So that phrase is our inmost request. And I thought, you probably use these words more than once for me to remember them, or other people have used them. And so I went to that great resource of all things, Suzuki Roshi, known as kuk.com, and where you can find pretty much anything that he ever said in public. I think that might be an exaggeration, but I'm not really clear about the status of the collection. But it's pretty comprehensive, and I was able to search. They have a search engine that gives you all the lectures in which such-and-such a phrase shows up. Anyway, I found one dated from July 1965, which is close to 50 years ago. The lecture was entitled Great Prajnaparamita Sutra.

[01:04]

So he was giving a talk on the Heart Sutra, which we chant every day. There were a number of lectures. It looked to me like there was a series of lectures about that time given in Los Altos on this topic, but I couldn't quite make out what was the connecting tissue between the talks. He'd say, now I'm going to talk about such and such. So there might be... I'm still curious about that, and I'm going to see if I can find out how... if there was a sequence of related topics, or whether he sort of landed here. I'm still talking about this, so I'm going to talk about some other part of the sutra. So in this particular sutra, this particular talk, excuse me, He talks about the concept of attainment. In the Heart Sutra it says there is no attainment, or then it says, well, all Buddhas attain such and such.

[02:11]

It's a difficult topic. Oh, another thing I wanted to mention. Suzuki Roshi talks about In this talk he refers to our true nature. And yesterday I was thinking, he's not referring to my true nature, he's not saying my true nature, or your true nature. He's saying our true nature. I don't know whether that... I'm sort of curious about that, why he's using that pronoun. And it may be that he wants us to not think about this too personally, or too individually, or maybe it's something… One of the things that you find when you look at the early talks, there are just raw transcriptions of what he actually said.

[03:15]

in the talk is that he's experimenting with how to use English and how to express the Dharma in our native tongue. And so sometimes when you read these talks, you have to kind of step back, step back, step back, just to try and figure out where the flow is, which is probably true of many of our talks in English, but I haven't read the transcriptions yet. So I'm just going to read a little bit of the beginning of this talk, and I'm going to read it just as it's transcribed, so ask me if you need clarification, let me know. He says, this morning I want to talk about the attainment. The attainment here, it means to resume our true nature, is actual attainments. To attain nirvana means to resume our true nature.

[04:19]

Our true nature is beyond reasoning, beyond our reasoning, beyond our sensory world. If, when we are beyond our reasoning or sensory world, there is no problem, there is no fear. Okay, so to read it the way I think it is meant to be read is, when we are beyond our reasoning or sensory world, there is no problem, there is no fear. There is just our true nature itself. When we resume our true nature, we say, we attained enlightenment. So actually, there is nothing to attain. To resume our true nature is our attainment. Resuming our true nature sounds like something really easy to do. But it's probably not like finding a dear old sweater that you haven't seen in years in your closet and just sort of putting it on and feeling, ah!

[05:32]

Maybe it feels that way. There's something more challenging about this. So he's suggesting that our true nature is something inherent in us, and yet we have to do something about it in order to connect. Also, he is Because he's talking about the Heart Sutra, that dyad of form and emptiness is always in the background. And it appears in this talk a little bit when he says, This nirvana, the ones he's referring to above, is from a negative viewpoint, it is calmness, stillness.

[06:48]

But from a positive viewpoint, it is the origin of all of our activities. All of our activities are supported by this state of mind, and even though you are taking activity, strong activity, there must be calmness of your mind or you will be lost in your activity. So I think this is kind of a really engaging way to start talking about that problem of language that comes up for us a lot when we talk about form and emptiness. We have such strong associations with those words. that our minds use them in ways in which I think need to be refreshed from time to time. Emptiness is something that we admit can't be grasped. We have this word referring to something which is incomprehensible, and that's the basic problem of language.

[07:58]

We keep thinking of it as comprehensible, but then we keep using the word that refers to something we can't really understand in a normal way that we understand language. For instance, for me, the word emptiness evokes a big space, but it doesn't contain anything. There's no boundaries to the non-containment. And likewise, form, when we say form, we often think about something we can identify, something we can distinguish. And yet, form is something which is sort of The so-called world of form is something in which everything is interrelated in such a way, and it's constantly in motion. And it's like a torrent, basically, of changing, like a great mudslide of experience.

