Quite a few people brought up suffering this morning to me. What's the point of it? Asking why do we suffer? What's the point of practice, after all? Some discouragement, feeling of discouragement or futility in the face of so much suffering in the world and so much cruelty among human beings. Feeling like our practice perhaps is so little and so ineffective in the face of the hugeness of the suffering and the perpetration of the suffering

[01:02]

by humans and other beings. So I've been talking about the practice and training of suchness. But again, what's the point of this practice? The point is to liberate all beings from suffering. Again, people say, why do we suffer? But another way to say it is, how does suffering come to be? How does it come to be that we suffer?

[02:10]

And how does it come to be that we practice? There's many stories about how it comes to be that we suffer. One short story is, we come to suffer in dependence on delusion. Depending on ignorance and delusion and karma, we suffer. Depending on believing in our independent existence, we suffer. And it is part of normal human body, existence, bodily existence to have a feeling of individual, separate existence and to believe in it and to act from that.

[03:15]

Acting from this misunderstanding, we run into all kinds of disharmonious situations with other beings. But another story of how come we suffer is, even all by ourselves, even before we meet another person, there's a conflict. Because we have this self-delusion and we have a strong drive to preserve our individual existence. And that is in conflict with another drive in us to transcend this self. So within our own heart, there's a conflict, painful conflict between preserving this separate self and transcending it. And in some ways it's

[04:24]

necessary and you could even say helpful that self-preservation, that the activity of self-preservation and the belief that there is an independent self to preserve, that that is painful. Because if it weren't, our need for self-transcendence would be unempowered. The motivation to do the work of self-transcendence wouldn't be strong enough. working to preserve our self is so painful that we're willing to do the work which is required to transcend our self. And the work required to transcend our self is turning in the way things are. Including that they're very pathetic sometimes.

[05:32]

So how does it come that we practice? Well, speaking for myself, at some point in my life it was indicated to me, I saw an indication of ways of living. I saw them or read them or imagined them. And when I imagined those ways of living, I thought to myself, if I lived that way, I would be free of suffering. So I want to live that way in order to be free of suffering. That's how I came to be interested in practice.

[06:40]

And I could see that those ways of being were selfless. We're living with the primary orientation towards being kind to others and helpful. And I could feel that that would be happiness. But still, in the onslaught of insult on a daily basis, an insult in terms of criticism of myself, but also an insult of gorgeous objects, of attractive phenomena and great opportunities for attainment. In the face of all that, it's hard to remember how good it is to live for the welfare of others. So how could these people that I heard these stories about, how could they stay on the beam?

[07:48]

How could they always be oriented in this way, which was really the same as liberation from suffering? I found out they weren't just lucky, they trained all these people that I showed these wonderful ways of responding to life, to life's insults and temptations, in this really beautiful and enlightening way. They all were the results of training. None of them were born that way. And even if they were born almost that way, they had trained in previous lives. And the training was the training in suchness. The development of the awareness of suchness is in the background of all these people who I thought exemplified

[08:51]

the way of freedom. All these beings trained at being in harmony with suchness. They trained at tuning into ta, ta, ta. They trained over and over tuning into ta, ta, ta. And they found harmony with it. And once they found that harmony, when things happened they responded in this selfless, liberated, beneficial way, spontaneously, out of that harmony. But the training of the deluded person into the harmony is quite an effort. That's what I'm talking about.

[09:54]

How to train ourselves into harmony with what's happening. How to train ourselves into the self-fulfilling awareness. How to train ourselves into a self enlightenment by virtue of enlightening others. How to find the self liberation which is born of liberating others. Ji, kaku, kakuta. Self awakening by awakening others. How does the separate self tune into that? That's what I've been talking about

[10:56]

for a while now. But talk won't register on a tape machine. So you're the only, you and me are the only remnants of this effort. Okay, so Shakyamuni Buddha taught the teaching of such, the practice of suchness, the training in suchness. Prajnatara taught it. Bodhidharma taught it. Lhasa Bandhu taught it. Hoika, Bodhisattva Dhamma's main disciple, Hoika, he taught it and practiced it in real life. His disciple, the leper, we call him the third ancestor. They say he wrote,

[11:58]

you know, that wonderful text called, what's it called? Unbelieving Mind? What is it called? Shin Jin Ming. Shin Jin Ming. Well, he probably didn't write it, but anyway, it's still a good text. Anyway, he survived and had a disciple and his disciple called the fourth ancestor because the leper was the third ancestor. The fourth ancestor wasn't a leper and so people, you know, liked him better. So he had lots of disciples. And his teacher, he taught it too. He taught the practice, the training in suchness too. And the way he put it was the way he said it was One

[12:58]

