I saw an article in, I don't know if it was Time or Newsweek, but it was an article that, I think the title was, The Gospel Truth. And it was about Christianity, I think. Part of what the article was about was it was kind of looking at what sometimes is called Gnosticism in the history of Christianity. And So this is like a somewhat lay presentation of Christian scholarship or whatever.

[01:09]

But I thought it was kind of interesting anyway that they talked about at a certain point in the history of the Christian church, the two two principles or something or two issues were fairly well settled. And one issue was the importance, and I would say, and the authority of Scripture. And the second one was the authority of apostolic succession. in determining what is and what is not acceptable Christian thought. So I don't know if anyone would disagree with that, but I just thought it was an interesting idea anyway that these are two main ideas or two main tenets or two main principles in what came to be the dominant form of Christianity.

[02:23]

the form of Christianity that had the Roman Empire behind it. Again, first, the authority of Scripture, and second, the authority of the apostolic succession to determine, I guess, the understanding, interpret the understanding of the Scripture. The Gnostic tradition or the Gnostic movement or whatever it is was, among other things, the part that I wanted to stress is that it was about exploring your own psychic process, exploring your own experience as a religious exercise in accord with the teachings of Jesus. And I also read a book several years ago called The American Religion, I think, by Harold Bloom.

[03:33]

And he didn't deal with Catholicism, Roman Catholicism. And he didn't deal with Lutheranism, I don't think. He dealt particularly with Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostal Church and a lot of these kind of churches. And one of his points is that American religion is, especially these traditions, they're Gnostic. They have to do with people's actual experience rather than getting it from the apostolic succession about what's authentic Christianity. And I thought that was interesting. And in some of these churches you actually have to have some kind of realization before you're admitted. You have to have an actual experience before they let you become a regular member. A personal understanding, a personal revelation.

[04:40]

And a Mormon church was set up by a revelation of Adam Smith. And still today, the leaders of the Mormon Church have ongoing revelations. Not everybody's revelations are considered to be as important as other people's. So there's some kind of apostolic succession there, but they have apostolic succession of revelations, of new revelations, rather than apostolic succession of interpretations of Scripture. I've heard the word gnostic is related to the word prajna or jnana. Yeah, yeah, right. Prajna, jnana, samnya. That jna in Sanskrit is a cognate with jna of gnosis in Greek. It means knowledge. Yeah, knowledge, right. So...

[05:41]

So in the Catholic Church, again, I probably shouldn't even say this, but I would say that it seems to me that in the Catholic Church, there seems to be a recommendation that people just believe that the work of salvation has been done. Jesus has saved you, and if you believe that, then you're in a line with the reality of salvation. And I don't know how many Protestant churches that lines up with, too, that the salvation has already been accomplished, but you have to, like, accept that and not resist that. It's not like you have to save yourself. And I wouldn't say that in the tradition of Buddha Dharma you have to save yourself exactly. the Buddhists have already, in some sense, you could say, you could say that the Buddhists have already verified our nature.

[07:02]

And so, in some sense, the Buddhists have already realized our salvation. Also, you could say that at the same time that they've realized it, they also understand that we don't necessarily understand that. When the Buddhists are realized, they see that everybody's realized with them but they see that people don't get it because they're attached to their views. So they need education in order to understand that they have by nature a liberated reality of their life. So there's some relationship there in these traditions. So in the Buddhist tradition we have scripture also and some people have faith in Buddhist scriptures and also they have faith in the authority of the lineage.

[08:15]

If there's lineages, some people have faith in the lineages of teachers And so they believe that scriptures have authority and that some people have authority in interpreting the scriptures and teaching them about the scriptures. So we have, in Zen too, we recite scriptures. And we also, some of us have some confidence and some faith that people who are in apostolic succession in Zen, that maybe it would be worthwhile listening to their understanding of these scriptures. But it's also the case, I think, really, in the Buddha Dharma, that a higher recommendation than the authority of scripture and the validity of seeing people that we respect and listening to them tell us what they think the scriptures are about, a more important recommendation

[09:17]

mode to move into eventually, is by actually reasoning with ourself, or reasoning in our own mind, and reasoning with each other, we will come to a deeper understanding than we can come just by accepting scriptures from someone else, either from the paper or from someone else's interpretation. Or by commentaries, yeah, right. And then one step more profound and more highly recommended is direct experience. And this is maybe, this direct experience part and the reasoned analysis part are more over on the Gnostic side. And you find, actually you find some of this in in American Christian traditions is that they actually are in some ways into direct experience of the divine or direct experience of reality.

