For those of you who weren't at the lecture in San Francisco yesterday, you're finding out now that my voice has done something funny because I had my second relapse from the flu a couple days ago. Every 11 days I've been getting one third of the previous flu. This time my voice. I feel like a crooner or something. I know I can't sing. We have a Zen practice. We have a kind of belief. Can you hear me in the back? Okay. We have a kind of belief

[01:05]

in calm mind. Maybe as reality itself almost. And yesterday I talked about the field, how it's the easiest place for us to practice, because it's so hard to give up the observer and control in our ordinary life. The easiest place to practice is in the field of Zazen. Some maybe sheer or bright tactile awareness, in which the roughness of our mind disappears. First it's in contrast to Zazen, and finally

[02:21]

there's not so much contrast between Zazen and our activity all the time. I think many of you maybe went to Brother David's talk. Did any of you go to Brother David's talk in the city? No one. A few of you went. At the same time Brother David was talking here in San Francisco. A physicist named Ted Vaston came to Tassajara and both of them said the same thing.

[03:34]

I didn't hear Brother David, and I think Brother David understands our way pretty well, because he's practiced with us at Tassajara for maybe three months, I think, and he's practiced with the Zen group in New York for one or two years, I think. He was with them off and on anyway. But Ted Vaston had no familiarity with our way except in physics, because he's a physicist and he meditates. He's a Christian. I guess you'd have to say meditator. He's not a monastic, though he spends quite a lot of time with Christian monastics in England. He feels that classical physics does not

[04:47]

explain our life or our actual experience, especially it doesn't explain precognitive experience or extrasensory perception or many of the nuances or subtleties of our experience. Some people can demonstrate, but many of us actually experience. So it was quite interesting for me to talk with him. He's quite a good physicist in the world and he is concerned with, at that first level at which we can observe activity, and of course,

[05:52]

in which quantum physics points out, the observer and the observed are closely interrelated, he sees from then greater and greater complexity occurs until we have the level of organization of our own organism. But our concept of what happens gets simpler and simpler every time the level of complexity is raised. Anyway, one person who was with us felt that everything he said about physics was in complete agreement with Buddhism. But when he talked about monastic life or the spiritual life, it wasn't exactly the same. And what was the most

[06:55]

difficult was not the distinction between Christian and Buddhist ways specifically, but rather his belief in thinking, or the idea that you could exist beyond thinking or without thinking, seemed absurd to him. So he was trying to make a conceptual model of the universe which he thought it was possible to do. And we say, of course, Buddha is omniscient, knows everything. But from the point of view of our practice, you can't separate out something which knows everything. That's some dualistic way. To know everything is to be everything. So it's one auditing one. Anyway, he said the same thing that Brother David said about the requirements for a

[08:18]

spiritual life are chastity, solitude and obedience. And again, I'm not speaking so much about what Brother David said, because I didn't hear him. I only heard what he said about obedience. But I can speak about what Ted Baston, this physicist who's at Cambridge, England, said. What Brother David said about obedience is just exactly the same, actually. It's our practice that obedience, obey, means to hear. To hear completely, to not interfere with the hearing process. It's almost maybe as close as the story about Tozan, when he is concerned with the problem of what it meant when the student asked, how can inanimate objects

[09:25]

teach the Dharma? And he asked the teacher if the teacher could hear it, or he said he couldn't hear it. And the teacher replied, you do not hear it, but do not hinder that which hears it. You do not hear it, but do not hinder that which hears it. So, absurd in this case means to turn away from. Not to hear. And obey means to hear completely. But that's anyway quite similar to our practice.

