Sashin in San Francisco. And it strikes me how the difference between what I can talk about in Sashin, or especially at Dasara, and especially the last few days of Sashin, and also sometimes in doksan, if a student is... The image I have is like an ocean wave reaching for something. There are aspects of practice, or essence of our practice, normally I can't talk about. And this kind of thing worries me, to some extent, here at GreenGelb, because it's interesting, you know, it's the problem, not just of GreenGelb,

[01:22]

lay life in general, how do you practice as a layman? A layman, not our Zen center kind of layman, which is really a monk, almost a monk, but a layman leading a usual work of life. It's interesting, here we're turning the soil. But the soil of our practice, we don't turn so well here at Green Gulch. Again, I think as individuals, this kind of life at Green Gulch is quite good and maturing life. But we're always making substantial decisions about what to do here, and in our life we begin to seek substantial solutions to our problems. Again, Keiichu's cart, which I talked about last Sunday, and yesterday too, Getan Roshi

[02:53]

Kei Chu, famous wheelwright of ancient China. Kei Chu made a great cart with each wheel having a hundred spokes. And taking away, Getan said, taking away front and back and spokes and hubs, what will it be? what will it be? This what will it be is the soil, maybe, of our practice. And if we're not turning that soil, as Uman's poem says, when the vividly working wheel is turning, even the expert's hand is lost four directions

[03:57]

above and below, north, south, east, west. Without this turning the soil of our practice, the many instructions, many seed instructions, ways in which inanimate objects speak the Dharma won't fall, we won't hear them. Anyway, it's a pretty big problem. How can the many people who come to lectures do? who don't live at Twingo and don't have the reinforcement of Sesshin or Tassara to practice. How can Zen practice be anything more than a therapy? Something that adjusts their

[05:22]

them to their lives or just their suffering, but doesn't remove the root of our suffering. I don't think Buddhism has ever been very successful at answering this question. Most people, unless they can devote themselves fully for many years to the practice, can't, once they're back in, enmeshed in ordinary life, they lose their rightness. Very few people can enmesh themselves in non-discursive mind and still lead an ordinary life. The tendency of ourselves to be fooled by the cart is so great. I think the simplest advice is

[06:55]

concentration and morality. By morality I mean the ability to do what you want to do and have the consequences that you want to follow from what you do. So in the short run and the long run what you do makes sense. and because you respect others, their criticism of you is very important to you. It says in the Sutra, all moral states of mind tend toward concentration. All concentration tends toward morality. So it means that for a person in ordinary activity, first you have to do one thing at a time and with as much as possible utter concentration, completely concentrated on one thing at a time. Not so important what it is, just what you're doing right now, you start.

[08:26]

being as concentrated as you can on one thing at a time. And second, you are quite careful to understand as well as possible the repercussions of your actions. You can ask, would Suzuki Roshi do this, or would I want someone else to do this? If you do those two things, this kind of consideration in your activity and concentration in your activity, I think practice may be more successful in ordinary activity than at Tassajara. But it's pretty difficult to do that. Yesterday I talked about stability of mind and I'd like to... Most of you weren't in San Francisco yesterday and most of the people in San Francisco aren't here now, so I'll repeat some of what I said. I don't think any of you

[09:51]

actually ever have almost a really stable mind. Now you may in Sashin sometimes get quite a lot of mental stability. And to give you a feeling for, I don't know how to give you a feeling for what I mean by a stable mind, but it's a mind which you experience as stopped or moving at the same speed you are, like two trains, you know, I say. If two trains are moving exactly along, you know, the one train beside you looks stopped. It goes a little faster. you feel like you're going backwards, that kind of feeling. Still, this presupposes an observer. When the trains are completely equal, there's no observer. And our mind is quite comfortable, like you pasted the moon on the sky. The objects of your perception

[11:22]

are so stable and clearly the stuff of your mind that there's no longer any threat from or fear of inside or outside. But this kind of stable mind means you can't live in a way in which you feel compromised. Most mental illness and disequilibrium – what we call mental illness – I think, if you excuse me for being so strict, is moral illness. People live in a way in which they feel compromised, and you think you can get away with it, but you can't. You have to get drunk once a week, or stay a little bit drunk as you get middle-aged,

[12:25]

because you can't deal with the way you live, or you have to take sleeping pills at night, or it all collapses on you occasionally. Helps if you're tough or strong, you know, resilient. Helps you face your compromises. But the compromises are Real problem, not how strong you are. Our mind typically is quite unstable. It's always moving, something appears in your consciousness and it goes away. And it's changed and affected by your attitudes, your desire for it, your fear of it, your confusion about it. And so everything is turning and you can't quite know. But at the same time, one of our problems is we

[13:50]

We respect or fear our mind too much. It's rather a very interesting problem. You know, your hands are quite intelligent, maybe more intelligent than your mind, but you don't have any problem with the idea that you participate in the activity of your hands. You can decide when to use your hands and when not to use your hands. But you have some deep reluctance about participating in when you use your mind or when you don't use your mind. We have some idea that our mind is sacred and we shouldn't control it. We should let it just do what it wants to do. This is our basic Christian idea, I think, because fundamentally it means you believe in God. that you can't give up somewhere an observer, even if you say, natural, it's natural, that's believing in God. Do you understand? For Buddhism there's no natural, there's only karma. There's karma and oneness, I could say, karma and oneness. Oneness will free you from karma.