[10:23]

However, some of the established churches don't seem to particularly recommend that for their faithful. I don't know if that's true, but it doesn't look like it. I don't hear the Catholic Church recommending, I don't hear the Pope recommending that the followers of him would have direct infallible cognition of reality. He's the infallible one. But even in his case it's not necessarily by direct cognition but maybe by apostolic infallible succession. I don't know. But there's something here for us to look at is that part of the American culture is that even before we were subjected to the Buddha Dharma, we still lived in an environment where there was some validity in the culture for having direct experience of a liberating reality.

[11:29]

and also a very weak strain of a reasoned analysis leading to a very clear and accurate conceptual cognition of reality. That's not so strong in America, but it's very strong in the Buddha Dharma and it's strong in science. And in American Buddhism, it's not real strong among people who are non-Asians. It's not very strong to believe in scripture, I feel. But they're somewhat there. I don't feel that in the people who are practicing Buddhism, there's a lot of belief in scripture. Like you read a scripture and you think, oh, it's true because it's scripture. Like you read a Zen text and say, well, because it's in a Zen book, it's true. For whatever reason, I think people often feel like, well, it may be true, but I don't understand it anyway, so I don't know what to do with it.

[12:35]

So a lot of it is just so profound and difficult to understand, especially the Mahayana scriptures, that people, you know, in some ways aren't tempted to believe it just because it's in the book. I think people are attracted because it rings true. It rings true with their experience. Maybe that's possible, yeah. Yeah. Quick question. In the Zen tradition, is the kernel of free inquiry part of that, or is it not really part of the literature? Is the what? The kernel of free inquiry. Free inquiry? The speech to the Kalama people, I think it is. Is that a technical term? It's just a speech that was given about not taking... Oh, that scripture of the Buddha. Yeah. Yeah, right. There seems to be a scripture that kind of denies scriptures. A scripture that denies scriptures?

[13:36]

Or a scripture that denies the word of the Buddha? Almost, right? Yeah. The inquiry is in order to not take that which is given to you as being the truth. Right. So there's a scripture called the, how do you say it? No, how do you say it in the Pali word? Kalamaka? Kalama. Yeah. So there's a scripture where the Buddha said, you know, don't just take what I said and believe it because I said it. Check it out for yourself, both in reasoned analysis and direct experience. Okay? But that's only one scripture he said that. But then I just want to point out that the fact that it's only one scripture doesn't matter that it's just one scripture. One's enough. I've talked about this point before, is that the Buddha, I think, although I don't know if he said, I can't find where he said this, but the Buddha's words are not the Buddha Dharma.

[14:47]

That goes along with the scripture. What I'm saying is not the Buddha Dharma. So then people say, okay, so if you hear something from the Buddha, you read something the Buddha said, don't take it as true unless you've verified it by reason and by direct experience. You also talked about wise sayings or things that sound to be just general in the world, anything that sounds reasonable or wise or comes from an important person. There's a whole list of things. Yes, right. So those should be verified also. Now there's some things which you cannot verify until you're completely enlightened. So some teachings, the offerings, these you won't be able to verify. But other ones you can. But this statement of you've verified for yourself, there's another statement which is that you cannot hear the Dharma unless you meet a Buddha.

[16:02]

So the Buddha doesn't tell you the Dharma, but the Buddha talks to you And by meeting the Buddha and talking with the Buddha, you get ready to be able to hear the Dharma. So you need a Buddha in order to hear the Buddha Dharma. But the Buddha doesn't tell you the Dharma. It's just that when you hang out with a Buddha long enough, you hear the Dharma. And I've told you stories about people who are with the Buddha They do not hear the Dharma. The Buddha is talking to them, and they're not hearing the Dharma, and they're not seeing the Buddha. They're looking at the Buddha. They don't see the Buddha. They're listening to the Buddha, but they don't hear the Buddha Dharma. And then they hear the Buddha Dharma. While the Buddha is talking to them, they hear the Buddha Dharma. And they needed to be talking to the Buddha to hear it. But what the Buddha says is not the Buddha Dharma, and the way the Buddha looks is not the Buddha Dharma.

