We are all living here, practicing here. A spirit, Suzuki Roshi, brought to us very clearly. Something Suzuki Roshi brought here. And he didn't think it was his, something. that was brought to him by his teachers and by our lineage going back so far. I have a famous story of Joshu. Whenever anybody would come to see Joshu, Another one, Joshu, another one of the teachers, Sakyoshi, particularly felt akin to. Whenever someone would come and see Joshu, he would always ask, have you been here before? And if the person said yes, he would say, go have a cup of tea. And if the person said no, he would say, go have a cup of tea.

[01:26]

The work leader, I don't know what job exactly, somebody like the work leader, finally one day said to me, what does it mean, and Joshu, Roshi, what does it mean, go have a cup of tea? You always say it, no matter what people say. And he said, and Joshu said, work leader? I don't know how to, as usual, I don't know how to give you a feeling for what is behind a story like this. It's something very integral, the word to have.

[02:42]

something, and the word have, to possess something, in Chinese, I'm told, means your skin. Something that you have, as thoroughly as you have your skin, is to have something. And habit also has the same kind of meaning, to have something. You know, we speak our languages. mostly habit. And if you have habits, you know, language habits from childhood, as you know, it's very, very, very difficult to change even simple ones, getting tenses wrong, things, if your family spoke that way. So I'm again today trying to talk about how we do things, or how we exist in minutia or trivia, as Ivan Illich was saying too. We try to look for the meanings of things.

[04:18]

usually with some philosophical or scientific or factual attitude. Such and such exists and can be found out. Even talking about form and emptiness, we think of form like a drawing and emptiness as some empty space or something like that. And yesterday I suggested that maybe a good synonym for emptiness is friendliness. The unlimited practices of friendliness and compassion and sympathetic joy and even-mindedness These are other words for emptiness or space or presence. I'm trying to get you to trust your own experience plus

[05:45]

As your experience comes up in various categories, don't just take the accepted meaning or for granted meaning. Also, trust little hints that may come up in your mind. Why isn't that included? What does that mean? That kind of feeling. It may mean our mind is so divided up, you know, very hard for intuitive message from what I believe Socrates called his daimon or demon. But demon originally in Greek means conscience or inner voice. Conscience means to know thoroughly, or originally it meant inner thought or inner truth or inner voice. And it's exactly the same as Suzuki Roshi's inmost request. But our inner voice usually can't get through. It speaks in the language of our habits.

[07:13]

stereotyped habits. So I would say maybe if emptiness equals presence, form equals the synonym for presence, of bearing. You're bearing. Bearing means to give birth to. or to be able to carry, or to endure, or to bring within reach something that's on a human scale. I think I would translate the essence of the meaning of bearing on a human scale, or form. I would say form is bearing. If form is bearing, do you... Suggesting here is not some philosophical thing But bearing has the sense of direction in it he bore straight ahead Or he got his bearings and by a compass or trees or stars But in the situation he found his bearing

[08:40]

or he had some noble bearing or calm bearing. In the tea ceremony, tea ceremony is divided up into arrangement and the arrangement of things, and the purification of things, and calmness of mind are three main aspects of the tea ceremony. These come, I think, from Buddhist ceremonies. And it suggests something, too, about how we can work or do things. The arrangement of what you do. Some precise care with things. And then, by purification, we can say... It means some

[09:46]

absolute directness of your perception of the thing, not some mixed up. This thing, this particular thing, out of all things, it's not you emphasize its particularity. So if you purify it, you take away its contaminations or connections with other things. So arrangement is making something specific and clarification or Purification is to emphasize its particularity. And calmness of mind is a no-fuss or just absorptive. Your mind in an absorbing state. This kind of thing is important in how we work at Green Gulch. I don't know. I just had a long conversation with Harry. And I don't know the details at all, and I'm not interested in whether Harry is right or wrong. But what he was upset about is the same kind of thing that Suzuki Yoshi used to get upset about.

[11:19]

of people used some wood, which wasn't supposed to be used, haircut, you know, and they're cutting off extra long, laying some boards over there, they're throwing away the ends when they could use the ends, you know. I know Sukhirshi used to talk about our economic system, which made us always throw things away rather than repair them. It was more efficient or cheaper or something like that. But for Suzuki Roshi, it can't be cheaper to throw something that's perfectly good away. In the long run, we'll pay for it, he felt. No respect for objects. So we find this practice, the truth of this practice, the truth of our existence, in this kind of realm of friendliness or bearing or presence,

[12:50]

learning things by habit or by rote. Rote means public road. And you have a pretty good introduction to this world, which is pretty unfamiliar to American people at least. I think you do the kind of serving of meals we do pretty well. And most of you don't resist it anymore. At Tassajara there's one person who still resists bowing. Why am I bowing to Buddha? Who is Buddha? we got into a long discussion about bhava degradable. Whether the bhava is washed off in the stream enterer or not. A foolish discussion. But people were worried about some pollution in the stream and bhava and the stream entering mudra.

