really accord with the ancestral source. I can't say anything But if I do that, it will be difficult for living beings to get a foothold. Therefore, we speak. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

[01:15]

Before I sat down, I bowed over in this direction. I bowed to the Green Gulch elders here. Several hundred years of experience here. We have Charlotte Silver. We don't know how old she is. It's a secret intimately conveyed. But anyway, here she is, one of the ancestors of our, elder of our community. And seated next to her is Charles Brooks. We may know how old he is. I don't know if it's a secret, but I know he's been around a long time.

[02:27]

And the next is George W. Wheelwright. Another elder and sort of our predecessor here at Green Gulch, one of our benefactors, making our presence here possible. And we know how old he is. Because today just happens to be, I hear, his 86th birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear George. Happy birthday to you and many more.

[03:34]

Great. When's your birthday, Charlotte? 14. So in order to speak, I, in some sense, compromise myself and leak. But I'm willing to do it. I have no choice. And I'll also say that please clearly observe a teaching of the king of teaching. The teaching of the king of teaching is thus.

[05:02]

This teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhism ancestors. Now you have it. So please, keep it well. The Buddha, the essence of the Buddha, the essence of Buddhahood is compassion. And compassion, the Buddha's compassion is guided and always is joined with Buddha's wisdom.

[06:46]

Today I offer the idea to you that the sixth ancestor of Zen mentioned, namely that if you think, then you change. If you don't think, then you realize your true nature. If you think of benefiting all being, you change. You become a beneficent being. If you think of selfish thoughts, you become a selfish person.

[07:55]

So the practice of compassion of the Buddha is to think. It's a kind of thinking with lots of emotion. Thinking all the time of Buddha. Thinking all the time of great compassion. this is Buddha's compassion, is to think of what is beneficial to living beings, to joyously, joyously cherish living creatures, to constantly be devoted to what would be beneficial to them. If you think this way, you change. You are transformed. You don't think of transforming yourself. You think of benefiting living being. You don't think of improving yourself.

[09:01]

You cherish others' joy. You're devoted to bringing happiness to every living creature with no concern of transformation. And yet this is immediately transformation. So compassion is this kind of thinking, to do this kind of thinking with your whole body in mind, never stopping until all beings are happy. Last time I gave a talk here, a month ago, February 12th, I went into some detail about these ways of thinking of great compassion. I talked about the ten great transcendent vows and actions of the enlightening beings, the beings who are totally devoted to other living beings, who are devoted to the joy of other beings.

[10:21]

the Bodhisattva. There are ten practices I distressed. Practices involved of homage to enlightenment, aligning yourself with enlightenment. That's the first one. And then praising enlightenment Praising the enlightenment which exists in ten directions and three times. Making offerings to the Buddha. Making offerings to awakening. Confessing and repenting of all non-virtue. and thus clearing your eyes so that you can do the next practice of rejoicing in the merits of others, in the virtues of others.

[11:34]

And then beg the Buddha to teach, and beg the Buddhas to stay in the world. And then zealously practice the practices that all Buddhas have done. And then devote your life to accommodating and serving all living beings. And then take all the goodness, all the positive energy that is generated from these previous nine practices and set that aside hand it over, turn it over, dedicate it to the benefit of all beings, to the ultimate benefit of all beings. So those are, each one of those is a way to think. And when you think that way, you change.

[12:41]

And this change gives rise to a kind of energy, a kind of clear, positive energy that makes possible the successful practice of benefiting being, and it leads to the traditional practice or the collateral practice of wisdom. It gives you the clarity and energy to clearly observe the teaching of the Buddha. which is thus. By dedicating yourself to the benefit of all beings, all beings then turn around and support you and tell you that you can sit still and clearly observe thus.

[13:50]

If we don't take care of living beings, living beings distract us. Their call draws us away from our meditation. We must take care of all living beings in order to be able to pay attention to what's happening. And similarly, we must be able to pay attention to what's happening in order to really be effective in helping living beings. So it's a circle of compassion and clear observing, compassion and wisdom, compassion, wisdom, compassion, wisdom, until finally they're perfectly harmonized. Today I'd like to go into a little bit more detail about clearly observing the teaching, clearly observing thus. May I do that?

[14:59]

Okay. All right. Lord Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, to his disciple, please train yourself thus. Again, he could have stopped there, but he went on. and said, in the sea, there will be just the sea. In the herd, there will be just the herd.

