Yesterday I talked about the path and as we have more and more sense of a path that is constantly being confirmed, we can have more and more confidence. and trust our activity. One of the five fears is the fear of the effect of your actions. If I do this, what will happen? I think that's quite a pervasive fear, actually. We notice it sometimes in very little things. Sketching or something. the sketch seems to have some unknown scary quality. We don't quite trust our... It's hard to explain. I'm quite sure you know what I mean. Anyway, that...

[01:30]

you can, as your sense of being on the path is more and more confirmed, you can more and more trust your actions. Anything you do will be okay, particularly if it springs up in the way that I said yesterday, Suzuki Roshi said, right thinking is when you are so astounded by something. But right action is like that too. And if you're practicing too, in this way, with this sense of a path, and you know you're going to continue practicing there's no doubt in your mind anymore will I be practicing a year or two from now? that kind of doubt is gone you see that life itself is practice and that you no matter what your life is so short and in the time you have you'll be practicing if you have that kind of feeling then

[03:00]

The first sign of something is it. You don't have to try to amplify it or hang on to it or look and say, oh, this state of mind or this experience of zazen or this freedom or this feeling of freedom I must accomplish. You don't need to think anything like that. You have even the slightest intimation of something some greater feeling, some unity of space and time. That's enough. If you're going to continue practicing, everything has its own way of expressing itself. You don't want to interfere. So, what I'm saying is you shouldn't because you have this confirmation of a path you shouldn't give up experimenting you shouldn't depend on the path you know you can be freer and freer trusting your actions so that

[04:22]

it means being on the path means knowing more and more or rather not knowing more and more not knowing that you're on the path or what you're exactly doing just this moment you know so as I talked yesterday about how the four boundless feelings, we characterize it that way. It could be said some other way, but that's rather good. You'll find from your own experience, it's a pretty good description, the four boundless feelings of sympathetic joy, friendliness, even-mindedness, and compassion. that these feelings are a kind of space, a kind of space for your practice.

[05:50]

think at the same time we could have several identifications or acknowledgements, you begin to see the unity of space and time and past, present and future. And it expresses itself in various ways. objective and subjective worlds are the same and your dream dreams and the way your past and future correlate are one event and another is in your actions you feel all action all your all, any possible action in one action. And you know now that there's no way to sneak something by. There's no way you can do something and it's out of context, you know, like the story of, I told Tassara, then Suzuki Roshi told. It's a little bit funny story, but anyway, it's a story of

[07:21]

a monk, or I can't remember exactly, maybe someone pretty good, checking up on his teacher or another monk who was pretty good by following them into a field to watch them pee. The meaning of the story, of course, is just that. There's no time in which your karma does not observe you or in which there is not some effect of your actions there's no time out you know there's no private and public there's no non-practice actions and practice action there's no way to sneak one by early in practice you think well I'll practice but this week I'm going to or tonight to hell with it to hell with it's okay but It's also practice, that's what I'm talking about. So as you get older, you notice, you look back on what has happened to you and you think, my God, everything I've done was significant. Everything I've done up to now, lots of things I did by accident, I did this, I went off to there, I worked at this crazy job and I did that. But somehow it all comes together. Everything you did was useful.

[08:47]

each action included the whole rest of your life. That's easy to see when you're older, but as you get older, but even when you see that, you don't really accept that this action, this moment includes all your life. So this is some gate we call in Buddhism, some gate or power, the recognition, the consciousness of this in your actions. Another is, as you've given up possessiveness, differences are different or there are no differences or absolutely in the Dharmakaya, there are no differences. But anyway, the differences between things are seen as samenesses.

[10:00]

And another is that you, I suppose for most of us, the way to describe it is you recognize the secrets. Of course, there's actually no secret, but there's a feeling of, oh, that was something heard by my quiet ear. That was something heard by an ear which doesn't usually hear most which the ear which hears most things doesn't hear this kind of story this kind of thing something you feel sometimes from your teacher something you feel sometimes by some recognition in your meditation or in your life and we call this kind of recognition maybe it's Altogether we could say it's Sambhogakaya or the subtle body. So you begin to recognize the relationship between subtle and the gross. There's more than meets the eye.

