I am proud to teach the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. It's my pleasure to introduce to you, Kishin Sensei. She's been working very closely with One practice is we are oriented towards Sotom in my Sotom Zen.

[01:48]

And it's a great force too. Thank you, Mel, for your kind introduction. I, as Mel said, am a disciple of Joshu Kyozan Sasaki Roshi. And I have been his student for 15 years. And fortunately, he is seemingly still in good health so hopefully I can study with him another 15 or 20 years. Sasaki Roshi came to this country 20 years ago and I understand some maybe two or three years after Suzuki Roshi came and he started in

[02:59]

Sasaki Roshi started in the Los Angeles area, in fact, in a very small house, much smaller than this house, in Gardena. And he converted the garage there into a zendo. He made his own cushions and he held the sittings with the jigijitsu there. And I met him in 1967, some five years after he had been in the States. And people often ask, you know, usually people in the West ask when they see a Western Zen monk or nun, how did you come to Zen practice? How did you get involved in that? And my own story is maybe very, interesting in that I wasn't looking for a teacher, really, but somebody told me he was going to take me to have tea with the Roshi.

[04:05]

And what happened was, when we got there, there was a hall full of people sitting on both sides of the wall. And of course, you know, in Rinzai Zen, we face into the room, not the wall. and we were kind of late, it was just about to start a meeting and so we were pushed into this room and I was put on a seat in a posture and I felt rather uncomfortable and I didn't know what this was all about because all the books I had read never said anything about practice and maybe some of you experienced that too, you read about Zen or Buddhist philosophy and sermons of masters, but none of the books at that time that I had read said anything that, you know, you do something like this, like sitting. So I was sitting there and pretty soon a bell was rung and it started. I had no idea what was going on, so I was wondering the whole time, what are people doing here and what is everybody thinking about?

[05:07]

And I myself, after a while, thought, well, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? And so I realized they had put me in a certain position, certain posture, the monk that was attending the meeting. And so I thought, well, why not do that? Just sit. And when I did that, something wonderful happened. You know, the walls fell away. The whole building disappeared. and there was this wide open space. And so my first sitting was so wonderful and such a great experience for me that that made me come back to practice. Every Sunday I went for a while and then six months later I became really hooked on it and I went every day. See, in that, I made no choice between, in fact, I didn't even know what sect I got into.

[06:11]

And my first impression that Sunday, that first Sunday when I sat, there were two monks carrying the kesaku. We call it kesaku, not kyosaku, kesaku. And at that time, they were, somebody had made for them bright yellow kimonos, short ones, and they were wearing a black hakama over that. And when I looked up, I was hit right away the first day with the kesaku. Because the man who was sitting next to me looked like he knew what he was doing. So since I didn't know what I was doing, I thought I'd imitate him. And he was doing some pretty heavy breathing, like... And as I did that, just at that moment, the monk came by with the kesaku, and he hit me with the kesaku. Then I was really shocked, and I looked up. I thought he was beating me, you know. And what I saw when I looked up was out of this bright yellow kimono, his arms were sticking out and there were blue tattoos on it, on both arms. And you can imagine the blue against that yellow, you know, it was really jumping into my eye.

[07:20]

And then there was a kin-hin, and then there was another sitting, and another monk. They looked actually like brothers. They both wore glasses and, of course, shaved heads and the same clothes. And he came around, and every time that kesaku came near me, I kind of looked up like this, and I saw he also had blue tattooed arms. Then I thought, what kind of a strange club did this man take me to? You know, this friend of mine was a poet. And afterwards I couldn't help it, I had to ask him, I wondered if the tattoo was part of their outfit. But it turned out they both had been in the army or the navy and that was one of those things they did when they were 19 years old and you cannot get rid of it afterwards. So I didn't know, I was in a Rinzai Zen group or, you know, Soto. In fact, I didn't choose anything. I just sort of, you know, fell into it like that. And it wasn't until much later that I realized or understood that there was Rinzai Zen and Soto Zen.

[08:26]

And to this day, I have to say, I know very little about your practice, about Soto Zen practice. And I probably also know very little about Rinzai. because we have a teacher that doesn't explain things to you. And my own feeling is that in this country we don't perhaps have to make such, you know, sharp distinctions between Rinzai and Soto, maybe not to the point certainly that it has developed in Japan. In fact, I think in this country we probably have neither pure Soto nor pure Rinzai practice. So the little bit I know about Rinzai is, and maybe some difference to Soto, is that there is more emphasis on Koan study or Koan practice with the master.

