I mean, you do not have the means to change the treatments of the... Tonight I'd like to take as the starting point of my talk a question that came up during the yoga week about a week ago.

[01:04]

And we were having a discussion one afternoon in the dining room about Buddhism and yoga and sitting. And somebody asked, why do we keep our eyes open in Zazen? And the abbot turned to me and said, What is your answer to that? And I answered what I usually say when that question is asked, that we keep our eyes open to stay awake, and also to stay in touch with this physical reality, this plane of existence, not to trip off into a particular reality. hallucinations, or fantasies, or dream worlds, or whatever, but to stay in touch. And the abbot added one dimension to the answer by saying that a student had come up to him one day and said, I finally figured out why we keep our eyes open in Zazen.

[02:22]

And he said, yes, what's that? And she said, so we can see each other. So I can see everybody. So we sit. That is my dimension of why we sit. We sit to look at everybody, for everybody, we do our practice together, our study together for each other. And usually when we come to Buddhist practice or to zazen, we're looking for some personal realization or some personal liberation through zazen. some special experience in the zendo, in our meditation.

[03:26]

We think there's some enlightenment experience that we can achieve through our sitting. And because we approach our life with the mind of self-cherishing, we offer to each other the opportunity to practice for the sake of everyone, to turn our life over to everyone. It's also natural, I think, to do our lives, to live our lives for each other, to turn our lives over to all beings.

[04:40]

I think that's as natural as self-cherishing. The cherishing of others is as natural. But that has to be awakened usually. That needs some actualization. Initially, the early days of Buddha, he invited his disciples to go forth to be with people and to teach the Dharma to them and to alleviate their suffering, he asked his disciples to live among the people and to bring the teaching to them, because there was much suffering in you and much misunderstanding of the truth of existence. And for a couple of hundred years, And that was the practice of the Buddhist monks, to go out into the world and to preach and to live among people.

[05:48]

But after a couple of hundred years, there was a change, and monks became interested in their own salvation and their direction, and not so interested in being out there with the people. And they took to creating their own communities and doing their own practices to achieve their own salvation. The Arhat ideal symbolizing that kind of practice. And the Bodhisattva ideal, the ideal of our practice, developed in the context of that time. And the monks were turning their backs on the people and separating themselves and living their own lives, hanging out together, following their breath and their posture, watching their thoughts and their feelings, watching their states of mind.

[06:54]

The Bodhisattva ideal are developed as an antidote for this tendency to take care of ourselves and neglect, neglect others. I'd like to clarify the use of the term of practice before I go on. When we say practice in Buddhism, we don't mean practice like practice can be some routine practice that we do every day, but little by little to get better and give it performance, in the by and by. As Dogen used to practice, Dogen is the Japanese monk who brought Buddhism, our tradition of Buddhism, from China to Japan.

[08:04]

As Dogen used to turn, a practice means to accomplish the way. 20% effort today if I have the energy, and 70% tomorrow and little by little, a little more each day. But in each moment of our lives to fully, completely accomplish the way. 100% of our effort, 100% of our energy, of our intention is our The expenditure of our life energy, 100%, fully engaging at the moment, leaving nothing out, not waiting to pick up what got left out, adding something to more, completely including everything in the room, fully engaging our life in each moment.

[09:08]

Thinking about my life that way, think about my practice that way, settles me, centers me, keeps me here. This is where I live my life, in this moment, not the next moment. This is the only one. That's our understanding, that the only place we live our life is in this moment. And the only place we can do our practice or accomplish our life is in this moment. There is no other moment. But Dogen wrote a fascicle about the Bodhisattva way of life, and I'd like to talk about it with you tonight. There have been many translations of this fascicle, The Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance.