[10:29]

Chastity and solitude, the idea is a bit different. Because they believe, because Ted Baston believed, reflecting a Christian belief, in a more substantial reality of which you are a part of in your situation. And he emphasized more specific natures. For instance, he felt the spiritual life was a calling and only certain people could answer that calling. And so, this immediately affects everything, you know. It simplifies

[11:35]

lots of things. Because if it's a calling, then it's also a calling to be a businessman or to be a professor. And so, the businessman and professor's job is to support those people who need a meditative, contemplative life. But from the Buddhist, from our point of view in Zen, anyone can have a spiritual life. In fact, your life is actually, you only function, you know, because your life is, I don't know, it's hard to say spiritual even. But anyway, some complete harmonious life with everything. So, I talked yesterday about Chi Che's, the fourth patriarch of the Tendai schools,

[12:49]

five concurrent causes necessary to practice Buddhism. One is strict practice of morality, or the precepts. And that's, I think, that we have some difficulty with what the precepts mean. They're not just specific rules, they cover everything. But what they really mean, from not just a practical point of view, but a Buddhist point of view, is, I think it's one of the main problems we have. And sometime I want to talk about that more, specifically. But anyway, for now, one of them is strict practice of the precepts. Another is adequate food and clothing. Another is solitude, or a tranquil place. And the fourth is freedom from causal connections. And the fifth is good friends.

[13:56]

By good friends we mean Dharma friends, a teacher, or people who encourage your practice or who practice with you. And so, chastity means, is the same as freedom from causal connections. Freedom from rebirth. Why I'm talking about this exactly, is because what our own monastic tradition is in our minds, actually. It's what we have some background that we feel and take for granted without really examining it

[15:09]

and seeing how it's different from what we're trying to do here and at Tassajara, San Francisco. And since Green Gulch is the most Buddhist, maybe, and American, it's the most Western Buddhist monastery or practice place anywhere I can imagine. And it's very completely Buddhist, too. So, it's rather interesting. You know, Brother David, for instance, when he was here, walked about and shook his head and, you know, I guess he said something like, you can't do it, or how can you do it? It'll be rather interesting to see if you can do it, because to his mind it's impossible. How can you mix families, you know, or men and women,

[16:11]

or this complicated place, half-tranquil, half-monastic, half-urban? He said, I'm interested to see what happens here. I think maybe he thinks it's impossible. By Western rules of contemplative life, it's impossible. So what I'm talking about is how Buddhist rules of contemplative life are different from Western rules. So, anyway, without talking about Christians so much as what Ted Baston felt as a representative of a

[17:15]

Anglo-Catholic monastic tradition and a man who spent now since 1920s, maybe, studying, completely immersed in contemplative life and monastic life and physics simultaneously. So he felt, if you are immersed in ordinary life without married or something, or in causal situations or ordinary practical situations, you can't help but be caught by them, so you must cut them off, you must be chased in every sense. I mean, Suzuki Roshi's teacher, you know,

[18:17]

criticized Suzuki Roshi for liking paintings and art too much. You must be chased, that's an unchaste act to like that painting so much, his teacher would say to Suzuki Roshi, because maybe he felt he was being caught by the painting, by some aesthetic sense. But our idea in Buddhism is that you can be free from causal connections if you're not interested in worldly solutions to your life. So our practice is, as I said yesterday, not just non-clinging but not to participate in the world so that you create situations that cause clinging. You know, I mentioned the three gates to the city, the beautiful land, you know, the city of nirvana, whatever we call it in Buddhism. One is to notice the indeterminate

[19:23]

nature of everything, and the second is non-clinging, and the third is to follow the precepts or to not follow action which springs from passion. So there's a kind of, if you don't perceive the indeterminate nature of things, then you create situations for clinging, and if you create situations for clinging, there's some connection there. So you can practice these three ways, which include the other two. So our practice is not to turn away from the world, but to actually turn with the world, but to turn toward emptiness. Oh, this is some idea which Ted Baston had some difficulty with. And by the way, I'm not setting him up as a kind of straw man to say he thinks this and he's wrong, you know. He maintained his feeling quite clearly. He didn't feel I was right, you know,

[20:30]

and I didn't feel I was right. There is just some difference we can see between his view. Anyway, he felt it was impossible to turn with things, to turn toward things, but to turn with them, turning the wheel of the dharma, so that you turn toward emptiness. He thought you always turn toward rebirth, so you have to be chased in everything. And likewise, when we say you need one of the five causes, you know, concurrent causes to make our practice possible is a tranquil place. But that tranquil place can be in us. It doesn't have to be the geography.

