In one way, Buddhism is much too simple for most of us. It just means you see things exactly as they are, or as they are as we can see them. But it's difficult because it takes an enormous amount of energy to see things exactly as they are. It's much easier to participate in this fantasy of life we have. We all create this fantasy of some kind of life and we all want to participate in it and get rewards in terms of the fantasy.

[01:15]

But to think as simply as Buddha did is nearly impossible for us. How many of us can just note very clearly that there is suffering? and then accept it so completely that you can also then see that if there's suffering there must be an origin for it and thus there must be a way to stop it and then to set about, to sit about and find a way, a path to stop it.

[02:44]

It's actually a kind of way of thinking that in a way you should learn so that when you have problems you can just look at them very simply and decide what to do. Most of us can't even look at our problem. We want to pretend it's something else. Or it'll go away by itself. So, even if you see everything pretty clearly, you have an enormous problem with your habits and with your energy.

[04:21]

So the first practice is to restrain your senses. So we chant the Heart Sutra every day, and each aspect of that is actually a practice. And the five skandhas, and when they mention no eye, no ear, no nose, etc., each one of those can be a practice in which as you see something, You just allow your eye to see it without thinking about what you see. And as you hear some sound, you just hear the sound. There's no more connection than that.

[05:25]

And with each of your senses, including your mind, you just, whatever your mind thinks, it thinks. as whatever your eye sees, it sees. The practice requires some attention over quite a long period of time so that you begin to break the links between what you see and what you think and what you hear and what you want and etc., etc., etc. So the first practice is to restrain your senses. If you can't restrain your senses you can never know what your senses actually are. Another very simple statement in Buddhism is

[06:30]

The world has three aspects. One is form, and one is non-form, and the third is desire. The desire world, the form world, and the non-form world, that includes everything. And that's, when you read something like that, I mean, you might actually think about it for a while, or, isn't that interesting, this form and non-form, and then suddenly there's desire thrown in there. So that has everything, our whole practice is right there in the desire world.

[07:42]

So, your suffering comes from ignorance and desire. So, to get rid of ignorance, you first have to make an effort to see things just as they are. There's a funny story of a man whose wife was I don't remember how it goes exactly, but his wife was angry with him or something, and so she made herself very beautiful, and she was very beautiful, and she went out to walk to somebody else's house, I don't know, a boyfriend, I don't know what.

[08:54]

Anyway, she went out to walk, and she passed this monk sitting who was practicing, just seeing things as they are, and he asked, she asked the way, and he said, is that a way or something? and about 10 minutes later the husband came running down the road. Did you see a woman going by here? He says, well I saw a bag of bones slowly going down the road. I don't know whether it was a man or woman he said, just some bag of bones. I don't think you should always see Everybody has a bag of bones, you know, but you should also see that, you know. When you look at a person's eye, you know, just some wet surface there, you know, you don't have to have any idea of a person looking out or just some surface there.

[09:59]

That's all you are actually seeing. So the more you can restrain your senses and see things just as they are, the more your actual nature will shine on everything. Everything you see is shining. That's why the sixth patriarch could go and work in the back shed, I guess, pounding rice, and it didn't make any difference to him whether he pounded rice or was in the monastery someplace.

[11:06]

Suzuki Roshi's teacher used to criticize him all the time. He'd get up early to go to sit earlier and his teacher would become angry with him and say, why do you get up earlier than others? You should get up at the same time as others. Sometimes he'd go and sweep the garden by himself and his teacher said, why do you sweep by yourself? Why don't you sweep and work with others? Sometimes he would write down things and he would try to remember the stories about famous teachers. And his teachers say, why do you write down anything? So finally he thought he couldn't do anything. And he decided finally he couldn't even want to be a good teacher.

[12:25]

His teacher, after several years of badgering him like this, said to him one day, well, you can have one desire. It's risky, he said, but I'll let you have one desire. Maybe it's impossible not to have one desire if the world is, you know, form and non-form and desire. So the desire has two meanings. One meaning is the difficulty, you know, that confuses our life. And the other meaning is that desire, what Sukhiros used to call our inmost request, that frees us from circumstances in the usual sense. So I guess you may know that Suzuki Roshi's teacher also had some difficulty in being rather impressed with himself and his teacher made him bow so much that he developed a callus on his forehead.

