Someone said to me that he read this book, which has a number of talks given by Reb Anderson, and there was one phrase in the book that he remembered particularly, which was, Zazen survives any reduction. And when I heard that, I thought, I like that. I don't remember that I said it, but it sounds good. And I thought I might mention something about that. I don't know where in the book it says that, but the Zazen... You could say the zazen of this school, and by this school I don't mean to speak for anybody else, but anyway, this school, whatever that is, the zazen of this school is a vast ocean.

[01:15]

It's a limitless field of wondrous Buddha life. But since it's so vast, sometimes it has in the past been reduced to give people access. And I think almost any way you reduce it, it survives. And then we practice that way, that reduced way, but we should remember that any reduction of this vast practice is a reduction. And otherwise we might become narrow-minded and think that other reductions of it are not it.

[02:18]

Well, they aren't it exactly, just like our reduction isn't it. So we should converse with the other reductions and be open to the other reductions. The zazen of this school is the same practice and the same enlightenment as you and me and all beings. That's the zazen of this school. That's what Dogen says. Another way he says it is, each moment of zazen is equally wholeness of practice, equally wholeness of enlightenment.

[03:19]

for the person sitting and for all beings. Equally the same practice and the same enlightenment as all beings. That's the zazen. It's not what one person is doing. But you can reduce, out of kindness, you can reduce zazen to what one person does. It's a reduction to give that one person access, like one person sitting upright, paying attention to our posture, Stop there. It's a reduction of zazen to what one person is doing, to what one body is doing, to what one voice is doing, to what one mind is doing. It is one mind, it is one body. That's a reduction. But the actual zazen is there because there's something about the way that person is practicing, which is the same practice as everybody else.

[04:25]

And there's something about the way that person's enlightenment, which is the same way that all beings are enlightened. The way that person's enlightened, which is different from other people's enlightenment, you know, it might be some really nice thing. You know, it's the way some people are enlightened, that's not the same as the way you're enlightened. It might be spectacular, but it might also be super deluded. But whether it's wonderful or whether it's terrible, neither of those are the actual zazen. Any enlightenment which I have which is not the same as yours, although you may think it's nice, it's not the actual zazen. The actual zazen is the way you're enlightened, the same way as me. That's the real ocean of zazen. And if I have a practice and you like it, that's nice. But if it's different from yours, that's not the real practice.

[05:30]

That's just Reb's nice practice that you think is nice. Or if I have a practice you don't think is nice, that's not the real practice either. Of course you don't think it is. And it's not. My practice, the way it's the same practice as you, is the practice of Sa Zen of the school. Still, I have a practice which is my practice and not your practice. And you have a practice which is your practice, not my practice. And that, in both cases, that's a reduction of our practice. But the reduction isn't separate from that, from the real practice. It's just a small little thing, a limited version of it. which gives us access to remembering, what am I doing here again? Oh, yeah, I'm sitting. I'm doing the practice of the Buddhas in a reduced form.

[06:34]

But right here, not the slightest bit away from me, is the non-reduced totality of zazen. It's not the least bit separate from me. Like we say, you are not it, it actually is you. My zazen is not it, he is not me, she is not me, she actually in truth is me. So it's a very dynamic situation where we, being limited beings, we have a limited practice, But we also can hear a teaching which says, the actual practice is the way our limited practice is the same practice as all other limited practices. The way our limited being is the same practice as all limited beings. The way our enlightenment is the same as the enlightenment of all beings.

[07:40]

And the way my enlightenment is the same as yours, Or maybe the way my enlightenment is the same as one of you is conceivable. You know? Like, oh, I know Chris is enlightenment, and I am enlightenment. It's a little bit different, but there's a certain area we agree. That's conceivable. But the way I have the same practice with not only all of you, but all beings, and the way I have the same enlightenment with everything, that is conceivable. splendid and unthinkable, inconceivable, ungraspable, unending practice of our school. Still, we have to Our limited being has to hook into something limited which doesn't reach the actual practice in order to realize the actual practice.

[08:42]

So we have to do something, some reduction of the great practice in order to realize the great practice. We have to do something which doesn't reach the real practice and know it doesn't reach the real practice in order to reach the real practice. So we're doing limited things all the time. Limited thoughts, limited speech, limited postures. We're doing limited things. These limited things do not reach the practice of all beings. But we do them in order, knowing that they're limited. If we do them thinking that they reach it, we're just deluded. We're deluded anyway. But we're a little bit more deluded if we think what we're doing is the practice of all beings. But we have to do what we're doing, knowing that it doesn't reach that which we're most concerned about. And in that way, we do enter the practice of all beliefs.

[09:44]

Another thing I wanted to say was that... What is it? I was just talking to somebody about it, was our school is a school to learn that our school is not where it's at. And you could say, well that's why our school's best. Our school is a place to learn that our school's not best. Our place, our schools for that purpose, is to free us from our school so we can appreciate the other schools. And I think that's what the other schools are really about too. But sometimes we forget that.

