this session I've at least finished one round, maybe finished one round of talking about the six parmitas. We've tried to look at sasheen as a practice of the fifth paramita, jnana, the development of samadhi, concentration. and defining Zen as a... maybe being synonymous with perfect wisdom. But the form of our practice is jhana, so we are called the Zen school. But Zen as the fifth paramita is a specific practice, mostly, maybe something we do in sashins like this,

[01:35]

And yesterday I talked about practicing Buddhism as something like falling in love, because when you decide, when you really recognize that you're in love, is when you're in love. Before that, you weren't. It's when you, oh my god, I must be in love. That's something like what happens when you decide, I must be a Buddhist. And keeping our attachment, there are some other similarities. One is everything changes, everything is the same to everyone else but is different somehow. love and Buddhist practice have their observances. And another I mentioned was that you are, in a sense, carrying something, but it makes all your other burdens lighter. And I don't know how to describe that sensation, maybe.

[03:13]

carrying something, but it's... Yesterday I described it as, while engaged in the world, taking on responsibility, simultaneously looking into the uncreated, the void, recognizing everything as an illusion. Also, maybe we could describe it as knowing the great body of the dragon is right here, but you can't see the dragon. Just some raising of the eyebrows. Or maybe it's like faith.

[04:15]

So I suppose what I want to talk about today mostly is faith, that Buddhist practice really starts with faith. Whatever you say, you don't understand Buddhism completely at first, and so to practice it you need faith. In fact, you can't really do anything without faith. If you have despair, you can't function, almost you can't function. Your ability even to see the world is gone, everything is flat and colourless. system, any wholesome state probably has faith in it or is wholesome because it has faith in it. So I think in our practice we have to recognize that we do have faith

[05:49]

Otherwise you couldn't practice. And Dogen's way is to emphasize Zazen as faith. It's our whole practice. And you just do it on faith. But faith in Buddhism is not... You don't accept faith because of authority. At first, you know, you have some intuition, some feeling. But although prajna, wisdom, is translated sometimes as intuitive understanding, I don't think that's such a good translation. Prajna means you understand things absolutely directly, you know. You don't, as thoroughly as you know, you have five fingers. You don't know that you have five fingers on faith or intuitively. You know you have five fingers. So in Buddhism, right views and right understanding at the beginning of the Eightfold Path fully developed our wisdom, but in the beginning our faith, because there are still views or understandings

[07:16]

You don't understand you have five fingers. It's not a view. You know you have five fingers. So wisdom is not a matter of understanding, or intuitive understanding even, or belief, on any level, an extrapolation of some insight. It's completely direct, face-to-face, touch-to-touch understanding. There's no subject or object. So the whole point of

[08:21]

Buddhist life is to, you know, as I said yesterday, samadhi is the clincher, or jnana is the clincher. It's that which makes your faith into wisdom, or it's that by which you make your original faith sure. So in Zen practice, maybe the most important, though you can describe Zen as perfect wisdom, practice is faith and doubt. So doubts are essential if you're going to have realization. Zen is faith and doubt and realization. Realization comes from doubt and faith. Without doubt you can't have realization. So it's that doubt, that effort to make sure, that effort to

[09:52]

know directly, without anything intervening, is based on some deep, not what I call corrosive doubt, but deep exploratory doubt. but one which is fully. I don't know. Anyway, faith and doubt can't describe the relationship, but they're the same. Real faith is doubt, vice versa.

[11:23]

Though we start out with some intuitive sense of that everything changes, that there's suffering, that there's no permanent self, no permanent entities, It's mostly a matter of some suggestive insight or faith, and not the surety that comes when you're completely free from conflicting emotions, from desire, from restlessness, distraction. So then lots of Buddhism is, how do you get from that point

[12:26]

the initial point, the initial realization, the initial awakening of faith, to perfect wisdom, to knowing for sure. Prajna itself is reality. And what you need to get from those two points are all of Buddhism, the ten powers, the five powers, concentrations, six paramitas, etc. Energy, you need energy. some good, some conduct, which frees you from creating more karma. So, first of all, probably, you have to know how you create karma, and with some real conviction, stop creating karma. See exactly what leads to karma and don't

[14:03]

and realize in this world you can't sneak by a few things no one knows about. Karma is something absolute. If you know that, then anything you do, you're taking responsibility for your karma that's not quite the same as thinking you can get away without the karma. That kind of conviction though you need either the sureness of prajna or faith to practice. So it may be useful to you to develop your sense of faith, your faith, by noticing how actually you are already full of faith, or that your life, your minute actions are based on faith. Otherwise you couldn't do even the next thing, pick up something, even just the idea it'll still be there by the time your hand gets to the cup. It's some kind of faith, just as when you can experience your energy.

