I feel that we must always be able to start over again, to go back to the beginning, even though we may develop quite a bit in Buddhism and learn a lot, still we must be able to be willing to go back to the start. This is the beginner's mind. And this is something that Suzuki Roshi not only recommended, but was able to do himself. In 1970, in January I think, he said, let's all, all of Zen Center, quote, start with the practice of following the breath. And I thought that was very good, that he could himself be willing to do that

[01:09]

practice, a very beginning kind of practice, something that all of us could do together. Again, at the beginning of this lecture, I'd like to go back to the beginning, and that is, to the thought of enlightenment, and to the initial thought of enlightenment. Thought of enlightenment, you know, Buddha's mind is the thought of enlightenment too. The mind of awakening is the great, utterly, completely, perfectly enlightened Buddha's mind. It's also called the mind of enlightenment. But how about going back and remembering about the initial thought of enlightenment, when you first give rise to it? So Buddha has unsurpassable

[02:09]

bodhi mind, but also Buddha can go back every day to that initial thought of enlightenment. So always check to see, do you have the thought of enlightenment? Is it alive or dead? There's one thing which all the Buddhas and ancestors and all the Zen teachers in history, there's one thing that they all share, and that is the vow to help all suffering beings attain awakening. There's many other things that vary, but they all share that vow. So that's the beginning of this practice. That's the common core. And I myself did not, I was not attracted

[03:19]

to Buddhism or to Zen practice with that understanding. Only later did I find that out. And when Dogen Zenji says, sitting in my grass hut, there's only one thing I really care about, and that is that others, that I take others across before myself. That that simple part, that dear vow, would be his main concern. Actually, when I first read that poem, I was surprised. A person who can write these amazing works of literature on Buddhism, that is the main point of his life, that he helps others before himself and take them across to freedom. That's his main prayer in life. And such

[04:29]

a greatly enlightened person saying, this ignorant self may not become Buddha, but still, I will take others across because I'm a monk. That's the beginning, okay? Even of such a great enlightened being as Dogen Zenji. I have this idea, this kind of outline or kind of vision of how I might give my Dharma talks for this practice period, at least maybe the first half of the practice period. And that is using the image that I brought up last time, namely of the Buddha sitting still, silent and empty. And then

[05:39]

all the Bodhisattvas circumambulating the Buddha. Huge congregations walking around the Buddha, doing all kinds of Bodhisattva practices that we talked about. And in outline form, ten practices of paying homage, praising Buddha, making offerings to Buddha, confessing and repenting in the presence of Buddha, rejoicing in the merits of others, requesting the Buddhas to teach, begging the Buddhas to stay with sentient beings until they're free, zealously doing all the practices and then dedicating the incalculable merit of such a tour of duty. And then going

[06:51]

around and around. So walking around the Buddha, doing these Mahayana Buddhist practices for all beings and also relating to that center. So what I thought I'd do is just each time I give a talk, take one of those practices and go around the Buddha, one of those at a time, and then also keep going back to the center. So talk about walking around, bring up a practice, talk about walking around through that practice and then go to the center. Talk about a practice and go to the center. Talk about a practice and go to the center. In that way that would be ten lectures or so. So I both want to reiterate the Mahayana Buddhism, which is the context of this Buddha, this huge ocean of practices that surround the Buddha. Talk about those but also keep talking about the Buddha or as we call it in this school, Zazen, at the center of all this. So I thought that might be easy for me to understand and outline maybe for you too.

[07:58]

And again, I want to say again and again and again, is that Dogen Zenji taught Zazen in a country that had had Buddhism at that time that he taught it. It had been in Japan for already about 700 years. And Mahayana Buddhism was very... Japan was a Buddhist country. All the aristocrats and the generals and everybody and also the common people, almost all of them were Buddhists. So when he said it's not necessary to circumambulate Buddha, to make offerings, to do confession and repentance. When he says it isn't necessary to do all this stuff, he's saying it to people who are already doing it. And he's really saying,

[09:04]

you're already doing this and I'm teaching you Zazen, which is actually to help you understand the proper way of doing what you're already doing. Just like Kuinan, the great ancestor said, Zen has nothing to do with meditation. But he was talking to people who were sitting cross-legged with the tongues on the roof of the mouth and the hands in the mudra. He was talking to meditators, trying to show them what Buddhism really is about and telling them the true way. So if we don't understand that when they give this teaching, we would think that we don't have to do those practices, if they were already doing them. So if we understand the historical context of Buddha, the sixth ancestor, Dogen and so on, then I think we have to create the environment in which they

