One of the basic teachings which has been given by the practitioners of Buddha over the years, how's that? Okay? Is the teaching that everything is changing or everything is change or change is a quality of everything for us. And this teaching is simple but not so easy for us to understand because what our mind tends to do with that teaching is to think that it means either that things are changing but that something goes on or that things change completely and there's nothing left. These are two kinds of possibilities that our mind could understand.

[01:05]

Namely, when they say everything, when Buddha says everything changes, Buddha means, well, I change, but I keep going on and I just go through different transformations. But really, I'm constant. Or the other possibility is, I am completely destroyed and there's nothing left over from this moment or this experience happens and goes away completely and there's no carryover at all. And although it's true that there's no carryover, to say that there's complete annihilation is also something which we can understand but which is not quite what is meant by change in this case. The change is actually something in between those two extremes, something that we can't quite understand as a concept and something which we, at least I feel we want to enter into and meet this real change.

[02:18]

And I say enter into and meet, but really the real change is not something that I can enter into. like it's over there and I get into it. So how can I actually experience, or how can my life be the experience of this change? That's my question, but also I propose that deep down in our most almost subatomic nature, we yearn to to be the experience of this fleeting momentary reality. And that there are practices which have been given to help us realize this change, this changing life.

[03:24]

One of the practices that's given is practice of, sometimes called thinking of Buddha. In Sanskrit and in Chinese and Japanese, in Sanskrit I think the way to say it is I'm not sure how they say it in Sanskrit, but in Chinese they say nian fuo, and in Japanese they say nen butsu, which can be translated as thinking of Buddha. But actually there's no, in those languages, the of is understood or not understood. In other words, there's no character there that says of. It just says actually thinking Buddha or mindful Buddha. And the of is something that we would ordinarily put in there.

[04:39]

Because in fact when we think, usually when we think, we think of something. Our consciousness, our conscious life is consciousness of things. So if you say think or be conscious, we often say be conscious of. So to be conscious of Buddha, is our natural way of understanding, our natural subject-object kind of experience. So you could do that. You could take a Buddha, some Buddha that means, something that you think is Buddha, that you feel is Buddha, and think of it. And it is said that if you can think of the Buddha or of Buddha, of something that you feel is awakening, if you can think of it moment after moment without a break, that actually the virtue of that kind of practice will be that you will finally realize that everything you do, everything you think, everything you say is Buddha.

[05:58]

So at the culmination of thinking of Buddha, or being mindful of Buddha, the of is removed. And you're no longer thinking of Buddha because finally your life has become Buddha. So you can approach in this subject-object way to a final realization that thinking of Buddha is nonsensical. Because Buddha is actually, to think of Buddha means to not have an object of thought. Thinking of Buddha really means that you have no objects of thought. But this is very difficult to understand, so what you can do is start by thinking of Buddha, and eventually you realize no objects of thought.

[07:03]

When you think Buddha or think of Buddha in this objectless way, this means that you actually have the same mind as Buddha, because Buddha's mind does not see objects. But that does not mean that the awakened mind does not see people and trees and flowers and babies. It does not mean that. The awakened person, the awakened being, sees everything just as anybody else does, but understands that these things that are seen are not objects. Yesterday I was sitting in the courtyard at Zen Center in San Francisco. Am I still speaking loudly enough? I was sitting in the courtyard with Suzuki Roshi's son.

[08:13]

His name is Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi. He lives in Japan and he was just visiting here. And so I was sitting in the courtyard and we were looking at these birds who were, this one bird was diving down and I think he was breaking off violets and taking them up to build his nest. Yeah, I don't know if he's breaking them off. But anyway, he was coming down near the flowers and coming away with flowers. And on the courtyard wall, there's this ivy. And the birds build their nest in this ivy. So he was coming down and taking these flowers and going up, back and forth like that. very busy building his nest of flowers. And Hoitsu said something about, he said, do you know that poem about the bird in the blue cliff?

[09:26]

I said, oh, yes, I know that song. I know that poem. And the poem goes, a monkey grasping its young returns home over the green peaks or returns to the back of the green peaks. A bird picking a flower lands on the blue cliff. A monkey grasping its young goes home over the green peak. A bird picks a flower and lands on the blue cliff. For some reason or other, I've always liked that little couplet.

[10:42]

And today I'm proposing that the reason why I like it is because those images are not objects. This is not a story. These are not images of some monkeys holding her young, going over the hill, and a bird in the cliff. The reason why I like it anyway is because it's really not an object. It's also not a subject. It tells me how, in a sense, it tells me how my usual mind works. But what it tells me about my usual mind is that my usual mind sees objects but actually is not separate from them. That what my mind really is What my awakened mind is, is actually both subject and object. And I don't try to eliminate the kind of thinking which has objects. But I also look for a way to not be fooled into thinking that there's somebody other than me, that there's an other.