[09:04]

And we can't, you know, a torrent of immutability. We're not really, you know, we say sometimes we live in the world of form, but we don't live in. We are just, you know, coextensive with it. And it's always changing. So there are these problems, and so I appreciate Suzuki Roshi's attempt to talk about this in a different way, talk about our true nature as something inherent in us, and at the same time, something which is life itself. So I'm going to read a little bit more of this talk, where he talks about this phrase, inmost request. So he's been talking about calmness, about the absolute nirvana, the emptiness side, and now he says,

[10:17]

Now my mind is very calm, but I want something more. Because you have inner strong, some desire, you don't know how to appease it. It is just as you take food when you are hungry. Even though you take food, that is not enough. In America you have, in California, you have various fruits, which is very delicious and beautiful. So, we Japanese think, If I go to California, I will take as much fruits as I can. Best fruits. But we find out that even though we eat the best fruits in California, that is not enough. And we are rather disappointed with myself or with fruits. I don't know which. This fruit is not good enough to appease my hunger. Not hunger, maybe. I don't know what it is. But we have some inmost request. Something which appeases your inmost request is not something you eat, which you see, which you feel, or is not something which is called your desire or instinct.

[11:32]

We don't know what it is, but we have some deep request, and this request is very, very deep. And everyone has this kind of request. This is called our inmost nature, which will take various forms, which is the origin of all of our activity, mental and physical. The only way is to give up all appeasement, all the medicine, all the ways which are supposed to be effective, and to give up our desires even. When we give up everything, we will have direct insight of the hunger, direct insight of our instinct. When we know what is our inmost request, then all the things you eat, all the things you do or see will serve as an appeasement to appease your inmost request. That is why we sit. That struck me.

[12:36]

So, he's talking about our nature, which we cannot really grasp, as something from which emerges our desires and activities. But it's not something we can examine with objectivity. but which we can intuit if we make space by not attaching to the various expressions of our inmost request. That is, everything we can identify. It sort of points to a sort of life force within us, which is life itself, and is not the thing we identify as what we want. It is only the manifestation of that inmost request. So this phrase resonates a lot for me because it points to a certain intimacy with our own nature.

[13:57]

It's sort of pointing, suggesting that this is something that I alone can know that may be true for everyone, but there is something deep inside us Maybe it's wrong to say inside, but something that we ourselves alone can know. And it also points to, for me, that it's something that wants to be known. This is one side of looking at this, which is that this is something alive in us that wants to be known. And can we receive that? What do we do in order to so-called hear that request? And it also implies that we have some choice.

[15:08]

We can say, No, I don't want to hear it, or I'd rather be doing something else. But at the same time, something might be knocking, softly, at first. And then perhaps come again. So sometimes we, you know, don't really want to hear that or open up to it, even though it almost is sort of emerging on its own. So sometimes we distract ourselves. We think of things to do, other things to do. We think we're too busy or we're too tired or And then it inevitably comes back, knocking.

[16:15]

A couple of weeks ago in the morning zazen... And I want to shift perspectives here a little bit because the other side of this thing is this is something we can look into. We can ask ourselves about this. And so it gets to the question of what's the relationship between awakening to this nature and our practice? What are we doing intentionally? What's that aspect of our activity? The other morning during Zazen, Sojon Roshi spoke. He said, Even though it's early in the morning, try to sit up straight." I don't even know if those were the exact words.

[17:18]

Try to sit up straight, even though it's early morning. And then he spoke some more about the various points of zazen posture. And, you know, sometimes he speaks this way, and we listen and take this instruction. But I realized this morning that when he had said this, he was giving himself instruction, as he often says he does when he sits down. He was just doing this out loud. How do we ask ourselves about something like our inmost request, whatever that is, that thing that we cannot quite identify, cannot quite put our hands on?