[10:09]

did that practice. So that's what I feel that Zen needs to do more. To do the Bodhisattva practices in conjunction with this non-dual practice which Dogen Zenji emphasized. And even, what is it, D.T. Suzuki, when he first translated the Zen books, he didn't even mention Zazen. Almost never did he say anything about Zazen, because, well of course everybody does Zazen, so why mention it? But there's a lot of things which are assumed, which actually most of us do not know about, and not to mention practice. As a basic way of talking about Zen practice, you might say it has two phases. I should say, not Zen practice, but Zazen. Again, Zen practice, according to Dogen

[11:17]

Zenji, has two aspects. One is to do Zazen, and the other is to go talk, question about the Dharma with the teacher. Zazen itself could be broken into two aspects. The first aspect is to settle. To settle the body-mind on the body-mind. To use only this body-mind, to experience this experience, to be these five skandhas and not another five skandhas. That's the settling aspect. The next aspect is called many things, but basically it's to think in an entirely new way. To reverse the way you're thinking from your ordinary patterns. To perform a miracle. So you settle into your

[12:30]

phenomenal state, and then perform a miracle. That's Zazen. In China, as you can tell maybe by the reading some of the discourses, at the end of the discourses, Linji or somebody would say, you've been standing for a long time, so take care of yourselves. See you later. I was thinking maybe it would help to stand during these lectures. It would be easier to stay awake. So if you're having trouble staying awake, you can stand. That probably would make it easier. You can just stand over there. Your toes will get cold, but it's okay if you want to stand, just try to stay awake. Because I know it's kind of cozy, and you haven't had a chance to take a nap in quite a while, so this is a good opportunity. But on the other hand, here I am. So you've got to be awake to settle, and then even

[13:44]

more awake to perform this miracle called thinking in a new way. Dogen Zenji calls it learning the backward step. So you settle. Once you've settled into a steady immobile sitting position, then think of that which doesn't think. This is a really unusual way to think. This is a miracle. It's a miracle if you can think of the unthinking. What is that? It's non-thinking, and non-thinking is Buddha's mind. Non-thinking is a nickname for the way Buddha thinks. Now these bodhisattva practices, the connecting with the Buddha and so on, actually help you settle. They help eliminate resistances

[14:45]

and obstructions to settling, but also, particularly the bow aspect of these practices, help you, warm you up to thinking in a miraculous way. They warm you up to thinking in a way that you are not used to thinking. So I'd like to talk about the first one of these practices. Of Samantabhadra's ten practices, of ten vows. First vow is, I vow to pay homage to all Buddhas. As I mentioned before, homage means ... and the next one is, I vow to praise. So homage isn't

[15:47]

exactly praise. Of course, you wouldn't usually pay homage to something you didn't respect. Homage means that you align yourself. You align yourself, you put yourself in line with something. You say, I'm joining this club, I'm joining this lineage, I'm joining the family of all Buddhas. I'm putting my body, speech, mind and my aspirations in line with complete perfect enlightenment, with the beings who teach the way to save the world from suffering. That's what I'm going to do now. So Sudhana, Sudhana Kumara Sudhana, the young person, the young boy who is the hero of the Gandavyuha Sutra, the Upatamsaka Sutra, visits 52 teachers and the last teacher he visits is Samantabhadra. Samantabhadra is the epitome, the essence of the Bodhisattva practice.

[16:50]

The essence of the Bodhisattva practice is vowing. But vowing in Buddhism does not mean like so much like in Christianity. It has the aspect of, I promise or I'm going to do this. But vowing is primarily training in thinking. Vowing is primarily thinking a certain way. It has to do with what you're going to do, but it also has to do with the way you think about what you do. The Bodhisattva's main practice is thinking. Bodhisattvas are always thinking of Buddha. But they don't think of Buddha like most people think of Buddha. They think of Buddha non-dualistically. In other words, it's a miracle because they are Buddha by the way they think. They think just like a Buddha. They train themselves to make their mind think on a

[17:54]

scale like a Buddha thinks. They actually think that they want to help everybody. They want the absolute best for everybody to actually think like that all the time. And it's non-dualistic because that's how Buddha thinks. But a Buddha doesn't do anything. So the Bodhisattvas do the thinking. They do the work of enlightenment instead of being the enlightenment. But of course they also are the enlightenment. So Sudhana goes, the last teacher, the culmination of this huge sutra, the last teacher he visits is Samantabhadra. Manjushri is this kind of tour guide. Manjushri says, please, here he is. This is Samantabhadra, Sudhana. Sudhana has already visited 52 teachers. Now here's Samantabhadra. And Sudhana says, O great sage, pray explain to us what course we should follow in paying homage to the Buddhas and so on

