tried to talk about the contrast between Zen's immersion in society and the environment as practice, maybe as the subject of practice, but not the object of practice. the contrast between Zen taking society and the environment as the context of practice and Zen's relative little concern that those who practice Zen or Zen as a practice or philosophy has for society as a whole, or has. In theory, how can I say it?

[01:22]

There isn't much concern with theory or organization that relates us to society as a whole. There should be, and there always is, a good deal or a good sense of the hermit in our practice, a sense of the hermit which isn't limited to being alone. I called Alan Walsh in the transformation ceremony we had for him, a great hermit This lack of any much theory or organizational relationship to society as a whole, I think, is a big problem for lots of people. I know it was a...

[03:11]

It's quite a big problem for me, as I've talked about before. Isn't it irresponsible, you know, just to be here? Someone said that yesterday, or implied something like that. And I think it's pretty difficult. You have to have practiced quite a while or understand Buddhist philosophy pretty well to understand, on a mental level anyway, how our practice relates to society in a deeply connected, responsible way. And it also, as I tried to talk about yesterday, relates to our own sense of an amphitheater waiting somewhere for us to enact our own life. I think probably that amphitheater is the most dear possession of most of us.

[04:44]

Where what you do is finally going to count. Where things really count. Most of your life you... Maybe it'll end up to be all your life you keep thinking, this is preparation for the time when I start doing what counts. Always preparing for that time, when you do what counts. But then, practice. Or, actually, I don't, one reason I say then practice is because I want to give some of you an out, you know. Some of you are practicing some other way, and some of you are not practicing this way forever, you know, or you'll... 10 or 15 years from now, the fact that you will be practicing them in a traditional way will be a memory.

[06:06]

So I don't want to say life is second sense. Then you'll think, oh, I didn't really do life. If I say ten practices, oh, well, that was only ten practices. And I don't like Even though I don't mean, then, if I say, life is such-and-such, that there aren't, I don't mean there aren't other lives. I mean that if you look into whatever you're doing, you'll find life is actually such-and-such. Anyway, then emphasizing direct experience, limiting yourself to direct, your own direct experience. The sound of the airplane, not the idea of an airplane going to Los Angeles. Maybe if you really

[07:29]

hear the sound of the airplane. Everybody in the airplane will be in your ears. Anyway, just our direct experience and the faith or courage to depending on you, and it may be faith or courage, too. Stick to this. Attempt to stay with your direct experience may seem, by contrast, irresponsible, socially irresponsible. And certainly, it means giving up your empathy Just this moment, this moment is the last moment and the first moment, and nothing will come into this moment. Nothing is needed, nothing is missing from this moment. There's no anxiety.

[08:49]

This moment is your palace, your great space. Do you feel safe in this particular palace? The slower and slower you can go, the more you don't mentally race. You know, as when we eat, we can't sense the signal our mind gives us, our stomach gives us, in our mouth, that we've eaten enough. And so we eat past that, and past that.

[10:04]

And then we're eating the memory of the taste. The race. And many, many things we have that experience. So it's like going more and more slowly. There's no need to rush to the next moment. There isn't any next moment. Just this palace is changing. But usually we are secretly lazy. We hope Not too much happened to it. We hope nothing unexpected will happen. That's pretty usual to feel that way, and okay, but it's rather precarious. You're not relaxed or prepared.

[11:33]

So practice requires some energy. It requires quite a lot of energy to be just here in this palace. As soon as you think about something else, or what the future will be like, or what this will lead to, it's laziness actually. some escape and some responsibility of this moment. And this is religious feeling. Objectively, maybe we call it religious feeling. Subjectively, spiritual. Life. But if you're doing it, not even spiritual or religious. Maybe someone else says he'd rather have some feeling of wise spirit, or Tathagata has a religious feeling. But for us it doesn't have so much of a religious feeling. But there's some feeling when you can

[12:58]

Respect your own predicament. Know there's no alternative to your own predicament. But although knowing it helps, you know, practicing it, being it, finding the energy to be there, When you have that, you know, feeling, you will sense more dimensions than your mind usually wants to permit out of fear. And then you'll have some, you'll say, oh, I felt bowing today, or looking at the Buddha, or walking by some trees. I felt some religious feeling, some satisfying spiritual feeling. So I think for most of us it will take one or two or three or four years.

