Good morning. I have a number of things that have crossed my mind since yesterday, and so I may or may not get to all of them. But first, I want to continue with Hosan's talk yesterday. had a gata that he likes to use. Could you say the gata again? Yeah. May I be awake that I may help others to awaken. Okay. And you use that when? Right at the beginning of Zazen, as I establish my Okay, so I want to talk about gathas, but first I want to clarify or muddy, I'm not sure which, James' lament about the word merit.

[01:23]

Do you remember merit, the merit discussion? Well, I've been thinking about merit, what it means. I looked it up actually in Wikipedia. Don't do that. It gave me a headache. But it's very good, actually, because it clarifies a lot that the word merit has always been very important in Buddhism. It has to do with, you know, merit, what did I say here? It means, according to my definition, the result of an accomplishment. Basically, it's the result of an accomplishment, payment. And it's, you know, used throughout the world, in every country, in every age.

[02:29]

And it means different things at different times. There's a koan, the first koan in the booklet record, Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu. And Emperor Wu asks Bodhidharma, he says, I have supported monks, built monasteries, and done really a lot of good things for Buddhism. And what about the merit for that? And Bodhidharma says, no merit. So that's the koan, right? So we have to be careful here. People say, yeah, there's no merit in doing those things, right? That's not so. It's very meritorious work. Whatever you do, you accomplish something. So if you do evil, you accomplish the merit of evil, right?

[03:31]

Which is painfulness. If you do good, you accomplish the merit. And it's connected to karma. definitely connected to karma. If you do good deeds, you attain the merit of the good deeds. And that's, of course, what the emperor was talking about. So everybody thinks, well, yes, what's the problem there? The emperor's doing great deeds with his treasure. He's distributing his treasure. So what's the problem? Well, the problem is that he thinks he's doing good deeds. For Bodhidharma, the problem is, or the, yeah, I guess you call it that. The problem is that the emperor is aware that he's doing good deeds, or he wants to feel that he's important.

[04:42]

So he's expressing his ego. Is this good stuff? No. This is a story, right? So we have to remember that the story is narrowed down to its essentials. So you could discuss it, but that's not what's, we could discuss it, but I don't want to. It's tainted merit, basically. Tainted merit, because the emperor is thinking, what's the reward? What's the reward? So, in generosity, true generosity is just giving and forgetting. Never mind merit. So merit has this problem. Problem is, Are you aware of the merit or are you simply doing what you need to do?

[05:49]

And merit can be a very tricky thing because it can ensnare you or bind you. It's very tempting. You can use it for self-aggrandizement or you can use it for all kinds of things, but true merit is no merit. But no merit doesn't mean there's no merit. This is what makes it a nice koan, the first one. We own nothing. We actually own nothing. Suzuki Roshi used to say, these are my glasses. but they don't really belong to me. Somehow they got to me through the kindness of people, but I don't really own them and I appreciate you letting me use them.

[06:56]

And Akin Roshi once said, this is my typewriter. I use it to write all kinds of stuff. And although it doesn't really belong to me, I want to use it and I don't want you to take it. It's mine in the sense that I need it to work. So, this is really good in Buddhism. In all the history of Buddhism and the various schools of Buddhism, it's thought of in various ways. We also have it in our Zen practice. In the Southern Buddhism, and a lot, actually, Japan and China too, it's in a sense, merit that is collected through your good deeds is offered to your family, your deceased family members.

[08:06]

Because after they die, according to this understanding, they need help after they die. And so the merit of your actions helps your family members as you offer it to them. It's called transference of merit. Your good deeds are a support for their, after, in their, oncoming rebirths to actually attain Buddhahood. So that's the story. In Zen practice, in our practice, we've inherited several gathas that refer to this. we say may the merit of this practice pervade everywhere.