[21:36]

So he felt, if you are interested in the spiritual life, why don't you stay at Tassajara forever? And if you stay at Tassajara forever, how can you support yourself down here? Don't you need an established church, which has many followers who give you money, and so you can have a monastic life here? Because if you leave here, you'll lose your spiritual life. Because it's very clear, he felt you had to cut off the senses, our ordinary way of reacting and responding. But the idea that you could hear things without having them stir the mind, he'd never thought of before. Our Western tradition hasn't thought of it before.

[22:50]

So, we have a rather interesting view as outdoors or outside or nature or outside our head is some kind of world which can absorb anything and you can do anything to it. So, you know, Western psychology says if you have some problem or anger, you express it to get rid of it, otherwise you can only repress it or suppress it. So if you don't suppress it or repress it, you have to express it. But again, Buddhism thinks these are all the same. If you repress something, anger or something, or suppress it, you know, maybe the idea is you push it down into the base of your mind somewhere and it festers. So if you express it, it could be

[24:15]

absorbed, but actually we feel this is mine too, and if you express it, express your anger, it goes out into everyone else's mind and festers. Actually, of course, there is some way we can express things, anger or anything, that's appropriate part of communicating or relating with each other. But to just have these alternatives, suppression or repression or expression, Buddhism says you can feel it completely without necessarily expressing it or repressing it. And this occurs by cutting the connections between doing and thinking. You know, as I again said yesterday, when you use your eating bowls you'll notice that you may

[25:16]

be sitting quite calmly until you start cleaning your bowl and your mind will start thinking about all kinds of things. Because you stirred it with activity, your mind is stirred and you'll think about all kinds of things other than the bowl. But how to cut that kind of connection? How to have a calm, actual calm mind? How to turn with everything toward emptiness, but not be disturbed? Because, you know, Western belief is everything is some fixed entity and we feel everything is just a version, and that version is turning, changing. Version means to change or to translate,

[26:22]

to turn toward. So each version we see by a particular sutra or a particular person or situation, we turn toward it and with it, but not toward rebirth. When you eat something, and then in our practice we're not so concerned with the flavor, maybe with the taste, but whatever the taste is, you just taste it. If it's good, you taste it, if it's not so good, you taste it. And you should know the individual taste. And you should also know where the bowls and the chopsticks or silverware, you should have some appreciation for them as if you made them yourself. Understanding, you know, the ground is there, the dish is there, so many things are offered to us,

[27:26]

and it's some lack of insight to take them for granted. So we feel something, some taste maybe for the bowl and for the food, and we're not so concerned with changing the flavor, adding salt. And it's even more so with people. We can't add salt to people. Well, this person's taste, I don't like the way this person affects me so much, and I'll salt them and pepper them, and I'll feel, and I'll change them in some way. Okay. We talk about mirror mind, you know, and the mirror mind which sees images, and when the images are gone, the mirror is the same, but it doesn't mean that we seek for a mirror. Tozan, seeing his face in the water reflected, it's not water, it's a reflection, and it's not him,

[28:43]

but his experience was, that's my true self, not water, not me, but my true self is there. In everything, in what you're doing in the realm of the possible. So the second precept is very interesting in this. You know, it's translated in the sense of common sense, not Buddhist at all, just some rule, it's common sense, maybe it's translated as, do not steal. But it also means, you know, it's better translated in more Buddhist understanding, to say, do not take what is not given. But it also means you can't be given what you've taken. And the only way to actually receive anything is to be given it. And if you take,