[09:28]

But again, I suppose it depends on the master himself, that each master has his own method or technique to enlighten students. In fact, that's what it means to be a master is to when you're able to do that and you're free to use any kind of method. In fact, the student brings usually his own sort of technique and method that has to be applied to enlighten him or her with themselves. So, you know, both our traditions go back, of course, to Shakyamuni Buddha, of course, but then also to the Bodhidharma and the sixth patriarch in China, Wei Neng. I think you also probably study or know a little bit about Wei Neng. And Wei Neng is one of the really great masters in our history, Zen history, that often is called the father of Zen. Now, Wei Neng was a very interesting man because he was one who didn't really do

[10:34]

any Zen practice before he became enlightened. In other words, sitting, not very much sitting practice. He was a man that worked all the time. He had, as you probably know, in his childhood, he was half orphan, so he had to earn the livelihood for himself and his mother by chopping wood and selling firewood. And consequently, he had no time to go to school and study and was, so the history tells us, illiterate. And when he came to the fifth patriarch, he was not allowed into the zendo. He was put to work in the kitchen, to pound rice in the kitchen. And so again, he did not practice zazen in the zendo formally with the monks. He did not attend the master's teishos or lectures. I don't know if you call it. So he was just working all the time and several months later he became the successor to the 5th Patriarch and so this man, Wei Nang, had an attitude of telling people that

[11:57]

If you can just now see your nature, your true nature, which is the nature that comes before you discriminate this from that, good from evil, before you establish all the pairs of opposites, that your true nature is working already in you and it's ready for you there to be seen. If you just can see that, then that's what we practice toward, what we want to achieve or attain or see. So, meditation, according to Wei Neng, jhana, you know, is the Sanskrit word, and from which came Chan, I don't know if I pronounced that correctly in Chinese, and then Zen, in Japanese.

[12:58]

So he said jnana is just means to become free from attachment to outer circumstances or from entanglement with outer circumstances. And samadhi is the inner peace that results from that being not entangled with circumstances. So usually the way ordinary man functions is that his mind becomes disturbed because he does not stay in his center. He does not realize his center of gravity. He does not realize the inner peace and he is torn and pulled and pushed around by outer circumstances. So the Koan practice that we have in Rinzai Zen They are such problems that the master gives you, that he is like, you know, tying a rope through your nose and then he pulls you this way and that way with a coin.

[14:03]

And for many, many years, maybe this game goes on until maybe someday, hopefully, one realizes that you're really free and the one that ties you up is just your own mind. that from the very beginning, you know, in Buddhism we say, your true nature is selfless, pure, joyful, and free. It is not attached, it is not bound by anything. So, Wayang was when he became the fifth patriarch, he was advised by the sixth patriarch. I mean, when he became the sixth patriarch, he was advised by his master to go into hiding for 10 years and to cultivate or deepen his insight, his realization. And he did that.

[15:05]

And when he came out of hiding and went back to southern China, where he came from, on the way he passed a monastery And you see, until this time he was still a lay brother, a lay man. He was not a monk. He became the sixth patriarch before he became a monk. So he went into the, he stayed in that monastery and he begged the abbot to ordain him. And that abbot ordained, shaved his head, gave him the monk ordination after he had already become the successor to the fifth patriarch. Now there's a famous story or koan that you may have read that when he was, while he was there at that monastery, some monks were having a dharma debate. And, you know, in the Rinzai monastery, when the master gives a taisho, maybe in the Soto monastery too, they hoist a banner to indicate that the taisho is in progress.

[16:11]

And so this banner, this flag was flapping in the wind. You probably all have read this famous mondo between these two monks. One says it's the flag that is moving in the wind, and the other one says, no, it's the wind that's moving the flag. One says the flag is moving, the other one says the wind is moving the flag. And the sixth patriarch comes along and says, it's neither the flag nor the wind that's moving. It's your mind that's moving. Then there's another side to that story. There was a nun's temple nearby, and she was housing some of those monks that came for the Seshin. And when she heard that, she said, it's neither the flag that's moving, nor the wind that's moving, nor your mind that's moving. So, in Zen, you know, we have this strange way of talking about, we always talk in contradictions, it seems. So people become very frustrated when they read Zen stories or Zen books, because they always... One master says, mind is Buddha, and then the next moment he says, Buddha is not mind.

[17:22]

So, always like this. And why? Why is that? Well, if we... Truth cannot really be nailed down like that. You cannot say, this is it. So we say in Zen, as soon as you open your mouth, you have missed it. And that's why Zen monks really don't like to talk so much about Zen, because they know, as soon as you open your mouth, you missed it. But two positions that we have to take, that we view things from, is one, we look at it from the absolute position, from the position where everything is one and equal and that we call the absolute. And then you can look at the same situation from the relative position. So we have to be able to see both sides or rather when the circle is complete to see that the relative functions or manifests as the absolute.

[18:38]

and the absolute functions are manifest as the relative or the absolute or as we say in the Heart Sutra form is emptiness and emptiness is form. So they are one and the same thing. They're not two. There is not emptiness on the one hand or absolute on the one hand and the relative or form on the other. But emptiness is identical with form and form is identical with emptiness. They are one and the same. There's a koan there was a master called Sui Gan, Sui Gan Osho. Sui Gan Osho was a disciple of Ganto, Ganto, Master Ganto. And Master Ganto was a very famous Zen master in China in about the 9th century, I think, around that time.

[19:41]

And Ganto was a rather strong, well-known master of his time. but he had a very unusual death. One day, a band of brigands came into town, and all the monks from Ganto's monastery fled. They were afraid to be killed by them, but Ganto stayed, and he stayed and sat in Sazen, in his temple, and when one of the brigands approached him and asked for food, Ganto didn't have any to give him, So this brigand ran his sword right through him and killed him there on the spot. But it is said that Gantos did not blink an eye. I mean, his position did not change, but he let out this incredible scream. He yelled really loud, this kind of death scream that people say they could hear it for miles.

