Morning. Today. Can you hear me in the back? No. Now, can you hear me? Can you. You have to keep turning it up. Well, I think you would say a few sentences and we can hear anything. It's not pretty high. Let me. That's not that. Well? I can't tap. Can you tap it? I did. Well, I don't know what the problem is. Yeah? Okay. You should be able to. No. Can you move it up a bit? I'll move it down. How's that? A little better?

[01:01]

Maybe we should go out to Vulture's Peak. How's that? Yeah. Good morning. Yeah. That's a little high. OK. Yeah. Just keep working with it. Well, today we have two things. We celebrate. Shakyamuni Buddha's parinirvana, when I say celebrate, parinirvana actually means the great decease. We don't usually celebrate someone's decease. We memorialize someone's decease. But I think celebration is good here, because it means total realization. When we celebrate the decease of your ego, Thank goodness, that's gone.

[02:11]

And the other thing is that this weekend, some of us are sitting at two-day Sashin, weekend Sashin, and studying Suzuki Roshi's most important teachings. So this is a great opportunity for us to actually spend this much time studying Suzuki Roshi's most important teachings. And I wish you were all here. So I'm going to combine these two subjects. One is Shakyamuni Buddha's Parinirvana, what that means. and Suzuki Roshi's understanding of nirvana. Of course, nirvana means various things to various people, but for us it means total liberation, complete liberation.

[03:25]

Parinirvana means liberation as when one passes out of this world without anything left over, nothing left, no ties, no attachments, just simply complete and total passing. So where does one go? Where does one go when one passes totally and fully? What happens there? So there are various ideas about that also. But, you know, the Shakyamuni is called the Tathagata, Tathagata actually, which means the one who comes thus and one who goes thus.

[04:29]

So thus means No coming and no going. Coming from nowhere and going nowhere. What does that mean? That means that we are always here. We are always here. The reason why we're here is because we've always been here. We may say, well, I was born, my parents produced various elements that created my existence and then I lived my life and then I left. Where did I go? Where do people go when they pass through? It's always a big question. Nobody knows. The reason nobody knows is because there's no place that we go. So I want to read this well-known passage by Suzuki Roshi, talk, where he talks about nirvana.

[05:47]

Nirvana, when Suzuki Roshi went to, he came to America and somebody took him to Yosemite. And so he was very impressed by the great waterfall at Yosemite. So he begins this talk by saying, if you go to Japan and visit Aheiji Monastery, just before you enter, you will see a small bridge called Han Shaku Kyo, which means half-dipper bridge. When we have ceremonies sometimes, we have a little dipper, bamboo dipper, with a cup, and we pour it over the Buddha. We pour it over a stone of somebody who was deceased. So whenever Dogen Zenji dipped water from the river, he used only half a dipperful, returning the rest to the river again.

[06:59]

without throwing it away. That is why we call the bridge Han Shaku Kyo, Half Dipper Bridge. At Eheji, which is the large Soto school monastery, when we wash our face, we fill the basin to just 70% of its capacity. And after we wash, we empty the water towards rather than away from our body. This expresses respect for the water. This kind of practice is not based on any idea of being economical. It may be difficult to understand why Dogen Zenji returned half of the water he dipped to the river. This kind of practice is beyond our thinking. When we feel the beauty of the river, when we are one with the water, we intuitively do it in Dogen's way. It is our true nature to do so. But if your true nature is covered by ideas of economy or efficiency,

[08:04]

Dogen's way makes no sense. So, Dogen is expressing his gratitude and oneness with the water. There's a story that comes to my mind. Master Dogo, Daowu, in China, around the 8th century, And he had a young student, he was a teacher, he had a young student named Lung Tan, who later became a wonderful Zen master. And Lung Tan's parents made little cakes, little, I don't know, maybe some kind of little cake that they sold. And they were very happy that Lung Tan was, that Da Wu kind of taking care of Lungtan.

[09:05]

So every day they would give Lungtan some of these little cakes to bring to Dawu. And Dawu would take the cakes and he'd thank him and offer them back. He would say, this is for you. And he did that every day. And one time Lungtan asked him, how come I give you these cakes and Every day you give me one back." And he said, I'm only giving to you what originally belongs to you. So this is like the spirit of Dogan, offering back half a dipper of water. I'm offering back what originally belongs to you. And of course, this is what a teaching does to the student. The student offers himself to the teacher's teaching. And then the teacher gives back what originally belongs to the student. So he said, I went to Yosemite National Park, and I saw some huge waterfalls.