[09:12]

So that's interesting because it actually means the merit of this chanting. I changed it to this practice because we don't chant to transfer merit. we hope that if there is any merit to this practice, that it's shared with the whole universe, not any specific person or group or relative or anything, but simply universal. So we don't keep it for ourselves as a self-aggrandizement, but we quickly get rid of it so that we don't get burdened by it. But it's our expression of whatever we're doing, we offer it to the world, basically.

[10:19]

That's what it means. It's our offering. Our practice is our offering. And typically in Buddhism, the monks are supported by the lay people. The monastic monks are supported by the lay people. The monk has nothing, no money, three bowls and a robe and a sewing kit and a water bottle. And everything is given. If people don't want to support you, then you just simply die of hunger and thirst. That's the plan. And what you do is for their sake. That's your payment for them supporting you. So your practice has to be virtuous. And the virtue of your practice is what you're offering to everyone.

[11:23]

That's called merit. So we say this in our meal chant, may the merit of this, no, we say, do we deserve, how do we say that? Yes, do we deserve it? does my practice deserve this offering? Of course, you know, we pay for our meals during Sashin, but nevertheless, the cook, the shopper, all that effort that goes into making our meals is served to us as monks, even though we're lay people, Nevertheless, when we sit Zazen like this in Zendo, we're monks. I didn't say we're priests. We're monks. We're all the same. Priests and laypeople are all the same when we're doing this.

[12:25]

So any merit that's accrued, we offer to the universe and to those people who support us. So the monks are simply supported through their virtuous practice. And so you basically bring virtue into the world as your offering. And the merit accrued from that is offered to the people that are supporting you and to everyone. You know, we have Siddiqui, which is our Halloween. It's the practice of placating the hungry ghosts, which we all are. They and us are the same.

[13:26]

But in Japan, it's called sagaki of a hungry ghost, but it refers actually to their relatives. It's a ceremony for their relatives. And so, it got changed to tsujiki, which means more universal, not any specific people that the merit is offered to. I remember Professor Nara, when I was in Japan, I met Professor Nara, who was a wonderful guy. He was at one time the head of the president of Komazawa University, and he understood us very well. And he said, it should be Seijiki, not Seigaki, because the Japanese people are very much oriented toward ancestors. It's a kind of ancestor worship.

[14:30]

But for us, it's not. For us, it should be Seijiki, which means more offering universally without any intentions. So offering universally without any intentions or without any feeling of we own any merit, but simply whatever it is that is produced by our practice is offered to the world. We can't retain anything. We retain nothing. So that's kind of the meaning of merit in my understanding. So I just have one more thing to say about that. There is, I think it was Gensha.

[15:32]

A monk asked, Gensho was a well-known master in China, in the Tang Dynasty. And the question came up, what do you do with a mirror? And Gensho said, you smash it into a thousand pieces. So mirror here means something like, what do you do when you are enlightened, when you have enlightenment? And he said, smash it into a thousand pieces. And each piece reflects the whole, which is kind of like the net of Indra, each piece Each knot of the net is like an eye which reflects all the other eyes.

[16:37]

But this is like your enlightenment is your merit for your practice, from your practice. So what you do is you smash the mirror. In other words, you give it all away. And we were talking about this yesterday, I think. I remember talking about this, but I can't remember where and when. It gives your enlightenment away, right away. You don't hold on to anything, even your enlightenment. It's like, if you're a gardener, Your work is to work the ground. And if you work the ground, it supports the flowers. But you give all the flowers away.

[17:40]

You don't keep the flowers for yourself. You give them all away. And you retain nothing, even your enlightenment. You just start over and over again, every moment. This is true enlightenment. This is our are true enlightenment. People go around bragging about their enlightenment, that's delusion. True enlightenment is no enlightenment. No ego. There's nothing to keep, yes. And the more there's nothing to keep, the more there comes. The more you give away, the more it comes. When you have a rosebush, you trim it down, and you say, God, that's being trimmed down so far, you know, you're gonna ruin the rosebush, but it actually, it frees the rosebush, and then the rosebush flourishes.