[14:45]

of effort to be one with your activity, to stay with your poem, to stay within your own palace. And you have to be willing constantly to take chances. Not knowing quite what to do, but willing to do something. If two or three alternatives are there, trust the fact that the alternatives which are new

[15:53]

are there for some reason and try them rather than just taking the old alternative. The energy to know what to do right now. If something comes up, you know what to do. If you don't know what to do, you know what to find out. You start immediately to find out what to do. At first it's quite an effort, because there's a resistance. Every situation that changes, we have some resistance to, it's changing. These tiny moments you'll see. Something comes and you'll try to stay in the past moment, you know? And so at first it requires some... something like that. But eventually it becomes a habit, you know?

[17:08]

The more you realize it's like trying to stay with a ghost, eventually it's just mostly automatic, mostly a habit. And other alternatives don't seem to be there anymore. But on the other hand, it's so pleasant to indulge ourselves. And if Zen practice makes you strong enough to also permit a certain amount of indulgence, sleep. I wouldn't want to deprive you of that. But when you get bored with that, sleep. to be in that place, you know, where you always respect yourself.

[18:29]

makes life a good deal easier. And makes everyone else's life a good deal easier. Do you have some questions you'd like to... something you'd like to talk about? It's there all the time. You mean why? I know exactly what you mean, but the question is upside down.

[19:42]

You know, as we were talking about science yesterday, talking with Sterling, in a way it's not well known, as you progress into smaller and smaller units, from the atom to very minute particles, The energy involved, the binding, is tremendously more powerful. So the atomic bomb is only some small portion of the energy that's actually there. The more distracted you are, the less energy you have. The more concentrated you are, The more you're here in your palace, you'll have tremendous amounts of energy. In fact, you may have too much, that's one problem with darkness sometimes. Anyway, if you have the idea that energy is not there, how do I get it?

[21:21]

It's not a useful, successful way of thinking about it, if you have the idea more. The energy is there. If I knew that this would be there, that way you'll try things which you didn't think you had the energy to do. Do you understand what I mean? If you think, oh, I don't have the energy, I've got to go find it and then do this, you won't do many things. Our practice should always be out on a limb. I don't say it in a kicky fancy. Anyway, out on a limb. So you should be willing to do things, even though you know you don't quite feel it yet, you haven't got the strength. But you do it and find the strength there. Because everything you need, certainly all the energy you need is there. how much energy we, our mind, you know, just if we put it on a physical level, tactical, physical level, your brain burns up more energy, I think, than all the rest of you together. How much energy goes into creating that energy?

[22:52]

or worrying about myself and my relationships. You know, when I was a kid, I always thought that there's various ideas about being successful, and you have to try. Never could really get into that. But I thought I should. So I thought I should do something. I had some idea that you had to think about yourself and find out who you are that way and improve yourself. This was when I was about eight years old maybe. And I read a survey at that time that showed that unsuccessful people thought about themselves all the time, slightly less, still quite unsuccessful but not so bad, thought about themselves a little less, etc. And the most successful people never thought about themselves at all. That confused me at that time.

[24:24]

It's true, if you have the time to do things, you don't have the time to think about yourself. If you think about yourself compulsively all the time, then you'll be in a mental hospital. So, just practically speaking, giving up, thinking about ourselves, we think it has some value or we have some responsibility to do so, but that isn't the way we improve ourselves or behave responsibly with others.

[25:28]

If you find yourself Sometimes you feel like you're unable to follow people around sometimes. And it feels like, um, that, sometimes you're pretty consistent, but you're unable to follow people. And then, um, it's, when you're young, when you're in your 2000s, um, I think you've described a situation. What would you like me to say about it? Well, I'm thinking that not to subjugate you on this and pity you on this, but I thought you'd sort of said that you can't really practice much of how it is.

