The other evening we were talking about, I was talking about a Zen monk. literally clouds and water. Clouds and water symbolize the life of a Zen monk. And what it means is how

[01:07]

our nature finds freedom in form. That's how our nature, our spirit, and... how the form of our nature remains free, or lives life in a true way. We don't separate spirit from form, actually. We don't say there's form in the spirit, or that there's nature in form, but it's all one. make some illustration.

[02:10]

We talk about one thing and the other. So, how to live our life in freedom is the point. So, clouds and water symbolize this kind of freedom in our life. has no form of its own, but takes on the shape of whatever it comes into contact with. The nature of water is like that. When you throw water on the ground, it just dries up, spreads out, so it needs some container, some form for its shape.

[03:12]

So if we fill a glass of water, we say, oh, there's a glass of water. But the water actually has no form. So water, in order to be contained, in order to have some so-called existence, needs to flow to its lowest level, the lowest level. And it seeks the lowest level, so to speak, and finds its form where there's no place else to go. And on its way, it takes temporary shapes, tentative shapes.

[04:26]

We say, oh, there's a lake. And then we say, oh, there's a stream. And here's a reservoir. And there's a bathtub full of water, a glass of water. Many, many shapes. infinite shapes. But water actually has no shape of its own. And clouds are somewhat the same. They look like something. But when you look away and then look back, the shape of the cloud has changed. It's wonderful. In the winter, I love to watch clouds. The fall and winter. Lots of clouds around here. Sometimes big, cumulus clouds.

[05:30]

And they look like castles or cities or mountains. And as we look at them, little by little, and change into something else. And clouds are also water. So, clouds let their water out, and water comes back and forms more clouds. So, clouds and water, you can see it's a wonderful kind of illustration of our life in freedom. It's freedom to take various forms and shapes. So our life actually is very formal. And the problem we have in our life is

[06:43]

how to find freedom in this formality. Not to get rid of formality, but how to find freedom, how to be free in formality. So the whole nature of our practice is based on a kind of formality. attention to form. So the problem that we have in our life, in our life as practice, is not so much How do we practice in a formal situation?

[07:45]

But how does our life conform? How does our practice conform to life, take on the form of everyday activity as reality and as practice? If we enter into everyday life with some idea, some fixed idea about what our practice is, or what I am as a Zen student or something, we cannot our life will take on a very rigid attitude.

[08:52]

That's the problem we always have. How do we practice out in everyday life, within the forms of everyday life? We say, when we come to the Zen Dojo, this is the form of practice. So it's easy to get into that form. It's like water going into the bathtub or into the swimming pool. I think it was Nyogen Sensaki who said, nowadays, you know, we practice around the swimming pool. Now, practicing like around the swimming pool, but in the old days, the whole world as the realm of practice. But how do we, in a wide world, take on form and find our freedom within that form?

[10:15]

and give others freedom as well. So why we practice around the swimming pool is to find out how to do that. So there's really no difference between our swimming pool practice You know, when we sit there, it is so important. We sit around the edge, and there's a space in the middle. Of course, we don't have much space now, but there's really no difference. There should be no difference between this form and some other form that we take as we move in the stream of life. how to have a flexible mind, soft, flexible mind, and a soft, flexible body that moves with things and conforms to things, takes on the form and shape of our environment.

[11:41]

without getting lost, confused, or bogged down. Water itself is, we can say it has a certain kind of purity, but as it goes through various courses, all kinds of things enter into it, what we call impurities. All kinds of impurities enter into the water. But as the water goes back into the ground, it filters out all the impurities and comes out again. It's just pure water. When it enters into the lake, you can see all the way down to the bottom. So, when we sit thousand, we can see all the way down to the bottom.

[12:56]

We should be able to see all the way down to the bottom. This is a form of sitting, to enable us to do that. So, this formal practice is kind of purification. We let the mind settle, or we let the so-called impurities settle. And just a pure, clear, still mind is But like water, we keep filling, and we flow out into daily life, and so-called impurities start filling up our vessels.

