What I'm trying to talk about is the realm in which we actually live, or at least the realm in which those who practice Buddhism find that we live in. And our, as we say over and over again, our sense of identity, our own identity, is so persistent. and yet such a minor part of our existence, but yet so persistent that it almost completely prevents us from seeing how we actually live and causes us to have a great deal of suffering.

[01:22]

for Zen Buddhism, we condense all our practice into this sitting practice. And since I've been talking about the paramitas in maybe two months now, I guess, you must see how zazen practice at first takes the form of conduct or patience or energy, etc. And all of those first paramitas are to prepare you for actual jhana. But since we're doing it, you know, since we're practicing zazen every day, I don't want to talk about that paramita. I've been avoiding talking about all the others.

[03:14]

Not that one. For after all, there's not even a thing here to experience. So if I describe the experience, which I'll do sometime, but if I describe the experience zen sitting meditation itself, the various kinds of stages of absorption. I think you'll minimize, if not notice, how important conduct and patience and giving

[04:20]

giving is a surface description or a door of what we are actually, what this realm we live in, how to enter this, the actual realm we live in, in which there's no idea of I or mine, no idea of possession. So all of the Paramitas, of course, are from the point of view of perfect wisdom or the awareness that arises from perfect wisdom. But with some kind of persistence you have to practice substituting yourself for others, seeing yourself as equal to others, offering each event to others, to enlightenment, to all beings.

[06:03]

and encouraging others to do the same. And if you practice zazen, you can notice more and more the tiny instances in which something arises, when you can make that kind of effort. we think of ourselves as something born of our parents. And having

[07:31]

substantial existence, like our parents were substantial for us, we expect somehow to be substantial for ourselves in the way our parents were substantial for us. Some distinct place, some consistent existence. But now you're practicing Buddhism and maybe some of you are substituting now, though you came to practice Buddhism.

[08:45]

hoping to get rid of some kind of problem or the discontinuities in your perception of reality, but then in Buddhism you substitute a new illustrious Buddhist career in But even if you've made such a simple substitution still, you're practicing Buddhism, and you are no longer just born of your parents. Whether you like it or not, you are now born from Buddhism, and born even from a particular lineage. And if you can give up the idea of I and mine, you are born from the energies about you, from each of us. Which, as long as you have some sense of possession, some sense of identity, you can't believe, can't recognize,

[10:16]

this phenomenon, and so you're always resisting it, dragging your feet, or wanting some proof. You may be willing to go along with it if you get proof of it in the terms you're used to understanding. Mostly we receive, of course, like a spark from a fire burning so quickly. So the first practice is recognizing the millions of things we receive each moment by tempting, with your awareness, to give.

[11:24]

to respond by giving, to respond by letting go of your identity, of all those things we can call, when you... You call feelings, etc., but we call, Buddhists call, concurrent causes, which prevent you from And seeing that this world is without origination, that everything is present just now, that there is no need to seek for anything, that there's no need to consider yourself even in spatial terms or temporal terms. This is what we mean by perfect wisdom. Even if you take some children's question like, which came first, the chicken or the

[12:59]

It's not difficult, if you look at it, to see that neither one could come first. Both chicken and egg are one phenomena. So, you could ask then, maybe the question is, what came before the chicken and the egg? Since the question doesn't ask what came before the chicken and the egg, there's some wisdom in the question, because it just says, which came first, the chicken or the egg, which is some recognition of the simultaneity of things. The question, what came before the chicken and the egg, is not the question. But if you ask it, instead of looking at what the question points out, but which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, the question of the chicken or the egg? You can say, mind came first before the question, which also gives you some clue.

[14:31]

And chicken are same thing. So same thing produces same thing. You don't go from something more primitive to something less primitive. The egg is as perfect as the chicken. So our experience experience of this lineage, this tradition that you are now part of, is that we are – I don't know how to express it exactly – we are identical with the universe. Or, when I was a child, My grandfather told me that if I got up early enough, I could see this, I think he called it the squigamumzee, swallow itself. That interested me quite a bit, to see something swallow itself, exactly how it would do it. I couldn't quite imagine.

[15:59]

The first problem was I couldn't figure out when was early, because if I got up very early, my grandfather was already out chopping wood, he'd say, it wasn't early enough. I couldn't figure out what was early enough. So I gave up trying to see it, but it remained, you know. There's a physicist, I think his name is Wheeler, published an article some years ago. I don't know if this is right or not, but it's similar to the squiggum Z. that space is bent, you know, as Einstein says. Sometimes it gets so bent, it makes a donut, and then things that would normally just pass in the curve get caught in the curve of it. And these places where things are caught are atoms. Anyway, Buddhism has some

[17:17]

Our experience is something like that, as if we are in a place where things are caught for a second, for no amount of time that you can determine. And consciousness is of this quad. Anyway, we participate actually in this whole thing, which is chicken and egg and you. But you don't participate in it when you formulate through the five skandhas.

[18:40]

erroneous perception of yourself. So in Zen, our practice is to wear this perception out, maybe. You can see through it and flash if you're persistent enough. and be released from this burden. But it's still very tenacious. So, we sit and sit, and whether you sit or not, after a while you practice in any way you can, as the Sixth Patriarch says, wisdom arises spontaneously in his mind and his mind, tension does not stray and it's a field of blessedness.

