I vow to taste the truth of Dharia's words. Good morning. This morning, I wanted to say that I appreciated Yvonne's talk yesterday. And I want to respond to some of the things you said a little bit, and then continue. One of the things that came up yesterday was doing your best. Remember that? Usually, I say, do something wholeheartedly. I don't usually say, do your best. Sometimes. But I usually say, do something wholeheartedly.

[01:03]

So, when I... wholehearted means if there's anything left out, you don't have complete satisfaction. So in order to satisfy yourself, you have to be completely there in whatever you're doing. So there's really no Zen without wholeheartedness. When you enter into Zen, it means you enter into yourself completely. So that's what we're really trying to do. It doesn't make any sense. It's a little crazy to put yourself in a confinement for seven days in an old barn and not be there, right?

[02:21]

So even though we may not feel completely here, all the time, and may not be. Still, that's what we're trying to do, that's our goal. If we have any goal at all, it's just to be here. So, I don't know about doing your best, that's up to you, but just to be wholehearted, just to be here, just to be as present as possible. But doing your best, you know, everything has a problem. Whatever we do, there's a problem in it. And doing your best creates problems. Right? So, that which leads me into what I want to talk about today is how we control that problem. And there's, in Buddhism, there's

[03:27]

an answer to everything, or a response to everything. So there's a problem for everything. It's called the controlling faculties, controlling factors of mind, how we control these powerful forces of our mind. But first, I want to talk about another thing that you brought up, which is, there was a little bit of misunderstanding or doubt about the meaning of calmness and equanimity. So, as a kind of definition, Equanimity is like non-attachment, not being attached to something good or something bad, or something that you like or something you don't like, and an ability to accept things or reject them.

[04:49]

Suzuki Roshi used to talk about the frog. Do you remember that? The frog, we give a wonderful demonstration too. The frog is just sitting there on the rock at the edge of the pool, not moving, completely still. And then a fly comes around. And without moving, just at the right, exactly at the right moment, the tongue goes. And then, if the frog likes it, it goes down. If he doesn't like it... But, just sitting there. That's why we have that frog there, which is ultimately... I noticed that this morning.

[05:52]

So equanimity. And calmness is the ability to not be upset by it. If you don't like the taste of a fly, you don't get upset about it. You may register some upset, but you don't cling to it. And so the opposite of, if you want to define something, just look at the opposite. The opposite of calmness is agitation, restlessness. So calmness is like ease or the ability to settle. What's that again? What was the word?

[06:59]

Oh, equanimity? Attachment. So equanimity is like balance, not being unbalanced, not being thrown over. Yeah? And analogically, equanimity is even spirit. Even spirit, right. And it comes through pliancy of mind, sometimes called soft mind. brittle mind easily breaks, but soft mind is like grass.

[08:07]

When the wind blows, it bends down all the way to the ground, and then when the wind stops, it comes back up again. So this is what we cultivate in Zazen, these qualities The controlling factors of mind, there are five. Faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. And each one of these five is a very powerful force by itself. Faith is the ability to believe in something, or to have confidence in something.

[09:08]

But faith, without any control, leads us into all kinds of problems and troubles. So we want to believe in something. Because everything is moving, it has to go somewhere. So where should we go? What's our path? We can wander around, but we have to find some way to zero in on a path. Otherwise, we just spend our life wandering around. So there's a very strong desire to have faith in something so that we can stop our wandering. And so faith is an innate quality, and it needs an object. And if it doesn't have the right object, correct object, it'll take up any object.

[10:18]

So we have faith in you name it. But most of the of the objects that we have faith in are blind alleys, kind of like a maze. And so, at some point in their life, we say, well, what's the right thing to have faith in so that we don't end up in a blind alley? A lot of things look good, but they don't... eventually there's an end to them, or an abyss or something. So, for Buddhists, they say, Buddha Dharma. Christianity, we say, Christian Dharma, or whatever. Somebody might say, amassing a great fortune, or something like that, having beautiful cars, or partners, or something.

[11:28]

In Buddhism it's called the norm. Faith in the norm. That's what we keep looking for. What's the norm? If you read the Sutras, Buddha is always talking about the norm. And the norm means what's really correct. The norm means not something extraordinary, but the ordinary thing that because it's overlooked is extraordinary. And because it may be difficult to adhere to, it's extraordinary. It's ordinary-extraordinary.

