And now having listened to each of you, except for one person who was sick and two people, one person at a time and one person came late, I pray all of your statements of practice or all of your intentions for practice. Am I speaking loudly? And as I said last night, I was talking to the practice committee here, which is Vanya and Maya and Gil. And I said that this group is rather a Zen group.

[01:15]

And I felt that most of your expressions of practice were quite close to each other and that they have, to me, a Zen orientation, or what we usually think of as Zen, part of the Zen, namely, a lot of people said that basically their practice was to try to just be either completely present or more present or a little present. Anyway, a strong orientation towards, an intention towards trying to be present was expressed by most people. Or another way to put it, another word that a lot of people said it was to try to live completely or to be fully alive in the moment, moment by moment.

[02:29]

Another way that people put it is by saying that they'd like to follow the schedule. And I would say that to follow the schedule thoroughly is a very present-oriented task. It's very difficult to follow the schedule in the past or the future, although, of course, a lot of people try to do it that way. Have you ever noticed that sometimes in the middle of the night when you wake up, how easy it is to wake up, even though it's before you wake up, though?

[03:36]

You don't seem tired, you're perfectly willing to get up out of bed and go to the toilet or something. No resistance. That's an example of practicing the schedule in the future, ahead of time. And then, of course, we're quite familiar with the other way of, that after we wake up all the time we're ready to get up, too. But to be ready to get up, or maybe not even be ready to get up, but to get up, when the alarm goes off, or when the wake-up bell goes off, to get up, like all of you get up at that time, that's an example of living in the present. Of course, all of you not getting up is also an example of living in the present. You can do it that way, too. I think yesterday I was walking along this walkway.

[04:40]

I was, I think, waiting for a noon service, or coming to the later morning's ascent. And it was sunny and cold, and I was walking barefoot down the cold walkway. And I felt perfectly willing, really willing to be that person walking down that walkway. And I was willing to put my cold feet on the walkway. And there was a real willingness to do what I was doing. But also, it is also possible to curl up in a ball and weep with wholeheartedness. So, as I said, many people have expressed the intention or desire or choice to try to live wholeheartedly.

[05:58]

Another common expression is to be calm, to not lose composure, to have a little composure. So, as I mentioned also last night to those people, in some sense when I heard this I felt like, well, that's great that people want to do this, and I'll do it with them, and that's about it. There's not much else to do. And I also felt like, why have any classes or lectures if people are just trying to be present? Just leave them alone, let them look at it. But after thinking about it some more I realized that although I think it's very good that we want to be concentrated

[07:07]

and be completely with what we're doing throughout the day, whatever it is, still, that's not the whole story. The whole story is that while we're trying to concentrate on cutting vegetables or brushing our teeth or sitting straight or chewing our food bite by bite, while we're doing that many other things are going on. And in some ways those things that are going on are very helpful to not only test our composure but to give us a chance to change our point of view. Being present in itself is not exactly the point.

[08:20]

Just like being detached is not exactly the point. It's that when you are present and detached, something happens or something can happen. That is the point. Namely, you can be happy or at peace. No one said that they wanted peace. But then again, I didn't ask you exactly what you wanted, I asked you more what your practice was going to be. Peace is not something you can do, but rather that's something that might come to you if you practice the kinds of practices you proposed. So I think, again, if I was giving grades, I would give you high grades because you didn't say that you were going to do peace or something like that.

[09:28]

You realized, I think, that that's something that comes to you. You didn't say, I'm going to be happy. The more you said, I will practice happily. Happiness and sadness are not under our control. They come as a gift for our actions. Another way to put what many of you were talking about or how you were talking is, which I talked to one person about is, I found myself going like this with my hands. The person was talking about being firm or solid.

[10:34]

And I think part of what you are also talking about is that you want to have not a kind of solidity in the sense of something that doesn't change exactly or something that's hard, but yet I think a lot of you want to have a kind of firmness or you might call, let's say, I ran into the expression, have sane energy or sane energy. Sane, by the way, means whole or sound, healthy. To have a kind of sane energy, a kind of firm container for your experience so that life can happen, so that you can be open to life's experience and they won't break you.

