Yesterday I talked about the teaching that in practicing the way, the first issue is to arouse the thought of enlightenment. And I discussed the intimate relationship between seeing impermanence, and the thought of enlightenment, and letting go of selfish concerns. These three things work together. Three things. Seeing impermanence, the thought of enlightenment, and selfless practice. Selfless practice is the thought of enlightenment.

[01:01]

Seeing the mind that sees impermanence is the thought of enlightenment, and the mind that sees impermanence is the mind that helps us let go of selfish concern. And a part of what helps to see impermanence is to look at, take a close look at that mind that's always selfishly concerned, seeking fame and profit. So as a way Practically speaking, just watch this mind that's concerned with self, that's concerned with gain. Just reflect on that. Look closely at that.

[02:04]

Based on this honest observation of this egocentric thought process, you may come to the place where you can just forget yourself and practice inwardly. This is one with the thought of enlightenment. Just let go of your ludicentric thoughts and practice calmly. This is the most realistic form of the thought of enlightenment. Because we have right at our disposal near at hand self-concern. egocentric thought. It's right there. You don't have to go far to find it. Study it, study it, study it, watch it, and then just let go of it and practice calmly.

[03:10]

This is a practical, very practical, very realistic way to realize the thought of enlightenment. I talked about that yesterday. Do you remember something about that? Does that sound familiar? You having trouble hearing? Did you hear anything that I said before? Much? You heard much of it? Not much. All right. How's this? Better? Okay, one of the people who were sitting over there did hear me yesterday, and he said, Those were fine words yesterday. But it's putting them into practice that's difficult. Even though your egocentric thoughts, even though your self-concern is quite nearby, actually putting into practice the close observation of it could be difficult.

[04:22]

But that is the point, that putting into practice is what counts. So the next part of the guidelines for practicing in a way is that once you hear a night teaching like that about how to watch your egocentric thought Let go of it and practice calmly. Realize thought of enlightenment. Enter the Buddha way. Once you hear a nice teaching like that, a teaching which you might think, hey, that's true. That's true dharma. When you hear that true dharma, then the next thing is you should practice it without fail. Before I gave my talk yesterday, I asked I asked almost all of you, what is your intention, what is your intention for the Sashin, and I heard these fantastic, not fantastic, these awe-inspiring intentions. I was deeply encouraged, and it was a breath of fresh air to hear, wonderful intention, wonderful intention, wonderful intention.

[05:37]

And today, the second day, I hear what happened to these intentions as you've entered the, excuse the expression, avalanche of practice. It's hard to practice these intentions when you're actually confronted with this body and mind which hears and sees and smells and touches and tastes and thinks and emotes and fears and yearns and aches it's hard but those intentions are still excellent now it's a question of putting them into practice hearing the Dharma the true Dharma put it into practice you want to realize such an intention such a practice

[06:44]

you should practice such a way. If you want to practice such a way, you should practice this suchness without delay. And if you constantly perform in such a manner, you are assured of being such a person. If you practice suchness, for a long time you will become, you will be suchness. Once you see or hear the true teaching you should practice without fail. One phrase offered by a loyal servant can have the power to alter the course of a nation.

[07:48]

One word given by a Buddha ancestor cannot fail but turn people's minds. One word given and received and practiced can change the course of a nation. The unwise ruler does not adopt the servant's advice. One who does not step forward cannot accept the Buddha's teaching. If you are unbending, you cannot stop the floating along with birth and death. Hearing the true Dharma, we have to let it move us into practice. The next part of the Gakkodoyo Jinshu is closely related.

[10:09]

W. Zenji says, in the Buddha way, you should always enter enlightenment through practice. And I guess this is a statement that is very familiar to you all, this concept that we enter enlightenment through practice. But, I guess, it also could be said that you tend to practice through enlightenment. If we are involved in a life that has some self-concern, some egocentric thoughts still occurring, then that's where we start the practice from which we enter enlightenment.