[17:11]

But you need to be looking at Buddha to see the Buddha Dharma of the way the Buddha looks. So that scripture that says, check this stuff out for yourself, should not overthrow the fact that the Buddha also says, here I am and you need me in order to in order to actually hear the Dharma. But what I'm saying to you right now is not the Dharma. Because the Dharma is beyond concept? The Dharma is beyond concept, that's right. And what I'm saying to you, you're taking in conceptually. And you need to be talking to me right now and taking this in conceptually in order to get ready to hear the Dharma, the inconceivable, non-conceptual reality. So I also thought I might mention to you something I think is nice about the

[18:24]

in a sense, the analysis of one of the epithets for the Buddha is Tathagata. So the Buddha is, you know, he's a Buddha. The Buddha is a leader of humans and gods. The Buddha is the tamer of those who need to be tamed, the teacher of what needs to be taught, the victor over delusion and so on. And then Another one of the things is the Buddha is Tathagata. And Tathagata is kind of a neat word because the long A in the middle leads to two possible ways of splitting the word up. One way would be Tathagata and the other would be Tathagata. tathagata or tathagata.

[19:28]

So tathagata could mean both thusness, tatha, thusness which has been gone to, thusness which has been gone to. And that's tathagata, gone to thusness, tathagata. The other is tathagata, thusness which has come. So the Buddha is both going to the truth and arriving at the truth, ta-ta-ta, arriving at the way things are and realizing it. But also the Buddha is ta-ta-agata. It's the coming of the truth or coming from the truth. And I think that in Soto Zen, we have both of these tathagatas. And I think it's, to me, I think it clarifies what's going on if you realize we have both.

[20:35]

Tathagata, going to tatha, going to suchness, going to the way things are, going to reality and realizing it, that's the Gnostic way. That's the way of indirect cognition and direct cognition. Those are two types we can have. Indirect and direct. Indirect conceptual cognition and direct non-conceptual cognition. To go through direct and indirect cognition to know suchness. And the way you go there is by turning the light around and shining it back on your experience. And the Buddhas have done this. They have studied their own mind and realized the nature of their mind, the suchness of their mind.

[21:42]

So the Buddhas have gone to suchness. But also Buddhas come back from suchness and they teach. But we also are these two things. We are going to suchness through our study of our mind and our body and our speech. By studying our activity, we are doing what the Buddhas all have done. This is the Gnostic process of studying ourself, learning about ourselves, and learning about ourself, of our psychic, our psychophysical causes and conditions. Learning about this is the path of Tathagata, which all Buddhas have traveled. But Buddhas are not fully Buddhas until they come back and teach.

[22:48]

So all Buddhas are also coming back. So we also are practicing tatha agatha, we are practicing as the return of truth or the coming of truth. When we sit, we are both going to suchness, but our sitting is also the arrival of suchness. We are in our practice the coming of suchness. We are in our practice the coming of Buddha. both which is similar to embracing and sustaining and being embraced and sustained, similar dynamic. So we have a faith side that we give our body and mind over to the function of the Buddha coming into the world. We say here's a body that is now being used

[23:55]

as a place on the earth where suchness is coming and realized here. I'm not doing it and yet I give my body for the place for it to be done. This is not something I know. This is coming from knowing into this form. And this form is not it. But this form is the ceremony. This is not the Buddha. This is not the ineffable Dharma. This is a ceremony which is a way that it comes into the world. That's a faith statement. I offer my body as a statement of faith that Buddha comes into the world. That I'm sitting here is a testament to that Buddha comes into this world.

[24:59]

That other people, for some reason or other, enjoy sitting still in the posture that the Buddha sat in is a testament to that they're not just enjoying it, but they're enjoying being servants to the enlightenment, allowing enlightenment to be manifested in this way. They feel okay about that. and it looks like the way the Buddha did it by kind of a coincidence, a ceremonial coincidence. You can also get up and walk like Buddha walked and let the walking be a case for the coming of the Buddha. You're not trying to get anything. You're actually giving yourself over to the gift of Dharma to appear in the world through your action. It's pure faith, not trying to get anything. You're just giving, giving, giving. You're giving yourself as a place where dharma is received.

[26:02]

You don't need to get anything because you don't know anything about this. It's totally inconceivable and vast, and yet you're devoting your life for this to be realized in your body at some place on this planet for people to see and enjoy. Also there is this thing about, but you don't get it, you don't understand necessarily at this point. The other way you will understand. However, if you never turn around and study yourself, if you never learn the Buddha way, and you just practice according to faith, you probably someday will understand. Just by sitting as a testament to the coming of Buddha, completely wholeheartedly, tathagata, you will become tathagata. And similarly, of course, if you become tathagata, you naturally will become tathagata.