[12:34]

And he doesn't call it the extraordinary path, he calls it the norm. But faith is very strong, and once it latches onto something, will become fascinated. and has that quality of being fascinated, and naive, and susceptible, and seducible. And the controlling factor of faith is wisdom, and wisdom in this case It means discernment or rationale.

[13:39]

It's where faith will charge off in some direction and other through fascination. Wisdom will say, oh, just a minute. Hold on there. So it will appear in the form of doubt. So the opposite of faith is doubt. But doubt is not necessarily bad. Skeptical doubt is discouragement. So skeptical doubt is discouraged in dharma. Because you can't progress if you have skeptical doubt. But you can progress if you have doubt. And doubt is like throwing out the anchor, or trimming your sails, and allows you to go at a pace where you don't get ahead of yourself, where you don't just charge off through enthusiasm.

[14:56]

So faith and doubt really go with each other. So when people say they have doubt, that's not bad. That's quite good. You should proceed with doubt. But skeptical doubt is a little different. It says, oh, I don't believe it. Or you can't make me believe that. It's heel-dragging, and you can't make any progress with skeptical doubt. So, it's too restrictive. In order to proceed in practice, you need to have faith. All these people practiced before me and left me this practice, and so I'll do it the way they said I should do it.

[16:08]

That's faith in Buddha, faith in practice. The doubt is, even though that's true, I have to find out for myself. So everything has to be proven to you. You have to prove everything to yourself. And that's quite good. So it gives some reality to faith. And not just blindness. It gives some direction to faith. It opens the eyes of faith. Although blind faith is also necessary sometimes. Sometimes you need to just go ahead, even though you may not exactly see That's necessary too. But when you enter Sashin for the first time, you have to have some faith.

[17:22]

You wouldn't do it by yourself. You would not do this all by yourself, I'm sure. But because other people are doing it, and have been doing it, You have some pain, but you also have some doubt. Seven days? What? I'm not ready to do that. We always feel we're not ready to do that. So that's good. They're both good. But it's necessary to have enough faith to be able to go ahead, even though you have problems. I was always naive enough to have faith in the Dharma and in my teacher.

[18:23]

Sometimes people, well anyway, and so even though I had a lot of problems, I could always, I never had any doubts, any skeptical doubts. about what I was doing, which I feel is a plus. Maybe we'll all find out that it's a big joke in the end. So far, so good. There's a story about Buddha. In Buddha's time, there was a monk who had lots of faith in Buddha, but he always wanted to be around Buddha, and his whole practice was to watch Buddha. And he had all that love and devotion and faith for Buddha, but he couldn't do anything else.

[19:27]

And his practice was overbalanced through an overabundance of faith. And none of the other faculties were working. And so Buddha gave him a subject for meditation, but he couldn't do it, couldn't concentrate on it. He was just too fascinated with the Buddha. And so Buddha appeared to him one day, they say in a dream, not in a dream, but as an appearance, is the way they describe it sometimes, and explained to him that it wasn't enough. See, he went up on top of a mountain and was going to jump off, because he was admonished by Buddha. He couldn't really do the stuff. Just before he jumped off the mountain, Buddha helped him out.

[20:39]

I can't remember what he did now, unfortunately. Anyway, there is a kind of Buddhism which is based just on faith, purely on Buddhism. You don't have to do anything else but have faith. That's because some people feel that in this degenerate age, we can't really practice Buddhism completely. So it's enough to just have faith. I think that's probably so. If you can't have anything else, you just have faith. But in the dharma, to make it really well balanced, There is a practice.

[21:41]

Hard though it is. So anyway, faith and wisdom or discernment, rationale, balance each other. Wisdom is at the opposite end of faith. And wisdom by itself leads to cunning or egocentricity, because wisdom easily sees itself, when it gets very strong, as being in an advantageous position. When you get to be very smart, you see how how you can take advantage of people who are not so smart. Or you may get into a powerful position because of your wits.

[22:49]

And if you don't have faith as a controlling factor, you take advantage of the situation that you're in, or other people. And that being so powerful, you not ruling yourself and others. So, without faith, wisdom is very dangerous. And you can see it in our world, you know. The people who have so much faith that they are on their way to destroying the world through faith, and the people that are on their way to destroying the world through wisdom, So wisdom and faith have to balance each other out. It's like science and religion have to come together.

[23:55]

Because wisdom and science is like wisdom in that sense. But without faith it just will destroy us. So the next controlling faculty is energy. And energy keeps things moving, of course. Let me tell you that. And you know that when it's not controlled, it leads to agitation. restlessness. And its controlling factor is concentration. So concentration keeps energy stable and controlled.