[10:14]

The highest one there is 1,340 feet high. And from it, the water comes down like a curtain thrown from the top of the mountain. It does not seem to come down swiftly, as you might expect. It seems to come down very slowly because of the distance. And the water does not come down as one stream, but is separated into many tiny streams. From a distance, it looks like a curtain. And I thought it must be a very difficult experience for each drop of water to come down from the top of such a high mountain. It takes time, you know, a long time for the water finally to reach the bottom of the waterfall. And it seems to me that our human life may be like this. We have many difficult experiences in our life, but at the same time, I thought, the water was not originally separated, but was one whole river.

[11:19]

Only when it is separated does it have some difficulty in falling. It is as if the water does not have any feeling when it is one whole river. But only when separated into many drops can it begin to have or express some feeling. When you see one whole river, we do not feel the living activity of the water. But when we dip a part of the water into a dipper, we experience some feeling of the water. And we also feel the value of the person who uses the water. Feeling ourselves and the water in this way, we cannot use it in just a material way. It is a living thing. Before we were born, we had no feelings. We were one with the universe. That's our original nature. This is called mind only, or essence of mind, or big mind. After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, that we have feeling.

[12:30]

Only when we become separated do we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore because we have no actual difficulty in our life. When the water returns to its original oneness with the river, it no longer has any individual feeling to it. It resumes its own nature and finds composure. How very glad the water must be to come back to the original river. We will have composure then, perfect composure.

[13:41]

It may be too perfect for us just now, because we are so much attached to our own feeling, to our individual existence. For us just now, we have some fear of death. But after we resume our true original nature, there is nirvana. That is why we say, to attain nirvana is to pass away. To pass away is not a very adequate expression, perhaps to pass on, Maybe you will find some better expression for death. When you find it, you will have quite a new interpretation of your life. It will be like my experience when I saw the water in the big waterfall. Imagine it was 1,340 feet high. We say everything comes out of emptiness. One whole river or one whole mind is emptiness. When we reach this understanding, we will find the true meaning of our life.

[14:43]

When we reach this understanding, we can see the beauty of human life. Before we realize this fact, everything we see is just illusion. Sometimes we overestimate the beauty. Sometimes we underestimate or ignore the beauty because our small mind is not in accord with reality. To talk about it this way is quite easy, but to have the actual feeling is not so easy. But by your practice of zazen, you can cultivate this feeling. When you can sit with your whole body and mind, and with the oneness of your mind and body under the control of the universal mind, you can easily attain this kind of right understanding Your everyday life will be renewed without being attached to an old, erroneous interpretation of life. When you realize this fact, you will discover how meaningless your old interpretation was, and how much useless effort you had been making.

[15:46]

You will find the true meaning of life, and even though you have difficulty falling upright from the top of the waterfall to the bottom of the mountain, you will enjoy your life. Dogen Zenji says, when he talks about birth and death, he says nirvana is only to be found within birth and death. Nirvana actually can mean the oneness of birth and death. Even though we say birth is birth and death is death, that's so. But birth is death and death is birth. Nirvana is only to be found within birth and death. Nirvana sounds like some transcendental entity, but nirvana is not a thing.

[16:55]

Nirvana, transcendent means, not transcendental, but transcendent means to rise above, right? But to rise above means to find the way within. There is no above. To find the way within this moment's activity right now, without escaping. Transcendent means, seems to feel like escaping. No. Nirvana is not an escape. It means to be one with. When we are totally one with whatever we are engaged in, without attachments, without being caught, that's nirvana. Nirvana is to be found within all of our difficulties. Suzuki Goshi is always saying, we're always trying to get rid of our difficulties. And in order to be emphatic, he said, the problems you have right now are the problems you will always have.

[18:04]

Sorry. And we think, well, that's not so good. But actually, this is where we find nirvana. When we try to escape from our difficulties, that's delusion. So nirvana pins us right down. Stay there. Don't move. To find our release within the present moment's activity, good or bad, right or wrong, like or dislike, doesn't matter. This is what he means by separation. In order to experience nirvana, we have to experience oneness with, not separation from. So we do feel separate.