[13:59]

So anyway, Suzuki Roshi also was rather a talented young person and he thought he was pretty good, you know, so his teacher was quite hard on him and permitted him finally only this one desire. In fact, at one point his teacher told him, I think I've told you this before, but anyway, told him when he was, I don't know, He said, you are very good, he said, but soon, you already have, but soon it will start to manifest itself. You have this terrible disease which your bones will begin to distort and grow and twist and you'll become terribly ugly. And Suzuki Roshi thought he was quite handsome, you know. So he was pretty upset by this, actually, because Zen teachers have a reputation for being rather good at prediction.

[15:14]

So he believed his teacher completely, and he told me he'd look in the mirror in the morning. He'd see a slight change. Actually, for two or three years he thought this and he kept looking for a change. Anyway, his teacher just made it up, of course. So Suzuki Roshi practiced very hard for many years to not be a good teacher, in a sense. But what his teacher was doing was trying to get him to live completely in each

[16:21]

I can't say each moment because that's too much of an idea everyone has now, we live in each moment or now, you know, enlightenment now, right? And somehow what I mean by that is a little different from that. Anyway, so he tried pretty hard. And it was interesting to me because the other day Reb Anderson was talking to me about how when he first met Suzuki Roshi he was impressed with the special quality Roshi had even when he offered incense it was completely He was completely satisfied with just offering incense.

[17:25]

As if he took his whole life satisfaction was just in doing this rather meaningless thing like offering incense. And it almost looks like a special power to be able to be completely satisfied with offering incense. So you often in your own practice you have a conflict between wanting to do something, wanting to do something to help people, wanting to do something in the world, wanting to do something to express yourself.

[18:41]

At the same time, you would criticize Suzuki Roshi if he started doing things, being too busy, things like that. It felt good just to have Suzuki Roshi offering incense and really not doing anything. This is a conflict you'll have to resolve yourself, but it's very good to look at your life, try on your life from various points of view. So you should try on non-doing, trying not to do anything.

[19:58]

And maybe you have to work and do things like that, it's true, but that's a different kind of doing. Buddhism often talks about the world is burning up or our head is on fire or we should practice it if our head were on fire. And actually we have a kind of fire in us that the first practice in Buddhism is sort of how do you evenly stoke your fire, you know, so it's not flaring up all the time. And it's interesting, as long as you have desires, you won't be able to practice so well. You'll be tired all the time and can't quite make it to zazen, etc. But when your energy isn't tied up in desires, you have much more energy actually.

[21:09]

And it's even much more important to have your fire sort of evenly stoked, you know. So then practice becomes what to do with your energy. But first you have to sort of evenly stoke your fire. The three, another three very simple things, body, speech, and mind are called the three doors or the three ways in which we can act with our body, with our thinking, and with our speech.

[22:11]

My desire, speech, is sort of in the middle and a very interesting one because It unites, it's the one that unites body and mind in speech, which is part of the reason we chant. And Christianity says, in the beginning there was the word So you have to check on your outflows what your body, speech and mind are doing. And the most difficult is speech. And you should practice with your speaking for some time to try to say nothing unnecessary and to notice whenever you say something that's not necessary to say.

[23:25]

It's pretty hard to practice in the situation you're in, because if you're in a monastery or somewhere like that, then you can, if you don't talk so much, it's rather, it's okay. But if you are in an ordinary situation, like here, where you go to work and things, or if you're married, if you try to not talk so much You'll have two reactions. One is, at first people will be rather irritated with you and they'll try to get you to talk. I don't mean stopping talking completely, but they're used to your responding and they want you to respond a certain way. Particularly if you're married, you're not participating or something. People say, are you angry or something? But actually, if you do it rather gently and just mostly at first you just try to notice when you say something unnecessary, pretty soon people will be quite relieved that you're not talking so much.

[24:38]

I know one time, I don't know if this will make any sense to you, but one time I was very depressed and had been quite depressed for a long time, maybe two years or something like that. That's fairly long. And I was walking along and I lit a cigarette And the match, you know, I lit it and then I didn't want to throw the match away on the street, right, so I put it out with my finger and it sort of burned my finger. And somehow it burned my finger, gave me some pleasant memory of, I don't know, five or ten years before that, when I lit a cigarette and it burned my finger, but it was a time when I felt good, you know.