[11:45]

that you have to hear with your eyes and see with your ears, that there's something, the senses, our six senses don't monitor, don't reach, but if you hear with your eyes. Tozan said, you know, when he recognized what Ungan Dojo meant, when he raised his whisk, when he said, Why do I not hear inanimate objects expounding the Dharma? Tozan raised his whisk, I mean, Ungan raised his whisk, and said, Now do you hear it?

[12:57]

Hungan quoted the Amitabha Sutra which says, do you not know that rivers and trees and groves all are ceaselessly expounding the Dharma, chant Buddha's voice, chant Buddha's name. And Tozan said, wonderful, wonderful, if you listen with the ears you cannot hear it but hearing with the eyes or seeing with the ears we know. So with this kind of recognition we have given up the kind of preconceptions that prevent us from hearing with our eyes and seeing with our ears. So this point is, this gate is entered by the four boundless feelings and these recognitions

[14:26]

space and time, past, present and future as one. All actions are included in your action right now. There's no escape from that, how great a benefit it is. That the subtle and the gross are one, Anyway, these various maybe signs, non-signs you recognize. So, the six paramitas, again, you know, from each time I'm describing them slightly differently. The six paramitas, then, The first one is non-possessiveness. And the second is the recognition of the identity of subject and object. Conduct. The third is waiting. Patience. Maybe we can say now waiting or better entering

[15:57]

But the third patience is entering. Entering, giving up the preconceptions which jump you from one thing to the next. So you don't know what will happen next. You don't know what work will be given to you. You don't know what will happen next. You're just waiting. That's maybe we can call entering. The signless. energy that maybe we can call emptiness. Maybe it's one way to describe emptiness. We say, Buddhism always says, no determinate form. Anything you look at, it's changing. This is changing to that. Anything you look at is changing

[17:00]

But still we tend to identify, relate to, the form that's changing to the form to that which it's becoming. We don't relate to the changing itself. That changing itself is not decay or something bad. It's your own energy. It's the actual energy of everything. It's never emptiness then, you know, we can say from this point of view is no determinate form. You don't know what something is. It's changing. So giving up the two ends, what it started as and what it's becoming and recognizing

[18:03]

the changing itself as you. No longer holding to the form it was and the form it's becoming. This allows you to enter. The form itself is closed but the changing is wide open. and something you're already participating in. So some warning about the way I spoke yesterday about meditation. I talked about some blissful, wishless control center And there'll be a tendency when you have that kind of experience to try to maintain it. It's okay if you maintain it in the sense of experimenting. And the first jhana, first absorption, still has experimentation in it.

[19:33]

because there's no reason to hold to anything if your mind is... if you have some experience like that and it... I said if the experience is maybe polished by the four... first four paramitas so that you don't get caught going into thinking or distracting thoughts that you have some that it's a feeling of a lowering or lessening of separating disappearing when you stray from that blissful feeling but if that blissful feeling is so fragile it's not so important that you have to maintain it that it can't be everywhere that it's so easily distracted by distractions so that kind of feeling is nothing but a sign or a confidence in both senses of the word

[21:05]

It gives you confidence and it's a confidence kind of whispering to you. So our elusive practice, our evasive practice must also be entered. That sensation, that blissful experience I'm talking about is not, maybe it tries to go away, but if you can be centered, it won't go away. It's not evasive. In the same way, when you start thinking, then your practice, am I practicing or am I thinking? That's the elusive practice or evasive practice. So if you try, and Suzuki Yoshi used to say the same thing, if you try to hold to some wonderful feeling in zazen, even for one thousand years you won't know anything much. That elusive practice you must enter. And it's interesting why we care so much, why we want to review, evaluate, go over and

[22:34]

life thinking about it. How strong a tendency it is, you know, to hell with that blissful experience. This is more interesting. I'm going to think about such and such, you know. That's interesting we care so much. But that elusive practice there, is it practice? What? Is actual practice. If you just sit in a zendo or walk around with a zendo balanced on your head, people will get some good feeling from you, no doubt, but they won't ever know you, so they won't know themselves, so you have to enter that elusive

[23:49]

evasive practice which is in the midst of distraction. Our practice is a kind of wonderful gift and we don't seek it too much. Something is always being unexpectedly given to us. And you often may not know it until much later.

