For those of you who stay here a long time, and even though you can't stay here for so long a time in relationship to your whole life, those of you who do stay here for quite a while, This will always seem like home to you. Not so much because of the place, but because it will be the only opportunity in your life to practice Zazen this much, probably. And we find our home, some kind of satisfaction. And it's interesting how satisfaction and resistance are intertwined.

[01:18]

And if many years from now you hear the sound of the Han, or you come to visit and hear the bell, you know, it will be incredibly penetrating. Suzuki Roshi found the same thing true when he went to Ehechi to visit. And it will be the only time, probably, you'll have this much opportunity to find out what other people are like, and let other people find out what you are like. And there's some secret here, because if you can't let other people find out what you are like,

[02:52]

you can't really find out what you're like for yourself. That for much of our unconscious activity, other people are the first to know it. In fact, I think many of us live in some dread that someone's going to tell us what we're really like, you know, take us aside. That's what the score is. what we've noticed. But you have to overcome that fear, because they're the first to know. If they can know, and if you can let them know, really it's not of them, it's just you, in another form. If you're willing to let the various you's know all about you, then you can begin to know yourself even more deeply. So there isn't much difference between how you know yourself and how others know you. What we want to get at

[04:24]

our unconscious activity. If the practice of Buddhism is to be awake, or Buddha means the awakened one, then you want to awaken within your unconscious activity. The poet or artist goes off by himself, maybe, and comes to some inner resolution or realization and can write it down. and may give it to someone. If it's the kind of poem I'm talking about, and not the more story-like poem which you read and enjoy while you're reading and then it's gone, but the kind of poem which works in you at other moments in your life and doesn't seem to pertain even

[05:56]

the rhythm or the words or the grouping of the words comes back. A music composer may do that and a performer may then perform it. The performer doesn't have the opportunity to go off by himself. He has to do it right then, with people. But usually he doesn't have to create what he's going to do right then. But in Buddhism, In Zen practice, while we don't criticize making a poem or a pot or painting and offering it, in Zen our emphasis is on being able to do that at this moment with everyone.

[07:21]

And so, also, there's no emphasis on saving or retaining it, because it is retained in its own way, in its own forms. So, in... monastic practice like this, what may seem strange sometimes, without so much point, are ceremonies, are a way of bringing this kind of concentrated unconscious activity to a point where we're all doing something together in a concentrated way, we all decide to do something. Not because we want to at this moment. It's not a matter of we do it when we feel like it. We couldn't all exactly feel like it at the same moment. But more in the realm that whatever you do is what you feel like doing. It happens that it seems to be just what you wanted to do. Anyway, we practice with that kind of

[08:52]

attitude. And so, even you could say this whole practice period is a ceremony, with a beginning and end, and various ways in which we do things together and apart, or somewhat apart. Whether you write poems or make some object to give that kind of satisfaction to people, or not, you still sleep every night. And sleeping is another realm of unconscious activity, which if we interfere with it too much, there's some disturbance. So here we don't sleep so much, and you have to find out how to cope with that disturbance, and eventually how your

[10:23]

sleeping becomes more awake. But there's another kind of unconscious activity which is like sleeping. And sometimes it actually becomes sleeping. We find we want to sleep much more than is necessary. But often it's not It doesn't actually overcome us as sleep, but as some kind of behavior which you, in each of you, it probably takes some different form. It may be the need to just go fiddle somewhere for a while with something, or it may be combing your hair half an hour for no reason. Or it may be involving yourself in something that you really do have to do, and yet somehow the doing of it becomes a ritual which replaces other things, other more natural relationships to people.

[11:46]

Or for many of us who try to practice here at Tassajara, it becomes an intensification of some tendency we have, like greed or something. Here it's often involved with food. You just want to eat. Anyway, that's a kind of psychological regrouping. I don't know what you'd call it, but something. Something you need to tune out for a while and allow some process to occur, which is rather like sleeping. And again, everyone else usually knows more about that than ourselves and we do. So, again, this kind of life is meant to awaken us within that kind of unconscious activity which goes on when nominally we're conscious. And what you're doing may be quite reasonable, what everyone wants you to do, sort of some job. But actually, you can tell something is funny

[13:28]

Because if you interfere with the person's need to do that, they attack you. At that level, tit for tat, an eye for an eye is very heavy. It's like depriving someone of sleep, if you deprive someone of that kind of conscious yet unconscious activity. And so there's no way, almost, to get at this kind of habitual protective behavior in ourselves, except with this kind of opportunity to find out what we're like and what other people are like, and to accept and absorb this, them, us.

[14:32]

What I'm talking about partly is, again, is the six paramitas, which I think last time I was down here I spoke about the six paramitas, particularly conduct. The six paramitas are giving, conduct, patience, energy, meditation, or jnana, samadhi, and wisdom. And I'm speaking about the relationship between conduct and samadhi. And I think I gave you the example of the carpenter who Each step of his making the end of the window frame or the joint for some other part of the house, completed each step as he went, so that you couldn't say he was calm. He was calm because his conduct was calm.