[26:16]

Suddenly I felt good, you know. I thought, well. It was also interesting, I had to be standing beside the fireman's fund insurance building. Maybe it had something to do with my wanting to put the fire out. But I was quite struck by the fact that here for two years I'd been depressed continuously and suddenly there was this little glimmer of when I put the fire out, this little glimmer of feeling good. And I thought, geez, I'm still capable of feeling good. That was really interesting. So at that moment some resolve occurred in me. that if it's still possible to feel good, I'm going to find out how. Just reverse it, so maybe for two years I feel good and for maybe one flash I feel lousy, you know.

[27:23]

Actually, I didn't have any such hope as that, but I thought it might get a little better, you know. But that kind of resolve that I made then is at least somewhat similar to Buddha seeing that there's suffering and deciding you can do something about it. So the level at which you're convinced or you have some resolution or some desire that includes all desires is essential to practice Buddhism. at the most complete levels of your existence you have to be open to make this kind of resolution. And actually it doesn't occur just from some particular instant, though you can think back about something that made you start the resolution, but it takes quite a long time to

[28:41]

make such a resolution firm, to make such a vow, actually a kind of vow So, the purity of your mind is actually, you know, everywhere. Your Buddha nature, whatever we call it, is not hidden, it's everywhere. It's not more somewhere else, you know, or more later than now.

[29:47]

And as long as you have some idea that, well, I'll start practicing so-and-so, such-and-such a time, or I'll practice for one year or two years or I'll do zazen for this and this length of time or if I practice for five years then I'll be recognized as a great hero or something like that. As long as you have that kind of idea you're not practicing Buddhism at all. To be completely satisfied with whatever you're doing even if it's You know, if your experience at that time is unpleasant, there's no alternative to it. To abide in, to be satisfied in each moment of your existence, is practicing zazen. Do you have any questions?

[31:21]

Yeah? Sometimes you have a resolve, but then it falls apart. For how long? Well, resolve that is only there when it's convenient isn't much of resolve, but it doesn't, you know, you can't sit around waiting magically for resolve to occur, you know. You are the resolve and all you have to do is make the resolve and make the effort to bring it back to your attention and your effort when you Lose it. I mean, the whole business about right effort and all that stuff, you know? You just have to make an effort.

[32:29]

No one else can make it. You're completely alone, actually. Yeah? When I was younger, I had a very good friend. liked his parents very much. And I used to spend the night at his house occasionally. Two weeks ago, I heard he committed suicide. And I heard that he'd been very depressed, and like his father, he became a dentist. And he didn't have any real friends, and he wasn't satisfied with his practice. And I hadn't known how much I liked him until I heard he was dead. I want to say something to his parents, but I don't quite know what to say.

[33:33]

I sometimes think I know the right things to say, maybe make them feel better. Then I wonder whether I should maybe say anything at all. What I've done in such circumstances is I've written down the things I wanted most to say to myself about it, somehow including addressing myself and the person I'm writing it to, and the same. And what comes out is often rather maybe even outlandish, you know, you can't say things like that to people, but then you do, you know. Anyway, that's what I would do.

[35:11]

I think in any circumstances you search for what you actually feel. which is pretty difficult actually, because there's so many levels of what we want to feel or should feel, etc., what we actually feel. It's interesting as you, the more you look at your desires and find out what they, what your actual desires are, they're not the usual desires that Buddhism says that you should get rid of. Particularly when your fire is evenly stoked, then your desires are the same but quite different.

[36:18]

The whole direction is not selfish any longer. I'm having a little trouble with your word, restrained, restraining the senses. I just happened recently to have been reading that famous quote from Wayne Poe where he says, why not combine your senses into one spiritual brilliance? At which point I had pictured the sharpening and concentrating of the senses. Now when you say restrained, I wonder if there's any quality of dulling involved in restraining. No, that's what you just said, Wong Po said, that's exactly what I mean. But as long as you have some flaring up and some ... until your fire is evenly stoked, that brilliance of your desires is not there.

[37:20]

When I say everything is shining, that's what I mean. But as long as your desires are pushing you around, that's quite different. So, actually, there's two levels of practice. First level is you restrain your... Restrain is... Well, it's hard to know what word to use. And restrain, I don't mean at all in the usual psychological sense of repress or suppress or something like that. more like if a horse is jumping this way and that way, you don't shoot the horse, you just steady it a bit, right? You steady it a bit so you can see the nature of the horse. Then you'll see how everything shines.

