To perform the Buddha way is the Buddha way. To model the Buddha way is the Buddha way. To learn the Buddha way is the Buddha way. To perform the Buddha way, which is the Buddha way, is to perform yourself. Perform yourself

[01:01]

But if you don't notice it, if you're not aware of it, you might miss it. And if you miss it, it does seem like you miss it. And therefore you miss also the performance of the buddha way, and not therefore you miss the buddha way. So noticing that you're performing yourself is something which I highly recommend. Although I don't recommend movies, I do recommend that you perform the self. Someone said earlier today that they heard a teaching about fully expressing yourself. Did somebody here bring that up? Who did? She left. Who? Elizabeth. Elizabeth went off to perform herself to fully express yourself someplace else.

[02:07]

So today I hope that you enjoyed performing yourself here. Thank you for the confession. And then I ask you that when you notice that you're that you're a person who's concerned about being a good student? Do you perf... Do you perform?

[03:28]

I'm concerned. But now you confessed. Did you perform that confession? Yeah. Did you, and when you... Before you confessed, when you were talking about the concerns you just shared, did you perform them? Did you fully express them? I expressed them throughout all of the time. But do you feel like I am now expressing that? And do you feel I am not performing them? a student of Buddha Dharma concerned with these things? That's my question to you. Well good, that's the Buddha way. The Buddha way is when you're a person who's concerned about the things you're concerned about, that you perform with confidence. In other words,

[04:29]

wholeheartedly perform a person who is concerned about whether they're right or wrong. Wholeheartedly perform a person who is strongly bent in a certain direction. I am a bent person. I perform a bent person. Twisted and turned in certain ways according to ideas. Do you perform that person wholeheartedly? I am performing. And I'm doubting right now. And you're what? I'm doubting right now. Yeah, you're doubting. Are you performing that doubt wholeheartedly? I don't know. You look like a pretty good performance of doubt there.

[05:39]

It looked pretty good. It's kind of like, oh, God, I'm full of doubt. Oh, geez, wow. You look pretty good, you know. Did you feel the wholeness of your doubt? Did you exercise it? Somebody is just telling me about they're reading this book called Warm Smile from Cold Mountain. Of course, you Exactly. But anyway, that's the real name. And there was a part in it about saying about giving up self-improvement. Something like that in the book. I can imagine it's in there. Giving up self-improvement. Trying to improve yourself. And when she said that, I thought... Yeah, give up trying to improve yourself, but exercise yourself. So I actually exercise myself. I do. I do.

[06:41]

I even go to special exercise areas to exercise myself. And I might think when I'm there to improve myself, You know, to lift, instead of 250, to lift 300 pounds. Improvement. I might think that. But if I remember the book, it said, don't try to improve yourself. How about, like, well, just maintain yourself? How about prevent degeneration? So, the book says, give up. Trying to improve yourself, give up self-improvement and give up self-maintenance. But exercise yourself. Exercise. So as I'm degenerating from a certain perspective, I am degenerating. Losing, losing, losing various things.

[07:46]

No, giving them away, giving them away, giving them away. Losing, giving, losing, giving, give it. Losing memory, gave it. Losing teeth, gave them. Losing strength, gave it. Gave it, gave it. Even though there seems to be degeneration, the exercise of this degenerating being can even become more wholehearted. It's possible. But you better start now, not later. What you've got now. Exercise what you've got now. And then maybe tomorrow you can exercise what you are given tomorrow, which might be considerably less than what you have today, or it might be more. Spiritual practice has this great possibility that you give yourself more when you're in a degenerate state than you could when you were like nothing but increase.

[08:49]

In fact, we are always fully alive, but if we don't practice being fully alive, fully ourselves, we'll miss it. We miss it, which is really the main problem. And there's all kinds of karmic background which makes us kind of like, oh, I don't want to be this person. I don't want to really be this person. You can do that. You can be that person who doesn't want to be this way, or who wants to be a certain way. You can perform that person wholeheartedly, and that is the Buddha way, is to perform the creep that you are right now. ...concerned, petty, twisted thing you are, concerned about mommy liking you or teacher liking you, concerned about you, you can perform that person like really brilliantly.