[11:48]

So you don't have to be afraid of what will happen because you feel you have enough sanity, enough sane energy to encompass and accept what's happening. This is what I felt from some of you. In particular, in the study of Zen teachings, there's a dance between what we call the dark and the light or between birth and death. That dance, that interaction, that interpenetration is something that if we have a kind of firm crucible or cauldron, that interaction can happen within us.

[12:52]

We can study it fearlessly and learn the nature of our life. Which is very closely related to death, our life and death. Right now, I think many of us are teetering on the fence between, for example, not so much life and death maybe, but sickness and health. I myself feel myself just right on the edge there. I don't exactly feel like I'm sick, but I feel like, in some sense, I feel like either I'm always sick or I'm always healthy. But at some point, I get into a very unusual type of experience, so that my body is doing things like discharging fluids more than it usually does, or it's saying, lie down, or my head's vibrating.

[14:09]

So, like the day before yesterday, in the later part of the afternoon, I got this kind of dry, kind of swollen up feeling in my throat, which I usually get just before I get a sore throat. And I noticed when it came, and I went to study and I drank a lot of hot water during study, and it didn't go away, and it lasted through the night, and it was there in the morning again, but it hadn't gotten worse. But that feeling there means that a sore throat may be coming, for me. And then after breakfast, eating the cereal and so on, it subsided. And it sort of went away during the day. I kept trying to watch it while I was eating lunch to see if it was there. I couldn't... Did the lunch have some kind of pepper or stuff in it? Was that yesterday? Anyway, whatever the lunch was, I couldn't exactly tell if that thing had gone away or not.

[15:14]

But by the afternoon, it had sort of gone away. And then, I felt pretty good in the afternoon, and I thought I would take a little jog. So I went running up the road, and it was kind of cold in the afternoon there. The sun had started to set. And as I ran, my chest started to get hot, sort of like a little bit burned. And when that happens, when I run in cold weather, and I get that kind of burning sense in my chest, oftentimes what happens is then I get a cold in my chest. And just in a few seconds, the lungs start to produce some kind of fluid to protect itself. And I start to hear a wheezing in my chest. So I stopped after a few seconds of that, and walked back down. And then I watched last night to see, you know, maybe Gil could hear me clearing my throat, actually clearing my chest from that little bit of stuff that built up from that little short run.

[16:23]

And then I went to bed last night, and my ears started ringing. That's another place signal. It's a ringing, not ringing, but tingling in the ears, and down the eustachian tube. And then this morning, my nose started to run. So my body's, and also during breakfast, my head was starting to buzz a little bit. Not exactly hurt, but kind of like the premonitions of a headache. So I just feel like I have to be really careful, otherwise these symptoms maybe will get together in a group. And then I have to admit that I really have to change my ways, and stop getting up in the morning and so on for a while. But it's very close, you know. This body is trying to adapt to this new environment that's colder, and different schedule and all that.

[17:28]

And in some ways this is not a problem, but in other ways it is a problem, because I'm having to spend my time watching this kind of stuff. I can't just sort of go do something. I have to sort of, as I start to do something, I have to think about whether my body will let me. It's sort of inconvenient. And I'm not sure, it might be helpful to you if I did get sick. So I'm not sure that I shouldn't get sick, in the sense of not being able to follow the schedule anymore. It might be helpful. And I kind of like to get sick, a little bit, because then I can stay in bed. But what I don't like is to get sick and then not be able to stay in bed and read and stuff. I like to stay in bed and read. I don't like to stay in bed and just be like sick. So sick that I can't sort of play in my weakened state.

[18:37]

But the problem is when you get sick you can't control necessarily how sick you're going to get. So generally speaking I stay away from it, if I can. And right now I'm sort of watching that. I'm telling you this I guess because I feel that this kind of observation is, even though I don't like it very much, it's rather present-oriented. I'm being forced to do so, but actually it's very much like, it's a kind of, what I would say, as I said a few days ago, it's a yogic confrontation. Our yogic engagement is being forced on me. I have to be aware of lots of stuff now. It's not what we usually think of as yoga, but in fact it is part of yogic practices to be aware of.

