You know, in Buddhism, we're trying to kill you, and some of you are putting up a pretty good fight. And you means some person that prefers you to other things. And we're coming up to the session in which commemorates Buddha entering nirvana, or enlightenment, and in which our teacher entered nirvana. And the last couple times, I've been talking about pure practice. And you shouldn't confuse pure practice and preparatory practice.

[01:05]

Some of your questions are about this difference. I mean, you can say there's no difference between preparatory practice and pure practice, but actually, for most of us, we're trying some kind of preparatory practice, which sometimes is pure practice. If only in this next session, you can sit one hour. That's wonderful. And supposedly, Buddha had this big fight, you know, with Mara and Mara's daughters. So it's usually personified as, or objectified as, evil.

[02:07]

And actually, Mara means everything that's good, the things you prefer. Mara maybe stands for home and family and all kinds of things that are really important. But it stands for preferring those things over other things. So there's quite an interesting kind of playing or interplay between Buddha conquering, so-called conquering desire of Mara, and at the same time, accepting the glass of milk from the beautiful or not beautiful, I don't know, milk maiden,

[03:15]

who sounds like had sort of a crush on him, hung out near him, some kind of tender relationship they described. Anyway, he gave up asceticism and accepted, you know, the milk. And when he died, he ate, no one knows, but anyway, it says spoiled pork. And there's other theories, but the other theories, which try to make it a non-meat dish, usually ascribe it to some edible that doesn't grow in India, anywhere near, but I don't know. Anyway, the story is he ate pork. But if he was such a great teacher, why did he eat spoiled pork? And Buddha's enlightenment is followed by, is preceded by, you know, accepting the milk maiden and the milk.

[04:34]

And it's preceded by his confrontation with desire. In the same way I was talking yesterday about how we can see what looks like, you know, our desire or our attachment or our fear, may be a signal for us to practice. So we should enter the light areas and the dark areas, the things we particularly like and the things we particularly avoid.

[05:47]

To accept everything, you know, is to be Buddha. You can't, when we say observe things, we don't mean to stand separate from them. No, if you can't, you have to be mixed up in it and mixed up by it to actually observe it. It's like scientists find if they use an electron microscope to look at something, you know, the looking at it bombards it with electrons and things and changes it when they look at it. So if you observe something from outside, you change it. You know, you have to be it itself, which is mixed up. You have to actually eat poisoned pork.

[06:57]

And actually die. So nirvana and enlightenment are such mixed up ideas, you know, in Buddhism it's hard to distinguish which is which. Because maybe there's some feeling that maybe everybody has to give up everything when they die, whether they like it or not. But if you're practicing Buddhism, you give up, you know, before your physical death. To give up everything or accept everything. You can't be free unless you accept everything. You can't accept everything unless you're free.

[08:04]

There's some exclusion, you know, you're not free. So mara means to find the areas which you don't want to enter or don't want to give up. If you're attached to family, maybe you should be a monk sometimes. And if you're attached to being a monk, you should also give up the monastery. I don't mean you get a divorce or leave the monastery. If you're attached to your teacher, you have to give up your teacher. How to do that is not for each of us, you know, to enter the areas we don't want to enter.

[09:17]

To accept the areas we don't want to accept is, there's no instruction manual. Because there's no, mostly you can't see the door. So you can just have this strong feeling of readiness. And if you're ready, that little guy we talked about yesterday will signal. There's the little door that you're scared to go in through. But still, it doesn't mean something mechanical like, oh, I'm scared to do that, so you do that.

[10:28]

Just the readiness itself is entering. If you're actually ready, there's no hesitation. So in our practice, we should give up the idea of time and space. Mostly, time and space are just an extension of your self-possibilities. I can do such and such next week. I can go over there. But here, right here, is all there is. And there flows through here, and here flows through there.

