Daikei means staying home and tokudo means accomplishing the way. One meaning of staying at home is that the people are what are called lay people or householders. They hold a house. Maybe they even own it. Maybe they own a car, maybe they own some kids, maybe they own a spouse. That's one understanding, people who hold on to a house. In other words, people who haven't given up all their possessions. But I don't disagree with that meaning. And according to that meaning, it's possible to attain the way through the ceremony of

[01:03]

receiving the precepts, even while holding on to a house, even while abiding in family life. If you receive Buddha's precepts, you can attain the way through that reception, through that accepting of these sixteen great Bodhisattva precepts. But another meaning that occurs to me about staying at home is in the sense of staying home. In other words, being in your true home, being in your true home and attaining the way. And your true home is these sixteen precepts. Not killing is your true home. Not taking what is not given to you by all sentient beings, that's your true home.

[02:07]

Living in the house that all sentient beings give you, that's your house, that's your home. When you live in the house that all sentient beings give you, you attain the way. And so on. All these precepts, by staying there, by living there, we can attain the way. The way is this nickname for Buddha way, the way that one goes in awakening. And this way must be precisely where you are right now.

[03:09]

But where you are right now is not the same as your idea of where you are. However, your idea of where you are is part of where you are. This ceremony is a rite of passage, a ritual gate that you can go through. Sometimes it can be called a dragon gate. The fish are swimming around in the ocean or in the river.

[04:21]

And by the compassion of Buddha, a gate is set down into the water. And when the fish swim through the gate, they change into dragons. They completely change. When asked if they will practice Buddha's way, even after becoming Buddha, they say yes. Contrary to all anthropological study. They say, yes, I will live this way. I will observe this way which is far beyond human behavior. I will totally reverse my attitude about everything.

[05:30]

And if we totally reverse our attitude about everything, or if we totally reverse our attitude in every situation, we will be able to realize Buddha's way. And what is Buddha's way? Buddha's way, according to Zen teacher Yuen Mun, Buddha's way is to make the appropriate response. The appropriate response to what? The appropriate response to a living being. In general, the appropriate response to a living being is to listen to it and to love it. If you listen to it and love it, then you will understand it.

[07:12]

And you will know what to do. . The appropriate response is the thing that's apropos of benefiting the being. How will you know what is apropos? It is by listening to the living being, to the living beings.

[08:23]

It includes listening to yourself. Listen, listen, listen, until you are listened, until you realize that you don't even do the thing of listening. Listen, love, until you realize you don't do the thing called love. Respect, look again, until you realize that's not just something you do. It is a gift. You being respectful is a gift that is given to your body, mind and thought.

[09:27]

. So the principle I offered you this week at the beginning is the principle of if you take total responsibility for the way you think, for the way you see, for the way you talk, for the way you posture, if you take responsibility completely for your actions, . then you will receive the ability to respond appropriately. . It will come to you in response to your uprightness

[10:33]

. in the middle of your actions. . And the appropriate response will not be something that you're doing. It will be something that happens between you and others which comes to you when you admit that you think you do things on your own. When you think you can do a good or a bad thing all by yourself and you admit that and take responsibility for that understanding which you have, then it will come into your hands. The appropriate response will come into your hands and your hands will become compassionate hands. Hands that no longer are the instruments of an independent operator

[11:42]

but now hands that are the instruments of all sentient beings. . These hands are not born, these hands and eyes of compassion are not born according to conditions, by some conditions. . A compassionate hand is born when the spirit of enlightenment . is joined by or arises with conditions. . There's no conditions which make the spirit of the Buddha way arise.

[12:49]

There's no conditions that stop it. It arises in birth, it arises in death. It's arising right now. . It arises in a deluded mind, it arises in an enlightened mind. It arises in confusion, it arises in nirvana. . It arises by uprightness. It arises by uprightness. It arises by a thing being responsible to itself. And things are always that way and so the spirit of enlightenment is arising right now. And when it is together with any circumstance it becomes a hand held out in the world.

[13:51]

. So I was happy to hear today from someone about a dream that she had. In the middle of the night she was talking in her sleep. . . Someone overheard her fortunately. And she said, I don't know if she said I or you, anyway, maybe she said, I must be upright and take responsibility. So at first I thought, oh good, my message has sunk into his unconscious. But then I felt even happier to think, oh his unconscious has come to meet my message.