[19:42]

The little things like the feeling in the back of your throat, and the feeling in your ears, and the feeling behind your eyes, and the feeling of the skin on your face, whether it's getting, you know, drawn, and tight, or... These kinds of concerns are the kind of things that a person who is living in the present deals with. Also, not too many people told me that they were having a hard time, because I didn't ask you to tell me what problems you were having.

[20:47]

But I think that since I'm having kind of a hard time, probably some other people are having kind of a hard time. And then I ask myself and you the question, in the midst of, in some sense, I told you about my little hard time, in the midst of various kinds of hard times, what are we going to do? That's what I want to know. The problem of my almost catching a cold is actually not my major hard time. I have other things that I'm aware of that are also difficult. But still I wonder, in the midst of these difficulties, in the midst of various possibilities, and requests, and pressures, what is my intention? What is your intention?

[21:59]

And these difficulties are not excuses for why you can't do what you intend. They are rather the opportunities where you will be able to try to do what you intend. Thank you. As Dogen Zenji says, Buddhas are those who are greatly awakened in the midst of delusion.

[23:12]

And sentient beings are those who are greatly deluded about awakening. So, to talk about delusion, I feel quite comfortable, because I'm talking about the foodstuff of awakening. But to talk about awakening, I feel not so comfortable, because then I'm probably just a sentient being, giving you some deluded ideas about awakening. But again, if I remember that I am a sentient being who has deluded ideas about awakening, then I realize that I'm in the midst of delusion.

[24:34]

And I have a chance to continue to learn about the nature of delusion. So, I might as well talk about awakening. Actually, today I don't so much want to talk about awakening, but actually I want to talk about something that I never talk about. The N-word. The N-word. I want to talk about the N-word. Now, it seems like there's two possible N-words in Buddhism. One of them would be nothing. But I want to talk about the other N-word. I never talk about it. And I wonder why I don't talk about it. Well, I think one of the reasons why I talk about it is because bodhisattvas are not supposed to attain the N-word before all other living beings attain it.

[25:44]

Therefore, why even talk about it? Even the greatest bodhisattvas, you know, people who have practiced in such a way as to let you know, who couldn't reach their toenail, they don't even attain Nirvana, so why should we even talk about it? Well, I think the reason why I wanted to talk about it today is because I kind of felt that, in a way, what a lot of you were talking about was the N-word. Did I say the N-word? I flipped, sorry. I think that, in a way, what a lot of you were saying is that you want to attain Nirvana. You want to be living in Nirvana.

[26:49]

And the reason why I wanted to make that point was also because I think that my idea of Nirvana, that I've had for a long time, is a Nirvana which, since bodhisattvas don't attain it, that also they don't even know about it, or they aren't even interested in it. But actually, I think that the bodhisattvas, the Zen students that are here right now, actually are interested in Nirvana. Not all bodhisattvas seem to be, in a way, or at least they aren't conscious of it. I think all living beings, at least unconsciously, most deeply, that's what they want. The word Nirvana is often translated as cessation, which is also, I think, part of the reason why I'm afraid of it.

[28:02]

And also, very few Zen students say, I want to practice cessation. Sometimes they say, I want to stop the mind. But Nirvana is not exactly cessation, or stopping the mind. It is cessation in the sense of the cessation or the stopping of entanglements and delusions. But again, not that there's no delusion, but that you understand what delusion is. Nirvana is actually closely related to being very present. And in some sense, the bodhisattva's vow could be translated as,

[29:08]

I vow to not attain permanent, complete presence before other beings. I vow to not attain permanent, complete presence. I vow to not live in the present, completely. I vow to not live fully, completely, permanently, before other beings come. So one way to hear this is, I'm going to hold back from doing that until other people can do it. I don't think that's the way it's meant. There's a couple other ways that it's meant, that it could mean, that I think are more appropriate. One is, that if I'm living completely in the present, if I'm concentrating completely on something,

[30:13]

and someone else is not concentrating completely on something, I will realize that that has something to do with my concentration. That I'm not really so concentrated if other people aren't concentrated. It's not that I should stop being concentrated, but I should realize that if I think somebody else isn't concentrated, that has something to do with my concentration. One of the people I talked to said something about picking up a piece of paper on the street here at the Tassajara. It's nice to have a clean monastery, so we do soji and clean it up.