Practice Samadhi. So his training in suchness was the One Practice Samadhi. That's the way he put it. Now this Samadhi had been known in India. The Buddha taught it in the Mahayana Sutras. But he emphasized it very strongly. One Practice Samadhi. Absorption in the One Practice of all Buddhas. That was the Zazen of the fourth ancestor. Absorption in the One Practice of all Buddhas. Absorption in the Oneness of all life. The awareness

[14:02]

of the Oneness of all life. That was his main practice. To be absorbed in the uniform quality of all life. So all life is one. Being absorbed in that. But also be absorbed in the quality of all life that's the same. All life shares something in common. To be absorbed in that uniform quality of all life. The Oneness of all life. The One Practice of all life. All life is doing one practice. All life is doing the same practice. All life is doing one practice. That is the practice of Buddha. What is the practice of Buddha? It is the practice that all life is doing. If it's not

[15:02]

the practice that all life is doing, it's not the practice of Buddha. The fourth ancestor's teaching was to train the monks into this practice which all life is doing. This is the practice which enlightens the self by enlightening others. And this is also the same as what you read at noon service every day. The self-fulfilling awareness. The enlightening of the self which enlightens others is the practice that all beings are doing. And there's two kinds of enlightening self while enlightening

[16:02]

others. One kind is inconceivable. The other kind is conceivable. The inconceivable kind is the kind where right now sitting in this monastery, when you throw your body and mind into the way that all beings are living and practicing right now, at that time the entire sky and the whole earth are enlightened. Everybody in ten directions wakes up and is liberated when you throw yourself into the practice that everybody is doing together. But this is inconceivable. It doesn't register in your perception. But that is

[17:06]

Buddha's reality. This is inconceivable total liberation of all beings. That's the reason why everybody suffers unless everybody is enlightened. Self-transcendence means everybody transcending self. That kind goes on when you do your practice here, your little practice here in this little monastery, in this little valley, when you do your practice of throwing yourself into the practice of all beings, all beings are liberated. But you don't know this. That's the kind of thing it is. It's inconceivable. Even Buddhas don't know this, but they can say that it's that way. Buddhas are mouthpieces for this inconceivable liberation, but they can't conceive of it either,

[18:06]

but they can say with complete confidence that when you practice this way, that when this practice is happening, not when you practice this way, but when this self-fulfilling samadhi is happening, this liberates all beings. Now, there is a conceivable version of this. The conceivable version is that when you take care of your life in such a way that you're liberated personally by helping others personally, that you can experience. You can conceive of that. You can take care of your body and mind in the face of another body and mind, and that other body and mind can learn how to do that practice and be liberated. You can conceive of that. And, of course, that's called wonderful, but that way

[19:07]

you can only do one face at a time, basically, or in a way one to fifty or one to a hundred faces. You can't liberate everybody in the planet that way, because you can't conceive of that. So, if you want to know how it happens, you're going to have to know it on a smaller scale, and you're going to have to go from person to [...] person, which is not a big problem. Shakyamuni Buddha did it that way. He taught one person after another in India, but he also taught everybody all at once, every moment. He taught both those ways. So, if you want to be able to conceive of your practice, then your practice is going to be limited, and it's going to be like helping one person at a time. And so you won't be able to understand how you help people in Northern California

[20:07]

when you're in Central California. You can't understand that so easily. So help the people around here, and then go up North and help them, when you have a chance. But when you're up there, what about us down here? And so on. So there's two types of liberation, two types of entering into a conceivable way to enter into the one practice Samadhi, and an inconceivable way. Actually, I said a conceivable way of entering and an inconceivable way of entering, but actually that was a conceivable way of understanding how it liberates, and an inconceivable way of understanding how it liberates. Now there's also a conceivable and inconceivable way of entering this Samadhi of the

[21:09]

Zen Samadhi of the Fourth Ancestor. Okay, so how can we, how can an ordinary person with a little self, an unfulfilled self, enter into this one practice Samadhi? How can a one be initiated into the awareness of all Buddhas? How do you get initiated? Well, number one, first, you get initiated by not moving. By just sitting,

[22:09]

and being a living being. It turns out that for living beings, especially human living beings, have the ability to think of being something besides a living being. Because we have this ability, it's hard for us to just be a living being. Because we have the ability to think about moving from where we are right when we're there, it's hard for us to sit still. But it's very simple. The first step in initiation into the practice of all beings is just to be oneself. Just

[23:13]

don't move. That's really it. But not moving is not just your idea of not moving, not moving that I'm talking about is the actual not moving. Just being yourself is not just your idea of being yourself, it's actually being yourself. And actually being yourself requires something of you. It requires that in your not moving, you don't move, but you also find a way of not moving that is a full expression of yourself. It's not kind of like, sort of like a mopey, half-hearted not moving. It is a whole-hearted not moving. It is a not moving which is