[14:54]

I think this message is already in there and I'm just pecking at you for it to come back out. . I think eons ago we knew this. This teaching of being upright and honest. . Honest about what? About the self. About the self. And in order to be honest about the self you have to look at it. You have to say, oh there it is, that's what it is. This thing, this thing that comes and does stuff. This thing which does practice,

[15:56]

which does good, which does bad, which is right or wrong. And this self, this one I know so well, this one that goes up to here and then stops and becomes you. This one that stops and becomes the other. This one that stops and becomes the environment. This one, I admit it, I'm honest about it. And I'm upright in it. I'm not trying to run away from it. That one. And I admit that one and admit that one and admit that one until I admit it so fully, until I'm so upright and honest and take so full responsibility for it that I'm relieved of it. That I forget about it. And then, instead of me and other things, all the other things realize me. And there, when all other things realize me,

[17:00]

then I really have the ability to respond appropriately. I'm no longer limited by what I can do and what I can't do. Now, all things can be used to respond. Now, when I meet beings, the mountains and the waters can be used as a tongue to talk to them. If I see someone who's suffering, maybe I don't know what to do because I can only do certain things. But the mountains and the waters can help. And I can use, or we can use, the wind and the rain for words to talk to these people. To explain to these people who are suffering

[18:00]

the way that they can be free of suffering. Namely, by demonstrating to them that we're willing to be us and it isn't so bad. So maybe they could be themselves, even though it really is bad. It's bad to be them. It's really terrible to be them. But we know it's even worse to be us and we're willing to be us, so... Now, they think they're pretty bad, so we have to be worse. We have to be worse than the sickest person so that if we're willing to be us, then they say, Oh, okay. Must be possible. Look. This is what dragons can do.

[19:16]

Dragons can be able to help people because they use the clouds and the rain and the ocean. They don't just use their personal dragon power. That's what's so good about dragons, is they use the whole environment. But fish only use the little fish power. So these people tonight are going to go through a gate and then from then on, they're committed to use the whole universe to help the whole universe. Okay. A week ago or so, I was in Minnesota,

[20:50]

right near the Iowa border, visiting the Minnesota Zen Center. And at one point, I was about to sit down to practice cross-legged uprightness. And as I was folding my robes, it occurred to me that I had accomplished what I came to Zen for. I felt as though I could be myself. Right at that time, either just before that or right after that,

[21:57]

I was shaving my head. And there's a verse that the Buddhist shavers say. And I said it. The verse in English goes like this. Now I am being shaved my head and, in my case, my beard. I vow with all sentient beings, or I hope all sentient beings, will be free of all self-clinging. In the end, neither birth nor death exist. Really. And then I said, well, actually, now I am shaving my head and my beard. I vow with all sentient beings to be free of self-clinging.

[23:03]

In the end, neither birth nor death exist. And I went back and forth like that for some time. Now I am being shaved. Now I am shaving. Now I am being shaved. Now I am shaving. I don't remember how many times I went back and forth. Usually you're supposed to do it just about three times. But I did it more than three times. And the more I did it, and the more I do it, the more I feel like, hey, I can be me. Now I am being shaved. Now I am shaving. Now I am being made. Now I am being made. Now I am making. These two go together.

[24:07]

If I make me, I am pretty ashamed. But I don't make me. You make me. Now you might be ashamed too, but you're not. Because actually you don't have to take responsibility for making me. You should share the responsibility with all sentient beings. But when you share it, the shame is really small. Anyway, if I make this person all by myself, I'm so ashamed I can hardly admit it. Why would I do it this way, really? There's no justification to do it just like this. If I was going to do it, I should at least change a few things. Like be a little bit more modest or a lot more modest.

[25:14]

Or I don't know what. Many things I probably should do differently if I make them. But I do not. And I do. To some extent, I make me. And to that extent, I'm ashamed. But if I only make me, if I'm the one who's in charge here, then my shame gets bigger and bigger. But if I remember that you make me, I am being made, I am being shaved, my teeth are being brushed. If I remember that too, less and less do I need to be ashamed because I get closer and closer to my true self. Which, ironically or paradoxically, allows me to be just like I am, moment by moment. Because I cannot change the way I am

[26:17]

because I do not make myself the way I am. I am exactly the way I must be each moment. And someone said, is this fatalism? It would be fatalism, I guess, if you were exactly the way you were and you were stuck in that and that was misery. But the funny thing is that the idea that you make yourself is what's misery. And when you realize everyone makes you, it's not misery. It's total bliss. And that bliss is empowered with the ability to respond appropriately. So, if it's fatalism, hey, no problem.

