What does it mean that Buddhas and Patriarchs have existed in the past? Are we now, you and I, alone or together? in what way, alone or together. to pursue the way of Buddhism, means to find out how we're together. Three-fourths of practice, or almost all of practice, is up to you.

[01:48]

teachings, sutras, buildings, zendos, taishos, lectures can be supplied to you, but it doesn't amount to much, very small part. you already are nine-tenths of the way, and the remaining one-tenth, or a small part, you have to make ninety-nine percent of the effort, most of the effort, yourself. Certainly, doing Sashin will help you in the usual ways of this world.

[03:02]

you will feel better, be calmer, etc. And you'll have some, you'll develop some reserve of energy which will help you in any circumstance. But what the Buddhas and Patriarchs and Zen teachings are talking about is not... I can't say it any other way but to say it's not of this world. I've been talking about your state of mind and bodhichitta and how your state of mind is, you can experience it and enter your intention, your vow or bodhicitta in each frame of your mind,

[04:30]

moment of your experience. And I can give you some suggestions. Like stop trying to act, orient yourself by yourself, or try to let go of the topic. I don't know, I'm, you know, this is... I'm attempting to say something by saying, let go of the topic. Most people are too involved in the topic

[06:01]

One example of what I mean is, this is all kind of simple, but I'm just trying to give you a suggestion. When we use the clackers, for instance, starting the meal, the topic is the clacker and starting chanting, but you hit the clackers. And then the next thing, but we can say four things happen. You hit the clackers, this is the first. Second thing is, the clackers hit all the people who hear them. And third, you start chanting. And if you're the leader. And fourth, everyone starts chanting. And in a simple way, if you pay too much attention to the topic, you're involved in hitting the clackers, and you don't have any experience of the clackers hitting everyone else. But the real event, if we say it that way, is the clackers hitting everyone else. And then you don't start the chanting,

[07:31]

that everyone starts the chanting and you start with it. Because your experience is of the clackers hitting everyone else. But you can try that in your zazen. When something comes up, try to let go of the topic. You can say that to yourself. let go of the topic. It's rather difficult to do because we identify our existence with a topic. But like the stories I was telling you yesterday about the cigarette butts in the wheelbarrows. Those stories have, like the wheelbarrow, has some more depth than the story about cigarettes. And Zen stories have more and more depth. As you can let go of the topic, let go of the buffalo and his head and

[09:01]

legs and tail, and understand what must be going on, what Hoen of Mount Goso must be talking about. He has another name, Tozan, and the poem in that story says, the mount, the peak of Tozan is very hard to reach. People grope their way in the dark. And the last two lines I told you. A night falls and the half moon is in the trees. The north village is in the dark and the south village is shrouded in mist. So by this practice and by finding out about your state of mind and not sacrificing your state of mind, and we mostly, once you have stopped sacrificing your state of mind, you'll realize how much you have sacrificed your state of mind throughout your life and how terrible it was

[10:37]

you know, what a ghost it turned you into, something that you had to propel by your effort, you know, without much life of its own. So, becoming aware of the nature of your awareness, of the nature of your topic. How you identify consciousness and topic. And how Sashin will give you intimations of force you sometimes in the midst of pain or boredom or exhaustion to give up your topic. your identity, whatever form it takes, and you feel propelled or whirled away, or losing yourself, or some intimations that may make you pull back.

[12:02]

There's a story that has always charmed me about Tozan. It is said that a guardian figure, a guardian deity or something, wanted to see Tozan. And he couldn't find Tozan anywhere, even though he looked everywhere. So finally he got some, this guardian deity, got some rice and rice husks and scattered them in the courtyard. about and Tozan noticed them and thought, who could be so careless as to scatter rice husks around? And as soon as he thought that, he appeared and the guardian deity could see him. That's why I like Buddhism so much, because it's invisible, and it's available to everyone. When you're in Sashin, you're always in Sashin. When you're in the Green Gulch Green Grocer, you're always in the Green Gulch Green Grocer.