[19:02]

up to dedicating merit or turning over the merit to all sentient beings. And Samantabhadra, the great Bodhisattva, said to Sudhana, O noble-minded person, in regard to paying homage to all Buddhas, one should think. I'm going to tell you, Samantabhadra is now going to teach the practice of the vows, teach a way of thinking about paying homage to Buddhas. With deep faith and understanding and by the blessed power of Samantabhadra's vows, Samantabhadra was saying, you can use my vows. I've been doing these vows for incalculable eons. You can use the power and benefits of my vows now. With deep faith and understanding and by the blessed power of my Samantabhadra's vows, I see all the Buddhas as though face-to-face

[20:07]

in the past, present and future and in all the ten directions throughout the realm of karma and the realm of space. An infinite universe is equal to the total number of atoms in a Buddha field. With all the virtue of my body, voice and mind, I shall pay sincere homage to them without cessation. In each and every Buddha land, I shall transform countless bodies and with each body I shall pay homage, I shall pay my veneration to incalculable Buddhas throughout the infinite Buddha domains, equal to the total number of atoms therein. My homage shall be ended when the realm of space is ended. But since the realm of space is boundless, so will my homage to all Buddhas be boundless. Likewise, if the space of beings is ended, the karmas of beings are ended, the sorrows of beings are ended, the passions

[21:11]

of beings are ended, my homage then will be ended. But as these also are endless, so will my homage to Buddhas be endless. Moment after moment, without interruption, in bodily, vocal and mental acts, without weariness or without becoming jaded, I will always take refuge, I will always pay homage to the Buddhas. We translate the Samantabhadra, the shining practice bodhisattva, incandescent practice bodhisattva. When the Samantabhadra does something, he does it with this kind of energy. So, we do that every day, right? Twice a day at least we say, homage to the Bhairavachana, Dharmakaya Bhairavachana Buddha. We say, you do that,

[22:13]

you actually do with your mouth, say that. What are you doing when you say that? Well, it's pretty hard to condense the energy of that little passage into that statement, but that's what the Samantabhadra teaches. That when you say that line in a meal chant, homage to the Dharmakaya Bhairavachana Buddha, you actually have that kind of vow, that kind of intention, that you are going to do this forever and you're really going to concentrate that kind of effort. So, Samantabhadra is teaching the way to think about taking homage, so he recommends this way of thinking about it. When you take homage with your mouth, when you say homage to the Dharmakaya Bhairavachana Buddha, he's saying, vow and think that way when you say that. He didn't give the instruction, say homage to the Dharmakaya Bhairavachana

[23:23]

Buddha, that's with your voice that you do that. But when you do it with your voice, you do it with this scale, with this intensity. That's why some people feel if we're chanting that chant, we shouldn't go, not shouldn't go, but it doesn't make much sense to go homage to the Bhairavachana Dharmakaya Buddha, homage to the... or not even say it maybe, maybe let other people say it. So, of course we can scream it. Now it might be okay to scream it, to cry it, to sing it, sing it, joyously take homage with the feeling of I'm going to do this forever, I'm going to do this until all sentient beings are Buddhas, I'm going to continue to take homage, I'm going to align myself with the Dharmakaya Bhairavachana Buddha, I'm going to do that, that kind of intensity. And you think that while you're saying that.

[24:28]

Another way you take homage, pay homage, is you bow. Everybody here bows, every day you bow, three, four, ten, however many times a day, you put your body on the line, you put your body down to the Buddha. While you're bowing, have that feeling. He didn't say bow, but while bowing, have this bow, have this way of thinking while you're bowing. So, you might want to memorize this, so that it's in you, so you feel that way, so you live in that bow, and then you bow, you bow and you bow, you bow and you bow, and then you think. Now, this is a way of thinking, but you think other things too, like you think, oh, there's cobra, oh, there's tiger. But when I think, while I'm thinking, at the same time my bow is in that thinking. Every thought I have, every act of mental karma I create,

[25:34]

at the same time I make this bow to pay homage with my thinking, through my thinking. This is the same thing as realizing Buddha directly through your body and mind. Okay? So, maybe, I don't know, maybe that's enough for you. One is enough for today, we'll see. What time is it? You should think, you should think, with deep faith and understanding and by the blessed

[26:36]

power of Samantabhadra's vow. See, now you might think, I mean, I told you to do this stuff, and while I was telling you, I thought, boy, it's pretty far out to tell people to think like that, to be that intense. How could you do that? But, it's not that you do it, you have Samantabhadra backing you up. It's because of Samantabhadra, it's because of these tremendously long-standing practices, they're backing you up and helping you be that weird. With deep faith and understanding and by the blessed power of Samantabhadra's vows, I see all Buddhas as though face-to-face in past, present and future, and in all the ten directions throughout the realm of dharma and the realm of space. An infinite universe is equal to the total sum of atoms in a Buddha field. Now, you may think, well, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't

