This seat has been offered. And from this seat, I offer my presence and some words. In this lineage, what we're offering is the practice of caring for and helping living beings. The point of our life here is caring for and helping sentient beings.

[01:02]

Helping sentient beings realize peace and harmony. I hope that's what we're offering here. And this offering of caring for living beings is carried out in stillness and silence. Even though we may be extending our hand we extend the hand in stillness even though we may offer kind words, these kind words emerge from silence.

[02:11]

And moment by moment we return to stillness and return to silence and then from there offer more care for living beings. for sentient beings. The way I use the word sentient being is to refer to karmic consciousnesses, to refer to conscious beings who in particular have a kind of consciousness called karmic consciousness, active consciousness, creative consciousness. human beings seem to be this way. They seem to be conscious and their consciousness seems to be active and creative, creating stories of life and death.

[03:26]

Sentient beings are living conscious beings who are struggling with issues of birth and death, of life and death, of babies being born, of living beings dying, of war, of violence. These struggles around life and death are characteristic of living beings. The practice of the Buddha way is to help beings who are in this struggle of birth and death to find peace and harmony in stillness with all beings.

[04:36]

This is the work of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. It is the activity and the practice of enlightenment in this lineage. Now we are in the middle of a three-week residential retreat. About 105 of us are here in the valley throughout the week, struggling with issues of life and death. And all of you who have come here today, I guess you are also struggling with issues of life and death, deeply challenged by life and death.

[05:55]

And we are struggling to be still here with our very active minds and bodies, to be still with them so we can take care of them, so we can learn to care for our karmic consciousness and realize peace and transmit stillness and silence and caring for karmic consciousness to each other. and receive support from each other to do the difficult work of Buddhas. To intimately embrace karmic consciousness, deluded consciousness, which struggles with birth and death. We're doing very well and we're having a hard time. We're having a hard time and doing very well with it.

[07:03]

Fortunately, there's enough experience in the community that we knew beforehand it might be difficult. And sure enough, it's somewhat difficult. Some people who thought it was going to be difficult are finding it easier than they thought it would be. That's one advantage of thinking it's going to be really hard before you enter the initiation process into the practice of the Buddhas. It's going to be so hard. Oh, it wasn't, it isn't so hard. It's just hard. In the midst of this struggle, more than one person just happened to bring up in my hearing the question, is Zen a religion?

[08:12]

During the tea after last week's Sunday talk, the person who told me overheard some other people saying, is Zen a religion? And I don't know what the answer was. Many people have told me, Zen's not a religion. I heard them say that. They say Zen's a way, a way of life. It's a practice. I certainly agree that it's a way of life that's easy, kind of uncontroversial, and that it's a practice, I think. I can say yes to that. And what kind of a practice is this practice?

[09:13]

Which is for the purpose of helping living beings, karmic consciousnesses. Living beings are karmic consciousnesses. There's no karmic consciousness walking around without being a living being. And there's no living beings walking around without karmic consciousness. Zen is to help karmic consciousness to take care of it, to be compassionate with it. So it's a path of compassion towards karmic consciousness. It's a way of compassion for karmic consciousness, for deluded consciousness, which is struggling with birth and death. And this compassion, as I mentioned a couple of days ago and got a chuckle out of Elder Agin,

[10:16]

Compassion eats karmic consciousness and grows and eats more karmic consciousness in a very loving way and grows and grows and grows by eating karmic consciousness. But it doesn't eliminate karmic consciousness by eating it. Just like the plants here at Green Gulch do not eliminate the nutrients in the soil by eating them. They eat them and they grow into wonderful plants. The nutrients are not destroyed. The karmic consciousness is not destroyed. Living beings are not destroyed. And they don't last. They are impermanent. Karmic consciousness is impermanent and it reproduces.

[11:21]

Karmic consciousness arises, living beings arise and cease. They are not destroyed and they do not last. And while they're living, compassion eats them. Eats the living beings in a loving way. Takes them in and grows on them The field, the Buddha field of the compassionate mind is sentient beings. It watches them and eats them and lets them go. And by being eaten by compassion, living beings realize peace. They realize how to let go of themselves while they're going away. They realize non-attachment to their impermanent, fleeting, wondrous life.