[09:59]

Like, yeah, I want to be this way, but I don't want to be the person who wants to be this way. I want to be someplace else. You can do that too. You can always be yourself. So that's the performance of the Buddha way. What's the difference between performing and not performing? The difference between performing and not performing? Well, when I say performing, I mean that you consciously perform, not that you perform unconsciously. People are unconsciously performing, you know, like somebody unconsciously being... You're always being a certain way. You're always being a certain way, and in that sense, you're always performing the way you are. But if you don't consciously accept that responsibility and say, basically, basically say, yes, I do. Yes, I will. I will be this person right now.

[11:01]

I'll be this crabby, pouting, frightened, resistant... I'll be the person that I am. I will perform the person I am already performing. It's all pervading. You can't get away from it. But if you don't perform it, it's like, even if you don't perform it, 98%, 2% is enough to be sort of like off, to miss it. I would say 98% is better than 25%. Even a little bit missing it is, you know, it's a big miss. But we can be 100% because we've already got 100% working for us. We are actually 100% the way we are. Other people actually can see that. She's just that way. She's like exactly that way. But she seems to be slightly resisting it, a little bit.

[12:04]

Or some people like just like not paying any attention at all. to not paying attention at all. So it's acceptance is kind of the deal. Acceptance, you know, and welcoming and being here and, you know, really accepting the great thing that you are, which is somebody who is doing a performance of a person. Is that why Dogen says, no doubt will rise amongst them? At that moment? Yes, like that little doubt. Well, there's two possibilities. One is that he's saying that because in that wholeheartedness, there's no space for doubt. Because even if there's doubt, you're just performing doubt. It's just a painting of doubt. There's only paintings of doubt and there's only paintings of Buddhas. There's only performance of Buddhas. There's no like Buddhas. There's only performance of Buddha. And performance of Buddha is performance of yourself.

[13:07]

And if you're doubting and you perform that, well then, there's no doubt. But you can, like, perform doubt. Like, I doubt. Boy, do I doubt. The other possibility is Dogen's being kind of self-righteous and dogmatic and saying you shouldn't doubt. But we don't have to accuse him of that. I was thinking of Dogen as kind of that feeling of little gap between what you are and what you think you ought to be. Yeah, that could be existential doubt. Like, I'm not quite the person I want to be. Well, okay, fine. I'm not quite the Buddha I aspire to be. Okay, fine. Or I'm way far away from it. Fine. But now perform that. Be that person who has that doubt. Exercise that person, because that's the person we've got right now. It's the person who says, Buddha is two and a half miles away.

[14:09]

Buddha is ten light years away. Buddha is actually really close right now, but I can't see it. But it's very close. I've heard it. I kind of got it. I am somebody who really feels the closeness of Buddha, but doesn't see it. And I'm exactly that person. That's me right now. And I'm crying about that, or I'm laughing about that, and I'm performing the laughing Zen student now. Did you have something to say, Miss? What about the karmic consequences of doing something completely or not doing something? What do you say? What do you express? How are you completely full of whatever doubt? If you're full of doubt, what about karmic consequence? If you're full of doubt, that's because you're... Well, you're always exactly as full of doubt as you really are.

[15:10]

But when you perform, when you consciously perform the fullness of the doubt that you have, you're also aware of cause and effect. The kind of major byproducts of this practice is you become aware of cause and effect also. It isn't that the cause and effect is blown out of the water. No, it's that you get to see it. So you get omniscience along with this, by the way. So it isn't that by performing your actions that you're free of cause and effect. It's that freedom from cause and effect is that you're performing cause and effect. is that you're actually seeing cause and effect now because you're fully participating with it. Well, if I watch cause and effect, I'll become free of cause and effect. It won't bother me anymore. But no, I'm doing karma and I'm doing it so fully that I'm actually totally into watching to see what I am doing while I'm doing it.