[31:18]

Part of the reason why we clean it up is to impress the visitors. Part of the reason for cleaning it up is to make it beautiful. Part of the reason to clean it up is to realize that that piece of paper there on the ground, and also the ground under the piece of paper, is your mind. And you can say, well, it's my mind, and walk by, or you can stop and go to the trouble of bending down and picking a piece of paper up as an exercise in understanding what your mind is. There's an expression in Soto Zen, there's no place in the whole world where you can spit. There's no place on the ground where you can, like, it's okay to spit there.

[32:31]

In the Orient, in India and China, spitting on things is considered to be not respectful. That's why we don't blow out candles. We don't blow out candles on the altar, because you don't want to spit on the candle, which is an offering to your favorite thing. And also, that's why we save a little, when we pour out the water after the orioke meals, we don't pour all the water out, because there might be spit or saliva at the bottom of the bowl. So we save that little bit and drink it back. There's no place on Earth you can spit. There's no low place that you can be disrespectful of.

[33:35]

There's no such place. As a matter of fact, the place where you think you can spit, if you can make friends with that place, that may bring you greater intimacy than the parts of the world where you think you can't spit, or where you think are very wonderful places, if you would never spit. So if you like this person, and you wouldn't spit on them, that's fine, but this person that you would spit on is something about you, that if you can stop yourself and appreciate them, you get to know more of yourself. That's part of the reason why we do Soji, is to particularly get to those areas of Tassajara that we don't usually think of as our mind,

[34:38]

and touch them, and respect them. When offering incense, there's a verse. When offering incense, there's a verse. And the last verse, I'll say the whole thing. The verse is precept incense, concentration incense, liberation incense. This offering pervades the world of Dharma like bright light, like cloud forms. Now I offer to inexhaustible Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Arhats to increase their Dharma joy.

[35:39]

Know that incense offering realizes nirvana. Putting that incense in that bowl realizes nirvana. Now I'll ask Suzuki Roshi one time what nirvana was, and he said it's to follow one thing through to the end. And again, you know, I thought that's what many of you said you wanted to do, was to follow something through to the end. To do something completely, all the way to the end. About a month ago,

[36:50]

I got involved in doing some body work on my wife's car. We were thinking of selling it, and we wanted to paint it before we sold it. And I took it to some painting places to ask them how much it would cost and so on, and what kind of work needed to be done. And they told me, and the surface of the... The funny thing is that a car, the places where the paint's worn off, where it's almost down to the metal, those places require very little work. They can paint over the parts that are worn thin, where the undercoat of the metal is actually showing. But where the paint's still thick, and on her car, where it had been repainted a couple times, where the paint's thick,

[37:54]

there, there's slightly more cracks, and some little pockmarks and so on. So even though it looked better there, all that paint had to be taken off in order to paint again. And they would charge, you know, $50 an hour to take it off, so I thought, well, I'll take it off. Do you allow me to take it off? So I took it off, and many hours I scraped the car. Very hard work, and... In the midst of it, often I thought, well, what am I, how did I get into this stupid mess? But once I got, once I did part of it, then I sort of had to do the rest of it. And I worked and worked, and didn't feel so good about it. And then I finally sort of finished, or I finished as much as I could, let myself do, and I brought it in to show the people, you know, what I had done, and then to see how much they would charge me

[38:55]

now that I did all that work. And they said that I actually kind of overdid it. Like in some places I... where the car had been painted before, because it had been dented, it built up underneath the paint a little bit, and I scraped the part they built up. Plus also I made some scratch marks on the metal and stuff, so... In the end, you know, I don't know how much money I saved. And then there came the time... In some sense I... I hesitate to go into detail on this, and... maybe I won't, but... I want to say that my hesitation to go into detail is partly... you know, the opposite of what I'm talking about. I mean, it's partly... In some sense I should go... I should go into extreme detail with you about the rest of the story, about what happened to this car, because that's part of what I'm talking about.

