Yesterday in the City Zen Center I spoke about how everything, all our, and our energy has a tendency to cluster, and that clustering is our karma. It's not... our karma isn't just fixed in some way, it's actually... it clusters in our way we live, the way we hold certain views, cause that energy to cluster more or to dissolve. The first step in anything and in our practice is, of course, preparation, and I want to speak today a little bit about preparation. The poet Robert Duncan was here the other day and he came and looked in this endo and immediately said,

[01:33]

You take care of the zendo like this because you take care of your body. He saw this zendo as our body. And some of you who are studying tea ceremony comment on how you start out doing things in the tea ceremony. and yet after a while there's no doing, it flows out of the person, it flows out of the situation, that there's some... what you actually experience is a kind of tangible space which the activity is manifesting in, not, now I'm picking up a bowl, something like that. One of the most important qualities of the tea ceremony is that everything's included in it. It's just not making a cup of tea, it's the preparation, getting the bowls ready, the water ready, and carrying it into the room, carrying each item into the room, and making the tea, and carrying each item out of the room.

[03:02]

In fact, most ceremonies, even formal Western eating, is like that. Each dish, before you eat, is brought separately to your place. And in the ceremonies we do, we very carefully offer to Buddha, you know, tea and carrying And this whole feeling, in which every aspect of the process is recognized in the making of the cup of tea, allows the tea ceremony to exist. Otherwise you'd have some separate experience, you know, now I'm just making a cup of tea, picking up this bowl or something.

[04:15]

Instead, the feeling is when you pick up the bowl, you pick up the whole tea ceremony, the whole room. Here at Green Gulch, we have this kind of opportunity in Zen Center to start over again, to start with this barn. turn it into a zendo. And we even have the opportunity to cooperate with the people who are here before us, who are encouraging us and helping us in making what was the barn for prized bulls into a zendo. It's interesting, I saw a book recently which showed a very close relationship between Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and barns in Europe. So we begin by taking care of

[05:50]

our physical situation, where we sit, and it's very important. If we're going to have practice here, our practice should be seen in each thing we do. Preparation, in this sense, is not preparation for something, but each preparation is it itself. So there won't be some time, actually, when this zendo is completed. There will always be some, and now we must practice in such and such a way, now that the insulation is up. For yourself, you have to be able to prepare yourself for practice. Of course, the important turning point is when you consider practicing.

[07:13]

That's most of it, coming to seriously consider practicing. And then, if you're going to practice, you have to be able to hear as Brother David said, obey means to hear, you have to be able to hear and to think. By thinking we mean able to bring your practice, your thinking, back to your resolution to practice. And that resolution is wider and wider. And practice itself. So the ground is You know, thinking, hearing, thinking, and actually physically practicing. So the first step is you should know your nature, what kind of person you are, and you should attempt to balance it. If you are an angry person, you should have some work with, some way to

[08:44]

balance your anger by noticing maybe the other side of the person you are angry with. So, knowing your nature and balancing your nature, you should begin to establish some continuity, some kind of habits of practice, of staying with yourself. And you should also know what's enough.

[09:47]

Just because you establish some habit or continuity doesn't mean you should stick to things. Each thing you do should... and you should let go of it immediately, shouldn't linger over things, just enough, you know. These are all a kind of preparation which you can notice in your activity, you know. And you should be, maybe we could say, right on. You should have a sense of time, a sense of pace, so that when it's time to do something, you do it, not five minutes later or five minutes before. That kind of thing.

[10:51]

This is just common sense, but this kind of preparation for practice is necessary. Beginning to sense, well, I should have done that, now is the time I should do that. And having the ability to do it just then, not, well, I really can put it off till later and etc., you know. And you should also recognize, be able to recognize what it is you should do. not only a sense of time, some pace with time. Your pace is time, actually, but at first we feel controlled by time – outside time and time, we can lose time or gain time. But you can't lose time. Actually, you are time, you are producing time each moment, and it's only when you don't have a

[11:54]

when your mind gets you, because it thinks about things now. When you get out of phase, then you can be late or not having time enough. But once you're right on, this is the time to do it, and you do it at that time, there's no longer any sensation of being late. You may actually be late, in phase with someone else, you know? expected you at a certain time, and they may be angry. You have to do something about that. And recognition means, among the various things that happen, you know what to do. And then, if you do those things, you'll have some sense of progress. But it's important not to be satisfied with progress. Okay, but... And the last aspect of preparation is that you don't throw off the yoke of our practice too quickly.