[27:45]

see that, but if you say, I can't see that, yes, you can't see that, but somebody can see it. Something can see it. What can see it? Buddha can see it. There is a Buddha inside you that can see this. Don't let the fact that you don't think you can see this get in the way. Just say it anyway. Just say it, maybe the Buddha in there can say, thanks for saying so, I'm glad you realized that. It's true, I do see that. Don't let your little eyes, your little ears, your little practice be the definition of what you can do now. As Dogen Zenju said, if you go out in the ocean and there's no islands around, you look around, all you see is a circle of water, but the ocean is not circular or square. It

[28:48]

is infinite in characteristics and qualities. You can only see as far as your eyes reach, as far as your eyes of practice reach. You're stuck in your little eyes, but you can still say, the ocean I see, I see, I know there's an ocean there and the ocean isn't this circle of water, and I'm going to see this ocean. These eyes will not see the ocean. Somebody can see the ocean. With all virtue of my body, voice and mind, I shall pay sincere homage. I will align myself without cessation. In each and every Buddha land, I shall transform countless bodies, and with each body I shall pay veneration to incalculable Buddhas throughout infinite Buddha domains, equal to the total number of atoms therein. My homage will be ended

[29:52]

when the realm of space is ended. But since the realm of space is boundless, so will my homage to all Buddhas be boundless. Likewise, if the spheres of beings are ended, if the karmas of beings are ended, if the sorrows and passions of beings are ended, my homage will then be ended. But as these two are endless, so will my homage to all Buddhas be endless. Moment after moment, without interruption in bodily, vocal or mental acts, without weariness of becoming jaded, I added the becoming jaded. I didn't add it, jaded means to be weary. I noticed some years ago that when I used to read the Diamond Sutra, we still do sometimes read the Diamond Sutra, anyway, the Diamond Sutra from over here, sometimes there's certain parts of the Diamond Sutra I think are really neat. We used to read it that you could open

[30:55]

the book and read wherever you wanted to, people would read it different places. And I would open the book and read the places I liked, and I knew which sections they were. Like for example, section 10c of the Diamond Sutra is the section that the Sixth Patriarch woke up on. Anyway, there's certain sections I really liked, so I would open to read those and I noticed that when I kept reading those sections, after a while, I didn't like the Diamond Sutra anymore. And then I found that if I would just read straight through and read the uninteresting parts, that when I hit the interesting parts, they were interesting again. And not only that, but some of the uninteresting parts sometimes pop up there and give you a little smack too. This is kind of like folklore, right? Everybody knows this. Remember the story of the king or the prince that was wasting away, and the king brought

[31:55]

all the great cooks from all over the world to make him the best little feasts and he wouldn't eat anything? He'd become totally jaded. He was weary of eating. And then the boy traveled all over, the young man traveled all over this countryside trying to look for something that he could find to eat. And he met somebody and he said, I'm looking for the best food in the world that I can eat. And he met a woodsman and the woodsman said, oh, I've got it. He said, oh great, well, give it to me. And the woodsman said, well, first you have to come do something first. He said, what? He said, well, I'll show you. And he took him out in the back and they chopped wood all morning. And then he said, okay, now you can have the food and gave it to him as a piece of dried bread. And it was delicious. If we keep going for the best dharma, pretty soon nothing will satisfy us. But if you take what comes, after a while, everything will be delicious. And some things will be more

[33:02]

delicious than others. But everything will be good if you go through the other stuff. Yesterday I was reading the Avatamsaka Sutra and I hit this section, this chapter called The Merit of the Initial Production, the Initial Determination of Enlightenment. The first time you think that you want to become enlightened, what's the merit of that? Okay? So, they say, well, you know, you've heard this before probably, but they say, let's say this person makes offerings to Buddhas and sentient beings and gives them all these great foods and all these wonderful things and does this and does it in all these world systems. And let's say it does it for many, many eons. And let's say there's a second person. Oh, and then you do all that in a second. Let's say there's a second person who for an eon does in each

[34:08]

second what the other person did in many eons. And then a third person who in a second does what the second person did in many eons of each moment being doing what another one did in many eons. Okay? Up to ten people. So the merit of that tenth person would be rather large, you can maybe imagine. I'm shortening it for you. So I read that. Well, of course the merit of the initial thought of enlightenment compared with the merit of this tenth person does not bear any kind of comparison to the merit of the thought of enlightenment. Why? Because even the tenth person, still there's some measure, there's some measure still,

[35:10]

I just measured it, even though no one could say what it was, there's still some way to measure. The Buddhists could measure how great the merit of that tenth person was, but the merit of the thought of enlightenment has no bound. Okay? So then they go on to another example. And another example. And another example. That's one example I just said. And I wrote and I stopped and I said, I can't go on. I can't keep reading this. My concentration started wavering. I just couldn't bring myself to read another one. It was so boring. I just really wanted to skip over this chapter and go to the next one. I didn't even know what the next chapter was, but I was sure it was more interesting than this. My faith flagged and I wanted to have a different body and mind than the one I was having, that was reading this stuff about these repetitive descriptions of the unbelievable merit of the thought of