[11:58]

It's kind of like the whole universe is talking through me, is seeing through me. And when I see some other object, the whole universe is teaching me through them. So I have respect for myself as a manifestation of everything and I have respect for everything else as manifestation of everything. Each thing. It's because this is called not having an object of thought. It's almost like the great background of myself wraps around each of you and comes through you to me.

[13:15]

and back around from you through my back through me, something like that. This again is a picture, which you can think of as an object, but this picture is also not an object as you hear it and think it. So moment after moment to try to remember and not be fooled by the equipment of our mind which makes objects all the time. And if there weren't any objects we would have no experience. So the mind makes these objects and we respect that the mind makes these objects and we respect these objects. It is said that if you can have no objects before you, your mind is immediately at peace.

[14:42]

And again, you don't try to eliminate objects. You just realize that you're being fooled if you think they're objects. And that really, this is your own true nature teaching you something. This experience is not an object. The same applies internally. When you're aware of your own feelings, these are not objects either. And your own feelings are like the birds in the trees. When you're aware of your feelings, you're aware of them as an object, when you're just like aware of a tree or a bird as an object. These are not objects. This type of instruction is meant to let us live in the world of real change. We can't actually think our way into the world of real change, but this kind of attitude towards our experience lets us enter that world

[16:02]

But it's hard to remember to respect things that much. I find it hard to do that. And if we already understood that things aren't objects, that would be fine. And if we can't understand how to do that or what that is, again, one way to practice that that manifests this understanding, whether you think you understand it or not, is to give the utmost respect to everything. And everything, every person, every experience you have. To really respect your own pain, your own anxiety, your own uncertainty, and to respect other people's uncertainty, anxiety, and suffering.

[17:34]

And also to respect your own happiness, your own stupidity, and to recognize and respect other people's happiness and stupidity. Respect to the utmost. If I could actually do the practice of objectless meditation, that would be the same as respecting everything I experience to the utmost, with no reservations. So there are many religious people, not just Buddhists, have recommended that we go places where people are suffering greatly, where people are in terribly unfortunate circumstances from our point of view.

[18:49]

People that are starving or lepers, people who are dying of terrible diseases, that we go and spend time with such people. and see if we can practice respecting them as they are and seeing that the entire universe is acting, being expressed through this being's presence. But also, It is recommended that you even do the same thing with the people who seem to be oppressing these people. One of Buddha's disciples was begging one day. And he was begging only at the poor houses.

[19:53]

He was skipping the rich houses. He was begging only in places where he would get almost nothing for himself and where the people who are having the most difficulty in terms of surviving themselves, he visited them and asked them to help him. And someone saw him, a great layperson saw him and said, you shouldn't just beg from the poor people. You should beg just from house to house, one after another. Don't go to the poor, don't go to the rich. Just go one after another, house to house. And if it's a rich person or a poor person, you still ask them to help you practice. Asking someone to help you practice is an example of utmost respect. And again, utmost respect means not having an object of thought.

[21:12]

And not having an object of thought is really what our mind is like. As Buddhists, it is the awakened mind, the mind that lives in objects but doesn't really fall for that. That sense of objects is just a production of our illusory mind. It's just a show. And if we can practice utmost respect, we are not caught by our own mental fabrications. When I was 11 or 12 years old, I lived with my mother. My father and my mother were separated. And my father was a big man, pretty tall, a lot taller than me, and heavier than me.

[22:20]

But he wasn't living with me. So there was a man who lived downstairs in our apartment building, whom my mother was friends with. He had a wife and little kids, and he decided to be my big brother and to help me. He was even bigger than my father. He was a very big guy, 6'4", 250 pounds. His name was Dick Grant. And he used to tell me stories. At that age, when I was 11, I had decided to be as bad as I could possibly be. Not bad like what I thought was bad, but bad in terms of socially rewarded bad.

[23:27]

The bad that my friend would think was good, like dropping water bombs out the window. Anyway, that was considered good, bad at that time. I wanted to do all those things, but primarily to get support and affection from my friends. Also getting teachers upset was considered to be positive. So setting off firecrackers was another kind of good, bad thing to do. So I always wanted to do all those bad things. And I was pretty big for my age at that time. And Dick Grant used to come up and tell me about when he was young. And he told me about what he did when he was young. And he actually was better at being bad than me.

[24:39]

But I figured he had an advantage because he lived in a really bad neighborhood where they had big rats and stuff. So given that I lived in an upper middle class neighborhood, I didn't have to be so bad to be considered bad. He told me about how he was. He was bad. Bad boy. This was like in 1954 that I met him. And in 1946, he was the national heavyweight Golden Gloves champion. And he wanted me to be an athlete, too. He wanted me to play football and box. And he used to come up to my apartment, this guy who weighed twice as much as me, and he used to say, OK, now I'm going to show you how to play. And he would tell me to get down on my all fours, and he would sit across from me on all fours. And then he would charge me and knock me across the room.