[16:08]

which you can't separate. It would take probably great effort for him to keep from being distracted if he was somehow forced to hurry the steps. And by doing each step completely, he worked amazingly fast, as I said, finishing and then beveling and then planing. They don't sand, so they plane. It's just like every time you finish some part of a piece of wood we are making that's going to disappear into another piece of wood and never be seen again, you sanded all the surfaces. We think it was a waste of time. When they're making something quite perfectly, they planed. They beveled the corners and then planed it and cut it away again. of conduct, which is a kind of purification, which I think that the idea of purification is a hard one for us, so I don't expect you to have a feeling for it for some time.

[17:42]

But it's a process that occurs when you do zazen, or when you're conscious of what's happening to you, which doesn't fall into the realm of repression or suppression or expression. That being able to let more and more things go, and when you're able to let something go, Let something not be expressed. Let something not occur. The chances of it occurring again occur less. It's a kind of purification. So conduct means to be free from this or that. free from doing things out of desire or greed or some personal desire, wish. And conduct gives you something to, some way to be patient. It's the second, third paramita.

[19:25]

And patience is how we prepare our mind, actually free from this or that. Patience falls into three, named three kinds of patience. One is forbearance or forgiving, much like giving the first paramita. But you forgive what other people do, as if it were you doing it, or as if it was your mother or yourself in another incarnation. And as if you deserved it, everything that happened, you know, if you say, oh, this is terrible, it shouldn't have happened, it shouldn't exist. That may be so, but you also should feel, this is occurring because I want it to occur. I deserve And it's interesting how, in the beginning, you practice, this is all right, it's what I deserve, is, from Buddha's point of view, or from practice after, though practice in life is quite collective, is everything I want occurs on each moment, or what just occurred, surprisingly, is just what I wanted.

[21:01]

And forbearance means to see the value of negative activity in yourself and others. And it means to be able to see things from many points of view. We want to make our unconscious activity conscious. but we want to view it as, not as something to be gotten rid of, but as something that we ourselves deserve or created. Anyway, that kind of practice is forbearance, forgiving. And endurance, the second kind of patience, means whether it's Hot coals, they say, or sandalwood incense, unlit. It's the same if someone pours it over you. Lit sandalwood incense, rather uncomfortable. The sutra says sandalwood incense, they mean fine powder, perfect.

[22:37]

And, of course, just being able to sit through sashin, or difficulty, or unrest, flies. Very interesting to notice when the flies land on you. They don't land on you sometimes, and they do land on you other times. And there is a quite interesting correlation between what kind and level of mental activity So you don't need bug spray. I don't think anyone is, unless you want to have some Pratyekabuddha type orientation, you'll never be able to clear all the bugs out of the valley by your mere presence. But, I don't know.

[23:39]

As long as you're willing to forgive and take on other people's thing, you're going to have some flies crawling around on you, too. So don't expect something special about it. There is some correlation, interesting correlation, between what's happening with you and the activity of the flies. Very interesting to see that kind of relationship. Maybe the flies are joining our practice, sitting in the rows. You'll know when they sit very still. And the last aspect of patience is waiting.

[24:43]

I've talked about it various times. It's Suzuki Roshi's way of describing it. Waiting. Waiting for something. Waiting for yourself. Not anticipating or thinking about, but willing to wait for yourself. Wait for this dream, or this day. Every day is a good day. Waiting for what this day will be exactly as it should be. That kind of waiting is the most fundamental aspect of patience, which prepares your mind free from this or that, not caught by this or that aversion or attraction. Patience may be the closest way we can have some experience, some tangible mind-grasping experience of, maybe it's too strong to say emptiness, but being ready for everything just as it is. Patience also means to be ready for the world, no matter what it is.

[26:13]

that state of mind, we begin to know by patience, developing patience. So the practice of Shikantaza, attempting to do nothing in your sitting, so there's almost no mental activity at all, It covers all of Buddhism, because if you start in the beginning to do nothing in your practice, try to do nothing in your practice, you will practice all the paramitas and precepts and all aspects of Buddhism, conduct, patience, energy And conduct, you know, we liken conduct to having feet and eyes. We say when your conduct is mixed up, you are like a man without feet or a man without eyes. It means to actually see, maybe the eye of wisdom, to actually see.

