There is no analogy for how our practice penetrates into our society. I've thought of how a flute carries to the far-off hills, or how a dancer's movements are carried in the hands throughout a culture. And your activity, when it's free, the more it's free from the clusters of some particular formations, penetrates everywhere. Karma means things have a tendency to cluster,

[01:14]

and it also means that everything comes from you. You can't blame someone else for your situation, even if someone treats you in some way that is maybe pretty bad, still, you understand it as your own karma. So, our first practice in Buddhism is to follow your consciousness, to see how your consciousness exists. And it requires some sincerity. You can't look for quick solutions.

[02:22]

So, one of the first things you'll notice is that anything you observe is actually what you observe, plus your thinking. So, you have to take into consideration what you observe, plus your thinking. And And you'll notice that, if you follow your consciousness, that there's some record, some railroad tracks, you know, that have brought you to this point. There's some history of your consciousness, and it conditions everything.

[03:44]

And there's not much you can do about the history of your consciousness. But you can do something about its immediate activity, moment after moment. And its activity is in its discrimination, this is good, this is bad, you know. And to be caught in a bad realm is actually not so serious as being caught in a good realm, because caught in a bad realm, you pretty soon want to get out of it, and you'll make some effort to get out of it. But if you're the kind of person who knows what's good and can prove it, this is what I should eat, you know, this kind of activity benefits people, that's true, maybe.

[05:07]

But your thinking, the realm of your experience will be very narrow. Nothing in itself is good or bad. The third patriarch of China is famous for saying that the supreme way is not difficult. Only if you can keep away from discrimination, everything you see is it. But if you don't discriminate, what will you see? And Dogen says about this, I don't know whether he made this up or not, but it's wonderful, he says, if the great Garuda bird flies, it's so gigantic covering the whole universe

[06:19]

that one flap of its wings causes great tidal waves, you know, and then at the bottom of the ocean there will be many fishes and dragons alive and dead from the tidal wave, and this Garuda bird will fly over and he'll only take the live ones, the live fishes and live dragons. And Dogen says, this is true non-discrimination. So if you actually don't discriminate, if your activity is free from the various clusters that occur

[07:28]

around various ideas of self and other, then your non-discrimination is, I don't know how, it's almost like a great wind that precedes you. Everything that's not alive is not there for you to see. Everything that's presented is it. So, you must have noticed in your zazen that

[08:37]

according to what you think is important, your thinking will cluster around what you think is important. If you think some particular situation is relevant or you're concerned about something, you know, maybe somebody simply, you know, bumped into your car and drove off, and you're quite concerned about who it was and how they bumped into your car and etc., as if that was bad, then your thinking will tend to, no matter what you do in zazen, your thinking will start clustering around that thing. Who did it? Where did he go? How can I catch him? Why are people so terrible? How can anyone be so irresponsible? But if when you're asleep, someone hits you while they're asleep,

[09:52]

they're sleeping, you know, and they hit you, you don't get angry in the same way because it seems some innocent behavior. But in Buddhism, whether your behavior is innocent or intentional, still it's actually innocent because in some way you're ignorant of the actual way we live. Anyway, you have various records, actually, maybe they're like records.

[10:57]

You're not just in the groove from the past, but you're actually in some present groove, and each of us has some realm or record that keeps going round and round, and our thinking is in that realm. So some of us try to change our thinking, you know, but we don't think of changing the record. Some of you have, all of us actually, have some times when we have compulsive thinking, and it's like the needle being stuck in the groove, you know, and the same thought occurs to us over and over again, maybe some disturbing thought. But it's pretty hard to get rid of a scratch on the record. It's much easier just to change the record, you know. It's possible, maybe, to change the scratch.

[12:00]

But if you follow your consciousness and you try to practice non-discrimination, you'll see that actually there are various clusters in your consciousness or activity or mind around which some, maybe some subject matter that interests you, that around which your thinking will coagulate. So each of us is caught, actually, in some kind of realm of what we think is important. So this idea that we're caught in particular realms, not just by particular thinking,

[13:16]

is rather important. Because when you begin to practice Zen, you're actually changing your realm. And when you follow, when you count your breathing, you're changing the realm of your thinking. Because thinking and breathing are some kind of different thinking. You'll still have, while you're counting your breathing, you'll still have some kind of thinking. But that thinking will be different than when your thinking is caught by what you think is important only. So the first practice is bringing our breathing and thinking together till there's some unity, until all the time your thinking and your breathing are one activity.