[14:03]

But we don't really reject impure life. Impure life and pure life is all the same. Even though there's impurity in the water, The water itself is stainless. No problem. So in the midst of activity, to Mind is really stainless. Water is still water, without worrying about purity or impurity, good or bad.

[15:06]

If we experience our pure mind, pure clean mind, and continue to sit over and over again without trying to maintain some to look for purity. Looking for purity is not such a good attitude. As we keep seeking purity, it keeps eluding us. So, we say that the purity is obscured by the impure element. And when the impure elements are lifted or filtered out, then our pure mind is just there, always is there.

[16:54]

There's no time when it's not there. No matter how thick the impurity is, pure mind is still always there. But in order to see it, we clear some of that away, and then we see some glimmer of purity, and clear water appears. We can say that The clear water is like absolute mind, the absolute. And the impurity is like our activity, our worldly activity.

[18:01]

But both are inseparable. One is not really separated from the other. So the pure activity of our life takes many, many shapes and many forms in this world of activity. And this world of activity is actually our pure mind. And the ability to keep moving or not cling to some special form or shape is our freedom.

[19:13]

Even though we take many shapes, everything is constantly changing. And our stream, our life stream is taking many forms and shapes. Without clinging to any particular form or any particular shape is how our stream remains clean. You watch a stream in the mountains because it doesn't get hung up someplace. It stays very fresh and clean. So when we have this attitude of not clinging to things, letting our life move as it needs to move, we maintain some clear, some clarity.

[20:31]

and some freedom. So, the biggest hindrance, of course, is our desire to build some form, some ideal form. And for a Zen monk, you know, to have no attachment to anything, to have no special form of anything, and to have no desire for anything for yourself. It leaves you free to take on any situation and to help our people in any way that's necessary.

[21:41]

You know, to not have any special career is also the career of a bum. So a monk and a bum kind of have this thing in common. But there is a difference. The difference is that the monk is dedicated to helping everyone by having no particular desire for himself. He turns his attention to being a support of everyone and maintaining freedom and helping others to find their own freedom.

[22:52]

So actually, a bum can become a bodhisattva by just turning around. When I was first starting to study Zen, the people that, a lot of the people that were attracted to Zen, this is in the early 60s, People who were on drugs and who had given up any kind of career or any kind of desire to do anything in society. They were kind of like bunks. When they came in contact with practice, it just turned them around, and they became a bodhisattva.

[24:14]

Because it gave their lives some reality and some purpose. One of the problems that we have is how to have also a career, you know, how to have some activity that we do in this world and still have that freedom. Bodhisattva, you know, always comes has the freedom to not have to do anything, but chooses to enter into the world, like everyone, and take on some career or some burden, actually.

[25:24]

That's actually bodhisattva spirit, is to become involved in worldly activities, even though that person has complete freedom. So, the problem of our practice is how to turn into, turn to the world and maintain freedom, maintain a flowing freedom, and help others to maintain freedom.

[26:29]

and never to really escape from that. You know, when we sit zazen, this flowing stream takes on this form of cross-legged sitting. and how we maintain our freedom in this most formal of forms. How to keep this water So probably the most necessary quality is patience.

[27:55]

Great patience. Patience to see the minute changes and to conform to the minute changes. We have some fixed idea. If we have some fixed idea of what we're doing, we can't see things as they really are. We can't really focus on how minute changes are always taking place. So, we can't conform to what's actually happening. If we can conform to what's actually happening, moment after moment, we have very little difficulty. But because we have some idea of how things are, we feel trapped.

[29:10]

So to become one with the form, just to become completely one with the form, is how we maintain our freedom. When we try to escape, or when we lose patience, then we fall into confusion, and we fall into suffering. So as we practice over and over again, we absorb practice through our pores. How we learn is through our pores. You can learn a little bit by someone talking like this,

[30:33]

How we actually learn this is by practicing over and over until it comes through our pores, completely absorbed. Which looks like zazen, because we're considering it's a fixed kind of form. But there's infinite space in it. Completely limitless space. So when we can find our freedom in this still, pure form, then when we move to some other shape, some other form, we can also find our freedom within that form.