[10:54]

Some people here have been practicing a long time and some people were quite new to formal practice. Some people told me they've only been practicing with this situation for a few months. I just thought I might mention that when I say, when even for a moment you express, you wholeheartedly express the Buddha body, with your actions of body, speech and mind. Or in other words, when even for a moment your mental activity, your thinking is given to express the Buddha body, and the posture is given to express the Buddha body, and your voice is given to express the Buddha body. When even for a moment you use your limited action in this moment, okay, to express the Buddha body. The entire phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's body, and the sky turns into enlightenment, etc.

[12:15]

But there's different Buddha bodies. I just wanted to mention to you some different Buddha bodies. One Buddha body is like the Buddha body of, for example, the historical person, the human being, Shakyamuni. So this is a male, I guess, Homo sapien, who lived in India thousands of years ago. He was a person. So some people say, Buddha was a human being. Right. But Buddhas can manifest in other ways than human beings. So the person... who told us that he was a Buddha, and a lot of people who met him thought, yeah, no problem, this guy's a Buddha. That person told us that Buddha can appear in other forms, and he told us also that there's another body of Buddha besides the body of Buddha that he was.

[13:34]

He told us that he was a transformation body of Buddha. The person told us that the person is Buddha transformed into a person. Buddha is not just a person. But it can be a person. But it can be a lot of things, not just a person. And the person told us that. And the disciples of the person have also reiterated, like Dogen said, the fact that Buddha appeared as Shakyamuni Buddha in India shows us that Buddha can appear in other forms. And when I read that, I thought, does it? But anyway, he thought so. So the transformation and body of Buddha can be a person, can be a mountain, can be a bird, can be grass, can be a tree.

[14:39]

And in other world systems where they don't have humans, it can be a being in the top of the food chain, the middle of the food chain, or at the bottom of the food chain. Buddha can appear as fungi. I think it does. I think Buddha appears, is transformed into fungi to teach us. All beings in the universe are performing Buddha's work. Therefore, Buddha can appear in any form. That does Buddha's work. And the Buddha that can appear in any form is called the true body of Buddha. And basically the true body of Buddha is like space. It's uncommitted. but it can respond to the needs of beings in whatever way would help them.

[15:47]

And that Buddha body, that true Buddha body, can be transformed into a human being as it was transformed into a human being in India thousands of years ago. And that person, that human, told us that he was a transformation of the big Buddha. So if you wish to use your body, speech, and mind karma to express the Buddha body, you could think of it as expressing the body of Shakyamuni Buddha. which some of you might want to do. Like today, I'm going to have my body express the body of a Buddha that lived in India thousands of years ago. That Buddha seems to have passed away, but I wish to assume the postures which I think that Buddha assumed. And I wish to speak and devote myself to the teachings of that Buddha.

[16:54]

But you can also express the body, the true body of Buddha with your body, speech, and mind. And there's a third body which came later in the tradition after Shakyamuni died. I don't know of any record of him talking about the third body. The third body is called the bliss body or the reward body. And it's the body of those who are faithful who faithfully use their body, speech and mind, as gifts to Buddhas, as gifts to all beings. And by practicing that way, you experience another body, which is the enjoyment of the relationship between the cosmic, unlimited Buddha body and all the manifestations or transformations that it can take.

[17:58]

So that's the third body. You could also devote yourself to that body, give yourself to that body. Another way of saying what Buddha is, is to say that Buddha is the silent, unmoving bond between all beings. That that's Buddha. The way we're all connected and supporting each other Right now, without moving or speaking, that silent, unconstructed relationship among us, that's Buddha. Unconstructed means completely free of any of our ideas about it.

[19:04]

Inconceivable way we're mutually assisting each other, that's Buddha. But that's more like this dharma body of Buddha. the true body of Buddha. So myself, I think most of the time when I think of, you know, most of the time when I think of offering myself, offering my action to Buddha, I think a little bit more than 50% of the time I think of offering it to the silent bond among all beings. I feel like I'm diving in this ocean, this inconceivable ocean of of cooperative, inconceivable cooperative concert among us.

[20:09]

But sometimes I think of offering myself to Shakyamuni Buddha. I sometimes think of just like that one Buddha. Sometimes I think of offering to infinite Buddhas. Sometimes I think of offering to bodhisattvas, a particular bodhisattva sometimes, like Samantabhadra or Manjushri, But then also when I do that, I also remember this phrase which you just chanted, which is, revering Buddha, we are one Buddha. I also remember that when I revere the Buddha, there's not me and the Buddha. Or when I revere the Bodhisattva, there's not me and the Bodhisattva. We have the same nature. And the Bodhisattva and the Buddha are reminders to me that I have the same nature as them. Like, they're the school to remind me there's no other school.

