Our life is constantly full of contradictions. Talking about doing two things at once yesterday, at least we find ourselves, I think, usually doing two things at once because we're ambivalent. Now I guess I'm suggesting a third thing, which is Kechi's disassembled cart. We shouldn't lose that feeling. One of the Hindu teachers, not Bhaktivedanta,

[01:05]

remembers me. He says he always sees the pale blue pearl. It's the same thing. This comes into view when really comes into view when, as I said, your consciousness is no longer defined by a topic and activity, no longer defined by choice. Although on what we consider a larger scale society, I described yesterday by extrapolation

[02:43]

biological existence, something equally sensitive and minute, which we have grossly simplified and also mismatched. But despite that, on the personal level, I think most of what we experience is making do. The best we come to is to make do. It's foolishness to think there's anything better than making do. Yet if you vow to make do to what you're doing, as I was saying, to vow to lead the life you're actually leading.

[04:02]

If this which is make-do, you still have the ability to vow to do it. This make-do has a power, the kind of power we want to attribute to doing things perfectly, having some ideal arrangement. So you, in a sense, give things their depth and power by your vow. You make the world ideal by your vow. It's very strange to say so, but I think it's true. And this vow, you know, is another way to say – again, it sounds like I'm stretching it a little – but a vow is another way to say mine. Mine, as a word, has quite a background. In Dutch it means love.

[05:42]

And it has all the meanings of, you know, mind your shoes when you come in, mind that you take off your shoes, mind your parents, obey, mind the children. to watch the children. And mind means memory. And you don't need even re-mind yourself. An old way of using it is just mind yourself, mind somebody of something, means to re-mind It's pretty when you get sorted out yourself, get yourself sorted out, so that you can see yourself, unwound. And we do unwind. To wind means to wander or to weave and that then is a process of unwinding.

[07:31]

And two people together, two people like to spend time together because it makes them unwind. It's almost a kind of undressing. And we were talking yesterday about the agreements of society, the agreements of ourself with ourself, that such and such is so. For example, our whole education system is based on the agreement that we don't know anything, and it's not so. If we have to create some model, it's much more productive, I think, to say that we uncover Education is a process of uncovering, not of learning. So, Zazen as a process of unwinding, is stopping the weaving and wandering, is a kind of uncovering of what we know.

[08:58]

This is pretty important. I remember a personal experience of reading a very turgid novel by Faulkner when I was pretty young. And I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I couldn't quite figure out what he was saying. And then it dawned on me, somehow, This novel was written for human beings. Someone must be able to understand it. I'm a human being, I think. It must be possible. It can't be written for one or two people, somewhere. And as soon as I realized that the novel was quite clear, That's useful at that level, but it's also true if you can realize you're already Buddha, if you can realize you already know everything that you need to know.

[10:27]

that how you express or define or refine is something else. But we already know everything. The rest is just refinement or expression. You may not know some specific piece of information based on a particular location. But you know how it works. The sixth patriarch, you know, hearing the sutra, you know, saying, he says, I can't read, and someone says, he says, well just read it to me. They read it to him and he explains it. We know those things because we know how things exist because we are existence. We are existence. We are producing teeth and fingernails and thoughts. We are it. But because of various agreements you've made with yourself and with society, you cut yourself off from this fundamental

[12:05]

knowledge, this fundamental possession. So we in zazen we unwind. The fabric, you know, gets so wide like it's magnified and you can see the feel, see the fibers very clearly of how we think and act and how things exist. not just as an observer, you find your activity weaving, you find your thinking weaving. And as I started to say, once you have sorted all these weavings out,

[13:30]

You can begin to mind them, to watch them, to love them. As I said, the Dutch is love. In Greek, Minerva is the goddess of wisdom. In Chinese I believe there's two words, maybe there's more, but one word for love means the kind of love we mean, another word for love means like you watch a child grow up. I think that's the same as mind. So, mind is a, from the way I'm talking about now, mind is a repetitive process, a reminding process, a watching process, an obeying process. And you immerse yourself through zazen and