[36:16]

enlightenment. I really wanted to go on to something else. And I wrote in the margin. My concentration is wavering. And in the margin I talked myself into going on. And I finished the chapter. And I wrote at the end, I didn't give up. And by God, after a little bit longer it wasn't so bad. And the jadedness started to go away. The weariness went away. But if I stop, and then I go to the next chapter, I believe, I experience this, I become more and more weary, more and more jaded. And pretty soon I have to close the book entirely and

[37:17]

then the most fascinating part of the book won't be interesting anymore. So Dogen says, realize Buddha directly through, only through this body and mind. Don't think your body and mind to another one. Don't go on to a more interesting section of the sutra. Now at the same time I say to people, I sometimes recommend the Lotus Sutra to people. I say, don't bang your head against it. Don't keep reading it if you can't stand it. And give up on Buddhism as a result of forcing yourself to read the Lotus Sutra and getting so angry at the Lotus Sutra and me. Because if there's one thing that's bad, it's getting mad at the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus Sutra says, do not show it to people that won't believe in it. But still, even though I tell people, don't bang your head against it, actually

[38:21]

maybe now I should say, bang your head against it. Keep reading it even though you can't stand it. But actually I can't bear to say that, but I do it for myself. For myself, I'm strict that way. Because I know that if I don't keep reading through this body and mind, I know what happens. I just get more and more tired of the world. After a while, nothing satisfies me. And that's the great thing about Tassajara is, one of the great things about Tassajara is that you can actually start eating a simpler diet of body and mind. And then, you never did tell me what time it is, you asked me to read that thing again.

[39:23]

She said 9.30. 9.30, okay. Tia came and asked me about headphones the other day. People listening to music with headphones in Tassajara. She said, well what's the matter with headphones? And when Mel came down I said, I want to talk to you about headphones. Yes, I heard a rumor. He said, well, at the end of one of the practice periods, at the end of session, somebody came to me, I said, I've never listened to music in Tassajara before, but somebody came to me and said, you've got to listen to this tape. So I put the tape on the recorder and I put the headphones on and I laid back and said, it just totally wiped me off. It was just amazing. And at Tassajara, because of our simple diet, because of listening to the stream, and not

[40:32]

saying, could we have a different, could you change the channel, because of the temperature and the rain and the sun and the moon and the people and the schedule, we start getting in the habit of taking what comes, rather than sort of switching the channel, or shopping someplace else. And then, if you hear Beethoven, it is a total wipeout, especially if you hear through headphones. Here you are in a silent valley, undistracted, and this music comes and just completely wipes you off. No place does music sound so beautiful as here, or some place like this. But it's not so much here, it's not so much Tassajara, it's the way we live here that makes the music sound so good. Like Nakamura Sensei said, the tea never tastes as good as in the tea room. If you go in your own room, and you sip a whiff of the tea, it's not as delicious, because the tea room and Tassajara and the schedule, they surround the experience by silence and space. So the experience stands up and says,

[41:39]

this is heaven. So, Kamil and I feel, both of us very sadly, that we should not be listening to music in Tassajara, because of the very reason that it's so wonderful to do so. And that same, that mind that can appreciate things, should be used to appreciate what comes, rather than going to that. I haven't talked to the practice committee about this, and I haven't talked to the community about it, but we're both willing to sadly give it I've been wondering if the backwards step, or thinking of what doesn't think, is deliberate

[42:59]

or spontaneous? Well, it happens on what's happening. So, in that sense, it is a type of thinking which cannot be deliberate. And you can't, if something happens, you can't then sort of think the backward step on the thing that's happening. You have to use what's happening to think the backward step. To think, to take the backward step, to study the backward step, you have to use just what comes up. So it isn't that something comes up, and then you say, okay, now I'm going to take the backward step. So it must be spontaneous. In other words, it must happen with what's happening. Right? Does that make sense? Otherwise it's dualistic

[44:01]

again. And then if it's dualistic, it's not the backward step. The backward step is non-dual thinking, non-dual meditation. So it must arise with what's happening, and it couldn't be the slightest bit separate. Like you go to what's happening, and you have this little thing in your back of your pocket called, take the backward step. Okay, now take the backward step. No. At the same time, it is deliberate, in the sense that you deliberately vow to save all sentient beings. You actually vow to attain enlightenment, so there's a deliberateness there too. So where does Causal Deliberateness apply? It applies in the sense that you have a deep faith, an unshakable, unwavering faith that this is the backward step. That this is thinking in an entirely different way than you ever thought before. That this is seeing the ocean as it really is, even though you also know that what you

