Well, I think we can go ahead and get started. Sojin, we often will do a little introduction to whoever our guest is and for each other. But I'm curious if that would be helpful for you or if you want to start off some other way. You mean an introduction to knowing who I am? Sure. And for us to tell you who we are. Okay. Well, you know, that Michael Wenger and I edited this book many years ago. It was the hardest book we've ever taken on, because Suzuki Roshi would go back and forth often. And of course, his language was all over the place. And so we had to find the right word. Well, of course, it was all in English, but we had to find the right wording to make sense of what he was saying.

[01:09]

When you give a talk, it's not the same as when you're writing a book. So you have to have a different, not a different style, but your style has to be consistent with reading. rather than with talking. So it took us, I think we edited this book maybe 25 times. And then when we were finished, we gave it to many people to check out. And one woman said, I think it needs to be edited. So anyway, it turned out to be a pretty nice book, and I was reviewing it, and I noticed several things that are consistent in the book, consistent things that Suzuki Roshi said.

[02:15]

One is, things as it is, and the other is, I'm going to turn to our chapter, chapter nine, independence. Throughout the book, he uses the term independency. I don't know if you've been, you know, if you haven't studied the whole book, it's a little bit difficult to introduce these terms or to talk about these terms, but I will. Independent, well, things as it is, you know, is kind of a funny phrase because it,

[03:21]

states that things, which is plural, doesn't match with as it is. Things as it is. So that's the mixing up plural and singular. Things as it is. So we usually say things as they are, which follow suit. It just doesn't follow suit. It's things as it is. A lot of people talk like that all the time, but that's not what I'm talking about. That's a different subject. Things as it is. Things as it is. Let me straighten my mind out.

[04:32]

Things is like the plurality of life. Our ordinary life is things in plurality. But the underlying truth of everything is it, which is non-plural. The oneness of life is it. This is it. Everything is it. Because it doesn't point to anything in particular. Things point, you can name things, but you can't name it. So it is the absolute, and things is the relative. So these are the two truths about, in Buddhism. Nagarjuna's two truths. The first truth is secular, the truth of many things.

[05:45]

And that's the second truth. The first truth is the truth of oneness, it. Whatever you point to is it. But yet, there's no specific thing that is it. So it stands for whatever you want it to stand for, without being anything in particular. Everything is an expression, and all things are an expression of it. So Suzuki Roshi would call it big mind, and things as small mind. Small mind is multiplicity, and it Big mind is the one thing, and small mind is the expression of the one mind as all things. Plurality. So that's the basis, actually. And it's the first thing he mentions in the book, is things as it is.

[06:57]

It depends on where you start, but it's still things as it is. So everything is an expression of it. And at the same time, all particular things are an expression of the big it. So Siddharthi Rishi was always saying, don't stray from your essence of mind, your essential mind, big mind. So we're all, every one of us is an expression of, an individual expression of the big mind. So this is the touchstone of the sound of Gai. If you understand that, you will get you can get a good understanding of how to study the Sando Kai and what he's referring to all the time without necessarily talking about it or saying it specifically.

[08:19]

So the other one is He used that term. I was his shisha, his attendant during these talks at Tassajara, middle of July, it was really hot. And he started using the term independency and I said, we have dependency, or we have dependence, independence, interdependence, where does this independence come from? I never heard that before. He's like, I just made it up. So he sometimes would make up words to express what can't be expressed otherwise. So he made up this term, independency. And it's kind of, so he used several metaphors

[09:28]

to express it. And he used independency in the precede, I'm doing practice now, I'm doing tonight's talk, but in the 876 talk, he talks about independency. He starts talking about it in the sixth talk. And it means things are dependent, everything, dependent, and everything is independent. And everything, and what is dependent and independent are interdependent. That's the meaning of emptiness. So the meaning of emptiness is interdependence. Nothing exists independent of anything else. This is a Mahayana understanding.

[10:31]

But independency is kind of like, everything falls through the cracks in some way. Nothing is exactly what it seems. Nothing is exactly what it seems. And so, independency means independent but dependent. and dependent, but independent. Everything is on that little cusp. When you say independent, but it's not just dependent, it's also independent. Independent and independent, but not quite one and not quite the other. That's why we're always losing our balance. We live in a world that is not quite this and not quite that, and yet totally this and totally that at the same time.

[11:42]

These four propositions, totally this and it's totally that, but it's not this, totally this, and it's not totally that. So we live in this wobbly, you know, the world's not round, strictly speaking. It's an oblate spheroid. There's a part in a little song by Gilbert and Sullivan, one of their operas, I can't remember which one it is, but it's something like, playing pool. on a cloth, untrue, with a twisted cue, and elliptical billiard balls. So we're trying to make a perfect game on the tools that are not fit for anything.