[27:08]

You will naturally come into the world. So the story of Buddha is he took a walk up in the mountains, reached the truth, and then came back. That's one way to do it. But you can do it the other way, too. of just sitting with no gaining idea, wholeheartedly offering yourself as the coming of the Buddha, as one of the ways the Buddha can appear in this world. And you will go up to the mountain and realize the truth. So these really aren't separate, as that's the nice thing about the word Tathagata, is that the two, the comings and the goings of the Buddha, you cannot separate them. In Chinese, however, they didn't figure out a way to play with their characters to do that. So they chose one side. And the side they chose was tata agata. They chose the suchness coming. So in Chinese, they don't say thusness gone.

[28:11]

They say thusness come. They don't say the thus gone one. They say the thus come one. Ru, thus, lai, coming. Sanskrit's nice that way. You've got both. And they're inseparable. You embrace the Dharma, the Dharma embraces you. They're inseparable. Dharma's trying to embrace you, but if you don't embrace it, you miss out. And if you embrace the Dharma without realizing it's embracing you, you miss out. So we've got to do both sides And lately I've been emphasizing, putting a lot of emphasis on actually the Gnostic side of the practice. That you actually can look around and be aware of what's going on in your mind every moment. And every moment something's going on, and that's your intention, that's your karma.

[29:13]

And that is the problem that the Buddha raised. pointed out. The problem is what's going on in your mind. The activity of your mind has consequence. And if you do not understand the activity of your mind, the consequences are that you become hindered in realizing suchness. But by studying carefully the workings of your mind the workings of your mind evolve positively and your vision becomes clear. And you will eventually see that all of your activity has always been selfless. There was never a self in your action. But if you don't study your action, then if we don't study our action, then it will be hard for us to see that our action is selfless. It'll look like a self doing something.

[30:16]

separate from other selves who are doing things separate from other selves. And faith can be tested and knowledge can be tested. The Gnostic side can be tested, again, by direct experience and reasoning, and faith can be tested by the way you practice, by how wholeheartedly it's happening. like doing a practice period at Tassajara and, you know, following the schedule and not being too early or too late each period. And if you are too early or too late, that you practice confession and repentance about your lack of faith in the practice.

[31:26]

That you, you know, you didn't really believe in the practice so you thought maybe It'll work better if you're a little early or a little late. Yes? Are you equating reasoning analysis with turning the light back around? Yeah. He said, am I equating reasoning analysis with turning the light around? So I, before this hearing, I understood the sequence to be more Well, I put it, first of all, I put it, not so much before, but rather in a hierarchy of validity. of the most important.

[32:33]

So Scripture is somewhat useful, especially about teachings which you will not be able to verify, teachings about things which you can verify either by reasoned analysis or direct experience in the early phases of your evolution. But you can verify some teachings that are in the Scriptures by reasoned analysis and direct experience. But some of them you can't. I couldn't hear you. I'm just saying that that level of scripture will only be taken, for me, on a faith basis, not on a reasonable level.

[33:36]

You know, technically speaking, I don't think the Zen tradition says that its records are scriptures. We do say that we have this thing called the platform sutra. But generally speaking, I think Zen goes along with the thing that the scriptures are actually things that the Buddha teaches. They're actually coming from the Buddha. The Zen teachings are more about how to deal with scripture. the Zen records, are about how these people dealt with scripture. And the majority of them are how they didn't get into it, wouldn't get into the scriptures. Anybody who was trying to get into it was an opportunity for spinning the person around from their scripture-grasping habit. The story we studied in the last practice period or so about the fox koan is one of the examples of a Zen story where there actually is a discussion of the doctrine of karma.

[35:00]

It's one of the few Zen stories where they actually get into a discussion of how karma works. And kind of like showing it. Mostly they're about how people are hung up on it, the teachings, and how to release them from it. That's also in this story. So I don't really consider our, although we treat them with reverence as though they were scriptures, we're actually saying that these, what do you call it, these stories are neither inside nor outside of the scripture. they're stories to help us find a transmission which is neither inside nor outside the scripture which doesn't depend on the scripture and doesn't contradict the scripture but the scriptures are actually coming from the Buddha and people can give teachings which are basically as interesting or as important as what the Buddha said

[36:04]

but they're not scriptures because they're coming from that person rather than through the person from the Buddha. So some scriptures in the tradition are somebody's talking and it's not the Buddha, but it's coming from the Buddha's concentration practice. Like the Heart Sutra, Avalokiteshvara is doing the talking, but Shakyamuni Buddha is sitting in his neighborhood and it's through the power of Shakyamuni's meditation that the Bodhisattva is giving the Heart Sutra. Some other prajnaparamita sutras, the Buddha is actually directly talking. And there's other ways that the Buddha can directly teach, and then they're called scriptures. But some of the great bodhisattvas also have given teachings according to the scriptures. And some of the teachings they've given have been written down, and those are what we call shastras, they're commentaries, or not so much commentaries even, but they're coming from the bodhisattva, not the Buddha of this tradition. And some of these teachers, some of these bodhisattvas will be Buddhas, have been predicted already.