[32:16]

One activity after the next, constantly moving and changing shape, vital freedom. This is how our practice moves from Zazen into ordinary daily activity. And this is also called Genjo Koan. This is our Koan of daily life, which arises moment by moment. co-analyzes moment by moment, as we constantly change shape and change form. There's no formal or informal. Formal or informal is just like talking about one, two, or three o'clock, just something that we impose on the situation.

[33:22]

When you can feel comfortable in this formal situation, you can feel comfortable in another kind of formal situation, which we call informal. But we need to flow into the form each time. So eventually, or actually always, water takes many courses, but water is just water. All water belongs to water, to just water.

[34:32]

So when we can flow like this, we recognize ourselves in everyone. All the streams, water looks over and recognizes itself in the other streams, even though each stream is independent. This is a universal aspect. we don't have to contend with other streams. Anyway, I've done all the talking. Would you like to say something?

[35:42]

I'm not clear on this, but I find it hard to see the difference between to conform, conformism, And because when we are in the world of daily activity, we are within a world of social forms that appear to be as given as natural forms that are actually the product of human activity. Well, we have to we have some path that we go on.

[36:51]

You know, even though we have some path that we go on, that path is not isolated and meets with other paths and is conditioned by various other forces in the world. So we have to choose some way for this stream to go. It's not, you know, even though we pick out some smooth path for the stream to go, you know, you say, well, maybe it should go this way and then over there. But when we get up here, you know, it's already been, there are all these other streams and paths that have been deforming our way. I'm nuts. There they are, ruining my path. Can't get through. So, in order to continue, you have to deal with all those other paths, all those deformities, unexpected pitfalls.

[38:07]

And in order to survive and continue, We don't lose sight of our way. We don't lose sight of the way our path should go. But things come up and we have to deal with them. And sometimes we have to deal with things that we don't want to deal with. Sometimes we have to do things that we don't want to do. And even though we have ten precepts, say don't do this and don't do that, sometimes we come across a situation where we have to do something It's against the precepts in order for it to be right. So not even clinging to precepts. Precepts are a kind of guideline. They say, well, don't kill, steal, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes you have to do something that's not in conformity with them. And that's correct rather than to stick to

[39:18]

some rule. But because we have precepts, we have some guideline for our life. So that's important to know what precepts are and to know where we're going with some So if you think that there shouldn't be any, if you think that there should be no nukes, then you should, that's part of your path, and you should include that in your path. But some people say, well, you know, Does that mean I have to be pacifistic or something?

[40:21]

What I'm presenting is a negative side. There's negative and positive. Negative side is that you flow and conform with things. The positive side is that you create also a way. So it doesn't mean to just be passive. There's passive and active in perfect balance. What we do, we should do, completely. I'm presenting it, kind of one side, you know. But when we decide something, then we should do something. And whatever we do, we should do completely and wholeheartedly. It's like when we're six thousand, In order to sit, you have to have some passive quality.

[41:24]

You have to conform to the posture and so forth. But at the same time, you create the posture. So all of your energy, your whole heart, meaning body, mind, heart, is completely concentrated in this one act. Nothing left out. The whole universe is participating in Zazen with you. So, you know, to keep our attention always ready, without some preconceived idea of things.

[42:30]

And when you need to do something, you know what to do. Just do something. Always being ready for something. That's that kind of attitude. and to be ready and willing to take on what comes next. This kind of practice really shows us our own resistance and ego. Our ego comes up accustomed So this is the koan with our ego, dealing with our ego, moment after moment. It's resistance, and it's laziness, our own laziness.

[43:39]

And our own unwillingness to participate in life.

[43:46]

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