I love to take the trip, but I love the time it does the worst. Well, today is the winter solstice. In America, not in America, but in our present day situation, People don't pay so much attention to it because we're not so close to the earth, and California not so close to the seasons. Seasonal changes. But something happens when the seasons change. Something very vital happens when the seasons change. So right now, even though it seemed like winter, it's only been fall. And some many things are going into dormancy.

[01:09]

And where it snows, the earth is covered. And there's a big blanket, big white blanket over everything. So the Earth is kind of sleeping. But human beings, no matter what the seasons, continue to move around very quickly and maintain the same kind of activity year-round. But there is some change. There is some change. But for us, not so much. California, not much. We put on our raincoats when it rains and put on more clothes when it gets cold.

[02:13]

But that's about it. And Christmas is coming soon. So this is a time right now, between now and New Year's, lots of changes in a short space of time. the solstice and Christmas. Christmas is not a change, but it brings out something in our attitudes and changes our lives. And Christmas is a very important time for us because it's a time when we can celebrate some wonderful aspect of Christianity along with our Buddhist practice. As long as we don't get too caught up in the greediness of the exploitation, exploitive quality of Christmas, and just stick with the Dana attitude, we'll be okay.

[03:21]

But I think it's something that's good for us, too. Christian attitudes are very in their best aspect, are very generous and loving. So that doesn't hurt us at all to take on those attitudes. And then, it will be New Year's. And New Year's, for Buddhists in Japan, it's very different than in the United States. Although I've never been in Japan during New Year's. I do, what I've heard is that the Japanese people really make a big effort to tie up all the loose ends of their lives before New Year's. And the last few weeks is very frantic for them to pay all their debts and to forgive debts that are not paid, a lot of them.

[04:31]

to look at as many untied or loose obligations and debts, so to speak, which are hanging. So you think of it as one year is one year. It's a space of time. And January 1st, you start creating all this karma again. And by the end of the year, you should try to complete as much as you can of what happened in that year by the end of the year, so that you don't have a lot to carry over into the next year. The next year can be a new start, a new beginning. So I think for us it's a pretty good idea, good attitude to see what we can take care of before the end of the year and to think of the new year as a new beginning.

[05:41]

It's a good opportunity. And also we had Bodhisattva ceremony today. Kind of Bodhisattva ceremony's same thing, similar feeling as New Year. we bring all of our old karma, even though we don't name it specifically, we acknowledge our difficulties and what we've accumulated and renew our vows. That's bodhisattva ceremony. So we start fresh. And New Year's is a similar feeling. Start out in a new, fresh way. So that's also an American idea. It's not peculiar to Japanese. But there's something about the way they do it that's a little different.

[06:45]

Strong feeling. We talk about New Year's resolutions, which we don't keep. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. But we should be careful about our vows. Because if we make a resolution, we shouldn't forget it. But it's easy to forget. And most of our, not most, but a lot of our karma, if you look at it, is a series of broken or forgotten promises that we make. And sometimes we don't know why things happen to us the way they do. And if we look back at our lives, quite often we can see that it's due to past mistakes that were never acknowledged. And promises that were not kept, or vows that were forgotten.

[07:52]

You can make a vow one day and forget it the next. It's easy. But when we do that, we may forget it, but it doesn't forget us. And those things follow us and cause us some problem. And we don't know what the source of our problem is because we can't remember or we don't think about what happened. So, a good New Year's resolution might be to acknowledge the various promises and intentions that we have made and to either go through with them or or acknowledge that we don't want to go through with them.

[08:56]

Because our intentions are really strong karma. It causes a lot of problems if we don't deal with them, if we don't go through with them or forget them. So a lot of strong things going on in these two weeks. And I think it's very good to take the momentum of what's happening in these two weeks. before the New Year and do something very positive, take some very positive action using those events as momentum.

[10:02]

And one very positive thing to do is to decide what your practice is about, how to renew your practice for the new year. Are you just going to kind of glide into the next year or will you make some kind of commitment to yourself as to what your attitude toward practice is? I think that's very important. I want to talk a little bit about practice. I don't mean to say, you know, when to make a vow to say I'm going to sit zazen every day or something like that. But some kind of commitment to understanding what your practice is about.

[11:15]

To try and really understand what it's about. Recently, I've had people talking, questioning about what it means, what is the meaning of no gaining mind. Suzuki Roshi used to use the term a lot. Know that when you practice, to not have a gaining mind, And people are questioning that. It comes up from time to time, and especially lately it's come up quite a bit. So I want to talk a little bit about what it means to not have a gaining mind in your practice. Gaining mind is different than accomplishment.