[37:13]

But the Zen teachings are the teachings of enlightened disciples of the Buddha, but they're not really scriptures. in the sense of the word of the Buddha. However, the tradition is, I think, saying that by interacting with Zen masters, you can enter into a way of being so that you will actually be meeting Buddha. And we're not saying that the Zen master is the Buddha, but we're saying that by interacting with each other, we can enter into a concentration such that we will be meeting the Buddha and we will hear the Dharma and we'll realize that we're hearing the Dharma because we're meeting Buddha face-to-face. So in Soto Zen we say we venerate the face-to-face transmission of Buddha to Buddha. And we have the teaching that we must enter into that face-to-face transmission in order to hear the Dharma.

[38:18]

And you can hear the Dharma in two ways. indirectly and directly. And if you have been reading scriptures about the Dharma before that, that's fine, and people read scriptures, and sometimes when they're reading scriptures, wholeheartedly because the scriptures do have some authority, while you're reading the scripture, you can hear the Dharma. And you'll hear it in these two ways, indirect and direct. But before you have that indirect cognition or direct cognition while reading the scriptures, you can still read the scriptures and they still have some authority in the tradition. And you can check one scripture against another to verify if one scripture is right or wrong. And you can use scriptures to help you understand other scriptures. This is valid in this tradition.

[39:22]

But that level of intellectual pursuit is a warm-up to a cognition you never had before, which is not in the scriptures. Another way I thought of this, by the way, is that tathagata is like the launch, looks at practice as like the launching pad, how to launch into. And tathagata is the landing pad. So one way of approaching practice is this is the launching pad. This is where we go forth into the Dharma. By studying what's going on, we go forth. We launch from here. into the ineffable, inconceivable perfection of wisdom. The other way is the perfection of wisdom is going to land here. This is a place that lands.

[40:25]

So in both cases, though, we have what I call traffic control. You can take off now. The other one is you can land now. I don't know how that related to your ordering of the way things are done in order. But I don't see them as one, two, three exactly, because you can read scriptures and have both direct and indirect valid cognitions of what the scriptures were written for. You can also have not, it's possible not to have read scriptures and get some kind of instruction even non-scriptural instruction. So many Zen monks, I shouldn't say many, but some Zen monks didn't really get much scriptural instruction. They got direct instruction from the teacher. And sometimes the Buddha was talking to somebody, again, and they wrote down what he said to them, and what he said to them is the scripture.

[41:28]

But what he said to them is not what they heard when they woke up in the scriptures. Again, the Buddha is talking to someone. They're listening to the Buddha say these words, and they hear the Dharma. The scripture says, the Buddha said this, and the person understood. But some scriptures the Buddha delivered, and not all scriptures end with somebody understanding. Many do, but not all. In some sense, some teachings didn't work at the time. But they still wrote them down because the people writing down or the people actually remembering, I should say, they weren't remembering just because somebody in the audience who wasn't them understood. So we had this, another strange thing about this tradition is that there was somebody in the audience of the Buddha's talks who could remember what the Buddha said. And that person was not hearing the Dharma. Is that clear? It's a rather strange historical presentation that we have a tradition where the teacher is teaching and one of the people in the audience, Ananda, his attendant, is hearing the teaching and remembering it but not hearing the Dharma.

[42:40]

Somebody else in the audience is hearing the Buddha talk and hearing the Dharma. And sometimes Ananda would be tipped off. The Buddha would say, by the way, Ananda, that guy woke up. So Ananda would remember that too. So Ananda would hear the Buddha's words, remember them, and also hear the Buddha tell him that somebody heard the Dharma. Not you, but somebody else heard the Dharma. And he would remember that too. So, and that was not, you know, that was not because of the scripture, but the scripture was the medium in which the person was meeting the Buddha. But the Buddha's face was there too, all the whole time. But not everybody met the Buddha's face, even though the Buddha's face was in their face. Not everybody saw the Buddha's face and realized it was Buddha to Buddha. When you hear the Dharma, you're in that meeting. Okay?