[21:14]

The enlightenment of the Buddha is the same enlightenment as all beings. It's not just the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha, or Maitreya Buddha, or Prabhupada Ratna Buddha. It's the enlightenment of all beings. And the enlightenment of all beings is the practice of all beings. And the enlightenment of a Buddha is the practice of a Buddha. It's not like a Buddha is an enlightened being that has a practice. Their practice is the enlightenment. And your practice is your enlightenment. And your practice, which is the same practice as me, is your enlightenment, which is the same enlightenment as me. And again, that's inconceivable. So you've got a conceivable practice too, or you have a conception that you don't have a conceivable practice.

[22:34]

Like some people say, I lost my practice. I don't have a practice. Sorry. I had one yesterday, but I can't remember what it is. Well, offer your forgetfulness of your practice. That's a perfectly good offering. To what? to the inconceivable practice of Buddha, which is the same practice as you while you're forgetting what practice is. This is good news for Alzheimer's Zen students. If your practice is the practice you can remember, you're going to lose that practice. But if your practice is the practice that you're doing together with everybody. You never lose that practice. You never lose it. You never lose it. You never lose it. You give it away every moment. You give it away.

[23:34]

You give it away. You give it away. And when you give it away, you get a new one. And you give the new one away. And when you give the new one away, you get a new one. That practice doesn't depend on you remembering what practice is. But it does depend on you now forgetting about your practice and giving it away, or giving your practice away, giving your practice away, giving your practice away. And that way you enter into the actual practice, which doesn't depend on you remembering, and doesn't require you to forget either. Some people are forgetting their practice, some people are remembering their practice, but all together we're practicing together. And as far as I know, there's no problem of giving yourself to the Nirmanakaya Buddha and temporarily forgetting about the Dharmakaya Buddha, or give yourself to the Dharmakaya Buddha and forget about the Nirmanakaya Buddha for the time being.

[24:47]

The point is you're giving yourself to innumerable transformation Buddhas and to the ungraspable ocean of the true body of Buddha. And I think it seems to take a long time of practice to be consistent at this. But as it says, when you do it for one moment, at that moment it has a total universal consequence for you, and you have a universal consequence for the universe. But the next moment you may slip into worldly affairs, where you stop giving your practice to the Buddha, and then you're temporarily distracted, but come back.

[25:54]

I don't know who is doing the practice, but I do know that as soon as I... I don't know that as soon as I... use my body speech and mind to express the Buddha's body, I do it, then, no, at that moment, the entire sky turns into enlightenment. Even though I'm indoors, you know, I can't see the sky, the entire sky turns into enlightenment. And the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's body. And if I don't give myself, by not giving myself, I kind of miss it. I alienate myself from our, not just mine, from our essential nature, just by veering off course. But I admit it, and I have a chance to return.

[27:02]

to the Buddha body, which is practicing. The Buddha body is practicing. It's practicing walking the Buddha way, and it's practicing really wishing that everybody would join Buddha walking the Buddha way, and walking the same Buddha way in the same way. So the Lotus Sutra says, the original vow of all Buddhas is I want to walk the Buddha way in such a way that all beings will join me and walk together with me on this way. The same way. It's not like the Buddha's on the Buddha way and we have these side roads, and we walk along these side roads, and kind of like the Buddha's walking real smoothly and we're jumping around. It may seem like that, but really the Buddha wants us all to join the same practice, the same path, the same enlightenment.

[28:08]

So let's take our different, our uniqueness, and make it a gift, and offer our uniqueness, offer our gift to the Buddha way, which is the same, like Dogen says here, he says, Oh, oh, he's commenting on... His comments on one of the Bodhisattva precepts is... Yeah. When he's commenting actually on not indulging in sexual greed, that Bodhisattva precept, he says, the Dharma wheel... No, because the three wheels are pure. The three wheels, by the way, are the three wheels of giving. Giving has three wheels.

[29:11]

One wheel is giver, another wheel is receiver, and the other wheel is the gift. Because these three wheels are pure, and that means pure of any separation, because of that, nothing is to be wished for All Buddhas are on the same path. There's another place where it gets into that, but I can't... I was looking for it. So... Maybe I'll just mention this, that he also discusses in an essay on teaching and conferring the Bodhisattva precepts, which is kind of the

[30:16]

at the core of the book Being Upright, at the center of that text, is this text by Dogen called the Essay on Teaching and Conferring the Bodhisattva Precepts. And then there's a commentary on that, which I translated, and then Being Upright is based on those two texts. So in that text, Dogen talks about Three kinds of three treasures. First kind of three treasure is called the single-body triple treasure. And that Buddha treasure is unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. That's the Buddha treasure. It's not a person. It's enlightenment. And enlightenment is the way everything comes forward, the entire world comes forward to realize you and me.

