As I mentioned last night, and on many other occasions, the practice of Zen is called Zazen. sitting Zen. And this Zazen is a non-dual practice. Non-dual in many different aspects. For example, the practice that you do when you do Zazen is not different from the practice done by Shakyamuni Buddha.

[01:03]

It's not like Shakyamuni Buddha did a certain kind of meditation and you're doing a different kind. No, they're not two. They're non-dual. That's what we mean by Zazen. The actual practice of Buddha, the actual living Buddha, living enlightenment. The sitting that we do, the sitting that we intend to do, the sitting that we live to do, the sitting that we eat to do, the sitting that we sleep to do, the sitting that we come to sesshin to do, is not different from the sitting, from the practice done by bodhidharma. So it's a non-dual practice in the sense that it's the same as the enlightened ancestors' practice. That's one aspect of non-dual.

[02:06]

Another aspect of non-dual is that the sitting we do is not a sitting that I do myself. I cannot do this sitting myself. And you also don't do it yourself. And I don't do it for you and you don't do it for me. It is a sitting done by everything. And it is a sitting which realizes that self and other are not really two. That's another aspect of the non-duality. The practice of our sitting is also the same and one with our enlightenment. Our enlightenment is our meditation. Our meditation is our enlightenment. It's another aspect of its non-duality.

[03:08]

It's not a practice to attain something. It is the practice of attainment. It is attainment itself. It's not a warm-up for practice. It's not a getting ready for practice. It's not a preparation for practice. It is the practice of Buddha. People say, what is the fruit of our Zazen practice? Our Zazen practice does not have a fruit. It is the fruit of practice. In somewhat philosophical language, the school of Zen is called the school of emptiness. because emptiness is the basis of the school, and the school meditates, the members of the school meditate on emptiness.

[04:30]

Emptiness is also non-duality. So the meditation itself is non-dual, and the topic of the meditation is non-duality, is emptiness. The great ancestor, the fifth ancestor of Zen, Hongren. Hongren means spreading patience, proliferating forbearance. Hongren was a master who taught extensively the Diamond Sutra. the Diamond Sutra of the Perfect Wisdom. When he was up in North China teaching hundreds of monks about the Diamond Sutra, about meditation on emptiness, down south in Canton, a young man was strolling through the marketplace selling wood.

[05:50]

His name was Workman Lu, or to you, Mr. Lu. As Mr. Lu was strolling through the marketplace in this Buddhist country called China, they had various vendors selling many things, and one of the vendors was selling the Diamond Sutra, chanting it. As he walked by this chanting of the Diamond Sutra, the chanter just happened to be on Section 10C of the Diamond Sutra. And when Mr. Lu heard Section 10C, he was deeply awakened. Section 10c of the Diamond Sutra is, a bodhisattva, an enlightening being, should produce a thought which does not abide anywhere.

[07:11]

A thought which is not supported by sights, sounds, smells, touches, tastes, or mind objects. When Workman Lu heard that, he woke up. He went to the person who was chanting it and said, hey, where did you hear that? He said, well, it's a Diamond Sutra, and if you want to hear more about that, there's a great ancestor up in North China. He's teaching the essence of this sutra. You go check it out with him. And Mr. Lu decided to go visit the teacher in the North However, because he was awakened so profoundly at that time, I think some kind of an aura started to radiate around him, and people started to notice it and gather around him. Even though he was young and newly awakened, people could spot it and asked him to teach them what the Dharma was.

[08:17]

So, fortunately or unfortunately, he acquired about a thousand students on his way. to visit the ancestor and actually stopped his pilgrimage and started teaching. After teaching for some time, he realized that he had more study to do and he told his disciples that he had to do so and left them and went to study with the fifth ancestor. Their meeting I will tell you more about later. I'm telling you this now to point out that in some sense what Zen is famous for is this producing a thought which has no home, has no residence.

[09:27]

And the sitting is that way too. During the early part of Sashin, people are a little sleepy because we've been working so hard all summer By the end of Sashin, people are not so sleepy. So sometimes at the beginning of Sashin, I think, I have a little bit of a problem because I feel like mumbling because I don't want the people who are asleep to miss what I have to say. But then I feel that would sort of punish the people who are awake. So I have a little bit of a problem. I don't want to say anything really important. So, I'll just tell you a little problem I have.

