you could think of Hitler or something. To say, well, what's the most important... Yeah, what you just said there.

[61:47]

Some people have thought something's really important, okay? And I would say, if they act on what they think is really important without being any question, with no questioning, then it often is very harmful. So if you think X is important and good, then going with realizing good is questioning what you're doing and being questioned. So your openness to questioning what you're doing will protect your activity from becoming harmful. It doesn't mean you'll never do anything harmful, but it means you'll probably learn better from any harmful activity if you were already questioning it when you did it, or right afterwards. So I say something and then you come up to me and you say, may I ask you a question? And hopefully I would say, yeah. And you say to me, do you think that was helpful? Or do you think that could have been harmful?

[62:50]

You asking me that question is part of my ethical life. And so when you live in a place where you're trying to do good and people come up and ask you what you're doing and do you think you're doing good, that's a good place to live. And you can do it for yourself too. So we have thought certain things would be good and we were wrong. Okay, great, we learned that. But now we continue to think some things are good. But that's just the beginning. The next thing is, question it. And also, live someplace where some other people occasionally question you. It isn't just you questioning yourself about what you think is good. Other people should occasionally be questioning you, too, because they can question you in many more ways than you can. So in order to realize an ethical life, we need to be questioned by others and ourself.

[63:56]

And that's hard. But it's an essential part of great compassion, is that we question what we're intending to do in body, speech and mind, and we are questioned by others that question us. And we can notice sometimes we don't want others to question us. We can notice that. And then we can say, well, that I heard is not in accord with ethics. Not wanting to be questioned is okay, but getting away from being questioned and rejecting questioning and not inviting it, not saying thank you, even though you don't particularly like it. That's an essential part of intimacy. The Buddha activity is open to being questioned by others.

[65:11]

And I can notice if I have an idea and I do not want to hear from anybody about my idea. I can notice that. But then I also can notice how silly that is. And so, yeah, please, I invite you to question me. And then I can see, hey, did you welcome that question? And maybe, yeah, I kind of did. No, I didn't really welcome it that much. Matter of fact, I hope they don't ask me another one. But I know it's hard to be questioned and it's also sometimes hard to question. Because, you know, even though you got a question and it could be very helpful to the person, there's still, you know, and it's true you do have this question, you do want to know about something, and you think it would be helpful to ask him, but it's not the right time.

[66:34]

You know, like, they're busy doing something else, it's not the right time, so then you have to, not have to, but maybe you can remember the question, and then later the question still might be beneficial to them, you might think, and you question yourself. You can also, if you have a question for somebody that you think would be beneficial, it truly is your question, you think it might be helpful, you can also ask other people questions about if they think it would be good to ask that person the question. And so you do ask them. And they say, yeah, I think it would be beneficial to ask that person. But not now. Not right now. Right now they have a really bad headache. Leave them alone. But now you can ask them. I think now would be a good time. That was a good question. Now ask them. So we have a lot of chances to help people by asking them questions. But some questions may not be helpful. Maybe not ask the questions that aren't helpful.

[67:41]

But if you've got a helpful question, okay, now, when's the right moment? Now. I think now would be good. But even then, the first question before you ask the other one was, would now be a good time for a question? And they say, yeah, and then ask the question. I often ask people before asking a question the other question, which is, may I ask you a question? And then sometimes they say, no, I don't want one, leave me alone. And I usually accept that. I've got really good questions, I'm not going to waste them on people who don't want them. I've got a precious question for you. Questioning and being questioned is an essential part of Buddha activity.

[68:47]

It's an essential part of intimacy. It's an essential part of Zazen. There's so many Zen stories of the teacher asking the student, and the student asking the teacher, What's Zazen? What's great compassion? What's intimacy? What's Buddha activity? The teachers ask the teacher, the students ask the teacher, the students ask the teacher. This is a central part of Buddha activity, is being questioned and questioning. Yes? So in your experience, what do you notice are, do you notice a difference between questions that are best asked in Dokusan and questions that are best asked in groups like this?