[15:17]

But when there isn't oneness, your karma is what directs you, not natural. You know, the example I've given often is in Sanskrit, there's supposedly no word for natural. Every gesture is ritual. Where does the mudra begin and the natural leave off? This is a mudra. and that a mudra, and that a mudra. What posture could you take which is not a mudra, you know? The only problem is if you're conscious that everything you do communicates and you manipulate it, you're like a con man. Some Western people say, oh, if you're conscious you're a con man. Because you're always controlling how people understand you. But that's not what I mean. Just when you do something, your hand does it. You don't tell your hand to do it, but you know your hand is communicating. Your hand is full of your karma. Your mind is full of your karma.

[16:41]

So we don't want to give up the feeling that there's an observer somewhere taking care of us, whether it's natural, we turn ourselves over to doing things naturally, or to God, or to someone who's going to take responsibility for us. Some observer. But in Zen, as we practice and we begin to illuminate our observer, how do we figure out what to do? Now, bodhicitta. Bodhicitta. Citta means something very simply like frames of mind, one momentary set after another.

[17:47]

kinds of cheetah. But bodhicitta means enlightened or awakened frames of mind, one after another. Now the idea here is that if your frames of mind are enlightened, are awakened, like a movie, you know, the frames will take you somewhere you can't go otherwise. Your life will lead by itself to Buddha. So another meaning of bodhicitta is your intention to practice or your vow to practice, to exchange yourself with others, to become a conduit. So bodhicitta is a conduit from the Buddha on top of your head. So this energy, we can sometimes call it energy, some warm feeling, comes from our teacher and is passed. How do we get, how are we open to this? First you have to find out, what is your intention? Let's forget about Buddhism, but what is your intention?

[19:27]

What deeply do you intend? If you could quit being swayed by greed, hate and delusion, sheer of things and belief in things helping you, if you could get free of that, what would you like to do? What is your intention? Buddhism says, if you know your intention completely, it means you want to be enlightened. Now you may find out that your intention is different, but I doubt it. So, now you can try to find out what your intention is. Then, the vow means you just don't decide once, I will do this, but on each frame of mind you re-decide, you re-manifest your intention, so a great deal of the Study of the vow means how you hold the vow, how you sustain the vow. It's not like a New Year's resolution, you know. Every moment is your new moment for this resolution. So your intention becomes the frame of mind. There is no intention which has higher priority than this deep intention.

[20:54]

And you just add this to you, each moment. At first you may do it by some mantra, you know, or just reminding yourself. In Zen we usually remind ourselves by how we do things, our concentration on each moment. Otherwise these frames of mind are pushed around by your greed, hate and delusion, or your conceptual thinking. So we start out in zazen by, we say, just observe what happens. You're sitting zazen and

[21:59]

something comes up and goes, something comes up and goes. And you are rather detached, you know, in the sense that if you're watching someone eat and you're not eating yourself, you have some detachment from the eating. Or Dr. Gunther uses an example. The difference between watching a traffic light when you're sitting in a car at an intersection and watching a traffic light out of a window of a house or a ship. So with that kind of detachment you let things come and go. And you get the ability to just sit. Your first therapy is yourself. and you just sit. But if so, how are you going to know what to do? If something comes up and you're detached from it, this eye of wisdom, ultimately the eye of the formless world, you won't know what to do. So Buddhism also says, the eye of Dharma, which means the affectionate, loving eye

[23:28]

Avalokiteshvara with his many arms able to do anything. So how are you going to follow what happens? How do you decide what to do? This is a very esoteric point, actually. Because if you give up an observer, if you give up natural or God Then you have to trust your mind, you have to trust your feelings, and you have to trust your thoughts, because who is going to correct them? Who's going to say, this one is right and this one is wrong? Early in practice you can have rules. This hurts people, I want to do it. This doesn't hurt people. But that's rather a mechanical and rigid way. It's necessary to do it that way. Eventually, you just have to let go and enter the stream of cheetah. But is your cheetah pure, purified, or mixed up? If it's mixed up, you end up with superstitious states of mind, as happens to many religious people. Actually, maybe this kind of superstition is more advanced than rigid thinking.

[24:56]

There's some accuracy and subtlety in superstition. So you trust, you know, the many congruities you see, astrological signs, etc. But Buddhism at the same time says, no belief in signs. So if there's no belief in signs, how do you What are you going to believe? You're completely in the dark. There's no one or aspect of yourself to turn to for direction. This is pretty frightening. Terrifying, actually, when you get out on a limb of yourself. And you know there's no one to help you. You have no alternative but to trust yourself. But you're so compromised you don't know what you'll do. One of the first things that's helpful is to, as I said yesterday, to give up trying to direct your life in conceptual frames. And one example I gave is the tea ceremony, which some of you are studying here.