[20:42]

And that story, was one who had a very profound influence on Hakuin's, you may have all heard of Hakuin, the great Japanese Zen master, on his life, that he was terrified hearing the story to think that how can a man who is enlightened, who is so great and so strong, be so weak, when he dies, to scream just like an ordinary human being when he's stabbed to death. So Hakuin had a great struggle with that problem. But nevertheless, Suigan was Ganto's disciple, famous disciple. And Suigan made a koan, which is a story that's told about Suigan. And it said, Master Suigan every day called out to himself, Master, And then he answered himself, yes. Then he said, don't be deceived by others.

[21:54]

And he said, yes. He always called out to himself every day, three times a day, master. Yes, sir. Don't be deceived by others. This is a very interesting problem for us in Zen. What does it mean? You know, every day we chant the four vows. I vow to save all sentient beings. It's the same question. Who are the others? Who is this other? Another koan that deals with that is Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, and Maitreya are servants to another. Who is the other? Who is this other? Master Rinzai said, you, who is sitting right here in front of me and now listening to my discourse, you are the one, you, this hunk of flesh that's sitting here.

[23:07]

That is the Buddha. But it's because you have so little faith in that that you have to sit around here and steal other people's rice and hang around this monastery and practice hard and get pain in your knees. Even in those days, the masters were saying, Zen centers or Zen monasteries are just mental institutions. They're hospitals. unfortunately we have to go to those hospitals and we have to be grateful that there's somebody kind and wonderful like Mel and his disciples who keep these hospitals going so people can come and get well. But we should never lose sight of the fact that indeed we are from the very beginning not lost and we are well and we are Buddha And that's all one sees. When you have gone all this way, years and years and years of practice and training, and you get insight finally in what it's all about, that's all you see, that from the very beginning, that very limited, particular self that has all kinds of, you know, limitations and hang-ups and problems, that is the one.

[24:33]

And the curious thing is that it is with that one that we manifest Buddha. It is with that limited self, with that particular limited self, with all its limitations, that with that limited self we manifest the unlimited, the absolute. And the absolute works through that particular limited self. And so nothing really changes except one sees just that, and apparently at the times of the Sixth Patriarch and of Rinzai and at that time maybe people were able to grasp that right on the spot because always you read at the end of a sermon and the whole congregation was enlightened and left happy. So I always wonder about that. You know, it's so marvelous. People listened to one sermon and they were enlightened.

[25:37]

They could grasp that. And I could say, okay, it's right. When your mind is absolutely clear and you drop everything from your mind for one moment, you do not discriminate rain from sunshine and cats from dogs and from a woman from man and self from other. At that moment, you're there. That is it. And then the next moment, all the distinctions come back. But you know, the distinctions are only distinguishing particulars of the same whole, of the same universal, of the same absolute. So it's like having, you know, when you talk about flowers, but we only talk about flowers, but there's so many different flowers, but they're all manifesting the same flower nature. The wonderful thing about flowers is that they never want to be anything else but flowers. But human beings always want to be something else. And that's where our problems come from, because we look externally, we chase after external things, and we don't... So we're looking in the wrong direction.

[26:48]

We're not looking inward, where it's at. So the warning that the Masters always gave us is stop chasing after so many external things. And basically Master Rinzai's talks are all about that. He always just talks about you here, right, who is sitting right there now on this cushion, as you are, that's the Buddha. Not some other person in 15 years from now, 20 years after, 20 years of training. You here, right now, as you are, that is the Buddha. and he would say, stop chasing after, looking externally for Buddha or for God or for enlightenment, whatever. So, it's always been hammered into us like that, you know, and all, whatever different practices we do, whether this is Koan study or chanting or just sitting, Shikantaza or Kinhin, whatever we do, it all only

[27:51]

revolves around that, that we come to have this insight and then have the insight to the extent that all doubt vanishes. As long as there is doubt, we have not completely yet realized ourselves. Then maybe we have to do some more sitting, sit a little bit more, a little longer, get some more pain. But when someday You know, if you really completely go within, someday you completely waken up beyond doubt. You have no more doubt what it is that moves your hand or your eyes. Or as, you know, the whole Buddhism started just with Buddha's raising of the flower. There were no books, there was no dogma, there was no teaching. There was just, that is the beginning of Buddhism. Just that demonstration of the functioning of the Dharma, the working of the Dharma.

[28:58]

And so, Buddhism is that simple and that wonderful. To me, it was the greatest thing that I came across in this life. That, and I had, you know, I was not born an orphan or, you know, a child monk, or how many monks started out that way, but I was a rich little lady in Los Angeles with a house and cars and everything, and none of those things, and I could pretty much at that time do what I wanted, but none of those things were it. There was always something lacking. There was always something Yes, now you have this and then you have that, but still there was still something you were not satisfied or fulfilled. And it wasn't until I realized that it's going in the opposite direction.

