There are what we call three treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And all precepts, between pure precepts and the ten negative precepts, come out of the first three, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. So we should understand something about what is buddha, what we mean by buddha, what we mean by dharma, what we mean by sangha. When we look at the list of 16 precepts, or when we take precepts, jhukas, received precepts, I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dharma, and I take refuge in Sangha.

[01:06]

But refuge is not really such an accurate description. There is no... no one is satisfied with any way of expressing it completely. Refuge has the feeling of hiding, you know, escaping from some safe place. So that meaning is kind of limited. In some sense, the real meaning is the opposite. So one way of expressing it is I return to Buddha. I return to Dharma. I return to Sangha. Meaning to come back to what you already have.

[02:17]

To return to something that maybe we've lost sight of. Something original. So we say precepts are not something that is thought up, not some idea that Buddha thought up or Buddhists thought up, but our original existence or our original nature. And another way of expressing that is I am one with Buddha, I am one with Dharma, I am one with Sangha. So those two are pretty close, have the same kind of feeling. You see, Buddha is the perfect teacher, and Dharma is the perfect teaching, and Sangha is the perfect harmony of parts.

[03:25]

So more of this kind of meaning we turn to or become one with our true self which is not dependent on our existence or non-existence. So we say three treasures actually exist whether before Buddha and before our own separate existence. And because we recognize this existence, we express it in this way. So Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is how we express our own nature, our own self. And our own self is Buddha.

[04:36]

Buddha is not necessarily who we think of as a Shakyamuni Buddha, who existed 2,500 years ago. To take refuge in Buddha, or to be turned to our self, turned to become one with, needs to find the truth in ourself, to really be ourself. And it's ridiculous, you know. It's always the same. Our Zen practice is very simple. Just to become yourself, which means to become Buddha yourself. When you are you, when you're really yourself, then you are, we call you Buddha. Anyway, he called me Buddha anyway, whether you feel like it or not, just as you are. But it doesn't necessarily mean to reach our potential.

[05:47]

As soon as I reach my full potential, I'll be Buddha. It doesn't mean that. means just as you are, you are a Buddha. So we hold Shakyamuni Buddha up as an example. This is a person. Shakyamuni Buddha is a person just like you and me. And we call him Buddha because he realized who he was. He had this realization of himself. He became himself. So Dharma is like the inescapable, unavoidable,

[06:51]

reality of the way things are. So when we return to Dharma, we return to the unavoidable, inescapable love of the way things are and the way things go. And when we return or become one with Sangha, we harmonize with not just people. Sangha, strictly speaking, you know, we say sangha is the people that you practice with together. You have an agreement and you practice together with that agreement. But it also includes, in a wider sense, people who you don't have an agreement with about how things go. And in a larger sense, it means how you include everything.

[08:04]

How you practice with everything. Trees, rocks, and so forth. How you take care of everything. So Sangha is really a very big, big subject for us. What is Sangha? And in Zen practice, we put a lot of emphasis on Sangha. In Buddhism, every school of Buddhism recognizes the Three Treasures. Without exception, the Three Treasures is the basis of all Buddhist reverence. The three pure precepts are also the same. The rules of behavior are generally the same, but for different schools, different ways of practice, those are different.

[09:19]

For instance, the Vinaya schools of Buddhism have 250 rules, maybe 500 for women. And their practice is just to keep the loop. And so that's one extreme, practice the loop. And Mahayana practice is more philosophical and more, not loose, but more open. more organic, more based on something else. If you, and there's always been a lot of controversy between, for 2,000 years, over 2,000 years, you know, there's been this controversy between the strictly speaking school of rule practices

[10:28]

and the school of those who follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter. So lawyers are people who practice maybe the letter of the law and all the rest of us try and practice the spirit But we get caught, you know, and then we have to hire a lawyer to straighten things out for us. But, strictly speaking, we're not lawyers, you know, we go about our life and try to live our life according to... I don't know. Sometimes we need a lawyer to really help us at the fine point.