[14:22]

I talked so long yesterday Today I don't want to talk so much and What I'd like to be able to do is get you out of the categories of your mind so that it occurs easily to you that form is bearing. Like silence, the word silence. Silence means not speaking. There's no such thing as silence.

[15:32]

Silence means the absence of speaking. I don't know how to say it, but you see what I mean? There's no such thing as silence, except in relation to not speaking. So it does mean, it looks like, sometimes quietly flowing, something that flows without sound. So it means some activity. So form means some activity. is a very good word for form, and it has all the connotations of it. Some strength, meaning to bear something, some giving birth, some direction, it bears examination, some ability to accept Space, likewise, as I suggested, can't be defined except as the absence of objects. From some point of view, we can say that it's just our mind which can't conceive of space except as the absence of objects. That's true. We wouldn't even think of the idea

[17:02]

time and space, etc. Except by comparison, within the realm of time, the absence of time is not conceivable to us. One of the things Illich was talking about, our educational system. As I would put it, our educational system has made it impossible for us to imagine any other way of life but the one we have. If you say to people, we are going to live without petroleum and everyone will move at 20 miles per hour, so we don't need nuclear power. Almost everybody in the United States can't imagine such a world. It's against progress, it's going backwards, It's simply not imaginable. But if you ask, as Illich said, everybody in Mexico, nobody goes more than 20 miles an hour. They have no problem about imagining it at all. They actually are living it.

[18:23]

most of the world doesn't move very fast. But we can't imagine a life without moving rapidly. So it's, you know, hard for us to imagine that truth is in how we carry ourselves, how we bear ourselves, how we stand and serve the food, etc. And our mind usually is too hasty to find out something subtle. We don't listen

[19:51]

Maybe a good translation for silence would be listening. Listening is something active. Everything that happens is something active. There's nothing that's not active. Emptiness is active. Form is active. How do you put your finger exactly on that activity? Or your whole body or skin exactly in that activity? At Tassajara it's much easier in many ways than here

[20:59]

In evening time, we do evening things. In afternoon time, we do afternoon things. In morning time, morning things. It's possible for me to more fully do the trivia of the routine of a monk. Every day I should do certain things. Outside, in addition to the regular schedule, some respect to Suzuki Roshi and other things. Some things before I go to bed, some things after getting up. We can't explain it. Tsukiyoshi used to say, in America people would always say, well, why do you do it that way? He'd say, I never thought to ask. We just do it. We don't even think about asking. Maybe that seems terrible, but I'd like to again suggest that the asking occurs on another level.

[22:38]

I don't mean that this Buddhist way of life or some traditional way of life, when it's healthy – any form of life can become unhealthy – but when it's healthy, it's unexamined. The examination doesn't begin only at the beginning, doesn't occur only at the beginning. Before I do it, I'm going to find out what it is, then I will decide whether to do it. You do it first. Something subtle, something that takes many years. How could you find out what it's like to be married before you're married? Someone can try to explain to you. How do you find out what water is like? Some famous story. Drinking water to find out. There are many things that you can't find out except by doing it. Now, I'm not going to set up a booth

[24:10]

and recruit you for some long list of details that you're going to have to do by rote from the point at which you sign away your mental capacities. And I don't have such a list anyway. I can think up a few things. And if you practice, some things will appear out of the woodwork that you find we do without, I don't know, they come up. But I'm not talking about such things so much as an attitude toward yourself and toward your practice that the first of all, at least, is accepting. Accepting of the rote of your own body, heart beating, etc. The aloneness of yourself and the intention

[25:41]

finding the intention that's on everything that you do. There's no... if form is bearing, as I'm speaking today, we can say form is intention too. You're not looking... there's no way you can get down to some atomic dust, you know, which is suddenly neutral, without personality. or without intention. This practice isn't something impersonal. To eradicate desire, greed, hate and delusion does not mean to make yourself a robot without feeling or without desires. It's pretty hard to describe what I mean, but maybe desire is added on to desires, but the very thing itself is desire. There is no form that isn't desire. We can say form equals desire. Form equals bearing. What is bearing? Some direction, some movement. Where does the direction and movement come from?

[27:13]

What is the movement? Is it going somewhere? Means become ends in this practice. So you're in a kind of envelope, envelope of your projections and feelings and definitions and desires. and in practicing in zazen you're sort of looking around that envelope and the more you can look around without categories and without fear with an accepting feeling you can find out that you're bearing, your inner bearing

[28:54]

your inner conscience, your inmost request, your inner bearing. you can find out that space, that it's not just a limitation of our mind which conceives of space only as the absence of form, that space is form. Trust your... You have to stop putting yourself down. Trust what comes up. Ask something good. What exists is good.

[30:19]

I don't know. Inherently good, it's inherently good. And if it's bad, you made it bad. I don't know. Maybe you can think of it that way. With that attitude, at least you can explore your envelope. In this envelope there's a kind of rhythm of things by themselves, without any ego. Tsukiroshi, I think I said, used to say, on this side there's no ego. You know, it was a little difficult to understand what he meant. But ego is always something.