[13:38]

So it's available to everyone. But just doing Buddhism or doing Sesshin trying to let Buddhism turn you or the Sesshin turn you is nowhere near enough. You have to reside existentially without any ideas in just what you find each moment to be. And become very familiar with that without ideas of good or bad or any kind of preference. You can really get rid of preference. There's no depression or fear.

[15:04]

you reside quite easily with yourself. A category as you used to say, settle yourself on yourself. This is not the end of Buddhism, but the beginning when you settle yourself on yourself. hits from this continual experience without preference that you can let go so thoroughly

[16:15]

that you don't return except as Tozan did when someone scatters rice in the courtyard. One way we help people is just to help people. Another way is we help people to practice. We help people so that they can practice, knowing Buddhas and patriarchs have existed. Quite sure Buddhas and patriarchs have existed. Knowing, that means they now exist. Buddha exists today. And without this feeling, I think it's pretty hard to help people the first way, just to help them. Because to help them do what?

[17:49]

We can help people just go on, but if we haven't stopped going on ourselves, we don't have the energy, actually, to help people, nor to do any more than adjust their lives and our lives caught up in that adjustment, you may... it becomes a kind of treadmill or ladder in which satisfaction is always just a little more, a little further on. And that's so experientially true to you that it's very difficult to get off that treadmill without some deep, direct experience of being free of greed, hate and delusion. Deep, direct experience that there is nothing you can gain and nothing that you need.

[19:33]

which makes everything come into perspective and quite easy to do. Avalokiteshvara has, as you know, 1,000 arms and 11 heads. But not just Avalokiteshvara, every person has 1,000 arms and many heads and many bodies. and we can respond to all of them. If we can get that state of mind

[21:22]

which doesn't need a topic, which knows why the buffalo's tail did not pass through the window. There's another story similar to that in a sutra of Ananda's dreams, in which it said there's an elephant confined in a small room with a small window. And the elephant gets out, but his tail stays in. To understand why Buddhists would tell this kind of a joke, you have to have a mind which gives up the topic. And you can understand directly, like knowing when the clackers hit everyone, knowing why we exist or how we exist, how each of us exists, and we respond to that. Even though you respond to the rice being scattered, at the same time you respond to

[22:53]

the person who has no topic. I'm trying to give you a feeling for this space that you exist in, that you are. which you can only experience through some particular. You always confuse your experience and your consciousness with something particular. Some particular experience or some identifiable state of mind. And you can't cope with more than as an idea that everything is mind. You can't cope with what's before your very nose, how we are together. It would mean you'd have to give up possession, have to give up your future.

[24:54]

Giving up the topic, you then can create Kei-chu's heart, or this sashin, or your enlightenment. You'll understand where Dogen was coming from when he said, All I learned in China is that Eyes are horizontal and nose vertical. He brought the elephant's tail to Japan. It's obvious, you know, to say, holding up the book, I blocked the sun.

[27:35]

the whole sun or lifting up my foot the entire earth moves away. That's obvious. Why is it some supernatural or out of this world understanding too? You should be able to do one thing at a time, because layman's practice is just to do one thing at a time. But if you could only learn to do two things at a time, it would be helpful. One is, the second thing you could do is, whenever you do anything, at the same time, not care so much. When you do something, remind yourself,

[28:44]

I don't care how it turns out, or I don't have anything invested in it. To have some parallel reminder in your activity is very useful in the beginning of practice. When you're talking with someone, you can have some feeling. Okay, take everything away. Or, when you think something, you can think at the same time. Let's go over the topic. This kind of repetition is necessary

[29:53]

for you to at first live in what is first experienced as two worlds. And finally, you see, the world which has no topic includes the world which is topic. So we sit down together in our ultimate concern for each other. Concern from which we are not turning away, not dissembling.