[16:10]

In the imagined, there will be just the imagined. In the known, there will be just the known. When you train yourself thus, then there will be for you in the theme, just the theme. In the heard, just the heard. In the imagined, there will be just the imagined. And in the known, there will be just the known.

[17:27]

When things are thus for you, when there is just in the seen the seen, and just in the heard the heard, then you will not identify with it. When you do not identify with it, you will not locate yourself in it. When you do not locate yourself in it, there will be no here or there or in between. And this will be the end of suffering. This is the radical teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha, which is echoed down for 2,500 years as his practice of wisdom.

[18:58]

this practice of wisdom, as he said, will be the end of suffering. And it also allows that beings who are dedicated to helping others will not get tired out and discouraged in the process of working for the benefit of others. Because, as he said, When the heard or seen is just the heard or seen, there is no here or there or in between. There is no me or you or in between. Therefore, my helping of you or your helping of me, there is no outflow. There is no loss of energy. I don't get tired.

[20:08]

It doesn't wear me out to work for others' benefit. I have protected myself from the idea that I'm giving you something and you're receiving something and I'm losing something and you're gaining something or vice versa. I've protected myself from dualistic thinking so that I can be working for the benefit of others without getting tired. Because dualistic thinking has been cut out. How is it cut out? In seeing there will be just the seeing. In the imagined, just the imagined. In the known, just the known.

[21:13]

Then you will not identify with the object. You will not get involved with the object. Later, a thousand years later, Buddha's great disciple, Vasubandha, had a teaching called mirror or just concept, vijñapti-matrata, just concept. He taught the way to train the mind to terminate in the seen, to terminate in the heard, to terminate in the imagined.

[22:26]

We human beings, when we know something, we always know a concept. We do have direct experience. We do have direct perceptual experience, but at that time we don't know it clearly. This perceptual phenomenon is converted into concepts, and these we know clearly. However, as soon as we know something clearly, like a sound, or color, as soon as we know it clearly, at that moment, some noise comes up around it called a sense of self. And this sense of self, I'm here, and you're there,

[23:40]

and this belongs to me, and I'm there, and this causes suffering. So his medicine, the Buddha's medicine and Vasubandha's medicine, is bring the mind to termination on the concept. Train yourself in mirror concept or just concept, or as Buddha said, just concept, just image, just the known, just the heard. Let the mind terminate there, and then the self-clinging, which arises whenever we know anything, will naturally drop off. You don't cut it away intentionally. You just bring your mind directly to the experience and stop the mind there.

[24:42]

And the self-cleaning will not find a foothold. And you will be relieved. And bliss will be the name of the child. the first ancestor of Chinese Zen, named Bodhidharma. He had a disciple, and he had not much instruction for his disciple. He didn't say too much. Basically, all he said was, his version of the teaching that the Buddha gave was, have no objects of thought. And it doesn't mean that there's no objects. It means that when there's an object, when there's an object, you do not activate any thought around it.

[25:55]

Or when there's an object you activate, at that moment you don't activate any thought. In other words, no object of thought means no object. Or rather, no object, the instruction, no object of thought means that there's just the object and there's no additional thought activity. Hello. When there's the herd, there's just the herd, and there's nothing else happening for you at that time. So in Bodhidharma's teaching, rather than try to calm the mind by some kind of device, simply if you do not have objects of thought, the mind is immediately calmed. And as soon as you have objects of thought, in other words, objects with thought, The mind is disturbed.

[26:58]

So he taught his disciple, outside have no involvements. There is an outside, maybe, but have no involvements with it. Just let it be outside. That's enough. Outside have no involvements. have no involvement with object just let them be object just let those conceptual objects be a conceptual object inside no sighing or coughing in the mind thus You enter the way. Outside, just let it be that.

[28:09]

Don't get involved. Cut away all involvement. I see you. I see you. That's it. I have no involvement beyond that. It may sound tough. It may sound like you're going to lose something, but it's bliss. Just meet your friend, and that's it. And then again, meet your friend, and that's it. And then again, meet your friend, and that's it. Moment by moment, without stopping, just meet it. Meet it. You won't lose a thing. You may think so, but you won't. Actually, you lose one thing. You lose misery. You lose self-clinging. You lose selfishness. It drops away in that clear meeting. Outside, no involvement.

