Morning. So, this morning I want to start where we left off, kind of, with Suzuki Roshi's words. So he says, the basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency or change. Everything changes. It's the basic. Although everything changes, yes, things change. But there is something that doesn't change. But that which doesn't change is not a thing. So things change.

[01:03]

Everything changes. but that which is not a thing is not subject to change. So we have two truths in Buddhism which we have to understand, otherwise we get mixed up. We have the truth of transiency, the mundane truth of ordinary, what we call our ordinary life in the dharmic world. And then there's the truth of the absolute truth. So, although the ordinary truth and the absolute truth are not two different things, they're two different things. They're not exactly… They, it's not two things, but what, absolute truth has its, is one side of the one truth, and ordinary dualistic existence has its side of the one truth.

[02:22]

And the one truth is like, it's like two sides of a coin. There's the absolute truth and the relative truth. And the coin is the one thing. So sometimes we speak on the basis of absolute reality. And it sounds confusing because it doesn't seem to match up with dualistic reality. So we see, yeah, the book is real, you know, the floor is real, you're real, I'm real, but actually, it's a false reality because it's not absolutely true. It's relatively true. So there's relative truth and absolute truth. And all the koans are about this. I haven't run across one koan that's not about the absolute truth and the relative truth.

[03:31]

And these are all meant to help us understand the koan or the seeming dichotomy of these two truths. So the basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency or change. That's the relative truth. That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence. No one can deny this truth. And all the teachings of Buddhism are condensed within it. This is the teaching for all of us. Wherever we go, this teaching is true. This teaching is also understood as the teaching of selflessness. So selflessness is closer to absolute truth. Because relatively, we have a self. But in absolute truth, there's no soul or self.

[04:35]

Because in absolute truth, there are no divisions. Because each existence is in constant change, there is no abiding self or soul or inherent existence. In fact, the self nature in each existence is nothing but change itself. So in the relative sense, all there is is change. There's nothing that really is abiding except in a relative sense, moment to moment. So in the Dharma we say, it's only Dharmas rolling along. There's no self in the Dharmas. There is no special separate self-nature for each existence. This is also called the teaching of nirvana, strangely enough.

[05:42]

When we realize the everlasting truth of everything changes and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in nirvana. So how do we find our composure in the truth of everything changes? So, sometimes we're caught in, just a minute. Or just a minute, too bad. As Blake says something like, catch the, catch the, catch the what? Catch the something as it flies by, catch the, No, something like that.

[06:49]

Life. Life, yeah. Whatever it is that you want, catch it as it flies by. when we realize the everlasting truth of everything changes and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in nirvana. So how do we find our composure in the realm of everything changes? That's nirvana. You know, it's not like this is something new for us because we practice this every day if we are sitting zazen.

[07:51]

But zazen is the entrance to understanding this through our body and mind. That's why I always say Zazen is a great teacher. Zazen teaches us everything we have to know. It doesn't teach us how to use a computer, but it teaches us everything that we really have to know about existence, non-existence, birth and death, pleasure and pain, wanting and not wanting, letting go and grasping. Everything, it's all there. And that's why Zazen is so wonderful, because it gives us such a big problem. What did you want to say, John?

[08:55]

I just wanted to say, like, a way I want to answer the question already. Get used to it. Used to what? and then getting used to it. Yeah, well, you know, everything has its problems. So the problem of getting used to it in Zazen is a good problem. How do you wake up? So Zazen is called the practice of waking up, moment by moment. But it looks like going to sleep It does, it looks like.

[09:57]

And of course it is going to sleep, so at times. So we have to continuously keep waking up. That's why we used to carry the stick. Because when you're just sitting there, you know, paying attention to posture, breathing, letting go. It's easy to fall asleep because the mind's not attaching to anything, hopefully. So carrying the stick is like, how do you maintain vitality? How do you maintain awake and vitality in Zazen? That's important. So that's a good koan for you, good practice. Well, let me explain it a little bit, point it out.