[20:06]

and he doesn't know what work the fifth patriarch will give him to do. No, that's very interesting, that last part. He doesn't know what work the fifth patriarch will give him to do. No idea of being sixth patriarch or being woodcutter. It doesn't make any difference. But some activity, some way we exist each moment. And Dogen said, practicing, I get it mixed up, practicing and conveying the Self to all things is ignorance. Practicing and, how does it go, all things advance by themselves is enlightenment.

[21:28]

So we do zazen until you stop conveying yourself to all things. here at Tassajara to give you some chance to experience yourself from your Buddha nature, we can say, your true self from which all things arise. We try here to create a situation which doesn't cause so many things to arise,

[22:40]

So you think Tassajara is a very pure place, but actually that purity is you yourself, when you don't have so many things arising. So, anyway, we create that kind of situation and we have some ritual here. And ritual, like chanting and service, Some of you may not understand so well, but you might notice that if you live somewhere where you do everything you understand and don't do any ritual, your psyche gets bent. We don't mind that our dreams are mixed up, you know, or not able to be understood sometimes, but we mind that our conscious activity is when it can't be understood. But if you want to relieve some of the

[24:01]

compulsive, intensive, or bent back on itself, you know, experience of our psychological experience, we can say. If you want to unkink some of that, you will do some ritual, bowing or offering incense or chanting. It's pretty clear, if you stop doing it, you'll see. Ritual, I don't like it. If you stop doing it, you'll see, you begin, oh, I understand everything, but my daily life is getting mixed up. So, ritual has some, to do something that we don't understand in our conscious life, and to simplify

[25:11]

the situation here, which is easier to do than even at Green Gulch, since we're so far away from ordinary concourse. And you can begin to see the real exchanges or interchanges, exchanges of your own energy and interchanges your interchanges with everything. And if you can give up ideas of, oh, it's my stomach, it's something I ate, or it must be my lungs, you can give up the ideas you have about your body and have that kind of awareness which just is with whatever's happened simultaneously, not so you pay more attention to what happens here, but say you're working in the kitchen, that your awareness is equal with the grumble in your stomach and the grumble across the counter and the odour from the food.

[26:40]

and the time of day, if your awareness is like that, you won't be so disposed, predisposed to think, oh, this is some... my experience, or some psychological experience, or my identity. You will begin to see that if you want to call anything an identity, there is a big identity. But it means that your awareness must not attach to anything. So sometimes your practice will be, particularly when you're in a situation where you are not, where there are many things that arise, distractions, how you can just ignore them.

[28:38]

like water on a lotus. You know, a lotus, the reason a lotus is used in Buddhism isn't just because its roots are in the mud, the dirt, and then the stem comes through the water and then the plant sticks up above the water. That's one reason. So Buddha was never seen But one reason the lotus is used is because water, not only is the plant above the water, but water will not stand on its leaves. It forms little silver balls and then rolls off, but it sits. And you get more and more water if you get rain, if it's raining very heavily. It's very beautiful to see because lotus leaves all interlock, you know, like there's many, they're all in various layers. And they're sort of slightly cupped like that. And the rain will rain and rain and rain and rain, you know. And the leaf fills up with this great big crystal ball of water, which won't spread out.

[29:53]

And then finally the leaf won't hold it and it goes, it tips. And it goes, and the one below it catches it. It holds it for a while and then it tips. So you have all, it's a bit like, you've seen those birds in supermarkets, I mean drugstores that go, fill up with water, the beak, and then sit back for a while. The leaves are like that. But there's hundreds of them in a big lily pond in front of a Buddhist temple in Japan. And the biggest ones fill up and then they dump, and then the little ones dump, and then they dump. And the harder it's raining, during rainy season it's quite fast, they're all filling up. But anyway, one practice is for what happens to Be like that for you, just some drop which doesn't soak you. And another practice, of course, is to be able to respond completely but not be attached to the results. But as long as you feel yourself attached to the results, you can practice.

[31:18]

letting it affect you or you can, of course, sometimes find out what the results are like. So when you sit here in this practice period, your zazen will partake of everyone else's zazen. And if everyone can't quite concentrate, you'll find it pretty difficult to concentrate too. But if you can still, in spite of that, concentrate, you'll help everyone concentrate. So in this way you'll develop a concentration which isn't narrow and exclusive, and a concentration which is very strong, can include many things, many people.

[32:34]

Do you have anything we should talk about? Yeah. I'm not sure if this is different from what you were saying or not, but sometimes the idea of not allowing the rest of us, you said that things don't, that things roll off of you, but you also talk about healing. It seems that in circumstances sometimes it feels to me as though it's necessary to allow the effect to come and then to give it. It feels to me as though in order for me to give up or to give whatever it is, it has to affect me. And I have to be Well, speaking in such general terms, it's hard to say exactly. What you say is true, of course, but often something happens which you... Being affected actually obscures your experience, because you become angry or resistant or something.