[10:26]

The Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Conversion. The Four Ways to Win Over Beings. The Four Ways to Benefit Beings. The translation that I prefer of this title is that that Thomas Cleary used in his translation, The Four Integrated Methods of Bodhisattvas. The four methods by which bodhisattvas can integrate themselves with others. The first dimension, integrating within the self on this dimension of am I practicing to save myself or am I practicing to liberate others? First, to integrate ourselves in that dimension. And secondly, to integrate ourselves actually in our interaction with each other until there is no one outside of us that's different from us.

[11:35]

To see ourselves as identical with everyone. So these four methods are, the first one is giving or generosity or liberality. The second one is kind words or kind speech. The third is beneficial action. And the fourth is identity action or cooperation. And I said once before when I talked about giving that I've had a hard time even thinking about giving because I'd always found it a kind of binding activity full of obligation, duty, and reciprocity. You bid when you have to give a present, birthdays or weddings or childbirth or something, and you're never quite sure how much of a gift to give. And then there's a little tally you keep, and then you get some presents back.

[12:41]

We live our lives in this give and take, which ends up being kind of oppressive. So partly I think of giving as binding. The Buddhist texts talk about giving as wholesome activity, giving to equalize differences between people who have much and people who don't have so much, to equalize the differences economically or socially. But the giving that cheers my heart is when I think of giving as a liberating activity. Liberating giving from giving. Not even giving as a wholesome activity, but as a liberating activity. When there is actually no giving, no giver, no gift, and no receiver.

[13:49]

Thank you. In the text, Meaningful to Behold, which is a commentary on Shantideva's book, Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. That book was written by an Indian yogi and scholar in eighth century India. And it's kind of a classic text on the Bodhisattva life. The commentary on that, Meaningful to Behold, indicates four motivations for our activity. The first one is impure, and the other three go from lower to higher. And they're interesting. They are in the terms of what the judge is speaking. The one that's not pure is when the book says, the text says, before we do an activity, we should generate a motivation.

[15:18]

We should generate a motivation for that activity. The motivation that we generate will determine the scope of our activity. And they list four motivations. The first one, which is impure, is to gain a good reputation. That's a worldly motivation or aspiration to get something in this life, fame or wealth. The lowest aspiration is to attain rebirth as a human or a god. The next highest, the medium aspiration, is to gain release from our own suffering and attain liberation. And the highest aspiration or motivation is to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings.

[16:23]

And then the commentary says that after you have completed an action, We should dedicate the virtue of that action. And dedication is like having an intention. The definition of dedication is intention. And by our intention, we direct the virtue of our activity towards some direction or goal. Intention or dedication is like the reins on a horse, the horse of virtue, he says. And if we dedicate the merit or the virtue of our activity to enlightenment, it will remain undiminished until enlightenment is reached. It's just out there, continuing to work in the middle.

[17:28]

So giving, the first of these four integrative methods, is also the first perfection in the bodhisattva's life, in the bodhisattva's career, the perfection of giving. And it's a practice to liberate our minds from alleviating internal miserliness, he says. But there's a little miser living inside of all of us who's toting up our activities and tallying up our accounts at the end of the day. And to alleviate that spirit, we practice giving. We practice turning ourselves over, giving without any hope of return. And we practice the gratitude toward those who are the recipients of our practice. People... will allow us to practice giving to them or to practice patience, people who irritate us.

[18:48]

but it's in one way or another so that we generate practices stimulated by the difficulties of our relationships. And when people allow us to practice, they are our field of merit because they allow us to reap the merit of the path. So we practice... Giving on account of taking. We practice morality on account of immorality. And patience on account of impatience. Energy because we are lazy. concentration because we are distracted and we practice wisdom because of our ignorance, our confusion.

[20:02]

I'd like to read just a little bit from Dobin because it's so poetic and so beautiful to be able to feel for how he... Dobin is the master of known duality. His teaching is always from the highest, the deepest understanding. And his... He says here, giving means not coveting. Not coveting is not being greedy. In worldly terms, it is said that not being greedy means not flattering. And that really reached me, how hard it is to be with each other when we're trying to get our own way in a situation where we want something other than what's happening. We want in a relationship or in a conversation or in some circumstances, we want something to happen.

