The Shusho ceremony tomorrow is a very important part of your practice, and especially, of course, of Reb's practice. There are three major steps in a in practice, in the form of initiations. First is, when you make a decision, a commitment, to take responsibility for your life, and you decide to make some kind of vows, And that's tokudo, you know, shaving your head and becoming a priest. So it's possible to do that and remain a layman, too. And the second big one is shuso. The first one is your own decision. The second one is your friends test you. And the third one is your teacher tests you.

[01:30]

or your teacher acknowledges you. So, last time when I spoke, there were some people who thought I meant the shusho ceremony was more, was something like doksan. That may be partly true, but I think you're giving him doksan, not the other way around. If so, Doksana, of course, is more personal and more concerned with your particular practice at a particular time. But in any question, you know, you have to get behind the question. For example, if you just ask, what is Manjushri? Manjushri, this is not Manjushri, that Shakyamuni, the Pope. I think that little piece of wood says, I'm Manjushri. We're a primitive country and we have to do the best we can. Green Gulch has a real Manjushri in the city. But anyway, Chakrimani is good enough for us as well to be Manjushri too.

[02:57]

So if you ask, what is Manjushri? You mean, what place does he have in the Buddhist hierarchy of pantheon? Well, that's not a very interesting question. You can look that up in a book. You want to ask a question that's not exactly about yourself, but it's about Buddhism, but isn't about Buddhism in the sense of What is Manjushri? However, you might ask the question, what is Manjushri, in another way. Say you're disturbed, you know, by some hard aspect of Zen practice. Maybe it doesn't seem compassionate enough, or it doesn't seem, seems too isolated or something like that. If you're having that kind of, say, feeling, then you can say, how do I express that? How do I, you can say, well, why do we use the stick in the zendo?

[04:29]

But if you get behind why we use the stick in the zendo, you can look, what is the whole atmosphere of the zendo? The whole atmosphere of the zendo is Manjushri. We have this particular Buddha in the zendo, this particular Bodhisattva in the zendo. So if you come in and you say, what is Manjushri? You're asking a question about Buddhism, but you're behind the question in the sense you Why is our practice like this in the Zendo, rather than some other way? Then Rev can answer in different ways. He should know what you're asking. You ask, what is Manjushri? He should know, ah, in this case, this person is asking, where is compassion? So he can say a number of things. I don't know, he might say, elephants are doing Zazen. Well, I mean, you'd have to know a little about Buddhism to know what he meant. The other side of Bhairavachana is Samantabhadra, who sometimes represents compassion. And Samantabhadra sits on an elephant. Elephants are doing that. Or Manjushri has a sword. He could say, everywhere from Manjushri's sword, flowers bloom.

[06:02]

which refers to what he starts out his, you know, hitting with the stick, he'll start out, he says, this is a life-giving and life-taking sword. Why do we say life-taking sword brings forth flowers? So you can ask a question, you know, in that way. I don't mean maybe this is too, that's my way of doing it. You may have some other way, but anyway, that kind of feeling. I was looking through my notebooks of lectures that Suzuki Goshi gave in 1961 and 2 and 3, and I came to a lecture on the life-giving and life-taking sword. And it says Wednesday evening, and then I have a little note. At 12.40 in the afternoon, Sally Baker was born. I found this morning. But somebody asking what is Manjushri also might not be asking about compassion, but about how they feel they themselves are scared of that part of themselves which is Manjushri

[07:34]

So in that case, Rev might say, you know, why are you holding him at arm's length? I don't know exactly how Rev will answer the question. But we can ask questions about Buddhism itself, you know. We're testing Buddhism as a way for us to make our own life situation more inclusive. And Rep should answer from a wide standpoint. The most important single factor in practice probably is courage. And courage doesn't mean self-confidence.