[29:15]

Inside, no sign. Rotten pickles. They had rotten pickles to eat. Now, I don't think the teacher sort of gave them rotten pickles just to sort of, you know, push them. I think they were really poor. They were just really poor in those days. Buddhism was poor. Japan wasn't poor, but Buddhism was poor because it was a little bit depressed by the government because the government was, you know, supporting Shintoism at that time. This is, you know, early part of the century here. Now Buddhism's rich in Japan. Anyway, at that time, the Buddhist monks were pretty good, a lot of them, because they weren't into it for money. And they also weren't into it for robbing pickles, but that's what they got. So here's these young boys, these teenage monks or whatever they were, teenage or young 20s, I suppose.

[30:23]

And so now they have rotten pickles for lunch. And they didn't want the rotten pickles, so they didn't throw them in the garbage because if they threw them in the garbage, the teacher would find them in the garbage. Apparently he checked the garbage. So what'd they do? They buried the pickles. They are smart, pretty smart. A little bit too smart. So anyway, the teacher found the pickles, dug them up, and commanded that they be cooked. And they were cooked. And they ate them. And Suzuki Roshi said that he learned something on that occasion. It helped his understanding quite a bit. It was a good teaching, very kind teaching. And he also said that these other monks that he practiced with, and he too, were having kind of a hard time with this very kind teacher.

[31:30]

So, among the seven students, six ran away. What happened to the seventh? Poor Suzuki Roshi. He said, he said later, he said, well, I would have run away, but I didn't know I could. You've got to be that stupid. Really. The teaching of the Buddha is a teaching for stupid people. People that are so stupid they don't know any better than in the herd to hear the herd. In the herd is the herd. That's very simple. Almost nobody is willing to be that stupid. But you've got to be that stupid, that childlike, that innocent of sophistication. You've got to let the child who could enjoy that show take over.

[32:35]

A child would be willing to do that. Listen to this kid. Ding! Ding! Again and again, listen to that. Like a fool. Spend your life listening to sounds. Only. Okay? Practice secretly. Working within. Like a child. An innocent child who doesn't know there's any better show in town than just this. This is the spirit of the ancestors. This is the spirit of freedom. I have a watch. One disadvantage of having a watch is that it's kind of artificial for me to ask you what time it is.

[33:45]

But it's nice for me to say, ask you, what time is it? What time is it? Huh? What time do you think it is? Huh? It's now? Oh. Okay. Thank you. Now what should we do? So let's see. We got Buddha. We got Vasubandhu in the 4th century. We got Bodhidharma in the 6th century. And we jumped ahead to the 20th century. Now let's go back to 8th century. The sixth ancestor of Zen, he said, what's Zen? What do I mean by Zen? Zen is to not activate thoughts with regard to objects.

[34:54]

Sound familiar? That's what Zen, that's what he said Zen was. Zen is to not activate objects, thoughts about objects. To have no objects of thought is Zen. And, oh, sorry, I got that wrong. That's Za. You ever heard of Zazen? He said, what's Zazen? Zazen, sitting meditation, right, literally. What's za? Za is to not activate thoughts about objects, to have no objects of thought. And what's zen? Zen is to not be confused and just realize your true nature. That's zazen. And let's see, where should we go next? Next is 6. Let's see if we have a good place to start another one.

[36:02]

Oh, well, how about Dogen Zenji? Now, he's going to say something that's going to combine these two. He's going to draw the wisdom, the insight back with the compassion. Okay? He said, you should just experience the eye that sees Buddha. And what does it mean to see Buddha? Seeing Buddha means to have no object of thought. Seeing Buddha means that outside you don't activate your thinking. And then Dogen Zenji said that Buddha said, for one,

[37:20]

who practices all virtue is tolerant, gentle, peaceful, upright, and steady. For that one, that one will see my body. That one will see Buddha. Practicing all virtues means to practice those ten practices I mentioned earlier. It means to go into the mud and water. To go into the mud and get dirty helping living beings. To go into the water to teach the way. To be gentle, to be gentle or tolerant and to be upright and steady means that in the mud, in the mud and in the water, you see Buddha.

[38:43]

in the mud and water of daily life, that you enter into this mud and water of daily life for the benefit of other beings. And in this mud and water of daily life, you see Buddha. It's not easy, but you see Buddha there. You see Buddha in your daily life. What's your daily life? Colors, sounds, smells, feelings of pain, pleasure. emotions, things you know, things you imagine, things you see and hear. This is the mud and the water that you enter in order to help beings. And in those things you see Buddha. How do you see Buddha? Not as an object. In other words, you just see these things. This practice is very clear and simple, but very difficult because whenever there's a very simple practice like, hey, this is practice right there.