[11:35]

But Zen practice is not the practice of lawyers. It's the practice of Zazen. And so we say that Dharma, the Vinaya, our Vinaya comes out of Zazen practice. So, somebody who practices the Vinaya school look very strict, you know, because Vinaya school is practice of monks who just give up everything else and practice those rules. And people who practice the spirit more are lay people and Zen monks. Zen monks have a different kind of unite.

[12:38]

A Zen monk who is in a monastery practices the rituals and the various prescribed practices day after day, which is a kind of unite, kind of putting yourself within kind of dance, channel, so that whatever you do, you can be very apparent what you're doing and how you're violating precepts, you know, how you're violating yourself, how you're not being true to yourself or to others or to the law. You become very apparent. So practice is set up that way. either through Vinaya or through Zen practice or through some other way, how you're violating yourself, how you're violating others, harming them, and how you're violating the universal law.

[13:45]

So when we do that, we call it suffering. Suffering comes about through that kind of violation. There's other kinds of suffering. The suffering that we bring on ourselves is by that kind of violation what we're talking about. So, in Zen practice we put a lot of emphasis on Sangha, harmony and Sangha, because we don't have 250 rules, or 500 rules. And we don't depend on some sutra. One other way that Buddhists have developed for a practice is putting emphasis on Dharma.

[14:49]

We really don't put that much emphasis. Strictly speaking, our emphasis is not on Dharma. which would be to study, studying sutras and studying commentaries and studying philosophy. But those other two are included. Whatever we put emphasis on are those three. The other two are included, but they're not emphasized in the same way. So the way Buddhism developed is there are a lot of schools, a lot of ways of practice, and each one of those ways of school put emphasis on either Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha. And whichever emphasis they had, the other two were included. So in Nichiren school in Japan puts emphasis on Dharma. They study the Lotus Sutra. They don't say homage to Buddha, they say homage to the Lotus Sutra.

[15:52]

Zen is a homage to Buddha, and we pay attention to each person as Buddha. Buddha is our example, rather than the Lotus Sutra or some Dharma teaching. And we put a lot of emphasis on sangha, because how we interact with each other as individuals, together. And how we take care of our daily life is our emphasis. So, if we're not putting ourselves into the harmony of the Sangha practice, we can't really say that we're practicing. No matter how much you read, or study, or feel that you understand, Unless there's putting yourself into Dharma or the Sangha harmony, it's not real practice in the sense that we talk about practice, or in the sense that we practice.

[17:15]

If you hold back, if you put your toe in, that's something. It's a kind of toehold. to really practice and put yourself completely in. So, we say, in order to practice, in order to really understand what Buddhism or Zen is about, we have to have faith in the three treasures. So it brings up the subject of what is faith. Faith in Buddhism is not faith in something outside of yourself. It's not like saying, I believe in God. It's not like that. That's not faith. I believe in Buddha. It doesn't mean anything to say, I believe in Buddha. It doesn't mean anything.

[18:18]

So, faith is, in order to have faith, we have to have cooperation. We have to operate together with Buddha, together with Dharma, together with Sangha. When we actually turn the wheel, so to speak, and enter into Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, then there's no question of faith. Faith is not a question or something that you need to even think about. Because there's no separation between yourself and Buddha and Dharma and Sangha. When there's some separation, then you say, well, I have faith in it. So faith in Buddhism is a little different, because there's nothing outside of yourself that's going to save you.

[19:21]

And how we enter into Buddhism is how we enter into ourself. To enter into the triple treasure is to enter into ourself truly, which includes the immutable law of the universe and the Sangha, which includes everything. So as we isolate ourselves, the more we isolate ourselves, the less we understand. So sometimes it takes a long time for us to really trust ourselves enough to enter into it. I think of faith as music, the laws of music.