[18:25]

I was remembering years ago, In the San Francisco Center, we were studying the Prajnaparamita Sutras, and I think the text at the time that was being used was... You know, it comes in various sizes. The Heart Sutra is a very condensed form of the Prajnaparamita Sutra. And then there are various other ones that are different in size, and the one we were studying at the time was known as the Large Sutra. 10,000 lines or something like that. And I remember, and I haven't been able to find it yet because it's a very long text, but I remember reading it and realizing that It was laying out a meditation instruction that was almost verbatim from old Theravada sources, the early Buddhist sources, that was not the

[19:36]

that were not the same as what Laurie was referring to in her talk some time ago, a few weeks ago, as the second turning of the wheel, or the Mahayana perspective. And so I was reading this, and then at the end of this text it said, and the Bodhisattva does not apprehend this. In other words, does not get hold of it, does not grasp it. So we do practices, we act with intention, but we do not try to own it, grasp it, attach to it. So this word, apprehend, shows up in the sutra over 400 times. And there is a point being made here about how to relate to intentional activity in practice.

[20:47]

So How do you ask a question about this? How do you ask yourself a question about this? If you are inquiring into and trying to discern what the territory is, where the inmost request lives, how do you ask that question? Simply saying, what is my inmost request can be very evocative. But it's also something to be done with care. to somehow ask the question and then let the question go. Let it just go out, in, wherever it goes. And then perhaps return to it. Something, something will appear. So again, this is a question about what's the relationship between the effort in practice and awakening.

[22:15]

When we sit down, we give ourselves sasan instruction, we sit up straight and mindfully attend to posture and breath. And this is sort of an approximation of effortless upright sitting. But as we return attention again and again to the essential points of posture, we can disengage with distracting and habitual thoughts, and then true upright sitting emerges. So there's some connection between these things. But again, it's not something we can get a hold of. We can't say one causes the other. We can't say there's no connection, but we have to live with that mystery. So it keeps coming back to the question of how not to stick to aspects of our true nature, even though

[23:32]

the body and mind we engage with are not separate from it. So, we've probably got a lot of time left. Fifteen minutes, well, that's plenty of time to get into serious trouble. I'm going to open it up here to others to speak, ask questions. Yes? Thank you very much, Peter. Wonderful stirring. When you said upright sitting, as our request, it arises? What was the word you used, not arises? request as a being that we all share, and the idea that we allow it to emerge like upright sitting by letting self drop away.

[24:45]

So my inmost request is only heard when my self is not present, like my effort to sit upright doesn't really bring it, but it emerges when my will is there and answering It's indeed hard to talk about. The point that you made seemed to really hit it was that it emerges, it's not inside this separate body. It's not inside somebody's separate body, but when we melt down to the ocean of... Yes, that's definitely one aspect. Then we can encounter or fall into or drown in, in most requests. This is seeming to be Yes, Ron. A few years ago, I looked up the same thing you did, and the various internet connections with the trays.

[25:56]

And what I remember is that he said that in a number of talks, he used the trays in most requests, and then he stopped. At least six or seven years before he died. And stopped using it, never used it again. It's interesting. in this talk is that the reason I would think is that if you just hear that phrase without your talk, you think, I'm going to get something. You know what? It's sort of like praying to God to give me something really great. It could be people can misinterpret that phrase without that kind of showing it in. So that's just my idea, like you might have stopped using the phrase yourself. I don't think you stopped making the point that you're making at all. That's interesting. And I think it's probably true of some other words he used too, but they don't come to mind at the moment.

[27:01]

Yes, Judy. How might this be transposed or include the different clubs we might find ourselves in? If a community really were to be calm, attuned to true nature, and each of us is an expression of the various clubs that we, so to speak, identify or belong to at any given moment, how do we hear

[28:17]

Well, in any given moment, we're all present here. And if we offer whatever is emerging with openness and with an invitation to respond, then that some kind of shared space will open up. I appreciate how you do it, at the same time that part of what's coming up for me in this Sangha body is something around an inmost request of hearing from voices that I don't experience being heard as diversely.