[10:41]

So, I'm starting out by pointing to this kind of essential zazen practice. But part of my plan for this session is to also point out that this non-dual practice although it is in some sense the essential thing that a person should do for themselves to make themselves happy. For the achievement of Buddhahood, we also need to do practices which relate to other people and which benefit other people. So in a sense, the practice that I've just been talking about, the practice of producing a thought which abides nowhere, the non-dual practice is what we call perfect wisdom practice.

[11:50]

And it is the sixth of the six perfections. It is the sixth And it is the one that attracted most of us to Zen when we heard about it. But there are other practices which support this sixth practice, which are generosity, ethical conduct, patience, courageous effort, and concentration. These five are the ground upon which this thought, which abides nowhere, is born. So I'd like to talk about these other five also to give some sense of how to create the conditions, the circumstances in which this wonderful non-dual practice can actually happen.

[12:59]

Does that make sense? So, right there in the center of the room, as I pointed out, is the great bodhisattva Pleasant Splendor. In his hand he holds something like this, a nyohe. Oftentimes, Manjushri had it as a sword. It's the sword of non-duality, the sword of emptiness. the sword of perfect wisdom. Again, for the Zen school, most people would say, what is the bodhisattva people think of first for Zen? Usually Manjushri, because Manjushri is the bodhisattva, the enlightening being that lives in the meditation hall.

[14:07]

But recently, when a Tibetan teacher, Tara Toku Rinpoche, was visiting us, he felt, I really respect your non-dual practice. You should keep doing that. Zen is wonderful in its emphasis and development of penetrating insight. So penetrating, you can't even see it. Zen is very good that way. One of our students said one time, at Muktananda's place, they shake. At the Rochester Zendo, they have Satori. At Zen Center, we have bad backs and babies. Deeply penetrating insight.

[15:15]

Not even, not hindered by shaking or Satori. Utterly inconceivable and with no traces, no traces of enlightenment here. This is the perfect way. However, such a perfect way is supported by other practices which do kind of leave traces in a way, at least when you talk about them at first. So he recommended we work more on the other aspects of practice and let the wisdom kind of still be there, but go back and work on compassion. And the compassion is particularly developed through generosity, through giving, through ethical conduct, through patience, through courageous effort, and through concentration. Of course, our non-dual practice is non-dual with those, too.

[16:21]

But again, usually in Zen, you don't hear so much talk about those. So I like to balance a little bit this time and put more emphasis on the first five. Constantly remembering the sixth. The perfect wisdom is guiding, always guiding the other five. That's my plan. And one more thing from Manjushri today. He just reminded me. I forgot one point. Thank you. And that is, one time Manjushri was with a Shakyamuni Buddha. And Manjushri said, Lord Buddha, have you heard the teaching of the inactivity of all things? And the Buddha said, no, I haven't.

[17:24]

And Manjushri said, it's wonderful teaching, it's fabulous. And Buddha said, well, please tell me about it. And then Manjushri gave Buddha a little lecture about how everything really doesn't move. Manjushri said many things to Buddha, but I'll just say a little bit for now. Again, this is another sample of non-dual practice, okay? Manjushri said, the condition of being a living being is precisely what we mean by awakening. In other words, you as you are, the actual condition that you're in, moment by moment, that is precisely what is meant by awakening.

[18:29]

For a living being to be awake, for a living being to be Buddha, is just not to move. not to move from what it is to be precisely what it is. But to be a living being precisely as a living being is, to not move from what you are, is not so easy. What's easy is to move. What's easy is to be something other than a living being. It's much easier to be better than a living being or worse than a living being than just to be a living being. So, these first five paramitas are to help us simply be a living being.

[19:37]

to help us simply not move from what we are. Okay? So the first paramita, the first perfection, is the perfection of giving. Dana paramita. Dana means giving. Paramita means perfection. or giving which has gone beyond, giving which has gone beyond any idea we have about what giving is. Giving is also sometimes translated as generosity, liberality, what else, munificence, and so on. But these other translations in some sense don't indicate the incredible variety of the things that an enlightening being gives.

[20:54]

Because it's very important that you don't have a limited idea of giving. Having a limited idea of giving is a form of self-clinging. Self-clinging is the thing that interferes with sitting still. So giving and the other paramitas are ways for us to overcome self-clinging. When we have overcome self-clinging, then the sitting we do is the same as awakening. I'd like to read a little bit to you from one of the works of the Zen teacher, Ehe Dogen.