[20:39]

Music takes a person, and it takes understanding of music, and it takes harmony. And there are certain immutable laws of music. And you have to pay attention to what you're doing yourself. You have to pay attention to the laws of rhythm, harmony, and tonality, pitch. And you have to If you miss, it's all over. You can make mistakes. But you notice. It makes a difference. When you do everything right, it makes a difference.

[21:44]

When you do something wrong, that makes a difference. And in order to make music, to make it work, you have to pay attention to yourself. You have to pay attention to everyone help that you're involved with. And you have to pay attention to the law. Don't pay attention to the law. You think, well, I'm just going to go ahead and do this. Even though they're doing that, I'm going to do this. It doesn't work. Everything gets thrown off. And one of the most difficult things we have to You know, we don't like conformists. We're, as Americans, we're great non-conformists, great individualists. But in music, you can do a lot individually, but not unless you know the rules and know how to conform.

[22:58]

How to take the shape. Point one is take the shape. I talk about this a lot. Some people don't get it. Take the shape of the thing that you're involved with. So water takes the shape of whatever you put it into. This is a bowl of water. This is a glass of water. this is a stomach full of water, this is a leg full of water, an ocean full of water, of water, but water just conforms and becomes itself, and creates harmony with its surroundings, creates harmony with the life. bull for the land, or whatever.

[24:00]

There's a poem of Dovian's, when he was having a very hard time in the winter. I can't remember exactly the poem, but it's something like... The winter is so hard, you know, and I don't... I can't tell the true from the false. But this morning I looked at the mountain and see the snow on the mountain and I realized that the snow makes the mountain. So we want to express our individuality. Unless we know how to conform to universal love, whatever we do just turns out, we call it ego, and it turns out to be suffering for ourselves and for others.

[25:21]

So you have the 10 prohibitory, the 10 negative precepts. Don't kill, don't steal, don't have abuse in your sexual life, and so forth. And so this is a way of looking, you know, Negative precepts are a way of looking at our actions. It's interesting. Somebody said... When I gave people the various prohibitory precepts to talk about in a study period, someone said, well, you must have selected those very carefully.

[26:31]

to get selected each person to match each preset to talk about. But actually, I didn't. I could, no matter which one you get to talk about, you think, oh, this one was meant for me. Because I'm not so honest, he gave me this one. Because I get angry, he gave me this one. But you think that way. Because the precepts apply to all of us equally. Each precept applies to each one of us equally and reflects the mistakes and the things that cause us trouble. So, when Shakyamuni Buddha was saying that before we can understand, really understand the ten negative principles, we have to understand the three treasures.

[28:02]

We have to have some really good understanding of them. who is Buddha, who is Dharma, and who is Sangha. So, we put a lot of emphasis on Sangha. And, we call that Buddha's original way. We call him that, Buddha's original way. When Buddha was around, there was not so much need for dharma. There were no sutras. Sutras came long after Buddha passed away. Because there was no Buddha, they needed the sutras. And because when you start to... when practice starts to slide, you know, or when you miss something, then you start making up rules.

[29:11]

But there's no need for a lot of rules when things are turning right. Like Lao Tzu says, I can't remember exactly what he said either, but, you know, when everything is going according to the real Dharma, of the Dhamma, he calls it, There's no need for rules and regulations and everything is working in harmony. And as soon as something starts to slide, as soon as we start getting self-conscious, then the rules and regulations and prison, everything starts to break down. As things break down, we need more rules and regulations. We don't... So, this is... That's why we put emphasis on Zazen, rather than precepts.

[30:24]

Zazen is precepts. And precepts is Zazen. As long as we have... we really practice Zazen. If you want to practice 250 rules, or 500 rules, If you need that kind of practice, you know, it's there. But you should really practice that. And if you really have faith in Zazen, then you shouldn't just play at lip service, you know. In order for that kind of harmony and Dharma and Buddha to come out in Zazen, is you really have to practice Zazen. You can't just play with it. If you really sincerely practice zazen, there's not so much need for rules and regulations. Just enough to make things work. Just enough to keep our awareness.