[24:13]

as energetic and as expressive as the greatest shout you have ever uttered in your life. It is a not moving which is a big, [...] full, power. And it isn't overdoing yourself or underdoing yourself. It's exactly completely being what you are moment by moment. In order to be a living being you have to fully express yourself. And fully expressing oneself requires

[25:15]

and depends on others. You cannot fully express yourself by yourself. You can do the best you can by yourself and when you've done as well as you can then go do it with somebody else. Those are the two basic dimensions of being yourself. One is just sit by yourself. The other is go meet the teacher. And do it together. You can't do it fully by yourself. But you can't do it with somebody else if you don't do your own job. And you find full self-expression in dependence

[26:18]

on the other. And you depend on the other's support and the other's resistance. In other words the support comes in two forms. One in a way that you feel like they're saying yeah right this is it this is full expression and it comes in the form of no this is not full expression this is resistance. This is no good or whatever. This is half-hearted. This is really? Are you telling me that this is you? And so on. You can't fully express yourself without people resisting you. You don't know what full expression is until somebody resists you. And if you are fully expressing yourself you will get some resistance to confirm your full self-expression. You don't

[27:19]

know how much you care about certain things until somebody opposes you. That's how you find out that you care about something. If somebody says no then you can say oh now I really understand yes that's me. Like that you know that sick monk. And you know the traditional expression in Buddhism when a monk is sick and you go visit the monk you say how is your venerable health? Oh monk? No venerable means lovable. Did you know that? We apply it sometimes to old people but it really comes from Venus. How is your lovable health?

[28:20]

And so the monk comes to visit the other monk how is your lovable health? And the sick monk says oh I'm sick. And the visiting monk says oh you're sick. And the sick monk says oh I'm sick. He's enlightened. He thought he was sick. But he needed the other monk to realize how sick he was. Once he realized how sick he was he was well. Can't realize how sick you are all by yourself. But you can do a lot by yourself. And that you should do. So full self expression requires the other. It requires devotion to the Bodhisattva precepts.

[29:23]

You can't express yourself fully unless you practice not killing not stealing not lying and so on. You must have those precepts. Those others also help you and resist you and support you. In order to fully self expression you have to be mindful attentive and you have to be gentle and tender. In order to fully self express in order to express yourself fully you have to be humble and you have to have confidence. And particularly you have to have confidence in the logic of

[30:25]

self expression and the logic of studying yourself. You have to have confidence that studying yourself fully will be your gate to the one practice of all Buddhas. And you have to understand that studying yourself requires being yourself and fully expressing yourself. With that confidence you can dare to do this outrageous thing of being yourself which people will help you do by resisting you by making these funny faces that they make when you really express yourself. Those faces of repulsion

[31:27]

and disgust and adoration and then repulsion and disgust and adoration. Always helping you find out you know what who you really are. By full self expression you really begin to yourself and when you really become yourself you enter into the awareness of yourself as it receives its function. The self receiving its function is what all life is doing and you have just entered the practice of all life. And from that harmony with all life you act and

[32:32]

the act is Buddha's activity. Inconceivably it liberates all beings past, present, and future in ten directions right now. Conceivably it shows a way to the suffering person by which you can see and touch. Your hand reaches out to encourage someone to pay attention to himself. So this is the Fourth Ancestors training in suchness. The One Practice Samadhi. The Samadhi of unifying body and mind, self and other. You'll

[33:44]

see this Samadhi again and again from now on. So body self and other. Devotion to this Samadhi of the Buddhas means devotion to not moving from where you are, from what you are. It means honestly confessing what you are. Devotion means being gentle with yourself so that you can precisely exactly be in harmony with how it's coming to be. And

[34:53]

if you doubt, if you don't have confidence that you're allowed to not move, you should read the scriptures, you should discuss your doubt until you feel confident that you can sit still. That your sitting still is not selfish, but is a requirement in order to save all beings. The Buddha did it. The Buddha doubted. Actually, Mara teased the Buddha and said, you selfish monk, who do you think you are sitting here up in these mountains lounging about in these lovely samadhis obtaining their way you arrogant thing? And the Buddha said, geez, maybe I am being selfish. I thought I was sitting here for the welfare of all, but maybe I should move from my spot. But the

[35:56]

whole earth said, no, Buddha, you can sit there. You don't have to move. Stay there until you attain the way, just like you said you would. And he didn't have to move. He did attain the way. So, if you can, unmovingly, stay at your seat, ceremonially, in this hall, but throughout the day and night, wherever you are, not move from what you are, be who you are, you will enter, what did he call it, the extremely subtle and recondite awareness of all the Buddhas. You will be in the