[15:10]

then through this activity beyond choice, you immerse yourself in discursive mind but also non-discursive mind. So vow is – let me go back – when you get so this is all sorted out, you know, you can see quite clearly how you function, where your various, as I've said, billboards come from. And you can't locate anybody there. There's nobody home. You knock on the billboards and they divide up into parts and, hey, where am I? You can't find anybody there in the various parts and you can't find anybody to take charge. Who's going to decide how to put this back together? Who's going to decide what I do when I stop buzzing, when I get out of this boundless

[16:39]

floating world. There's nobody who stands up and takes charge. But at the same time, I don't want to say something is there. We experience something, some connective, something. But it may be more accurate to say that all the parts, if you drop the observer, they seem to know what to do. Like the cell, you know, which knows how to produce sixty trillion cells.

[17:46]

It's very trusting, but you find it so. But it means you can't be pushed around, as I keep saying, by greed, hate and delusion. And there are many hubric checks in this. If you're, for instance, since we're all practicing, practice itself is something you have to be If you find that you usually practice better than everyone else, that you do service a little better, you sit a little better, you bow a little better, in most cases pertaining to the main thing you do, whether it's whatever your thing is, in this case practice, you're a little better than everyone. You should be a little wary. Because it sounds like your practice is probably a possession at the price of others, at the expense of others. The most subtle people I've met are always in whatever group they're in. They're pretty good, but not the best.

[19:20]

they seem rather like everyone else. But then, you know, another time you find them in another group, a few years later or at the same time, a group, the best people in the other group could not have been in, could not have survived in, and in that group they're just, you know, not the best, but pretty much like everyone else. And hubris is very real, permission is very real. Talking yesterday again about the subtlety of individual and wider senses of identity. I think we can also say that

[20:24]

The vow to save all sentient beings means also that you need their permission for your life. That if doing something well means besting others, that permission will be withdrawn from you and you will suffer for it. And our almost intrinsic tendency to sabotage ourselves, I think, mainly comes from the failure to sufficiently feel this permission, that on hubris, you know, is the most

[21:32]

maybe most characteristic Western moral principle, which Socrates and Plato and others particularly talk about, and it's loosely translated as, Pride goeth before a fall. And the idea is that if you get too much out above everyone, you're no longer in touch with a foundation and you will fall. Greek plays are all built around this idea. But personally, too, if you... psychologically, I think, if you try to... just on a psychological level, though I think it's more fundamental than that, if you try to do something and you do it, secretly, to be better than others or to best others, or to think, now I'm on top. There's another fear which comes in, which is, if they find out they'll get me. And we are so afraid of this at an unconscious level that we'll pull the rug out from underneath ourselves, better do it quick before they do it.

[22:58]

You know, in Japan there's an expression, the nail that sticks up gets hit. And that's true, you know, it's not so true, it's not so apparent in our society, but I think hubris means something. So if we're going back to unwinding, we also have to be careful of bringing definitions with us in this unwinding, unweaving process. So we talk in Zen about great doubt, or I say some experimental attitude. For example, today I was speaking with someone and we were talking about whether the word alone, which we bring with us into zazen, I feel alone, maybe the word alone is a cover, a slouch or sabotage for togetherness.

[24:24]

There are many things that we can't look at directly, they're too bright, or too terrifying, and we give them the name of the opposite. And you find that in meditation. So, in your meditation you should examine the five skandhas, and alone and together. and what Nagarjuna might mean by it. There is no contact, there is only a third. A third So, Bhaisana, over a period of time, you are able to unweave things. Eventually, you're able to find things woven and unwoven at the same time, because your

[25:55]

physical activity is quite pure. And you see immediately when it's not, because it's like a, you know, deranged spider that's weaving suddenly, it's all cockeyed. You see it immediately that you did something. some Hubert thing, something out of keeping. So, finding all these disassembled billboards, all these parts and no one to take charge. They're all you. They're all you, but it's difficult to say, which is, you can't say. One of them is more you. And the secret here, the answer here, is the vow.

[27:23]

your intention. Your intention is what will save you in this situation. Because you can't control it. It's very clear one part can't control another, really. But your mind as repetitive thing, as a reminding process, your vow can be a reminder in there. So you put your intention in there, or your intention is one of the parts. And this is the most effective single thing in practice. It is what effort means in practice, the vow.