[12:50]

If we're self-centered people, then it's from self-centeredness that we practice. If we're deluded people, then it's in the midst of delusion that we practice. And from the practice in the midst of delusion and self-concern, it's from there that we enter the Buddha way. joyfully enter the Buddha way through joyfully practicing in the midst of greed, hate and delusion. Not just greed, hate and delusion, not just indulging in greed, hate and delusion, but intensely, wholeheartedly practicing in the midst of creating delusion.

[13:56]

Thus we enter Buddha's way. Respectfully, lovingly, laughing in the face of delusion. Not snidely, nastily laughing at delusion, but lovingly laughing at delusion. Oh, hi, Delusion. Hi, I know who you are. You are Delusion, and I am your pal, and I am laughing happily. You don't scare me anymore, even though what you are is intense fear. I hope I'm being respectful to you because I know what will happen if I'm not. Am I respectful enough of you to allow me to enter the Buddha way now?

[15:01]

And fear and delusion and greed and hate will say, Yes, you may. Please enter the Buddha way. You're such a good student. And this ability to wholeheartedly study delusion is another expression of not being pushed around by self-concern. The ability to study self-concern is an example of being free from self-concern. How do we study this egocentric thought, these self-cleaning thoughts, how do we study them? We just let them be what they are. We let the selfish thought be a selfish thought. We let the egocentric issue be an egocentric issue. And letting it be, we let it go.

[16:05]

letting it go to be then practiced calmly. For a while, We practice within delusion. And we attain realization before enlightenment. Douga Zenji said you should know that arousing the practice in the midst of delusion, you attain realization before you recognize it.

[17:32]

Arousing the practice in the midst of delusion, you attain realization before you recognize it. Is this the true Dharma? If so, the ancestor, the old Buddha says, you must put it into practice without fail. How do you put it into practice? Got delusion? Study it. Which means let the delusion just be delusion. It means in the face of delusion you wholeheartedly sit upright. Wholeheartedly sit upright means you let the delusion be delusion. How can you tell if you're wholeheartedly sitting?

[18:50]

Are you letting things be what they are without adding the slightest or subtracting the slightest? If you are that way, you are sitting upright wholeheartedly. If you don't know whether you're leaving things alone, check your body. Is your body sitting upright? Is it wiggling at all? If it is, if you're not sitting upright, then maybe you're not leaving things alone. These two work together. This is called practicing in the face of greed, hate, and delusion. When you practice like that, you attain the way before you recognize it. rather than recognize it before you practice it.

[19:52]

But if you do recognize it, it's okay. Your recognition might be a recognition that's coming after the realization that came before you recognized it. Since you may be traveling through various worlds, I wanted to give you a little road map.

[21:25]

I actually gave it to you yesterday, but I want to go over the map again. Sometimes the Buddha way is presented as three disciplines. And in Sanskrit they call these disciplines samvara. The word discipline means sambhara. First discipline is called pratimoksha sambhara. The second discipline is called dhyana sambhara. The third discipline is called hanasarava sambhara. So that means the discipline of practicing that which is conducive to liberation. That's receiving, that's the precepts. That's the practice of confession and receiving the precepts, refuges and other precepts. Then comes dhyana samvara.

[22:27]

That's the discipline in concentration. That's the discipline in step-ladder concentration, stages of concentration. And the third step, is a discipline in that which doesn't have any outflows. In other words, discipline in non-duality. Sometimes the Buddha way is presented as though you go one, two, three among those. But first you receive the precepts which are conducive to liberation. Then you enter dhyana, then you discipline yourself in non-dual life. But in Zen, we receive the pratimoksasamara, the discipline of that which is conducive to liberation, and then we enter Zen from there.

[23:38]

And Zen is Not practicing dhyana, not practicing stepwise concentration, but concentrating, taking that concentration practice and not using it to go into stages of concentration, but take that concentration and turn that concentration towards the discipline without outflows. So Zen is the concentration on the non-duality, on the lack of outflows. Which means to concentrate on suchness. Which means to concentrate on letting things be as they are. Which means to concentrate on no here or there or in between. When there's a here or a there, there's outflows. From here to there and there to here.