[11:12]

Composure in Zazen, okay? is letting everything come and go without being disturbed by anything, basically. And that's the same thing in your daily life. Composure in your daily life is letting everything come and letting everything go. It comes as it comes and it goes as it goes. And then in daily life, you have to deal with phenomena as it arises. In Zazen, you learn how to do that. No, it's not idealized. It's just actual. There's not some ideal.

[12:14]

If you have a hard time finding composure, then it becomes an ideal. You're always looking for your composure, because you lose it, and then you come back to it, and you lose it, and you come back to it, and over and over. And that's an example of our life, because our life is full of distractions, just like in Zazen. And how do you find your composure within the distractions? Yes, how do you find your composure? That's nirvana. How do we find our composure when everything's changing? How do we, you know, and also, as we say over and over again, everything is falling out of balance and finding its balance.

[13:27]

Moment by moment, everything is changing, even though you have this wonderful posture, and oh, this is it, perfect posture. And then the next moment, it's changed. It doesn't stay there, it changes. So you have to have flexibility as well as stability. Stability and flexibility at the same time. There's a lot to do in zazen when you're doing nothing. A lot to do in zazen, finding your stability, and your flexibility at the same time. Flexibility lets everything come and go and stability finds its position that doesn't get moved or pushed over. That's like when you're serving the people on the floor in the meal, you go down on both knees or at least one knee if you only have, you know,

[14:36]

trouble not standing up or squatting. Squatting, you get pushed over. So you're always looking for the stable position moment by moment. That's one of the fundamentals of practice. Always finding your stable position moment by moment and not getting into some position that can turn you over. Stability, flexibility, composure, in the absolute sense, they already are. Like, that's Buddha nature, that exists. And when we stop discriminating in the mind and let things come and go, then they can arise. Then what? Yes, so to find perfect composure within imperfect

[15:53]

within our imperfect composure, that's allowing the absolute to support the relative. It seems to me that everything in the absolute is dynamically active all the time. No, there's not something sitting there. Yes. Life is a verb. Yes, it's a doing. No, don't say that. There's being and doing. There is just being and doing, and that's zazen, is the doing of just being, and the being of just doing.

[17:12]

So... to actually access, I guess you might call it, the absolute being within the doing. So that's to take care of every, you know, to take care of, very carefully take care of and meet and appreciate every existence, actually, is to not be separate from a being. So our being reflects, our doing reflects the being, our being.

[18:16]

Our doing reflects our being because our being is the source of doing. even though they're not two different things. To bring it all together, that's why sweeping the ground is a great activity of perfection. Sweeping, you know, it's so simple. And that's why Zen practice is so simple. Because the simpler it is, the less obscure it is. Simple doesn't necessarily mean not complex, but not complicated. Just allows us to take off the coverings so that nirvana or the absolute is revealed.

[19:22]

even though it's always there. It's there, but it's not revealed. So we have called eye coverings or mind coverings. Kanze calls it mind coverings. Thoughts that are covering the light. We talked about a word yesterday, deluded. Looted means light. And diluted means light covering. So take off the light covering so that the light shines out, right? Yeah, poise. Yeah.

[20:28]

We have this picture of our life, but it might not look like how we... Oh, well, the way we see our life and the way our life is are not necessarily the same. Right. It's a picture, so we have to accept this idea of a composed picture. Yeah. Right. So within the picture, you know, when you play music, The musical composition is perfect in a sense that you don't put mistakes into it. It's a little world where everything works together harmoniously. So it's called harmony. How do you allow life itself to be like that? So life is an art. We can say life is an art. How you compose the life around you, how do you take part in the life around you so that you're actually seeing it as a composition?

[22:23]

A composition of things that you can't control. And You find your balance in it, you find your composure in it. And so, in a sense, we're walking, or our path is like a composition. It's like somewhat chaotic, even though it has its logic, because chaos has its own logic. It just looks like chaos to us. You know, like Master Rinzai was asked a question about control. He says, I control the whole world. The guy said, well, what do you mean you control the whole world? He says, everything is going just the way I think it should.

