working in warehouses and things like that. But then maybe it was okay to work for a university. I thought that would be probably a fairly pure place to work. So I worked for this place. you know, trying to develop programs for public education, adult education. So I had to face big compromises and small compromises, much to my surprise. The big compromise I wouldn't go along with, this department handled a very large amount of money from the federal government to get architects and engineers to build bomb shelters.

[01:16]

in their building. The bomb shelters for who? For people. Oh, just generally. Not for bombs. Yeah. Not for the government people? I just didn't get it. Yeah, during the... During the... sixties, you know, there was always this threat that Russia might bomb us. And so the government tried to have architects and engineers build bomb shelters into all new buildings. Sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry to drive some people out to cook for us.

[02:24]

I'll finish in a minute. So... So I, first it was obvious to me that these bombshells would not protect you from an atomic bomb or hydrogen bomb. So it was also obvious to me the real purpose of this was a psychological preparation for war. So I went to Suzuki Roshi and he said, oh yeah, Japan did similar thing to prepare Japan to go to war. So I took a stand in this department, which was 35 people. and fellow employees.

[03:38]

I was assistant head of the department. that I would not handle any piece of paper having to do with this program. So it all had to be rooted around me. And I was willing to lose my job over there. I had a little baby and a wife, so it would have been something to lose my job. But they didn't fire me. So I felt very moral and good, you know. At least I felt I could take a position.

[04:46]

Then my boss got involved with complicated political things and he expected me to write letters, backdated letters. If I'd refused to backdate the letter, I definitely would have been fired. In other words, you're pretending the letter was written in July when it actually was written in August. So I did that, but it didn't make me feel good. Then I knew this guy who would be public relations director for the company that developed the first birth control pill. And I don't want to tell you the whole story, but basically there was a guy who was advisor to the company who I knew was doing something wrong.

[06:12]

And he was part of a real high medical family in America. His brother was the advisor to the U.S. president at the time. And this guy was a real creep. Creep? Dishonest, slimy. No, no. But somehow my boss was going to go to work for him because of this political stuff.

[07:24]

And even though he had me back getting letters, I tried to help him by telling him, Look, I know something about this guy. You better not work for him. But my boss phoned him right away and said, oh, I know this about you, and it came from so-and-so. It came from me. Well, immediately my friend, who was public relations director for the company, public information, was fired. And this guy called me up for half an hour talking about how he was going to destroy me. You know, I mean, it was unbelievable, the venom of this guy. Das war unglaublich, das Gift dieses Menschen.

[08:44]

This was my first venture into the workaday world. Das war mein erster Ausflug in die Arbeitswelt. So I went to a lawyer and things like that, tried to figure out what could happen. Ich bin zu Anwälten gegangen, um herauszufinden, was denn passieren könnte. But I suppose I'm saying that when you work in even a good situation like a university... You can find yourself in an extremely compromising situation. How can you be honest sometimes? How do you try to help somebody here? So this experience was quite a strong one for me also to do this. I hope all jobs are not like this.

[09:46]

But here was a job, an ideal job for the University of California and all good people. It was really, really pretty bad. So I think various versions of that happened to a lot of people in their job. How do you practice that? Also a question I'd like to ask. Okay. Flip it for a moment. Ujjala jim jami a-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la

[13:02]

A single, neutral, neutral, stringent, unforecoming law begins itself in a hundred thousand, million, almost zero, ten, million, ten, million, [...] million. Hi. Good morning. Yeah.

[14:44]

So I've recently been feeling that the next step for the Dharma Sangha practitioners is to break the habit of permanence. Yeah. Yeah. To develop the habit of knowing the impermanence of everything. This is fairly easy for me to say. It's a pretty big difficulty to practice it. Es ist eine ziemlich große Schwierigkeit, das zu praktizieren.

[16:02]

Yeah, it seems easy. We can do it. At least intellectually, we can do it. Es scheint einfach, das zu tun. Zumindest intellektuell können wir das tun. But really to practice it, yeah. Your practice has to be pretty developed to practice it. And it's a really big, when you do practice it, it's a really big shift in your practice and a big release. Although the awareness of change and impermanence and so forth is present throughout our practice, obwohl das Gewahrsein für Wandel, für Unbeständigkeit in unserer Praxis überall gegenwärtig ist.

[17:22]

Yeah, present from the beginning. Gegenwärtig von Anfang an. Okay, so, yeah, since I think that, weil ich das glaube, that the next step for us is to break the habit of permanence, of implicit and explicit permanence. Yeah, so now I have to say, well, here we are with you, each of you. And I've been... Quite a few of you I haven't been practicing with for a long time. And some of you are quite new to practice. So I think I should try to make up some kind of outline of practice today.

[18:34]

And you can help me with the outline. In the afternoon in our discussion, give me some sense of what the stages of practice have been for you. Now, what do I mean when I say that the Dharma Sangha, next step for the Dharma Sangha, Well, you know, I observe that I proceed from the feeling that the teachings take hold more fully in our individual practice. when we're practicing with others with whom the same teachings have taken hold.

[20:01]

So I sort of, you know, kind of bumble along. Mm-hmm. Do you know the word bumble? I think I translated it with stumble. It's sort of the same. You can bumble without stumbling, though. Bumbling, yes, sort of like stumbling. Bumblebee? They're much, no, they bumble with much more persistence and accuracy. But I think bumblebee is for the sound they make. It's a fairly different word. That's good, man. I haven't made a beeline in this teaching, though, have I? I'm bumbling.