[26:51]

Well, there are actually some schools of Buddhism which divide things up that way. Now we follow the precepts of Judaism, and after you've attained a certain amount of something or other, you then practice meditation for one year or something, and then you do something else. Anyway, in Zen we don't practice that way, and it doesn't even make any sense. Your practice of Zazen is... There isn't three steps in Zazen. In Zazen, and... First of all, there's some confusion between the jhana of the fifth paramita, which is a specific practice, mostly like maybe sashi, and the Jhana of Lin, which includes all the paramitas and all Buddhist practices. So, dozen means you are following all the precepts. When you sing dozen, you're not breaking any precepts, or very few. So,

[28:15]

Okay, precepts. And precepts mean your own feeling of what you should do. It doesn't actually mean some rule. Those rules are just suggestions. Actually, there are thousands of precepts. And it may be good, you know, to make your own precepts up, like New Year's resolutions. You know, there are ten. Do not kill, do not take what is not given, etc. But for yourself, what are the fundamental things I would like to have characterized my activity?

[29:20]

If you do that, you'll see what's important to you, and then you'll see you left one or two out. Why did you leave that one out? So from that point of view, if you are not comfortable with your actions, if you feel unequivocal about what you're doing, you can't have a calm state of mind. So you can't practice samadhi. What if you have a feeling about what is the right action for you, but you seem to be going against it often inside yourself? Realizing that you've swept the mutated mind, and you seem to do it over and over again. Stop. You know, at least try to stop.

[30:50]

that trying is—practice isn't some state, as I often say, trying to practice is practice. If you keep trying, if you have a big enough problem and you keep trying, that may make your practice perfect. But some of us like the sensation of trying, so we create problems to keep trying. That's some other way of delaying entering the actual world. But sometimes, you know, what you're trying not to do No. Because it disrupts your state of mind, you should look at it very carefully if it repeats itself, because there may be some secret there, or some truer precept. That, for some reason, you don't want to face.

[32:10]

Aren't these New Year's resolutions a way of thinking about yourself? What moves you to try to look for that contradiction? We can always relate A and B or C because they're all just various emphases.

[33:20]

If I say A or B, there must be some difference. And if you don't see it, you know, it's not necessary to figure it out right now. But what I'm talking about is in general. Our language and communication can't make very subtle distinctions or suggestions. So if you try to compare them at the level that they're said, you'll close off your experience.

[34:30]

Yeah, I understand what you mean. I don't mean that your question isn't accurate, but that asking and also letting be are important. So first I responded to just letting a confusion or a contradiction be. As for your question specifically, I don't know exactly what your experience is in each moment, but... Usually, in trying to make some, say, precept or notice, it's not exactly the same as thinking about yourself, because you notice it when you do something. And you see yourself doing this, and then this again, and then this again. So each time you can come to some conclusion, this upsets me, or this seems to...

[35:50]

be rather harmful to other people. And so you can make a resolution, shall we say, to, next time I'll see if I can catch myself. But you don't think about it in between, just when it comes up. More like talking about direct experience. Not the actual moment you do something, but you don't have to think about it, you know, other times. Do you understand what I mean? You don't have to come to some theory about it. Go ahead. I can repeat it. She asked me to say something more about what Sue said, about the other precept that may be hidden under what you think you don't want to do. My best example of that is my brown telephone story, which most of you know, I think.

[37:24]

I used to, for quite a few years, I had a practice of asking myself questions. I would sense some vague area that I couldn't get at, couldn't be conscious within. I didn't know quite what it was doing, but it seemed to affect my activity, my action. Or there was some tendency I had to argue or to think too much about something. So I would form some question like, you know, why do I think so much? Why do I think so much? I don't know if I ever said that question, but I might have picked some question. So I would drive to work at the university and I'd say, why do I think so much? And always trying to keep that question before me. And it would change, you know, it would change into something else. Completely, sometimes, it would change into stop thinking, stop thinking, or it would change into something else, which might be, say, the source of the thinking, or the topic that I was usually thinking about, and then I would notice that most of what I called thinking was actually thinking around a particular topic, say. In that kind of way,

[38:54]

And I tried to follow the question as it changed. Often it changed into the answer or a statement. Sometimes it would disappear for a few days or a week or months and then would come back up. Or then suddenly, sometimes I'd find my action itself was the answer. I no longer was doing it. Or what I was doing in relationship to my job or other people or my use of time, space, reflected that I'd resolved that foggy area. Anyway, in the midst of one of these, I was, I guess, half daydreaming, or I was in Zazen, I don't remember. But anyway, there was this very clear image of a room, and I was trying to stick to my question. While I was sticking to it and sticking to it, a phone kept ringing. You know, this phone kept ringing, ringing, ringing. I was sort of, you know, I was conscious in the midst of it, so I was saying, why can't I wish this dream phone away and concentrate on my dream question? So I was trying to do this.