[29:29]

There's more popcorn happening. Popcorn happening here that you're experiencing? Or you imagine popcorn that could be coming here but is not being heard? bring the popcorn please. Laura. Thank you Peter. You quoted Suzuki Roshi as saying we need to let go of all desire. It seems to me that if we really did that we wouldn't even have a reason to get up in the morning or feed ourselves or take care of things. Is there perhaps a host of Yes, yes. Keep asking yourself the question, first of all. I mean, on one level, cultivating a desire, you always have to ask yourself, would this create harm?

[30:38]

And so that, on one level, that's true. On another level, it's our inmost request. And I think you can trust this, that that's what gets us out of bed in the morning. There's another part in this talk where he actually talks about that. Let me see if I can quickly find it. Oh, here it is. I don't know what this actually says, we'll find out here in a moment. Some people say, my mind is not calm enough to sit this morning, so I'd rather stay in bed. This is opposite. I'm just reading what it says here. Even though you stay, if your desire is not so strong, it may be better to stay in bed.

[31:44]

But if you find out what is our inmost request, you cannot stay in bed. You have to do something. Even though you do something, it will not work. If you hit your head or smash your hand and feet, it will not work. In this case, the best way is to sit. This is the best way. So we've heard that before, that strategy of upright sitting is the least harmful of all practices. And Peter, can I share a memory? Yes. I was working in the Zen Center office in San Francisco Zen Center, and you were, I don't know if you were a work leader or a director, you had these have-a-heart traps in the basement and you went down there and one of these have-a-heart traps had caught a rat, but it had broken the rat's leg.

[32:46]

So I was sitting in the office and you were taking that rat to the vet. Wow. I think this is related to the talk. Even though you caught that rat and that was your intention, you didn't want it to suffer. Wow. Do you remember that? No. I'll have to think on that one. Thank you. That's a wonderful story. Mary? So that phrase, the Bodhisattva, does not have to be cannabis. So when I heard that, my mind went to, I mean, this is not something we can understand. We have to figure out how to live and not know.

[33:48]

And you went on a different road. I'm interested in a different road. You went into the road of not clinging, not grasping. Yes, it implies, it certainly implies the other. Yeah, yeah. Ross? It seems like there's two kinds of requests. There's the ordinary request, which is He's pointing to something, the second, you know. But I also play with it in terms of the first. Right, so the request of I want to wake up, I want to be encouraged or supported and all that.

[34:55]

Yeah, yeah, that's what he's getting at, I think. I mean, there are also ways in which we mistake the inmost request as something like, you know, I'm going to buy that shiny car, or I'm going to turn away from something on the street I'm uncomfortable with. So the question is, there's a category of requests that are sort of limited in scope. I'll get to that in a minute. Yes. Go ahead, Gary. I'm just asking a question about your most impressive action, not a question.

[36:16]

Can you say something in regards to that? No. I'm just saying that maybe there's, beyond the question, there's an act. You could say Zazen is the act. So what is the quality of walking down the street that points to that? Yes? And I couldn't help but thinking about the play, Six Degrees of Separation, and Socrates' marvelous portrayal of the mother.

[37:27]

She says, chaos, control, chaos, control. Those are the songs. Neither of which work by themselves and don't even exist separate from each other. Well, it was even more personal. I mean, he was your son and he isn't your son. There was somebody over here. Go ahead. Friends ask me, why do you do this? And it's a hard question to answer. I told them that until now, I told them it was an itch that I had to scratch.

[38:30]

It's the acknowledgement of some life force that you find that's present in you, around you. Some people say, I can't think of anything better to do. I have an itch. It is difficult to talk about. I guess I remember, and maybe other people have different memories, I remember maybe Scott would say, like if you went to Duncan Fox, she would say, she would say, what is your innermost request? Hmm.

[39:46]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Because I think it's also, you know, we sometimes get distracted by thinking it's this over here, which is really bothering me, when it's actually something else that we really care about. And when we see what that is, this other problem goes away, you know. Hmm. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. So I'm getting a signal that I have to answer Ross's question. So I'm going to put it to you this way. Knock, knock. My inmost request. You know your part. Come on.

[40:35]

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