[12:49]

Suzuki Roshi used to say, everything is falling out of balance and finding its balance all the time, continuously. We just take it for granted, you know, that's the stability of our life, but nothing is really stable. So, because everything, of course, as you know, everything is changing. continuously. And when it changes, it changes its balance. And if we're good at keeping our balance, we just, you know, take it for granted. But there are times when we actually have to be very careful. Matter of fact, we have to be careful all the time. But we get lulled into thinking that things are always going to be the way they are. but they don't last for more than a second.

[13:56]

I liked this Rob Walker guy. Anyway, so those are the keynotes of my talk and of this book. So, do you have any questions? Yes, I do. Yeah, we're just, um, we're very casual in this group. And so, um, if you have a question, you can feel free to unmute yourself. Um, maybe just if you're going to start speaking, you could kind of motion your hand. Yeah, but, um, we don't need to, you can unmute yourselves and things, so. Okay. So, um, thanks again. Uh, in, in, in the, um, in this chapter is question and answer, like the students asking him some questions.

[15:00]

Um, in one place, one student, um, you know, uh, probably puts up his or her hand up and says, I don't understand the, I don't understand the meaning. I don't understand why you're talking about this lecture. I don't understand what you're talking about in this lecture. Correct. He's saying like, he or she is saying that, uh, uh, I can't place this lecture in, in relation to everything else that you've talked about. And Suzuki Roshi responds, um, saying, How do we stay with composure? Maybe I should read it. So he says, the purpose of what I'm saying is to open a different approach to your understanding of reality.

[16:07]

You are observing things from just one side or the other, and you stick to some one sided understanding. This is why I'm talking in this way. It is necessary. Strictly speaking, Buddhists have no teaching. We have no God or deities. We don't have anything. What we have is nothingness. That's all. So how is it possible for Buddhists to be religious? What kind of composure do we have? That will be the question. The answer is not some special idea of God or deity, but rather the understanding of reality, we are always facing. Where are we? What are we doing? Who is he? Who is she? When we observe things in this way, we don't need a special thing, special teaching about God, because everything is God for us. Moment after moment, we are facing God. And each one of us is also God or Buddha. So we don't need any special idea of God. That may be the point.

[17:10]

So the question on that, what I wanted to ask is when he says this view of our reality, um, what I want to clarify is that easy asking us to always have an open mind of our experience, um, rather than having a preconceived notion of, uh, I know what this is. You know, this person is always like this. Um, or, um, sometimes I get frustrated with, um, so for example, my daughter might do something small, like she might not tidy your room. The first time I say, ask her to tidy your room. And I noticed myself, um, getting into a, not a rage, but you know, an anger. And then I realized, then I reflect on that, like, based on what view am I reacting so harshly? There seems to be some kind of a view that I'm, maybe I'm, maybe I'm expecting to be right in a certain way.

[18:22]

And then maybe there's not being met and I'm reacting a certain way. But, but that's what I was trying to, I'm trying to understand like, which is, things can be, I can intellectually understand things are, when I see it in its absolute sense, I can include everything. And when I'm peaceful, I can understand that and I'm joyful and I feel one. But then when I see something not right, I'm reacting, maybe I should also practice more inclusiveness, but I'm trying to understand this worldview, this view he's talking about. You know, he's not talking about a view. Matter of fact, views are not considered very helpful in the Dharma.

[19:27]

Let go of all views. Then you'll have the answer. That's the answer. But at the same time, think of how you would feel as a little girl. Some big guy comes and says, do this, because I said so. How do you finesse something? How do you get, how do you, show her that it's something that she wants to do rather than something that you want her to do. That's skill. So how do we create skillful ways of doing things? Not by being slick, but by understanding the other person's mind. You know, there's a let's do this together kind of thing.

[20:29]

There's a, you know, we have so much expectation. And our expectation is by society, our sibling, our parents, our grandparents, all this history that goes into saying, clean up your room. There's centuries of historical pressure and say, who did this? And you don't even realize that. You just think, well, it's me wanting to do that. But as you've been driven by all these centuries of pressure, until you say, clean up your room. Or, it becomes a threat. And any red-blooded person doesn't want to be threatened. And so they say, no, I didn't do it, no. And you say, blah, blah, blah, blah. So how do you make friends with your, you know, so that she wants to do it for you instead of, oh, if I didn't miss you.