[12:24]

So I think Zen's a path of compassion, a path of precepts of compassion. And I think Zen is also a path of insubstantiality, a path of emptiness, a path of realizing that all the living beings that we care for cannot be found, cannot be grasped, cannot be attached to. And in order for this compassion to really digest and grow on suffering beings, there also needs to be the wisdom which understands that these beings that are being consumed and cared for, cared for and consumed, consumed through care, that these beings are insubstantial, that these struggling consciousnesses are ungraspable.

[13:31]

So it's a path or a practice of emptiness and insubstantiality of all phenomena and compassion towards all these insubstantial phenomena. We are devoted to every single karmic consciousness in the bodhisattva path, in the Buddha way, every single karmic consciousness, every single living being, totally devoted to them without attaching to them, without dwelling in them. And of course, we start at home. We're totally devoted to taking care of our own karmic consciousness without dwelling in it. And if the compassion is wholehearted, there will be no dwelling. And when there is no dwelling, there will be realization of the truth of sentient beings. And realizing that truth, we don't get tired in the great work of compassion towards all living beings.

[14:36]

We need wisdom which sees that the things we're devoted to are insubstantial, otherwise we might give up in our practice of compassion. But with the wisdom which understands that we can't actually grasp the beings we're devoted to, and also we can't grasp even helping them, the beings and the helping realize peace. So what about this religion? Is this a religion? Is a path devoted to the salvation of all beings a religion? Or can we just say it's a path and forget about religion? I don't think so, because there's religion. There's religion as much as there's karmic consciousness. It looks like where there's karmic consciousness, religion is somewhere in the area.

[15:40]

Like in Ireland, they have karmic consciousness, I've heard. They have religion. In Mississippi, they have karmic consciousness. They have religion. In Texas and in certain parts of California. In New York City, I saw some karmic consciousness recently and there was religion. The religious are no more real than the karmic consciousness. They both have a conventional reality and they both have an ultimate reality. They both appear to exist substantially and they both are insubstantial and ungraspable and bottomless and beginningless and endless and completely at peace. All over the world, karmic consciousnesses seem to be struggling with birth and death and also struggling with religion.

[16:46]

There seems to be great distress around religion. Even here, some people are distressed about religion and saying, is this a religion? Is this a religion? This isn't a religion. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. War has not broken out in this valley, but there are differences of opinion among karmic consciousnesses here about whether we're practicing a religion or not. And some people who think we're not wonder if it's okay for them to be here. I'm not religious. Can I practice Zen? Am I allowed here in this meditation hall? Some other people actually might say, I am religious. Can I practice here too? Those people at the tea said Zen wasn't a religion. They said it's not religion, but I'm religious. Can I stay? Yes, the religious and the non-religious can both live in Buddha's way.

[17:58]

Because living beings are struggling with religion, Zen takes care of people struggling with religion to help people who are struggling with religion to find peace. to find peace with their own struggle and to find peace with other people who are struggling and particularly to find people who are struggling with religion and thinking that theirs is better than others and they should eliminate the other religions. As Suzuki Roshi said, Buddhism is not one of those religions like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Buddhism is when religions go beyond themselves, when religions let go of themselves. That's what we mean by the Buddha way, which is the same as when sentient beings go beyond themselves

[19:09]

let go of themselves. And how do we let go of our sentient being? By taking care of it, by being intimate with it. This is the work, this is the activity of enlightenment. So the enlightenment, if there's a religious phenomena going on, religious activity, enlightenment plunges into it and meets it intimately. It doesn't separate from it and say, I'm not religious or come over here and practice another religion. It enters and meets people where they are And in this meeting, in this caring, all parties hopefully someday realize non-attachment and reality and peace.

[20:12]

There's not so much a view that we're going to eliminate sentient beings and just have Buddhas, that we're going to eliminate the people who are attached to themselves and to their religion. It's more like the Buddhas will live as long as there are sentient beings who are attached to their religion. Buddhas will keep and bodhisattvas will come with them, willingly entering the world of struggle with birth and death, entering the miseries of life and death in order to care for beings there, willingly entering this with no advantage. Willingly enter the realm where, you know, of airline travel where, you know, there's Advantage and Advantage Plus and Premier and First Class and Ahead of the Other People Class, where there's Me First, Me First, Me First, where there's Me Not Wait with those other people.

[21:37]

Enter that realm. and take care of the people who are in first, second, and third class. Religion and other things are important to sentient beings. And sentient beings tend to attach to things that are important to them. And the Buddha way is to embrace these beings, embrace our own consciousness which finds things important and is sunk into them and attached to them. Be kind to this attachment. Be kind to this overly substantiated concern and in this relationship liberated.