[26:38]

If you try to do something, to give you an example, the difference between trying to do something conceptually and non-conceptually. If you do it conceptually, your mind wants to control the event and be able to comprehend it. And some people are very smart, one of the intelligence tests. is to take a piece of paper and you fold it five or ten times, over and over, and then you hold it up to a five-year-old or six-year-old kid and you say, how many times is this folded? Some kids are completely bewildered, two or three, but some people can actually look at it and say, eight times, and be right. And it means they're quite smart at letting their mind follow the permutations. But if I fold it completely haphazardly, no mind can follow it. The intelligence then is in the paper, not in your mind. So for our mind to follow something, usually you have to have two hands to do it. For instance, if you want to fold a cloth, so it's conceptual, you have to bring the two corners together, and the other two corners, etc. For instance, in tea ceremony, which

[27:59]

leads you into the forms of it, beyond what your mind can follow. You use the intelligence of the cloth, you know, you pick up the tea cloth like this, and you go like this, and you do... I can't do it with my... okay, so... You just... like this, but your mind can't follow what happens then. one hand clapping, you know, maybe, one hand with the cloth participating. So then you do that and that and you end up with it on your hands, but you can't figure out, you couldn't explain to someone, using two hands, how to do that, you know. or like a garden, if you take a typical Western garden. You can look at it, you can see the geometry of it, from one point of view, usually, not even two points of view. But Zen gardens, Japanese gardens which have been influenced by Zen, always are organized from many points of view.

[29:23]

You know, as if you do zazen, your shoulder does zazen. Not you doing zazen, making your shoulder do zazen. Of its own, your shoulder does zazen. Of its own, your stomach does zazen. Of its own, your breathing does zazen. In this way, the garden, of its own, the rock organizes the garden. Of its own, the bush organizes the garden. Now, if you are doing this yourself, it means that you decide what to do in a small area, and you move to the next area, maybe a month later, not even close in succession, and you decide what to do in that area, and each area. So as a result, when you step back from the garden, many aspects of the garden you can't see, it's hidden behind something else. There's no way you can conceptualize the garden. You can't hold the shape of the garden, or even a Japanese house, you can't hold it – by looking at it you can't see what it is. You can only see what it is by walking through it. But we are so fearful that often we try to make our life something that we can conceive of, and when it gets beyond our conception we feel quite afraid. And it – many things, the way we do things

[30:57]

We don't trust the intelligence of the paper and the pencil, of the people we're with, of the situation. We're always trying to control it in some way. So one of the first things that's helpful is to give up trying to control our mind or to exist in some conceptual way. Our mind is an attribute of our activity. Conceptualization is an attribute of our activity, but not the former, you know, like a rerun. We're always doing reruns in our mind of our life. And your mind, your life should be beyond your mind, small mind, beyond your conception. So at this point I get origins, the way I'm using it now, X means out, out of, and STA means stand, the place you stand, or center, or still point. And it has a subtler meaning, which I mentioned, which is very interesting. A third person or a third point,

[32:28]

because two points are always relative to each other, but a third point will determine. So it means an observer. So ecstasy means out of observation, action. We use the dictionary, we'll say it's something like beyond rational thinking. So if we want to be strict about Buddhist practice, Suzuki Roshi says in the Sandokai lectures, when we are talking about people's nature, we should be very generous. Everyone has Buddha nature. This is Buddha, you are Buddha, everything is Buddha. But when we're talking about when you're going to understand Buddhism.

[33:30]

when we should be very strict. This is not Buddha, you are not Buddha, that's wrong. So if I'm going to be strict, I must say that this ability to free yourself from an observer to trust your mind and body completely. You must have a purified consciousness, no longer pushed around by greed, hate and delusion, and you must learn to give yourself over to the ecstatic warmness of your thinking. you begin to follow, the path begins to be some kind of warmth, not something conceptual or cold or rigid, something soft and round.

[34:57]

you'll feel it sometimes in sashi on your thinking, some blissful feeling or melting feeling that you can almost give yourself up to. If you can, that's bodhichitta. That's literally what is meant by bodhichitta. And then if your intention and your vow and some warmth throughout your and awakened physical and mental activity, which is a conduit for others. But how such an esoteric idea, how to exist in this way without belief or dogma or rules just immersed in your activity, non-discriminative, non-discursive, non-discriminative activity and mind, without any idea of spiritual or religious. How to be so free in your ordinary circumstances?

[36:34]

is pretty difficult, well-nigh impossible. But you can do it if you deepen your intention, and that intention is your highest priority. And you try to do each thing with concentration and with the consideration of the effects of your actions. then you don't need to force yourself into forgetfulness by drugs or exaggerated tones of mind. By every measure, it's the better choice. You have to have patience. It doesn't happen immediately. but certainly you enjoy your obscure life much more.

[37:49]

So what your state of mind is, what your state of activity is, and how it flows or goes is our way of practice. if you want to.

[39:39]

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