[21:40]

Kelsey? Kelsey? Yeah, so I have a kind of a different question. I was just really surprised by the title of this chapter, The Willow Tree Cannot Be Broken. and how it connects to the stanza and the santo kai, light and dark oppose one another, like front and back foot and walking. And I guess I'm wondering if you can make more of a connection for me. Well, a poet, I don't like to term a poet, we used that, we had a conference where we went through the whole santo kai with a whole bunch of people. they landed on the term oppose. I like the term alternate. The way the Tsugi Roshi explained it was, well, the way it's expressed came from Arch Blythe, actually, the English scholar

[22:58]

He was in a concentration camp during the war. Any of these terms can be translated in some other way, right? So the scholars kind of settled for this translation on the term oppose. It's not bad, right? but I like the word alternate. So you have two fingers, I mean, two feet, two things, right? And when you're walking, it's like, dum, dum, dum, dum. So this foot is behind, and this foot is before. And then you take a step, and this foot is behind, and this foot is before. And then you take a step, and this foot is behind, and this foot is before. That's alternation, right? When you're walking, you don't notice it so much.

[24:02]

If you're on a tightrope and you're walking, as soon as you become self-conscious, wow, what am I doing up here? You're lost, it's all over. So you have to be able to have the walking and the step before and the step, be totally integrated with the universe. So actually, how do we move? We're moving continuously. And how do we move in harmony with the universe? So that our steps, this one is before and this one behind, we just keep replacing things all the time. And sometimes the hands are up here doing this, and sometimes they're down here doing this. It's all the same, you know, we're using all the same tools continuously to do this work.

[25:13]

Just doing. So our practice is just doing. And then just doing is the, And the stuff that's done is the why. So we have why and how. I love Sesame Street, you know. Many years ago, my son was still young. During breaks of sashimi, I'd go downstairs and take a little break. watched his Sesame Street, and it's like, why, how, sit, stand? This is a perfect Zen. What was your question again? Well, I, it's funny, maybe I'm like reading into it because I like hearing you talk, but

[26:21]

I was asking about the title of the chapter, which is The Willow Tree Cannot Be Broken. Yes. Well, the willow tree, of course, grass, you know, is the strongest. He's talking about strength and weakness. But he's using those words because his vocabulary is limited. It's a little more subtle than that. It's not strength and weakness. It's more like assertiveness and acceptance. Assertive and, what did I write here? Assertive and yielding. So he said weakness, but yielding, and then he explains it, of course.

[27:27]

But he's saying, if he were to use my words, he would say yielding. And Dungan uses that, too. And often the translators could be a little more circumspect, because that's what's meant. It's not like strong and weak. It's assertive. and yielding. So we alternate between being assertive and being yielding and knowing when to do each. That's called strength. Strength is knowing when to step back and knowing when to step forward. And the two, knowing, stepping forward, that's assertive. and the foot behind is yielding to the foot in front, and the foot in front is being assertive, and the other foot is yielding to the back.

[28:34]

So both legs are important, and it's the movement of both legs, feet, in walking, how you use both of them, that's true activity. balanced activity. And the willow tree is in the yielding position to the snow, which is in the assertive position, right? Snow is in this assertive position and the willow tree, because the willow tree knows how to go with things. You know, if we're too assertive, only one side, emphasizing one side too much, like you know who, then, sorry, then it's out of balance.

[29:39]

And when they, we're out of balance and when our yielding is too much and we don't have the, ability to be assertive, then we call that weak. So both of those are weak. The strong one is weak and the assertive one is weak because the assertive one doesn't have the balance of the yielding quality. So one who is really strong knows how to be weak. That's what he's saying. One who is really strong knows how to yield. And he says that in here. I'm trying to remember the exact sentence he used, but it didn't sound right. Well, if we start reading it, we'll come across it. But do you get that? Yeah, thank you. Although I don't think I'll ever be able to walk in him the same way.

[30:42]

If we ever do, yes. Yeah. Dan? Hi, yeah, thank you. That actually, there's a passage in this chapter that I was kind of puzzling over. And what we were just talking about, maybe kind of reconsider it. And I'll read it for everyone. It's pretty short. But it says, to go east 100 miles is to go west 100 miles. When the moon is high in the sky, the moon and the water will be deep. But usually people will observe the moon above the water and not see the moon in the water. The moon is deep means the moon is high. The moon in the water is independent and the moon over the water is independent. But the moon over the water is also the moon in the water. We should understand this. When you're strong, you should be strong. You should be very tough. But that toughness comes from your gentle kindness. When you're kind, you should just be kind. But that does not mean you are strong. Yes.

[31:45]

I guess. you know, that strength, it's not strength versus kindness. To be kind, you have to be strong, and that's, it's one thing, that's the moon, I guess. And those are just. Those are the two sides. Right, but it's really just the moon, right? It's just the moon, yeah. And you can't have, The truth is that you can't have one without the other. You just cannot have one without the other. You know, the two sides of a person are both masculine and feminine. And people weigh down on both sides, on one side or another, weigh in on both sides, one side or another. But actually, and then, you know, People get criticized because they're heavy on one side or the other, but feminine and masculine need to be balanced in each person.