[14:22]

And it's, anyway, an ancient observation that your thinking and your body are related, that each chakra represents a different realm of thinking. And so, when you practice Zen, you're not caught in a particular realm of your thinking. So, after you have, can, after your thinking and your breathing are quite close together, and your thinking doesn't wander off sort of on its own trip, then, you know, the next practice is you follow your breathing. But actually, you relate your breathing to your energy. You relate your thinking to your energy. And then your thinking is in another realm.

[15:33]

Maybe you have the same thoughts, but there's some difference. So, so, how to let go of the, of relevance in your thinking and activity is pretty difficult.

[16:40]

So, one side, it's very important to be able to take various roles, to see what you're doing as a role, not as an identity. And in America, that's pretty difficult, because we have such a strict hierarchy of roles. We pretend everyone's equal, we say everyone's equal, but actually, that means only the top role is best, only the top role is equal. So, if you're a taxi driver, your role is not so good as the person riding with you, you know, because you're a servant or something. So, the taxi driver may insist on speaking to, involving himself in the conversation, because he's just as good as the people riding with him. And that kind of thinking

[17:47]

means you're really caught by it. And some identity, you know, some hierarchy of which you're involved with, of roles. And the other thing we do is we anticipate, you know, now I have this role, but later I'll have that role. So, you're not doing exactly what you're doing. So, someone like Suzuki Roshi can be quite forgetful and forgetful. As your activity is in wider and wider realms, you know, and you're not clustering

[18:54]

around some idea of what's important, your perspective on things is so different that it's quite difficult to remember things other people think are important. So, Suzuki Roshi needed maybe some kind of assistance. But we want him to do that because his willingness to forget everything helps us. But if he has to take some role and do some specific thing, he's quite able to do it. Yeah. But his job was to forget about roles. Or his role was maybe to forget about roles, you know.

[19:57]

Anyway, in that kind of way, we practice with karma. First, we try to follow our consciousness and observe it by noticing how it discriminates. And then, as we see how everything is some object, some observation plus thinking, and a kind of thinking, a kind of particular record or realm. And we can begin to get free of some particular record by bringing our mind and

[21:24]

back to, first of all, back to our breathing and our physical momentary existence. So, do you have some questions we might talk about? Would discrimination used properly be helpful? Oh, I did and I thought you could hear. Would discrimination used properly be helpful?

[22:52]

Yeah. Of course, we have to discriminate. At least, at first in our practice, we have to discriminate. If you don't, people will. Or if you discriminate, how can I say? Actually, you're discriminating all the time because you've got some one particular record on. Yeah. That record may be, everything should be natural or everything someone said to me recently, why don't you give lectures which suggest that we let everything hang out?

[24:11]

Actually, that's what I'm saying. But usually, when you think you're letting everything hang out, you're actually caught by one kind of record and you only let those things hang out which are convenient. So, you let that hang out and you hide this, or that way, that kind of way. To let everything hang out is rather dangerous. How to stop discriminating would be to let everything hang out. But then you have to, if you resume to, we say, if you do zazen, of course, if you do zazen, you're not discriminating. But more so, we mean, if you resume your original nature,

[25:23]

then according to your nature, just intuitively, you can do everything without discrimination. But when we discriminate in Buddhism, we discriminate and ask ourselves, what is it? What are we doing? Not just, oh, I like this or I like that, but, well, I'm choosing this, but, you know. I think Dogen said something about strict discrimination. Actually, we all know what we want to do. We all know what we should do.

[26:44]

But it's pretty hard to follow that. So, we discriminate and practice non-discrimination and do zazen sometimes. But most of us use zen as a way of sneaking up on what we really know we should do. We don't want to give up entirely, you know, but we don't want to actually do what we know we should do, so we fill the space in between with practice. Go to zazen. But at some point, you decide. And after you've decided, you see it's not so easy as just to decide. And you only made a little bit of progress by deciding. So, you have to decide over and over again and practice much more thoroughly then.