[18:43]

That's the nature of roses. You have to cut them all the way down, and then they flourish. That's like that, yes. So, gatas. Gatas, as I said yesterday, has a long history. We have lots of gatas that we use. I remember back in the 60s, we had this little book. of gathas. You may have seen it. I think some of you probably have it. And if you go to a heiji, you see the monks, when they go to the bathroom, they have a gatha for brushing their teeth and a gatha for going to the toilet and all these things.

[19:46]

And this is a gatha called After You Wake Up. You wake up and, this morning, as I awake, I vow with all sentient beings to attain awakening to everything without throwing off the world. So, this is a good gatha for a monk because it's easy to get so involved, you know, in your monkish practice that you forget about the world. So Soto Zen is very, this is a very important part of our Zen practice is not to forget that we're living in the world and where our practice is actually to help people in the world, even though we're secluded. Secluded is like, you know, up on top of the mountain. And it's where you gather yourself and gather your understanding of practice in a kind of isolation.

[20:58]

And then you come down the mountain and share yourself with the world. So those are the two aspects of practice. When we come to Sashin, this is up the mountain. top of the mountain, and then at the end, we go out into the world. That's the other side of practice. And daily, we do the same thing. When we sit in Zazen, we isolate ourselves from the world. And then when we stand up, we go back into the world. Suzuki Roshi is very adamant about, you know, when we used to sit Zazen, some people would want to, we'd get down off the tan and start doing Kinhen. And somebody would just keep sitting, you know, like, you guys have to do kin-hin, but I can just sit here forever because I'm a really good Zen student. But he said, get off the tan.

[22:00]

When we do Zazen, we all do Zazen. When we get off the tan, we all do kin-hin. You don't, you know, do some special heroic practice by yourself. And in the monastery, somebody rings the bell and everybody gets up and goes to the zendo. And sometimes people will get up an hour earlier. He said, when we get up, we all get up at the same time. So this teaching is the teaching of, I mean, all of this meritorious in a sense, you know, you're doing something extra. But he said, we don't do something extra. We learn how, this is how we learn how to let go of our ego. Extra stuff can be egotistical.

[23:02]

We don't know our ego until we come up against practice. That's what's so wonderful about our practice and so difficult. That's the difficulty of practice, is our self-centeredness. Anyway. There's the verse of the Kesa, which we do every morning before we put our robe on. And I resurrected this gatha that we used to say at Tassajara, we used to say this when we had tea. Now as I take food and drink, I vow with all sentient beings to partake with the pleasure of Zen and to fully enjoy the Dharma. And then at the end of tea, we used to say,

[24:04]

Now I have taken food and drink. I vow with all sentient beings to be full of pure practice and filled with the ten powers." There are various lists of ten powers, but I don't want to go into them. We can talk about them sometime. And then there's the verse of the bath. As I bathe this body, I vow with all sentient beings to wash from body and mind all dust and confusion and feel healthy and clean within and without. Actually, this is, if you ever went to Dasara, and gone to the baths, when you walk in, there's the altar, and then there's a picture of the 16 Bodhisattvas in the bath. And then there's a little saying, which is this. Probably. Could be that. Could be that one.

[25:06]

Yeah. I have the picture of the 16 bodhisattvas in the bath in my bedroom here. James? Yeah, I was going to read that to you, but thank you. You got me. That's good. Thank you. It's great that you can remember that. I don't remember anything. Thank you. And then we have the Ghatan opening the sutra, or when we do a lecture, the four vows. And before bed, tonight before I sleep, I vow with all sentient beings to still all things and to clear the mind of confusion.