[33:01]

Some people have a lot of one and not much of the other. In our practice, when we actually practice face-to-face, day-to-day, we look you know, a teacher will see the different sides of a person, because we all have so many sides. And if a person is too assertive, we kind of encourage them to back off a little bit, you know, and slow down and find a way to recognize the other side in themselves. so that they can become more fully balanced and happier and more useful to other people. But those statements are all statements that are a little bit like koans, you know, what do you mean to go west is to go east and like that.

[34:11]

It's not something that's easy to explain or to find quite quickly, but if you keep it in your hand or in your belly, actually, for a while, like this is your baby, you know, someday you give birth to it. That's the way koans work, actually. Thank you. Bob? Robert? Yeah, hey Sojin. So first I want to thank you and Michael for all your efforts in editing this volume. I really love this book and one of the things that I love about it that I've said to this group before is I think that it really captures what you were talking about with the phrase like things as it is or independency or, you know, that Suzuki Roshi is kind of amazing facility to create words that don't exist in a very sort of playful way, in a way to, you know, generate more meaning.

[35:28]

And I think that you all really just like capture that with the conversational nature of this. And, you know, I just get a real sense of who he is. So my question, and this is really not as much a Dharma question, it's just sort of like a literary context question, is, you know, in this book, we get the sense, and this may just be an artifact of it being edited, but that, you know, that there's this high level of discourse going on between, you know, Suzuki as the teacher and then the students and sort of the interaction here and that, you know, people seem to be kind of operating at an incredibly high level in terms of their understanding or their, their engagement with with the teaching and so I'm just wondering kind of to the extent that you can remember I mean it's been 50 years but like what was it like at Tassajara when when this was going on right I mean this feels just like you we've sort of caught almost like a lightning strike, like a real just incredibly intense moment of engagement in his teaching career and then with the students in the room.

[36:33]

And so I'm just wondering kind of what was going on, like what it felt like to be there. Well, you know, we had no precedent except, you know, the outline of Japanese practice, which Suzuki Roshi gave us, and this was a kind of upping the ante of our practice, from temple practice to monastic practice. And he didn't feel qualified. I mean, he had been, he had done monastic practice at Eheiji, a monastery in Japan, He, because we wanted it, he gave it to us. I mean, he gave us permission to do this, right? We never, he never initiated a lot of things.

[37:36]

He always waited for us to ask him, and then he would do something. So we actually did that. And with his, you know, blessing, and his, of course he loved it, you know. You can't just grow a monastery overnight. But we did pretty well because we were willing to do, we were willing to be good boys and girls. I can remember the Eno who was in charge of that, officially in charge of the zendo, in charge of the practice, but these names didn't match our abilities, right? The names of all these positions didn't match our abilities, but we took them on anyway. And I can remember that Ina was this svelte young lady who wore a bathing suit and zendo, you know.

[38:47]

That was the kind of thing that was going on at that time. Suzuki was back and forth, and Katagiri helped, and he was back and forth. And then Tatsugami Roshi was invited down. Tatsugami Roshi, he was invited down to organize the monastic practice. And he did. I liked him a lot. A lot of people didn't. He was always jolly. He was a great smoker. We would have choson, which is tea, morning tea, in his cabin, the officers did, our ragtag officers. And he had a little, what I used to call an opium puck. You could get them in Chinatown on the corner little corner stores, and people bought them just for the fun of it.

[39:51]

And then he had this shredded tobacco, high quality, and he put two pinches into the bowl, and he had a hibachi, and hibachi, two metal chopsticks, and he would take a coal, a little bit of coal out of the hibachi, and It was very elegant. But he would smoke anything. People would order all kinds of strange tobaccos. Anyway, that's the kind of feeling that was going on. But he organized all of the institutions of the monastery practice. like what you do in the kitchen and what you do with the Don Rio, who conducts the little band.

[40:55]

And he taught us how to chant, and he was really good at it. He was a great chanter. He brought cheers to marriage. But he used to drink, he did not drink at Tazahara, but in Japan he did. You know, some kind of Monks were kind of lazy in Japan. And, you know, it was falling apart. That's one reason why Suzuki Hiroshi was happy to come here, because we were just innocents. We knew nothing about Buddhism. We had no baggage at all about it. And he could just shape us the way he wanted to. But he didn't try to shape us into any special shape. What he did was to inspired what was inside of us to take shape and to emerge. And that was his goal. I mean, he didn't advertise for anybody to come to see him or anything.