[25:14]

Sometimes you don't know until you're old, I think, what your practice has been or is. When some big occurrence comes, some completely unforeseen problem, you will find some richness in your life coming out. which comes from practice, which you didn't know you were ready with. So, in this sense, we mean just sit. Just sit, which covers elusive practice and specific concentrated practice. practice which you don't even know what you're doing, not even sure it's practice sometimes. Is there something you want to talk about?

[26:54]

I'm going to be practicing against everyone. I'm going to be practicing against my father. I'm going to be practicing against my brother. You think we should eat more simply? You... I think it's important to... On the one hand, it's good to have some corrective idea about practice.

[29:14]

but on the other hand it's good to accept just the way it's being done that we inherited this way of eating from Buddhist monasteries in Japan and China and in fact I believe When I was at AHEG, they ate somewhat better than we do. So, to actually discuss the two points you raised, one, why we eat the way we do, which has been thought about, I'm not ten times as much as necessary probably, but anyway, a great deal. And the other point, what to do.

[30:31]

How can we practice this way when there is so much suffering in the world? Ejo Takada Roshi, Momon Roshi's disciple, went to Mexico because there's so much starving there. And Suzuki Roshi came to America maybe because he saw America spreading suffering over the whole world. The second point, how can we practice when there's so much suffering in the world, is a continual question for us.

[31:49]

anyone practicing. It's not so... not quite such a difficult problem for someone practicing only, you know, putting aside one or two years to practice and then doing something, being a doctor, whatever. But it's quite a problem for anybody practicing their whole life. practicing with others, spending thousands of hours sitting on their bottom, why shouldn't they be doing something else? The question is a very real one too, one unavoidable confrontation one has over and over again. Buddhism quite satisfactorily has some understanding of that problem. And even though you yourself can be quite sure that at least you should be doing this maybe, at least someone should, still it's a confrontation. What are the real ills

[33:18]

How do we respond to them? Something else? Yes. Are you sure? Are you sure everything is only exactly as it is? Anyway, your question is an unsureness. What's the root of your question is something you should... is the only answer. Well, I'm not sure if it's just a problem

[34:53]

We want to take our turn again. We have to get up. Free will and determinism exist in a world of past, present and future. And a world of subject and object. And for Buddhism that world is not... that world is just a artificial creation. You know, it's the world of too late. Not being there in that present. Not the present which you... It's already passed when you receive it, but that present which is right now, not form, that world has no free will or determinism in it.

[36:15]

But you can still say about it, it's just what it is. How could it be anything else? I think practicing Buddhism you have to simultaneously be quite trusting and also simultaneously accept, view everything with a slightly quizzical eye, with a grain of salt.

[37:54]

think, the world we perceive or think, quite accept it, act on it just as you find it, but I don't know, you should have some way, some elusive, experimental attitude. Some of you are having some trouble with sleepiness. Drowsiness and distraction are the two major problems in practice.

[38:58]

But, on the other hand, to sit in such a way that you eliminate drowsiness and distraction, eliminate distraction would be to eliminate elusive practice. And to eliminate drowsiness would probably be to eliminate entering, because you can't really enter bosom Consciously, completely consciously. It catches you unawares. So sometimes you'll find that actually your zazen gets very concentrated after you've been thinking about something. You may try and try to be concentrated and not be distracted and follow your breathing, but somehow there's some activity, some disturbance. Another time you may just be wandering around thinking about something. suddenly you realize you're completely concentrated. Because sometimes you forget yourself in such a story. You're doing zazen and you're thinking about something and you've forgotten completely about who you are or what you're doing and some concentration takes

[40:27]

and in drowsiness, that somewhere, not sleeping, not awake, we enter some concentration. Let's do it. It helps to try to cut through drowsiness. I think pulling in your chin is the best thing you can do, aside from other things I've suggested. And then your head back. Pulling your chin in just a little, curving your neck this way a little, is quite amazing, the way it cuts off thinking. Your head goes like that almost as soon as you're thinking.

[41:31]

Thank you.

[42:21]

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