[43:49]

Yes? It seems to be the case that it was oral. That's why That's why when they actually got together to decide what the canon of scriptures is going to be, they weren't scriptures yet. They were, I don't know what to call them before they're scriptures. Because scriptures usually mean written, don't they? They were oral transmissions which the Nanda magically, wonderfully, apparently remembered all the things the Buddha taught. And so there he was. And they had to have him come to the meeting with all the enlightened disciples and he wasn't one of them. Because they wanted to hear him recite the text and they would decide whether what he said, all the stuff he said would be the canon of the Buddha's teaching.

[44:52]

And then they probably changed what the Buddha said, somewhat, and rendered it into verse. Because I don't think we sang that the Buddha spoke in verse. Because a lot of the stuff was like, hi, how are you today, you know? And, I mean, that's what it says. They greeted each other. They exchanged amenities. So they had kind of normal conversations in whatever the language was. But then when Ananda told them, then they converted those into... kind of verse form to make it easier for them to memorize and also to make it easier for them not to make mistakes in the memorization. That probably went on for three hundred years before they started writing it down. I don't know the exact agreed upon number that scholars have arrived at at this point, but... Yeah, I think that when they first had the meeting together, I don't think it was Pali that they put it into.

[46:07]

I think Pali, it came to be in Pali when they wrote it down and it came to be in Sanskrit when they wrote it down. They didn't have another, I guess they didn't have other languages that had writing. By the time they wrote these things down, They wrote them down in Sanskrit and Pali, and I don't know which happened first when they started writing it down. It probably happened here and there. Before that, there were probably different oral lineages being transmitted, and they may not have been Sanskrit or Pali when they were oral. I don't know. We don't know what they were before they were written down. They might have said, let's convert the stuff that you're telling us, Ananda, into Sanskrit. Let's start chanting it in Sanskrit. Or let's start chanting it in Pali. But to me it seems like they wouldn't, when they first heard it, they wouldn't have done it in both languages.

[47:09]

They would have done it in something that was appropriate to the the people in the group, but maybe the group was already split into a wide enough diversity of disciples so that some of them would be better able to put it into Pali than others, and others would be better able to put it in Sanskrit than others. And maybe right away, when they started reciting it, they started reciting it in Sanskrit and Pali, but I don't know of any record of the discussion of what languages they started to say the Buddha's teaching in as recitation. I shouldn't say no, but there isn't extensive notes on the linguistic discussions of those early meetings. They were mostly interested in preserving the Buddha's teaching. They were not so much interested in preserving their discussions and their methods of preserving it. Yes? It seems then that the transmission, it's not like pouring something into the disciple with a funnel.

[48:11]

It's more a process of induction. Yes, that's right. So that in the receiver, something is stimulated from within that person based upon kind of attuning to the Dharma. Yeah, it's more like what the Buddha is doing with people is to attune them so that they can let the Dharma be poured into them. The truth is coming from within the receiver, not being poured into a funnel. It's like the truth is being stimulated inside the receiver, more than being poured in. Well, or the truth is being opened to, and the Buddha is helping the person become a receiver. And so the example which I've mentioned before is the Buddha says it's like somebody climbs to the top of a mountain and then they can see things from the top of the mountain. But, you know, and if they stay down in the mountain, you know, up here I can see these beautiful palm trees swaying on the beach and these ladies doing these fancy dances and they have all kinds of nice drinks down there too.

[49:21]

And the person says, what are you talking about? You're crazy. The Buddha doesn't teach like that. Maybe he tried, but I don't think so. Anyway, maybe he tried and nobody got it. So what he does is he walks back down the mountain, takes the person by the hand, and walks them up to the top of the mountain where they just see themselves. So the Buddha doesn't really give it to them. The Buddha brings the person to where they can see it for themselves. And the Buddha does that by getting the person to look at themselves. And then you can see it and hear it. But you need help to get ready to receive it. And that's what the Buddha was willing to do. And what he said while he was doing this for people is recorded. And also what happened to some of the people is recorded too.

[50:23]

And the other people got to listen to the warm-up thing he was doing for some of them. And if not without some use, for them it was like the warm-up to the warm-up. And for some people it was the warm-up period when he finished the scripture they were done for. Yes? What do I mean by practice? Practice is the way that you are... What am I going to say now? Open, did you say? Yeah. Practice is the way that you are... What am I going to say now? No? Practice is the way you are embracing life.

[51:29]

That's practice. In order to see this, you need to pay attention to what you're doing. Now what you're doing when you first look, when you first look at what you're doing, you don't see this when you first look. You maybe see one side of this when you first look. You see a partial version of this when you first look. And this, by the way, is embracing and sustaining. Practice is the way you're embracing and sustaining all beings and the way all beings are embracing and sustaining you. That's practice. Practice is the actuality of your existence. Practice is the way you realize, is inseparable from the realization of the truth. When you first start trying to practice, what you do is you pay attention to where you are and what you see you're doing. And when you finally arrive right where you are, the practice occurs.