[41:59]

He just sat at Sokoji and he sat in the pews of the auditorium at 5.45 in the morning. People would come and they just heard about him and little by little they would come. He did not try to do anything. He was just doing his practice. So he came, he wanted to give us something, so he came down and he wanted to, well, at the time, I don't want to chop up my sentences, but We had not studied anything. One practice period, he did come down and taught the Lotus Sutra, because that's very, very significant, and so it was then, the Lotus Sutra.

[43:02]

Dogen liked the Lotus Sutra a lot. So he came down and taught us the Lotus Sutra. I'm not the same as this one because Tatsugami had been introducing chants to us. The only chanting we had with Suzuki Roshi before Tatsugami was the Heart Sutra. We chanted it three times for service. That was it in Japanese. We had a really nice chanting card. It was the transliteration of the harpsichord, the translation of the harpsichord, and the characters all in line. And you could kind of, you know, get those in passing and get the gist of things. But that was really nice. I have those. I have a number of those. I'm thinking it'd be nice to introduce that kind of chanting card back into the liturgy.

[44:06]

Anyway, so, people, some students who had little knowledge of, you know, things, asked him to, if they would help translate some of the, some of the liturgy that we hadn't been chanting. And so he said, okay, you know, if that's what you want. And so, Sando Kai was one of them. And because that was something we were chanting already, so he wanted to come down and explain it to us. And that was the occasion for doing that. So he set up at Blackboard. You know, the Zendo at that time was in a bar, because Tassajara was a resort. And it had a bar and a hotel and stuff. Hotel burned down, unfortunately.

[45:09]

So we turned the bar into a zendo, and then there was a stage up there, and that was the altar. And so he set himself up on the altar, and I was his shisha, and I would carry his books, the zendo, the incense. We always had incense. And there was, over 100 degrees, and you'd get up from your cushion and be all soaking wet. Anyway, that was the atmosphere in which he did these talks. Ben? Ben? Oh, you're there. Hi Sojin.

[46:12]

Hi. Hi. Two quick things. One is, would you consider, I know you recently did Zazen instruction and it was recorded. Would you consider doing a chanting refresher or class even during these remote times? I was inspired to ask you when I heard you talk about Tatsugami's chanting style and how in his instruction and So I wanted to put that out there. And then I had a question sort of going back to the two feet or the two legs. Feet. Two feet. The lightness and the darkness. Yes. And I know in some context to some extent that the darkness is the absolute and the hit and the light is the things. or the relative. And I can see that how in practice, we're constantly alternating in those worlds from some perspective.

[47:24]

But I also know that when the thing's foot is forward, when we're in the light, as Zen students, we're not necessarily just caught by things or completely immersed in things, like, can be so easy to happen. And maybe the opposite is also true. When the darkness is forward, we're not getting caught by that. So maybe you could say something about how, when we're in the world of things, we're also sort of not completely in the world of things, or we somehow engage in the world of things differently. And how does that work? You know, the other night, Thursday night, Daniel, I gave Daniel a koan. He asked me about, let me tell you the koan, which I'm sure you already know this.

[48:30]

I just turned it into a koan for him. Mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. When you enter into practice, mountains are no longer mountains, rivers are no longer rivers. Nothing is what you thought it was. Then when you come out the other side as a mature sense student, mountains are just mountains and rivers are just rivers, except with a difference. So ordinary life, that's what we live. We live in a dualistic world. So we don't try to change the dualistic world, but the dualistic world has an underlying essence. So discrimination is what sets off the essential world from the dualistic world, because discrimination means divide.

[49:38]

That's what it means to discriminate, it means to divide. And so we're always discriminating. That's the world of duplicity, meaning in two. Duplicity. So when you have gone through the mill of the grinder of practice and come out the other end, then oneness is duality and duality is oneness. Before, it's just duality. And when you enter into the a practice, all that gets turned around.

[50:46]

It gets redistributed. And then you find the essence. And then the essence and the one and the two are not two different things. So the non-duality of duality and the duality of non-duality. What is the duality of non-duality and what is the non-duality of duality? That's the koan, which Dogen calls Tencho Koan. The koan that when you step out of Zazen, Zazen is like, you know, the essential place. And then when you step out into the world, you stand up and you go out. Everything's kind of shiny and stuff. because your mind is at rest and you find your way in the dualistic world from a non-dualistic understanding.

[51:51]

Thank you, Sojin. You're welcome. Sojin, you just said when we come out the other end of practice. And I just am wondering, do we ever come out the other end? No, no, it's just a matter of speaking. Okay. Not sure. I mean, you've been practicing a lot longer than me. There's some end here. You know, language in Zen is never what it seems to be. So we use various terms, but we don't believe in them. use them because they express something at the moment. In order to express, say, come out the other end. There are no ends. There's nothing to come out of. So we're free to use any kind of language we want to without being attached to them. That's the secret.