[36:57]

inner heart of great compassion. But again, if you doubt that, discuss it, discuss it, read the scriptures, see how all the ancestors struggled with this until they found their place. Bring up your doubts, debate. If you keep discussing, your doubts will become a source for stronger faith in the practice of total devotion to a mobile presence. Total self-expression. No matter what you're doing, total self-expression. This

[38:05]

is the essential art of Zazen, this total self-expression. This is the initiatory art of Zazen. It's not me. It's not all of Zazen. Zazen is totally beyond the inner dimension reduction. This is just the door. You can express

[39:07]

yourself. You did that really nicely. That's good. You know, in the first case of the Book of Serenity, it says, you know, clearly observed, the teaching of the sovereign of teaching is thus. The teaching of the Buddha is thus. The teaching of the Buddha is the teaching of thus. Okay? And then, it says, it has a verse at the end there, and it says, the unique breeze of reality. And I kind of today, I feel like the breeze, you know, the breath, but also it's like the unique thread of reality. This one thread, this one breath that goes through all Buddhists. This one thread, this one breath that goes through all living beings.

[40:07]

Okay? The unique breeze, the unique thread of reality. Can you see it? Can you hear it? And it says, creation, but actually literally it says, the mother principle, the mother principle, working her loom and shuttle, incorporating the patterns of spring into the ancient brocade. Everything that happens, the mother principle takes that thread of what is happening and incorporates it into the ongoing pattern. No matter what happens, can you incorporate this thread, this new piece of data, into the ancient brocade. Every

[41:11]

expression, every moment, another thread put through the fabric, incorporated into the brocade. The mother principle is doing that. She stays home, and takes care of the babies, and while she's caring for life, she takes every new piece of data and puts it into the fabric, and the brocade goes on. In the middle of suffering, she makes a beautiful brocade. Grandma? Q&A Q&A

[42:26]

Q&A [...] if somebody who... see that's how you do see it did you see how I harmonized with you how did I do it? I made that I did that too Wow okay but I also expressed myself I didn't you know I could have expressed myself but being quiet okay I could have harmonized with you by being quiet that's possible but I that

[43:41]

would have been my self-expression but harmony don't forget harmony is not passive it is expressive you harmonize with the other by expressing yourself and funny thing is that when I expressed myself and harmonized with you you felt you weren't alone yes so then I have to express myself to harmonize with your ugly face how you get angry I'll show you have you ever got angry at me did you show me did you show me when you when you talk to me did you show me I'm like this. Pardon? You're what? I'm like this. You know, Rev, I really, I really think that I could jump in and pop out and have you careful of how I feel

[44:50]

My original plan was to avoid the noise. That was going to be the self, the noise avoidance samadhi. That was going to be the practice for you? Well, you know, how am I doing in terms of harmonizing with you now? You're easy, so you've got to show me a real one. That was pretty good though it was close to reality. I wouldn't even say maintain I would say not maintain because like kind of like okay I got equanimity I'm holding on to my equanimity and here comes this person who's screaming at me I'm gonna hold on

[46:02]

to my equanimity hold that equanimity hold it save me look she's taking she's attacking me I got hold on to my equanimity no that's not a harmony harmony is throw you don't hold on to equanimity don't hold on to anything then you won't harmonize open let let go and release your equanimity and you'll find it again right there in situation right there in the fire you'll find the equanimity if she is screaming at me and somebody's totally with her and loves her and present with her amazing because I let go of my equanimity and found it again with her she's helping me find my self-expression all right maybe while she's screaming at me I won't sing certain songs because then she might scream louder but maybe I will scream sing some songs while she's yelling at me I don't know can't say beforehand if you're gonna harmonize you have to drop

[47:06]

your agendas but the Dharma of harmony you find it by letting go of it you let go of the Dharma it fills your hands if you hold the Dharma when you're interacting with beings you can't receive the new Dharma because you know you're like this I got the Dharma I got the right true Dharma rather than okay what is the Dharma oh here she is oh my god you know can I face this can I harmonize with this you think ahead of time you get scared got to be right there if you imagine will I be able to live up to it you know if I think of the next dog sign no good can I meet the next person no good I have to be there fresh can I forget about past and future and just be there now and harmonize with this that's a constant challenge sometimes it seems easy you know oh

[48:09]

you're so nice you're such a wonderful blah blah blah but then that's nice you know you're such a wonderful you're such a great love look you said to me but then you kind of like oh sleep time and then the students it's hot gotcha you went to sleep you know I lulled you to sleep you worthless you fell for that compliment old teacher how do you stay awake in the dance so please don't get mad at me but if you do I'll try to be there for the anger like like the weaver you know it becomes anger leave it into the brocade who this is a bright thread

[49:11]

you Oh Oh

[50:40]

his brain is unsurpassable

[51:00]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