[08:37]

Courage just means you're not fooling yourself. But it takes some courage to stop fooling yourself. Take some responsibility for your life. And death. You know, if you don't have courage, you know, It means you think you're immortal. You're going to have lots of time to work things out. And we pool ourselves, you know, so thoroughly. We finally come to the conclusion that we have to practice that life is some kind of a situation that's too entangling, so we have to practice. Usually we practice like we're taking methadone. You know what methadone is? You know, if you take heroin, you get stopped taking heroin, like sometimes you do methadone, I think it is. And methadone, you get hooked on methadone as well. The disease, you know, the antidote in the disease,

[10:15]

the antidote becomes another disease. Sometimes the antidote becomes a cover for our problem. Well, I have my... I'm doing my duty, you know. My responsibility I'm filling. But actually sometimes we do that as a way of avoiding our actual responsibility. Because we have this need to fulfill some responsibility we sense, instead of actually fulfilling it, we make some easy-to-fulfill responsibility and do it. Then we think, ah, yes, I'm fulfilling my responsibility. And we practice the same way. We practice zazen. Not really practicing zazen, but as some... that kind of expression, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, Double meaning. Also means we hide our eyes with our eyes. So the traps we make for us are rather clever.

[11:46]

and it's pretty difficult to get out of. And many of us get quite close, you know, but we lack that last little bit of courage, that one percent that's the difficult part, to actually just look at the world. Looking at the world requires we take responsibility for our karma, for our actions. We don't really want to take responsibility. So it takes some commitment. Practice or friendship takes some commitment. And commitment means that you don't discriminate. As long as you think one thing is more important than another, you can't have real commitment. As long as you think you're more important than some other person.

[13:15]

or people are more important than trees or something. Everything is equal. Equally real anyway. We don't So there's two important sides to practice from this point of view. One is that you view everything as unreal. It's certainly not real in the usual way we look at it. Only with some courage can you view things that way. Only viewing things that way can you have some courage And the other is to view everything as equally real. I think what... One way of describing practice is that what we are actually looking for is a real friend.

[14:44]

A friend is, you know, the ultimate possession, too. All the other possessions and accumulations are really aimed at having friends, or having people think something about it. We just want admiration, that's some kind of diseased form of friendship. But how to have a real friend is, like everything in life, not what we think it is at first sometimes. And a lot of us spend a lot of time saying we don't have any friends, and what we think friendship is, is not what it is. Anyway, of course there are various kinds of friends, But the kind of friend I'm talking about, especially, is not the friend you share some history with, but the friend you share, maybe, reality with. That kind of person you can meet and know and understand each other immediately just by looking at each other. You share everything, not just some common history.

[16:15]

You know, Sangha is really a community, a Buddhist community. It's really just a specific way of viewing everyone as your friend. Not necessarily that you want to go to the movies with everyone. But it's so scary, you know, to have a friend. We get so, you know, when your mother's angry at you, you go to your father. So we get the idea that we solve our world by things. So we have some real fear of non-existence.

[17:38]

not only from the point of view of our own death, but from the point of view of what can we depend on. So we want to depend on our friends, you know. in an unreal way. So we want to possess them. And it's so scary to think that you might have a friend and then lose it, but generally most of us don't have friends. You know, sort of we have friends, but we keep a little bit at arm's length. Because we're scared of what will happen. Certainly nothing's more painful than to lose a wife or husband, or for a teacher to lose a disciple, or a disciple to lose a teacher. And how painful it was for Suzuki Roshi's disciples, for his students, to lose Suzuki Roshi. And some people never got to know Suzuki Roshi for fear of losing him.

[19:09]

But, you know, which is better? And if you knew Suzuki Goshi well, losing him was somehow wonderful, too. So if we go around the Afraid, you know, all the time. Unwilling to view things as unreal or unwilling to view things as equally real. Then we never enter in to anything. If you have some feeling for some person or for a teacher or

[20:11]

anything, you should enter into it. Usually, it turns out that what you feared, if you actually see what such and such a feeling is, it's not something that hurts you. But usually, since we see it in terms of possession, we see it in terms of something that can hurt us by Lack of possession. But if you can be, not be possessive, be free of hindrances, then you can act on everything. Everything that happens, you don't say, well, this is less important than that. Everything that happens is real, equally real as everything else. Your disease is equally real. So if, as I said last time, the truck which is disturbing your sleep, if you try to push it away, you also push away your sleep. To enter into the noise of the truck is to enter into your sleep too.

