in the early days of Zen before anybody called it the early days of Zen maybe even before it was Zen the fourth generation of the lineage of Bodhidharma, had a teacher named the great doctor, Dai, great doctor, Doshin, way mind. The great doctor with the mind of the way. And his practice of Zazen was called One Practice Awareness, or One Practice Samadhi.

[01:14]

This practice was known in India too. They called it Ekavuha Samadhi there. it's the awareness of oneness or it's the absorption in oneness the absorption in one thing or the absorption in the oneness of all our life of all my life of all our life of all of all of our lives. To be absorbed in the oneness of all life right now and the oneness of all life past, present and future. This was the practice that they did in those days. This was their Zoghan practice.

[02:18]

And I still find it I still find it unsurpassable to do one practice, and that one practice being the practice of oneness, the practice which includes everything. and which everything includes, the practice that reaches into the extreme limits of the world of life. We call it just sitting. And to fulfill that practice, to fulfill that one form of practice, that practice of the one form of all life, means that we must abandon absolutely everything else.

[03:39]

Because if we don't, that shows that we do not actually think it includes everything. That means to do one practice giving up all selfish concern. That means to do the practice just for the practice. It means to practice that way for the sake of that way without any hidden personal agenda. To throw your personal agendas into the way and to be happy that there's no more big names.

[04:45]

Just throw your name in with the big name. This total devotion to one practice is what it means to forget the self. As long as you remember the self, you have not yet been totally devoted to something. As soon as you're totally devoted, you forget the self. And as soon as you forget the self and are totally devoted to something, you are set free immediately. The self drops off. and the self and other separation drops off. If we sit in this way, we naturally become good.

[06:00]

This practice of fulfilling uh... one form completely of giving ourselves to one practice completely naturally we become good naturally our dharma eye opens our wisdom eye opens and because we have a wisdom eye and we are naturally good we naturally benefit all beings. And the beings we benefit are beings where the self-other has dropped off. So just devoting yourself to one practice, which is the practice of oneness, we practice all three of these

[07:10]

cumulative pure precepts. Yesterday I slipped at the end of my talk. I wanted to talk about... I've been talking about the first pure precept and I wanted to talk about the second pure precept But I really couldn't get to because it was time to stop. I was a bad boy. I felt bad. I indulged in self and other being two, in the first precept and the second precept being two.

[08:19]

And sure enough, I went to minor hell. However, I confessed my evil ways. I felt the pain. And the Buddhas came and gave me imperceptible, helped me imperceptibly, helped me inconceivably. All day long they helped me by me simply admitting how I had indulged in separating myself from the other. in many ways. So part of the practice of oneness is repentance.

[09:31]

When we veer off, to note that, By the power of that repentance, the Buddhas come and help us. And they gently, so gently that we can't even know it, pick us up and put us back on the path, the path of oneness, which we may slip off again quite soon. But again, if we confess it, if we notice it and confess it, they come and help us back on again. It's a very slippery path, this path of just sitting. Sometimes they say, if you hold so much as the letter A in your mind, you go to hell as fast as an arrow shot.

[10:51]

If you hold on to anything, if there's you and the slightest particle of dust You go to hell. And being in hell, shedding a tear perhaps, how did I get here? I think I have an idea. The Buddhists say, oh, good, you see, come on. Not holding on to as much as the letter A means abandon everything.

[11:59]

It also means to abandon the mind that discriminates good from bad. The mind which discriminates good from bad comes up fairly frequently. According to Buddhist psychology, it comes up in every single mind that we have. there's always the judging good and bad. Good, good, good, bad, bad, good, neutral, bad, neutral, neutral, bad, good, good, bad, bad. This goes on all the time. What does it mean to abandon that mind? It means to just sit in the middle of this circus. It means not to lean to the right or the left when you hear a good or a bad.

[13:07]

However, good and bad are being distinguished and when they are distinguished, the chemistry is different. When they come and praise you, oh, you're such a wonderful, kind, compassionate, intelligent, beautiful. When you hear those words, the body may become relaxed and warm. When they come and they tell you you're a jerk and spit in your face, the body may become tense. This is normal for most people. That's not a problem. The problem is if when they say those things we don't abandon our response.