[15:34]

energy as a practice, it means to not just know when you're tired, have extra energy, but that energy which is holding everything together right now, that you have a direct experience of that. the four trances or eight trances or absorptions are not an end in themselves, they're not religion or truth or something. They are just a way of making sure. So we don't wait until you've achieved all the eight absorptions that are blissful and all-knowing, et cetera. I hope not. We'd have to wait a long time. But you start to work right away.

[17:00]

based on faith, not just on knowing. And that work actually is Realization. That work is your practice of the Paramitas, of giving, conduct, etc. So, simultaneously you are trying to deep in your faith, maybe, and deep in your conviction. So we, Sashin, though I describe zazen, the zazen of sashin, as this and that. Most of you, I think, don't have such good concentration, aren't particularly free from distracting thoughts.

[18:32]

that disease. But you have some... each session you have some more confirmation, some sense of, if only just a little bit, you know, for a few minutes in one period or two periods, some sense of some concentrated state of mind where your thinking is... disappears, maybe. Your thinking is so smooth it doesn't... It's not noticeable as thinking. This kind of state of mind, completely realized, is maybe Sambhogakaya. And this has some powerful work in the world. you don't have to worry any more about doing anything, because the activation of the strength of zazen, even a little, you can't explain even what happens to someone who does zazen, or a group of people that do zazen by usual means, what happens in society.

[20:02]

people, what effect it has on people. It's not explainable, and it's not the credit of any group or person. It's the power of Buddhism, the power of Zazen, and it's the meaning of non-doing. And not anymore do you have to make any plans or do anything. Doing is smooth the way your thinking disappears, non-thinking, and your doing disappears. Yet there's always doing. But it's very definitely not the same. And how deeply your doing reaches without any effort. this point of view, bodhisattva is the ultimate social work.

[21:15]

I've spoken about concentration, samadhi as concentration, and someone asked me about concentration, the same question I used to ask myself. And there's a whole problem with... You have to explore it, whether you like it or not, if you practice much. But we have a culture which has developed around a lot of ideas. progress in primitive naturalness or natural self, nature, freedom.

[23:13]

and an emphasis on physical freedom, the freedom to do things, rather than an emphasis on freedom to think things. So we don't have much mental freedom, but a fair amount of physical freedom compared to other countries, social freedom of a certain sort. But these words and then the uses of these words and the related uses of discipline and concentration are, it's pretty hard to understand any... You can be sure that any word of common usage in English about process or fundamentally descriptive of our nature or our world, can almost not be translated into what it seems to translate into in Buddhist discipline and concentration. The connotations of the words are so different.

[24:38]

The simple idea of concentration, like you concentrate on one thing or you can concentrate... He's so concentrated on his work, nothing disturbs him. He's shutting out other things. There is a way to practice meditation in which you do concentrate on one thing, but even that point of that in Buddhism is if you can concentrate on one thing, if you can limit your field, to one thing, then you can remove that one thing. The point is not the concentration on the one thing, it's the field with nothing in it. So you can do that and then remove the one thing. Go away. But we don't practice that, obviously we don't practice that way much in Zen, otherwise you wouldn't be sitting there counting to three. for three or four years, you know, or one. Next time if you count to one, you'll have a long time, you know. One. But that's wonderful, you know, actually. If you count to one and two or three years later you count to one again. That's space, or maybe to two.

[26:09]

A lot has happened in that space. One is such a big number. It gets, as you know, harder and harder to count to one or two. In the beginning it's pretty easy. But then eventually it's completely easy to do so. But anyway, we don't emphasize that simple kind of concentration at all. It's just there you are and what's happening. Because our Zen practice includes faith and doubt, all the paramitas, conduct, deportment, giving, non-possession, energy. meditation itself, wisdom. So we can't tell you, we don't want to say, for example, do this or do that, because then our practice is based on wisdom, which does not have any particular thing you can say about it.

[27:45]

But discipline or concentration, you should be able to stick to one thing. You shouldn't be distracted all the time. Not because you, by effort, can stay with it, but because you can ignore distractions. I mean, it starts out very simply in your zazen. You don't scratch this and that. That, at first, is difficult enough. But, so in your practice, samadhi isn't the concentration of one thing exactly. It's the ability to stay with everything at once, all at once, without wavering.

[28:57]

thinking about something, wandering off into something particular that you could concentrate on. So as you... you'll find, you know, just as you must have noticed in a session, that the way you sleep is different, and that your dreams are a little different, and that Suddenly you can keep a visual image in your mind and look at it. Your mind, if you, doesn't wander. And I talked about the wishless control center and how you can then abandon that. The concentration is just a way, a word for maybe non-distraction, so you can have a direct perception, direct contact with reality.