[13:20]

of Buddhist practice, your own practice. You know, yoke and yoga are the same word, and at first this preparation is a kind of yoke. You notice when you are out of phase and so you make some effort to be in phase. If you don't have this kind of sense, if you don't work at developing this kind of sense. If you can work at developing this kind of sense, it's the same as completely practising. But if you think that you don't have to work at this kind of sense and you can just practise somehow, that's not practise at all, because without the ability to recognise and recognise what to do and do it when you should do it, Your practice is always in the realm of thinking, because you don't exist in that realm except in your head. Do you understand what I mean? I mean, the realm of being out of phase is only in your head. So you can have a wonderful realm in your head, but you won't be practicing. You have to enter practice with your mind and body completely, unified.

[14:47]

Anyway, we prepare for practice in this way. And if you take care, try to take care of your activity during the day in this way, you bring yourself to your cushion to meditate. Of course, there's some preparation involved with this posture, too. If you're a rather stiff person, you probably should do some kind of exercise. I'm not so sure. You need to take the exercises out of some book or a discipline, but using your own may be better, actually, rather than following some prescription. use your own sense, you know, I have these parts, you know, and they'll get rusty if I don't move them or use them. And ordinary work only exercises them a little, you know, in specific ways.

[16:30]

So it's good to, particularly if you're stiff and you have trouble, to find some way. I don't know. It's up to you. These are fingers. How do they move? And arms. You can just move them. Just moving, actually. Standing when you get up in the morning, just moving all the parts. And if you move them, like that, just finding out what movement is, you'll find, actually, my body moves in ways I didn't realize, because your mind in your practice moves in ways you don't realize. If your body is unable to move, your mind is unable to move, so your body wants to be quite flexible. That's part of the reason we start Zazen with a kind of simple, you know, rocking. Back and forth. Anyway, if you can hear and think, you know, in the way I mentioned, and practice.

[17:49]

you can make that kind of resolution that's necessary for Zen practice. All of this preparation is to establish a resolution to practice, a thoroughness in your desire to practice. And your standard should be rather high, you know. I want to have, you know, right views. I want to live in wisdom. I want to get rid of gross discrimination. I want to get rid of I. I want to have some easy living in the Dharma. It's much better to have high standards and come down from them than to have low standards and sort of try to boost them every now and then.

[19:20]

There's some actually beneficial tension maybe from having high standards and coming down from them. So you should have the highest standard but at the same time accept whatever your effort is, whatever your accomplishment is. Standards aren't meant to destroy your effort. The important thing is, if you try, that's enough. And maybe you should be satisfied with 80% or 90%. Maybe 80% or 90% is perfect. To imagine some 100% is unreal world. Related to this is one of the ways we can prepare is to know what's enough, you know, not to linger. Just enough. And that's true in our activity too. You can't isolate out one thing and say, this should be. Your whole life, you know, your whole effort, everyone's effort together is perfect practice, is perfect views or wisdom.

[20:58]

So your standards should be high, but they're standards for everyone. If we all can practice, but your effort is enough. You don't want to get in a duality between, oh, these are standards, and that's not what I mean. Everything you can say is related, you don't have to oppose things. So you can have high standards and low accomplishment and it's the same thing. Do you understand that? It's only not the same thing in your head, you know. Anyway, if you have this kind of preparation We take care of green gulch and prepare the zendo and prepare the land for seeds. And we take care of our body and the details of our life so that we can come to sit, you know. And if you can come to sit, then you begin to find that you have, you know, outward

[22:31]

Your thoughts are outward all the time. So first you turn your thoughts inward, and you sit in what I've described as a kind of sheath or envelope of tactile awareness. If you're... as you turn your thoughts inward, At first they sometimes are inward and sometimes are outward, but eventually you can hold them, you can hold where you are, whatever the object of your activity is, you can hold it, stay with it. And then eventually You know, your thoughts become wholly inward, even about outward things. It's a rather interesting experience. When you see something, it looks like – I don't know – it doesn't seem separate from you, you know. It seems quite familiar as if it's in your mind, very clear, like sometimes you see things in a dream, very clearly.