[21:24]

We want somebody to think the way we think, to agree with us or to get some approval or just to win in some way. And how much that desire to affect the results undermines ourselves. How much we have to manipulate and adjust to accommodate ourselves to what's happening. How painful that is. How much suffering there is in that. When one leads the way to the way, one attains the way. When attaining the way, the way is necessarily being left to the way. When goods are left to goods, the goods unfailingly become giving. Self gives to self. Other gives to other. In Buddhism we say that practice of giving, compassion, loving-kindness begins with the self, that we have to practice loving-kindness and friendliness and charity toward the self first.

[22:49]

When I read something like, self gives to self, other gives to other, this is what comes up for me, that how we liberate ourselves from the self through giving, is when we liberate ourselves from the idea of a self, from a limited idea of of what we can do or be or express or experience. Minyan? When we allow ourselves to know the full range of what is in us, not just the light, positive, socially acceptable attributes that we enjoy presenting to each other, but the difficulties and the arrogance, the greed, the bully,

[23:56]

the need for dominance, the rage, the violence, the confusion. When we include all that and offer that integrated being, all-inclusive being to each other, we liberate each other. We liberate each other to be our full selves. I completely When somebody just is who they are and says what they think and feel directly, it's a great liberation for me. I then can do the same. And when I can do it for someone, I offer them that same gift. Back to Dovin, he says, entrusting flowers to the wind, birds to the season, also must be meritorious acts of giving.

[25:06]

When one learns giving well, being born and dying are both giving. What is difficult to transform is the mind of living beings. This giving is to intend to transform the mind even as far as attainment of enlightenment. In the beginning, it must be done by giving. There is a time when the mind transforms things, and there is giving in which things transform the mind." And the Tanahashi translation of this is especially Because mind is beyond measure. Things given are beyond measure. Moreover, in giving, mind transforms the gift, and the gift transforms mind. I always feel that when I am not trying to do anything for anybody, it's when I'm actually helping or giving the most.

[26:37]

And I feel that way because I feel free to take whatever I need from anybody. Then they're not trying to give me something. Just when I see something happening, I see the way a person is moving or breathing or speaking. And I'm free to take from that what I need. And I think we've all had the experience of people saying, you really helped me when you did such and such. And when you did such and such, usually means when you were just living your life. You were just going about your day of business. Kind speech, the second of the four, he says, we should first arise a mind of kindness and love. Kind speech is the absence of harsh speech.

[27:39]

OK. first aroused a mind of kindness and love and utter caring, kind words. Here's a little story from Benjamin Franklin, who was tactless in his youth. He became so diplomatic that he was made the United States ambassador to France. When he was asked the secret of his success, he said, I will speak ill of no man. and speak all the good I know of everybody. Mind speech is trying to curb our impulse to say the first thing that comes up with it. That impulse that we have to be truthful at the expense of somebody. We've got to be charitable or compassionate.

[28:47]

Sometimes kind speech is just being authentic. And beneficial action. Dogen says, universally benefit self and others. And when I think of beneficial action, I think of a story about Suzuki Roshi. In the early days of Zen Center, when we were putting out the early version of the wind bell, it was a mini-graph sheet, a couple pages. And the students were pretty much in awe of him. pretty much all sixes and sevens around him. And the particular person who was helping him run the mimeograph machine that day couldn't get anything right, couldn't get the machine in, couldn't get it to turn, couldn't get the paper in right.

[30:01]

And Tsutsubi Roshi, noticing how nervous he was, began to drop the ink himself and to spill things on himself and to generally be pretty clumsy. And pretty soon, they both settled down and were able to get the publication done. And that is pretty generous. It's something that we don't often offer each other. And the last of the four methods is identity action and cooperation. And Dogen says that means non-opposition, not opposing oneself and not opposing others. And I read a beautiful little story the other day, and I'd like to share it with you.