[30:27]

And I talked about transmission. In Zen, the whole process is transmission of practice, of the way you live, of your conduct. It's sangha life. We say, Tsukiyoshi always said, warm hand to warm hand. It's direct contact between us, knowing the dragon. Sometimes transmission is a raising of the eyebrows. that direct knowing of each other completely, so there aren't any more barriers between you and other people.

[31:54]

We might say you start out with faith in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and Buddha's recognition of yourself as Buddha, knowing you are Buddha, practicing as if you are, knowing with conviction that you can realize this. No doubt there. Not going around acting like Buddha, but knowing with conviction that you can realize this. And dharma then might be the practice of the parameters of conduct and morality, precepts, charity, giving, non-possession. And sangha then is the knowing what the lineage is, knowing the mind of Buddha and the patriarchs and all the people you practice with. So even from our first sense of faith or recognition to our full, direct understanding

[33:40]

everything else is our Buddhist life, our transmission, our practice, our knowing each other. And so I would say, maybe if someone asked me, what characterizes Buddhism, or the practice of Buddhism, or what really is the experience of Buddhism? What is it all about? I hope nobody asks me such a question. Actually, I can't say. Maybe. You can't say.

[35:23]

If you have to say something, it's something like love, or maybe the four boundless feelings. Sympathetic joy. Friendliness. Loving kindness. Even-mindedness. Compassion. Some feeling of affection. that doesn't need any object, or doesn't have any object, or isn't conditioned by what people do, good or bad, or something like that. Certainly a sense of impermanence, not trying to build anything, or hold on to anything, or caring too much about

[36:28]

anything. But that... that's only to make way for the un... differentiated feelings of sympathetic joy and friendliness or loving-kindness and even-mindedness and compassion. that sometimes presents or is expressed as faith, a willingness to go along with Buddhism, a willingness to go along with some particular person. As I said once, the Buddhist

[38:17]

golden rule isn't just do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but it's also do unto others as they wish to be done unto. You know, to go along with other people, even if it's So sometimes expressed as faith and sometimes expressed as doubt. And certainly Zen practice is rather strict. It's not just some love or good feelings. You know, we recognize from practicing. Samadhi, knowing Samadhi, what good and bad are, we know what those terms really mean in the world. My experience of Suzuki Roshi always used to be, he's so nice, like a flower. So everything, it was like sunlight was coming up and the wind was blowing. But underneath the petals are these huge thorns.

[39:43]

It was incredibly dangerous to be around him. Oh, I can't get stuck. Oh. But you heal one day. Anyway, Suki Ueshiba used to say, the scolding voice. You should know the scolding voice. And in monasteries or practice communities in Japan, for the first year or two, everything is no. No matter what you do, it's no. It's wrong. Finally, you learn to survive in that. So you don't care. Anyway, sometimes faith, sometimes doubt or confrontation, sometimes any one of the various practices by which we try to realize the insubstantiality of the five skandhas of self, of dharma, dharmas.

[41:11]

I'm very grateful to have practiced this session with you here at Green Gulch. I don't know what will happen to Green Gulch, but I have some faith in Green Gulch, the way I have in Tassajara. that we can perfectly use it for practice and for the benefit of other people. That this valley, that practice here in this valley is already beginning to And that if we continue this practice here with Sesshin and Zazen every day, and working and growing food, and taking care of this place so that it's a pleasure to be here, it will have

[43:27]

great effect on people. And if you affect one person, you affect our society. We don't want some reputation. Just one by one, whatever person you meet, you treat them as we give them the space and opportunity that their true nature demands, that we should be strong enough and undistracted enough to offer, in each circumstance, to everything and everyone. If we can realize this,

[44:34]

can, we will be realizing the true path of the Bodhisattva. Suzuki Roshi called the building in the city, the city Zen center, called it the Maha Bodhisattva, the great Bodhisattva practice place. And before he died, his last request about Zen Center's community was that we find a place like Green Gelch. to complete Zen Center's form, to make enough space available for the practice of this particular community, and to be able to have different kinds of people practice together, not

[45:57]

just people who can give up everything and go to Tassar, and that we combine practice with people, with the way we take care of ourselves, growing food, etc. I don't know how we were so fortunate to find Green Gulch as a gift to answer Suzuki Roshi's request. But we did, and I feel some great responsibility to fulfill his wish here. And I feel this Sashin is some powerful recognition of what he wanted.

[46:55]

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