[23:26]

Everything is going just, I accept the way everything is going, basically. as it is. So, yeah. John, you ask too many questions. It becomes a conversation between you and me, so I'd rather hold it. Yeah, that's not composure. That's a kind of, you know, it's like sometimes in order for people to feel safe, they put a wall around themselves.

[24:29]

That's a picture, right, of safety. But it doesn't work because there's no, you know, there's no final safety. Living in a gated community, you keep parts of the world out, right, which looks like safety. But no, composure is finding your balance moment by moment. It's a live thing and not a dead thing, yeah. But I really, this question of the picture, I think it's very interesting. I like that. It can lead, it leads you to think of how we actually find control and within chaos, chaos but within uncontrollable conditions. Because, yeah. Well, yes, but also… Right.

[26:04]

So, the cracks actually add something to the picture. They tell a story beyond just a picture and open it up in a wider way. Judy? Yes. It seems like the pictures can change.

[27:40]

I have a picture in mind of Indra's net. So to me, that's very resonant to this culture. It's not getting caught in one view. But as I was seeing that in mind, I realized it's kind of chuckling because my vision of what Indra's net looks like Yeah, it's your vision, yeah. But compost is, everything is compost. The whole thing is compost. I used to love making compost. When we were on Dwight Way, I had a huge yard, and I would just collect compost from all over the place. cuttings and garbage, and I even had a guy bringing garbage over from Zen Center to put in my compost pile. And then I realized that, you know, Suzuki Yoshi had this talk where he talks about taking care of the ground as being more important even than what's growing in the ground.

[28:53]

And that's Zen practice. Not so interested in the result, but how you make the soil and cultivating the soil and having a good ground for the soil. And then whatever grows is wonderful, but taking care of the soil, that's our practice basically. which is also how we think about birth and death. The death of one thing is the birth of another. And I also think about cocoons. Cocoons are really interesting. Are we really butterflies or what? Are we cocoons or what?

[29:56]

It's a great mystery how something looks like it's dead, but it's actually a transformative being. And so life is transformation. Compost, cocoons, human beings, dogs, cats, plants, So, fortunately, everything changes. And how we find our composure in those changes, I think faith is a really important factor, because what is there to trust in when everything is changing and we feel like a human being, and we have our breaths and our thoughts and our movements and our desires, which are always changing, and then there's so-called final change.

[31:03]

And what comes out of that? What is the outcome? What is the result? So he says, without accepting the fact that everything changes, we can't find our perfect composure. But unfortunately, although this is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we can't accept the truth, or we have a hard time accepting the truth of transiency, we suffer. So the cause of suffering is our non-acceptance of this truth. I would say one cause. The teaching of the cause of suffering and the teaching that everything changes are thus two sides of one coin, which I talked about. Subjectively, transiency is the cause of our suffering. Objectively, this teaching is simply the basic truth of everything changes.

[32:19]

So in other words, whether we like it or not, this is what happens. So in a world of like it or not, being able to flow with the waves and not be victimized to flow with the waves, to actually not go along because you're pulled along, but to go along to drive the wave as well as to ride the wave. So the ocean, you know, the ocean is absolute truth. And the wave is the expression of the ocean. So to find our pleasure in change rather than our suffering in change.

[33:27]

But pleasure and suffering are still two sides. To go beyond pleasure and suffering Yes, nirvana. Yes. Yeah, faith is being open to whatever's going on. It's simply being open to whatever's happening. It's not like faith that something's going to save you, or even in some deity, but just openness to what, that if you live your life in a way that flows with life,

[34:37]

that you are flowing with everything. Everything's going together with you. Everything right here in this world at this moment is going together with you, and you are part of that going. And we have to be able to feel that's okay. It's gotta be okay. If it's not okay, then that's the cause of suffering. So how we allow ourselves to be open to that It doesn't mean that you don't have choice or that you do have choice. You have a choice to either go along or not. But no matter what's happening, things, you know, I don't know, there's a place where you just can't explain, but everything is going the same way, I don't know about the same way, the same way, but it may be in different directions, but everything is meeting in the same place at the end.