[29:54]

you cut yourself off from ever actually receiving. So in this point of view, it means a no attainment, no idea of attainment. Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. You know, if you count your chickens before they're hatched, it's some deep rule, you know, then you could never have chickens. So if you're interested in enlightenment or attainment, or anticipate your attainment, you will never actually attain, and no one will give you. The cosmos won't give you. And the obverse, or the reverse, or other side of do not take what is not given, is do not throw away what you already have. And this means your mirror mind. Not that you seek a mirror or you polish a mirror,

[31:04]

but what's there you let remain there. And you make no effort to keep or add to what's there. This is what we mean by a calm mind. And to know the actual, maybe taste it, is our way to be one with everything. And it comes from a calm mind which can accept everything, see everything clearly, and isn't dependent on a tranquil place, particular geography.

[32:11]

Although it certainly helps, and it's very clear at Tassajara, it helps people's practice immensely. And we can emphasize two sides of practice, one practice in activity and one practice in solitude. And practice in activity is more our Zen way, but it's based in the beginning on practice in solitude, particularly your own inner solitude, which allows you to see everything as it is. It's almost as if you took a stone and could drop it into a pond and it would just go, and the water would close about it without any ripples. Just the stone, no effect from it, just what you hear. Not being caught by the ripples of it.

[33:18]

So Avalokiteshvara, who I've often talked about here, who the Heart Sutra is sung to, chanted about, is said to have a thousand arms and eleven heads. And our way of concentration doesn't mean you concentrate on only one hand, you know, and forget 999. It maybe means omniscience, or how to be, how to practice with everything, without discrimination. So as I said, you know, there are three modes.

[34:26]

We see the world in three modes, maybe. One is as some complex or gross thing, as Ted Bastian from physics said, is the more complicated it gets, the more we have some gross idea of it, big bodies bumping into each other. But in our practice, as we know ourself more subtly and intimately, we know the subtle interconnections with everything. And third, how they combine. Or as Alan Marlow suggested, we can call third instead of combination, seed. Anyway, as we know ourself more and more subtly, by returning to our field of zazen, you can know the subtle connections with everything.

[35:32]

And that is the meaning of the thousand arms. Not just he can, Avalokiteshvara can help this person with this hand and this person with that hand, but he can also help this person with that hand and this person with that hand, but it represents the subtle interconnections with everything, that if you concentrate on one hand or another hand, you forget 999 or 998. But all at once, you can't do that, you know, unless you go beyond thinking. So,

[36:44]

I think maybe it should be some name reflecting our Avalokiteshvara practice here. Because we're trying to do everything here and maintain a monastic life and maintain a subtle, quiet feeling and place and practice, in which one hand is always welcoming people and another hand is taking care of the zendo, and another hand is trying to have some economic life or growing food.

[37:49]

And we know the taste of our vegetables and eggs and each person and whatever comes, without being caught by it, you know, disturbing our calm mind. maybe we can say Buddha is doing it. We can't say we are doing it, but we don't want to get caught too quickly by the idea of God or Buddha, does it? But as you practice more and more and as you know yourself more and more intimately,

[38:58]

we see Buddha in everything, almost like God. Some faith, or if you have all 1,000 arms, you know, everything takes care of everything. And you can give up thinking. For then you can, knowing the subtle nature of yourself and everything, you can turn with, you see cues from your situation. Your situation tells you, I should do this, and there's no question. Your mind is quite soft, and it doesn't balk, ah, yes, and it's very calm and clear. This way of turning with everything, and we can give up sometimes. Oh, I don't have to decide. I won't do this. I can't do this, but Buddha will help me.

[40:07]

Pavalokiteshvara will help me. I'm Pavalokiteshvara. If I can participate in everything, as if I had 1,000 connections with everything. From this point of view, we don't get so caught in specific, you know, this barn or that barn. This particular hallucination, or this particular idea of myself, or this experience I had of that person from a distance. That's emphasizing one hand, you know, and forgetting 999.