[27:58]

Yeah? Are all of us ready right now to decide? Oh, yes. Actually, we're all waiting for each other to decide right now. After you. You first. Yeah. Yeah, that's some kind of cluster in your body, you know. Which, if you unwind everything, it will unwind. Sometimes it helps to have some massage, but actually, we want to unwind everything. And then all the clusters go. How does turning to emptiness relate to non-discrimination?

[29:16]

It's the same thing. What was the question? How does turning toward emptiness relate to non-discrimination? It's just a different way of saying it from another point of view. True activity, you know, is activity, but it's not in criticism of other standpoints. It includes other standpoints. Yeah? It seems that being non-discriminatory means not to have your own opinion in terms of, like, right, I don't like this, or I do like that. It seems like in everyday life, especially if you're talking to someone, I don't like this.

[30:22]

Yeah, he said. Actually, I think you said, how do we avoid being immobilized by non-discrimination? You can't even comment on a movie. Well, that movie was... Pretty soon, you know, you won't have any friends even. Because your friends want you to like them, you know, which requires some discrimination. Maybe it's almost impossible, you know, to not have some opinions, but you should know they're just... The important thing is, since you can't be completely free from opinions, to know they're just opinions.

[31:36]

And they're not real. They're not the actual way it necessarily is. Well, maybe you should know they're yours. Wow, somehow that produced lots of... Of course, yeah. Of course.

[32:42]

I don't know quite how to say this, but... Of course, the main cluster, you know, we have, is that we think we're important. That this particular I and its extensions are important. Though it may be useful to describe it in terms of realms of importance, because the idea of I is hard to see. But you can see what you consider important. So you can see how things cluster on that level, or this level, you know. But it's very interesting, you know,

[33:52]

to practice, to give up, to try to give up the importance your own opinions have. Maybe you have some opinion. So what I'm saying is, not only do you see your opinions as just opinions, you know, some temporary, non-real way, you're looking at it just now. By non-real, I mean it's only one little part, you know. But it's also important to withdraw importance from this or that opinion, or having other people hear what you think about a certain movie. And it may be difficult, because you think, oh, if I could tell them what I observed about that movie, they'd really understand it. So then you want to say it, because it'll make it clear for the other person,

[34:57]

how they should have enjoyed the movie. But, you know, if you can imagine that they might feel that way about your opinion about the movie, you can try imagining that maybe their opinion about the movie might affect you that way. So you can, giving up importance attached to your own thinking, you can listen to what other people say about things, as if they were your own opinions. You know, as if, oh, that's just my mind over there. And then it's very interesting. It's very interesting when you look at someone who's speaking at you, and you think, oh, that's me speaking at me. That's my own mind. That's my own words. Just me over there.

[35:59]

Anyway, you begin to... Your discrimination then is more subtle, you know, it participates with other people's and fits, you know, in that way your discrimination doesn't stand out, you know, like stones or something. People had some back there. I know, but back there first, yes. Self-importance in the decision. The decision might be seen... It seems... Every moment I make a decision, the decision keeps going deeper and deeper. Deeper and deeper. The mind turns micro. The mind turns micro. It's getting more crucial and more crucial and more crucial that this is happening.

[37:08]

And then I see myself get caught by how important and how crucial I think this is. I see this other side of me. That very crucialness or cruciality, this whole finding is not there. I don't... Yeah, I hear you. I don't know. Let me try to repeat what you said, because the words are... I'm not sure I got the words right. You said giving up self-importance in making a decision makes the decision go deeper and deeper.

[38:12]

No? Giving up self-importance in making a decision... It's seen as... But... It's a decision. To me... The decision to stop, just giving up, keeps going deeper and deeper the more I practice. Oh, the decision to give up self-importance goes deeper and deeper. Yeah. And it becomes more crucial. This moment I'm faced with every time I turn around and see it. The more I practice, the more often I turn around and see it right in front of me. It's like a wall. It just keeps going deeper and deeper. It becomes so crucial. To give it up. And yet that very decision is self-important.