[40:14]

And finally, it wouldn't stop ringing, so I thought to myself, maybe the phone is part of the whole thing. Maybe the phone isn't something to be excluded. So I went over the phone, it happened to be a brown phone for some reason. And I went over and I picked it up and I said, hello, and it told me the answer to my question. So I said, thank you very much. So you never know if something that keeps bugging you is actually what you really want, what you, you know, think. Oh, I don't remember what the question was. Maybe both, but I don't remember what the question was. I don't know, it had anything to do with thinking. I don't ever remember asking myself that question. I remember trying to stop thinking of several things at once.

[41:17]

and trying to carry on four or five simultaneous conversations with the same person, which I used to have a tendency to do. But my friends would say, quit changing the topic, and finally I learned not to do that. I don't remember asking myself the question about thinking. Maybe so. If you really know what you're doing, it's not so bad. Always that's so. As Suzuki Roshi said, you know, I used to think it was rather foolish, that the thief is trying to protect his mother. And that's rather foolish kind of thinking, but it's true, actually. You know, he had some idea. And if he knew what he was doing, he would do it some other way. What I mean is that your palace is complete. And everything there should be there. And just because some object looks like it doesn't belong in the palace, it's because your vision is poor.

[42:41]

It's just something to laugh about. [...] that doesn't have so much evidence other than the anger of the people. And it seems like I'm really, like really good days, you know, you go on the hike and you're really interested in the interconnections of various things, but on bad days or something, I'm really pretty sure that the reason that I

[43:51]

I'm interested in making a personal fortress and in some place that's safer or that will be safer than it was before. Actually, I'm more interested in the forklift than in anything else. Did you say something? Did you have anything to say? It seems like a contradiction that's in here. I mean, I don't see how I could get out.

[44:53]

You ask flowing questions. You ask flowing questions. They start, they flow along. I don't know which part, where to jump in the stream exactly. Obviously you know that an open field is safer than a fortress. So in your own experience you should When you see you're putting up a wall, or you want a wall, take it down. You can actually do that kind of thing. And sometimes I do talk about, or we talk about, interrelatedness, and sometimes something which has nothing to do with relationships. There's no way to describe it, but it's not in terms of relationships at all. This completely without relationships. But neither one nor the other is true. It's just a way of, if you say this, you know I have to say that. If you say that, I have to say this.

[46:26]

Nothing that I say is true. It's all some suggestion from my experience, that's all. And it should awaken your own experience. I'm not interested in your being like my experience, you know, either. I'm much more interested in your own experience. I think when I try to understand that, it gets to be much bigger than what I understand as well. Are you being mindful of something? You can't hear, I know. Maybe next time, we should move into the aisle next time.

[47:57]

The stream is going to get noisier and noisier. She asked about mindfulness. And what was the first part? And understanding. Mindfulness has... There are various things you can call understanding. Mostly what we call understanding, figuring out. We don't mean... When we say understanding in Buddhism, we mean more like standing under.

[49:00]

It's not up in the middle of it figuring out. So if your mindfulness is a kind of attentiveness in which you don't interfere, you just... First of all, you have to, as I was talking about, take some energy just to be present enough to be mindful. Mindful means you just, as the sutra says, if you have anger, you see that you have anger. If it's going away, you see it's anger that's going away. If it's anger that's arising, you see that it's anger that's arising. It's not anything to do with trying to get rid of anger. Just what's there. And able to stay with what's there without trying to change it. That place which can do that needs to be articulated. But sometimes mindfulness and understanding are different. If you try to understand what's happening, you'll get completely bogged down. But you can know exactly what's happening, but that's not a matter of understanding. Because you can move with it. And moving with it, again, is a matter of energy, giving up of possessiveness of your space and time and thoughts.

[50:31]

But sometimes it is useful to try to understand things in the usual sense of the word understanding. Make a tremendous effort to understand something completely. Trying to understand, struggling with it. Really trying to shake it. Willing to batter against it, trying to see what it is. That way you'll find some what the limitations of your thinking are, of understanding are. And you might understand something.

[51:24]

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