[41:12]

When you don't, the important thing about a bodhisattva is he doesn't know he's a bodhisattva. No idea of a bodhisattva. As long as you know, you're emphasizing one or some particular group of hands. So, the Western attempt is often to try to explain the world in terms of some observable, specific thing, some precognitive experience, or some experience you have in a quiet place.

[42:15]

And they forget about everything as one. We forget as Westerners. So, the practice we have here at Green Gulch is quite difficult and quite interesting, I think. I think we can do it, you know. Bringing together so many things, because we have a calm mind from our practice, which doesn't get caught by this or that. Just one more. Let it come, and let it go. We have some ideal possibility here, actually, because we don't... It's not so complicated as the city.

[43:19]

Because we also have this beautiful, calm place, which will help us. So, let's return to our own calmness. Do you have any questions? Now I'm not getting caught in my face.

[44:57]

He said our mind is like a snake, very wiggly and curvy and wants, yeah. Anyway, not to get caught, maybe we need to see how that reacts with the situation that occurs. Not that we necessarily feel, but that they come. So it seems like, I don't know, it seems like we can't help getting caught. But if you see that you're getting caught, is that getting caught? Or, you know what I mean? If you see that no, in the nature, no way to go from experience. And maybe you have some new controllability through that. Whatever is happening to go through it, with some bigger view of it,

[46:17]

some behind it, some larger understanding of what's actually happening. It is about the only way to not get caught. But at the same time, those situations do keep happening, and you do spend moment by moment by moment, your moment to moment existence in those situations. If there are too many of them, it makes it very difficult to get back to some field of calmness, some field of zazen. And it's something that I experienced very clearly here. And now the more activity that you engage in, the more you do, the more you're busy. You can see that, you can see that you're busy, and you can see your mind, you know, and you go to sleep. But it takes longer and longer for the way to subside.

[47:20]

And I just, it's just a reflection on this place, that I sort of hope we don't try to do too much, because while we cannot get caught when we have all our understandings and so on, in our moment to moment existence, the way we actually live, is created as a premonition. Yes. Yeah, we don't want to do anything more than we have to do. We can use practice in activity as an excuse for doing what we want. Then we say, how can I do what I want and not get caught? And that's the opposite. But Nagarjuna said, you know, since our mind is like a snake,

[48:26]

and it's very wiggly, what to do with it is to put the snake in a piece of bamboo. So we practice in that way, by putting our mind in our straight posture. And maybe we put the activity that will come here, because of this particular place, near a city, into this narrow valley. And we must have certain rules about how the activity occurs here, and how we can practice with it. If we can't practice, we must limit it more. If your mind is actually calm, it doesn't matter how much activity. But yesterday was a very complicated day, and I've just come from Tassajara, and it's so easy at Tassajara.

[49:30]

Just 50 people or so, and we're all doing the same thing, and we're all there in that valley, we all know each other. There isn't much problem. But it's actually true, there's how many? Two billion people in this world, you know. And 200 million in this country. And we can't just live at Tassajara, ignoring. Two billion people. So this is a pretty good place to practice, because it's somewhere. It both has a calm base, and some activity, because of its location. And if we make Manjushri, you know, and Samantabhadra,

[50:43]

Manjushri is the bodhisattva there, wisdom, and Manjushri. And Samantabhadra is the bodhisattva of patient practice, maybe. If those are here in this zendo, outside Avalokiteshvara can wander about. There we have a great big Avalokiteshvara out there, looking like the Jolly Green Giant, in the arms. But we must have this zendo, you know, if our practice is going to make sense for everybody in this valley. Here in this valley you can only see a portion of the ocean, and a portion of the sky, and only the sides of the hills. So there's some limitation, and when people come in here, they'll feel some limitation.