[28:27]

And you've existed, you know, for quite a long time. Your consciousness, particularly your consciousness defined by a topic, doesn't perceive your life as being very long. Going from topic to topic, you know, it misses millions of events, instances. And as some of you have noticed, given doing zazen, you know, and the topics being not so satisfying or numerous or not so convincing, we get quite bored in zazen. But it's because our consciousness is trained to be alive only on topics, so we tend to go to sleep, boredom or sleep.

[29:39]

because our consciousness is not subtle enough to exist without the definition of a topic. But all the invisible work, you know, all the many agreements you've made are always present and always working for all the millions, I don't know, billions and billions of instance of your life up until now. Like millions of leaves turning in the dark, infinite, almost infinite number of instances, you expect to change by a little thousand. And there's no way to do it, really. Zazen will settle out, unweave. But as soon as you put it back together, it'll go back together in the old way. Maybe a little more play, a little more detachment.

[31:08]

but it is necessary to have the reminding, repetitive process of intention. And the subtleness of this is opened up by knowing some other person completely. Of opening up the reminding process fullest by reminding with another mind. Some ancient kind of meeting.

[32:19]

meeting with a mind which has gone through this process. It means in one lifetime you may be able to do it. So to do something about the millions of instance in which you have decided such and such was so, you've acted on, existed as if such and such was so. You have to keep every moment reminding yourself. That's why all forms of Buddhism are based on mantra or mudra or visualization or repetitive

[33:26]

All our attempts to bring that second or third thing into your consciousness, your teacher always on top of your head or some guardian Bodhisattva visualized out of the material of your karma. We can say a Buddhist or a priest is someone whose craft is their karma. The material of their craft is their karma. And you reshape that into a bodhisattva or a mantra. So by our practice you take some part of your karma and you remind yourself of it over and over again. And the success of your practice will be directly related to your ability to bring that into each successive instantaneous moment. First it's kind of gross and

[35:04]

haphazard and greatly interrupted by weeks and months. And then it begins to exist there all the time. You can say unconscious, but it's just there. It's functioning. And you don't even know it consciously so much. When you forget it, it doesn't make any difference. It's going on. Basic intention is the vow of enlightenment or to save or receive the permission of all beings. But you may make many specific ones. And at first I would say it takes always at least a year, almost a year, and maybe two years or three years of repeating, of deepening your attention. It takes that many instances.

[36:26]

to shift the weight of the infinite number of instants of your life up until now. Even with satori, a satori which is the complete and utter conviction, a kind of By that I mean, I'm rather interested in cubism as an organizing principle. Cubism is, you know, a face is like this and then abruptly a line is drawn across and the profile is to the side, like in Picasso's paintings. So, your life goes along like this, and there's a line drawn across it, and everything changes at that point. That's like a sector. That's accused. Zen Center is very accused, in the way it's organized. Energy comes into Zen Center and goes... We don't, we should, we don't keep it inside and make ourselves secure. It's all outside.

[37:51]

But even with that, still, your habits are very deep and some repetitive mantra-like process is necessary. Fundamentally, it's the vow. Your priorities become so clear that the vow is always there. Everything you do is a realization of the body. There's no action or thought which you have finally, which isn't an actualization of the body. And this, you find, is not some New Year's resolution or not some addition to your life, but the vow is the fundamental nature of mind. It's how our mind exists. And it's how we exist now. It's those many agreements we have which are often contradictory and ambivalent.

[39:16]

which push us around now, we call it karma. So mind, free of your particular karma, is vow, would express itself as this vow of enlightenment. The example I've told you several times and someone, I was reminded of it yesterday or today, but some of you don't know so I'll mention it. I was working with some question at one point, I can't remember, this is a kind of joke but it's a good example.

[40:21]

and I was trying to stay with this question and by this time I was pretty experienced at doing it. Usually I could resolve or absorb a question into an answer in a very short time, that time maybe, one or two hours or a week or two. Eventually it's one activity at the same time. There's no hindering the process after a while. The first one takes a long time and then the process begins to work. In everything you turn, you can turn things out of the weaving. Anyway, I was asking this question and something began to distract me in a kind of image in my mind, and it was a telephone ringing. And I kept saying, I want to stay with this question. Stop ringing. But it was quite persistent. And for some reason I remember the telephone was brown.