[52:32]

So the practice is actually what's going on, and so in some sense it's a question of practicing to wake up to the practice. And the main hindrance to appreciating the practice we call karmic hindrance. And then there's other kinds of hindrance too. But the first hindrance is karmic hindrance, and that comes from not paying attention to our activity. Paying attention to our activity, we more and more find our place and realize the practice. Okay? Is that okay? Yeah, I was thinking about, I guess, the forms and ceremonies. You know, sometimes they're spoke of as practice. Yeah, they are spoke of as practice. So, I guess I'm thinking, as a, you know, someone who is a lay wife, that kind of practice, is it something I can do as much as someone in the ministry?

[53:50]

Would you speak up, please? If someone can lose a late life, I don't do that formal practice as much as someone does during the practice period. For instance, in life, what difference does a late practice have? Yeah, there is. And the way is that every action throughout the day is done for the sake of realizing the Buddha way. That's how it would be. And that's how it is supposed to be in a monastery, that every act that the monks are doing, they do for the sake of the Buddhadharma. This is what he called it. the tatha agatha, that everything you do, you do as an opportunity for the realization of the truth.

[54:58]

That's the way you see it. That's the way you intend it. That's the point of what you're doing. And you're actually here paying attention to what you're doing. So it's not just theoretical, it's practical that what you're doing right now is the occasion, is the landing pad for the Triple Treasure. And you're offering your activity as the place to realize the Triple Treasure. Whether you're inside the monastery or outside, that is necessary. Otherwise you're missing the practice. If you can do that outside the monastery, fine. If you can do it inside, fine. If you can't do it inside, that's too bad. If you can't do it outside, that's too bad. I would say, if you want to realize this. And then the debate is, can we actually do it without lots of support?

[56:03]

And the answer is, well, we hope so, but even with lots of support it's hard. Even in the monastery it's hard. Even here today it's been hard to be moment by moment remembering that your body, speech and mind activity is dedicated to the realization of peace and harmony among all beings, which requires the realization of truth. It's hard to learn to do that for everybody. And then we have to be realistic about how much support we need to tune into that and stay with that. And if we don't feel like we have sufficient support, quietly consider the causes and conditions where we can find that support and realize that support. Because again, it's support to realize that you're supported. It's support to realize that you're supporting people.

[57:06]

It's support to realize the practice of remembering that you're embracing and sustaining everybody and also that everybody you're embracing and sustaining you see as a question. You don't really know who this person is you're looking at that you're embracing and sustaining. And you don't know who this person is looking at you and embracing and sustaining you don't know who they are. But you're paying attention but you don't know who they are. And you're learning to be mindful of that of that suchness And we want to be able to do that consistently. Because if we don't, there's consequences. And if we do, there's consequences too, but the consequences of remembering seem to be good, and the consequences of forgetting seem to be unhappiness.

[58:11]

So I said to someone earlier today, and I've said many times, now you can see you're practicing together with people. I guess you can see that. Some people in this room, maybe even now in this room, can't see right now that they're practicing together with people. It's possible. That somebody's sitting here and saying, I'm not practicing together with those people. They're not practicing with me. I'm all by myself here, all alone. These people are not supporting me, and I don't want to support them. Some people might be thinking like that. No, consciously. Some people walk into Dharma Sanghas and think, I'm not practicing with these people. They do think that. That's true. Yeah. It's called loneliness. If you see it that way, you feel lonely. Yeah. But it's also possible that here with this packed in here like this, it's possible that everybody in this room kind of gets it.

[59:22]

Oh yeah, I am practicing with people. I do support these people. I came here today to support these people. That's what I'm here for. And I stayed the whole day and supported them. And that was a big successful day of supporting other people to practice. You may feel that way, all of you. And you also may all feel, yeah, and these people supported me all day. I see. I'm practicing together with people." Well, fine. That's true. That's ta-ta-ta. You see it. Now, if you go away from here and don't see that you're practicing with people, then you don't see it. And that's hard. So I sometimes say, you shouldn't be someplace where you can't see that for very long. You shouldn't spend too much time looking at the world and say, I'm not supporting this and this isn't supporting me.