[30:03]

Instead of accumulating things and gaining more, giving up and giving up and giving up things. Then you begin to really become fulfilled and satisfied. And so I began to understand the wonderful teaching of giving. Dana is one of the six paramitas, one of the six perfections of wisdom. And that's the one I think is maybe the most suitable for lay people to practice, giving. Everybody can start to give something. You can start giving gifts. You can start giving where people have a need. and we have so many festivals and holidays that deal with giving, but unfortunately people are always waiting for some thank you note or some reward, a telephone call or some payoff for the gift. So the next step you have to do is to give without expecting thank you or reward.

[31:07]

And then you begin to give of yourself. And the highest giving is to give the self away. Or we might say to surrender self. Now, that you can find in all religions, you know, in Christianity. Actually, all religions deal with surrendering self. Now, they have different ways of expressing it. Now, Christianity talks about surrendering to God or yourself to the will of God. Of course, in Buddhism, the Dharma, we don't Buddhism does not pose a god as such, but if we talk about Dharma, Dharma has no will. So you're not subject to the will of something, but you flow with the Dharma by being one with the law or with the events, by giving, surrendering self to the present moment and to the circumstances. One is dissolved, or the self is momentarily, from moment to moment is dissolved in the present,

[32:14]

moment into the circumstances, so that the whole situation of the moment, this moment, this very moment, this is yourself. Not just yourself there sitting on the cushion, but the whole thing, the whole situation is yourself. And from moment to moment, we gain a new self, and we dissolve the self. But the self is dissolved. As the circumstance goes or vanishes, the self goes with it. and a new self arises in a new circumstance, and it goes. So what we usually call self really does not exist. It's an illusion to think that one has a permanent, continuous, unchanging self. That is an illusion. But rather, we are a series of momentary events at each event and each moment is so incredibly precious because it is so brief and so unique it will never, ever come back.

[33:25]

So that makes one deeply appreciate each moment and the moment for what it is in itself not what I wish it to be or what I what I make it into with bringing my content to it, but rather to see it as it is in itself and be totally unified with that moment. And then it's already gone. For that, of course, we need space, inner space, peace and quiet. And I suppose at the time of the Sixth Patriarch in China, people were much, probably less polluted with noise and air pollution, noise pollution, and whatever pollutions we have. So perhaps their minds were a little bit clearer and calmer to start with.

[34:32]

But even today, no matter how polluted our minds are, we can always come in touch with our original nature. We can always, in fact we are in touch with it. We can always again see that and experience how wonderful it is when you'd once sit down and you completely let go of everything you know, of everything you think you are, and then just be new born out of that situation. So out of each Samadhi comes a new self. And this process, of course, as you know, in Buddhism, we don't have such notions, really, of life and death, but rather this endless succession of arising and dissolution, arising and dissolution of the Dharma, and then the events, the changing events with that. So in that sense, when we chant, and then some of you chant, you may notice it says, true life, true self is

[35:40]

eternal. It means that the process never ends. Just changes occur. But the process never ends. The Dharma is endless. And once we're identified with the Dharma, we have peace of mind. Disturbance comes from attachment to illusory self. But when we're totally identified with the Dharma, if you can sit on a rainy night here in Southend and you're just the rain, it's timeless, it's spaceless and selfless. So I think when we look at Dharma and our practice from that point of view, you probably also do not see any difference between Soto and Rinzai Zen. It is just the approach we take, how we get there, that maybe our paths are a little bit different.

[36:43]

But I'm sure that you also experience the same when you sit and dissolve yourself in the rain, whether one is Soto or Rinzai Zen. It's already beyond that, far beyond that. And I hope that I have opportunity maybe in the future when I'm not quite as busy to experience some sort of Zen practice in a group sometime. I hope to be able to join you sometime in your practice. I think it might be interesting if we at this point open it up to questions if there are any. We chant the Heart Sutra every day, and that's the main scripture that we're aware of every day.

[37:52]

In your practice, do you have some equivalent? Yes, we also chant the Heart Sutra every day. Heart Sutra and, in fact, we have in the morning, we call it Chokha, morning chanting, starts with the 25th chapter of the Lotus Sutra. That's by, do you know that? That's by the way a very, if you ever read it in the translation, a book, a very beautiful chapter of the Lotus Sutra that deals with the listener to the cries of the world, Kanon, Kanzeon, of course. And in that chapter, in one part, it enumerates the many different ways that human beings are saved And the wonderful part about that is that it says, for instance, a Zen priest's wife is saved through a Zen priest's wife.

[38:58]

Or a minister's wife is saved through a minister's wife. Or Joe Brown is saved, you know, through Joe Brown. or by Joel Brown, maybe by or through, doesn't it? So, it's telling us, essentially, that each one of us is saved through his particular form. So, there isn't just one savior that saves everybody, but saving happens that way. that, as it says in there, a Brahman's wife is saved by the way of a Brahman's wife, or a Brahman priest, you know, at the time, is saved as a Brahman priest. Which means that each one of us, in his or her particular way, is saved, just as I said, through that particular limited being that you are now, that is your savior. This is how you're being saved, through that, completely grasping and realizing that

[40:00]

That is how one is saved. Then we chant the Heart Sutra and Namu Samandha, the, what is that called in English? We chant them all in the original, so I don't know the English title sometimes of them, but it's something like, yeah, something of the removal of disaster. The Rani for the removal of disaster. And then Namu Kara Tanno. He's chanted also. And after that we chant the Dai Segaki, the hungry ghost. They don't have that one. And then an admonition by Daito Kokushi, a national teacher. That's the only one we do in Japanese. The others are Japanese pronunciation of Chinese, transliteration of Sanskrit, something like that.