[34:45]

There's no way to spell it out completely. The first practice in Buddhism maybe is to notice how you accumulate karma. And as long as the... Well, let's put it this way. A bodhisattva is one who also acts in the world, but the effects of his actions are not accumulated by him as karma, but are given away to others as merit. So... how to exist so that things affect you, but don't accumulate as karma. As your karma and other people's karma, actually. When you accumulate karma, you accumulate it for others, too. Yeah. Yes?

[36:21]

And I notice it's from the resemblance that only thing that really trips me off, that's our ceremonies. I can go along kind of taking a break, and then I get to a ceremony. Like yesterday. Like yesterday's ceremony? Every time. What do you mean, what happens to you? I get kind of shaken up. At first I thought that when I first came here it seemed like I was taking on a lot. by participating in a ceremony of responsibility for accepting the participants. It seemed to spread a lot of waves. When we first came here, they were taking care of 52 kids down here. For me, one was well-managed.

[37:50]

After a while they're not so bad. You told me once that Buddhism was based on the experience of black people, accumulated maybe experience. It seems to me that Buddhism is, negative isn't the right word, but there's a lot of philosophy in something. It sounds good or something, but it's always in contradiction to everything that happens. But when an actual situation arises that it seems like there should be some application from Buddhist philosophy, and I don't know, I go around asking people what, you know, if they happen to know what piece of philosophy applies. Even nobody knows which

[39:38]

you know, which doctrine applies or it's, it's, it sounds negative. Like, well, you have the wrong idea, but the right idea either isn't presented or it's incredibly obscure. I don't understand. It seems as though I'm missing something. But all I've found in the last few years is that how I think that's wrong and I've never kind of paused anything that's any clue about, do you know what I mean? Can you say anything? Well, as long as, maybe you're talking about at least two things, as long as you're looking for something,

[40:40]

you won't find it in Buddhism. Looking or not, you've changed a lot in the last few years. But the other part of what you're saying is rather true. It's a little bit troublesome, actually. For example, if someone feels they've done something wrong and they feel very guilty, right? Buddhism, Zen anyway, offers no way to confess your guilt or expiate your guilt or something like that. Oh, you feel guilty? Good, you're stuck with it. What's that like? That's more the Zen response. There it is, something real, guilt. But most religions give you some way to cleanse yourself of guilt or some feeling, or give you some advice about if you have certain kinds of feelings, how to get rid of them or avoid them.

[42:11]

But one problem is that, from the point of view... Buddhism is expressed primarily from the point of view of Buddha. Zen, particularly, sort of goes all the way. We don't want any halfway measures, all or nothing, sort of Zen way. It's mostly described from the point of view maybe of emptiness or something like that. So, from that kind of view, situations like troublesome situations don't arise, the kinds of complicated thinking. in which you need tactical strategy in how to get out, doesn't arise. So there's no tactics necessary. So Zen says, how to get to the place where no tactics are necessary. It doesn't say, here are the tactics along the way to make your life better. Do you understand what I mean? So there aren't very many tactics. The best Buddhism that I know of offers is

[43:37]

the Abhidharma-type psychology, where you consciously create the opposite thought. First of all, if you have some feeling of, say, hatred, you don't try to get rid of the hatred. You recognize the existence of the hatred, saying, ah, now I feel hatred. But when it's directed toward a specific person, you encourage yourself with other consciously created thoughts. This person isn't so bad. This person has such and such good qualities, etc. And like in the talk when I've been talking about giving, you substitute yourself for that person, etc. Willing to take on, no matter how bad it is, the other person's suffering. If you do that, you know, some space is created between the two extremes, hate and created thoughts of affection. And the more you can do that, the more you open up various possibilities for your experience, and won't create the possibility of not being caught by either.

[45:02]

For Zen, the only way is to keep seeing things as your own mind, if you say, that person is dreadful, right? That's saying your own mind is dreadful. If you stray from that kind of view, reminding yourself that everything is mind, as in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, you then get into real problems. If that person is dreadful, what shall I do? Or if this situation is impossible, or if my own state of mind is created by my parents, or my bad luck, or by circumstances. As long as you have that by describing it from outside yourself, or seeking outside yourself, Buddhism isn't so helpful. Buddhism is only helpful when you always are reminding yourself, that's my own mind, that's me. because it's this thing which is right here, this squigamumsy which is swallowing itself, right, where you are, where it's arising for you, and there you take your responsibility. I suppose that's the main reason why Buddhism has a Buddhist practice, Zen practice, has

[46:39]

tradition of this kind of life as actually advisable in everyone's life, not just monks, where you can have a period for that kind of examination of this which is arising right now. So I suppose practice requires the confidence enough to bear with your difficulties until the difficulties don't arise. It's not so much how to solve the difficulties but how to bear with the difficulties until the difficulties don't arise because you see the root

[47:44]

We're not so interested in trimming the plant. We're interested in finding the root. And Zen doesn't tell you much at all about how to trim the plant, how to fertilize it with water, how to get at the root. Somebody else had their hand up somewhere. If you sit straight, you will find the root. I know each of you know the truth.

[48:41]

@Transcribed_v004L
@Text_v005
@Score_49.5