[60:25]

Don't spend too much time there. If you can't see it, get back to some place where you can. If you can see it someplace, go there soon where you can remember, oh yeah, I am helping these people. Anyway, I'm trying to help these people. I'm trying to nurture these people. And these people are trying to nurture me, and they are. And I am. Yeah, that's what I want to see. And I do see it now. And if you start taking the people away and you lose it, well, don't tolerate that for very long. Because once you get in that space of where you don't see that you're helping people, and don't see that you want to help people, and don't see that people want to help you and are helping you, when you're in space, that space can go, boom, to a month or a year. Because, you know, where's the end of it? Well, the end of it is get back in some situation where you can see that, oh, here's some people that I want to help. I care for these people. I don't know if I am helpful, but that's what I'd like to be, and I think they want to help me.

[61:30]

And they are helping me. then now you're seeing like the Buddha sees. And that's good, I would say. And once again, don't go away from this if you can't see it when you go away. If you can't see it when you get up on the highway, if you don't think, like some people who came from Sacramento, when you get back on the highway, if you can't remember that you're helping those other people, you know, People are cutting in front of you. You're helping them. Like, go ahead. I give you the place. I love you. You're helping me. You're reminding me of my practice by driving so selfishly. If you can, maybe you should just pull over. You know, pull off the freeway for a little while until you remember, okay, now. Okay, now what is it again? Oh, yeah. I'm going out there to help those people on the freeway. I'm not just trying to get to Sacramento. I'm going to practice with those people. I'm going to be an encouragement to them. I'm going to be polite to them.

[62:32]

And they're going to help me with my practice. Okay, here we go. I know that might make the trip back really take a long time. But, you know, if you pull over and wait until really late at night when there's very few, that makes it maybe easier. Just me and that one other car. Okay, I'm your friend. So that's a radical suggestion that our practice is to practice together in a group. That Sangha is really part of Buddha already. But if you don't see that, then you need to acted out in gross terms, like with people and plants and animals. You need to do it until you get it that this is the way it always is.

[63:35]

And again, if I forget it, then I have to go back into the training situation again, where I can see, okay, okay, yeah, here's people. Now am I ready for them? Am I up for them? No. Am I ready, up for them? No. Am I ready, up for them? No. Am I ready? Yes. Yes, I am fine. Okay, I give up. I'm devoted to these people. Okay, I got it. I don't want to keep not being devoted to these people. That's no good. I don't like it. Oh, and they're devoted to me, too. Oh, wow. Great. Wow. I think you've got to do that wherever you are. And if you can't do it where you are and you think some other place might be helpful, well, go to that place until you get the hang of it again. And then go forth. Go and see if you can do it in a less populated neighborhood or a neighborhood where the people aren't so obviously your family.

[64:50]

your dharma family. When the Buddha appears in the world, there's nobody not in her dharma family, even though they never saw the Buddha before. The Buddha says, oh, these... I get it. Actually, when the Buddha first appeared, he did not see his dharma family. Somebody had to say, no, there are people here who want to practice with you. Oh, really? And then the Buddha couldn't go. Oh yeah, you're right, there are. Oh yeah, okay, I'll do it. Speaking of Buddha family, today is the day of the month when we do memorial service for Suzuki Roshi. Would you like to do a memorial service for him? No? Okay.

[65:53]

Well, if you would, we can do that. We know how, right? Thank you very much for supporting each other today. Was it too crowded? No. Well, thank you very much for your great efforts today and thank you for helping each other and accepting each other's help. As far as I could tell you, you had no problem with that, right? Is that right? It's okay with you if all those people helped you all day and you didn't mind helping everybody? Is that right? Did you help everybody today? Were you up for that? Yeah, right.

[66:55]

We're not used to being open to this exchange of support and nurturing. That's what we have to train for, is to get ready. We train to get ready for the real practice. At some point, you don't have to think about it. Exactly. At some point you don't have to think about it. And even though you don't have to think about it, you do so that you can tell people about it. So the Buddha doesn't have to think about it. The Buddha is just totally immersed in it. But then the Buddha realized, oh, if I don't think about it, I won't be able to tell these people who don't know they're doing this thing with me. So I'll think about it. How could I tell? Oh, there's a truth. I have four truths for you, and so on. So he had to think in order to talk to people. But when he went to ta-ta-ta, when he got to ta-ta-ta, there was no thinking necessary.

[68:02]

But when he came back, he landed in the world of thinking and then talked to the thinkers. And the thinkers, one of them woke up right away. Oh, oh, remember that part? OK. Also, I have some copies of this. If you'd like a copy, I'll put it on the table there. Do I have 40? Fortunately, no. So shall we set up for the memorial service? So maybe we just stand up and try to get arranged for that purpose?

[68:51]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_87.61