[19:10]

We always feel separate. Our separateness. But fortunately we have a way of realizing our oneness. So when Suzuki Roshi says, you are here now because you have always been here, this is what he means. We are one being. We are separate expressions of one whole being. So as one whole being, This life of duality separates us. And then we have our... that's when we create our feelings, and our ideas, and our thoughts, and our activity. And then, at some point, it all comes together again. So, the word striated comes to my mind.

[20:13]

A kind of striated life which comes back to itself. And within this life, we have to find our way. How do we find our way within this life of strife? For some people, life is strife and strife and crisis and suffering and so forth. I'll read you another passage from Suzuki Roshi where he talks about birth and death. So he says, it is just your mind that says you are here and I am there.

[21:48]

That's all. Originally, we are one with everything. If someone dies, you may say that he or she is no more. But is it possible for something to vanish completely? That is not possible. And it is not possible for something to appear all of a sudden from nothing. Something that is here cannot vanish completely. It can change its form, that's all. So we are always one, even though we are two. I remember at Tassajara, back in the 70s, when this kind of question came up about killing earwigs. And people said, Well, we're killing earwigs. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, it's not a good thing or a bad thing. But no matter how many pieces you chop the earwig into, you can't kill it.

[22:54]

Of course, you can change it. You can cause a transformation in the earwig. But you can't kill the life of the earwig. The earwig is an expression of life. You can kill the expression, but you can't kill the essence of the earwig. That's not possible. So we have the precept, don't kill. But that's not possible. What it means is, don't kill the essence of life. Don't stifle the essence of life. Superficially, you may say you are feeling lonely, but if you are very sincere and really give up your small mind, then there is no fear and no emotional problem.

[24:02]

Your mind is always calm and your eyes are always open and you can hear the birds as they sing. You can see the flowers as they open. There is nothing for you to worry about. And if you worry, you will see it as an interesting novel. To read it is very interesting, but it is not something to fear or worry about. We can enjoy our life fully when we understand things in this way. So we really get caught by our feelings, our emotions, and our imagination. So what he's saying is, yes, of course, all these things are there. And we are all subject to this kind of separation. But it's not necessary to be caught by it. We should have some freedom. from that which is compelling.

[25:05]

When I was flying back from the east coast the other day, I saw a beautiful sunset. The sunset lasts a pretty long time if you're flying towards the west. People on the ground think it is dark and there's no more sun. But if you are flying high up in the sky, you still have the sunset. And you can see beautiful clouds. It is wonderful to see, but at the same time, someone may feel very lonely. You're feeling one way, someone else is feeling another way. Yet, wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun, even though they're clouded over. And the stars that you see, even if you jump out of the airplane, you don't go anywhere else. You are still one with everything. That is more true than I can say and more true than you can hear. I'm not talking about something that is strange and mystical.

[26:09]

If you think so, it means that you are not truthful enough. You are not feeling deeply enough to feel what is true. Be sincere enough to be yourself. That is the direction of our effort. Again, Dogen said that if you want to attain renunciation from birth and death, Don't try to get out of birth and death. Birth and death are our equipment for this life. Without birth and death, we can't survive. It is our pleasure to have birth and death. That is how we understand the truth. We think that we want to live, but we don't want to die. And elsewhere, Siddhigarajan says, Exhaling is more important than inhaling. Well, aren't they equal? Yes. But the reason he says that is because we're loathe to give up.

[27:10]

The reason it's more important is because we don't want to give up. We don't want to expire. We want to inspire. Which is great. We have to be able to accept both sides equally. Birth and death is our life. Each moment is a moment of birth and death, obviously. Nothing is repeated. Nothing is held on to. Even if you hold on to something for a while, eventually it disintegrates. So there's integration into integration. And to be able to see, to appreciate both equally, is to be free. So, today I have it, tomorrow I haven't.

[28:17]

So, what's here now? One moment replaces another. One activity replaces another. One entity replaces another. This is our life. This is the life of Nirvana. To be able to know how to take up and know how to let go. But we get caught by our feelings, our emotions, and our intellect, our thoughts. And that hangs us up. So he says, In short, don't be involved in making too many homemade cookies. Your ideas are big or small, good or bad. Make only as many as you can eat. Without food, you can't survive. So it's good to make cookies, but don't make too many.

