I start out by being a little embarrassed because last week I came before you and said that in this week we would have our first talk in the new meditation hall. But it didn't happen. I'm sorry to disappoint any of you who are looking forward to doing that, but probably the person who is most disappointed is me, since I promised. And this kind of embarrassment is not as great as I imagined it would be because I think I can work it into my talk. in the sense that we human beings make promises or say things might happen and then they don't or they look like they might not.

[01:13]

And then we try to arrange things so they will. So actually all this week I've been pressuring certain people to make it possible to use the new hall. Fortunately, they were able to, well, they didn't think it was a good idea, and fortunately they were able to continue to say so, and fortunately I was able to listen to them. And so, here we are. a kind of conversation between human beings occurred where both parties in the conversation or all parties in the conversation were willing to be human beings and have opinions. Nobody was exactly trying to get their way, but somehow it worked out this way.

[02:24]

I don't know about next week. I'm not going to say anything at this point. I have been talking for a long time about what we call upright sitting, sitting upright, and how that's an expression of really being ourselves truly, and how that's really the foundation for our life to work. And I've also been trying to relate this practice of sitting upright or upright sitting or just plain uprightness to Buddha's precepts. And I've been going over this and over this in many different ways and today I'd like to go over it again.

[03:31]

so that it's clearer and clearer. I hope it will become clearer and clearer to you how this practice might work for us. And today I'd like to use certain images or images or famous Buddhist personages to help think about this. So the first step in the practice of upright sitting is to listen. Listen, which means to acknowledge what's happening, to listen to, first of all, your own pain or discomfort, your own pleasure or comfort, your own confusion, to listen to yourself, to acknowledge your state, to accept what's happening.

[04:56]

at least at the level of, well, this seems to be happening. This function of acknowledging and listening is personified by the great enlightening being we call Avalokitesvara, the one who actually pays attention to, or listens to, or regards the cries of pain of all beings in the world. We start at whatever level we can start at which is our Self. We don't skip over listening to our Self and try to listen to others. We listen to our Self and then we listen to others from the basis of admitting what's happening with us. In this sense we start to manifest this great enlightening work of the one who listens to everything.

[06:07]

Once we start listening, which is also to accept the first truth of the Buddha, that there is suffering in this world. It's a fact. We must not overlook this fact. We must accept it in ourselves and empathize with others about it. Then we go on by, after accepting this truth, we can see, we can see, we can understand the cause of this discomfort. And the personification of this seeing the cause of suffering and understanding it is this personification we call Manjushri Bodhisattva, Manjushri Enlightening Worker, the great, what is it called, pleasant splendor Bodhisattva.

[07:26]

who sits in the middle of our meditation hall in Zen. During construction we moved him over to the tea house for safety. But hopefully soon this great sweet and light being will go back into the Zendo. This represents our ability to see the cause of suffering. which is that we crave. And the reason why we crave is because we think there really is something there, something which exists independent of other things. And we see that that's the cause of our problems. Once we see, then we can vow.

[08:28]

We can vow, we can wish to let go of the cause of suffering because we see how good that would be for us and for everyone else. And the personification of this wish, this vow to drop this clinging, this craving, this belief that we or something else exists by itself in this world without being connected to everything else. The personification of this vow to let go of that clinging we call Samantabhadra Bodhisattva. And this Bodhisattva, the statue of this Bodhisattva in porcelain is sitting in the middle of this room here. And she sits on an elephant. Manjushri sits on a lion.

[09:37]

And Avalokiteshvara sits on a peacock. Okay. And once we make this will, this vow, to drop this craving to give up on this life so that we can really have our life. Then after that we can, what do I say, we can go to word. We can go to word. We can put our vow in words. We can say it. We can give our word. And we can say, we want to drop this attachment and we want to live for the benefit of all beings and we want to do all that's necessary in order to help everyone become free of the cause of suffering.

