Good morning. Well, I was thinking of talking about some views on the state of the union, the state of the disunion, but yesterday we had tea in the afternoon over here in the corner, and And when I got there a little late, someone said, oh, maybe you can answer this question. Someone, a new student, had said, what is the meaning of bowing? It's a legitimate question. And so I was put on the spot to answer that question, what is the meaning of bowing? So that's what we're going to talk about today. So I said something like, doesn't mean anything.

[01:06]

Can you hear me? I can't hear myself. Can you hear me now? That's a little better. It could be even a little better. Yeah. So I said, doesn't mean anything. And I thought that was a pretty good answer. Because it doesn't mean anything, it means everything. There are two fundamental practices that we have. One is sitting zazen, and the other is bowing, and they're both the same thing. Zazen, sitting Zazen and bowing are same thing. One is sitting still and the other is moving. Moving, of course, moving contains stillness and stillness contains moving.

[02:17]

They're just two different sides of the same activity. Suzuki Roshi talked about his teacher who was a kind of stubborn fellow, and he used to bow a lot because he was so stubborn, and he had a callus on his forehead from bowing to the floor. That's probably so. I didn't believe that. We use these zabatons. Anyway, so what I used to tell people when they would ask, what is bowing? And I would say, well actually I said, that's not really, there's a better question.

[03:21]

rather than what is the meaning of bowing, it's why do we bow? It's easier to talk about why do we bow. So I used to tell people when we bow, we're bowing to ourself, but that sounds egotistical. But if we understand the meaning of our self or our true self, we know that only when we let go of our ego do we find our true self in everything. Our true self, we say, the true self of the sage is the whole universe. So when we say, yes, we bow to ourself as the whole universe.

[04:24]

So this connects us to our true self. Bowing is an expression from our true self which connects us to our true self. Often the bow is superficial. Because we're supposed to bow, we bow. In this practice we bow, but bowing is not something mechanical. Bowing comes from our deepest self, and we bow a lot in this practice. Every time we come into Zen Dojo we're bowing all the time, because this is how we touch our inner being. This is how we don't, it's beyond thinking, it's beyond our feeling of attaining something. There's no thought in thinking.

[05:27]

When we bow toward the altar, it looks like we're bowing to an idol. There's this piece of wood on the altar that looks like our conception of Buddha, but it's simply a focal point. we all have that focal point. The reason we study sutras and the reason we study texts is because they're a focal point and they keep us, our mind, focused on the practice. It's not so much to learn stuff, but it's to keep our mind focused on the practice instead of focused on straying in various places, But it's really hard to stay focused on the practice. It's hard to stay focused on a practice where you're simply expressing enlightenment rather than trying to get something.

[06:35]

Bowing is an easy way to express enlightenment. You know, we look for enlightenment wonder what it is, and is he enlightened, is she enlightened, but actually a bow is an enlightened act. So we always have that access to enlightenment without realizing what it is. When you can let yourself go completely, abandon yourself in a bow, that's an enlightened act. Because that's what enlightenment is, is abandoning yourself and letting yourself freely flow with the universe, and let the universe tell you what to do. So in all kinds of circumstances in our practice, we bow.

[07:53]

In the monastic practice, every time we meet somebody walking or moving around, except in working circumstances, we always bow to each other. You don't have to say anything. It's just meeting. And There are various kinds of bowing, of course. This is gassho, when we put our hands together, and thumbs. Sometimes we bow like this. It's nice, but this is better because fingers and thumbs are all doing the same thing. In Soto Zen practice, there are described ways how you practice. You should know that, but I don't think we should be careful not to get caught by that.

[08:57]

Bowing should not come from the head, but from the heart. So, we put our palms together and bow, and when we meet somebody, We bow, and then we stop. And the stopping is where everything disappears. And we totally become one with the universe. When we can stop the workings of our discriminating mind, It's the same thing. Boom. And it's just for a moment, just a moment, a moment of complete clarity. That stopping is this pause at the bottom? Pause, yes.

[09:59]

At the very bottom, boom. It's a pause, just a slight pause, and that's where meeting actually takes place and there's no you and no other person. Just that moment. If it's too Sometimes it's ostentatious, you know, and sometimes it's superficial. So it expresses where we really are, expresses, you know, but that's okay. So when we sit Zazen, it's the same thing. We sit Zazen and we let go of the discriminatory mind. and just let everything flow, which is an enlightened act. So, one moment of sansin is one moment of enlightenment.

[11:04]

One moment of anger is one moment of where enlightenment disappears. So, you know, we bow to our eating utensils, we bow to our cushion, we bow to the pillar, we bow to cats and dogs. When I come home and I open the door, the first thing my dog does is bow. He just goes like this, and I think, oh, he's just stretching, you know. But he does it a lot, without stretching, and he bows to me. And I don't know where he picks this up. Sometimes I think, well, maybe he's the reincarnation of Suzuki Roshi.