[31:20]

That's enlightenment. And that's this one type of Buddha treasure. And the Dharma treasure is its freedom and purity from dust. What's its? It is the Buddha treasure. The way enlightenment is free and pure of dust is the Dharma treasure. Free from dust means free from the slightest bit being other than how things are coming forward to realize you. So you might think when things come forward to realize you, that there's a little bit of separation between the things that realize you and you. The Dharma treasure is just saying, no, there's no separation between all the things coming to realize you and you.

[32:28]

That's the Dharma treasure. In other words, it's not like all things plus you. It's not like there's a universe plus something and that happens to be you. The universe is based on you and it's not in addition to you. The universe is based on you and you're not in addition to it. That's what it means by no dust. No you out there or world out there. And then the Sangha treasure, in this kind of interpretation of the three treasures, is peace and harmony. is the virtue of peace and harmony. That's the Sangha treasure. And so in the midst of all of our problems, all of our sufferings in our changing life, there is this... How do you say in your echo?

[33:44]

Do you say, all-pervading, everlasting triple treasure, is that what you say? Everlasting Triple Treasure. So this Triple Treasure, even though we see a world of destruction sometimes, there is a world of peace. And the world of peace is where we are. realized by the coming forth of everything, where there's no separation between us and what realizes us. There's peace and harmony. And those three treasures don't come and go in the world that we live in, where there's lots of coming and going. Sometimes nice coming and going, sometimes terrible coming and going. And we don't argue with that. We just say that these three treasures live in the fire of our world.

[34:47]

The next three treasures are the historical three treasures. They're called the manifesting triple treasure. So in the world of India, which had wars and fires and birth and death, the Buddha, the enlightenment gets transformed into a human being who appears in a world where there is destruction, where there is birth and death, and so a human being appears there to tell people about a kind of indestructible Buddha and gives a dharma which partly tells about an indestructible dharma and provides a sangha of humans who come and go to help us understand the peace and harmony that's always available no matter what's going on. And there's one more, but I think I'll talk to you about that some other time, if you can wait, because I think that's maybe enough for now.

[36:03]

When I was in Texas, I saw this TV show about the Mormons. And the people who made the show said something about that religions are, one thing that all religions seem to share is a kind of, I don't know what, I'm not sure what they said, but something like a kind of rebellion against death. A kind of, you know, death is not really, we're going to, a transcendence or a triumph over death, that's what this program said. And they said, and no religion is more outrageously triumphant than the Mormons. Maybe Harold Bloom said that. He's a very interesting scholar, Harold Bloom, and partly a scholar of religion. Yeah, I think he said that. I think it was Harold Bloom that said all the religions are into that and that Mormons have really gone the farthest in transcending, in proposing to transcend death.

[37:15]

I think that comment could be leveled towards Buddhism, because we do have a teaching that in ultimate truth, in emptiness, as you know in the Heart Sutra, in the context of emptiness, there's no increase or decrease, no birth, no death, no suffering, no freedom from suffering. So Buddhism does sort of say, in a way, when you realize emptiness, you realize a truth in which there is no birth and death. But you could say Buddhism is not just transcendent over death, it also transcends over birth. We've triumphed over birth and death, not just death. For us, birth is as much a problem as death. When I was sitting by Kadagiri Roshi, in his last few hours, his wife was sitting next to me.

[38:21]

And just a few days before this, his first grandson had been born in this world. So I was sitting next to Mrs. Katagiri, who was just about to have her husband die, but had just gotten this new little boy to be grandmother to. And she said, when we look at people being born, when we look at people dying, when they're born, we feel good because we're getting something. And when they die, we feel bad because we're losing something. And then she said, but for them, the ones that are born and the ones that are dying are both having a really hard time. We feel good about the little ones having a hard time because we're going to get them. And we feel not so good about the other ones going because we're going to lose it.

[39:25]

But they're both having a real hard time. It's not necessarily that much easier to be born than to die. Going through change is hard for us. So I think Buddhism's, in some ways, another thing you could say is religions are about transcending birth and transcending death, but they're also about transcending or getting really skillful at change, getting skillful at transitions. like transition from this person, to this person, to this person, to meeting this person, to meeting this person, to meeting this person. But also from me being this person, to me being this person, to me being this person. All these transitions of who I'm relating to and who I am. We're training ourselves to get really good at transitions, at change. In some ways our retreats are like to get into a simplified situation where we can like experience change but in a kind of concentrated way where there isn't so much change actually, where we can sit still and it doesn't seem to be so much gross change, but then we can focus in on the subtle change and see if we can like really relax with it.

[40:56]

And if we get the feeling for it that maybe we can extend it into the other realms. Would anyone care to come forth and offer something or receive something? I request that you speak, I don't know, at the top of your lungs so Phil can hear you.