[11:45]

So we practice Shikantaza without any idea of time. When you exhale, it's going to be your last exhale. And it slowly goes out. And you fade away. Just fade away. Maybe you're going to die. No effort, even, to make the inhale. If you don't inhale, it's okay. We'll carry you out of the zendo. But probably you'll inhale. But we don't want to emphasize inhaling too much. Trying to be alive is one of our problems. You don't have to try. You're going to be alive for a while, probably.

[12:53]

Oh, no, not very long, but pretty long. But your life will flow back, flow in you each moment like an inhale. If you emphasize anything, you emphasize your exhale. So our practice to be ready is... In zazen, is to go away with each exhale. Or give up with each exhale.

[13:57]

When you can really do that, then... We say big mind or something. The usual you that prefers things dies. And some other... True nature or something, I don't know what to say, comes up. Just give up on each exhale.

[15:09]

And you don't have to wait till zazen, you know. You can start right now. And you can start right now. Each period of zazen, you know, it's not so useful to have an idea of seven days, seven days of struggle. I'll get through it. That's some idea of time, you know, which just extends you who's going to get through it. Just go to the first period. No idea of time or anything, just giving up on each exhale.

[16:14]

And next period, same feeling. Next period, same feeling. Maybe eventually someone will tell you that sesshin is over. And there's no point in struggling with our pain in the same way, as if someone's going to overcome it, or someone's going to stand it. You should, you know, know your pain, and your mixed up feelings, everything, without any context of it's going to end,

[17:18]

or be overcome, or begin. No idea of anything. Next period. Next period.

[18:24]

Next period. This kind of practice is like maybe a billiard ball or something, there's no way to get inside it. And if you find your practice is, sort of no idea of anything practice is pretty boring, or you fall asleep as soon as you have no idea of anything. Sleeping is the closest you come to no idea of anything. And it's sort of true, it's a very deep habit that as soon as we let go of our usual consciousness, we fall asleep. And if we don't fall asleep, we don't know what to do. My daughter, I discovered is now jumping rope to

[19:31]

no form, no color, no, you know. I don't know what will become of her. Anyway, she tried Zazen, you know, she likes to go to service, so she gets up and no one's home, so she comes over to Vizenda, San Francisco. And for a while she came to Zazen, but now she just comes to service. Because when she went to Zazen, she sat down and in five minutes she thought of everything she could think of. And then there were 35 minutes where she couldn't think of anything, and she said it was terribly boring. Usually we don't have that problem of 35 minutes when we can't think of anything. But we get to that point too, you know,

[20:35]

and then it's pretty boring. Just... Anyway, that means you're still doing preparatory practice, and you have to find some way, you know, to make an effort to stay awake, to have a kind of awakeness through you. And so you follow your breathing. Your breathing is an easy way to follow your consciousness, you know, into your knees and ligaments and feet. You know, we have... If something happens in your stomach, say, you have nerves there which send information to your, you know, consciousness or processing station somewhere,

[21:38]

and you know there's some lump in your stomach or gas, but until those nerves are bumped, you know, in some way, we don't feel anything in our stomach or legs. But the nerves are there, but we're not subtle enough to have our consciousness there unless there's some gross pressure or bump or... But actually your consciousness can be everywhere. You know, if I say consciousness and you think, ah, I know what consciousness is, then you try to apply a unit of that to your knee. That's not what I mean. But anyway, we follow our breathing.

[22:44]

Maybe imagining it's going, that you can feel it. Maybe imagination is very useful because it can help us, lead us. So you can imagine my breathing is going to my knee and to my foot and up across my back or in my shoulder. And you can begin to have access to your whole body and everything that happens and not just your physical body. Instead of feeling located somewhere, I don't know, where you feel located somewhere. Eventually, you know, there's no location at all.

[23:49]

So we can say that you've been killed. And... Do you have some questions that you could talk about? Yeah. Waiting.

[25:14]

That waiting, you know, is partly what I mean by ready. Do you understand what I mean? And as you, just what you said, I wait till I'm ready to decide I'm going to sit straight. That's what I mean. Waiting. We make a decision in our practice.