[16:18]

We don't fall into cause and effect, and we don't not fall into cause and effect. We study it. How? By performing it. We are nothing but the performance of cause and effect, and we are nothing but empty, and we are nothing but realizing that that emptiness is a form of emptiness, so we're nothing but the middle way. And being on the middle way, you study cause and effect, which you're exercising. Exercising and studying. Studying the exercise. Exercising the study. Of what? Of what you're doing, which is the main kind of cause and effect that we're focusing on here. Don't you have some choice about how you perform? The choice is another thing you can perform. It's another thing you're performing. When you choose to perform that, you performed the choice.

[17:24]

And she said, don't you have choice? And when you really perform the choice wholeheartedly, you realize you don't have it. When you perform something wholeheartedly, you give it away. You give it away when you do it wholeheartedly. And also you don't have it because it's you. You're nothing but your performance of, for example, choice. You choose to, like, practice Zen. Yeah. Yeah. You actually perform Zen. Yeah. Yeah. But when you actually are consciously, wholeheartedly, totally into your performance of choosing Zen, you don't get to have... Zen, the performance or the choice. You just are the performance of Zen. That's all you are. That's yourself. But you do get to be a person who's performing a choice sometimes. Or you could say, quite frequently, you perform choosing.

[18:34]

You could say that. I frequently perform Or you could not say, and I'll say, you frequently perform choosing. But I'm saying that if you are conscious and totally engaged with that choosing, that's the Buddha way. This person performing what she's performing, performing herself, which is a choice machine, a choice machine, a choice machine, Did I choose to say that the way I said it? Do you understand? I think if I said I understood it perfectly, I would be self-deceived. And you don't want to be self-deceived? No, I don't. Yeah, so now you're performing a person who'd rather not be self-deceived.

[19:39]

Yeah. And I'm saying perform that person. Enthusiastically. Great. Could you explain why the word perform? Why the word perform? One or two words you could be using instead. Perform. It seems the opposite of what we're talking about. Perform seems shallow and not real and fake. So I don't know why you're using that word. I don't understand. what you are what you think you are is a shallow version of who you think you are and you do think about who you are and you do think that you are something karma is shallow however it creates worlds which are shallow

[20:39]

Thinking is something you perform. It's your basic action. When you understand emptiness, you understand everything you do is superficial and shallow. Emptiness is deep. Form is superficial. Going to a Zen center and doing a practice period is a superficial thing. It's a ceremony of the Buddha way. It's not the actual Buddha way. However, there's no Buddha way aside from the performance of the ceremony of Buddha way. Your version of yourself is a shallow version of the truth of you. So yeah, we do this superficial thing which does not reach the profundity of reality, and we must perform in order to realize the profound.

[21:52]

We must do the superficial in order to realize the profound. And we do do the superficial. No shortage of superficiality. But there is a shortage of wholeheartedness in our superficiality. And in our superficiality, we're concerned with like gaining, improving and stuff. You know, like we're with this little thin layer here and we're concerned with like making this little thin layer like quite a bit thicker. Like instead of being like 10 times that high and it's still this little tiny little thin layer. And that's what I'm into. Because I'm like a sentient being into like improvement. This is me. I do that. And now it's like, it's getting worse and [...] worse. Oh, yucky. Oh, yuck. But if you perform that, you realize the emptiness of it.

[22:53]

If you resist this little, you know, oh, I'm improving. Or you go, oh, I'm improving. But you're not really like, okay, I'm performing improvement. I'm performing. If you resist the shallow, you miss the deep. If you try to get the deep, this is kind of similar to miss the shallow. And we've got shallow self, little me, performant. decisions, blah, blah, blah, gain and loss, blah, blah, blah, perform it, exercise it on this superficial level, open to how superficial it is, and that will be the gate to the profundity of all activity, the emptiness of our karmic play. And performance and play and relaxation and graciousness, they all go together. rather than really do something in reality.