[52:58]

Non-attachment. Because when we understand that there's nothing to be attached to, we can be attached because we're not afraid of being attached. There's something called responsibility, the ability to response, to respond. So these words are important. How you put the syllables together and use them is important. And that's how we can make up words. Even though the words seem to be stereotyped, we can make them up, the same words, but they mean something else. So responsibility is the ability to respond to what's going on. So there's responsibility and there's reaction. Responsibility is the ability to

[54:01]

come from who you are, whereas reaction is to put yourself in the hands of that which you are reacting to. If you think about it, reacting, there's sometimes reacting is important. It's not altogether, nothing's altogether bad, you know, good and bad are relative, right? This is all opposites and relative, but if you say don't ever react, that's not possible. To say always react, not a good idea, because then you get caught. So how do you go through the dualistic world without getting caught by it? That's our practice. And how do you respond?

[55:04]

How do you be a responsible person to the truth? And sometimes to the lie? I just had a quick comment. It's come up for me while we were having this discussion, and I don't know if it'll translate to the rest of you all, there's something about practice that feels like changing sides to me, or like re-identifying, right? Because we talk about our true self or big mind, and that's not the narrower, more maybe familiar feeling of ourselves that maybe we grew up with. And when you were talking earlier, Sojin, I just had this feeling of we're sort changing that maybe Bodhisattva practice is sort of changing allegiance to not away from the things, I guess, because the two interpenetrate.

[56:11]

But anyway, I just wanted to share that. It's sort of where we're casting our lot with it instead of the many things that we might chase after. Yes. And we're somehow discovering some faith that that it is you know, our father and our mother and our true self. Yeah, the touchstone. Yeah. So, yeah, so we're free to go from side to side. Because it is like the coin. And the coin has two sides. Right? So to weigh what is, what is, what is important. So, you know, morality changes, good and bad, right and wrong, all that changes what was considered really bad or impossible not too long ago.

[57:29]

has changed into what is good today. And what is good yesterday changes into something really bad today. That's the way it is. Good and bad are relative. Right and wrong are relative. So in the relative world, everything has an opposite. I don't know anything about science, but one of the laws of science is that everything has an Every force has an equal intensive force, a counterforce. Is that true? Yeah. When you do something, then there's a force that comes against you. But that's strengthening if you know how to use it. If you're going to climb up a mountain, it's hard. And hard is the counterforce. But if you work with the counterforce, the counterforce makes you stronger.

[58:37]

Rob? I wanna just, well, before Rob goes, I was just gonna pause and see if there was anyone who hasn't had a chance to speak and just give them space. And then if no one speaks up in a few minutes, Rob, go right ahead. Yeah. Tane. Karen. Karen. It's a really unusual name. Karen. Yeah. Yeah. Um, hi, thanks for being with us today. Um, I had a question about a part at the end of the chapter, kind of in the question and answer. Um, there's, and this came up in the last section too. And I remember we talked about it and at the end I was like, I don't think I understand that. Um, where Suzuki Roshi says you need precepts, but actually it isn't possible to violate precepts. You cannot, but you feel as if you are. Well, that's an interesting statement.

[59:38]

His understanding of precepts is not the usual dualistic understanding of precepts. Sometimes you'll say something and we don't understand it. And so that's not an easy one to understand. You know, there are what he calls dead precepts and live precepts. So precepts have been written, lists of precepts have been written down, and people follow them sometimes by rote. And for him, the rote precepts are, he says, if you follow, just follow the rote precepts, that's heresy. So that sounds kind of very different than what we usually think. Because for him, precepts are already within us.

[60:42]

The precepts that we need to follow are already within us. And when those precepts are teased out, so to speak, When the precepts that are within us are manifest, that's what he calls the live precepts. In other words, we know what to do in a situation. If we allow ourself, if we allow the precepts that are within us come forth, we already know what to do. So one of the meanings of precepts is compassion. So if we cultivate compassion, then the precepts that are in us will be activated, because basically, that's what precepts are about, compassion, how to be compassionate with your surroundings, not just people, but all of your surroundings, and to respect everything around you.

[61:53]

Then you know what to do. If you respect everything around you, and have compassion for what's around you, people, animals, plants, inanimate things, so-called. Nothing really inanimate, but compared to some things that are happily animate, inanimate things don't look like they're doing anything, but they are. They're always moving. Everything's moving. So when you have that, compassion and respect for things, then live precepts will manifest. So that's what he's talking about, really. So he said, you know, it's okay to have dead precepts. They remind you of what's nice to do.