[22:06]

It's a fascicle of his called Bodhisatta Shishoho, the four integrative methods of the Bodhisattva, or the four liberating methods of a Bodhisattva. We have several translations of this fascicle. So if you want to study it later, you can look at several different translations. However, they don't seem to vary too much. It doesn't seem to be a particularly difficult fascicle. Now, one thing I'd like to also mention is that it is taught by ancestors of this lineage that the Shobo Genzo is primarily a big footnote, a 95-chapter footnote on sitting.

[23:19]

In 95 chapters, the ancestor Dogen is basically trying to help us understand what it means to just sit. So my My intention, too, in studying these paramitas is to help us understand sitting still. And when I read the Shobo Genzo, I always think, how is this fascicle, how is this teaching, how does it encourage me and others? How does it help me just sit? The ancestor says, giving means non-greed. Non-greed means not to covet.

[24:27]

And our translation does it the other way around. It says, giving means not coveting. Not coveting means not being greedy. Covet means, is related to the word cupid. It means to desire. It also means excessive desire or craving. So the first paramita means non-craving. And craving is the source of the clinging. Craving is the source of self-clinging. So right at the beginning, we have the antidote to all our problems. Giving means not to covet.

[26:20]

Sitting means not to covet. That's what sitting is. Not to desire anything. Of course, if you're sitting, you may desire a great deal. You may desire the sun to come out. It's cloudy today. It's not sunny here. If I notice that it's cloudy, that's pretty much just that. But it's pretty easy to slip from noticing it's cloudy to wishing that it was sunny. Are you able to observe that? Slight. Notice it's cloudy and then this little thing comes up there like, gee, it would be nice if it was sunny. It would be more colorful or... On the other hand, if it was sunny, you would be less happy maybe being in this room.

[27:24]

You wish you were outside. But notice how when it's cloudy, I don't know if you feel this way, but I'll notice myself, how when it's cloudy, it's easy to slip very quickly into, gee, I wish it was sunny. Now, sitting in this endo, day after day, period after period, some of you, some of us, may wish sometimes a period would end. We can move our legs. Or, Sashin's aura just started recently, so I don't know if your wishing was over yet. Have you got to that point yet? But at a certain point during Sashin, almost everyone wishes it was over. Not because necessarily they're even in pain, but just they'd like to get back to more productive activity. Or whatever, make a telephone call or take a walk.

[28:28]

It usually happens that people want it to be over sometime before it's over. Isn't that right? Those of you who've sat Sashin, haven't you sometimes had the experience of wishing that it was over prior to the end of it? What? Oh, yeah, and when it's ended, of course, you wish just a couple more days. This is called desire. Wishing for... You know, sometimes we say covet, and they say sometimes covet literally means to desire, but it has also acquired the idea of coveting, desiring something of an other's. Like, we come here... We make a tremendous effort, each of us individually and as a whole community, to provide the opportunity just to be here moment by moment where we are, day after day. Right? And even after that tremendous effort to provide the circumstances to just be here, we still wish we were someplace else.

[29:42]

Not all the time, but sometimes. And that's very useful to see how ridiculous that is that we do that. I came to Zen Center to study Zen with a teacher because I was actually trying to study by myself in Minnesota. And I felt a need for somebody who knew something about what was going on. So I heard about that there was a Zen center where there were other people practicing and where there was a good teacher. So I came and met Suzuki Roshi. And then over the years, I learned various ways to insinuate myself into his life and sort of be under his nose all the time. I worked really hard to get opportunities to be with him. And so I did get opportunities to be with him. And sometimes I got opportunities to be with him all by myself, just him and me.

[30:46]

Like, you know, in Sanskrit it's called kushala dharma-samgraha. Kushala means wholesome. Dharma means things. And samgraha means gather together and accumulate. This is not like, this is not practicing and restraining yourself. Okay? This is kind of letting yourself go. You know, go for it. Go for what? Help, you know, do good things. Let yourself go doing good things. It's not restraint anymore. There's not rules. You're not disciplining yourself according to rules in that dimension. And this clears, clears up, opens up the life stream, your life stream. your ever-changing life becomes cleared up by that second aspect.