[21:29]

So at the point you come in your zazen where you feel afraid, just enter into it. And the point when you see that your duty or your eye is hiding your eye, then look right through it. In the light of the real insubstantial quality of our life, how many of us are going to survive even a short time? It's silly not to have courage. Then you can look each other in the eye.

[22:40]

So tomorrow we want to test Rev. We want to look him in the eye. as our friend. In this way, he can continue his practice. In this way, if you ask questions directly, you won't give him a chance to think. You don't want to give him a chance to think. Let him think. Ask him questions. And if his question doesn't satisfy you, his answer doesn't satisfy you, say, unclear,

[23:58]

And ask him again, something. And if it still doesn't satisfy you, ask him to explain. Okay? But three's enough. And, you know, we should be scared maybe a little bit. That makes it more fun. And we actually find our space, you know, if we're both brave and afraid. If you're just brave, it's boring. This Yusuf ceremony is not going to have many visitors, you know. I guess that's my fault, but I wanted to go back to the way we started out and I guess the way the Shuso ceremony was many, many, many years ago, which is it's just the people who practice together confronting each other and testing and helping with the Shuso.

[25:28]

So, only a few people will come, and they won't be asking questions. I think Oksan Tsukuroshi's wife is coming down, and... Chino-sensei, I think, and Les Kay will be the next to show. And... from Los Altos. And... as you know, Chino-sensei will be here for a couple weeks in the next practice period. And I don't think Katagirashi can come. And the ex-Shusos, the people who were Shusos, some of them will be here. And possibly one or two friends of Reb's who Reb invited several months ago when we still thought we would have wider invitations.

[26:35]

And I also invited as my guest, I invited Debbie. Reb, rather, was against it. She's not an extra, so... I thought Reb was one friend. Anyway, we should enter into our feelings with each other. And find some commitment which allows us to continue our practice together.

[28:00]

Is it some question? Yeah. Yeah, it is. And you can get in trouble if you don't know where the line is. Yeah. Just be angry. Sure. But if it's based on possessiveness, you know, try to notice if your anger is based on possessiveness. Then, you know, you're probably making a mess of things. But if your anger is because the other person stepped on your toe, you know, or something dumb,

[29:14]

It's all right to be angry. Yeah, you're dumb. Yeah, that helps people, you know. But when I say you enter into everything as equally real, anger is equally real. Love is equally real. No, but what's the real point of love or anger or some discomfort? We want to feel some, see some bigger base. And you don't feel it till you have some commitment based on something more than possession. You know, if everything's equally real, you don't need to possess everything because this thing has no more value than that thing. And you can't tell, particularly in your practice in the beginning, what's... what...

[30:18]

is good and what's bad or what's anger and what's actually some real expression. And you can't bottle yourself up either. So, because we take some rule, don't be angry or, you know, don't eat too much or something like that, it doesn't mean that you have to spend all your life not eating too much or not being angry. It just means that you'll never find out what anger is unless you limit it sometimes. But the purpose is not to eliminate anger, but to understand anger. Because everything that exists in you actually is your request for a true friend, or your request for enlightenment, or your movement toward the realization of your nature. How do you see everything that happens to you in this way? Recognize everything that happens to you as a kind of gift. Do you understand what I mean? Usually,

[31:51]

we get in trouble when we're possessive. But even possessiveness itself, you know, what do we really want to possess? What can we really possess? So, one side of having a friend is to know what ground we both stand on. So we try to understand the actual situation of our lives. What is Manjushri? What is Buddha nature? What is ultimate reality? Yeah, he asked if somebody had baskets of courage around and was offering baskets of courage for sale. Excuse me, I'm teasing you. She asked actually,

[33:20]

You have to start out with courage or can you cultivate it? I'm not sure anyone starts out with courage. A lot of people start out with confidence. But courage usually is based on an actual perception of your situation and the willingness to take responsibility for your situation. And we're not willing to take responsibility, you know, to put off or fool around or... When we don't really realize, I mean, simply you can say, when we don't really realize we're going to die, you know, I don't know how to I don't mean something morbid. I guess, Reb, I wasn't here to talk about death. Death as a friend, it's a very good friend, actually, death. It puts things in perspective, actually. And it's the basis of our actual joy.