[62:55]

But the real precepts, there are ordinary rote precepts, dead precepts. And sometimes they're called hediana precepts because there are 250 of them. And they just kind of, you know, practice them by rote, not entirely, And then there is Mahayana precepts. And then there are the precepts of non-duality. So the precepts of non-duality, it's not like that kind of hierarchy, but the precepts of doing by road, doing by,

[63:59]

intuition. Intuition actually is more like directly understanding, directly letting something out. It's a preset that comes up every moment of your life, in your daily life, without having to think too much about it. Thank you. That helps clarify. That's a big study. Daniel, go ahead. I was going to ask a sort of inflammatory question. I was going to ask, do you think Donald Trump has precepts within him? He does. He has his own precepts. Okay. But they're not Bodhisattva precepts. And that was sort of going to be my question too, right?

[65:06]

Because if you just said a second ago that, you know, our sort of conventional sense of morality can change, right? It goes from one side to the other and what is good is bad and bad is good and that, you know. wherever we are in a certain point in time, there's a conventional set of moral guidance that exists out there. But how do we reconcile that with this notion of precepts, which seems to be deriving at some level from the absolute as opposed to the relative? And how do we practice with our sense of the intuitive precepts that arise when it might be considered doing harm to somebody by conventional morality, you know, if we were to subscribe to whatever the prevailing sort of norm is that we feel is not, you know, maybe at odds or certainly not compatible with what comes out of our precept practice. Yeah, well, we have to be willing to stay with the Bodhisattva precepts.

[66:14]

Yeah, so, because society goes various ways. Society's like a big ship in a stormy sea, and you have to be the one person that stays in the middle, that rights the ship, keeps it, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh used to talk about this, about the boat people from Vietnam, and how the boats were tipping around like they do today. And if one person with a calm mind gets into the boat and sits in the middle, the boat has a tendency to right itself and to calm itself. But each one of us is our own boat. So how do we keep our own ship? from tipping over and getting tossed around.

[67:17]

That's really, yeah, that's really good analogy. Daniel. I'm wondering about balance Like, is it walking? Balance is through every posture that you assume. You have to find your balance continuously. And so you have to know what's going on in your ship or your body or your It's called equanimity. So how do you equalize things?

[68:21]

How do you equalize an elephant with a mouse? Are a mouse and an elephant equal or are they unequal? In terms of the balance of Uh, like, in terms of, like, there's, like, okay, but, like, the balance of, of the absolute and relative, like, or if, like, there's balance within the relative. Because there's opposites, but they're balanced or something. See, they're not opposites. Relative and absolute are just words, but they stand for something. The absolute is not anywhere near.

[69:25]

There's absolutely no difference between the absolute and the relative, except the absolute is the absolute and the relative is the relative. The relative is how the absolute expresses itself in activity. There's nothing wrong with relative. It's a natural... Nothing can move, you know. If there was no duality, everything would still be here. There wouldn't be any room for it. So we have to clear the decks. so that new things can come on and dramatize their existence on the stage. So the trick is, how do you dramatize your, how do you express yourself in the world of duality without, and dance through it?

[70:31]

How do you find, everybody has to dance. How do you find your dance? on the stage of oneness. We think we're doing all these things, you know, my, me, mine, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, but actually it's the absolute that's doing it all. It's the underlying essence that is doing everything. And so when we go to, when we have service, We pay our respects to the absolute. We bow. God, it's great, you know. It's wonderful. Yeah, Joe. I had a somewhat similar question regarding what Suzuki Roshi says.

[71:39]

If you think of your life only as a personal practice, it doesn't make much sense. But if you're aware of what we human beings are doing, you will see that this is exactly how we cause trouble for ourselves. So I think you're kind of getting to that, but I'm wondering what we as human beings, what we're doing. Yeah. Well, you know, I always think of this, that we don't live long enough to actually, as human beings, we don't live long enough to actually change things in a way that we can actually make life better for everybody. A little bit, you know, we progress one step and then we fall back two steps. But because it's a dualistic world, it can't help but be the way it is, which doesn't mean we can't do something about it.

[72:45]

But this is the way it's gotta be because it's dualistic. There are always two sides, at least. There's no such thing as one side. As soon as there's one side, something comes, the other side comes along and says, that's what you think. So thinking of it as personal practice is just thinking about one side. Is that what it means? Yes. When we sit Zazen, we don't say, I am sitting Zazen. It's Zazen is sitting Zazen. That's what we say. As soon as you think, I am sitting Zazen, it's no longer Zazen. So we let go of that, of our, a one-sided understanding and become, blend in with our universal self. Because our thinking is so small.

[73:48]

Our thinking is really tiny. We have to expand our mind a bit. I don't like the new age terms, but I think expanding our understanding It's not just this little, whatever it is. Bodhisattva, I think the word bodhisattva means various things, but it means a totally mature human being. So how can I be a totally mature human being? That's the goal of practice. What does it mean to be a totally mature human being? Now we see how hard that is, because we have all these emotions and feelings and likes and dislikes.