[69:49]

Like, I don't really understand that whole thing very well. Yeah, I think, I think that in Doksha, if somebody brings up questions about the Zen Center board's decisions at a recent meeting, I might say, you know, I think that's, first of all, I don't know anything about it, but I think that may be something you should go talk to the director about. or if somebody wanted to tell me about some other person's unethical behavior, I think I might not want to do that in doksan. Because doksan is more about people telling me about their own, their own practice.

[70:54]

So if somebody wants to talk about somebody else's practice, I might, in Doksana, I might say, you know, in a private interview, I might say, maybe we could talk about this informally. It's not that I won't listen, but I'd like to talk in an environment that's not talking about their own practice. Or if they were talking about somebody else, I might say, can you talk about that from the point of view of how you're practicing what that person did, rather than tell me about what they did. Sometimes people tell me about something that this person did. And then they also mention to me that this person went to such and such a college. And that when they were at college, their major was such and such. And in their classes, so-and-so was teaching them. And so-and-so was the teacher also of so-and-so.

[71:57]

And so-and-so was an alcoholic and blah, blah. And it usually doesn't go quite that far, but some people actually get that far and they say, could we talk about you? Rather than the grandchildren of one of the professors of somebody who talked to you the other day. Some people's minds just run all over the place. And I sometimes, can we talk about what's going on now with you? But if they really want to talk about the other stuff, then I say, well, we need to make some other environment. And it's not that... The main reason for doing it is so they can tell the difference between a conversation where they're paying attention to themselves and what's going on with themselves and a conversation when they're talking about other people. Some people, the two wash together and they can't tell one from the other. I think it's good to be able to tell when you're talking about other people and when you're making... So I used to say plans, problems, people, and politics.

[73:04]

Those are informal discussions. But don't sound more like you're talking about your own life struggles. And it could be how you're dealing with those things, but it would be about how you're practicing with them, rather than talk about those things. And also how other people are practicing with those things. Does that make sense? And I used to walk around with a notepad where I had a list of questions for Suzuki Russians. So if I ever ran into them, I had questions for him. And most of the questions I had for him were about what could be a doksana. Another general rule is, the things that I would feel good about a doksana, you can ask any place. So like, if you want to ask what's great compassion, you can ask what's great compassion any place. Does that make sense?

[74:10]

In other words, if I ran into you in the shop, you could say to me, do you have a moment? I'd say yes. Could I ask you about great compassion? I would say yes. But what about here? Here's fine, too. So the doksan questions can be asked here. But some questions should... I would recommend not doing a doksan and do it some other place. Questions that aren't directly related to your practice maybe should not talk about here. or in doksa. But if you want to talk about things that aren't related to your practice, if there's anything like that, well, maybe some other environment. So you can tell the difference between talking about practice and something, if you excuse the expression, something else. So I don't prohibit people talking about something other than practice. I just make a separate place to talk about it. They're not talking about practice space.

[75:13]

And then people can go there and see what that feels like. Say, hmm, yeah. And then go back to the practice place, see what that feels like. Hmm, yeah. I see the difference between talking about practice and talking about something that I think is not practice. Which is kind of a waste of time to talk about anything that's not practice. Because there isn't anything like that. But some people, they really want to do it. So, okay, fine. Does that help you at all? Uh-uh. I'm not sure. I'm not sure either. So that calls me into question. Thank you. Is that enough for tonight? Yes? So the word intimacy, it doesn't immediately feel like I know what that means, but there's a song about getting to know you. Yeah. Interesting. It would be something like that.

[76:16]

Yeah, yeah. That song is a song about what's called practicing to realize intimacy. Getting to know all about you. Yeah, getting to know all about you. Thank you very much. When I was a child, it was a sad experience. When I was a child, it was a sad experience.

[76:48]

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