[45:03]

see is just a circle of water. The circle of water appears spontaneously, and it's there every moment. Some circle of water appears, but also the ocean is there. The backward step is a deep faith that this is the ocean, the way you can see the ocean. But it is the ocean too, but the ocean doesn't look like this. So it's spontaneous, and yet the way we think has effects. And if you think like this, as you think, what happens? The ocean looks like this, that is the backward step. But as you think another way, because you think like this, that is also the backward step. So everything is the backward step. Everything is to totally reverse your karmic patterns. Everything is the essential art of Zazen. Everything is non-thinking. Non-thinking is really the way you're thinking. And yet

[46:08]

if you don't make vows, if you don't pay homage to Buddhas and so on, you have trouble believing that this is the essential art of Zazen. Many people have trouble believing that this is the essential art of Zazen. No one can believe that this right now is the essential art of Zazen if they're not settled. If you're not settled, completely settled and still and quiet, you can't believe that this is the essential art of Zazen. But when you are settled, when you are unwavering in the face of experience, then that very experience is the backward step. To be settled is not enough though. You have to be settled and you have to also believe that this is non-thinking. This is the way Buddha thinks.

[47:09]

And so one way to check to see if you can believe that you're thinking like a Buddha is to read this stuff and see if you have any resistance to thinking that way. If you say, I can't, I can't think like that, even though you just read it, then you're resisting thinking like a Buddha. And then you're resisting settling into your body and mind. So then you won't be able to believe that you can do this. To think like this is no easier than to think non-thinking. Non-thinking is to think like this vow. This vow is an elaboration of what non-thinking could be like. Namely, thinking in a way you don't usually think. Or thinking in a way you can't even believe or imagine you could think. So once you're settled, then something which before you couldn't believe was the backward step can be the backward step. But it isn't anything other than what's happening. It can't

[48:14]

be, otherwise it's non-dual. Non-dual is the backward step. Another way to put it is, I was talking to Noreen and I said, we're talking about like being wounded. If you have a wound or an affliction or a handicap or something like that, if you don't know you're wounded, the wound is going to interfere with your life considerably. You know? Does that make sense? Like if you have somebody stab you in the back and you don't know it, or you have a big rip in the side of your thigh and you just keep walking around without knowing it, you're going to just die from loss of blood or whatever, or infection. If you take care of the wound, then that'll be good. If you know about the wound, then you can take care of it. But still, that's just taking care of a wound. But if you take

[49:18]

care of the wound and you settle into knowing what the wound is, completely settled into taking care of the sickness or the wound, then the next wound, when it happens, you can wake up on that one. The wound can then be the moment when you wake up. When the wound first happens, you have to take care of it. But by taking care of that wound and completely being willing to have that wound and have that problem of taking care of it and have the adaptation to taking care of that wound, then if somebody comes up and sticks another knife into you, at that moment, that can be the backward step. The first wound in this story I told, the first wound, you weren't settled. So when you were wounded, you had to learn what the wound was. You had to settle with the wound. You weren't already settled with some other wound. And by wound, I mean any experience.

[50:23]

So any experience you're not aware of is like a wound. In other words, it's going to hurt you. Every experience that you're not aware of, that you're not settled with, will hurt you, will harm you, will drag you, will throw you around. Anything you're not aware of becomes your oppressor and you become a slave to it. But anything that's happening, that's your body-mind. You can use that to settle. And once you're settled, then any body-mind experience is the backward step, can be the backward step. So the determination, the willfulness, the vow is to settle into the body-mind that you're aware of now. That's where you apply the sort of heroic effort, I'm going to do this, I'm going to be here. Once you're there and you don't have to do anything, then you just sit, quiet, unmoving, unwavering by whatever people say. You know, they recently found out there's no Buddha. You know, they recently found out there is a Buddha. You know, they recently

[51:34]

found out that Buddha's really even better than they thought. You know, they found out that Buddha's not as good as they thought. You sit there. This is Mara, okay? Buddha was sitting there and all the cleverest little snide remarks that could be possibly made to Buddha are said. All the trickiest possible disturbing suggestions are made and Buddha's sitting there listening to them, hearing these things. You name it, they tried, and Buddha did not move. You see, even if somebody tells you something just tremendously wonderful about practice, something that makes you realize practice is even better than you thought, still you shouldn't get excited when you're sitting there. Once you're settled in your body-mind, you should stay with this body-mind and not switch over to another body-mind which even realizes practice is better than this. You should stay with this body-mind. And there, staying with this body-mind, then the next thing that happens could be complete, complete