[41:49]

And I went over to it in my mind thinking, that's the way to get rid of the cancer. And I picked it up and it told me the answer. So, my point is you don't know which is hindrance or which is something bugging you and which is the question. Who's controlling which? So it's rather subtle, there's no way to actually figure out when you're reminding yourself. Is what's distracting you the answer? You don't know. There's no way to know except by your vow or intention, because you can't figure out the parts. You can only return to your intention. If you do, you will find out what to do. So making do becomes your vow or following.

[43:11]

It's rather hard to express in simple English, but you know what I mean. So Zen is not a belief or set of rules or even a way of life. In the sense that it's a way of life or there's some rule, some way, it's just a kind of reinforcement to get you started. You're doing two things. You're finding out how you exist, how you work. That's all. You don't want to find out anything. It's not a matter of Buddhism or whether it agrees with Buddhism. You are just finding out what it is that for some reason

[44:51]

you've been given the experience, you know, as an observer of a particular blob. And for some reason you can, you identify mistakenly with this observer. you can get a perspective on it. And then, you know, it's sort of death if you try to control the blob from the perspective. So then we try to get some detachment from blob and observer. So you're just trying to find out how this blob and observer And once you find out how they exist, that's the one thing you do. The second thing you do is you join your intention or attention to it. It's something mysterious, but once you see this is the way it is,

[46:18]

You don't, I don't know how we can say, you don't hold back anymore, but you don't hold back anymore from it. That's what it means, accept things as they are. It means this not holding back. And that joining process is a vow. and completely done, we call it Buddha. But we need so many reminders. because we get caught by greed, hate and delusion, by possession, by hubris, by rejection of some people, not taking everyone into consideration. And we pay the price in accumulated karma, in compromised behavior, in faulty

[47:44]

So the effort is to give up trying to define yourself as important or define your practice, to give up consciousness identified by topic. Yesterday there seemed to be some confusion over when I said you don't I said to be wary of wanting people to know what you have done. I didn't mean your history, that you shouldn't share your life with your teacher or share your life with your friends. I meant more like often young people walk up the street with a radio on. And it's much too loud, you know, somehow it's not just for them to hear the radio. They can hear it quite well if the volume is lower, but the entire street is involved in their hearing the radio. And we have a tendency to lead our lives that way, to turn our own volume up.

[49:11]

If we're involved in even wanting Suzuki Roshi to know, it's something to be wary of. You can assume Suzuki Roshi knows, you can assume we all know. It's an uncovering process because we already know. Much more useful to just assume people know us. One of our agreements is people don't know us and we have to get to know someone. You already know people. They already know you.

[50:30]

When you're really not confused by the topic anymore, your wisdom will come out. A mantra, a kind of mantra you might take, try out, is, I want your permission. So when you're with someone, or when you find you're thinking about someone, friend or enemy, to falter with your agreements by saying,

[52:11]

I know I need your permission. May I have your permission? We would do things quite differently if we didn't always with the feeling, may I have your permission. But even if you don't believe such a thing, it's interesting to see what happens if you try. How far along we can go with such a repetition. So something you get stuck on, I can't do that, that's the kind of thing you can take as a repetition. All the koans and aspects of the sutras which you can't understand, to repeat. As the sutras say many times, every sutra, just one word of this sutra

[53:42]

is worth, this is what it means. The nature of mind and thought, the nature of our effort, the nature of our participation in our existence, which has no observer, identity, or topic, One thing I want to say about breathing is we talk about exhaling and inhaling and having our breathing down here and, as you know, those of you who are not so familiar with

[54:46]

breathing, to take an inventory of your breathing, how you breathe under various, on various circumstances. But today, and in this session, talking about state of mind, I'd like to emphasize centered breathing, in which you feel your breathing like a cone, part of your posture inside you. some warm, sensual, soft column which supports us and makes our posture straight and is some condensed kind of light to us and extends actually to here.

[55:48]

All the way through.

[55:56]

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