[12:10]

Sometimes I see a frog. And the frog will be there during Zazen, outside the door, and I'll think, oh, that's Zuki Roshi. That's how superstition starts. But the dog does that, and it's really sweet. And then the cat comes along and doesn't do that, but goes like this, puts her head forward, and then we bump heads. And she does that on purpose, you know, this is her greeting, her bow, her way of connecting in that same way. We also have the handshake, but you know that's how we spread disease. I don't want to criticize the handshake, you know, I'm not taking the Asian side as against the Western side, even though secretly I do. I think it's much better to bow because your bowing is like this.

[13:16]

This is Buddha side and this is karmic side. Buddha side is Buddha, Bodhisattva, Pracheka Buddha, Arhat and Deva. Deva is like heaven, and this side is like, what is this side? Oh, the six worlds, hell realm, human, well, human realm, sort of, animal realm, fighting demon realm, and I did say hell, the first one, yeah.

[14:20]

So, those are the karmic, that's the karmic side and this is the Buddha side. unity, this is diversity or disunity, this is delusion, this is enlightenment. So what we do when we bow is bring all that together. That's an enlightened act. It's not falling into one side or the other, but bringing both together in unity. and then bowing. So this is difficult. We can do it as a bow because our minds are so dualistic. And duality is how things operate in the world. We can't deny duality.

[15:23]

but it's hard to find the unity between the two sides of anything, unless we know how to let go and let the ocean, you know, it's like there's one ocean, but it's divided by our dualistic mind. And when our dualistic mind is no longer dividing the ocean, the ocean comes together. So both sides are important. It's important because we live in the realm of duality to understand how to make it work instead of make it cause suffering. So this is the side of duality, this is the side of oneness, and we have to bring them together. That's Bodhisattva's work, and you can always do that by bowing and by sitting Zazen.

[16:34]

Otherwise it's almost impossible. So we have that ability, that's the way out or the way in. because the world's always divided. It will never be peaceful. How do you find the peacefulness within the division? So, you know, we want peace and we want harmony so forth, but that will never happen in a dualistic world, because what this person wants, that person loathes, and what this person wants, that person loathes. That's a life.

[17:38]

And one thing brings up the other. Peace brings up war. War brings up peace. And when you look at the history, when was there never war? When was there never peace? They always coexist in some way, and each one is trying to conquer the other. So Buddhism is kind of difficult. As Suzuki Roshi used to say, the reason why practice is difficult is not because of the pain in your legs or your disconcerting thoughts, it's because we always fall into the realm of duality. It's really hard to practice pure practice, which is to bring the two sides the duality together.

[18:45]

You get slaughtered in trying, but this is what Thich Nhat Hanh used to do. He was the guy in the middle, trying to bring the two sides together, and they tossed him out. He was lucky to escape with his life in Vietnam. So sometimes, you know, we bow a lot during our mealtime, when we're sitting in town here and eating meals in a very formal way, and the servers are bowing to the recipients, who are the eaters. and the recipient, the eaters are bowing to the service, but sometimes we're in such a hurry that we forget what we're doing, and sometimes we forget to bow, or we bow not together, not with each other, but because I'm supposed to bow, I bow.

[19:59]

Bow, but we're not bowing, we're bowing at each other, but not to each other. It's like talking, you know, sometimes we talk at somebody instead of talking to them. So if we're really aware, bowing slows us down. It puts us into the present. It's really hard to be in the present because we're always thinking. We think, well, now I'm thinking in the present, right? It's sort of true, but to actually be present, in the moment is to be present with no thinking, no discursiveness, to just be. So there's two things, being and doing.

[21:03]

Those are two sides, being and doing. Enlightened activity is being and doing at the same time. So you might ask somebody, what are you doing? We never say, how are you being? Well, we do say that, how are you, means how are you being, in a sense, but not in the same sense. How are you being? The answer should be, But we always say, how are you doing? Because we're always doing, we're going someplace. Doing means doing something and going someplace and interacting and so forth, right? But at the same time, there's pure existence.

[22:08]

which is hard to pay attention to. Hard to pay attention to pure existence. Pure existence means, is like eternal life, so to speak. Pure existence is eternal life. It means that it's always this moment. And I've talked about this before. In clock time, which we invent based on the movements of the planets, of course, we divide time into one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, and so forth. That's divided time, discriminated time. And then there's just now, which is not divided into moments.