[52:39]

non-thinking. So that's where the deliberateness, the deliberateness. Get yourself to the center of your life. Get yourself to your experience and stay there, and don't move and don't say a word, and be empty, empty of the desire to be anything else, and then the backward stuff can happen. So like Gensho, he left his teacher. Gensho, his teacher was seppu. He left his teacher by teacher and he walked away from his teacher down the hill from the monastery, and he stubbed his toe. And amid intense pain and blood squirting on Chinese earth, he said, if the body has no inherent existence, where is this pain coming from? And he was greatly enlightened by the pain in his toe. But who walks in such a way that

[53:46]

when they stub their toe they say, if this mind, if this body has no inherent existence? He was already settled. He was walking down the hill. He was already settled in his body-mind, not by accident, but by the force of his determination to be in his body-mind. He was there. He was there, and when that toe got stubbed, he was there and he saw it in the backward stuff happen, and he woke up. So there is determination. There definitely is that will. But once your will is complete and you're settled and you're still, then the backward stuff is not a willful thing. It is the true working of your mind which you're awakened to. And these bodhisattva vows help you remove your resistance from letting yourself see yourself think that way, because you cannot believe from your little mind that you yourself could actually be thinking that way. So you try it on willfully through these exercises. That's what I mean

[54:48]

by circumambulating. But at the center, you're not circumambulating, you're sitting still and you're quiet at the center. Your mind is unwavering at the center. It always is, but you have to do these circumambulation practices to be willing to stay there, to resist, to remove the resistances, to be there, to not be overly excited or depressed about being there. That's all. When you're there, that's it. Then Buddha will appear. On this, not on this, then you put the Buddha on it. You do the backward step on it. This is the backward step. Walk around and around and sit. Walk around and around and sit. Remove the resistance. What is it? Little box samba, remember? I was thinking or wondering if after you've sort of become liberated in a certain way,

[55:57]

you're settled in a certain way, then you have another experience. It takes a lot of calmness while you're settled. But then after you've sort of learned to be settled in circumstances and then you stick your toe again or something exciting happens, then sometimes you shout and then sometimes you get excited. Yes, sometimes you do, but that's actually just a little bit of a slip. The perfect Buddha, when the Buddha wakes up at that time, the Buddha still doesn't move. So it's sitting there. It happens and the realization occurs. And then sometimes people go, whoopee, or something like that. But it's actually, that's an emotional reaction later. The actual thing.

[56:59]

What's the story? Did you hear that story about how to paint the portrait of a bird? Well, what time is it? Ten to ten? Maybe not time to tell it, but anyway, I'll just tell it. I'll tell you one section of it. And that is, the whole story is about how to get this bird to come into a painting that you're drawing. You're drawing a painting of a bird, painting a portrait of a bird is the name of the poem. And you actually paint a bird comes into the painting. And when the bird finally comes, the poem says, and when the bird arrives, if the bird arrives, at the time it arrives, observe the most profound silence. So when insight hits, when the backward step appears, when non-thinking is manifest, at that time you've got to really hold on to your seat. You were waiting for the bird,

[58:02]

right? You put the cage out there for the bird to come into and you're waiting for it quietly, patiently, still, not going to another painting. And then the bird appears. At that time, there's some tendency to throw away the whole practice, which you have been doing for the bird to come to. So at that time you should keep sitting still. Although there is a tendency to go, it finally came! Confirmation of this effort. And that happens. Many people tell that story. I've heard that story hundreds of times. I got concentrated and I noticed and then I wasn't. Right? Noticing that you're concentrated is very happy, you feel good. You're concentrated though, and before you noticed you were concentrated. Because you're concentrated, you noticed you were concentrated, and that's fine. But then you get real excited

[59:05]

and then you blow it. So to thoroughly integrate this insight, you should try to stay calm. But sometimes people do yell for joy, right? But that's usually one of the first times it happens. The later ones, people don't tend to do anything. You look like you're going someplace else. Well, I'm wondering, not just about getting excited about the enlightenment or whatever, but your life after that point, it's like you can be excited and get carried away, and be excited and not get carried away, or you can suffer pain. You're using the word excited. Well, what about another example? If you say inspired, that's okay. These kinds of experiences are often inspiring, and you're

[60:11]

inspired doubly. You're inspired by the experience and you're also inspired by the mistake of getting excited. That's inspiration too, that you feel confirmed and getting excited actually cuts away part of the energy. So it seems like we can have a real caricature that might get in the way also. You always stay extremely calm once you're there, but that's not right either. The Buddha is unwavering in the truth. The truth can be anything. The truth can be a back handspring, the truth can be a burp, the truth can be a sneeze, but there is always no movement at the center of that experience. But what the awkward form appears to be has no limitation. Buddhas are really free, I