[29:17]

It's good to have problems. And without problems, we can't survive. But not too many. If you really understand your life, it's not even necessary to practice Zazen, or even for me to come and stay in America. If you could make just enough homemade cookies for yourself, it would be okay for me to go back to Japan and eat Japanese cookies. Since you make too many cookies, I have to eat some. I have to help you. That's the Buddhist way. That's how to enjoy life and that is what we practice Zazen. We don't practice Zazen to attain some special enlightenment. Just to be ourselves and just to be free from our useless efforts or tendencies. We practice Zazen. So maybe you might have a question or two.

[30:24]

Rishi, thank you for your talk. What happens if the water drop evaporates before it hits the river? How can the drop evaporate before it hits the river? It can evaporate before it hits the ground. The drop is part of the river. The drop is the separation of the river into parts. When it dries, it finds itself in the river. You know, it's interesting. Randolph Hearst, who was the editor of the Actually, he read all these newspapers and even the Chronicle.

[31:32]

Every year in the Chronicle they'd publish his editorial on just this subject. I don't know if you've ever read it. Once a year. You know, the circularity of life and death. I thought it was very interesting. Ralph? William Randolph. Random random numbers. Yes. What book are you reading from? Well, I'm reading from Zen. I'm a beginner in mind. And not only so. You interpreted the precept on not killing by saying it means don't kill the essence, the essence of mind. Yes. It worries me. Which doesn't mean that we should kill people. Yeah.

[32:33]

No, it doesn't mean that. So where does the precept help us to remember not to kill sentient beings? It means both things. Oh, you didn't mention the other thing. No, I didn't because that's not what I was talking about. But I'm glad you brought that up and I appreciate it. Yeah, we should not kill each other. No, that's not a good idea. You know why? No. Because we all want to live. And we have empathy for each other. Everything wants to live. But everything has to die. But at the same time, we don't want to cause suffering to people. How about the earwig? The what? The earwig. The earwig. That doesn't mean we should chop earwigs into pieces. It's simply about Even though you chop the earwig into pieces, you don't kill the essence of life of the earwig. It doesn't mean that you just go ahead and chop the earwig into pieces.

[33:36]

That's not what it means. That's not the meaning. Of course we shouldn't chop earwigs into pieces just to prove that the earwig is, you know. You have to understand one thing at a time. You understand what I mean? One where we're talking about the essence and then the others we're talking about the earwig itself. Yes, don't kill earwigs if you don't have to. Al, Ross? Thank you. I believe you said don't kill the essence of life. You can't kill the essence of life. You can't kill the essence of life. And then you said something about Don't kill the essence. Yeah, don't stifle. Don't stifle. So can you talk about how those are different? Like, you can't kill the essence.

[34:39]

What could you possibly stifle? The essence of life is not born or dies. Don't kill the essence of life means to be aware that there is such a thing. And it also means that each separate entity is an expression of the essence of life. So the earwig is an expression of the essence of life. So even if you chop an earwig into a million pieces, you don't kill the essence of life. But that doesn't mean you should go ahead and chop it into pieces. Don't dissect the frog. in order to find the essence of the frog. Can you give an example of how someone could stifle the essence of life? By not valuing, not seeing, by not recognizing the virtue of each individual existence.

[36:08]

Just to carry on this point a little bit, it sounds like in one sense the stifling of the essence of life is the stifling of it in yourself, your awareness of it. It continues whether or not you do that, but you become impoverished, you become stifled as a result of not having that awareness. That's right. I think that's it. I don't have a better statement. Could you tell us what the title of that chapter was, of Nanami? Oh yeah, okay. What was that? One with everything. One with everything. One with everything. Give me one with everything. That's the old hot dog gum. So, it seems like in practice you kind of first have to realize not-separateness before you realize, before you can be like, you're separate in a not-separate way or something like that.

[37:38]

So when I feel like I can at least approach that, there's a feeling of great fullness to everything and I feel very, yeah, a great gratitude for all of it. But I also hear Master sometimes talk of loneliness, which intuitively kind of makes sense to me, but at the same time I'm not... Well, loneliness, that's our accentuation of our separateness, right? So, loneliness is not a bad thing. It helps us. That's a good problem. Because, why am I lonely? And this helps us too. Because we're lonely, we look for a way to not be lonely. Right? So, lonely means lone-ly. Right? I feel alone.