[41:02]

And then, of course, the four vows in the end, shudra moham. I do that with a group, but it's not in our morning or evening sutra book service, but I chose that one. I do that when I travel with groups because it's short enough and that everybody can quickly learn it. But that one we, in our group, we usually do it at ceremonies only. Oh, please stretch your legs if anyone wonders. Yes? Could you say a little bit more about actual Koan practice? I mean, I'm sure it's different for every student. You say every student brings his, her own particular style problem to the teacher. But is it in some way like having a mantra?

[42:05]

The Koan is actually given to you by the Master. And there's quite a large number of Koans they can choose from. And as you know, they were formulated sometimes from actual life events or other times that they were created by Masters for the sake of their students. just invented almost like fairytales. But the koan is, there are different kinds of koans we use in Rinzai Zen. The beginning koan that you get is a koan that you would use almost like a mantra. You invoke it silently during Zazen. You just keep repeating it and repeating it and repeating it. Then at other times, of course, Koan practice also is important to do while you're active, while you're working. In fact, your Koan is your best friend. And I really learned to appreciate Koan when I began to practice. I, from the very beginning, was involved in helping to build centers.

[43:09]

We were just beginning then with Roshi. So I didn't have the leisure to just be a student and practice Koan, but I had to from the very beginning work a lot, so I couldn't do very much sitting sometimes. And you know how difficult it is, and we were only allowed to sleep five hours, and in the beginning it was very hard. And in the morning when I woke up and I thought, you know, when the thoughts start coming in, and you really don't have to do that, you could have stayed in your house and be comfortable there, and you have your own schedule all day long, and you paint, and you know, those things, then I realized if you, the first thing I do, in fact the last thing at night when I went to bed is I grasp my koan, I put my mind on my koan, last thing, then I go to sleep quickly, you'd only sleep five hours, and the first thing in the morning, where's my koan? Quickly grasp the koan, so then you have, the koan helps you to prevent, you know, it keeps other thoughts, it's like a barrier, it keeps all the other thoughts out, and then you put that koan on your mind, you brush your teeth, and you wash your face, and you run to the zendo,

[44:11]

And you sit down and you repeat your koan. Now, it is always said you must become completely one with the koan, unified. In other words, that means you have to totally become, turn your whole being into that question. You have to become the question. And when you have really become the question, you begin to see the world from that position, you know, as through that question. And then whatever your experience is with that is what you would bring to the, to Sanzen, to the interview. However, we were originally, Boshi taught us to invoke the Koans silently, but later on he said, and this is true with later Koans you get, sometimes you just also look at the Koan, you sit there and maybe you even think about, you can do anything you want, you know, you're free, but it's just you have to come with some answer to Sanzen. So you may contemplate it, you may look at it, and you may have some kind of answer, and you may reflect on what the Roshi said about it last time you saw him, and you discard it again, and you have some doubt again, and then you get sure again, and you have some doubt again.

[45:23]

But in our practice, we have to see, in the way I was, of course, fortunate I was with him before he had very many students, so I saw a lot of him every day, we would have to see him twice a day, morning and evening, and answer every day. And then during the daisashin, every student must go and see the Roshi four times a day and answer your koan, four times a day, every day, for seven days. So no matter whether you have an answer or not, you have to go and see him and you have to present yourself, manifest yourself. So that's the way we use koan. But you know some very well-known stories of Kyogen, for instance, Master Kyogen, who was enlightened when his broom struck a pebble. Do you all know that sound? He was sweeping. See, he had left the monastery, and it was some time later that he was always, the koan was with him.

[46:29]

If you lose your koan, then you cannot come to some, you know, insight or realization about it. But you should always keep it present, somewhere present here, somewhere. Like, you know, the best way I can describe it is when somebody is in love, you know, their mind is always on the lover, always on the lover. So your koan has to be like that. like your lover, and you're always together with your koan. And you have for three years, for three years, I did nothing else. I didn't, maybe that's my being German being so thorough. I never looked at a newspaper or radio or television or movie or book or anything. I just did that koan day and night and day and night for three years. Then you make some progress with it. Of course, you know, in Zen, I mean, people who are not Buddhist or not Zen, they often misunderstand Buddhism and Zen very much because they read books and they get the impression that, you know, Zen monks all their lives just sit there in the monastery and they don't do anything else.