[40:06]

See it? Whenever there's anything simple like that, around something simple like that is something very, very, very complex. When the Buddha holds up a simple jewel, immediately tremendous disturbance occurs around that jewel. This is the teaching, but it takes all we've got to stay there with it, because right around some simple presentation, it's tremendous psychic force. All the forces of the universe are swirling around this simple presentation. The simpler it gets, the clearer it gets, the more turbulence in the neighborhood is possible. That's why we must generate a tremendous will of goodness and devotion to other beings in order to have the support, the empowerment to actually sit still

[41:18]

with the jewel of the truth. When you try to sit there with what's happening, immediately there's possibility of tremendous forces of dispersing you, distracting you, and throwing you off. So it's simple, but for that very fact it takes All you've got to be with such a simple teaching of just hearing the heard and so on. So I offer this simple teaching, which is transmitted to us by the ancestors, but I don't say it's easy to stay there with it. I warn you that it will be difficult. Now Bodhidharma, what did he say? He said, out... ...involvements.

[42:22]

Inside, no coughing or sighing in the mind. Thus enter the way. He trained and he trained and he trained at that practice. So now, I think, we here are training in this practice too. And finally, he accomplished that practice. In other words, he reached the place. He attained that practice. And he was just outside no involvements. Okay? And so he went to his teacher and he said, I have no involvements anymore. And his teacher said, doesn't that turn into nihilism?

[43:33]

He's testing him. You know what nihilism is? Nihilism is First of all, the position, the philosophical position that nothing exists. Nothing can be communicated or known. Nihilism is then also, from there you go on to say, refute all moral positions that previously existed and say, all these moral systems don't hold anymore, and so on. So when the disciple, when you finally get to the place maybe where you think there's no further involvement, there's nothing, no involvement, that may slip into nihilism. Sometimes people come and say that when they do this, they feel like there's nothing left. Everything's taken away. There's no place to stand. I have nothing.

[44:36]

But couldn't that slip into nihilism, into the position that nothing exists? We're not saying that nothing exists. This isn't a nihilistic position. We don't say that the object doesn't exist. We just say, no involvements with it. We don't say there's no hearing or no seeing. We say, in the herd, just the herd. That's no involvements. But when you say no involvements, you could mean that there's nothing. In other words, nihilism. if you are meditating in this way and you feel like everything's taken away and there's nothing and you have no place to stand and you've lost everything that is involvement you see that is talking about it still now it's possible that there could be a moment where you taste what it's like for some for just the scene to be the scene

[45:41]

Just to be there with what's happening. It's possible the moment you actually successfully train yourself at it, but then in the next moment you may start talking to yourself about it and say, hey, wait a minute. What's going to happen to me now? Or what happened to me? Where did I go? Or what's going to... Where's the floor? Where's the ceiling? Or where's my life? This is, again, you slipped into involvement. And... If you say that not just what happened to the floor, but if you say the floor is gone, that's nihilism. Nihilism is a kind of involvement or chattering around the neighborhood of just what's happening. Okay? That make sense? So when the disciple comes to Bodhidharma, when Huayka came and he said, I have no further involvements, Bodhidharma tested him. Isn't that maybe nihilism? And Huayka said, no.

[46:44]

And Bodhidharma said, prove it. And Huayka said, I'm always clearly observing. and no words can reach it. Not even the words, no further involvement. Not even the words, there's nothing. And Bodhidharma said, this is the essence of mind of all the Buddhas. Have no more doubt. In Zazen, the Zen of this practice, we have a practice called just sitting. Just sitting.

[47:46]

In the sitting, in the body that sits, there will be just the sitting body. When there is for you in the sitting body, just the sitting body, then you will not identify with it. When you do not identify with this body, you will not locate yourself in it. When you do not locate yourself in it, there will be no here, or there or in between and this will be the end of suffering just sitting but again there are tremendous forces of distraction swirling all the time ready to take you off from this simple stupid practice of just sitting

[49:17]

Yes, there are. For example, sleep. For example, hey, I'm doing pretty good. Or, hey, I'm doing really bad. I'm a lousy meditator. Many, many things you can think of. Or, when's lunch? Or, gee, this is painful. Many, many, many, many, many distractions. If a Zen student sits for one hour or one week, they will realize many things can happen besides, not besides, around this wonderful thing called just sitting. which is immediately, perfectly, absolute freedom and compassion. Okay? You know.