[14:10]

Those things are not good or bad, but we judge them so. And sometimes we reverse our judgments and think it's good if they spit in our face. In some societies, the way they choose the king is to come and spit in the face, and everyone's waiting to see who will be spat upon. The Buddha administered medicine, and it's actually still being done in Indian medicine, of putting certain liquids in the mouth and spraying a fine spray on the person. All we need to do, as Thoreau says, is sit long enough in an attractive spot in the forest and all the inhabitants will exhibit themselves to us in turn.

[15:34]

The reason why they will exhibit themselves to us is because we have become good. And if we've been sitting for some time and all the beings have not yet exhibited themselves to us, then rather than say, oh, my practice is no good and get depressed, we should just consider that maybe we haven't been sitting long enough. Because long enough, again, means from morning till night for one whole lifetime. To sit right now with a complete sense that our whole life is unified in this moment. That all the days and nights, all the mornings and afternoons, every day of the week, all the months, all the years are now one now.

[16:48]

We sit like that. And when we completely embrace our whole life, then all beings will come to us. They will come to us because we are good. And there will be benefit. So our minds are constantly producing stuff. How can we not be fooled by this? So someone told me about trying to concentrate on something.

[17:49]

But then the mind starts questioning this thing that she's concentrating on. And it seems like the main thrust of the mind is to question and analyze the practice that she's trying to do. So we talked about maybe switching from what she was trying to do to what seems to be the way the mind wants to behave. And make that into one practice. For example, make it into the practice of what is it? And bring the distraction back to the center and take that as the one form. There must be one form And yet that one form has myriad manifestations.

[18:55]

Like that story I told about the tea bowl, the wonderful tea bowl, that the one monk was treasuring and the other monk came and broke it. And then the Lord glued the tea bowl back together So whatever form you're practicing with, it will be broken constantly. And then, glue it back together. And it's even better. And the Buddhas came to visit me in various forms and told me that the three pure precepts are indivisible.

[21:13]

You can't really separate these three. The main way of helping other people is to work on ourself. The main way to help other people is to drop off our belief that we're separate. to believe that we're separate, to believe that we're separate from ourselves, to believe that we're separate from anything, to believe that we're separate from anything, to drop it off. To fulfill all wholesome dharmas, Dogen Genji says, it is the teaching of unsurpassed, correct, complete awakening.

[23:38]

It is the path. of practicing and being practiced. It is the path of practicing and being practiced. The path of practicing is the path of, in a sense, it's the path of the action or the activity of practice.

[24:43]

And the path of being practiced is the path of being practiced. It's like the passive side of practice. One side of practice is I practice, we practice. The other side of practice is we are practiced. Those are two sides. The Chinese is nice. It says, it takes the word practice and it puts a character next to it which means the active, makes the character active. Or it's the character which means the ability to do. So the ability to do is put with the practice and then the other character for practice is put together with the character which means a passive marker, which means that which is acted upon.

[25:50]

The practice of good is the path of these two. The path of where I think I can practice joined with the path of I am being practiced. Those two. The path of these two. is the path of good, is the practice of, is the fulfillment of goodness. This is the same color of pure, simple and pure practice. One side is I think I can practice. The other side is all things come forth and confirm me By completely admitting that I think I'm practicing, all beings come forth and practice me.

[27:09]

Already they come forth and practice me, but I don't appreciate that except when I completely admit that I do the practice. When these two, when the admission of me practicing by myself on my own energy is admitted, then I may be able to realize that all beings are supporting me. If I just tell you or I just tell myself that I'm able to live by the kindness, the inconceivable kindness of all beings, I may say, oh, okay, I can believe that, or I may not be able to believe it. But the belief of that or the understanding of that comes at the limit of admitting what I think I do by myself.

[28:16]

By admitting my own karma. My own delusion. Goodness is the path not of the practice I do by myself, which is delusion, and goodness is not the path of all beings coming forth and realizing my practice or me as practice. It's not that, which is enlightenment. It is the two together. The two together is called the Buddha mudra, the Buddha seal. This Buddha seal is the path of that seal is the path of goodness. And that path is also the teaching of unsurpassed perfect enlightenment.