[47:35]

Of course, all of you who practice here know you all have jobs and you have to go out. The same is with the monk. In fact, Zen monks cannot live in a monastery. They only go there for training. in Rinzai Zen anyway, and only a few, a handful that become teachers or officers remain. And those who are in training, even while they're in training, they don't stay the whole year in the monastery. They're there for training periods, which last about three or three and a half months. I used to go, used to be invited down to Florida to Rollins College, you know, in the wintertime, they have a special program. four or five years ago, started to incorporate a Zen practice into that. And whenever I was down there, it's a very Catholic area, you know, then various churches and convents and monasteries, they always come and ask me, would you come and give the talk in our church or school or whatever. So one time it was in a church, Catholic church, and some fundamentalists came in, you know, the back door and they were standing by the door and they were really

[48:41]

shooting, you know, some really vicious questions, like arrows. So you always have this kind of encounter, you know, with wherever you go in life. But see, your Master trains you for that. I mean, He doesn't teach you, He doesn't tell you what to say in such a case. But he is the one that shoots those arrows at you, you know, when you come to a sunset. He's the one that whips you with his stick and beats your ego to a pulp, you know, and asks you all kinds of vicious questions. That's why they call them, you know, like going to a lion's den, you know, because that's the way a lion trains her young. They pit them and throw them off the cliff, you know, so they get used to the kind of thing they have to encounter when they go out in the world. Well, you have this kind of practice, right? Yes, in a way. No, we don't have a form of dharma, the essence of it.

[49:43]

Well, we never attain enlightenment. But, you know, Buddha said when he was enlightened, he has not attained anything at all. nothing really changes except one's viewing of things has changed. Therefore, the world has changed. One has a totally different view of things, a way of viewing things. And then, not only Zen does not exist, nothing exists. But at the same time, things do appear all the time. And you say, oh, there's this sitting, that, that, that. But there's no discrimination. judgment. Just all things appear.

[50:59]

And Zen, yeah, it's very difficult to answer what Zen is because... It's a word. Yeah, exactly. Not even that. Just Zen is Zen. That's all it is. But, of course, when we deal with people who have no idea at all of Buddhism or Zen, then sometimes, you know, we have to explain what it is, but to a Zen student we don't have to explain what it is. Enlightenment, Satori, really means just to have completely seeing self, the complete self, and to understand the process of dharma, that self is the dharma. So Buddha, when he became enlightened, he said, now the dharma has arisen in me. Or in other words, he is functioning as the dharma, and the dharma is functioning as him.

[52:00]

So he said, when you see me, you see dharma. When you see the dharma, you see me. because he didn't want people to become attached to his physical being or personality or something. That is not it. If you look at that, you have missed it. But you should see what you see here. What you look at is Dharma, is how the Dharma functions. And when you see that, you see me, you see the real Buddha. But of course, meaning that that's true for everyone, for every single, for everything. The only difference between us human beings and animals or flowers, is that we can see that. Flowers manifested and animals manifested, but they cannot have a reflection of that. They cannot know, have the joy of knowing that they are that, that they are Buddha or enlightenment. In fact, in truth, there are no unenlightened beings or things, but that is just a way we talk when we want to point at the fact that there are some people who have not recognized the fact yet that they are enlightened.

[53:08]

Then sometimes we call it unenlightened. When you were telling the story earlier about the master who questioned himself and said, don't be deceived by others, do you think that the master meant by that, don't be tempted by others or don't look, take others' perception of yourself as your true self, or what exactly do you think the Master was talking about? That's a very good question, yes. You should ask yourself who's asking all those questions. That's, you know, the Sixth Patriarch, if you read the Platform Sutra, I don't know if you've ever read it, but that's Wei Neng's collection of his sermons. And in fact, it's very interesting, usually only Buddha's sermons were called sutras. but the sermons of the Sixth Patriarch are also called Sutra, the Platform Sutra. And in that he expounds what it means, the Four Vows, you know, to save all sentient beings or to get rid of evil passions and things like that.

[54:15]

The reality of all of this is it's very simple. True mind, meaning Buddha mind, is one and undivided. There is no self and no other in that. And to understand that and to be in that mind and to function from there, that's what it means not to be deceived by others. So, the way to get to the answer is through yourself, to get into that state of one mind, Buddha mind, non-dualistic, non-discriminating mind, And then from there, see, yes, there are distinctions. There's an orange candle, and, you know, red socks, and brown wood, and a light, and a cat, and you. All those distinctions you can see. But you're always in that consciousness of oneness. The distinctions only appear and go back into the one, and appear and go back, and appear and go back.

[55:18]

So, what is meant by others, it means to get rid of the delusion that there are others. There's nothing external to self. Satori means to see that you see only self after that. Everything is self. You're seeing your own consciousness, self-seeing self, that's what it is. But of course, not the deluded self, not seeing ego self, my, ooh, I'm this, I'm that, you know, but true self is the flower is you seeing the flower, flower is you, moon is you, teacup is you, all. It's always just All is just the same Buddha nature functioning. So you get rid of the idea that here is some individual self. It's just a thought. If you ever sit down long enough and look at it, what do you really think you are? Let's take your name, your age, with all your qualifications and characteristics that a usual person thinks is his self or herself.