[10:48]

After making the va'al, after giving our word, then we can go to work. And Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, Samantabhadra means a universal goodness enlightening being, the enlightenment worker of universal goodness. Then we can go to work. Okay? So first seeing, represented by universal compassion, riding on a peacock. They use a peacock because a peacock has a peacock, right, with those feathers that have those eyes on them, which, or ears on those little end of their feathers. It rides the being with this fan back there of listening to all beings, seeing all beings suffering. Then we see Manjushri Bodhisattva riding on a lion, a lion that kind of claws away this attachment, claws away this craving.

[12:02]

And then finally we get on the elephant, a huge elephant that walks step by step into the work. The work of upright sitting. And this seems like one, two, three, but it's a circle. You don't do this, you go round and round in this all the time. One, two, three, one, two, three. These three aspects of practice over and over. You can think of it as a wheel rolling forward into your life of doing these three things over and over. See, hearing, listening, understanding, and making a commitment to the way over and over. recommitting yourself because you have seen again the necessity of the work and you see the necessity of the work because you feel firsthand the pain again. So again now, sit and listen.

[13:11]

Sit and see. Sit and vow. Sit and go to work. I also want to use these three stages or these three aspects of the wheel of Dharma, the wheel of practice, to give a feeling for what we mean by upright sitting in each case. So first of all, to sit and listen.

[14:14]

Just sit and listen. You don't have to do anything. Listening is a lot. Listening is a very lively activity. Sit and listen. Sit and listen and you bring or you allow the being of universal compassion to inhabit your body and mind. Because that's what that being does. It just sits and listens. This is upright sitting. Next, sit and see. Sit and understand. Deeply.

[15:19]

And again, when we understand something arises in us, a spirit arises in our body and mind, a spirit which wants to, which wants to drop body and mind, which wants to slough and take everything off, take everything off that's causing this suffering. the spirit, the mind of renunciation grows up in us while we sit this way, listening and seeing. And the spirit of renunciation means that we really learn what it means to just sit and be ourselves without any assistance. Well, I don't mean that you don't get help from all beings because you're sitting and all beings are helping you.

[16:25]

What I mean by no assistance is that you sit without adding anything to yourself. You sit and appreciate actually how all beings and everything's helping you be alive and how your life is actually the sum total of all the help you're getting. your life is actually just the result of help. There's nothing to us but the fact that beings are helping us. If we add something to the reality that all beings are helping us, that's called craving. If we add anything to simply the fact that everyone's helping us, that's called believing that we have independence of all that help. That's the cause of suffering. A spirit arises that wants to drop adding.

[17:33]

And as that spirit arises and becomes stronger, the spirit of upright sitting also becomes more and more alive. Upright sitting is willing to be there and just be the result of everything that causes you. Just be the result of all that supports you. Just be the arrival of everything without carrying or importing anything yourself to the situation. The willingness to sit that way is the mind of renunciation, and that allows us to really just sit upright. But that means we let go of a lot of habits, to think we have to do something ourselves other than appreciate that everyone's helping us. This is to be willing and actually want to realize that we are totally empty.

[18:40]

And totally empty means to realize total emptiness of ourselves is to realize that we are totally interconnected, that the totality of us is our inner connection. There's nothing more to us. To want to realize that and to want to be relieved from suffering because of realizing that. This mind of renunciation arises from seeing what happens when we don't do that, namely misery, etc. The great Buddhist teacher Nagarjuna in his most important work, which is called The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. In the first verse he said, Nothing that exists anywhere ever results from itself, or is from another, or from both self and another, or from no cause.

[19:54]

this is upright sitting. And the spirit of renunciation is to be willing and actually want to be the thing which is not caused by itself, not caused by another, not caused by both a self and another, and not without a cause. If I'm caused by myself, then I'm bringing something extra in. This is delusion. If I'm caused by another, I think I'm over here and everything that causes me is over there. I still think I'm something in addition to what everything else is. I still think there's something else, that I'm something and there's something else. I still haven't been willing to see and accept that I'm not something independent of the else, of the other. To think that it's both doesn't help either.