[29:23]

In order for me to admit my, in a sense, wrongdoing of thinking that I practice by myself, I have to abandon the mind which judges me as being bad for doing that, or perhaps judges me as good for practicing. Anyway, some people have an idea that they practice and they think it's good. Some people look at their practice and think it's bad. Some people think it's good, but they think they're bad for doing it in a dualistic way. The people who think it's bad probably think it's not only bad, but bad for doing it in a dualistic way too. But anyway, The mind that's judging our practice must be abandoned in order for us to put our whole energy into admitting the mind that's judging our practice.

[30:50]

Or to do it the other way around, if you completely admit the mind that judges your practice, you abandon it right now while I'm talking to you there is a judge sitting up here judging every single word I say and using all of you to make my judgments but still I must admit that although my judgments are entirely dependent on you and not just you but the roof The fact that the roof's staying up there is, in a sense, I take it as a positive sign. If I'm giving a lecture and an earthquake starts, I wonder, what does this mean? Should I stop talking? If you all make these kind of gooey, inspired looks on your face, I think, oh, maybe this is a good talk.

[32:00]

If you all frown or go to sleep, I think, hmm, maybe this is not a good talk. But even though how I judge myself depends on the faces you make, still, I must admit, I do the judging here. That's what I think. And I see the judgments coming down moment after moment. And sure enough, when I told that little joke and you smiled, I thought, hey, things are looking up. The judge said, oh, good, you know. Popularity rating went up anyway. That might be a sign of true dharma or it might be a sign of not true dharma. Maybe the true dharma really puts people to sleep. Anyway, all these possibilities are... very rapidly being processed, calculated, and every moment we manage to come up with a conclusion. I'll tell you, lots of neutral judgments this morning, neutral negative judgments, with a few, you know, uplifting positive ones in there saying, you know, don't take it seriously.

[33:11]

It's not that bad. It could be all right. But as I completely admit that my mind is calculating and judging and trying to evaluate my success at converting beings, at being popular, at making the pain in my heart drop off, all that, am I also doing one thing the whole time? And again, I judge that. And again, while I judge that, is there one practice going on? Is there some place, is there some way that I'm not holding anything and I'm really, what?

[34:21]

I don't even know what. This goodness, you know, is not something that we can get. It cannot be recognized. If it's recognized, it's immediately I have to dedicate myself to practice something which I can never know, which I can never grasp, which can be of absolutely no use to me because it can't be the slightest bit separate from me.

[35:22]

or the slightest bit separate from anybody else. I want to look to see, you know, with my eyes, I want to look to see how beautiful everybody is, how virtuous they are. And I may see, oh, I see how virtuous they are. Well, that's nice. but it's also not nice because it's really it's the person I see and think is nice it's just another judgment and that can flip in a moment when they change one line on their face

[36:41]

I have no understanding of it. Now I could say, and that goes for a lot of other things too, but that would be bragging. But I would like to have, you know, nothing. That's another way to put that I'm always doing the same thing. That I have one practice. And again, you know, sure enough, you guys stop smiling and stop laughing.

[38:04]

And again, I thought, oh, it's a bad lecture. What? I know, I know, I know, I know. It's not that it is a good lecture or a bad lecture. It's just that people think so. And it is so that people think so. Not only am I evaluating it moment by moment, but I think, I fantasize that somebody else is too. Now, I'm not saying necessarily you're doing it non-stop.

[39:07]

You may be judging other things, like, I don't know what. But... Pardon? Perhaps I would be fantasizing that they aren't? I just did, yeah. I just fantasized that somebody might be dreaming right now of, you know, somebody has their eyes closed and might be dreaming of Hawaii right now. Might be dreaming of somebody else giving it. What? No, I don't know. I'm just saying they might be dreaming of Hawaii. What? Who would be accepting? Just accepting. Yeah. One could fantasize that someone was just purely accepting. One could fantasize that way. Now, do I fantasize that way? Okay, I'll just fantasize right now that somebody's purely accepting.