[24:02]

And everything you see, you feel immediately intimate with. And at that point, you see, the whole idea – you know, we've talked about the second precept – is, do not take what is not given, do not steal. At this point, you know, the true value of things becomes apparent, because everything you see you own. There's no feeling of separation from it, so if someone else actually takes care of it, that's some relief. Oh, he takes care of that Buddha, or he takes care of that flowerpot, or that car. Anyway, everything we see is very intimate. That's when your thoughts are wholly inward about anything. Then we begin to have some deep feeling of silence.

[25:26]

of the spaces, you know. I'm saying this, you know, to give you some sense of how we prepare, you know, how we take care of our preparation. and how we prepare with now, with our life, with the details of our life, with the daily objects of our life, with a sense that these objects, these details, are wisdom, are silence. So we start out taking care of things. Later, you may treat this as your mind. Big mind also means the land and water. So at first you take care of it as preparation.

[26:55]

Later you take care of it because it's your mind. Anyway, from this point there are various stages, we can say stages maybe, ways we can verbally identify, notice our practice. You know, at first you have some roughness in your thinking, as Suzuki Roshi used to say. You start to practice. First there's a contrast, you know, between your zazen and your activity. Then as your thoughts become more inward, there's some more unity, but there's still rough thinking.

[28:26]

But that roughness is our practice, you know? It's not like, oh, I have rough thinking, I want to get rid of the roughness. Each step, each aspect of your practice is the whole practice. So the roughness of your life right now, if your life is rough and just taking care of your daily existence, is the same, actually. Taking care of that roughness is the same as the roughness you have in the third jhana, the third stage of complete meditation, when you've given up completely, no looking back, no lingering after ordinary life. Then there's roughness, but it's the same roughness, just more subtly and related to the very base of the perceptive process. and not the objects of the perceptive process. But there's not much difference between the objects of the perceptive process and the very base of your perceptive process, out of which the world arises. So to take care of the roughness in your activity is the same as taking care of... Luckily, this practice lasts at least one lifetime.

[29:59]

have so many chances to practice. Nanaku, who was the disciple of the Sixth Patriarch, quite a famous Zen master, and the teacher of Matsu or Baso, who is maybe the most famous Zen master of all. Anyway, when Nanaku went to see the Sixth Patriarch, I guess he was pretty young. Nanaku lived from, they think, 677 to 744. Not very long ago.

[31:25]

Anyway, when he was quite young, much younger than you are, we are, he went to see the Sixth Patriarch. And I don't know what his exact words in English, in Chinese were, but Suzuki Roshi's version in English is something like, the Sixth Patriarch said, what is it that comes here thus? Maybe he said, where do you come from? But he said it in some way which conveyed the sense or meant, what is it that comes here and greets me? And Nanaku didn't know what to say. I don't know. I don't know even if he knew the sixth patriarch was asking him something like that. Maybe so. Anyway, he practiced with the sixth patriarch for eight years.

[32:47]

taking care of his life in the way I've just talked about, this kind of preparation and working in the community. Anyway, after eight years, Nanaku was asked again by the Sixth Patriarch, what is it, you know, that came here? And Nanaku said, even if I say it in words, it won't be right. It won't be enough. Even if I say it in words, it won't be right. So the six patriarchs said, that which you cannot say in words,

[33:52]

wants to practice, needs to practice, needs enlightenment. And Nanaku said, but that practice, that enlightenment must not be relative or dual, which means not relative or absolute. If you say practice or enlightenment or Buddha nature is something absolute, only Buddha has it, we don't have it, you have some duality between this and that. We don't practice in that way. If you think you understand what I mean, you're probably not right. But if you don't know quite what I mean, maybe you're right. We practice in that realm of, I don't know, I can't, no matter, even if I put it into words,

[35:29]

It won't be right. That which you cannot put into words, that which you can't quite know, practices, wants to practice, needs to practice. So your response to it is to practice. With resolution, with some preparation. So although we're preparing and we're practicing, we don't know quite what we're practicing. But we know the only way to respond is to practice. Turning toward emptiness, more and more moving toward the formless jhanas. This is the only thing that will satisfy your deepest request, as Suzuki Roshi said, your innermost request.