[22:42]

And during this retreat there's lots of opportunities for stillness and some people have noticed that and actually have told me that there's more stillness available than they'd like to have. One person said, you know, I really would like more movement of this body. I've got a lot of energy and I'd like to, you know, work it in some other way than being still. But still, we do have this opportunity to practice stillness and in the stillness to care for our own karmic consciousness and the karmic consciousness of others. This retreat's offering considerable opportunities for that. Once again, including taking care of the karmic consciousness that doesn't really want any more opportunities like that.

[23:55]

But then the question arises, even during the retreat, what about after I leave the retreat? How am I going to be able to continue to care for my karmic consciousness when everybody's saying, don't care for your karmic consciousness, come over here, do that. Take care of your karmic, you know, be still with your karmic consciousness some other time, not now. So wherever we are, somehow we need to be devoted to being still in order to take care of beings who are telling us not to be still. To return in each moment to stillness in our daily life. and thereby transmit the stillness without necessarily saying anything.

[25:05]

Return to it, embrace it, take care of the living beings that are here. Return to it and care for the living being here. And in this way, transmit this context for care while people are challenging us. And challenging us means supporting us to have a karmic consciousness that's difficult to be still with. The challenge that people are offering us actually is helping our compassion grow. Without some challenge, we can't grow. And it's also possible that some challenges are, for the moment, we have to admit to advance that I can't dare to be still with this challenge.

[26:11]

Well, then be kind to that and see what you can be still with and practice stillness with that. And little by little, we expand our ability, or I should say our ability gets expanded to be still with more and more difficult and challenging karmic consciousnesses. With our own karmic consciousness that gets more and more challenging when certain people are around, like, you know, our mother, our father, our sisters and brothers, our children, our practice friends, our spouses, our enemies, people of different religions and political opinions. When we're with these people, the kind of consciousness that arises in our own kind of consciousness is quite difficult to be still with.

[27:20]

When I first started practicing Zen, I did not think it was a religion, and I didn't think it had a religious mission. Now, I think it does have a religious mission, but not so much a religious mission to be a religion. But I think it is, Zen is the vow to save all religions, including Zen, from taking themselves seriously. I think the mission of Zen is peace in this world, and I think Zen does not wish to get credit for it, but to work maybe as a catalyst that nobody even notices to bring peace among the world's religions, among those who feel so strongly about this aspect of human existence. And so I think Zen has job security.

[28:42]

This is a huge problem, a huge karmic consciousness problem. Tremendous, virtually limitless opportunities to practice compassion, to plunge into the world of religious distress and disharmony bringing compassion to it, helping beings not cling to it, helping beings find peace. And we have some places like this around the world to exercise where it's clear that the main exercise is compassion, moment by moment, to be still with the moment and be kind to the moment and not dwell in the moment and open to reality and then again, and do this for the sake of all beings.

[29:49]

But again, those of you who are not in the retreat, please, when you leave, throughout your daily life, please, each moment, be still with the karmic consciousness. again and again, and in that stillness, be kind to it. The first act of kindness in that sense is to be present and still, and then notice what it is, and then be kind to it. Over and over again, including, of course, being kindly acknowledging that it's been quite a while since you remembered to do that practice. that you've forgotten many moments to be still with what's happening. But now you remember and return to the practice of stillness. And without saying anything perhaps, transmit it to your friends.

[30:53]

Plant seeds of stillness and presence among your friends, moment by moment, around the world. to help them find peace in this struggle with life and death. Enlightenment loves sentient beings. Enlightenment loves karmic consciousness. It doesn't like or dislike karmic consciousness. It loves it. It welcomes it. And it welcomes it now. And it vows to welcome it in the future. And it welcomes it now.

[31:54]

And it vows and commits to welcome it in the future. until all beings learn to welcome it and not dwell in it and be freed of karmic consciousness without getting rid of it. So simple, so difficult. easy to forget, challenging to remember, but not impossible to remember. This karmic consciousness has a story that sometimes people remember and they don't regret it. Here we go.

[33:03]

There may be trouble ahead. So while there's music and moonlight, And love and romance Let's face the music and dance Before the fiddlers have fled Before they ask us to pay the bill And while there's still a chance Let's face the music and dance Soon we'll be without the moon Humming a different tune And then there may be teardrops to shed So while there's music and moonlight

[34:10]

and love and romance. Let's face the music and dance. The shining glades

[34:39]

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