[39:58]

I'm talking about the willingness to take... to take, if you say, consummate trouble with something that you didn't even want to be involved in in the first place. That the Warren that we were going to get was going to be the one we got. We thought it was going to be real sexy. We didn't know it was going to be the way it turned out. It's like somebody who's trying to quit smoking or quit drinking. They want to quit smoking, or they want to quit drinking, but they don't want to feel the way they feel after they stop drinking. They just want to stop drinking. They don't want to feel what it's like after you don't drink for a while and when you want it. They don't want to feel that. So, we come into birth, we come into human birth, we came into it because it looked real neat, it looked real sexy, real...

[41:00]

you know, whatever. Real beautiful. And then when we got into it, it wasn't quite what we expected. Now that we're in it, now how can we follow through on what's going on here, even though it's not exactly the way we want it? That's a big problem. So, with this car thing, I actually, somehow I mustered up my energy and my commitment. I called forth all the love and respect and faith I could. I'm talking about faith. Faith not in car repair, but faith in following through on something that I got involved in. And at many points I just sort of wanted to say, oh, somebody else take care of it. But I couldn't. I was lucky. And I went back and forth

[42:02]

between different painting places and different body shops and so on and so forth. And finally, I made the decision and I did the work and it turned out very nicely. Very nicely. Beautiful job. It cost $420, but it was a beautiful job. And then, we sold the car and selling the car was very sad because it looked so beautiful. And it was this old car, you know, 18-year-old car in beautiful condition. It wasn't just a paint job. It was a beautiful car and now we lost this little baby as a result of all my good work. We also got some money for it. The same amount you paid for it 15 years ago.

[43:03]

No, 18 years ago. 15 years ago. Somebody said, the practice of Buddhism is a continuous process of what? That's the answer. It's a continuous process of you fill in blank. Forgetting about it. Making mistakes. Making mistakes. Waking up. Whatever, just leave it blank. Anyway, another possible thing to fill in is grieving. The continuous process of grieving. I would say, I would add to that,

[44:06]

without grieving, without bitterness. Without blaming. Without resentment. And working on that car was a continuous process of grieving. Except when it got painted. That was a moment of beauty. But then after that, I lost it. But I'm sort of bragging because although I did get resentful at various points in the process and I did get bitter and I looked for somebody to blame too. Believe me, I tried to find one. But who could I blame? There was nobody else involved. Nobody else did any work. It was me that was doing all this. So, although I was looking for someone, I just hung in there and realized that it was ridiculous. That there was no one. And that resentment wasn't

[45:08]

helping or hurting anybody but me. So, resentment, bitterness and blaming do come up in the process of grieving. But also, as you yourselves have mostly said, you want to stay in the present. And if you do, this resentment, the ridiculousness of this resentment and this blaming become apparent and it drops away. You could also say, fill in the blank with disillusion. Buddhism is a process of disillusionment. But again, disillusionment without resentment. In a monastery like Tassajara, I find it quite easy to experience

[46:09]

the little and the big disillusionment. The little and the big griefs. And then to also see the emotional reactions to those losses. To those reversals. So, as I said earlier, I'm very happy that you're such a close-knit group of Zen monks. And I would encourage you to continue to try to be completely present and wholehearted

[47:10]

about everything you do. Continue in this intention. Make yourself into a crucible that's whole and firm that can accept the experiences of pain, sickness and grief and disillusionment that will happen to you during these three months. Accept. Make yourself something that can accept and be open to these experiences. These contradictory experiences of birth and death that you will have. This is the crucible, this is the cauldron in which you will make wisdom and compassion. That's where it grows. It grows in the fireworks between birth and death.

[48:13]

Fireworks between what you expect and what happens. What you've got and what you want. Between the relative and the absolute and so on. Life will provide you with the with the stuff and the fire. Your main job is to take care of the crucible, the container, the cauldron. The same energy that's your job to take care of. Gather as much as you can of love and respect and faith and make a nice container for all your experiences. And listen to the

[49:16]

truth of the gentle Buddha's teaching. Om Om

[50:17]

Om Om Om Sengına Sengına Dilutions are inexhaustible. I vow to render. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to join to them. Buddha's way is unstoppable. I vow to become.

[51:23]

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