[23:16]

It's the underlying time of now, which is always the same. So when we say being present, being present in that sense means being present in undivided time. just now. We don't know what just now is necessarily, because each moment, because we think of undivided time as a moment, but that's divided time, discriminated time. We discriminate one moment from the next, now, now, now, which is how we do it. but actually non-discriminated time is just the time of now, and we can always be there. But we think that, oh, the moments change, right? So we think of time and the moments as discriminated time.

[24:22]

This moment, the next moment, and the next moment, and we speak that way, and that's okay. That's good, we have to, but behind that or within that is nondiscriminated time, which is always the time of now, which is more like eternal time, which isn't even time. So when we bow, to each other and make that pause at the bottom of the vow, that's eternal time. And then we fall back into discriminating time. Is that now being? Being, yeah. Instead of... Being, yeah. Fundamental being. Eternity is being.

[25:25]

Well, I don't know what it is, but... I'm trying not to say what it is, because then that's not it. But I'm pointing at something. It's even dangerous to talk about it. because then we want to grasp that, right? But it's always there. It's not something, it's just that we give it pause in order to experience it, but it's the most fundamental thing. Everything else we call delusional because we don't understand that within all of our delusional activity is the fundamental thing. And we don't recognize the fundamental thing unless we stop.

[26:27]

Because we're always going, da, [...] da. Life goes, da, da, da. It's always moving, right? It never stops, except that underneath all this movement is stop. So because everything is dualistic, Stop includes go, and go includes stop. Everything has to include its opposite. When you realize the reconciliation of opposites, then you experience that, but if you don't, then you don't experience it. And that's why it's called the delusional world, because we're always falling into one side or the other. So there's something when Confucius called it the unwobbling pivot. The unwobbling pivot is like that post.

[27:35]

It's just the pose is just there, and it doesn't move, doesn't go from side to side or move, right? So the unwavering pivot is where everything comes to a standstill, and there's nothing, no movement, no life, apparently. But as soon as it moves, this is called concentricity, it's concentric. Meaning it's totally centered. And then when it moves, we have eccentricity. And then things start to move. As soon as it bends over, as soon as that pivot bends, then we have eccentricity. And so we live in an eccentric world. And when someone's eccentricity is extreme, we say, oh, that person is eccentric.

[28:43]

That person is an eccentric, right? But we're all eccentric. That's the exaggerated expression, right? So we live in an eccentric world, and that's what makes things go around and work, and so we invent our lives. you know, according to how eccentric we want to be. And we're forced into various eccentricities because of our karma that we're always creating. So that's this side. And the unwobbling pivot is this side. And both are necessary. But we have to understand how they work. And when we want too much for ourself, we say we're egotistical. And that's delusional because egocentric is ignorance, rises through ignorance because we don't understand how we're connected with everything and that we would be much happier if we shared our lives instead of trying to accumulate for ourselves.

[29:58]

So, if we know how to bow, if that's in our body, we don't need to do this all the time, because our being is always bowing. We're just always doing that, whatever we do. Whether we're sweeping the floor or washing the dishes or making food answering the telephone or talking to each other, we're always in that mode of bowing. It's not something special, no longer something special. But I'm also, as long as we're not trying to get something, This is called freely giving, dana.

[31:07]

Dana is the first of the six wisdoms, Prajnaparamita wisdoms, is dana. Dana means how you let go. We say giving, but it includes just letting go so that whatever you do, you don't do for some personal gain. If we don't do for some personal gain, everything comes to us, unasked. But it's scary. It's scary to allow ourself to just depend on the universe's benevolence. It also brings us things that we have to work with, and we can take that in the same way and face it and work with it. Things that we have to work with. It brings us all the things we need, food and support, but it also brings us stuff that we have to work with.

[32:09]

Yes, it also brings us our problems. Because the world's problems are our problems. Even though, you know, we don't like it. We have to take care of things that we don't like. Are you saying that lay Buddhists should not save for retirement? We should depend on Gana? No, you should save for retirement. Yes, lay Buddhists should save for retirement. Strictly speaking, a home leaver monk does not depend on it, has no money, has only three robes and a bowl, ideally, and eats one meal a day, which you solicit in the morning before lunch.

[33:17]

And they are giving the lay Buddhists an opportunity to practice Dhamma. Yes, right. And so the stereotype is, the lay Buddhist supports the monk, yes, and that's how they cooperate. Gives the lay Buddhist an opportunity for generosity, and so giving and receiving are both necessary. Some people say, I mean, you know, there's a saying, giving is better than receiving, No, they're just saying giving is better than receiving, but actually receiving is just as important as giving, because if you give and there's not much you receive, it doesn't work. So yes, but the monks in Japan, when you do takahatsu, which is begging, they go around and chant in front of the stores and knock on people's doors and stuff, and they chant for them, but they don't speak.