[12:16]

If we don't have some accomplishment in whatever we do, then we don't feel that what we're doing is worthwhile. When we talked about the seven factors of enlightenment, joy was one of them, one of the factors. And joy comes from accomplishment and satisfaction. So it doesn't make sense to not have some satisfaction and progress, sense of progress in your practice. But that's different from gaining mind. Because gaining mind is ego mind, materialistic mind, which only sees the world in terms of materialism. spiritual, and Trungpa Rinpoche coined the term spiritual materialism, having some kind of materialistic advantage through spiritual practice.

[13:34]

And even the The gaining idea of enlightenment is a kind of materialistic attitude with most people. It doesn't mean that to have enlightenment is not right, because it is right, but to have the idea of enlightenment as a gaining idea is not correct. Because it goes in counter, it points the opposite direction of what enlightenment is about. So rather than gaining mind, our attitude of real practice is letting go of mind. Letting go mind is enlightened mind.

[14:44]

So gaining mind is the opposite. And if you have real letting go mind, real accepting mind, the mind that's not grasping and has confidence in mind, then no need to worry about what you get. You don't get anything. If you think that you get something through their practice, that's just materialistic attitude. So the problem that we have a lot is not being able to depend on our Buddha nature.

[16:00]

Buddha nature, what we call Buddha nature, is what actually does our activity. We say, well, I do my activity. But that's a kind of egotistical attitude Buddha nature does everything. Some people say God does everything. But since we don't use those kinds of terms in Buddhism, we say Buddha nature, everything is the activity of Buddha nature. Even my ego is the activity of Buddha nature. But when we become cut off from our understanding of Buddha nature, then we just think that my little ego does everything. When we sit in zazen, our ego is minimized and just Buddha nature is there.

[17:11]

And then when we stand up, the whole world arises with us. But buddhanature is still there, doing it, doing everything. When you come to realize that, you have enlightenment. You don't gain anything. You just have some realization of who you are and what everything is, even though you don't know anything about anything. So if you have enlightenment, you realize that you know nothing about anything, and you have nothing. Nothing belongs to you. Enlightenment doesn't belong to you.

[18:17]

You just happen to have some realization about your true nature. But as long as you want something, then you create some idea in your mind about what you want. And as long as you have that, you're not letting go. So I don't care what type of Buddhism you're talking about, whether it's Rinzai, Koan study, Soto Zen, any kind of Buddhism. If you have some idea about enlightenment or wanting anything, it just drives you further away. When you can let go, just practice. then you have great success.

[19:29]

The way to practice is to just practice without any idea about wanting enjoyment or not wanting enjoyment or wanting success or not wanting success. When success comes, wonderful. When Disappointment comes, okay. Whatever comes, okay. But just practice. Just continue to practice with everything that you have. Otherwise, you keep falling into the dualistic practice. Dualistic practice is, oh, success is wonderful. Oh, disappointment is terrible.

[20:31]

And you just fall into those. You're always wanting success. Always wanting it to conform to your idea of success. And you just fall into a dualistic trap. Practice is not so hard, but you have to be very careful. It means you have to be really careful. It's very simple, but very difficult because you have to be so careful. When you practice for a long time with the right attitude, then underneath there's always some joy. But if you practice thinking that there will be joy, then that's still a dualistic practice. If you practice thinking that something wonderful will come out of all this, that's just dualistic practice.

[21:37]

Practice is not for one or two years or for some time. It's not like when you do something in the ordinary world and you get some success. It's your whole life forever. And it has to do with the attitude of how you accept your life. in a non-dualistic way. Dualism doesn't mean that there's no good and bad or right and wrong. That's not dualism. Exactly. Even though we say not to think about good and bad, when you sit, you don't think about good and bad. But when you stand up from sitting, the whole world arises with you, and then you have to make some judgments based on your non-dualistic mind's understanding.

[22:40]

So, as I said last time, Suzuki Roshi says it's not so difficult to be enlightened. Enlightenment is not the problem. The problem is how to keep our practice pure. And purity doesn't mean some kind of special way, you know, like avoiding all the bad things. Purity is in the impure. Purity means to accept both the pure and the impure. When things are going very well, that's fine. But if you make too much of that, you fall into your trap.

[23:52]

So when they're going well, hmm, good. When they're not going so well, Hmm, okay. If you don't have that attitude, you're not really practicing in a proper way. You may get discouraged because of your idealistic point of view. This is the most important basic thing about practice, is that it goes straight, practice goes straight, and good things and bad things happen all the time, and they alternate. And you accept whatever happens, and deal with it in a correct way.