[25:05]

That's why we're always getting off, you know. Our concentration is always getting off because energy is so powerful. And it just wants to be free. And when we find a correct vehicle, we're always looking for the right vehicle for energy. And if we don't find the right vehicle for it, we choose any vehicle we can get. Even if there's no vehicle. So when we're sitting Zazen, especially, the vehicle for energy is our posture. So the more strict your posture is, the better vehicle it is for your energy. That's why we always stress good, strong posture. Work on your posture. In Zazen, we talk about breathing. Concentrating on breathing is important, but posture is first.

[26:08]

The vehicle for your energy. So the more correct your posture is, the better legal it is for your energy, and you can have much more energy released or induced. The posture induces energy. So if your posture is like this, you can't draw any energy because you're blocked. keep striving for a good posture, what else is there to do? Lots of energy. And then you feel a lot of joy, because your energy's up. But it has to be controlled by concentration.

[27:11]

So if you really put your effort, your mind, into the posture, there's concentration. If you have a strong energy, you need a strong concentration. And they match each other. And when your energy is more and more channeled, your concentration becomes stronger and stronger. there's a kind of energy which is a little unbalanced. And these controlling, balancing factors of our mind, balancing is the most important thing, actually. Some of the energy will get abberated in Zazen.

[28:16]

You may find that you have certain experiences which are very strong because of certain unbalanced energies. And, you know, like very strong light or very strong concentration, which is like over-concentration, on a certain aspect of your posture, or a certain aspect of your breathing or something. And because it's very strong, it seems like we want to cultivate that kind of aberration. It may seem like enlightenment. But the thing to strive for, the point to strive for in Zazen, in my belief, is evenness of concentration, evenness of all the faculties, not allowing one to be real strong.

[29:38]

It's like a lamp. especially an Aladdin lamp. You know, the Aladdin lamps have a little tall, long chimney in there. They give off a good, strong light. But if you turn them up too high, they'll burn real bright. You know, and you say, wow, that really lights up the room. But if you leave it there, it starts to smoke and then flame out. But the light is real bright, real strong. But the correct light is when you turn it down and it's just very steady. It doesn't flame out or burn out or smoke. But it's a very steady light and it lasts a long, long time. And all of the factors that create the light are balanced. So we may get into a position where we have a very strong light, but it's at the expense of burning ourselves out.

[30:49]

Then too much pain. Too much pain will create a lot of concentration. And we all experience that. When we have a tremendous amount of pain, then we get really concentrated. And then we have this experience that's just very bright, very still. And I don't say that that's bad, but it happens to us, all of us. It's not bad, but it's not what we should be looking for. It's like a kind of peak over there, but our mountain is more round. So when such a state comes up, what do you do? Just enjoy it. Just enjoy it.

[31:55]

It's okay. I'm not saying that it's wrong. But that will happen. And it will happen probably a lot. But it's not the thing that you are striving to have happen. That's what I'm saying. Concentration, being the opposite of being the controlling factor of energy, energy is also the controlling factor of concentration. Because, as I said yesterday, concentration tends to lead to laziness or loss of energy. An example of that is sitting long and getting tired. Isn't it cool? Sitting long and getting tired. tend to slow down. Everything tends to slow down more and more, you know. And then when you chant, it tends to be kind of weak.

[33:00]

And then it starts to become slow, and things kind of drag, you know. And you get into a kind of very slow, weak, feeling energy to keep things going. vigorous kind of action, actually. And I love this school. There are two schools. One is slow everything down. The other is when you're moving, really move. And I like vigorous service, strong chanting. When we move, we really move. When we work, we really work. When we're sitting, we really sit. Because the tendency of Soto Zen, you know, Soto Zen is called Mokusho Zen, silent illumination, and it's wonderful, but its problem is that you get kind of concentrated out, you know, your energy is not so strong.

[34:16]

And you just kind of, you seem to get into kind of floating around and stupor, you know, zombie. And we have to actually make a conscious effort to keep our energy up, so we don't get just kind of stupored out. That's why I really want us, when we chant, to really chant fully. Chanting is an expression of zazen, of the strength of our zazen. So there are the two sides, you know. Energy balances concentration. Concentration balances energy. And if you only have a lot of concentration without that energy, then it leads to a kind of slothful disposition.

[35:32]

And right in the middle is mindfulness. Mindfulness is the chief controlling factor, and it's the harmonizing factor of all of the factors. And when we sit, mindfulness controls all of these factors and balances each against the other. So if one is too strong, it introduces the other one to balance it out. So in zazen, balancing the factors is more important than any one factor being dominant. But it's difficult because if you're not aware of that, it's easy for one factor to be dominant, especially the factor of energy.