[32:02]

something from the outside. We're scared to purify ourselves. We say something and as we say it we race around what we've said, checking everyone's reaction to it and ready to draw it back in, a kind of scatter shot approach You're listening, you don't know which message to receive. But if you purify what you say, or what you do, you just say something. And after you've said it, you don't worry whether it's good or bad, or how people will react to it. It's been given birth to. It has its bearing, own bearing, and it's in your envelope. It's not far away.

[33:03]

You don't have to keep track of it, because out there is not separate from you. Presence means in front of you, too, immediately, in front of. And this kind of phrase occurs in many Zen stories, in front of. In front of means everywhere. Dogen Zenji said, treat a grain of rice as if it were your own eyesight. Erio's poem, which I don't know if I mentioned here, within 10,000 forms I see one naked body. Only those who affirm it can be intimate with it.

[34:24]

Until yesterday, I was only pursuing it halfway. Today, I see ice in fire." He says, today, only those who affirm it can be intimate with it. It means form is bearing. Form is intention. If everyone has Buddha nature, if we state it that way, it means you stop putting yourself down and think of yourself as Buddha. Not in some comparative sense, I'm better or worse, but in the minute way in which you respect yourself. And you treat other people that way, and you treat a grain of rice that way. as your own eyesight. This is affirming it. This is actual practice. Affirmation of the teaching, actualizing the teaching. Turning your envelope into the compassionate,

[35:51]

So you can see now, maybe, how space is compassion. Space is friendliness. If there's someone who isn't friendly to you, there's no boundless space for you. At that person, it comes to a halt. And if when you see someone, you feel on the outside of that person, there's no boundless space for you. When you see someone, it makes me think of my plastic lunchbox, clear plastic lunchbox my mother sent me to school with. When I was in first grade I was so embarrassed everyone could see my lunch. When you see someone, it's like you can see right through them. You don't have any feeling of barrier, you know? Maybe you cooperate in creating a barrier because it's too intimate, or it's not time yet to lift all the blinds. So you lower your eyes a little.

[37:26]

or create some small problem, like creating a suitcase to carry. Then you can do something together to carry the suitcase. So each person for you is an opportunity for a whole world. When you see the person, you know, I don't say arrangement, but let's say arrangement, you notice you're with someone. First of all, you're with them, so that's some placing,

[38:31]

Next you take away any idea of the person. That's part of the arrangement. And second, you purify that person by giving your full attention to that person as if they were in the entire universe, which they are. And without a frightened state of mind, a calm state of mind, you listen. Listen, meaning all your senses to that person. This attitude can be going on in the middle of joking and talking to someone. You'll find a great space Great forests, wild mountains open up in one person. Many histories are there. Many skies and aspects of nature. And boundless space is something very personal and real and intimate.

[40:01]

Then there's no question of, I must be alone in the mountains. You're alone in the vast forest of some particular person, breathing their fresh air. And bearing them would mean your and their realization of this great world that rests on each point. Bearing that whole world on each point. Some dignity.

[41:13]

Knowing, the whole world is bearing on this point. If you bow, the whole world bows. So you bow with some dignity. There is no restriction in dignity or bearing. Somehow we have to find out here at Green Gulch. The burden is on us, especially here at Green Gulch, in the next year, to find out how to carry on our work, our farming and carpentry, and taking care of and greeting guests with this dignity, with treating each thing like it was Buddha's eyesight, our own eyesight,

[42:50]

how not to waste things, how to include not just the job, job from morning to evening, but the job in the morning is one job, and the job in the afternoon is another job, If you do this, you will find out, at certain times of day, everyone works together, everything will fall into place. And later in the afternoon, it's for taking care of something else, to make tomorrow fall into place. But when you violate those kind of rhythms, it won't really come. You're always going uphill, always sweating against the rhythm, trying to do what should have been done in the morning, in the afternoon. Our body exists with that kind of rhythm and pace, and external world exists, and all activity, all bearing, all form, all presence, has this kind of

[44:22]

personality in it, definition or affirmation in it. Within the 10,000 forms, one naked body, only those who affirm it can be intimate with it. Until yesterday I was doing everything halfway. Today I see the ice in the fire. Ice in the fire means mutual health, or past, present, and future. Included in everything Or ten directions on one point Knowing the long and short of it in each when you know this feeling. In the midst of your activity, you will feel a deep, peaceful, deep, peaceful unity with everything. And your mind and body, bearing and present, will open up to include

[45:56]

so many dimensions of things that you have no knowledge or feeling of. You'll find out you're always doing many things, actually. that when you do one thing, one trivial thing, it includes many things, and you will find the many things on it. The whole feeling of boredom and effort will shift to be a doorway. But it's not going to happen because I say so, or by doing something once or twice. finally just doing it coming to that one like you are breathing coming to each moment as it occurs without reservation listening to everything around you

[47:25]

pure, uninterrupted consciousness, which includes everything. And it can't be stopped for a single instant. It means a total letting go into relativity. and join each other in this deep meditation. Thank you very much.

[49:09]

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