[74:57]

By the time that thought comes to us, It's almost too late. Well, if only I had started as a kid, you know. But actually, you can do that any moment. At any moment. Just having that, waking up to that, is in itself an enlightened thought. So we can have enlightened thoughts all the time. Suzuki Roshi used to say, getting enlightenment is okay, but it's not the most important thing. Enlightenment is what brings us to practice. It's not just the end of practice, of which there is no such thing, but it's the beginning of practice.

[76:00]

And then we work out enlightened activity from there, called practice. Practice is enlightened activity. But because we have this idea of what we think enlightenment is, we don't think so much of it necessarily. We have our doubts. We just, you know, we do enlightened practice. And sometimes we have our doubts and whatever. But it just has to do with how we conduct our daily activity. So instead of looking for something, you know, there is no end to the rainbow. So that's why people don't chase the rainbow so much, because it's elusive. But when you're walking, the rainbow's right there. The rainbow is your path. but we don't see it.

[77:05]

It's not the end of the past, it's the past itself. The past is the rainbow. Just like the Wizard of Oz. I was just gonna say, Yoni, if you wanted to speak, I wanted to give you a chance, because we only have a few minutes left. And if not, then Raghav, go ahead and yeah, just do a time check. I'm good. Thank you. I'm content just listening. Okay. So I was thinking about like recently about what it is to be a mature person. Yes. And, um, I read this somewhere a while ago where kids, um, are actually the, uh, the Aesop's fairy tales or the grim fairy tales.

[78:09]

Um, they had a somewhat of a purpose, which is kids. Um, they're able to see, hold only one view of a person. For example, if their mom, You know, you know, it's loving, but then some, you know, she yells at them later on. And kids can't have a difficulty holding both those views, which is, One an endearing and another one is a loving mother and also an angry mother. And I was thinking of it in my own terms where I still have difficulty with holding, if I see something, someone acting out not so great or, you know, putting out a wrong statement or something, I have difficulty just holding that and also giving space for the other side of them.

[79:20]

But I was thinking maybe it's maturity being able to hold every which way we see a person, for example, and not be swayed by, or not react to something that is not so, something that triggers something in us. Yeah. So that's what I was thinking. So to be able to hold both views of someone, for example, someone like, as an, just as an example, someone like, you know, someone who is hurtful to others, like say, I don't want to say Trump, but I'm going to find a better example. But something, someone like that, we still hold space for, another side of them, but we still voice what is to be okay, what is to be okay. Well, you know, okay is not okay.

[80:23]

We have to save ourselves. So, there's something called forgiveness. You say, well, how can you forgive this person for that? you know, this person who's kind of troublesome and worrisome and hateful, how can you forgive them? What you're doing is letting go of your own attachment. So the only way that you can hold those views equally is to not have any attachment. and to not be caught by discrimination. Because as soon as you start getting angry at the other, that person, you are being caught by that person. So we are getting caught by our kids.

[81:29]

Because they are little devils. They will always win. So, because you teach them to be clever. We're teaching them all the time. They don't care what we say. They don't care what we're, you know, what we're about. They just see us through their own eyes. And, you know, what is he going to do? And so they either respect you or they don't. But what people often do, and this was especially in the 19th century, people beat their kids. That was totally acceptable. Just beat them to hell until they mined. And that just teaches them to be mean.

[82:38]

So what do we want to teach them? That's what makes us mature. How do we make peace in the world, which is your little household, in a fundamental way? It's hard. Everybody has their own, and you get to your wit's end. Yeah, I remember my son, at some point, became very troublesome. And he was so bad at one point that I just let him down, you know. And then he looked up at me, you know, three or something like that.

[83:42]

And then I made an agreement that if he won't hit me, if I don't hit him. So I never hit him to that. And he didn't hit me. If you hit me, I can hit you. They have great logic. Words you cannot, you know, it's hard to counter. So you're teaching them logic. You're bringing out the logic in them. All these things, you know, you're bringing out them, but you think they're all his. They are his, but you're stimulating it through, and so we're all teaching each other how to act with each other. If you think about it, everybody you meet, they're teaching you how to act with them, and you're teaching them how to act with you, without even thinking about it. So think about it.

[84:48]

That was two minutes up, huh? We never got to the text. What text? Oh, we did. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Sojin, for joining us. It's just been awesome. Pleasure. It's really a pleasure. And because I've, you know, interacted many of you, but not everybody. So it's nice to do that. Yeah. Good group. Wonderful. Well, we'll have to have you back sometime. Thank you so much. Thank you, Susan.

[85:29]

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