[24:56]

And this going straight is the power of your enlightenment. You may have a terrible time, but if you know how to practice, that's just your life. You may crave some wonderful life, But if you have enlightenment, you can see how wonderful that really is. If you have enlightenment, you can see how wonderful your misfortune is. But gaining idea is When you're only looking for the nice part then you have some gaining idea.

[26:06]

That's just like any kind of ordinary activity. Then, when you know how to practice No matter what's happening to you, whether it's fortunate or unfortunate, every step of the way is within enlightenment. It has nothing to do with whether good things or bad things are happening to you. We think if we get enlightenment, bad things won't happen to us, or we won't be bad. Suzuki Roshi used to say, after you get enlightened, when you pass the ice cream store, you think, oh, I will no longer be tempted to go into the ice cream store to salivate when I pass the ice cream store, if ice cream is your thing.

[27:27]

You may be just the same. He also used to say, when you get enlightened, you may not like it. I think that's the most wonderful statement I've ever heard about enlightenment. But if you have that kind of attitude, that's beginner's mind attitude of pure practice. If you have that attitude, then you can enjoy your practice, no matter what happens.

[28:40]

And that's the power of practice. And if you can do that, it means you have very little ego. We talk about ego a lot, getting rid of ego. It's hard to know how to get rid of ego. We don't really get rid of ego. That's just a way of speaking, manner of speaking. In Buddhism, ego is a little different meaning than in psychology. So Buddhist meaning of ego is no real self. In psychology, it means our idea of It has a kind of reality. Ego has a kind of reality more than in Buddhism.

[29:46]

But Buddhism is that there really is no individual self. So there is no ego. And ego is a kind of illusion of a self. But if we understand no ego, no real self, then we can accept this self as it is without adding something to it. We can accept what happens to this body and mind, which is part of an expression of Buddha nature. Just one more expression of Buddha nature. Just Buddha nature expressing itself in this particular form. So, to have no ego means to be able to accept that.

[31:01]

So, you know, each one of us has to direct ourself So instead of ego, practice is to get rid of the illusion of ego and allow true personality to arise. We may not have ego, but we have some true personality. which is not something that we make up. So, getting rid of personality, reducing our, I mean of ego, reducing our

[32:11]

ego, reducing our illusion or delusion, allows our enlightenment to come forth. So, the more of our image we have, or the more we want, the less we can have. So unless it comes out, we're blocking our real personality, our enlightenment. So it's not a matter of getting something, it's just a matter of not interfering. So ego interferes with our true personality, enlightened person. and causes us confusion and delusion. When you don't have confusion and delusion, you can accept what happens as part of the great activity.

[33:28]

Otherwise you say, Oh, how did a thing like that happen to a person like me, when something happens to us? How did God do... You know, I've been so good and so... How did God do this to me? We don't understand our own karma, the results of our own karma, which create the various things It sets the stage for the various things that happen to us. Anyway, even if you're enlightened, good things and bad things will happen to you. Your life will not change so radically, but if you can accept your life, as it is, and just continue to practice, your life won't be so difficult, actually.

[34:48]

Life is not as difficult, even though those things happen to you. Same things happen to you, but your life is not as difficult. And you can learn how to work with it. You can learn how to work with your life, so that even though good things and bad things are happening to you, It's not as big a problem. Even though there's a problem, the problem is not so bad. Anyway, I think it reminds me of a koan, Baso.

[35:58]

A monk came up to Baso, and this is a famous koan, you all know it. A monk came up to Baso and said, where is the place he can go where we can get out of being too cold or too hot? And when it gets too hot, where can you go? And when it gets too cold, where can you go? And Baso said, when it's hot, just let the heat kill you. And when it's cold, just let the cold kill you. the koan of our practice. When it's hot, just be hot through and through. And when it's cold, just be cold through and through. When it's hot, we like to drink cool drinks, get in the shade.

[37:11]

And when it's cold, we say, Why can't we get some heat? Well, that's okay, you know. It's okay to do that. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do that. But you have to understand the koan. You have to understand the meaning of the koan. As long as you try to escape from your situation, you're creating a big problem Of course, we don't always like to be there. How can we escape from our problem? When something comes, how can we escape from it? Or should we escape from it? You know these slapstick movies where the hero is constantly going from one adventure to another.