[34:39]

But I think what you say is right, that in a sense, Azen does increase our courage, because we become familiar with our courage. Just sitting sashin, which is a rather small thing, actually, and the stakes aren't very high, just you, Maybe that's pretty high stakes. But you have some experience of being willing to stay with something. And the more experience you have, the more you're ready for that moment when, yes, you can actually look at things. Do you duck or do you look? Do you distract yourself with remembering your history? Some of you

[36:02]

of us, and as soon as we're in a situation of confrontation, oh, we remember what it was like as a child, when we had some similar experience. And as we get out of it, we say, oh yes, there was something that happened with the cow that was just like that, and then I did, and then it's gone. It looks like a real response. I understand because it was like, but it's completely different. If you say, ah, this is like something else, and you're in trouble. Don't say it like anything, just what's before us. So, when you find that you're trying to go into the next moment, you know, with the idea, well, this moment, I've tested this one before, I'm safe. Yes. That's not what I mean by courage. But that's the easiest way, you sort of stick a foot into the next moment. That's why you can tell about people and how they walk. Some people walk just like the earth is going to step out. They step out. Yeah.

[37:25]

You people ask such difficult questions. She said, how do you take care of a good friend? Do you take joy in what he does or she does? You know, there's two kinds of merit that a bodhisattva has. One kind of merit is he does things and accumulates merit, supposedly. He does good. But considered better or higher than that is the bodhisattva who takes joy in what others do. And then give that joy to others. So, true joy isn't, you know, your doing. It's taking joy in what others do. And then giving that joy to them and to others. So there's no you there.

[38:50]

But it also means to take care of a friend means to take care of yourself. Because you need to be friendly to yourself, too. You can't be friendly to anyone else if you can't be friendly to yourself. You're also one of the people in Sangha. So you should treat yourself as well as you treat other people. Maybe not quite as well. We haven't cut it down yet.

[39:58]

One of the two trees has had so many bad things said about it that it's committed suicide it looks like. It's withered away and it has one little leaf on it. The other one isn't going to give up so easily. So maybe we should leave that one. We can cut trees down if we know what we're cutting down. You can cut your own karma off if you know what you're cutting off. Dogen, you know, is very interesting. As I said to Reb last night, he's very smart, man. Dr. Koenzeck said, after I gave him an essay that Dogen had written, he read it and he said, that Dogen had it up here. He didn't just have it up here, he was pretty amazing, man.

[41:56]

But I was looking at some Dogen the other night and he read some, he quoted some story, you know. And most people take those words as representing the story, so they take the key words of the story and they talk about the key words. But Dogen took the story as the words. What's there were the words, not the story. And he looked at each word as equally real. The, the, whatever the words were. Each word he considered equal. And that's a sign of somebody either very smart or very just looking at what's presented. He also says very interesting things. One place he says, those travel fastest who, I guess, I may get it mixed up, it's not so important. Those travel fastest who don't arrive, for arrival hinders arrival.

[43:24]

It's really rather interesting. Arrival hinders arrival. Non-arrival hinders journey. Maybe that doesn't make any sense to you, but it's partly the same thing as I said. Your duty hides your duty, and your practice hides your practice. But the very hiding of your practice, the very impulsiveness, is it equally real? So if you're being impulsive, you look at the impulsiveness with equal weight with the anger or the love or the whatever. That way you can see what's happening. But if you emphasize one or another part, usually we're emphasizing it because we are afraid or possess it. But it's not easy, you know, as you know, Buddhism attributes, you know, there's two main sources. One is our basic desire for becoming, to create life, you know, which hides life from us, too.

[44:55]

So, self-creation, and the other is self-affirmation, which hides our self from ourselves. So, we're always trying to be greedy or create more of ourselves. And it's fundamental, otherwise we know the human race wouldn't continue if there wasn't that feeling. But that can't be the only feeling. You have to see the background if you're going to live your life. Anyway, I talk like this, you know. I'm talking to myself too.

[45:46]

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