[26:22]

We do make decisions. But not by some will, but... But as Darlene says, when you're ready to make the decision but still it's a decision, kind of decision. And the basis of decision is very mysterious, you know, and fundamental to this life. I don't know how to explain it, you know. It's a little bit like the problem in Christianity of

[27:28]

free will and whatever, determinism or something. God decides everything and you have free will. You know, that's some Christian expression of the same problem, but it's not possible to explain. But accepting, you know, is everything is just as it is. To accept the world just as it is is to create the world, to decide to create the world. It's the nature of being alive. Some other?

[28:36]

Yeah. Are you at that point? It's just something that's based on the physical. I don't know whether you just... Those are interesting problems, actually. You can do, if you... You can do whatever comes next, you know. But if you find that you're making... that you're at a place where you are making a decision, ah, should I do this or should I feel this other feeling, you know,

[29:47]

let go into this other feeling, then try one or the other. You know, it's some kind of experiment, our practice. But when your practice is closer and closer to what I call pure practice, there's no decision, it's just... you know, there's nothing you have to do. But when you have to do something, then try this way or that way. But don't try it with the idea of some fixed idea, just a try-on. Do you understand what I mean? Yeah.

[30:49]

Counting your breaths, following your breaths, or anything you do in your practice. Yeah. I think pure practice means maybe two things. One is the effort to... when you're doing your practice, you know, within the doing of your practice, the effort to give up doing is pure practice. And completely having given up doing is pure practice. Anyway, it's just words, pure and pure, you know.

[31:57]

Just some attempt to talk about something we're doing to give ourselves some more space in it. But actually there's just one whole you which includes all of us and we can't divide it up. And its divisions are its unity. You understand?

[33:00]

Do you understand what you meant by Buddha? Buddha? What I meant by Buddha? No, you meant by Buddha. You said Buddha... You said Buddha gave up his senses. I believe you. You said Buddha attained enlightenment after he gave up his senses. Yeah. What do I mean by that? There's something I want to understand. I don't understand. You said Buddha attained enlightenment

[34:04]

after he gave up his senses. When he decided to become Georgette. I don't understand. I don't understand. Why don't you stay with your question more? Okay? Yeah. What is the difference between making a decision and giving yourself permission? And giving yourself permission? Do you mean permission as I've spoken about it sometimes? I don't know, you know.

[35:32]

To make some distinction between them, I could say decision is to... to see the inevitable. To do what you know is already done or that you have to do. And permission is to do what you know you can't do. So permission comes from some other part of this whole being other than you. You can give yourself permission sometimes but actually it's much better practice to receive permission from everything. Or from your teacher. Does that make sense?

[36:37]

Sort of? Yeah. Do we sit with our left hand over our right? Let me check. Yes. Well, most... you know, I don't... I don't have any explanation. No one has any explanation, though there's lots of explanations. So when I hear the explanations I forget. But... most Buddha statues sit with right hand. Have the right hand on top of the left. And Rinzai sex sits with the right hand on top of the left.

[37:39]

Soto sits with left hand on top of the right. But sometimes it sits with right hand on top of the left. Okay? You have your own left hand and your own right hand. Why does your left hand sit on top of your right hand? Why don't you get down inside your left hand and ask? I'm not kidding, you know. It's the only way to find out why your left hand's on top of your right. Hey, left hand, what are you doing on top of my right hand? And you can find out, maybe. Sometimes the Jikido can't see you.

[38:41]

Just switch. Put your right hand on top. Try it out. See how it feels. Sometimes we sit this way, too. Sometimes, Soto. Rinzai sits this way a lot. Soto doesn't sit this way so much. And there are various ways to hold your mudra. One is... Japanese people have rather short arms, you know. So... There's various ways. Tibetan people, too, have rather short arms. And there's one unbelievable posture. I think I've tried to demonstrate it. You lock your elbows in. I couldn't possibly do it if my arms were too long. But Japanese people often hold their mudra up here. Which is rather different from us, you know.