[27:45]

You have to have conduct and patience, practice giving, meditation, etc. Like you don't know what to look for, and until you purify your conduct, you don't know what to look for either, or don't notice. And finally, patience gives us some way to know our energy. Your energy is, what do we say, willpower or some effort you should make. But the whole problem which I talked about before in relationship to the idea of being natural or something, that you just make a decision to make an effort. Why make an effort? Energy is

[29:25]

whether it's uprising or falling or fading or brightening or lightening. A bodhisattva is defined as one who puts out energy, creates his own life moment after moment. But that realm, if we just say you should do it, It doesn't make any sense so much sometimes for us, and also, it's hard to do it. It looks like a grueling, you know, sort of thing you have to do. But, you know, discipline is every other letter capitalized. Anyway, some rough feeling, discipline. With patience or conduct we can give you some suggestion. Try to accept other people as if they were yourself. We can give you some suggestion, but with energy we can't give you any suggestion. But if you practice

[30:55]

work with your conduct and practice patience you'll begin to experience your energy not just your energy when you're tired or when you have to do something but your energy moment after moment which is rising and falling lighting and darkening flashing out of voice So you can begin to have some intimate relationship with your energy by practicing patience. When I was talking about a couple Saturdays ago in the city,

[31:56]

weigh the carpenters' relationship between their conduct and the quality of the work they did, the care with which they did things. One person asked, well, how can you do that kind of work if you are always being interfered with by others? That's not exactly what the question was, but it was something like that. If you're trying to do something and other people want you to do it a certain way, or they don't want you to do it a certain way because you're doing it too well and it makes them nervous so they interfere, or whatever reason, you can't or aren't given time to do things just as they should be done. It's interesting, too. Anyway, that kind of feeling that we have when we're working here at Tassajara or Green Gulch or San Francisco or at a job, being unable to do things right,

[33:23]

because other people's standards are not as high as ours, and there's some aggression. When our standards are higher than others, it may be a form, actually, of unconscious, that kind of unconscious activity I was talking about. But it was interesting to contrast that with the carpenters, again. What I'm speaking about each time I talk about the carpenters are various ways in which Zen Center students, mostly, and some Rinpoche, Trungpa Rinpoche students and others who were up there working, reacted to the carpenters and what they were doing. And I'm not posing this as some you know, Japanese versus Western, but rather somebody who has a highly developed craft, whether Japanese or Tibetan or anything, but a highly developed craft which, in this case, is, in the case of the best carpenter, very influenced by Buddhism.

[34:52]

Anyway, in this case, I'm speaking about a student, a person working on the house, said, I'm scared to hand – the head carpenter was also doing stone masonry and cement work at the time – I'm scared to hand him a stone, because whatever stone I take, he uses, without choice. And other people noticed the same thing. Whatever you did was all right. And if you said, you know, let's, is the cement dry now? Let's scatter dirt on it. That's what they place the stones with a little cement underneath them and then scatter dirt around it. It may not be dry at all or ready, but the minute you suggest it, he does it. Same way with Some of the carpentry in the house is a little different than it was planned to be, because one person made some cuts, you know. Oh yes, do it that way. One of the key beams, which is supposed to stick out like that, is cut off there, in four places. But what happened, you know, is the Americans

[36:27]

They're so clear about it. We would have a hard time teaching ourselves to work that way, maybe. But they're so clear about it, in the way they work as a group, that the Americans got into it immediately, because everyone felt terribly nervous that they would be responsible for the next thing going wrong. So the responsibility was placed on the person. So the person handing the stones to Mitsuhi-san became extremely alert to exactly what kind of stone he handed. Since the choice was entirely his own, he was just terrified that the next stone wouldn't be right. And also, he was given no choice, no time for much choice. You can't select, you just have to reach. So he just had to reach and hand. But everything, all of those stones fit, and it all turned out quite beautifully. If I was to try to create a framework to describe roughly what kind of framework the carpenters are working under, it's that what counts is not the work done, or I mean the job itself, exactly how it's done, or that you yourself do it, it comes out of your own thing or another person's thing,

[37:55]

but that it comes out of some bigger place than that, some place that you all share, which also is the completed work. And the completed work can't be something that you put in a magazine and say, wow, isn't that pretty? It doesn't exist like that. That way you build houses that look like guest rooms. You impress your visitors, but not you. It's got to come out of a place which everyone shares, or the house, or whatever's being created won't be that kind of a place. So they force, relatively force, everyone to act out of that place. And since that counts more than the work, they're willing to make all kinds of mistakes or errors, and compensate in other ways for it, rather than worry about details. they'll try to force everyone they're working with to work in that way, so that you are minutely responsible, and whatever you do will be taken and is okay. It's not so easy for us to work that way. When you have that kind of ability, though, you have what Buddhism

[39:21]

is based on, which is completely an individual identity, a sense of yourself standing on your own feet so the whole world can depend on you, and simultaneously a group identity or an ability to be at one with other people without reference to your own, this is what I should do or shouldn't do. In this kind of way, kind of adventure, you can know other people and yourself in a way, so you can't even say other people and yourself. Here we have some rare opportunity with each of us willing to live together now for at least three more months.

[40:41]

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