[34:29]

no communication that way. The communication is all in giving and receiving, and it's anonymous. The hat's down below the eyes, so that, you know, it's not like personal. Yeah. Somebody. Oh, Charlie. Good morning. I was reading the other day about a murder mystery, but in the next to the last chapter, is present in all human beings is waiting, waiting for this, waiting for that. Godot. Waiting for Godot. Or Godot's brother-in-law. That's interesting. Is that what you wanted to say? Yeah, that's a very interesting point. Waiting for something. And when you're doing that, patience is part of that, right?

[35:39]

Patience often means waiting for something. But for me, patience means just being where you are without waiting for something. It's like, what's next? It's like, what's now rather than what's next, although what's next is also important. Yeah, I just wanted to share a little bit about bowing because it means a lot to me. And not just because the animals in my household, including the canary. But I came at it in a different way than some people here. As you know, I came through the door of stress reduction in practice. And so I was sitting for a few years without any forms. I was just sitting. at a certain point after I'd sit for 40 minutes, I would just feel such gratitude and I didn't know what to do about it.

[36:46]

And so I went to my teacher at the time and I said, what do I do? How do I express that? And that's when I went to that. Yes. And you know, when we come to the Zenda, we bow to the cushion and then we bow away. And when we bow to the cushion, we're bowing to all the ancestors that came before us, who gave us the practice. So that's gratitude. And then we bow out toward the whole universe as ourself. No, we die and then come back. That's called rebirth. Yes, you just totally let go of everything.

[37:48]

You just die. And then strangely enough, you come back to life. You go forward to life. You never come back to anything. in a very absolute sense, and I feel conflicted sometimes about, I guess I feel irresponsible to squander my resources by trying to give to everybody that I encounter. Can you speak on the balance between being a giver in your immediate surroundings and being a giver to the world? looking at the nature of your resources, right? So, giving a story of Buddha, when one of the ancient Buddhas of the past came, just a story, right?

[39:00]

One of the ancient Buddhas was going by, It was a rainy day in the puddles, right? And so this person laid down their hair over the puddles so that the Buddha would have something to walk on, right? And so that was a great gift. He didn't have anything, right? But he just put down his hair, right? Or someone gave a seed, you know? It's not a matter of how much. one recipient, and that's giving to all recipients. So, we have this problem of one and many. We take care of one thing thoroughly, we're taking care of a lot. So, otherwise, we're just always feeling guilty. I receive so many requests for money.

[40:05]

every single day. And so, what I've decided to do instead of feeling guilty, which I still do, is my wife does all that. No, that's our agreement, because we both get the same requests. I'm giving to them, and then I get the request and I give it, so it's double indemnity or something like that. So we decided that she would do all that, and so I could just be free to receive the information without having to pay for it. It's an interesting practice of Ghana for me. A lot of the times I've had no money. yet I recognize that that person's in need and I'm greeting them eye to eye.

[41:08]

And so my practice has been to hope for them. Yes. And to not say to them, you don't deserve, or I can't give, or any of those things with my, when I'm able to do that, I mean, you know, my highest self. So how do you think of that? Yes. Sometimes, like if I walked on Shattuck Avenue, or, yeah, and, you know, I get a lot of people handing the can to me, and I'll give it to one or two people maybe, something, but then I'll bow to the others. I'll bow by just smiling or saying hi, and they appreciate that. They appreciate being recognized. That's really important, just being recognized, because they feel like they're the lowest worms in the society by having to stand out there and beg. And so just to say hello or give them a nod or smile, they really appreciate it.

[42:12]

I'm being recognized even though I'm not being supported. But that is a kind of support, it's a moral support. Yes? It used to worry me some. Now that I don't have a car and I'm walking around, I meet a lot more. You're not so protected from the world. And I think, does this person deserve it? And they're just going to go get a drink and stuff. But I remember now, Walt Whitman said, he said, who should you give to? Give to who asked for it. I don't think there are any millionaires sitting around on the corner asking for money, so I'll just keep my dollar in my pocket and the first person who asks me, I'll give it to them. Yes, no discrimination. Also, it's helpful to think, well this might be some great Bodhisattva disguised as a beggar, and probably is.

[43:14]

because you're not gaining mind and not thinking. Yeah, that's another story. There's one more. Just Judy's the last one. I was wondering, in the Bodhisattva ceremony, How do you what? Bow to whom or what I can't see. Yeah, that's what we're always bowing to. That's the only thing we're bowing to.

[44:18]

You may think that you believe in what you see, but actually we're just bowing blindly, indiscriminately, basically, totally indiscriminately. When we bow to one person, we're bowing to the whole universe. we say the Bodhisattva's halo is the whole universe. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[44:56]

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