[42:06]

Thanks for coming. You're welcome. Thank you for coming. So this is kind of a long wind-up, so pardon me if it's long-winded, but I practiced in a Zen school for many years that really placed no emphasis in terms of teaching on the precepts. Okay, so I didn't have my nose stuck in the precepts in terms of study as a part of my practice. And recently that's changed with the change of teachers and lineage and all that. And so something new has sort of opened up in my awareness. And I've really been enjoying going into that and seeing how... Can you hear him okay, Phil? Yes. And seeing how life feels and works... when giving attention to these precepts, which I understand give life to the Buddha, as a way of saying, that manifests the awakened way. In our country and in our culture, we have all this talk of integrity and character.

[43:17]

Abraham Lincoln is a man of great character. Adolf Hitler was a man of despicable nature, that sort of thing. And I also have a sense of the recurring compulsions in my own life that block my way over and over and over. The rock that I keep tripping on. One is addiction. That's been a recurring hang up. It blocks my path and I can see how it does that. So my question is, do you think maybe this notion of character or integrity is something maybe best dispensed with as sort of nonsense, doesn't it maybe come down to what is your intention for doing what you're doing now, period? And this idea of carrying forward some integrity is only as good as this next moment.

[44:25]

Could everybody hear his question pretty well? I just want to say something to sort of, just also as part of the wind-up. Because I heard that, I think, somebody said, you can accomplish almost everything in solitude, except character. So, and you're proposing maybe we shouldn't be too concerned about character, but just be concerned about the present moment and how we give ourselves in the present moment. And I also just recently read something about the Zen teacher Sawaki Kodoroshi and his main disciple, said, you know, talked about Sawaki Kodo Roshi's character.

[45:35]

And he had the character of, he was a very strenuous, energetic person. And he had many other interesting and impressive character qualities. But just before he mentioned that, he said that when Sawaki Kodo Roshi died, The newspaper article about his death, the headline of the newspaper article, I think, was, uh, Sawaki Roshi wastes his life practicing zazen. And I remember Kadagiri Roshi quoted that around the time that Sawaki Roshi died. And, uh, So I think, and I'm not sure about this, but I think that his senior disciple, Ujjamaa Roshi, was saying that, yeah, Swakiroshi had this amazing character, but that really doesn't have anything to do with the fact that he's wasting his life practicing Zazen.

[46:46]

It has nothing to do with that. His actual religious practice was to waste his life doing Zazen. And we could do that, too. So we may not have the same kind of character as him, which is a wonderful character, and did a lot of, made a great contribution. But his religious life was that he gave his life to Zazen and he wasted it. He wasted his great character on Zazen. So in some sense, I would agree to you that the fundamental thing is not what kind of character we have, but that we waste our life for this practice. And then we don't have to worry about our character so much. However, in the process our character will evolve while we're wasting it for this purpose. So then people may say something nice about our character. And if we don't practice precepts, I don't think we'll be able to waste our life practicing sasana.

[47:52]

we'll try to get something out of life if we don't practice the precepts. If we don't notice our addictions, we're not just going to sit there and give ourselves to the moment. We're going to try to get something. Like, you know, Yeah, I think the comment on the precept of no intoxicants was, you know, nothing's brought in from outside. We're not trying to bring something in. Of course, we are nothing but the arrival of other things, but when we try to bring something in, we miss that. When we accept that, we give our life away to that practice. So I don't want to... Some people say that Zen's about developing your character. That's what some people's understanding is. It's about developing character. And I don't disagree with that exactly. I just think that it's not really about that. I think it's about this practice.

[48:56]

which in our character is what we have to use to express this practice. And taking care of the precepts is a way to make sure that our giving is really not... Well, I shouldn't say make sure. Practicing the precepts is a way to find out if we're kind of being sneaky in our giving. Actually, we say we're giving, but there's some subtle kind of grasping. The precepts help us discover our sneakiness. That's another thing Sawaki Roshe says. He says, when you practice a long time, you notice more and more that you're just getting more and more clever and sneaky. Finding new ways to kind of... trick yourself. So by studying the precepts we have a chance to not end our sneakiness, but notice our sneakiness, confess our sneakiness, and go back to try to give purely.

[50:03]

So precept practice follows the giving practice. So those who are described as having these great insight, great understanding, whose teachers and students both, we can list the teachers and we can list the students who we know whose lives are sort of a train wreck in their personal lives and the way they comport themselves, if that's the way to say it. Can you hear him? Does this idea of, you know, we know of famous teachers, realized people who have a great deal of insight and have written volumes of books on the Dharma, whose lives are sort of a train wreck, who go around kicking up a lot of trouble. and by almost any standard. So in your experience, does this sort of actualization and character often lag behind insight? Limb along to try to keep up.