[56:26]

And you sit down with that and look at it, you cannot find it anywhere. You know, you let go one after one after one. It's just a thought. You realize this is just a compound of a mass of thoughts that have accumulated, which have built up and, you know, presented themselves to you as yourself. And all you have to do is to unhook that thought, you know, let it go, and you're free. It's just a matter of time. Could you expound a little on forgetting? On forgetting, it's just to sit. You know, when you come to the Zen Dojo, you need yourself to get here and you need will actually to get here. You know, especially if it's early in the morning or late at night and you're tired, you have to sometimes will yourself to get there.

[57:32]

So we have to use our will. And will is very important. You know, we call bodhicitta, the will or the mind for enlightenment, the desire for enlightenment. It's very necessary. But the instant you sit on that cushion, you're there. You don't have to will yourself anymore to get there. You're already there. At that moment you just sit and just... you have arrived. You don't need will anymore. You don't need desire anymore. You just let them fall off. The way, of course, you let them fall off is I don't know what particular practice you do, observing the breath or whatever, and we of course have Korn. When you become unified with your Korn, you forget yourself right away. How do you study and forget at the same time? We don't study. You don't study, you just sit. And I don't, I don't know what your practice, you practice holding the mind here in the hands of me? breath, breath observation, all right, so when there's only, you have to get to a point where there's only breath left, not you breathing, but only breath breathing, breathing itself, you know, and then you even should forget breathing.

[58:46]

It will continue itself, you won't die, it just goes by itself. In fact, you cannot stop it, you cannot jump off this world, you're always going to be in this world as long as you, you know, have this body and breathe. The point is you have to get so calm, so quiet, and that requires to become completely still body and mind. As long as any part, that's why in our sendos you're not allowed to move for that whole, as soon as the three bells ring and the sitting period starts, you cannot move, not even blink your eye, anything. It's because if you do that, your mind moves. And as soon as your mind moves, everything moves again. You can only get into samadhi when body and mind have become perfectly still, when nothing moves and it's just wide open space. And of course there are many kinds of samadhi, so we distinguish between, I think sometimes it's called positive samadhi, in English that's the samadhi you usually have maybe when you sit and you have nothing on your mind, completely empty, but you have awareness, you hear.

[59:57]

sounds very clearly and so forth. But you should not follow those sounds and think about them. Just let them appear. The sound appears like that, and then instantly it's gone. You're gone with it. And then there's nothing. And then maybe the car, some other sound coming. Then that's gone. So you just sit, you're that empty space or like blue sky, and all these things happen in it. But then there's a higher kind of samadhi where you even transcend that and there's no more awareness, sensory awareness. And suddenly everything stops, sound, everything. You don't hear, you don't see anything. So body and mind dropping off, as long as you try to drop them off, there is somebody there who is trying to do that and you cannot drop it off. So you have to stop doing. You do nothing. You just sit and do nothing.

[60:58]

Just think, you have arrived, now you're at home. You came here all the way, driving through the traffic and all, and finally you sit on this cushion in your Zendo. Now, I'm at home. There you can stay forever. Nothing penetrates there, nothing reaches there. You're just there. And not even you there, nobody's there. Driving to the Zendo is the part that's hard, So we were very fortunate to be able to sit every day But How do we Like you keeping your Cohen all day long that seems to be the important part Not just doing it at the sender So, how to do it all the time?

[62:00]

How do you do it all the time? Of course, it's not a case where you think about the Koan all day long. I mean, if you think about it, you might run through a red light. But to have the Koan present with you is a different kind of activity, it's not thinking about the koan, being attached to it in some way, but to have some kind of feeling of presence of it. In other words, you know where it is and you can leave it there. And if something suddenly happens, that incident will sort of snap, fall together with your koan, that kind of presence. And maybe if you have a more, of course, when you're working, you should be completely given you know, 100% to your job, to whatever activity you're involved in the moment. So, you're not thinking about the koan, but since you are the koan, the koan is still working in you, and it continues to work in it.

[63:01]

You may not be completely conscious of it, but it's working there. It's sort of germinating and doing something. Like, you know, I don't know if you ever had that experience of learning a foreign language. I found that when I studied, Well, for instance, Japanese, I studied a little bit in Japan, and then I didn't use it anymore. I came back here. But then suddenly I was thrown into a situation with a number of Japanese people, and I realized one day, many years after I'd come back from Japan, how I continued, somehow it continued to ripen and to ferment and to learn. And I thought I had forgotten it, but I actually felt I had learned more. It was better now. You know, and your koan does that kind of... That's why we say, you know, the seed of Buddha nature is already in you. And you have to just sort of activate it through all the practices, chanting, sitting, and maybe a koan or different things we do.

[64:09]

And you may not even notice it's growing. and maybe you stay for a few years in a Zen center or in a monastery and then suddenly after five years or so you go out in the world and you're suddenly thrown into some really crisis situation and at that moment you will realize what a strong plant has grown in you and you did not notice it maybe here in this environment so the corn is like that seed it's always in you and present and it continues to work on its own. But sometimes you call it right into your, you know, up into your consciousness and you look at it and you reflect on it, then you put it back down there. That kind of practice. But of course, you know, if you understand Koan, as I said earlier, it means, it's a means to become free from self, to dissolve yourself. And how do you become free from self is Like Dogen says, to forget the self, to forget the self is also when you work, not only when you sit, when you do some planing, if you're a carpenter, you know, you're planing, and you're just doing this job, and there is the plane, and the wood, and you all have become one.