[38:22]

At what point would you feel that your energy is being dissipated by these others? What do you mean by that? I don't understand. What do you mean by this strange history? Well, it would be, maybe if I could talk to you personally about some specifics, you know, and be easier to answer, because in general, you know, I can't say how you do this and how you do that. There are many actual ways to restrain your desires.

[39:33]

One way is, as I said, when you see something, you just see it. When you hear something, you just hear it. When you feel something, you just feel it. You don't look to follow up on action coming from that feeling. You completely feel it. Then if you have to take some action, then you take some action completely, but there isn't a rushing from the feeling to the action. It's a matter of, in a way, slowing down for a while, what's happening to you, so you can see, understand what's happening to you. Yeah? Well, it requires being alive. That's actually quite a lot already. Actually, I don't think so. I think once you've got even a little sense of what Buddhist practice is, from then on it's up to you to create every situation as practice.

[41:05]

And it's, for all of us, enormously hard work and there's no easy way. Long Iron Road. He used to give me a scare every time he said it. But as soon as you get a sense of practice, you know, so that your fire, say, becomes more and more evenly stoked, there's some indescribable satisfaction that begins to come. It's present all the time, no matter what you do. Otherwise, you couldn't go around offering incense all the time.

[42:14]

wondering about this building, you know. So if you go into, anyway, that's enough. Yeah. We're the only ones who can make the effort. How do we get help? Why are we here? Because we're each trying to, by your making an effort, you help others. So if you have one person making an effort somewhere, like Suzuki Roshi,

[43:23]

soon there'll be two people making an effort, and three, and four. So a situation where there are people trying to practice is helpful. In fact, in the first years of practice, it's good to avoid famous people. two beautiful places, etc. Until everything is equally beautiful for you, which isn't, you know, actually you can't wait till that completely happens, but until you know what that means and that you're not involved with this is a downer and this is an upper and etc., you know, And of course you can do anything you want right now, but if you do you may be a bit stupid actually.

[44:34]

Because if we have some sense about our life, actually we realize that doing everything we want isn't what we want. And that kind of freedom isn't just automatically given to us. You shouldn't expect help, but if it comes you should just welcome it. Everything is helping you, But you can't actually, the things around you can't help you until you know how to help yourself, until you're really open to helping yourself and really have a resolve to do so.

[45:44]

I mean, one person can live beside, say, Suzuki Roshi all their life and have no idea that he's a teacher. I mean, this happens in Japan, in his village. Another person can live beside him and know he's a teacher. So you may not see a teacher or a situation in which to practice because you don't yet know how to help yourself. Then you're mostly taken in by, you know, something interesting or exciting or strong vibes or something like that. Yeah? You're going to get all tangled up thinking that. That's the theory that everything that's bad is good practice, which isn't true, of course.

[46:45]

Everything that's good might be better practice. When you start thinking in that kind of maybe a little bit tangled way, you should examine your motives very carefully. Not you, but just be positive. Yeah? The sound that you yourself are making? You're you, who did it refer to? Oh, that body, okay.

[47:53]

your attention, your consciousness, your existence should be the sound, but you also should include the sounds around you as if they were your own sound. If you do that, you'll chant with everybody. I mean, there's some danger of just, you know, being way off somewhere. Actually, it's pretty hard to get too much out of step, but I understand your question. Yeah.

[49:10]

When we hit the drum, the bell starts to ring. And partly, if I say to you, you know, right now give up all your desires. Even if you were able, it's too scary. You have to sort of sneak up on it because we have a lot of fear involved in what would happen if we did that.

[50:19]

And even if you just find suddenly that you're not thinking about anything and everything around you goes blank, it's very scary, you know, until you have some ease so that you're ... Finally, the fire I'm talking about is stoked. finally seems to go out. And you can't imagine what makes your activity go, but somehow it just goes of itself. And it's quite easy, whatever happens, you know, there's some, as long as you're alive, some, each thing sort of is, evolving or propelling itself.

[51:25]

And that experience, that kind of life is when you find out what your true life is, because you cease trying to direct yourself where you think you ought to go or somebody told you to go, and everything begins to unfold. If you've seen those movies of flowers very slowly unfolding, there's some sense of an order there that you never knew before, and each thing comes, just unfolds completely in ways you never would imagine before you could barely see the plant. I enjoy practicing here because I find actually so many of you are unfolding, and most of you don't even know you are, but actually you are.

[52:33]

Thank you very much.

[52:38]

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