[51:04]

Well, I'm being careful here because for a number of reasons. One is that you're opening up a natural implication of what I've been talking about, which is... I was maybe thinking of bringing up later, but I just want to say a natural implication of what we're talking about here is that all that I've been talking about is inconceivable. It can be realized, but it can't be grasped. So it doesn't appear within perception. People do have glimpses of the Dharma, but glimpsing the Dharma is not the Dharma itself. Nobody's glimpsing at the Dharma. But we can have glimpses of it. But when we have glimpses of it, we're slightly alienated from it. And some of the people who have glimpses, real glimpses, and Shakyamuni Buddha had glimpses too.

[52:21]

Some of the people who have glimpses are not the same people who have plunged into and entered and had no glimpse, but just became it. When you become it, the precept, you're practicing giving, precept, diligence, patience, you become, that's the way, the training things are actually there in the Dharma. When you glimpse it, you can still, at that glimpsing position, you're alienated, and in your alienation, you can, you can be, what do you call it, at odds with the precepts, at odds with the training program. Even you can say, some people when they have the glimpse, in the glimpsing, which is wonderful, they even think that they don't have to practice anymore. That that thought arises to you when you have this wonderful glimpsing experience.

[53:25]

You know, like Dogen says, suppose one has pride of understanding, glimpsing the wisdom that runs through all things, aspiring to escalate the very sky. This happens to people who have these glimpses. They're real glimpses. They're seeing this wonderful thing, but they're outside of it. He says they're still loitering around the frontiers and are, he says, somewhat deficient in the total way of complete emancipation. They're not completely deficient. They're somewhat. But they're sort of on the outskirts still because they're looking at it. When you actually plunge into it, you don't get to have it anymore. You just are lost in realization. And when you enter there, you enter and then you leave. And then you enter again and leave. Your mind and your world go into this place, this unconstructed stillness, and then go beyond it.

[54:27]

But there's no kind of like me having the experience at that point. But there can be me or somebody, not even me, but there can be this consciousness of this. But again, Dogen says, this realization cannot be met with recognition. That which can be met with recognition is not realization itself. So you're looking at it, and it's true what you're seeing, but the realization is not what you can see. So that's, aside from some of these problems you're bringing up, this is a difficulty because we have some background, I think, particularly in the West, of having Buddhism presented to us as something we can experience rather than something we can enter. In Asia, it's not so much... There is some people in Asia, but I think a lot of people in Asia present Buddhism this way. I'll go maybe more into this later.

[55:29]

We're trying to make Buddhism a way that would be easier for Westerners to understand, rather than the way they thought about it for 2,000 years, which is you do the practice, and that's the realization. And we more think you do the practice and you get the realization. The realization is that You have this insight into truth. But there's another thing in the traditional picture of Buddhism is that as you progress on the path, sometimes the path is presented as five different phases. And the third phase is the phase where you have insight. And it's followed by a fourth phase, which is the phase, it's called the phase of meditation. But there's meditation before the third stage. The first two stages are stages of meditation too, but they're meditations before insight into selflessness. Then you have insight into selflessness, but then you enter into another meditation course post-insight phase.

[56:32]

If before the person has completed the second, the post-insight meditation phase, the person still has lots of old habits that have not been juxtaposed and washed by the insight. And they can make lots of mistakes still based on these, just like they can make mistakes before. But in addition to the old mistakes, they can make new mistakes which are now imbued by their insight. So they can be more arrogant than they used to be. And the last thing they get over is pride. And they have something to be proud of. But with the pride of understanding, you can have people who have real understanding making mistakes just like they did before. So it's not that bodhisattvas don't make mistakes before, during, and after insight. It's that hopefully they're aware of their mistakes and learning from them. So it's not that we're not going to make mistakes, but that we're aware of them, and that we are generous with them, and that we learn from them.

[57:38]

But some people mistakenly have insight, and then they, and sometimes their students, think that because they have insight, they won't be making mistakes anymore. So then when they make mistakes, they think, must not be a mistake because I made it. And I'm enlightened, so it must not be a mistake. And the students say, it must not be a mistake because she's enlightened. So I guess we should just shut up even though it looks really sick. So then that goes on and on until finally people say, I guess we can't avoid admitting it. This is actually just illness here. And we have gone too long not admitting this because we thought this person had insight. And if the Buddha was there, the Buddha could say, they did have insight. It was an insight, but it was just an insight. It wasn't the Buddha way. The Buddha way is not my insight, or your insight. Even though you have good insight, it's not the Buddha way. The Buddha way is how you and I are practicing together.