[31:02]

which illustrates this identity action principle of seeing the other as yourself. And this is the story in St. Luke about the sisters Martha and Mary, into whose home Jesus Christ came with his followers one day. And they seated themselves in the withering room, and he proceeded to teach. And Mary seated herself with the disciples and followers and began to listen. And her sister suddenly realized that she was stuck with getting the meal out or serving a guest. And she wasn't sure she felt good about this. She felt kind of isolated. And part of her wanted to be out there with Mary, listening to the teaching.

[32:08]

And her irritation and her bitterness got strong. And she said something. She spoke up. In Christ's words to her, were, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her. And so Martha was left not only with her bitter feeling about her sister, leaving her to cook the meal alone. But with this teaching of Jesus, one thing is needful. Mary hath chosen that good part, and it shall not be taken away from her. And Martha was troubled about what that meant, how she should understand that and apply that in her life.

[33:15]

Should she also, it was an equal thing to be a student, to be listening to the teaching. Should she also leave the kitchen and sit down at Christ's feet? And the way the story is told, she was troubled and she stood in the kitchen and she looked at the pots and the utensils. If she tried to work quietly, she knew that she couldn't hear. She could hear the sounds through the door, but not the words. What does it mean, thou art careful and troubled about many things? She began to think about how hard she worked.

[34:17]

It seems as if her path was service. And she went over and over. Should she change what she was doing? Should she not serve the need? Should she serve the meal? How could she let go with that understanding of it? And as she stood there in some confusion, there was a letting go, a temporary, voluntary dropping away and letting go of this turbulence inside of her. And space appeared. And in that space, in that moment of space, she realized that she was Martha and she was also Mary. That that part of Mary, Mary was a part of her. That she was not separate from her sister.

[35:22]

She had not before been able to see, include within herself, that aspect of herself that was her sister, that aspect of her sister that was herself. And the story goes that with that new space, And that liberation from the tension of the opposition and the competitiveness and the bad feeling, she certainly had a lot of energy and she was able to go about her tasks without being troubled because, in fact, she knew how to do things and she could work very easily and quickly without her mental obstructions, The effort. There was some recognition in her that her path was service. Her path was working. Her sister's path was something else. And the story, I don't know if I told it in a way that comes across, but as I was reading it,

[36:34]

I've had one of those old experiences because I too have sometimes been in a conversation with somebody where we seem to be pitted against each other and we're struggling to separate ourselves from each other and to clarify that person's situation or position and I'm clarifying my right to the situation. We're trying to get through to each other. And when we stop the effort and just listen, there's a moment when you realize there's no difference. That person is being exactly the same friend that I am being. Their aspirations and their intentions, their desires and needs are identical with mine. That moment I can drop my sense of combativeness, of needing to overcome or dominate, and just allow that person full space within me, and there's no struggle anymore.

[37:37]

It was an enormous realization. And I suspect we've all had some experience with that. And it was especially poignant to have this story describing the conflict of these two sisters Two minutes over. Does anybody have any comment on this? He is about to deliver this son to me. That's wonderful. Next story. There's this wonderful little book called A Way of Working, published by Parabola. And the story goes in there.

[38:40]

Like a cat, huh? I have a question about this 100% effort all the time. I was thinking a couple hours ago after a hard day's work, getting kind of lost in waiting tables and carrying dishes. knickling at the back door all the time, eating deep desserts and smoking some cigarettes and, you know, kind of tired and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that I'm not so sure that I've been doing 100% effort and I'm kind of wondering how we lose our, in a way, it's good to lose ourself in a situation and just sort of plunge in

[39:42]

and kind of forget what our definition of a 100% effort might be, and still have that be a 100% effort perhaps. I don't think I really understand what a 100% effort is. Would you try to clarify that for me? It's doing completely whatever you're doing at the time. It's not standing outside and saying, I shouldn't be eating this third dessert. I shouldn't be having this cigarette. I shouldn't be reading the newspaper. I shouldn't be smoking. It's completely doing that and leaving yourself alone. Doing it and dropping it, whatever you're doing. What do you mean by dropping it? I mean not pushing yourself around or not bullying yourself. not criticizing, not improving yourself. Where is discipline?