[36:52]

Do you have any questions you might talk about? Can you hear what he said in the back? He said, what do I mean by, don't give up the yoke of your practice too soon? It's another way of saying, don't be satisfied with your progress. Yeah. Is there really any, if you have fear,

[38:56]

Is there really any alternative to working with it? Actually, we have no choice. Our existence is fear and anger and etc. If you don't work with fear and anger and various desires, there's no way. You can only take drugs or kill yourself or something. Because there's no way. You could sleep all the time. That's worse. If you sleep too much, some unbalanced part of you takes control. It's quite difficult. So there's no alternative. So if there's no alternative, that's part of the answer. You have fear, so you just accept fear. You think you have some alternative, then you think there's some way to practice with it. As if there's an alternative to get out of it, you know, I'll use this practice to get out of it. Do you understand what I mean? Practice when you think there's an alternative, or practice as an alternative to fear is not practice.

[40:12]

Well, you have to make some kind of practical discrimination. Obviously, you can avoid putting your hand in the burner of the stove, and it makes sense to avoid putting your hand in the stove, but if cooking your meal makes you feel the same as putting your hand in the stove, you have some fear, then you should probably still cook your meal. Depends on what kinds of things you're avoiding. I don't think we should go out and look for difficulty. You have enough difficulty, just... If you need to look for difficulty, you're not looking very hard, because there's plenty right here. So I wouldn't look for difficulty, but I wouldn't avoid difficulty that's something you should do. But we have to use some strategy, actually. If you feel quite weak and you know from experience you can only do so much, you know, you have to be careful. We have to maybe even baby ourselves a little.

[41:55]

But if you always baby yourself, you'll... you know, there's no... it's no good, you know. Anyway, you have to be kind to yourself. But you can have that kind of strength to keep... to stay with your difficulties and try a little more each time if you have the deep resolution to practice. If you have those standards, I am going to practice fully. I may not ever realize the practice fully, but I'm going to practice fully. And realization of the practice is possible for someone. Maybe I can't do it, but I'll help someone do it if I can't do it. That kind of resolution you need. But we have to be careful, you know. with standards. It's interesting, you know, I know quite a lot about psychology and I, over the last twenty years, have had quite a lot of experience with people who have a great deal of psychological difficulty. And in the end, you come back to

[43:28]

the stereotype of what it means to be crazy. You either think you're Napoleon or you're mad or angry. And almost every person that I've spent time with who has difficulty with being crazy, you know, most of them either are intensely angry Or they have an incredible sense of their own importance, which flips over and they become an incredible sense of their excrementalness or something. But they go back and forth. So a recognition, I don't mean by high standards, some, well, I'm Buddha, you know, or I'm have some special quality, I'm a chosen person. If you have those kinds of feeling, you better balance them with, not with feeling you're terrible, which is what karma does to you, it smashes you pretty quickly, but with some more reasonable... Most important is the idea of being maybe a servant, just willing to

[44:55]

help others, not yourself. Could you explain to me what you mean by turning yourself in? Were you at the talk I gave about that? Yeah. I was sitting in the back. She asked, what do I mean by turning toward emptiness? We have so many opportunities. Well, first of all, I mean the first opportunity not opportunity, possibility we have is to reject life, reject things. Most of us reject things in two ways.

[46:22]

We either try to push them away from us, obvious rejection, or we try to make them what they aren't, you know, are not. By that I mean the kind of mentality which always wants to make everything okay when it's not okay. So some people make everything lousy when it's not lousy, and some people make everything okay when it's not okay. These are two ways to reject the world, to hold the world away from us. And if you find yourself doing either of these two things, which actually most of our culture and civilization is based on, you have to catch yourself and be willing to face things. And if you're willing to face things, to look at things just as they are, which it helps a great deal to do zazen. The more you do zazen, the more you have that kind of simple strength to stay with things, to see things just as they are, without turning away from them. And again, this is a kind of... what I mean by each stage, each aspect of practice is the whole of practice.