[25:43]

But I knew he loved me. He was doing it because he wanted to help me. So because of that motivation which I sensed in him, I put up with it as long as I could. before I said, could we do something else? But anyway, I looked forward to our meetings with quite a bit of fear to see what the next kindness would be. One day, he said to me, he knew I was trying to be bad, so one day he said to me, I don't know why or when it was, but he said, you know, it's easy to be bad. And when he said that, I thought that he knew how easy it was. He wasn't somebody that didn't know about how easy it was.

[26:46]

He said, what's hard is being good. And coming from him, I thought, yeah. And I decided at that time to try to do the hard thing. And I switched from trying to be the worst kid in school and do the worst things. And I tried to do good. And at that time, I think I have pretty much the same idea of what is good as I do now. Namely, just respect everybody completely. And so I decided to do that, to really be kind to people, to really be nice, to really be friendly. So that's what I decided to do when I was 11 or 12. And I immediately noticed that it was almost impossible because I forgot.

[27:49]

Even sometimes on the way to school, I would be thinking about doing that and practicing it when I got to school. And as soon as I opened the door of school, this tremendous noise of all the kids. And what are you wearing? And let me copy your homework. I immediately forgot. I don't think I ever remembered all the way through homeroom. And so he was right, actually. It's not so difficult to be bad. It's really hard to be good. Because in some ways, if you were saying so, our mind is built for being bad. Our mind is built to see other people as separate and to see everything as an object. When you see things that way, it's going to be problems.

[28:53]

Actually, all you got to do is see things that way. You don't have to do anything more wrong. That's enough. Everything else will follow right along with that. So being good then in this case is what I'm saying is to turn that process around. Turn it around and stop seeing the world as an object. Stop seeing the external universe as not your own mind. And again, when you really respect things, objects are no longer objects. They are simply your mind. They are simply your practice. They are ways for you to practice goodness. But it's hard to do this, really hard. And then after going through high school and so on and not being very successful at doing this very hard thing, but still thinking that he was right,

[29:57]

I started, I somehow had the occasion to hear some stories about Zen people, Zen practitioners, just some stories. But again, they started, they sounded to me like stories of good, stories about what I had wanted to do way back but somehow couldn't do. Like one, the ones that moved me most was about this guy who was in his hut on a full moon night. And he sensed somebody creeping up to his hut, probably a thief. Before the thief came in, he threw his possessions out the window. Some stories say that he didn't have anything to throw, but he threw some junk. Another story says he had some money and he threw the money. Anyway, he threw whatever he had out the window to the guy before the guy even came in the house. And then on top of that, he said, I'm sorry, I can't give you the full moon too.

[30:59]

And I thought, yeah, that's the way I want to be. Where can you learn how to be like that? So I still want to learn how to be that way, but I still can't really quite figure out how to do it. I mean, it's hard to not only give it up, but then wish you could give even more to somebody who isn't even polite. But this not politeness deserves utmost respect. Utmost respect may be actually to spank the unpolite person. I don't know. I'm not saying what comes from utmost respect. You may utmost respect somebody and spank them. I don't know. But the point is, you judge. Do you feel the utmost respect, the utmost love for this thing, this person, this apparent object?

[32:01]

Do you feel it? And if you do, then what do you do from that? I don't know what you'll do or what I will do. All I know is it's hard to keep remembering utmost respect. for each thing. That's hard for me to remember because there's so many other things to think of. And utmost respect, somehow it's hard to, if it's just the same word over and over again, it gets kind of boring. So if we can think of some more words for it, that might be helpful. So we thought of millions of other words for it in Buddhism. No objects of thought, sitting meditation, compassion. We just have all these words to remind us about the same thing. so I'm still trying to learn how to do what I resolved to do when I was 11.

[33:03]

And I'm still trying to figure out how to throw the stuff to the robber and want to give him even more. But it's not easy. And so I'm just a little baby disciple of Buddha trying to learn how to do this. And You know why baby Buddhas walk softly? Do you know why baby Buddhas walk softly? Because they can't walk hardly. So we have to, you know, just carefully try to learn how to do the practice, step by step. And be careful when you step down. Don't, you know, because we can barely walk. We're just little baby Buddhas, right? If you walk hard or walk real fast, you might trip and fall down on your face.

[34:08]

If you walk faster than you're able to. Well, if that happens too, then just the place you fall down is the place you get up. and then start walking again. It's simple, but it's not easy. There's so many other things which are more interesting. We have to really believe in practicing this simple way of utmost respect. We have to believe it really is. really deeply in order to be able to do it with all the competition for so many other kinds of activities or apparently other kinds of activities. All these other activities should be able to be turned in this way. So again, I just said a bad thing, right? I said other activities, but really I should respect those other activities too.

[35:11]

Even when I'm not being respectful, I should respect even that. So even when I trip again, to respect my tripping, because even my tripping, even my stupidity and falling on my face, that deserves the utmost respect too. And then practice starts again. But sometimes when you really fall down and get all dirty, it's hard to respect it. Not this. This is too bad. Hey, hello, [...] hello.

[35:48]

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