[31:32]

So that's where we put our trust and our faith. bind us up with a lot of glue. So as long as everything is going that way, it's okay. We should know, you know, we should understand the eightfold path. We should understand the sixteen precepts. In fact, we should, the most basic thing is our own practice. understanding those precepts in the light of day. But we should know, we should study these

[32:44]

Even though we put emphasis on sangha and our activity in our daily lives, we should study Buddhism. We should understand how precepts develop and evolve. We shouldn't just be naive. And at some point, you know, you can't help being curious about all the lessons other people practice. Some people practice just by chanting the name of Buddha. That's a kind of faith. In Buddhism, especially Japanese Buddhism and Chinese, but especially in Japanese Buddhism, there's a way of looking at two sides.

[33:50]

One is called brother power and the other is called self power. Other power means to just put yourself in the hands of Buddha by chanting the name of Buddha. faith practice. And the other side is self-power. And that means just without putting, having faith in Buddha as a deity or something, to have faith in yourself. And those two extremes, one other power

[34:52]

has been associated with nenbutsu, or chanting the name of Buddha. And self-power, people associate with Zen. Self-reliance. But actually, those two extremes are two extremes. And we should avoid those two extremes. Faith, as I explained, is not something outside of yourself. It's not to have faith in something outside. And it's not just to rely on yourself. We say self-reliance. Self-reliance means don't rely on something false. You should rely on yourself. Each one of us should rely on ourselves. That means, what is yourself? It doesn't mean to isolate yourself.

[36:00]

When we can really relax, you know, if you let go, and really relax, you can rely on just about anything. And you can reject those things that are false reliances. and just rely on what's true. So in our practice, we rely on ourselves and we rely on each other. So there's a lot of trust in practice. If we don't have trust within our practice, we have paranoia. It means, I don't trust these people. So I'll stay by myself because I think That kind of attitude, you know, is not really trust. If you can really trust yourself, then you can trust others. And within the Sangha, you know, strictly speaking, the Sangha is the community which you trust and open up to.

[37:14]

And maybe something happens, you know, that is untrustworthy. Not everyone is trustworthy. And everyone has some place where they're not trustworthy. If you look at each one of us, we all have some place that's not trustworthy. But basically, You know, if I took all of... If every time you said, I'll do this, and you didn't do it, if I took every time you did that as a basis for trusting you, I wouldn't stand a chance. And neither would me. Sometimes I say, I'll do something, but I don't do it.

[38:22]

For one reason or another. But basically, we should trust each other. We should have that intention. Sometimes, you know, we should live out of the grocery book. So, you know, to have faith, we should have faith beyond what we see. You know, we have to be able to trust someone's basic nature beyond what we see and what we experience. Even if we double-crossed over and over again, We still have to be able to trust. I know that's difficult.

[39:26]

What about, you know, yourself? You have to be able to trust yourself even though you double-cross yourself all the time. You know? We talked about this piece yesterday. tell you the truth. And we cross ourselves up all the time. And when you cross yourself up, how do you feel about yourself? Well, you just keep giving yourself another chance. If you don't keep giving yourself another chance, you have to jump off the bridge. You can't leave yourself. You can leave this guy and that guy and the other guy, but you can't leave yourself. And you can't leave each other. You think that we can leave each other, but we can't. Even though you leave this sangha, you'll go someplace else and everybody will be just the same. So, you know, here we are, stuck with each other and with ourselves.

[40:46]

Sometimes I feel... I just want to give this up and go someplace else. Sometimes I feel that way. Sometimes I feel... It'd be so nice to just go someplace where everybody's really content and just practicing and I don't have to give up. You should get me a big shovel for Christmas. But even if I leave you this place, it will still be the same. It's kind of convenient. So anyway, it's like rough stones rubbing up against each other.