[31:50]

And the third one's called something like sarva-sattva-kriya. Sarva means all, sattva means beings, and kriya means to clean or purify. So it could be to purify this being, but also to purify all beings. And of course that matures and brings people to awakening. So these three aspects of the practice of ethics are one presentation of it. And they are basically to help us model ourself on ourself. Just to give you a few little examples of each type.

[32:54]

For example, the first one of restraining yourself according to monastic rules. And these monastic rules you can practice in your house. Even if your house isn't a monastery, you can practice some of these if you want. A lot of them are quite good for the house. One of the monastic rules is put things back where you found them. This is, if you have that, you can have that rule at your house or in your monastery. It's a rule in this monastery. But don't worry. Even though we have the rule, guess what we do? We're no better in the monastery than anybody is in their house. But still, we have a structure called return things to where you got them. Put things back where you found them. Now, if you find something

[33:57]

Like if you find a teacup out on the lawn, if you take it away from the lawn, you should put it back in the lawn, I suppose, according to that. But if you know it's from the kitchen, you can take it to the kitchen even though you found it on the lawn. But that's a case where you're returning something someone else took from the kitchen. If you take it from the kitchen and leave it on the lawn, please take it from the lawn back to the kitchen. Today, if you have tea, you're drinking from a teacup, you take it from the tray, put it back in the tray rather than leaving it on the ledge or up by the shop or in your parking lot. Is Lou Hartman here? One of our elder monks has taken on the obligation of being the wrath of God to people who don't return cups. So be careful. He's watching.

[34:59]

Another monastic rule is when you move things, like a chair, move it quietly. So if you're moving a chair from back under the table or pulling off the table, rather than drag it across the floor, unless it's extremely heavy, lift it up. And when you're done, lift it up and put it back. Suzuki Roshi was very big on this one. He said, chairs are already convenient enough. It's enough that we can sit up in chairs. We don't have to also push them around like that. And they make noise. I said this one time and a young man told me that they teach that in the army too. And also I later found out through my extensive study of Emily Post that she says so too. This is called manners.

[36:06]

Ethics of manners. Another one. Well, that's enough. You get the feeling, I guess, huh? Well, I'll tell you one more. One time I was having tea with Suzuki Roshi, and we see these black cushions here that we're sitting on, that you're sitting on? We were having tea, and we were sitting on these black cushions. And then we got up, and we had to rearrange the black cushions. So I rearranged the black cushion with my foot. So he turned to the person next to me, and he yelled at the person, we don't move these with our feet. And he sort of went, well, why are you telling me that? So in that case, he explained, we respect these cushions.

[37:16]

We don't move them with our feet. We bend down and move them with our hands. It's an act of respecting them and showing this big mind that respects everything. This is a monastic rule to help you realize what you are. And also, it was a good example for me because he didn't criticize me directly. He criticized someone who wasn't at fault. who later understood, I think, and I understood too. What an interesting way to teach. And in the next category of doing things, accumulating good, one of the main things is try, try to find a way, try to find satisfaction solely by listening

[38:17]

studying and practicing the truth. See if you can find all your satisfaction in listening, observing, and practicing the truth. That's an example of doing good, doing something wholesome. There's other things. Another one is, that's pretty much it, I suppose, that one. Oh, another way to say it is listening, pondering over and making a living experience of the truth. Making the truth alive. This is not a restraining kind of activity. This is a, I don't know what, it's more creative. Try to be creative. Like right now, can you hear the truth?

[39:20]

Thunder helps. But when the thunder stops, can you still hear it? It's always coming in the old ear. Listen. When you hear it, think about it. Ponder it. And then see if you can make it alive in your life. This is the second aspect of ethical behavior. Another aspect of the second one is to rejoice in the good qualities of others. When you see somebody do something neat, rejoice. And when they're doing something you don't think is neat, look at yourself. almost all of us, at least in this society, are very good at criticizing others.

[40:30]

I've met a few people who aren't. We call these people mentally retarded because they don't have the ability to criticize others. Anyway, we do have that capacity and it can be quite useful but How about trying to appreciate others, and when you see something that's not so good, rather than criticizing them, look at yourself. Well, you can forgive them, too, right off, and then look at yourself. This is an example of cultivating good. Another thing that's good to do is scrutinize your own confusion and ignorance. Keep track of it. That's good. Being confused is not particularly good. But if you're not confused, then you miss out on a chance to practice good. Because if you're confused and you scrutinize your confusion, that's accumulating good stuff.