[40:11]

I didn't come up with anybody. Yeah, I don't think there is anybody like that, that just purely accepts. I think everybody's judging all the time. Like somebody whispered in my ear last night that some rabbi said, beware of teachers who have all the answers. If you want to know if somebody is a genuine Rebbe, ask them if they know how to eliminate all defiled thoughts. If they say yes, you know they're a fake. There's no way to eliminate defiled thoughts because there are really no defiled thoughts.

[41:19]

There's no way to eliminate judgment because there really isn't any. So rather than trying to eliminate what isn't there, what we should do is admit that we think something is. And by complete admission, and in that sense acceptance of the fact that we don't just accept, we abandon the mind which doesn't just accept. and that's a practice which we can do all the time and we can do it all day long every day for an entire lifetime we can do it right now backwards to the beginning of our life the fact that all those moments in the past we think about now we think we didn't do it we can

[42:30]

we can admit that we didn't do it and thereby be freed of that. Yes? Yes. It doesn't help that you think that there's objects? Flipped off the path and fell into hell. Then you haven't admitted it. If you just say, oh, well, I did it.

[43:34]

Sure. I admitted to the boo-boo. I thought dualistically. No. That's not admitting it. Admitting it means you admit it completely. You take full credit for causing major damage in the cosmos. And you don't do that. And it's because you don't do that, the Buddhas are sitting there saying, well, we're waiting. We're waiting. You think that it's a major problem? You do? That's what you think? Yes. That's part of the pattern of us not seeing that we function that way.

[44:50]

That's right. Yeah, and that's good, too. That's good that you consider it to be a significant problem. Now, what is necessary is that in addition to considering it to be a significant problem, that when you are making your contribution, this particular moment's contribution to this problem, which is the problem in the world, it is the problem, when you are currently making this contribution, which you are making, that you admit that at that time, then you will be helped right then by that admission. Not a theoretical admission, but a practical admission right now. No, that's not, that's not.

[45:54]

fucking up again. That is simply telling the truth. When you fuck up and you say I fucked up that's not fucking up. That's admitting that you think that way. Now you're not unnecessarily you're not saying necessarily I'm doing the thing of confession of this. You're just saying, I did this. I think that way. I admit that. And that hurts me. That's all you're doing. And that's correct. That's correct. That's not an error. That's right. And recognizing pain and admitting pain is not admitting karma. Pain is not karma.

[46:58]

Pain is the results. You don't have to confess pain. That's not a confession. Pain is not a lack of practice. Pain is not a lack of faith. You don't confess pain. You confess the cause of pain. The cause of pain is your karma. Okay, then I understand. So as I recognize my error or my mistake, I feel pain. No. The pain comes from the action. The recognition does not cause pain. The recognition of karma does not cause pain. The recognition of karma frees you from that error and put you back on the path.

[48:02]

When we do a karmic act, it immediately causes pain, which we may or may not feel. If we're aware, we'll feel it. That's not the recognition of karma, that's the feeling of pain. That's the judgment that this is painful. then the admission of the karma sets us free from that act and puts us back in the path with the assistance of all buddhas and we cannot know how they're helping us but they do it does quietly explore the farthest reaches of these causes and conditions as this is the exact verification of a Buddha or the exact realization of the verified Buddha clarifying this point and this is the pure and simple color of true practice right there and that's the one thing you can do all the time you can do it all the time no matter what you're producing in your mind and if we sit with that all the time

[49:20]

we naturally become good. And become good means everything becomes good. And it's no longer you practicing Dharma. It is the world of you practicing Dharma united with the world of Dharma practices you. So I'm going to take a little risk here and say that I feel really bad.

[53:13]

And I think the reason why I feel really bad is because I think you're not me. And I'm really thinking you're not me. And I confess that I really think you're not me. And I feel really bad. And I'm going to sit with that pain and see what happens.

[54:21]

And I'm going to try not to get angry at you for not being me. I'd like to find somebody to blame for this way of thinking other than me. But it's the way I'm thinking about you that's causing me pain. And you are being kind to me by at least temporarily, you're being kind to me by not distracting me from what I'm doing. And letting me practice with what's happening to me.

[55:34]

how I'm thinking and the results of my thinking. Thank you for helping me see how deluded I am.

[56:37]

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