[47:52]

Because at the beginning of practice, if you can keep trying to not turn away from things, to accept things, to see things, to receive things as they are, without wanting to blur the edges or color them in or drain the color out, take the threat out of it. If we can just see things, accept things, look at things without turning away from them, that's a kind of preparation. But if you can completely look at the world without turning away from it, that's enlightenment. So sometimes I think some of the names of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva may be one who does not turn away from things.

[48:52]

So each step of your practice you should do completely. When you're a carpenter, you should completely be a carpenter. When you're in the zendo hitting the bell, you should completely be hitting the bell. When we have a guest here, we should completely take care of the guest. So we have to have this ability to enter into each thing completely without comparing it to something else. One stage of preparation, one aspect of preparation means no topsy-turvy views. Topsy-turvy views are when you can't take, can't

[50:01]

do what you are right now. You have certain views about it. It should be this way, it should be that way. Sometimes it's said, living upside down. Anyway, if you give up living upside down and can look at things just as they are, then you have two opportunities, maybe. You can turn with things toward creating more things. toward rebirth, toward more activity. Or you can turn with them toward emptiness. So in a conversation, for instance, if you're speaking with someone, you have a sensation after the conversation that you participated Maybe you didn't say everything, but you said... you didn't push yourself to say things. You said just enough so that when it's over, it's gone, you know? Like the way the ocean closes up behind a sailboat. That when you do something, you know, sometimes we say, cause seals cause, cause seals effect. That when you do something, it's complete there. It doesn't lead to the next thing.

[51:27]

It may lead to the next thing, but it leads in its own nature to the next thing. So conversations have a tendency to return to silence and not leave you with sort of strings of, I didn't quite... I should have said... So turning the wheel of the Dharma, which we've talked about doing here at Green Ghost, means turning toward emptiness. Everything is changing, but to turn with that changing toward out of which it arose, and to turn with yourself toward your original face. Okay, one, two more and that's all, okay?

[53:08]

Yes, you don't turn away from things that are there, but you don't participate in them to continue them. So if you don't turn away from things, that means you participate with them, you enter into them. You can't actually turn towards something and remain separate from it. Yes, I think so. I know what you mean. But we have to... I think... It's... Yes, I understand. It's a very...

[54:13]

Could you hear what he said in the back? It's some danger of our practice, though, to think that maybe turning toward emptiness means not getting involved. There's no way, actually, to actually see things as they are without being one with them. So there's no alternative to participating in things. But how do you participate in things in such a way that you don't cause them to continue, that your participation is such that the situation turns toward emptiness? Oh, you had one more. If you try to figure out exactly what I said, you may be confusing. Because, you see, I know many of you pretty well and I know what your heads do to

[56:04]

So, if I don't say the opposite or some balance, you know, there's some problem occurs. So, if I say high standards, you know, you see, there's no conflict between eighty percent and high standards. You know, in the actual world, this inadequate world in which you're an inadequate part of it, right, there's no possibility for perfection. failure and perfection are, there's an effort toward perfection, but a satisfaction with failure. Do you understand what I mean? Well, if you're not... Yeah, well, that's true, but we're always failing. Dogen's famous statement, practice is one continuous mistake. Actually, that's true. You really have to be willing to fail to practice, and to know how deeply we're failing, and your resolve

[57:30]

If your resolve is deep, it's deep because you failed, because you know failure. A resolve based on success is not very strong, because when there's failure, it wobbles. But the bodhisattva kind of resolve comes out of trying sometime, trying to help someone. Trying, actually, a bodhisattva knows it's impossible. Maybe a bodhisattva has tried. And most people, when they tried and they see that it's impossible in this world to really help other people, they give up at that point. Well, it's the better part of valor or wisdom, you know, to just make the best life I can for myself and give up this idealistic thing I had when I was young. Now, a bodhisattva keeps those same ideals and is willing to accept one failure after another in pursuing those ideals. You understand? Somebody's knocking at the door. Oh, I see. Van?

[59:01]

Let's zen it up. Is that your expression? No, I didn't say it. Did I say that? I think that's your expression. I don't know about you. One day, you know, here we are at Green Gulch and it's us in San Francisco, he was the buyer and we announced we were going to buy Green Gulch and he has to have been consulted.

[59:50]

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