[21:02]

It's just two kinds of confusion added up. And to think that I'm sitting here without a cause, it's another kind of sense of independence realized without admitting dependence. To sit and walk and talk and live your life with a sense that you're not caused by yourself, by another, by self and other, and you're not without cause, That is the philosophical expression of what we mean by upright sitting. And the willingness to be that way, to be in accord with that teaching, is a mind of renunciation. The teaching is out there. You want to line up with it. Well, as human beings we have a lot of resistance to lining up to such a teaching. The only reason why we will is because we can see that not doing that is really, you know, really painful and is a source of additional pain and suffering to others.

[22:13]

If we're willing to do that, Then we're ready to go forward into the next step of making a vow, putting it in words, putting it in words in our head, putting it in words outside, saying, I want to let go of all this attachment. I want to help all beings. I really do. I'm willing to do what's necessary. I want to be an enlightened being so I can help all beings. And I heard that all enlightening beings and all enlightened beings have done this practice. And I want to do the practice that they did. And one of the first things they do, these enlightening beings, and the Buddhas even, one of the first things they do is they confess with words where they're at. They admit their humanness verbally. because humanness is so closely connected to words.

[23:23]

Our bondage is our words, and it is our words that will set us free. So we must speak in order to set ourselves free. We're going to speak anyway. It's a question of admitting what we're saying. This is called confession and sometimes called repentance. To admit who you are as such, moment after moment, is upright sitting. Or to put it the other way, if you want to repent, if you want to confess what you are, then sit upright and contemplate the truth, contemplate the true marks of your existence.

[24:26]

The Lotus Sutra says, the ocean, the entire ocean of karmic hindrance arises from delusion. If you want to confess, if you want to repent, then simply sit upright and contemplate the true marks. And all hindrance will melt like frost in the morning sun. The entire ocean of karmic hindrances. Karmic hindrances means all the hindrances that arises from our actions, which means all the hindrances of the world. That entire ocean of worldly hindrance and trouble comes from delusion.

[25:41]

How you doing? Might take a little break. So I'm trying to focus in on this upright sitting. Okay? So you've got this ocean of hindrance and trouble. It's from delusion. The world is not like isn't people and trees and tents and mountains.

[26:52]

The world is what happens when we grab stuff. That's what the world is. The world is basically clinging and the results of clinging. Then the world is basically obstruction. That's what we mean by the world. Giving up the world means giving up obstruction, means giving up clinging. All this obstruction comes from delusion. What kind of delusion? Well, basically the delusion is different from enlightenment. It's one kind of delusion. When we hear about an ocean of karmic hindrance and we hear about contemplating true marks, our dualistic mind might think, oh, well, we're supposed to get rid of this delusion and get rid of this hindrance and grab on to these true marks.

[27:57]

That's an example of delusion. And that kind of thinking causes these obstructions. Sitting upright means that you don't grab onto the true and reject the false. That's what sitting upright means. It means to sit without grabbing onto what you think is true and rejecting what you think is false. It also doesn't mean, of course, that you grab onto what you think is false and reject what you think is true. It means you just sit there. And you watch. And what do you see when you sit there, when you contemplate what the true marks are? You notice that you think this is true and this is false. That's what you think. You think this is the true middle way of the Buddha, and this is the stupid way of so-and-so. That's what people think when they sit, as far as I can tell. People have told me.

[29:02]

They think like this. Or even they think this is the true way of me, and that's the false way of those people. And we may or may not tolerate them to sit in the same meditation hall. To sit upright means you don't grasp what you think is true or what you heard was true or what your teacher says is true or what your school says is true or what the true true is, you don't grasp it. You just sit there and you watch these truths, these great truths appearing and disappearing. And you also watch these great delusions, these great falsehoods appear and disappear. You don't try to get rid of them and hold on to the true. That's what sitting upright means. That's what contemplating true marks means. Contemplating true marks means contemplate them. What are true marks? True marks are that you think, that I think in terms of right and wrong, true and false, me and others,

[30:06]

dirty and clean, holy and ordinary. This is the true marks of being a human being. We think like that. Buddha sees that and Buddha understands that. Buddha listens to this crap. Buddha sees this crap and Buddha wants to drop attachment to this stuff. And dropping attachment means to sit and not grasp the true or reject the false. We have an expression that the horse arrives before the donkey leaves. The great horse, a reality, arrives before the donkey of delusion departs. The truth arrives before delusion leaves. But we usually think, well, delusion would leave and then truth would come. Or, here comes delusion, bye-bye truth.