[40:45]

What sort of discipline? What's discipline? I think discipline comes from another place. Let's say intention rather than discipline. Discipline sounds like the outside. Intention to understand our lives, into practice non-duality, non-separation from our life, from our activity. That's like a vow. And we do the best we can in each situation without commenting on it. It's the commenting on it that pushes us around and separates us from the activity. I think if we Have that vow or that intention to keep clarifying our life and understanding it. We'll gradually find that we're less interested in reading the latest magazine out there, and sometimes we'll turn to a Buddhist book.

[41:54]

Or even if we read the magazine, that's OK, too. I don't... You know, some people, I think, push themselves too hard, push themselves around too much. And those people, I think, should leave themselves alone and trust themselves. Trust their intention or their vow or their effort. And some people, when they need a little push, I feel like you work pretty hard. If somebody needs a push, he or she will get it in this community. Is there a theme in contrast to, for instance, this book I was reading, Emily, I was reading tonight about my conscience, talking about feelings.

[43:06]

Sometimes it's just a little voice inside the eyes. Which is a pretty, pretty much in our Western society, it's very Pinocchio, any cricket thing. So, since we're raised with that, a lot of cavities. The voice inside of us holding us around, telling us what to do. The idea that part of us is telling us what's right and wrong. It's not easy. But we have to, right? I don't know, Brian, I didn't want to sound like there's no effort. But I want to say to you, we have to make that effort.

[44:09]

And the effort is just to let ourselves be. But watch what we do. Just watch that voice coming up, and watch that voice coming up, and watch that voice coming up until it's infinite. you don't... you see that that voice is empty. So, at some point, there's a different quality to it. You can separate, you don't identify with it anymore. It's habit energy. It's the only way I know how to talk about it right now. That voice isn't who you are. If you watch it long enough, without trying to do anything to it, at some point, You'll see that. It's not you. It doesn't mean it's not actually happening. It's not real at the time that it's happening.

[45:12]

But it doesn't come from any place except causes and conditions. It's not substantial or real. So the way we practice, as you know, is just watching it, not trying to stop it. At one point, I thought I heard you use the word authentically. You were talking about the most highly important thing to me. One day, something will break loose. And you'll see something about yourself that's free.

[46:18]

Suddenly, you'll accept your envy or your greed. or your despair or your rage. That's just whatever that is. And you don't identify with it anymore. It's really okay with you to be that. It's okay with you to be an angry person, an ambivalent person, a greedy person, an inquisitive person, whatever. When you can let yourself be all those things without trying to mask them from yourself, we include them, we put them out there for everybody. If we put them out there in that spirit of not hiding them and masking them, we liberate everybody to be free to include all their stuff too. I include my shit with you, you can include your shit with me. And you need to do that.

[47:19]

To be truly real with each other. To be whole being beings. Let that stuff come into our life. That's part of who we are. And I don't think it means that it dominates us. For a time, it's part of our process of just including it. But when we practice with the vow to liberate ourselves and to liberate all beings, we need to see it in order to know that we're trying to liberate ourselves. We don't see this stuff, but we're denying it. It's not available to us. So first we practice looking at it, identifying it, acknowledging it. And then... Frequently, once it's given its own space, it doesn't have the same power in our lives.

[48:22]

It can go out the way. Or it might come up, but it won't tangle with us in such a powerful way. The stuff that's powerful in our lives is the stuff that we're not conscious of. Once that becomes conscious for us, it doesn't... It doesn't push us around, it doesn't drive us to miss anyone. Is this communicating at all? Yes. Pat, I don't think I answered you. Thank you very much.

[49:20]

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