[26:10]

That's very good. I have to say, Did I do that? But I don't do it on purpose. When I go to sleep, I just go right away. I don't know why. Luck. It's pure luck. Okay. So here are some of Robert Aiken wrote in times past. Akin Roshi and also Thich Nhat Hanh introduced writing gathas. We'd have a kind of class and we'd all sit down and write gathas, which was fun. Unfortunately, we don't remember. I mean, it's there and then it kind of fades off. If we were doing, if it was,

[27:15]

insistent, we probably remember to do that. But I can read you some of Akinroshi's kathas. And I want to start with He says, waking up in the morning, I vow with all beings to listen to those whom I love, especially those things they don't say. Yeah, our awareness and intuition about what's going on with another person, very important.

[28:30]

How we read people. You know, words will convey something, but actually to read the meaning behind the words and the meaning of no words. So preparing to enter the shower, I vow with all beings to cleanse this body of Buddha and go naked into the world. That's pretty good. It's like fresh. Everything's gone. That's so hard to do. You carry stuff around. In the ordination ceremony, we confess our, we don't really confess our transgressions, but we acknowledge our karma.

[29:34]

And then we say, now you are free of all your karma. And then we get right back into it, of course. But for a moment we're free of karma. So this one is about bells, which I like to, I think I want to write some God sense about bells because I'm so, you know, fussy about bells. I'm really fussy about it. I apologize, you know. But sounding a bell at the temple, I vow with all beings to ring as true in each moment, mellow, steady, and clear. Steady and clear. I remember Suzuki Roshi talked about this master who, as a little boy, lived with his father.

[30:51]

And his father couldn't take care of him, so he turned him over to the monastery at maybe 13 or 14. And that's what people used to do then. The monasteries had a lot of orphan boys, and they brought them up kind of like monks. He said, they will ask you to ring the bells when you go to the monastery. So, he thought about that. And then, true enough, he was asked to ring the bells and the abbot was talking with his And he heard the bell and he said, that's an unusually wonderful sound of the bell.

[31:52]

I'd like you to go and see who rang that bell. So his attendant went out and found the little boy and he brought him back to the abbot and David said, that was a wonderful bell. What were you thinking when you rang the bell? And the little boy said, well, when my father said that I was gonna have to ring the bells, he said, every time you ring a bell, you produce a Buddha. This is what should be in your mind when you ring the bell. And that's actually a true story. So I would like all of you, when you ring the bell, to, how can I produce a Buddha? Now it's time for something, ding!

[32:54]

Change the subject, ding! How can you produce the most beautiful sound every single time? That's what you should be thinking. It doesn't matter whether it's in time or not. It does matter whether it's in time or not. But if you ring beautiful bells, they will be in time, more likely than when you're trying to ring them in time. So these bells, like, you know, that bell's made by hand, they both are. They're not just manufactured by pouring into a mold. And they have certain qualities which should be brought out. How do you bring out the inherent qualities or the voice of the bell? There's a voice in there waiting to be sounded. And how do you bring out the most beautiful part of that voice? That's what you should be thinking about.

[33:59]

Not just ding, dang, bong. They're capable of doing that. The bell's, the voice is there. There's a difference between, there are two sounds, two basic sounds in each bell. One is the sound of the beater hitting the bell, and then the sound that's produced. Those are two sounds. What you want to hear is the sound that's produced. And the minimum is the sound of the bell, of the beater hitting the bell. Often, the sound of the beater hitting the bell is most dominant, and the voice of the bell is hardly there. So all we hear is bang, bang. That's the sound of the beater hitting the bell.

[35:02]

The sound of the voice is boing, boing. We hear it once in a while. We hear it. It's like the sound is just produced, but there's no sound of the beater hitting the bell. That's the impossible task. Then, there's another one. Sounding a bell at the temple, I vow with all beings to remember I'm ringing the Dharma for the Sangha and of all who can hear. With the sound of the temple bell, I vow with all beings to offer my skull as a bell in the echoing Chileacosms. You know, what's really important, I think, is to think of the bell as your own head, or as the head of your lover, depending on how you're feeling about your lover.