[58:41]

It's the same practice as people with insight and people without insight. It's the practice they're doing together. It's the way they're actually together. That's the Buddha way. But then in that situation, what is it like with the fungi, right? Sometimes the mushrooms pop up, and people think the fungi is a mushroom, even though it's just a spore transmitter. So the same in the Buddha thing, the Buddha Sangha, the human Sangha, we're all doing this thing together and occasionally mushrooms pop up to send out messages of, hey, insight, yay. And then they think that the mushroom's the plant, even though the mushroom's 10 inches tall, two inches tall, but the actual fungi is like hundreds and thousands of acres and been living thousands of years. The mushroom's just like, this plant's thousands of years old. But that's, people get excited about mushrooms. They're delicious, they're intoxicating, right?

[59:42]

Both of those things. Yeah. So that does happen when you, I remember, you know, when I finished Dharma Transmission Ceremony, the thought did cry across my mind that I could fly. I kind of thought, yeah, I can just, I don't know, gravity's not a problem anymore. I can do pretty much whatever I want. Fortunately, I was married. And my wife kind of saw that this was happening to me. And she kind of like, you know, what do you call it? She didn't give me clearance to take off. But I kind of thought, I kind of thought, whatever, man, you know, this is like, I can do it, anything now. I have Dharma transmission. Well, that's just delusion. Just like before, if I thought I was doing something before, but now in the top of my previous delusion, now I have even more reason to be deluded. So now I'm more deluded. And also if I had done certain things, some people might have thought, well, it's okay what he's doing.

[60:47]

So we've seen this thing of various teachers, not just in the Buddhist Sangha, but in other religions who do have insight. Really, they do. They're wonderful people. And they thought they could do whatever, and then they did it, and then people didn't know what to say because they heard or understood or believed the person had insight, and the person also thought so. So then it had to get worse and worse before people said, oh, I see. And then what people think is that the person didn't have insight, which is not necessarily true. They might have real good insight, but that's not the point. But it's presented that way to the West. The point is for somebody to have an insight. That's not the point. The point is for everybody to realize the way. And if people have insights, good, but they need to give away their insights back to the precepts.

[61:52]

And a lot of people do have insights, and as a result of that they feel like, oh, now I really want to practice the precepts. Well, that's in that they don't. It's because they think, now I really want to practice the precepts, but I don't have to. Because insight would go with you seeing how beautiful the precepts are. You would say, oh, now I, before I thought there's something I should practice, now I see how beautiful, how they're the truth. And I also see I don't have to practice them. And so that's why this person needs help to return to the practice of our school, not the practice of this person. To give the practice of this person to the practice of our school. which is this great, inconceivable, boundless practice of all beings. But from ancient times, people had to, after insight, had to practice scrubbing away their karmic patterns after insight.

[63:00]

And if they stopped at insight, it would be in some ways worse than not getting to insight at all, because before insight they were, you know, they were working on their problems. But then after they stop sometimes. And another thing is that it's nice to have a sangha because sometimes in a sangha somebody will spot that you think you don't have to practice anymore. And if you're looking for a teacher, a teacher should still be studying and still be practicing. Not like, okay, I understand, so I don't have to study anymore. Like Dogen said when he was dying, Concerning the Buddha Dharma, there are ten million things I have not yet realized. Ten million things. But I do have the joy of correct faith. And his faith was, grandmother mind, to make every action for the Buddha way. To make every action for the Bodhisattva precepts.

[64:06]

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Anything else at this time? I get the impression that, uh, that Mitch likes singing. Yeah, I was in bed. Took my bigger mind reader. I was like, it's time for a song. One that occurred to me was, There were birds in the trees, but I never heard them singing. No, I never heard them at all till there was you. Yes. Did you want to say something? Were you about to come or were you just doing a soft shoe over there? I was hoping he didn't see me. Hard when I'm standing not to see me.

[65:12]

I've recently moved to a new city. Austin? Can you all hear me? Yeah. Austin? Austin. Austin, Texas. And I'm finding myself talking a lot about my experiences the last year and a half here with Mish's Sangha in Florida, and so is Roger, and with my practice. And a lot of younger people are very interested, when I say younger, younger than myself, 18 to 22 years, about. I'm not sure how best to help out because I see some people looking at me as if I'm some sort of expert and I don't feel that way. I just kind of feel that I'm sort of meandering around and trying to use the resources best I can and learn as much as I can every day. So I guess my question to you is, do I share with them what I've read? Or do I share with them what I've experienced? What do you feel would be more important to share?

[66:26]

So he's working in conjunction with the Austin Zen Center. He's working with a group of young people as part of the community, right? Right. Yeah. So he's offering kind of like Big Brother a little bit, kind of thing. Yes. Big Dark Big Brother. I don't know, I think they can tell that you're not a lot older than them and that you're kind of their older brother. I don't think they think you're completely enlightened. But they may act like that just to see if you'll fall for it. And when you fall for it, you may think like you have to tell them, you know, I'm not completely enlightened. But, you know, I think, you know, that it would be good to tip them off to this big practice. Well, you know, while they're fresh, before they get deeply embedded in the picture of, you know, that you're enlightened or somebody else is enlightened, you know, tell them about the big practice.