[36:39]

or the factor of concentration. So, when we have a well-harmonized, when all the factors of mind and body are well-harmonized, then our life is very even. We have good energy, good faith, good concentration and mindfulness and we don't get tired and we don't get overactive. We can easily be with ourselves, easily be with our situation and it's kind of like nirvana. Even though we have a lot of pain in our legs things going on.

[37:47]

Nirvana is samsara, right? Everything is working together very harmoniously. And you can accept everything. And the seven factors of enlightenment are present When you talked about the wisdom, you didn't mention compassion, and I thought compassion was more synonymous.

[39:05]

Is that something different? Well, compassion and wisdom, I didn't mention compassion because it's not part of this system, but compassion is the complement of wisdom. Wisdom sees everything with a cold eye. Wisdom sees everything as it really is. It's the eye of reality. It sees everything just as it really is. Compassion enters the suffering of beings and suffers with them and also rejoices with them. But it's the feeling that we have for each other. So, wisdom is the cold side, compassion is the warm side.

[40:09]

And our faucet has one controller in the middle that blends them. Hopefully. So, compassion is wisdom and wisdom is compassion, right? And you can't tell the two from... one from the other when they're well blended. Does mindfulness balance Wholeheartedness and evenness? Wholeheartedness? Well, evenness is balance. Right. It seems to me, or sometimes, at least for myself, when I do things wholeheartedly, I go out of balance.

[41:14]

Well, maybe... I mean, I'm not really doing that. Okay, well... Let's look at jumping in. You jump in with the whole body, but you're not necessarily steady, you know? So then, if the whole body is in the pot, then you need to find out how to balance it. If it's all there, you can do it. It's possible. If it's not all there, then it's not possible. You can balance. In other words, you balance with what's there. You take whatever... This is our life situation, moment to moment. We have a body, and every single moment we're figuring out how to balance it with whatever is there, whatever we have. And sometimes it's not all there.

[42:22]

But we balance what's there. But then you have what you have. If it's all there, then you have something very strong when you balance it. If it's not all there, you have something rather weak when you balance it. But you have something very strong. And when you jump into something, There's a lot of stuff going on, and it's hard to balance. But part of the problem with balance is desire, because desire wants one part or another usually to dominate. Desire leaps in because it has an idea or a feeling that wants to dominate. And then it's not always easy to balance. with all of the factors around us and ourselves, with our desire.

[43:25]

That's why in Zazen it's possible, because your desire in Zazen is just to sit still. There's no ego in it. When there's ego in it, it's hard to balance. Because there's always one thing that wants to be dominant. That's one reason we have a lot of trouble in our life. Because we have one thing that wants to dominate. And controlling, you know, in balance, looks dull. You know, if everything is in control, if all the factors in our life are well balanced, It looks dull. So we do something to throw it out of balance, and that creates interest. It's true.

[44:35]

So it's hard to abide with stating that. That's why the teachers are always saying, you have to stop doing this and stop doing that. But we don't want to, because we don't want to cut off those things that make our life interesting. And I remember Suzuki Rinpoche used to say, as long as you like it, OK. We talk about something. Well, you know, I don't want to stop doing something. Well, as long as you like it, no problem. When you no longer like it, then you can start doing something new. When it becomes too, you get fed up.

[45:40]

But one of the problems is we get fed up, and then we start to practice, but then we change our mind. go back to. So we're always, it's hard to be wholehearted. Really hard to be wholehearted. You read in the sutras about in Buddha's time, you know, where people were turned into arhats in one morning. They met Buddha and they had this problem and Buddha said something to them and they went out and they, you know, saw some object which turned their mind, you know, and he found his light. That's called practicing in the time of Buddha, which is impossible now. Yvan, did you want to say something? You're just thinking something.

[46:42]

Anyway, it's just about, you wanted to say something. Unchanneled and unchanneled energy, how do they work and what are the channels? satisfaction. I remember Suzuki Rushdie gave us an example about sex. And he said, sex is pretty hard to control. Channel, you know, having one partner or, you know, many partners.

[47:46]

He said that when you, when that urge is very strong, he said, Sometimes even a hole in a fence will do. He's thinking, man, of course. So fancy an alternative. But anyway, here, you know, we have this channel called Zazen right now to shoot, so no problem. We can talk about that more later.

[48:55]

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