[38:43]

So, alone has two meanings. Fundamentally, it means at one with. alone means that one would. Secondarily, it means separate from. The same word has the opposite meanings. So by feeling separate from, we want to find it. We are led to find the original meaning. So it's good. It motivates us. Would you say it kind of sticks around as a force even when You know instead of going back and forth we should be able to realize both at the same time Robert I think on the same lines Title of the book is not always.

[39:46]

So yes, there's a verse in the Tao which talks about always so everlasting Dogen says the Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. How do you do that? Leaping clear of the many and the one means diving in too. So no separation? No separation. Leaping clear means no separation. At the same time to realize the difference, Jeffrey. Yes. Thank you. So, just to talk about the loneliness again. I was just thinking about that coming to service where there is the famous, not exactly the last words of the Buddha, but kind of before he died where he said, after I'm gone each of you have to be licensed to yourselves.

[40:50]

Yes. It always seems kind of shocking, because it seems like he's saying, after I'm gone, you're all on your own. Well, it sounds like that, but he's saying, my teaching will be myself. The Dharma will be the Buddha. He doesn't say you'll be on your own. He does say that. He says, you have to find your way by your own light. Each one of us has to find our own light by ourselves. In other words, I can't give it to you. So this is what we call practice. When you begin practicing, that means you're taking it seriously. But it doesn't mean that you're just all by yourself. Because finding your way or your light by yourself means that you do it with everyone. That's the value of Sangha. Sangha supports us to do that.

[41:52]

So, without Sangha, it's really hard. You know, there's also the passage like, be a rhinoceros, you know, the lone rhinoceros. Let the lone rhinoceros get his horns cut off. So, you know, there are many expressions, right? But Sangha is really important. Because otherwise, You don't have the support. And it's so easy to just get pulled around by things. If the drop of water going 340 feet down the waterfall does that instinctively, that's its nature to join back with the river. It meets itself. Yeah. But my question is that when we get separated, we have to come to awareness, we have to almost think of it or know something, have knowledge, we don't have that instinctual thing that melts us back together into a oneness.

[42:59]

So we have to work in a different way. We can't be as wonderfully natural as the Dragonborn. Yeah. Well, we have to re-find ourself. Yeah. So, you know, we're tossed out there into the world. I was thinking about, we grasp. We're still in the river, you know. When we emerge into the world, we're still in the river and we grasp at straws, you know, on the way down. But it looks like we're looking for something substantial, but it's not there. And we create all these substantialities. we think, but they're not substantialities, because they're just rafts.

[44:00]

So, the more security we have, the worse off we are, believe it or not. Yes? It's the suffering that brings us back. Back? Yeah, it's the suffering that helps us to orient ourselves. When we realize all those things out there. We're doing it, and you always want to get back there. You know, I remember Master Hua, who we used to call Toh Lun in the old days, he had this little sign that he gave away that said, everything we do is a test. All of our actions are a test to see what we will do. I think that's really great, you know. Everything that confronts us is a test to see what we will do.

[45:02]

And so, how do we orient ourselves, right? So, we orient ourselves, you know, I think of, there are two wheels. One is the self-centered wheel, and the other is the Buddha-centered wheel. So, we start out on the the self-centered wheel which causes us suffering. Then we transfer our center to the buddha-centric world. We become buddha-centric instead of self-centric. And then our tests, our responses are based on our buddha-centric self rather than our self-centric self. Then we have a way of dealing with all these tests. And the tests are practice. Everything tests are practice. Okay, this is the last one. Yes. Thank you.

[46:04]

Testing leads to failure. Testing leads to failure? You test to failure. If you test from the egocentric... That's right. It will always lead to failure. So don't do that. Well, it has some success, but it's not fundamental success. You know, people collect billions of dollars and they feel that they're successful. But it's an illusion. This is the last one. I was just going to say the waterfall is just it's a falling river. Yeah, it's just a falling river. That's right. And because of it, it hits the rocks and those things which separate it, we feel separate. And then at the end we rejoin the river. That's the understanding.

[47:05]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