[38:12]

you know, escaping from one thing and then finds himself in another position with a big problem. Then he escapes from that one and he finds himself in another position with a big problem. And our life is like that, you know, we escape from one problem only to find ourselves in another place with a tiger, you know, and then we escape from the tiger and we find ourselves there with an elephant. That's what our life is like. So how do we deal with the tiger that's in front of us? That's our practice. And remain steady. Steadily practicing with the tiger that's in front of us. Sometimes we ride the tiger, and sometimes the tiger chases us around the room.

[39:14]

This is Manjushri, you know, Manjushri riding the lion, very comfortably riding the lion. This is the lion dog. But he doesn't want to be underneath. How do you get into that position? You didn't get in that position by running away from the tiger, from the lion. So Zen practice is difficult.

[40:17]

because you have to keep facing it all the time. It's not because it's hard to sit Zazen or because it's hard to get enlightened, but you have to face the situation all the time and accept what's happening. Accept your life completely without trying to change it around too much. It's cold here, maybe I'll go to Florida where it's warm. There must be some easier way. There probably is some easier way. They're also easier forms of Buddhism.

[41:31]

But when you take an easier form of Buddhism, what seems like an easier form of Buddhism, and penetrate down to it, it's the same. Ipen Shonin, who was one of the early Nembutsu practicers in Japan, he decided that chanting the name of Buddha was the most efficacious way to practice But for him, understanding the meaning of the name was what he was practicing, not just mumbling something, but to penetrate to the meaning of the name.

[42:49]

If he can penetrate to the meaning of the name, please practice that way. So for him, he said, the meaning of the name was in the whole universe as it is, is chanting the name of Buddha. Not so different, not different from our practice. Everything you hear, is chanting the name of Buddha. How do you penetrate through the name? This year, I would like us to, for the new year, to really try to penetrate into what we're doing, into the meaning of our practice, into the meaning of your practice.

[44:25]

What is the meaning of your practice for everyone, for each one? Do you have a question? Could you say something about the place of effort in trying to accept? For instance, in avoiding the problems of just mere resignation, on the one hand, or denial of the problem on the other. And acceptance seems to be more than just, OK, hit me, beat me. And on the one hand, it seems to be more or different from just denying the problem altogether.

[45:30]

How do you try to accept something when you really don't accept it? Where's the effort? Or is it just something that has to come through eons of zazen or something? Eons of zazen. That's good. But also Everything is a balance. You should always remember that in practice there's always a balance. So how to stay in balance? How to keep balanced? And one way is to say, when something comes up and you don't know how to deal with it, say, I don't know. And I don't know will I'll give you the space to find your balance.

[46:36]

Out of I don't know, I don't know is like doing zazen. Like don't, I don't know, mind. I don't know. You come back to zazen and then when you that gives you, then when you meet the problem, you're coming from an absolute position, rather than a relative position, in which most of our problems are caused. It's not a formula. If you know how to rely on that, or if you have some confidence in that, you know how to use that. So, you know, usually when we have some big problem or decision, and then we try and figure it out using the components of opposites.

[47:58]

But when you just drop it, I don't know, and give yourself some space, And out of that arises something. Some way to go. But you have to be able to trust that. I trust it very much. It's not different than, you know, if you're practicing something. Let's say you're practicing a musical instrument, you know, and you get to a point where you just, no matter how hard you practice, you can't make it work. Then you just put down the instrument, and you walk away for five minutes, then you come back and pick it up again, and it works. Sometimes it needs a longer space, you know, but nevertheless, when you give yourself space and balance your mind, the space to balance your mind, come back to nothing.

[49:08]

then from nothing you can start again. And responses and answers come out of nothing. That's when you can really begin to trust yourself. But it's hard to trust ourself sometimes. Hard to trust our nature, because we want to trust our brain, our mind. So there's no place there for effort? Oh yeah, effort. That's the effort. Sure, the effort is to do something positive. Saying, I don't know, is the most positive thing you can do. It's not that you scramble, you think of effort as scrambling, but effort is putting ourself in the right position.

[50:16]

I don't know is different than, oh, what do I do? It's very positive, positive way. It looks negative, but it's positive. Letting it go, letting it go, letting go of the rational, trying to find the answer, and then something hopeful comes up. Scrambling. You don't... It's not something hopeful that comes up. You just drop it. Something hopeful that comes up is a gaining idea. Just drop it. Just say, I don't know. Truly, I don't know. Somebody comes at you with a gun and says, you know, what'll I do, you know?