[35:56]

It's like the waterfall. It's one body, but all the drops are separating, and then they all meet down at the bottom. So everything has this adventure of seeming individuality, but it all comes together at the end. I think that's faith for me. Everything comes together in the end and we all have our adventures in the meantime. And then, so it's nice when we can all share our life together because we're all in the same, I often think about this. Everybody in the world is living in the same time continuum. that I am living in. And so at some point, you know, when you meet people that are born in the same year that you were born, there's some connection, you feel, on the same day, at the same time, you feel this certain kind of connection.

[37:08]

And so there's this familiarity of everybody, everything going, living out its existence at this particular time and space. And it's all compost. All the beautiful flowers are We'll end up in a compost and then we'll all be some, find ourselves in some other venue, but we won't remember. So, oh, it's a different page. Yeah. So the teaching of cause and effect.

[38:10]

Objectively, this teaching is simply the basic truth that everything changes. So Dogenzenji says, teaching which does not sound as if it is forcing something on you is not true teaching. You know, there's a saying, Buddha is an obstacle. Buddha is an obstacle. because Buddha always challenges our ego. Buddhism is an obstacle to our ego. The Dharma is an obstacle to our ego. So we come up against it, boom, it slaps us in the face. A tough teacher is very good for people, but not too tough. knowing how to be tough and knowing how to be soft. Nevertheless, teacher is an obstacle, and the Dharma is an obstacle.

[39:15]

If it's not, then there's no such thing as the Dharma or Buddhism, because all that the Buddhism or the Dharma is teaching us is how to let go of self-centeredness. And that hurts. It's painful. The problem, what's painful about zazen is not the pain in your legs. It's the pain in your self-centeredness. It's the pain of our ego. It's the suffering of our ego. So, if it doesn't feel like it's forcing something on you, Yes? Anything is an obstacle which challenges your ego.

[40:24]

Yes. Everything that challenges your ego. What did you say? And how, yes. Yes. So it feels like it's forcing something on you. Teaching which does not sound as if it's forcing something on you is not true teaching. So that's why, if you go to Japan, When you say, I studied Zen, people say, oh, very difficult. So the teaching itself is true, and in itself does not force anything upon you. But because of our human tendency, we receive the teaching as if something were being forced on us.

[41:34]

Yeah, teaching is just the teaching, you know? Desire is just desire. Everything is just what it is, just neutral. As long as we start blaming anything outside of ourselves, we should pause and say, well, what am I contributing to this problem? What am I contributing to this problem? So that instead of changing your surroundings, you change yourself. You work on yourself. This is how you can actually deal with your own disposition. What is it, how does, so that's why we welcome a problem, because the problem is teaching us something. or at least the problem is setting up the conditions for us to learn something. Sometimes when somebody's always complaining about, when somebody comes to me always complaining about other people all the time, not all the people in all circumstances, blah, blah, blah, they did this, they do that, blah, blah, I say,

[42:55]

They say, please give me some teaching. I say, yes, thank everybody for what they're telling you. Thank you very much. Not very many people can continue it. It's our practice. But whether we feel good about it or bad about it, the truth exists. If nothing exists, this truth does not exist. But Buddhism exists because of each particular existence. We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. We should find perfection in imperfection. For us, complete perfection is not different from imperfection. The eternal exists because of non-eternal existence. In Buddhism, it is heretical, it's a hard word, to view or to expect something outside of this world.