[42:10]

If we don't rub up against each other, it's okay as long as we're grinding away, you know. But when we get like this and start going in isolated ways, you know, it's like floating around in space, you know. We forget that, you think, well, you know, Maybe it would be better if I just got interested in something else. But we always have to keep coming back and facing that situation. In the water, we can keep coming back and facing that situation. the stronger our practice will be, and the more vitality we'll feel in our practice. If we don't see any vitality in our practice, it's because we're avoiding something.

[43:14]

So each one of us, you know, is a factor in this kind of harmony. And we should all play our part. It's like a play. We have a part. And we should all play our part. If we don't play our part, everybody gets discouraged. I don't hear it. I can't hear this one. We think that all this is going on apart from us, but it's not. we create what happens. And when we put ourselves in and then don't play our part, then everybody suffers. It's really true. Some way everybody is affected. It's better to withdraw, okay, and go someplace else. Then people don't have to think about you. You don't have to feel affected by what you do or don't do.

[44:30]

But if you put yourself in, then You should play your part. That way, you know how to encourage each other. Somebody said to me, it's so discouraging when people don't play their part. We make these decisions and agree to do things together. And then, somebody doesn't play their part. Very discouraging. Our place in the universe. And we can only do it by playing our part. Whatever we're involved in,

[45:32]

You should play a part up to the hills. Otherwise, you're not alive. You're a ghost. So, you know, people say, well, I don't know about practice, or should I practice, or shouldn't I? What I always say is, do what you want to do. I don't want you to practice. I want you to do what you want to do. What do you want to do? Find out what you want to do. Do it. But if you want to practice, then really practice. Don't make people miserable around you. I really happen to see you doing what you want to do. Everybody's happy when you're doing what you really want to do.

[46:35]

You're really happy. But don't bother other people. Don't pretend to do something. Because once you put yourself into that action, it affects other people's lives as well as your own. And something is expected of you. When you get a job, there's something that's expected of you. You think, well, I just have this job. I get up in the morning, I go to work, and then I try to get through it and I get paid. That's what we call having a job. But living our life through that job is something else. So, don't waste your time.

[47:38]

Find out what you really want to do and do it. Someone will say, well, I never could find out what I really wanted to do. I never had any real interest in life. People say to me, well, I never knew what I really wanted to do. If you hang back, If you don't involve yourself in what you're doing, then you never know what you want to do. Always looking for something that you never can find. Do you have one question? The great comfort of this practice is that you can answer the question, what's the meaning of my life?

[48:42]

Or you can say, particularly when you've got it established, when you've been doing it for a while, and you do indeed have been putting in or trying hard. So it's a great comfort to be able to just have that question answered. What's my life about? My life is practicing Zen. My life is being a student at Berkley Zen Center. But I've been noticing that the it's a big mistake to think that the matter is settled. That our problem for people who have put the foot in the door is that it gets, you can sort of lay back.

[49:49]

You say, well, I'm inside the door, so I'll make without even saying it very consciously, I'll make this as comfortable as I can make it. And then if you're really honest with yourself, you look around and you see people who are making a sincere effort at entering the door, and you compare yourself to them, or you compare yourself as, say, an older, what we call an older student, to them and realize that even though maybe it looks like you're several years down the line or that you've got it pretty well figured out, that you're nowhere near the sincerity of somebody who doesn't have it figured out.

[50:53]

My question is, I'm not trying to blame anybody, but how do we continue the quest of making our life meaningful beyond the point where it gets comfortable? And that applies to many people here. Well, you know, it's after you've entered the door and you do find practice more comfortable. Once you, you know, when you get used to doing something, you flow with it comfortably. And that's actually quite good. Once you know how to do something, you know, at first you struggle with the mechanics of how to do something and how to learn how to enter in.