[51:46]

It's very real, and very deep, a limitation on your everyday activity, like I have a job, and really spaces me out. And I try to find a place where I can sit with you all day. I also try to comprehend what its function is. The function of your job? I had many jobs, you know, many kinds of work situations. Some of them were... The worst ones are the ones you get paid the most money for. And it's probably why you get paid so much money for them, because it takes a real toll.

[53:09]

It's very distracting, and much activity, and responsibility, and very confused reasons people do things. And for me, it was mostly useful to think of the job as a place I was with certain people. I wasn't so concerned with what the job did, but just these people I went every day with, and we did things together. With that feeling, I went to work. And also, I would be in the midst of very complicated situations, and people talking, and I wouldn't know what to do, you know? And my arm would be on the desk or something, and I'd say to my arm, Do zazen. And I'd leave my arm there doing zazen while I was talking, or having a meeting, and I'd say, Be calm there. And it would rest on the table, you know? And I could feel the whole desk along my arm. That's very calm.

[54:12]

The desk is there, and my arm is there, and there's no problem between my arm and the desk. And if I did that, I felt some greater calmness. So I would tend to, now I'm sitting in my chair, or holding a pencil. And it's an interesting difference, because when you do that, you realize that you're not resting anywhere. Your arm is here, and you're about to move it, etc. And that kind of situation, you know? And suddenly you see, if my arm just rests on the desk, it doesn't have to be ready to go over there and there and there. Just resting on the desk. But if you find you're in a job which you, no matter how hard you try to have some practice, maybe you should change your job. I don't mean that... I don't think it's so useful to say, anything that's difficult is good practice.

[55:14]

Which sometimes around Zen Center is said quite a lot. Oh, it's difficult, it's good practice. And any situation is necessary to stick with it forever. You know, as if you have no interest in engineering, but you pick up a book on engineering by mistake, and you start reading it, and because you started it, you should finish it. And that's silly, I think. But we get ourselves into that kind of situation. So of course we should work with situations, but if it's impossible, we can change. Particularly in the first years of practice, five years or ten years, we have to be somewhat careful and make some choice of who our friends are and what kind of situation we have. Particularly if we're practicing not in a calm situation like Tassajara.

[56:17]

You have to think about your situation carefully. It's interesting that you might be difficult to put yourself through this situation. You can't hear what she said in the back, can you? Did you hear her first question? She said it's interesting that to go to Tassajara many of us have to put ourselves in pretty difficult situations in order to go there. Some kind of job, you know. That's partly true. Of course, all the world is in that kind of difficult situation. So it's not all that difficult. Actually, in this country, although this country is... something's wrong with it,

[57:20]

still our practice as a Buddhist is to be healthy in a sick society. From a Buddhist point of view, all societies are sick. And so Buddhism... Buddha is called a doctor because his teaching is some medicine for how to be healthy in a sick situation. And although America seems particularly sick at present, still it's not all in all so difficult as many places in the world to earn some money. Anyway, this kind of experience necessary to go to Tassajara is pretty important. Very much what Suzuki Roshi thought was necessary. Anything else?

[58:41]

As we practice, you know, and know more and more what it means to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, you know, the ten precepts, the first... well, maybe five or so emphasize the insubstantiality of the world or your relationship to things in terms of producing karma. And the second, next two, emphasize mind only and the next two emphasize emptiness. That's nine. And the last one, these are ways of looking at the world, and the last one emphasizes faith. And it's the only one that emphasizes positive.

[59:50]

The others say, don't do this. You're okay as you are. The last one says, take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Give yourself up to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And as we know more and more what Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are, we'll see that this life here isn't separated from Buddha's Sangha. He had his Sangha and his teachers and his situation and people who practiced with him. And we have that same situation and we have our wider situation we can call Dharma. And we have Buddha, if you know yourself and can give up your impure likeness of yourself.

[60:52]

Thank you very much.

[61:06]

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