[23:58]

And it's very superficial. But I don't have to ask you to do that. You will. I will. We already got that done. We need to engage it more fully. That's all. We don't have to be any more superficial. We're just the right amount. Each moment, you're actually perfectly the right amount of pettiness. This is the exact thing you should be working on right now. And then exercise it, which you're already doing. But join the program. You're just describing the performance to me like no karma. The performance is no karma? No, it's not no karma. No, wrong, that's wrong. Well, no, there is karma, but you can't find it. That's wrong. The fact that you can't find something does not mean that it isn't there.

[25:08]

In the not finding, in the not finding it's not there. But it doesn't mean it's not there in the not finding. I mean, it's not there in the finding. When you find it, it's there. Suffering, it's there. There is no two in one. What you're describing is one. So are you exercising what you just said now? Yes, and I see it, and it is. Yeah, now you see that it is, now what? And then I had another question. Wait a minute, what about the isn't there? You just said it is there now. What's there? Whatever you said, you said, and it's there. I don't know what it was, but you said, and it's there. You performed, it is. It's there. No. So you don't know?

[26:10]

No. And are you performing this person who doesn't know anything? A lot of times. How about now? How about now? I was when you asked me the question that I could... What about now? Yes, I am this. I'm this now. Okay, good. You want to do that some more? I could. Do you want to do some of this now? This one. Do this one. Come on, do it wholeheartedly. There you go. Yeah, settle into it and do it. But now do this, not that. Do this. Are you ready? No. Perform that fully? Yes. Good. That's it. Now again. Okay. Yeah. Good. Again. One more.

[27:11]

Okay. Where are you going? Don't go away. Be this person. Are you being this person who's going something? Constantly. Not constantly now. Things creeps in. Something that, yeah, I'm being this person that allows things to creep in. You're being this person who allows things to creep in. Okay, yeah, all right. You're doing that. I'm sure. Okay. Now continue that kind of practice of being this person who allows things to creep in when you're the person who allows things to creep in. then I don't want. When you ask me to do it, then I don't want. Yeah, now be this person who then... Be that person now. Okay. Come on, do it all the way. Be, I don't want. I'm not going to do it. Okay. Yeah, that's the one. That's what we've got now. And now we have somebody else.

[28:15]

Yeah, I have this... This... Somebody that... Yeah, now you're somebody who's talking about being somebody else. Yes, it's a decision. You're somebody now who... You're missing that you're talking about somebody else. You're missing it. That's me, but I like to decide. I like to decide. I see that you do. And you get to be a person who likes to decide right now. That's who you are. Okay? Are you enjoying this? Are you enjoying being this person you are? I love it. I love to be decided to be here. Yes, I love it. Okay. Well, that's what we've got now, isn't it? Somebody who loves that. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm going to be used. Okay. Well, it is a good time to stop because we usually stop at this time. Yes, Vajra.

[29:22]

It's a drum stand. Should we put the drum back on for fun? Do you want the drum on here, Vajra, or not? We'll put the drum on for you. And how about this one here? What goes on here? And what's this? Well, I hope you all had as beautiful a day as I did. I really want to make a special thank you to Erin.

[30:27]

These flowers are just inspirational. Thank you, Erin, for those flowers. What? Urban flowers. Well, all over. Yeah. And, you know, I hope... One of the things that was beautiful for me today, which is often the case, is that the temple's already clean. So then we can play cleaning the temple. It's really just, you know, we don't have to do any work. So we can play doing work. And it was fun, wasn't it? Cleaning the temple, even though we didn't have to. The same when you leave here, that you go out and take care of and clean the world that's already clean. That's Zen. We clean the clean.

[31:29]

We don't really have to, so we just play cleaning the clean. And I know some other situations people say, it's dirty, clean it. Don't let that stop you. To continue just playfully taking care of this world. And it's nice that no abode can be that way. You know, we don't really have to do anything, and yet there's plenty of stuff we don't have to do to do. So thank you for coming to play here. And... New Year. May I...

[32:06]

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