[67:35]

And then you say, well, should I have them read or should I have them tell my experience? And I guess I think they may not go for this, but I think the main thing you can do for them is to get them to look at what their experience is, to say, you know, yeah, I don't feel like it's really going to work for me to tell you about my experience. I think you should find out what it is yourself just by seeing it. I don't know, are they ready to sit, are they? Some are getting to that point. Yeah, I think, no, don't force them to sit, but just tell them that it's kind of difficult for, if you tell them what your experience is, really they just interpret it through their own storytelling, so they're really not going to find out what your experience is. But you could tell them that one experience One Buddhist priest, when you told him about that, he suggested you say, you know, I recommend that they just go sit and find out what it's like to be themselves sitting.

[68:43]

And if they don't want to do that, you still be keeping their friends, but basically, and don't like, yeah, don't stop being their friend just because they keep wanting you to tell them what's going on. But don't tell them sort of what your experience is as any kind of idea that that's what experience they should be trying to get or should have or anything like that. But if they want to know what the experience of practice is, if they sit, they will have the kind of experiences people in practice have. They will feel restless. They will feel afraid. They will have to figure out what to do with discomfort. This is part of what we're offering, is for people to get to know how to cope with this stuff. So you might say to them, why don't we try it a little bit? I'm not trying to get you to sit, but why don't we just sit enough, I don't know what, 15 minutes or 20 minutes, and then after we sit, we can talk about what happened. together so then they sit and then you know and they struggle with that and then they're going to have actual information that they can use as a resource and tell you about it and you can help them work with it now they may think yeah so then so then so we get into like okay you had those experiences but that's not like Buddhism that you had there that's just your experience but how do we handle and how do we care for the experiences we do have

[70:12]

Because after this session with them is over, they're going to walk out the door and keep having experiences. And some of their experiences they're going to handle poorly unless they're trained. Like they're going to think their friends are jerks, that they're going to be afraid of their friends. Or they're going to think their friends are great and get attached to their friends. This is the kind of thing that's going to happen to them when your session is over. So if you can teach them with what comes up in the sessions with you, if you can teach them ways to be relaxed and gracious with those experiences that are coming up right then, then you can say, well, now this is what to do with the other experiences that are going to happen, particularly in interactive situations. But a lot of teenagers, their own inner experiences are horrible. You know, they think in their own mind that they're terrible people. They think horrible things about themselves. They can't stand what they are thinking of themselves.

[71:14]

Right? So if a little bit of that comes up when they're sitting, you could, you don't have to say my experience, but from your experience, you can show them ways of dealing with the challenging stuff that comes up in their body and mind. And then they can perhaps extend it, the terrible things that are going to come up to them when they leave your presence. That's what I feel would be good to do with them. Thank you. And also, if you do it in a group with them, they can learn that they can express these things, and that you and the other people will let them do that, and that that's okay to get that out in the open. So that's another thing they learn. Now they learn good ways of dealing with what's going on with them, but they also learn that they can get the stuff out in the open, and that when they get it out in the open, it's really good to have it out in the open where other friends can see it, rather than, especially friends who are, like, trying to help each other deal with this stuff, rather than keep it inside and don't tell anybody, which I think a lot of teenagers do, like with their parents, right?

[72:28]

Come home from school, how was your day? Uh, okay. Okay. You know, lots of stuff happens, but they don't tell their parents because they're afraid of what their parents will think, that they'll disapprove or tell them what to do with it. So you, in some ways, can help them more than their parents if they will tell you what's going on. And within the realm of your zazen practice with them, or with the sitting with them, they may be willing to tell you what happens in that arena. They may not be willing to tell you other things. But you could also have sessions like that. You could have sessions where you sit with them and they tell you what comes up and they learn, number one, that they can tell people and that's okay and survive that. Number two, that they get advice from you and other people of skillful ways of handling it. Because a lot of people, you know, when they tell me about something that's going on with them, they just can't be kind to themselves. So I often say, well, what would you say if a friend of yours had that experience?

[73:30]

And then they could give the friend some advice to be kind. So some of these kids can't be so kind to themselves, but sometimes they can be kind to the other kids that are having those kinds of experiences so they can see that. So I think that's what I would think would really be good for you to do with them. You're welcome. I just have one last question. And book reading and stuff is okay, but they can do that when they're not with you. Okay. Perfect. And how are you? Am I? I don't know. What do you think? You seem very well today. That's what I was hoping. Just wanted to ask. Check in with you. I am very well. However, I might die today. It's possible. I might have a heart attack this afternoon and say bye-bye. But right now I'm feeling really healthy and very happy to be with you.

[74:34]

Very happy to be here as well. Thank you. You're welcome.

[74:38]

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