[51:58]

And then at some point, you gain some proficiency and you become comfortable with what you're doing, which is okay. It's not so bad. But the problem is that we feel, once we're comfortable, then we settle down to that comfort. And that's the problem that some advanced person has. settling into some comfortable niche instead of continuing with the same spirit at the beginning. So it's a problem that we have. You can always tell when that's happening because it's not that the practice itself or isn't calling forth that kind of beginner's mind. It's not that the practice isn't doing that, it is.

[53:01]

And we can see through our complaints and through our kind of discomfort at the same time, and through our reasoning and our excuses that we build up a resistance. to continue. Once we get to a comfortable place, then we start thinking about all of the other things that we like to do. And then, that starts to become more dominant. It's a complicated question. It's not simple. Because, you know, in a monastic practice, it's fairly straightforward. But in a lay practice, Because our lives have so many elements and they're not the same for each person. It's a much more complex problem. What is practice after you get to a certain point?

[54:04]

For some person, just taking care of a family may be the extent of practice. It's very difficult to say something in a general way. We have to appreciate where every person is, one by one, person by person. And each person has to look at their own practice very carefully. And the main thing is our sincerity. You can look at somebody and you can say, well, they're not doing this or that. But from that other person's point of view, you have to look at them and say, If you put yourself in that other person's shoes and say, geez, this is really hard, very difficult. And they actually are practicing, even though it doesn't look like it to me. So in this kind of practice, to evaluate someone's practice is very hard.

[55:09]

And it puts a lot of, what we really have to put a lot of emphasis on is each person's own sincerity. You have to know yourself what you're doing. In our people thing of residence, we have little different expectations. Because people are residents, that means that they're here because they want to practice in a certain way. And so it's not so, it's easier. to evaluate someone's sincerity. But, you know, our practice is something that we have to evaluate every day. We can't just coast along. When we coast along without evaluating our practice every day,

[56:13]

Then we can say we're just kind of coasting, moving along. Renew your practice. Practice is being renewed every day. That's why the residents all have to sit in the morning. Renew their practice every day. Whether they like it or not. Whether they want to sit or don't want to sit. When the alarm goes off, you just get up and sit. That's called renewing your practice every day. And you can see what your existence is. You have a way of looking at yourself. The alarm clock is a mirror. It's not so hard to know that you're practicing in your own retina. And all of us can practice together. The thing about residence practice is it's very visible. to non-residents and somehow provides an example for non-residents.

[57:24]

So in a sense, the people who are residents live in a kind of hazy fishbowl, translucent fishbowl, not completely transparent. Always setting an example Whether we want to or not, it's there. There's one thing I wanted to say. It seems like when that feeling comes up, some feeling of, you know, why isn't this person doing this thing? And I know myself, I can get very judgmental, very harsh with somebody like that. It's not a big fault that I have. But I'm thinking a lot about, you know, getting inside them, feeling from their point of view something that happens.

[58:28]

Some way of doing things that a particular person might have that just always, as you say, pushes that button. And, you know, usually, They have a very good reason for what they do. From their point of view. From their point of view, they do. The problem is that when we're always looking at something from our own point of view, we can justify the world in whatever way we want to. And this is the problem. That's why in practice, you know, you give up your point of view and you look at our life through the eyes of practice. through the eyes, through Buddha's eyes, rather than through our own partial understanding. That's a very important point. Otherwise, everybody's got their reasons for doing what they do.

[59:29]

And this is what's so important about monastic practice, is that you give up everything. You give up all of your ideas about anything. It's like brainwashing. You stop doing things from your own point of view. And trust the practice. It's harder to do in lay practice. Much harder to do. Because everybody wants to hang on to their own point of view. This one, this one, and this one. Everybody's got some idea how to do it. So that's why, you know, a monastic practice is set up where you do this, and [...] you don't do something from your own point of view.

[60:41]

You just leave all of your opinions out. So that's what makes it much more difficult. So when someone comes up with something that's always unsatisfactory, it's usually because they're coming up with some opinion based on their idea that So, they always get a negative response.

[61:20]

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