[31:16]

this concern, ultimate concern, overshadows everything else, any philosophical or intellectual understanding, any particular deep experience. And if we can share that concern, four repetitiously, four ten years or so. You can become a vehicle for the Buddhists and Patriarchs. But I'm not talking about something that takes

[32:46]

actually many years or any measure at all. A famous teacher was asked, how many monks in your monastery? He said, front three and back three. you can drop the topic completely instantaneously if you have enough affection for yourself and enough honesty to realize you have only this one life

[33:58]

And it's your life, not somebody else's idea or in the newspapers, etc. If you really want to do it and you have no reservation, when you waver, someone should strike you.

[35:04]

But the depth of our practice, the flow of our practice comes from a deep, unconsidered, or inconsiderate, I don't know, I want to say inconsiderate affection for ourselves. Because you exist, you have some affection for yourself. When you don't have any ideas, some affection will come up. It's your comparing and topics that prevent this affection.

[36:41]

bodhichitta, this vow from coming up and leading your frames of mind. Tsukiroshi used to say, we know sunlight, the warmth of the sunlight, because it hits something, because there's some obstacle of the sunlight. So your life is the obstacle of this affection. Because you're alive, we know this affection.

[37:50]

So our state of mind and affection are very closely related. As I've said before, the word think and the word thank are the same root. So many of you, when you sit, will begin to have some gratitude, feel some gratitude for things just because they appear. just because they exist. You don't need to find some meaning or explanation anymore. You can act with them out of affection, not out of their meaning. We can completely join things in this way, not concerned with origin or meaning. And you will understand things affectionately and completely this way.

[39:53]

Lin told me, I hope you don't mind me quoting you, Lin told me that, something I've noticed myself too, that people who can't see stand very straight, and by standing straight everyone recognizes them, as being unable to see. So, if you don't want to be treated like a blind person all the time, you have to learn how to slouch. That's very affectionate. So, because we're affectionate for people, we slouch. If you, maybe our natural way, is to stand straight. It's easy, actually. And some Zen students stand too straight, and it becomes a kind of aggression. It's more affectionate to slouch. If you stand too straight, you're blind or aggressive.

[41:59]

But most people no longer realize their neurotic way of living or their slouching or their mistakes or their scattering rice in the courtyard is a form of affection. And they see it as a disability. So the whole world is slouching affectionately around, making a mess of everything. Building atomic plants, etc. So sometimes we bow, you know, quite perfectly. And sometimes we bow with our hands slightly curved. This way, not so many people can enter this way. But this way, people can enter with our hands sort of soft or slightly curved. But we should know both ways.

[43:33]

And sometimes we should bow very straight, and we should stand very straight. And sometimes when people are slouching, we should stand straight. And sometimes we should join them in their slouching. And sometimes when people are straight, we should slouch. If you try to do this for your own gain or loss, it will be your loss.

[44:47]

Unfortunately, our life does not work when we try to do it for ourselves. As far as I'm concerned, it's a proven fact. You end up to be a shadow. If you stand straight, you stand straight for others, and if you slouch, you slouch for others. And the sooner you realize this, The easier it is for you to stand straight when you slouch, and slouch when you stand straight, and accommodate yourself to every circumstance without losing your pure, undisturbed state of mind. Buddhism then is available to everyone, and you reside with the Buddhism patriarchs. And this world is a million little Buddha seconds away from you. I don't know how to express it. Not different from just as we are and yet completely different.

[46:21]

sit in this world all the time, live and act in this world all the time. And by Sashin, if you can just sit and drop the topic, drop the topic, drop the topic, your posture, your pain, your mind, you may have a deep taste of what the Buddhists and Patriarchs are talking about. Or if you can only decide on the side of absolute sincerity, without concern for gain or loss, it's exactly the same. That is all the esoteric teaching are there.

[48:19]

That's the front door. All the esoteric teachings are back doors and side doors. The front door is right in front of you and easy to enter but has to be entered in a flash. No manipulation. No planning. No holding back. No buffalo's head or tail.

[49:05]

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