[39:44]

Up near your navel. Because our arms are rather longer. So... Suzuki Roshi did it both ways. When he first came to America for most of his life, he sat with his hands resting on his lap or on his foot. And then later he moved up. Someone told him, Ah, you should sit with your hands up or something. So he was always quite willing to try. But he didn't do it at all. That's one reason the many rules we have in Zen Center are so confused. Because he would teach us how to do kinhin, you know. And then some visiting teacher would come and say, Oh, I do kinhin this way. So Suzuki Roshi would turn to all of us and say, Well, from now on we'll do kinhin this way. So we'd all change, you know. Pretty soon everybody was completely mixed up. Everybody would go this way. I usually stuck by the way Suzuki Roshi told us first.

[40:51]

As you know, I guess I told you that when Suzuki Roshi first... His English was not so good at first. And it was hard to figure out what he was saying a lot. I had a lot of problem with the word alert. Because I thought he was saying our heart. And he kept telling me to be more our heart. And I thought that was, you know, instead of being a bodhisattva, I was supposed to be more like an our heart. I had a problem with that for two or three years. And he also said you should have your thumbs... separated just by the thickness of a piece of paper. Actually he said your thumbs should touch together with enough pressure as if to support a piece of paper. So I spent more than two years... learning to keep my thumbs just barely, barely separated.

[42:02]

And I could feel this little, you know, synapse or vibe going, a little heat. And sometimes they'd just bounce off each other. And I'd say, oh, failed. But I actually got pretty good after all. I could sit there and they almost never touched and I could still feel the warmth between them. But then I found out that it was wrong, but it was wonderful to do it. So it actually doesn't make much difference whether it's wrong or right. But then there's... you can hold your mudra this way with your thumbs and first finger rather in a parallel plane, vertical. Or you can turn it back, have your thumbs in the middle. Or you can have it either those two positions

[43:08]

and with your hands flat or turned back. Like this. With your thumbs more or less against your stomach. In other words, you can have just this part of your hand against your body, or close. And your thumb's out in a plane. Or you can tip your hand this way so that this point and your thumbs more or less touch. Generally, Suzuki Yoshi favored the way in which the palms of your fingers and palms are more or less flat. Horizontal. And this is vertical. But he thought it was all right to sit this way too. Actually, each way is slightly different. Okay. So... Anyway, the idea is that you're left...

[44:18]

Nancy Wilson Ross, who's written several books or edited several books on Zen, before she wrote on Zen, wrote a novel that was a bestseller in the thirties, I guess the thirties now, called The Left Hand is the Dreamer. It's kind of interesting that she would see that and then spend the rest of her life writing about and interested in Buddhism. But anyway, the left hand is the dreamer, maybe. Or some more passive side. And the right hand is more active. So, in Soto, which emphasizes... Zazen,

[45:25]

an emptiness more than koan study and bringing your mind into some confrontation, emphasizes putting your left hand on top of your right and your left foot on top in full lotus. I think that's right. But, actually, most of you sit left or right depending on how your legs work. And you don't have too much choice. Though some of you may be able to switch. So, since most of us don't have so much choice, we have to find out what it means to have the left foot on top and the right foot on top, maybe when we only always have the right foot on top or only always have the left foot on top. But it doesn't...

[46:28]

By the time you're able to distinguish the differences, it doesn't make any difference. So it's not so important to figure out. But there's some slight difference. It's pretty important that we bring our hands together. I've become aware that there are boundaries to my human self. I don't often know what those boundaries are. Is it important that we... come to know and recognize that there's a way to let go? Did you hear in the back? She said she's come to have some recognition

[47:31]

of boundaries or realm of her own life. And is it important to explore it or find what the boundaries are? I think that's almost hopeless. It's like searching for the grail or something. Just give up the boundaries in your breathing. If you can give up actually one boundary, all the other boundaries, just bring up to fill the hole and then you can get rid of it. Anyway, we take one thing, one here. You know, Dogen said something like,

[48:32]

on what roadside weeds will the dew of our life fall? And when we think this weed is not so good, the treasure is over there. Obviously, we all know that that doesn't make sense. But still we do it. The treasure is right before us. It doesn't matter which weed. So we... There's no point in having any idea of time and space. Just...