[21:03]

So, for instance, as you well know, I've endlessly taught the five skandhas. So maybe some of you think there's 500 skandhas. But I've done that because... You know, I really want a fairly large percentage of you to get the practice. Yeah, probably three reasons. One is it makes you aware that consciousness has structure. If you don't get that, there's no adept practice.

[22:23]

If you just see what you see and seamlessly see it like a camera and you don't have any sense that you're structuring what you see and according to certain you know, habits, rules. So first of all, even if you don't really practice the five skandhas, I know some of you don't. Yeah, at least you have the intuition now or feeling that, yes, consciousness, awareness is structured Yeah, and then if you actually practice it, you get an ability to participate in how your mind makes the world.

[23:34]

Then you discover more precisely different states of mind than just waking and sleeping. And the occasional lucky Zazen period. Well, that's one reason. That's the second. Third reason is it gives us, begins to give us the basis to see the insubstantiality of self. Insubstantiality of self.

[24:34]

Yeah, to see the habit of meanness, me, as a habit. Even if an extremely difficult habit to break. Even if meanness is an extremely difficult habit to break. Auch wenn dieses Ich, diese Ichheit, eine Gewohnheit ist, die äußerst schwer zu brechen ist. In the past, way back a thousand years or two thousand years ago. In der Vergangenheit, tausend oder zweitausend Jahre zurück.

[25:35]

The schools that were rigorous in saying there's no meanness substantial meanness. tended to lose popularity. And the schools would knock in subtle forms of meanness to continue. They gained in popularity. They all used the same word and they sounded sort of the same, but one kind of supported meanness and the other didn't. Of course with individual practitioners we can practice in any way that comes up between us and But still, in the general way I've taught is to try to get a number of people to understand something together.

[26:55]

Yeah, and I actually think somehow we made progress. Mostly because of the good spirit of you, of each of you. Eh, that sounds right to me. So, and mostly the way Otto

[28:16]

Although that's what I've been doing, I've also pretty much let you or supported you in practicing in any way you wanted to. So this will be the first time, I think, that I've actually made some kind of stages. But I think before I leap forward to this breaking the habit of permanence, I should step back and look at what are the basics of that leap forward. Leap ahead. So I imagine, if you're new to practice, what... Where should you begin?

[29:33]

I think, first of all, you should develop a habit of practicing mindfulness. Primarily of your actions and your breath. Yeah, that should be concentrated on. And to help in that and in addition, it's good if you can develop a daily or weekly practice of sadhana. By weekly I mean three times a week or five times a week or something. And again, as I've always said, just because some zazen is good doesn't mean more zazen is better, more good.

[30:52]

In fact, yeah, you can actually sit too much if you sit on your own several, four, five times a day. That's too much. Tatsächlich, man kann so viel sitzen, wenn man vier, fünf Mal am Tag für sich selbst sitzt. One day a week, maybe it's all right. Ein Tag in der Woche, das ist vielleicht in Ordnung. Because you really want your Dazen practice grounded in your daily life. measured by your daily life. Tested by your daily life. You shouldn't indefinitely use Zazen as a refuge from daily life. You shouldn't use Zazen as a refuge from daily life. So you should do zazen in a way in which you feel it

[32:07]

developing presence in your ordinary life, daily life. So, second, it's good to develop a daily or weekly practice of satsang. Das zweite ist also, dass es gut ist, eine tägliche oder wöchentliche Sazenpraxis zu entwickeln. Third is good to bring some teaching into your life. Das dritte ist, dass es gut ist, irgendeine Lehre in dein Leben hineinzubringen. Like we said yesterday, treat things like your own eyesight. Anyway, some teaching, some sense of teaching being brought in to your daily life. Often in the form of a phrase or a reminder, etc. Fourth, I would say it would be good to have a general appreciation, awareness of the Eightfold Path.

[33:48]

You can think of many teachings as kind of target. Like in the four foundations of mindfulness, there's a long tradition of what you bring your attention to. So you bring your attention to a million things. The tradition, ancient tradition, is that it's most useful to bring your attention to certain targets. So the Eightfold Path is somewhat the same. Good to bring your attention to your speech, your conduct, livelihood, etc. Yeah, for example.

[35:03]

Okay. And then if possible you add a couple more. In this first stage. You try to practice with other members of the Sangha. Yeah, once a week or something, two or three or five or six of you get together and sit, I don't know. Come here or something. Anyway, you develop some kind of relationship to Sangha practice. And sixth, I guess you develop some relationship, if possible, to a teacher and to a practice center.

[36:13]

So that's what I would call the first stage. And that's fairly easy to bring into your life without changing your life much. But it definitely means you've got to organize your life so that this can be brought into your life. And it should The first stage of practice should be demanding enough that does require you to order your life to some extent. Okay. That's the first step. That's the first stage.

[37:22]

The second stage. My goodness. There's seven stages and we're only... For my goodness, there are seven stages and we're only... Maybe by tomorrow it will be seven. Okay, the second stage is you develop some kind of... develop a feeling for a background mind. And here it might be good... it would be good to... Probably practice with the koan, for instance, of which the line comes, the one who is not busy. So developing a background mind is quite good too, quite useful to work with the feeling of the one who is not busy. In our busyness, is there simultaneously one who is not busy?

[38:29]

Yeah. I think... Yeah, so you don't feel too busy, I should stop now. Yes, I think we have more time. We can continue. Yes, episode two. Yeah. The mark of Zorro. Zeichen des Zorro? The mark of Zen, excuse me. Zeichen des Zen.

[39:29]

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