[50:23]

You've tried. You know. okay you gotta have faith and you gotta ask you gotta dedicate yourself to all sentient beings you gotta say i'm just doing this i wanna help everybody i want i'm concerned with everybody's joy and then please everybody help me sit here I just want to sit here and do Buddha's practice for you. Okay? Help all Buddhas and ancestors. Help all sentient beings. Because that's what I want to do for you. I want to make the Buddhas happy. I want to make the Bodhisattvas happy. I want to make the people happy. I want to make the frogs happy. I want to make the cockroaches happy. I want to make everybody happy. So please help me do this practice which will help me make you happy. Help me make you, help yourself be happy. Okay? And then maybe you can do it. You can't do it by yourself.

[51:25]

You've got to get everybody's help because you're doing it to help everybody. And if you're doing it to help everybody and you keep trying, everybody will help you. And when everybody helps you, if you're awake and you clearly observe, you'll notice that they're helping you and you will be able to just sit. Okay? This is also an ancient tradition on the night of Buddha's enlightenment he was trying to sit actually just like you and I he was having a little problem now he wasn't at that night they didn't mention of him going to sleep on the job but actually one of the things that he was tempted by was sleep can you imagine Buddha falling asleep that night Just think about that. What if he'd slept through it? No, he wasn't asleep, was he?

[52:30]

He was awake all night that night doing his job of being a Buddha. But actually, one of the devils, I think, is it called the noontime devil? One of the devils is sleep to the meditator. I recently read in this book called Crowds and Power. And I'm talking about these invisible crowds that exist. There's the invisible crowd of the dead, the invisible crowd of posterity, the invisible crowd of angels and saints. And there's also the invisible crowd of the devils. And one of the things that I was surprised to hear was that traditionally, the invisible crowd of the devils in societies where they had a lot of devils you know, where devils are really, people can see them still, that devils are not only numerous, like lots of billions of them, but devils are teeny.

[53:32]

Now, I always thought devils were kind of like, you know, about the same size as people. But they're teeny. Actually, when I think about it, it makes more sense. Because when you're meditating, it's not like some, you know, five foot eight red guy comes up to you and says, hey, why don't you go to sleep? Or, you know, you're wasting your time. You're not making any money doing this, plus you paid some money to do this. You know, or when's lunch coming? Actually, that doesn't happen. Somebody like that doesn't come up to you even dressed in a normal clothing and talk to you like that. They leave you alone. But there's these little teeny ones that are buzzing around your ear. And they go in your ear and they say, when's lunch? And they're under your armpit, you know? And they're in your lower back and they say, relax.

[54:37]

They say, slouch. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. So, okay, so Buddha's there the night of his enlightenment, right? And innumerable hordes of devils are swirling around him, talking to him about sleep, sex, food, power, wasting his time, you name it. Because he was getting close to completely, he was getting close to just sitting. He was kind of hunkering down, you know, to just hearing and just seeing. He was getting close. No one had ever gotten this close before in this eon, in this cosmic cycle of our planet. He was getting really close to terminating his mind on the concept. So these devils were going totally bananas.

[55:39]

trying to distract him because his stillness evoked tremendous activity because they go together when there's something very still there's always tremendous activity tremendous energy because it's a dynamic universe So there he was, trying to sit still, not quite able to do it yet, not quite knowing if he would dare, whether the universe would let him, because these devils certainly weren't letting him. Armies of distracting forces were assailing him, they said. So he said, okay. I came here to sit. I said before I sat down, he said, by the way, before he sat down, he said, I'm going to sit down and I'm not going to move until I finish my job. Now he was sitting pretty still and now it looked like maybe he wasn't going to be able to finish his job.

[56:44]

Like maybe he's going to have to move because he was really getting tempted by all these distractions from just sitting there. He was getting tempted to identify with the body, to get involved with the body or whatever. And he said, okay, I'm going to check now. I thought I came here to sit. I want to check to see if I can actually do it. Can I actually just sit here? And he took his right hand out of the meditation. He had his hand like this, you know. He had his hand...

[57:28]

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