[44:00]

We don't seek for something outside of ourselves. We should find the truth in this world through ourselves, our difficulties, sorry, through our suffering. So this is the basic teaching of Buddhism. Pleasure is not different from difficulty. Good is not difficult from bad. Good is bad and bad is good. You know, right is wrong, wrong is right. Everything is changing. It's all relative. All those things are relative. Good and bad, right and wrong, like and dislike. When I was a kid, my parents, once in a while, would make beet borscht with sour cream. And I thought, God, that is the most awful thing I could possibly think of to eat. But now I think it's great. Back then it was terrible, and now it's wonderful. That's life. It always changes. It's all comparative values.

[45:03]

So, for the time being, it's a good thing to think about. For the time being, I hate this. For the time being, I love this. For the time being, this is right. For the time being, this is wrong. Yeah, that's eternal truth for the time being. It's probably the time. Almost. You have a question? Yes. He said what? Oh yes, the waves are the practice of the ocean.

[46:09]

That's great. Yeah. Yes. Yes, yeah.

[47:12]

Yeah. Riding the wave and driving the wave, that's really a wonderful metaphor for our practice. If you're simply going, if you're simply riding the wave, that's passivity. And if you're simply driving the wave, that's activity. So riding the wave and driving the wave at the same time, it's like when you do the Macugio. If you're not listening to everybody and you just want to get on your horse and go, boom, [...] and everybody's, I don't want to do that. I don't want to. go your pace, you have to listen and feel what the body wants to do. And if you're just passively doing this, it's just dragging along, it gets slower and slower and slower.

[48:22]

And the other way, it's faster and faster and faster. So how do you find that mean, which is going along with and pushing, not pushing exactly, adding the energy so that it doesn't bog down. So that applies to everything in our practice. All these things that we do, like the bell, Mokugyo, and chanting the sutra, that's great practice for how you actually get along in the world. It's not just keeping time to the chanting. The way you express your understanding when you sound the bell, the way you express your understanding when you meet the makugiyote fish, and how you express your understanding when you're leading the chanting,

[49:33]

I could say more about that, but I don't, I will. There's one bell that's the most important bell when we're doing the service. And I talk about it all the time. And yet everybody forgets. And so how do I keep my composure This bell is the bell. When the Kokyo, when we're doing the Heart Sutra, no, when the Kokyo announces the Heart Sutra, that's a solo. And then there's a bell,

[50:37]

And then there's the tutti. The tutti means everybody, right? And that bell is the most, the bell between, that, the end of the announcement of the makanya mitajinyo bong, that's the most important bell in the whole series. Because that bell, matches the energy of the person who's introducing the sutra. And then if that bell is not attuned to the kokugyo, it's just dong. I'm supposed to hit the bell. It's not like that. This is like I'm driving the sutra. This is the same as the mukugyo. that bell is both driving and riding the sutra.

[51:39]

And then everyone comes in according to the sound of that bell. So as the bell goes ding, the sutra goes ding. There we go. So the bell has to be, bong, kanji, zaibou, zazugyou. It's not, they're not three solos. Not the bell solo, the kogyo solo, and the kogyo solo. It's, all three are one piece. And each one is responding to each other. And then, the Sangha is following all that and also responding to it. So it's all in peace, but we... And I keep saying, that's the most important bell, do that. Okay. So anyway, that's my...

[52:48]

Discomposure. That's my picture of our liturgy. That's true, yes, yes it is. Yes, yes. And when you're not trying your best, that disturbs my mind. And I never give up. I never give up. And I don't carry it around with me.

[53:51]

That's what's really important, is not carrying it around. That's composure. Sometimes I carry it around. I carry it around for a few minutes and then go about my business. Yeah. And I try very hard not to blame. Music teachers, you know, are terrible. And I understand why. And you understand why. They can be really awful. But, you know, there's the picture of the music teacher with a stick, you know, hitting the piano student over the fingers with their stick. I would never do that. I would hit them over there with their bassoon. So, that's probably good for now. I also have to remember my own mistakes, which I make a lot of, actually.

[55:03]

So, we're all in the same boat in many ways, in more ways than one.

[55:13]

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