[61:15]

mean really. They're so free that they usually don't even care to cash in on that, but they could. But the main thing they do actually, and this can be anything, the weirdness really gets out there, because the main thing they do is they do what people need. And you know what people need sometimes. Sometimes people need a tick taken out of them. Sometimes people need to be screamed at. Sometimes people need to be kissed. Sometimes people need to be patted on the back or fed. You name it, the Buddha can do that through the vehicle of the Bodhisattvas. But unwavering in the truth, and unwavering in totally being settled in this, this could be anything, but whatever it is they're settled in that. It could be talking to you now, it could be nodding your head, it could be running up the hill, but settled in that. That's always

[62:19]

a characteristic of them. So you can have this real comfortable, like, in this category which is vibrations and what between being aware of the outward form and always simultaneously being aware of your center. Yeah, that vibration he's talking about in some sense is what I'm talking about, of circumambulating Buddha and being at center. Dynamic. Because as human beings our resistances keep cropping up. So you have to keep doing purification practices and accumulation of merit practices and giving them away practices in order to just be sitting there, unwavering. And Zen practice has both of these kinds of practices and as it's been transmitted to us, there's been an emphasis, at least in the verbal presentation, an emphasis has been placed on sitting at the center part. But the practices that surround us, which we do,

[63:20]

which we don't notice so much, are actually giving us a hint. So I will go on with this particular style, I'll go upon them, and next time I'll do the next few of those practices, and I'll keep going back and forth, talking about the central practice of Zazen and the surrounding practices, the central practice of non-dual meditation and the surrounding practices of the Samantabhadra's ten vows, ten transcendental exercise programs. Yes? I'm wondering if you were saying that you have to have a one-way thinking, that there's something in you that thinks that there's a way that you can do that. Yeah. And I was wondering if that was true also for parameters, in particular, that you have to have that kind of energy to produce that kind of energy, even though it's made up of

[64:40]

things. Right. Like, what's his name? Did you ever hear the name Ermengarde Schlegel? Ermengarde Schlegel is a German woman who studied in Japan, studied Zazen and Daito-Kuji for quite a while, and she did one of the translations of the Linji-Rinzai-Roku. I think she said something like this, that one time she was bowing in Japan, and she was bowing, and when she was down on the ground she said to herself, I don't understand why I'm doing this, it really seems silly, but somebody's really having a good time here. Somebody's bowing like hell. You know? Or is there a better story? The story of hearing the insentient beings, like hearing this, hearing this expound the Dharma, although you may not hear it, please don't hinder that which does. Sometimes I feel like that.

[65:47]

Sometimes I'm talking to people in lecture and I'm saying something, and the person is going kind of like … and I feel like, would you please get out of the way? I'm talking to that person. Get out of there! I feel like there's this thing in there listening to me going, hi, hi, thanks, more, more! And the person's going … So I say, okay, you may not get it, but would you please not get in the way from this other one that's inside there? Those millions if not hundreds inside you that are clapping for me, that want me to keep talking, would you please? So, yeah. You know the resistance, right? There's two kinds of resistance. One kind of resistance is, I don't want that. I don't like that. The other kind of resistance is, hey, this is really neat. That's resistance. That's resistance. The perfect thing is not holding, not going, and not going, hey, this is neat.

[66:51]

The lack of resistance is just doing it. You see some people sometimes, once in a while you see somebody come into the Zen, they're kind of like, oh, boy, I can hardly wait to get up there and sit, oh, this is going to be great, you know, this is, Zazen's really neat. That's kind of resistance. Rather than just do it. Not up here, do it there on the way. As you put your foot down, do it. Don't be excited about it going to happen tomorrow. Be looking forward to it. In a few seconds you're going to be in the Zen Dojo and it's going to be neat. Do it. So sometimes we think practice is really wonderful and we blow our top over it. That's resistance. Other times we think it's really depressing and we can't do it. That's resistance. And some people around here, the kind of resistance they do, it's delightful to see, you know. They're just so enthusiastic about practice, so excited about it, so delightful to see, really. But I'm just scared to death if it switches to the other side with the same intensity.

[67:54]

It's easier to take the ones who say, boy, Zazen's great. But what if it's got to be the opposite? Anyway, both are resistances and the way is just to do the practice. But it takes a lot of work, back and forth, back and forth, to work out the right kind of relationship, which is no relationship at all, which is just to be the Buddha way. But believe me, no, I don't believe you. Anyway, I think you are the Buddha way. I mean, there isn't another Buddha way that we've got. You're it. You're the people who are doing it. I mean, there's other people doing it too, but you're it. And if you don't think so, well, please don't hinder the one who's doing it, because I see you doing it. And don't let your own personal opinion stop you from doing things that you really want

[68:58]

to do. So does that make sense, this little kind of outline I have, walking around the Buddha that way? Give me about ten more lectures and I'll be done. And then we can talk about Zen, the way we're used to hearing about it. It's getting dark. May our intention be brilliant.

[69:30]

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