[36:14]

Your new lover. The one that you haven't quarreled with yet. No quarreling. So, how do you treat somebody? How do you treat your own head? Beginning our Sutra service, I vow with all beings to join my voice with all voices and give life to each word as it comes. Thank you. When joining others for sharing, I vow with all beings to give my report on the weather, that's your weather report, without making a mess on the floor. Oh, at a Zendo meeting for business,

[37:28]

I vow with all beings to drop my plan in the chopper and let the process evolve." That's really good, isn't it? So Eken Roshi's understanding of these gathas is that gathas are about everyday life, about all of our activities, not just special gathas, so to speak, but everything special. Everything we do is special and not special. Oh, I have a note here that somebody gave me many years ago. I just found it in here. It says, the phrase nothing special keeps coming up for me. Could you please talk about it? Its meaning or meanings. Thank you. So Suzuki Roshi used this term, nothing special, all the time. There was a match cover one time and it had the words, I have to paraphrase this but I can't remember exactly, but, brilliant splendor, something like that, is nothing special.

[38:53]

It was a kind of quote on a matchbook that kind of came from somebody who I heard something from Suzuki Roshi. So everything is very special and nothing is special. Everything appears and disappears. There is nothing special. But at the same time, everything that appears is special while it's there. So we should treat everything, not as special, but with great respect. because everything is special. This is Soto Zen practice. When I was with Suzuki Roshi, we had a number of people sitting in a circle and somebody had given him a present of a, I think it was a cup, and he held the cup

[39:59]

Well, when it was my turn, I was looking at the cup, he passed the cup around, and he said, no, he said, hold it down here, hold it on the tatami, don't hold it up here, because you want to be careful that if it fell, you wouldn't want to be responsible to say, you would not want it to fall. His teaching was that you should always find the most stable position. When you're doing something to find the most stable position, when you're serving, and you're serving the people on the floor, you should go down on your knees. You shouldn't squat, because if you squat, somebody could come along and just push you over, right?

[41:01]

You're balancing on your feet and you're squatting and find the most stable position off time because everything is constantly changing and falling out of balance and regaining its balance. So in regaining your balance, you should always find the most stable position. Don't fall down. I'm just thinking, when I offer my bowl to the server, and then I have to do my stop, this requires a stability and a But we are challenged with that in more than sitting and standing. Well, there's so many places when you're being served and in serving that requires stability.

[42:10]

That's a great place to practice. Serving is a great practice activity. So when we get our bowls, we don't hold them up here, we put them down in our lap. When the other person's being served, or when we're being served, you're like, this person's being served, and then you're being served. And then you get your bowl filled, and you're waiting for the other person, and you hold them in your lap, not up here. Because this is the fundamental position where you won't drop anything. And you have, see, this is the cut-off point between your legs and your body.

[43:11]

So stability is all down here. And this is all balance. So we're always thinking about that. Whenever you move or do something, you're always thinking, where's the stability here and the balance here? All the time, that's our practice. That's the practice of stability. So if you think about all of the movements that we make when we're actually doing, receiving the meal and serving the meal. You know, when we serve the meal, we step forward and hold the pot out. And when we're bowing, right, we don't hold it under our nose, you know, but we hold it out and you find your balance right there. So, and then all this is like, What is my balance when I'm serving?

[44:14]

Am I leaning too far over? And Suzuki Roshi taught us this in his movements and in his demonstration. Always resuming our balance in all of our actions. Okay, well, you know, I cannot go through this whole book, but this is a good example. So I would suggest if you have something that you really want to remember to do, to make a gatha.

[45:17]

and look at it every day. You know, it's a great practice. Here's a gatha that I just kind of wrote down. As I cross my legs for zazen, I vow to sit with warm feet and cool head. That's the other, that's also a balancing prescription, and it's a Soto Zen practice. Cool head and warm feet. Warm feet means, oh, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not going to explain it. You understand already. Warm feet and cool head.

[46:11]

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