[41:38]

Well, it's getting late, so I just wanted to say sort of one more kind of story. And it's a story about my life. I've told it before. And I partly tell it again to repay my gratitude to a man in my life. And by the way, the word virtue, these ethical conduct is also the practice of virtue. The word virtue has a root. comes from the root vir, which means man. It also means, it also has the connotation of strength and capacity. It's related to also, in Sanskrit, the word for bull has to do with virility and fertility.

[42:50]

But, you know, women also have this virulness too. They have this strength and capacity, this manliness within them. We need virtue in order to be manly enough or strong enough to face up to what we are. And when I was a boy, laughing because I was gonna say I was a bad boy but then I thought of father Flanagan do you know who father Flanagan is many a Zen Center has attracts people from all over the world so a lot of my childhood stories I have to explain because many of you are from other parts of the world yeah when I was a boy I There's a place in Nebraska called Boys Town.

[43:54]

It's for orphaned boys. And the person who founded it, his name is Father Flanagan. And he used to go around and find boys who were in trouble, boys that were sometimes called bad boys. And he would take them in and take care of them and help them grow up to be, I don't know what, to be good boys. And he always said, my grandmother used to tell me, Father Flanagan says, there are no bad boys. But I was kind of a bad boy. I tried that out. But really what I was, was I was an energetic boy. And I found that doing bad things had a lot of juice. And I actually, when I was 11 years old, made kind of a vow to be as bad as I could. And at that age, being as bad as I could was doing things like dropping water bombs from the third floor stairway of my school down to the first floor of my school, and things like that.

[45:02]

It wasn't yet really that hurtful, but it was heading in that direction. And I lived in an apartment building, and in my apartment building, lived a man, a big man. I was 12 at the time and I was a big boy for 12. I weighed 134 pounds and I was big and strong and energetic and evil. And I liked it. And not only that, but Well, I'll stop there. And downstairs in my apartment building, I lived on the third floor, and down in the basement, there lived a man, and his name was Dick Grant. And he was about 40, 34, 40, somewhere in his late 30s maybe.

[46:09]

And he was six foot four, and he weighed 260 pounds. And he was a 1946 National Heavyweight Golden Gloves Champion. And he liked me. And he gave me a lot of attention. And one day he said to me, I want to tell you about my childhood when I was your age. And he told me some things he did. And he was bad too. Now he was bad and he was big and he was strong. And he said to me, you know, it's pretty easy to be bad. Now some people, you know, when they say it's pretty easy to be bad, they don't really know how easy it is to be bad because they don't really do it. They hold themselves back.

[47:10]

But I felt like this guy, when he says it's easy to be bad, I believe he knows how easy it is to be bad. I think he knows. He said, it's easy to be bad. He said, but what's hard is to be good. And I thought, yeah, that's true. A lot of my friends were impressed. Even my teachers were impressed at how bad I was. And they gave me a lot of attention for it. But this guy was not particularly impressed. He loved me, but he was not particularly impressed by how bad I was. And he said, what's difficult is to be good. And I kind of thought, okay, I'm going to try it. And ever since, I've been trying. And it's much harder.

[48:12]

I haven't made it yet, but I still think it's the real thing to try to do, is to be good, is to be who I am, to try to figure out where that is, how that is, completely, and thereby forget who I am, and thereby wake up. So I thank that Dick Grant, for showing me the real challenge in life is to find a way to be good and give and be patient and be courageous and be concentrated and be wise. In other words, what do you name it? It's a wonderful, wonderful thing we try to do. We just keep trying, never stop trying. So this week we're sitting here trying to give completely, to practice all good, to avoid wrong action, to help all beings, to be patiently accept what's happening.

[49:29]

to courageously enter into what's happening to be concentrated on what's happening and to awaken to what's happening this is our effort this week and i hope forever so even if you're not sitting here with us please uh... join us help us we need a lot of help this is hard and we'll join you because we know what you have to do is probably even harder at least we know What's hard about our life? Painful knees and so on. But you have, those of you who are bopping around the Bay Area, have a harder time to know what your challenge is. But let's help each other. Okay? May it all be.

[50:25]

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