[51:31]

Maybe I should fight him or just, I don't know. But out of I don't know, it means you're ready for anything. This is the whole... this is samurai attitude. I don't know. If you go in there thinking, I'm going to win, I'm going to kill him or something like that, it doesn't work. Just no mind. And then anything can happen in that space. Could you say something about how do we apply a no-gaining mind to the marketplace or, you know, in lay practice, you practice and then also have a career, or maybe some professional development, so how do we extend that no-gaining mind to living within

[52:44]

It's hard because the marketplace is set up in a competitive way. And so competition is the name of the game. And it's hard not to be caught up in that. So you have to take a lesser, usually lesser role in that. marketplace. For instance, the Hasidic Jews, in order to practice their religion, they take jobs which are minor kind of jobs, not competitive type jobs, mostly, and work at those kinds of jobs that they don't get into that competitive marketplace. and they work enough to sustain themselves is something they feel is honorable labor.

[53:55]

Just enough to support themselves and have some honorable kind of work to do. So I think that's a pretty good example. Well, um, I used to think that, you know, for a long time, that, um, I was just staying in the same job, you know, forever. And, uh, take a very low, uh, standing job, a low-paid job, and then just do service from, from that, uh, place. And, uh, um, but then you also find yourself, like, uh, being very overqualified, and having a lot of, uh, that maybe it's not being utilized. But then people don't necessarily come to you and they can't come for a coca-cola here.

[55:01]

You have to go and go look around and see what other possibilities there are, and then connect yourself with some other place where there's some other activity happening. Well, that's okay. And then there's also the consideration that if you have a family, then maybe you're watching This time changes, so you might need more income to be able to make ends meet. But that's according to needs. Right? You adjust according to needs. That's what you should do, is adjust according to needs rather than according to desire. No problem. But when you say, if I got that job, I'd be making 200,000 a year. I don't need $200,000. Just think, you know, and then start getting... That's just greedy activity.

[56:03]

Gaining idea is a little different in spiritual activity, you know. A little different feeling. The term has a little different meaning because we apply it to our spiritual activity. but in the marketplace we call it greed or over-ambitious. The goal becomes... the means becomes the goal. In other words, the livelihood becomes... the advantage... taking advantage becomes more important than the livelihood. It doesn't mean that, for example, It seems like the aims then of Buddhism in some way are similar to, it's kind of social, socialistic. Well, it should be, can be applied in a social way, sure. It's like the biggest thing that Marx criticized was capitalistic greed.

[57:05]

Yeah, of course. Yeah, well, I think that's true. But that's just obvious, you know. It's not communist or Marxist or anything. Everybody knows that. Marx just happened to make a point of it and based his, you know, this social change on it. Everybody knew that along. And especially Buddhists knew that 2,500 years ago. Like applying it to social organization. Right. Greed is greed. Yeah, greed is greed, wherever you find it. Whatever form you find it. It seems like it's very difficult to really differentiate greed as just greed. I have a friend who is an executive, and he has a possibility of earning a lot of money, and he's moving out to this part of the country specifically for that idea because he has a family.

[58:17]

He doesn't want to live out here, but he figures he can make a lot of money quickly and then go back to where he wants to live in upstate New York and just stay there and raise his child the way he wants and have this little house paid for. That's a kind of gaining idea. Because in a non-gaining idea, you don't live for the future. You take the elements that you have right now and live right now. How do you live right now? But you have to live to some extent. Yeah, to some extent you have to plan the future. That's right. I'm not saying you don't plan the future, but there's some difference in scheming and in just living your life. Scheming is a way of thinking about creating some advantage for yourself in the future.

[59:20]

I don't say that what your friend is doing is wrong, but I'm saying that there's a difference. The example is that wanting to gain advantages becomes the dominant thing in your life. And then your life becomes dependent on gaining the advantages that you're thinking about. So the way you're thinking is the way you're living. And you're always planning everything, you know, a better life in the future. And that does happen to some people. But if you know how to take care of your life where you are, I don't say you shouldn't move, but if you have to understand the principle, if you're taking care of your life where you are, then you're living your life right now. Life is only so long, you know.

[60:31]

And if you go, you know, you may create some way of life where when you're 80, you're really living it. But all that other time, you know, you're kind of wasting it. I'm still confused between the juxtaposition of gaining idea and accomplishment. How do you know you're working at something? You're working at your practice, you're learning things. Where is that line between gaining idea and accomplishment? Sometimes they don't acknowledge their accomplishment because they believe that they're getting an idea.

[61:42]

It works both ways, and that point is very confusing. Well, it's honest to accept your accomplishments. Accomplishment is that you are able to practice. in an enlightened way. That's an accomplishment. But a gaining idea is the idea that what you're doing now is for the future. And that you only want, you're looking for something wonderful. But some wonderful thing that's going to... which conforms to your idea of what it's going to be like.

[62:47]

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