[31:09]

No. Uh-uh. Truth and delusion don't live in two different worlds. They do actually live in two different worlds, but the world of freedom includes those two worlds. We contemplate that true world of freedom. This sitting upright and contemplating the way our mind works without trying to fix it, listening, seeing, and working with it and giving word to the intention to sit there with it, this is upright sitting. And if you want to repent, then what you do is you practice this upright sitting. And when you practice this way and sit upright in this way, contemplating the truth of delusion, the truth that delusion is delusion and so on, when you sit that way, all the karmic hindrance melts in the morning sun of this wisdom.

[32:10]

The wisdom that you're not caused by yourself. You're not caused by another. And nothing else is caused by itself or by another or by both or with no cause. You just sit that way. Until that truth is totally realized as your moment-to-moment life. Somebody said, I think it was Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle said that genius is the ability, the transcendent ability, to take trouble. And you can hear that, I can hear that in at least two ways, and maybe you can hear more ways you can tell me about. But one way to take trouble is a transcendent ability to just sit there and take it.

[33:17]

Take the trouble. Take the outrageous, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Just sit there and take it. That's genius. Not even the taking it, the ability to take it is genius. The other meaning of take it is to take trouble like, you know, carefully get into the difficult details of your life. Go there and sort of face all these little difficulties. And just in the last couple of days, some of my friends here at Green Gulch, I saw them exemplify this kind of genius. By the way, you know, the word genius is I think a Latin word. And genius is the name of the tutelary god of the house.

[34:22]

The guardian spirit of the house, of the home, was called genius. The guardian spirit, the guardian sovereign of your home, is genius. The guardian of your home is your willingness to take trouble in both those senses of the word. And one of my friends was talking to someone over a long period of time. This person was coming to talk to her and talking a lot and yelling a lot and blaming a lot of people for a lot of things, a lot of problems. And this person pretty much just, you know, most of the time just sat there and listened to it and accepted it. And finally this person who had been talking to her realized that she had been beating this person with this stuff. Finally realized that she had been pummeling this person.

[35:25]

But this person didn't say, you're pummeling me. Maybe they did once in a while, but basically they just took it. And finally this person woke up. I'm not saying you should take abuse. Because if you're being abused, you're not taking it. you should get away. But if you can actually accept it happily, the other person will finally find out what they're doing. Another example of taking trouble was another friend of mine was in a meeting and something happened to him. Some big change happened in their life right in the meeting. And so a great emotion came up and this person, this guy, wanted to run out of the room because all this emotion was coming up, all this unruly karmic hindrance was coming up.

[36:36]

And so what do we want to do at that time? Quite normally, human beings want to get out of there for various reasons. You're afraid you're going to cry. You're afraid you're going to scream. Or you're afraid you're going to run out of the room. So you want to run out of the room before you really run out of the room. Or you're afraid you're going to get angry and attack somebody or say something cruel. Or you're afraid you're going to show people that you're having trouble adjusting to a big change that just happened in your life. In other words, you don't want to We don't want to take the trouble of having this particular experience. But she didn't run out of the room. She said, she told us that she wanted to run out of the room. That's not running out of the room.

[37:40]

That's taking the trouble to have the problem of wanting that, of feeling that, and taking the trouble to notice it and to say it. Then everything's changed. And also this person then models for the other people that they can take the trouble to be who they are. But it's not easy to say those kinds of things. Our habit is to run away from being this human being But this worker, this great, looks like a lady, riding on this elephant, she just rides, you know. You don't have to do that much work. The elephant's doing the walking. The elephant of the universe is walking you into this stuff. All you got to do is ride, Sally. Just ride.