[49:38]

You know, I can say a simple verbal thing, that you know, no matter what you do in your life, wherever you go, you'll always just be in a place you could call here. That's really quite simple. But if you fully, fully, fully know that, most of your problems will be gone, because you'll know completely what's here, and then everything that's there will become here, moment after moment. There's no need to make decisions or anything about your life. Whatever roadside weed, in this case it's Zen Senate, Tassajara, and your breath.

[50:54]

So we practice, not so much by exploring, out there somewhere, but what can you do now? Well, your breathing, that's all. Where are the boundaries in my breathing? So if you ask yourself some question, what is the limit of my realm? You can immediately apply that same question to your breathing. What is the limit of my breathing? The other day, I said something about practice for women was a little different than for men, or Zazen was. And that... I guess I said that in a rather curious way, because I've had some curious questions about it. So I said I'd say something in lecture.

[51:57]

Actually, I think the... the geography is the same, it's just that the map is a little different. There's usually more difference between person to person than there is between man and woman. Hmm. But there is some... the way one makes one's... through the countryside of practice is a little different, but it's just a matter of emphasis. But it's also true, there's some difference if you come from the middle of America, and if you come from the East Coast. Actually, there's some difference in the way you practice. But still, the geography is the same,

[53:02]

just the roads are a little different. Yeah. Some sort of fear was also... Some doors? Just the doors. There was fear associated with that, like coming in here out of this one door and being taken to another. It's been on something like that. What? What takes us through the door? Well, scouting around a bit is OK too, you know, if you're... Do you understand what I mean? You know, um...

[54:04]

I don't know if this is a problem for you, but for quite a lot of people it's a problem. Will I go crazy? In practice or in your life, in various ways. And how to cope with that kind of... fear, which we can't say isn't a real fear, or a fear about a real possibility. I mean, sometimes some of us do go crazy.

[55:07]

So you can't pretend, well, you know, you can't go crazy, because that's just fooling yourself. I'm just talking about this, you know, as an example of the door, you know, any door. So... But still, it's also true that you can't go crazy. Where are you going to go if you go crazy? This is just a big mental hospital we live in anyway. So, whether you're inside one wall or outside another wall, it's all... it's not going to change things. The problem is, you know, we have this bully

[56:11]

that bullies us. And if the idea of going crazy disturbs you, the bully will threaten you with going crazy. And if... you finally get over that one, it'll think up something even worse to scare you. And you have to find some way to work with the bully. And the bully will do everything possible to prevent you from killing him. So you have to, like just when you were bullied as a kid, I suppose you were all bullied as a kid, sometime, you have to figure out how to work with the bully, play his game too. If he takes your hat, you know, okay, you can have my hat. And... So likewise, it's really quite simple

[57:17]

if you're being bullied by somebody who says, well, you're going to go crazy, eventually you have to say, all right, I'll go crazy. Anyway, you know, the Indians had... Indian... the context which Buddhism grew up in had some idea of a heaven and a hell. And the Buddhist idea of nirvana is neither heaven nor hell. And... a Buddha should be able to exist in heaven and hell. So if going crazy is... if that's where you're going, you know, Buddha goes crazy too. Right? But we don't, you know, just practically speaking,

[58:29]

we don't want to go crazy and be nothing but crazy. So... it makes some sense to know what your strength is. And... know what kinds of things make you feel very uneasy or super uneasy. And... But when you have some real feeling for your own territory, you can't... that's no solution, that's like preparatory practice. At some point you have to say, whatever happens, OK. If I go crazy, if I have cancer, whatever, problem. If no problem,

[59:36]

if I never have any suffering to help me through Buddhism, I have no real problem, I'll never be enlightened, I don't suffer like other people. Well, then you have to be ready to practice Buddhism with no suffering. Never putting your right foot on top of your left. But knowing what putting your right foot on top of your left is. No pain, no suffering, no pain, no suffering. No pain, no pain.

[60:33]

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