[65:23]

There's a new entity that has its own center of gravity. So that's how you forget yourself, by completely surrendering the self to the activity. And this is actually how we all should practice in our life. And then there's so many marvelous other ways of doing that. Like we have today, I had the, yesterday and today, the good fortune of attending a tea ceremony. And we have Nagarjuna Sensei here tonight. kindly invited me to join and visit with her class. And they are the same principles, is to surrender yourself to the tea, to each act, to each Yom Kippur thing, moving the various utensils. And each time you give yourself and you gain a new self. Because if you didn't have news, there was always the same self-contained, you would have a mess in the end and not nice tea.

[66:27]

Much like a movie, when you project pictures on a screen, if you go to a movie, you don't see the blanks in between. You just see the movie smoothly running one scene after another. But in reality there's always a brief blank moment on the screen that the previous frame or picture has to disappear before the next one is projected or else after the third frame you would already have a mess and you couldn't see the movie. So that's the way true, that's the way the Dharma functions, true nature, that one moment you have a self, that is one scene, like one frame in that movie, one picture, one incident, event. And the very next moment there is a brief zero state where that event disappears. And these zero states usually people cannot catch. Only a person that meditates gets into, you know, the habit or begins to experience those states. So it knows that from moment to moment self arises as a new incident, as a new event, and then the next moment it's zero, blank, nothing there, that disappears.

[67:34]

Self disappears with that event. and a new self comes up with the next event and disappears. And that's one who is not knowledgeable about that, or enlightened, so to speak, will see only the movie and misses all the zero, or the blanks, or the rest, the pauses in between. Now, in Buddhism we call that, that zero, or that pause, or that blank, death. The death of the self. The death of the self of frame one, or frame two, or frame three. And that's how frame 4 can come about. So that's the way it works. Yes? What's the difference between sitting at home and sitting at the Zen Dome? Well, maybe you can tell us. It's not as concentrated at home.

[68:37]

At home, yeah. Probably. It is, especially for beginners, I think it's necessary to have sitting in a group because one doesn't have the discipline, you know, to... At home, there are too many temptations, right? You want to have a cup of coffee, you get up and make it. In the Zen dojo, you can't move. You just have to sit and wait till they give you some tea. So, in the monastery, actually, we do, we cultivate both. They're sitting in the group, of course, most of the day you sit together with everybody in the zendo, and then at night they encourage that you sit by yourself out in the garden for an hour before they retire in the zendo. And of course, there are no private rooms in the monastery, so everybody There's one hall that's for practice and for sleeping, and every monk has a three by six foot space. That's his living and dying quarters. And so during the day they sit there, and at night they stretch out on it, and that's all you have.

[69:38]

And there's a little cabinet at the end, about as wide as this altar here, with the two little sliding doors, and all your belongings fit in there. And so that's the whole space you have. There's nothing more efficient than a Zen monastery. Nothing more efficient, I say. Very orderly, very, you know, sparse, just barely what you need, nothing else. And a few things that you don't need, like snow down your neck, because they have all the windows and doors open, summer and winter, you know, in all four directions, behind you, sliding windows, and it snows in there, blows down your shirt. So both, I would say, if you can come to practice to a Zen dorm, do that, but also sit at home. Make it a practice to sit at home, maybe when you cannot come to the Zen dorm, in the morning, in the evening, then come as often as you can and sit with the group.

[70:42]

Group spirit also generates, you know, another kind of energy that's very powerful. Twenty or so people sit together is quite different from sitting alone. Are your legs beginning to hurt? Please move more of them. You're all sitting so well. In the chapter from the Lotus Sutra that you talked about chanting, What is saved there? You said that each person is saved in the form that they're in. Well, it's no different from what, you know, the six patriarchs said, or they're all saying the same thing, but just with so many different words. Saved is when you realize that that, what is your name? Connie. Connie. That Connie is saved through Connie as she is right now.

[71:46]

That's your Buddha nature. When you realize that, that that's it, that you're not seeking for any other kind of Kali, for a better one, a more pure one, or maybe a wiser one, or a more compassionate one. But when you realize, just at this moment, as you are, this is it, this is how it manifests, the Dharma. Then you are wise, then you are pure. That's pure recognition, that's pure wisdom. That's what it means to be saved through. Kani is saved by the way of Kani or through Kani. So then they don't want to, of course in Buddhism we talk about, well they have some, they talk sometimes about heavens and hells, but not like in Christianity. But if, you know, in Christianity if you came to heaven and they would ask you, have you realized

[72:47]

Buddha and you would say, wow, I didn't make it in this life. They might forgive you, but they wouldn't forgive you if you hadn't realized Karni. Something like that. So, your true nature is joyous, selfless and pure. And all you have to do is You don't have to become a Buddha. You should just act like one. Just be Buddha. There's no need to become Buddha. Just act like Buddha. It means have faith in your Buddha nature and your joyous, pure Buddha. And when you sit still, you see that. I'm sure you all feel that. It's working. Thank you for your patience.

[73:47]

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