[38:43]

And if while you're writing, maybe you have to say, hey, I want to get out of here. This is getting too thick. This is getting too rocky. Just say so. This is also upright sitting. This is also confession. And as soon as you say, I want to get out of here, as soon as you say that, a hindrance drops away. Especially if you say it wholeheartedly, honestly, not hiding, not sort of saying it. You know, I a little bit want to get out of here. Now, you can say it that way sort of ironically. You can say, guess what? I just a little bit want to get out of here. As a kind of, you know, certain style of telling people that you really want to get out of here. And this is really hard. Unfortunately or fortunately, whatever, it's not really fortunate or unfortunate, just the way it is, oftentimes these times our sense of humor, we lose our sense of humor and we can't make jokes at that time.

[39:50]

Which is another reason why we want to get out of there. This is called work. And one side is genius, which is willing to do the work of being us, step after step. And the other side is laziness, which does not want to do the work of being us, which says, you know, I can't do it. I'm not good enough. I can't ride that elephant. the novelist E.M. Forrester, imagining a creature, said, she is English to her fingertips, English to her fingertips, and unshakably conservative in her belief

[41:17]

And yet, she inhabits her narrow world so profoundly and with such enormous feeling that she transforms it. This is genius. This is not particularly, what do you call it, conservative group probably, Marin County and so on. Maybe some of you are conservative, I don't know. Point is, if you're liberal or conservative, whatever you are, that's a narrow way. Even if you have grand schemes, it's still narrow. To inhabit each of us, our space, our being, to inhabit our world, which is a narrow little world always, even though it's got a name like big world, to inhabit that narrow world, it transforms, we're released from it. The point is to inhabit it and be released.

[42:21]

If you're interested in the health of the whole planet, your interest is a narrow little world. The point is if you really want to work for the health of the world, you have to be released from your narrowness, from your view of how to do that. If you're not interested in the world at all, and you're just only interested in yourself, then you gotta inhabit that narrow little world and be released from that one. This lady could do it. She could inhabit it. Down to her fingertips. What does it take to make the vow and to give your word down to your fingertips, down to the hairs coming out of every pore in your body, to get all those little hairs to stand up and talk with you.

[43:25]

What does that take? Well, it takes listening and seeing. When you listen and see, you can say with your whole body and mind, I want to do that. I want to inhabit my life so it will be transformed, and so I can work others to model for others that same effort, that same willingness to experience what I'm experiencing, to think what I'm thinking, to have the beliefs that I have, to have the values that I have, and to experience them so fully that I'm released from my values. I'm released from my values. I'm released from my opinions. I'm released from my narrowness. This is also called upright sitting. To inhabit your bodies and minds so fully that you're released from it. But for most of us, in order to do that, I guess we have to first say we want to.

[44:36]

I have to say I want to inhabit my life so fully that I will be released from it. I will live in the mud so willingly, so completely, and take the trouble of living in the mud so completely that my life will rise up above the mud and form a beautiful white lotus flower. Today we're starting our training period at Green Gulch, and so we'll have more meditation than we have been having for quite a while.

[45:43]

And when we do this, when we sit with ourselves in this way, when we have the great leisure to be able to sit and confront and become aware of our body and mind, all this mud, all this shit, all this trouble starts to become more apparent to us. It's not that sitting still makes it happen, it's just that we start to notice it. And already I've noticed with some people that they're already getting somewhat unsure and somewhat unsure, somewhat worried whether they'll be able to deal with all this, all this shit, all this stuff that in a busy life

[46:49]

we sometimes don't even notice they worry and I would say basically my faith is that if you can tell people it's like this one person if you can say I feel like bolting I feel like running away from this if you can say that you can you can get whatever help you need Not necessarily from somebody else, but just you can say it to yourself. As soon as you say, I can hardly stand this, some help is right there. I can't say as a definite rule that anything that's happening to you, you can handle. But something like that I'm saying. Especially if you can say, this is really hard, I'm reaching the limit of what I can stand here.