[24:42]

There's flowing from there to here and flowing from here to there. It can't help but be if there's a here and a there. Receive the precepts and watch, are there outflows? Is there a here and a there? Is there energy gain and loss between you and the objects? If so, look closely at how that happens until you can just let that over there be the over there. And when you let the over there be over there, there won't be an over there, an over here. And then you'll be looking at non-duality, where there's no inflow, no gain and loss. and we concentrate on that no gain and loss.

[25:44]

We train ourselves in no gain or loss, and we concentrate on no gain and loss. If we haven't yet realized no gain and loss, we confess, I'm living in the world of gain and loss. we look closely at the world of deluded gain and loss and we let the world of deluded gain and loss be the world of deluded gain and loss and we're attended to that moment by moment we face the world of gain and loss the mind of gain and loss and we let it be that way until we see No gain and loss. And then when we see no gain and loss, we then continue to immerse ourselves, to absorb ourselves in the no gain and loss mind.

[26:54]

This wonderful no gain and loss mind. And the door to the no gain and loss mind is through looking closely at the gain and loss mind and letting it be that way, just like it is. And it will open and release. Sometimes they say you can blow on it a little bit and it'll open if it's stuck. So here's some more words which may or may not be true Dharma.

[28:07]

But if there were any true Dharma spoken, now can it be put into practice? I think it can be put into practice. And I think you could enter the Buddha way. You could enter enlightenment from such practices as I just was talking to you about. I want to confess to you that I'm very happy about this teaching.

[30:18]

It makes me happy that such a teaching is available to us. We've got some work ahead of us. We've got some difficulty ahead of us. But that's not the end of the story. We also have a teaching which says, when you run into difficulty, just check out whether there's any self-concern, whether there's any egotistical thoughts, any egocentric emotions. Just check them out. Study them, let them be just like they are, and then they'll drop away. If you're running in difficulty, if something comes up and you're having a hard time, check to see if there's any outflows.

[31:24]

Is there any draining from here over to there or flooding from there over to here? Any outflows? Any here or there? If so, we're not leaving things alone. If we're having trouble, just wholeheartedly sit, let things be just like they are, and the door of liberation will open of itself. And you can use it at will. Open door, close door. And I also want to mention that, um, uh, Gradual practice, you know, where you go prati-moksha-sambhara, jhana-sambhara, anasarava-sambhara, those stepwise ways, and also doing concentration practice just for concentration rather than using your concentration to look at your deluded mind.

[32:31]

If you want to just concentrate on an object and not pay attention for now to your deluded mind, and you want to do that just to cope with your deluded mind it's okay that stepwise process is okay I call that bomb shelter practice it's alright if you can't stand to look at your delusions if you can't stand to look at your selfish greedy vampire mind and you want to focus on something else go ahead And then maybe you can calm down enough to say, okay, let's go out of the bomb shelter now into the fresh air where I'll get greedy again for flowers and flesh. Come out of the dark, stale world of where you're focusing on one thing when you're ready.

[33:37]

But in the meantime, it's okay to go down to a simplified world But we've already simplified things somewhat here. Maybe it's simple enough. So you could now, with this simple setup, watch your selfishness. Watch the leaks and floods. And there's nothing wrong with the fact that it's turbulent. It's turbulent in a flood. I mean, the flood's a problem, but it's not a problem that the flood's a problem. So it's hard to stay alert and upright and present with all this salt water, especially when it's really cold salt water. But anyway, I'm very happy that we have a practice which we can use, or which we can give ourselves to and devote ourselves to,

[34:42]

in the face of all these intense difficulties. So those are the first three sections of Gakudoya Jinshu. Arouse the Bodhi Mind, by meditating on your selfish thoughts, which open your eyes to impermanence, or by meditating on impermanence, which relieves you from your selfish thoughts. And put that into practice, and remember that it is from such a practice that you enter nirvana, that you enter enlightenment. Of course, you can also enter enlightenment from enlightenment, but that's called going beyond enlightenment from enlightenment.

[35:46]

In the meantime, we can enter enlightenment through delusion, practicing in the midst of delusion. So you're all set, I guess. Does that make sense, everything I said? Pretty clear? What's that? I don't know, I'm trying to show

[36:26]

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