[39:16]

And it finds... The very decision itself seeming crucialness or whatever finds me so tired. Can you all hear what he's saying? Mm-hmm. Sounds like you're all underwater with him. So... Yeah, I understand. Mm-hmm. Okay. Anyway, be careful of deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And crucialness. It's crucial. But anyway, that's... Okay, so you've described a situation. Now, what do you do about it? Maggie? Well, our practice is non-discrimination.

[40:18]

But it seems like it can seem very different from most other people in the world to me. People think we're weird. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't seem that we relate to the other people in the world around us so well. We're different. And we make other people feel different. Oh, what she said is that although well, she said

[41:23]

that Zen students are different. People think we're freaky, weird. We call ourselves freaks. Yeah. And she also implied, perhaps, a connection between a practice of non-discriminating and thus becoming something that's discriminated as weird. Hmm? Hmm. Well, I don't know if that's two different problems. One problem is whether the practice of Zen makes you different from other people and puts you out of touch or something like that. That's one question. And a rather separate question is

[42:23]

is this particular bunch of people which we are weird? Which, I'm saying it that way, though. Yeah. Yeah, I understand, yeah. I mean, I was saying that my way. I wouldn't say that you said that. Most of what we look like as a group I think comes from two factors. One is the particular people, us, who decide to practice Buddhism and through our understanding and misunderstanding

[43:25]

decide that practice is relating to the world in such and such a way. Since most of us have a great deal of difficulty with role-playing, we have a great deal of difficulty with holding jobs and we think Zazen is so important and such and such else is less important, etc. This is our misunderstanding, not Zen. . I think any

[44:39]

practice, particularly during the first years of practice, you'll because you're doing a specific thing together, we'll have a specific kind of identity. Of course, ideally, you're shouldn't make other people feel you're different or funny. Very definitely is a side of Buddhist practice. Aim of Buddhist practice is to even if people are poisoning themselves, we poison ourselves with people. We don't even discriminate that much. But of course, if we have some particular practice, it has... even if everyone's discriminating and you're not, it makes you different. But you should be free to discriminate with everyone.

[45:41]

But still, Suzuki Roshi, I'm sure, seemed rather funny shopping in the supermarket, wandering about in his robes with his shaved heads. And you know, someone asked me recently, but people ask me fairly often, if Buddhism is maybe some natural way, why do we shave our heads? And there are many reasons, I can't explain so many. Partly, it's a tradition and people want the tradition continued. But actually, if you're going to let it all hang out, it means you either never cut your hair or you shave it off. And religious people in the world do one or the other, usually. Because as long as it's

[46:43]

in between, you have to worry about it. Oh, I must comb it or it has to be washed or something. So it involves you in discrimination about your appearance. If you just let it go or you cut it off, you don't have to worry about at least your hair. Hmm. But also, practicing Buddhism, you know, part of our practice is, I don't know music very well, but you know, isn't contrapuntal, means there's this and then there's a kind of echo to it that works with it. Anyway, our practice is in some ways, even though you do everything

[47:44]

with everyone, there's a kind of contrapuntal effect. There's some difference. It's the same, but there's some difference. That's probably the most fundamental way Buddhism teaches. Buddhism. Through that difference. And in that way, this teaching penetrates. So one one side of Buddhist teaching, not at the beginning. In the beginning, you're just trying to maybe let it all hang out. But if you, since you get in trouble, if you do that in your actions, you do it in zazen. But eventually, one part of Buddhist teaching is, exactly what is your identity as a Buddhist?

[48:45]

Because you have to have some identity, actually. You have to have some kind of clothes you wear. Some kind of way you hold your hand. Hmm? In Sanskrit terms, I believe, there's no such thing as a natural gesture. Everything is a mudra. The more conscious you are, everything you do communicates something. So, you know, there's some simultaneous naturalness and choice involved. Anyway, so it's not simple. There's some there's both some

[49:50]

sameness and difference. There's the difference of us, you know, just particular people. And there's the conscious difference, like a kind of dance, of the role of a Buddhist. But most, for most of us in our practice, the thing to keep remembering is one and yet two. Don't be caught by universality. Don't be caught by particularity. On one side, just everything is one. Another side, everything is two. This way you can get free from your particular record. And then,

[50:54]

as Dogen said about the Garuda bird, everything you see will be alive. Even if you are quite forgetful of even who you are.

[51:09]

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