[47:55]

That's your way of handling it. And if I speak for Avalokiteshvara, the one who listens to all this suffering and all this shit, I don't want to say that Avalokiteshvara is sitting over here on this chair, so you can run over here and get help. This ability to accept what's happening is all over the place. But I guess I could say this, although I guess I would say I invite all of us to admit what's happening and see if we can handle it.

[49:05]

And if somebody feels like they're allowing things to happen and you don't know how to deal with it, This community is dedicated to help you. I just made a commitment. I'm sorry if I didn't ask other people who live here before I said that, but that's what I think our commitment is, is to help each other to make a community that can allow people to experience what they're experiencing. and to help to encourage them to be able to do that. We don't have some other work even though we do lots of stuff here. And each of us think about what we need to do for ourselves

[50:11]

to make a container so that we can dare to experience what's happening to us. Is there a song about this? Yeah, that's it. I don't know the words or the tune, though. Does everybody know it but me? I see some young people in the audience. I don't know how young they are, but they look pretty young from this old person's point of view. And I just heard another story from one of the young people that lives here who was a freshman in high school. And he said that I think the group of freshmen got together at his school, and they just talked about where they were at. And what they said was, a lot of them said that they were suffering a lot.

[51:16]

And this young man was very encouraged to hear this. He thought it was really, he felt really, I don't know what he felt. He felt really, I think, relaxed or encouraged anyway, encouraged. He got courage from other people being able to admit that they're having a hard time. And I thought, gee, again, this is Marin County, but I thought, geez, That's surprising that teenagers can say, can know that they have trouble and that they can say it. That's really great. My therapist told me, you know, I was talking about some adult and he was talking about... Maybe it wasn't my therapist, but anyway, somebody said, you know, people aren't... Adults aren't totally aware, right?

[52:19]

We're not totally aware of our suffering. But for some reason I said, but teenagers are, generally speaking, not at all aware of what's happening to them. They're totally unaware. Now, I didn't say that. Anyway, it's hard for teenagers to be aware of how much suffering they've got, because they've got a tremendous amount of suffering. Because, in fact, they're going through tremendous change. And that change is very difficult to cope with. They want to bolt all the time. They want to bolt from their house. They want to bolt from their school. They want to bolt from this. They want to bolt from that. They want to run away from this tremendous change they're going through. They don't want, it's very difficult for them to sit there and be a teenager. Some Buddhists I know, the main reason why they want to practice Buddhism is so that before they're a teenager again, they can learn something. And they don't want to live forever.

[53:22]

They do not want to be a teenager again. I must have been one of those teenagers who was totally in denial because I didn't think I had such a hard time. But when I look back at it, I realized it was really hard. Now when I get up in the morning, usually dark, but I just get dressed and go to the meditation hall. But I remember when I was a teenager, getting up and getting dressed was a major trauma. Trying to figure out, well, how am I going to look today? What should I wear? Should I cover up this face covered with pimples? How should I comb my hair? It's a big problem. Should I be an adult or a child? Major decisions every day. Anyway. No song about this that appeals to me. It's not easy being free.

[54:29]

Being green. It's not easy being green. Somebody gave me a tape of that, sung by Frank Sinatra. Let it be? You want to lead us in that song? Let it be? You know that? How many people know Let It Be? That's not enough. No? Not today? Well, there's always a red, red robin. Yeah, that works.

[55:47]

How many people want to sing the Red Red Robin? It's not enough. Is there any song you want to sing? Row your boat? How many people want to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat? It's not enough. Old Man River? Do you know Old Man River? You do? How many people want to sing that? Not enough. And I want a majority on something. Yes? Any suggestions? I see hands raised, but no other suggestions. How many people want to sing Amazing Grace?

[56:56]

How about Bodhisattva Vow? You have to do it anyway, so you might as well vote for it. Even if you don't have to do it, you have to listen to it. So please listen to this, at least. Anybody who wants to sign up later, Tayo will take your names. May our intention...

[57:41]

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