[27:17]

Call it whatever you want. Even call it Reb Anderson. Doesn't matter. No matter how you insult it, it doesn't matter. Because it's happy and it's helpful. Even in intensely polluted sewer. It just goes, intensely polluted sewer all the way to the fullness of the pollution. And in that completion, it is totally relieved and totally useful. When a rock is a rock, when a rock is uprightly a rock, that rock saves the world. When you are you completely,

[28:25]

you save the world. But, you don't make yourself that way all by yourself. So part of being totally yourself is to understand and understand. And you understand when you admit how you understand now and see that it's totally the reverse of what's really true. And that the truth and the totally reversed version of it that you hold are not the slightest bit separate. They're as intimate as intimate can be. And this intimacy ultimately as it gets very close

[29:29]

is almost like a war. That's why we have to practice uprightness and be patient with the intensity of this dualism and not split over to one side or the other. I forgot to mention that to switch over to the side of only you are made, only you are being shaved, that won't work either. So the verse, you know, now I am being shaved is pretty good but I don't think that's enough. I think you have to have the other side, now I'm being shaved. I think you need these two sides. As I mentioned before in the three pure precepts that are taken in this ceremony in the Zen version of them,

[30:31]

the first character of these three pure precepts is the same character. One version is I vow to avoid all evil and I vow to practice all good and I vow to benefit all beings. But in this version that we chant the first character is the same. Embrace and sustain or embrace or engage or control or gather. But as I mentioned this character has a passive and active meaning so it means to be embraced and sustained by right conduct and it also means to embrace and sustain right conduct. It means to be embraced and sustained by all good and to embrace and sustain all good. It means to embrace and sustain all beings

[31:32]

and be embraced and sustained by all beings. It means to relax and just throw yourself into the ocean of all beings and trust that they'll take care of you just as they have been up till now. It is only by their kindness that you are here. However, because of many, many, many examples or instances of thinking that I can do things by myself and I don't need any help because of that thinking I have been thinking also that sentient beings haven't been helping me. I've been thinking, Oh, that wasn't very helpful. You attacked me. You undermined me. This way of thinking comes to someone who has been thinking like that before and this habit is...

[32:34]

We don't have to worry about this habit dying. It's very healthy right now. A lot of people think that way. If it becomes an endangered species of thought, let me know. We could make a little kind of nature preserve for it just to keep it as a kind of like, you know, a version of possible human thought. But as far as I can tell it seems to be still very alive in the world that people think, These people are not helping me. These people are being cruel to me. It looks like that to certain people. A Buddhist teacher was visiting us in San Francisco one time and he heard the garbage trucks coming by one morning

[33:42]

and he asked later what that noise was during meditation and someone told him that these people come by in these garbage trucks and pick up the garbage and he said, How kind. Now, one might think, I hope there was somebody to explain that these people get paid for this. So it really isn't so kind. They're just doing it for the money. What is Buddha's work? Appropriate response. A response apropos of enlightening beings, of setting them free from their attitudes. How do you get the ability

[34:46]

to live in the realm of appropriate response? By taking responsibility. It seems kind of like a trick, but it is, I guess, a kind of a trick. The trick is that things can turn around. Things can turn around. What is good can be bad. What is bad can be good. Garbage collection can be kindness. Kindness can be garbage collection. Matter of fact, that's one of the main practices of kindness of bodhisattvas is to go around and collect other people's garbage without skipping over your own. So, when you see a word like responsibility,

[35:54]

when you totally exert responsibility, it turns around and becomes the ability to respond. At first, responsibility is something which is maybe a burden. Something which you might hesitate to completely embrace and sustain. But again, as you start to do it, according to your own personal effort, you will be met and supplemented. So, you take responsibility as much as you can, and then you will be taken responsibility, or you will be... How would you turn that? You will be... Well, you will be responded to, and you will receive the ability to respond. That's what's going on in the level beyond our poor, diluted perception. We are responding to each other all the time.

[36:58]

We are mutually creating each other all the time, but it's so complex, it's so intense, it's so radiant that we have protected ourselves from it with our perceptual equipment so that we can know something. Or, to put it the other way, in order to know something, we had to leave the world where we're mutually creating each other. So, we've accomplished this great thing of having knowledge of something else, but the price of that is that we've lost track of awareness of where there isn't anything else, and where all the things that aren't anything else are totally co-creating each other in an extremely rapidly changing, organic soup. And in that soup, there is the ability to do what's helpful to people,

[38:01]

helpful for people, and it comes up quite naturally according to the condition. It's just the appropriate thing happens. And these people who do the hard work of being responsible, it isn't that they can do this appropriate response, but the appropriate response happens at the address of taking responsibility. Uprightness is the address of appropriate responding. And the people who appropriately respond are those who have freed themselves from the idea that they personally are the actor. But once again, the freedom from belief that you're the personal, independent operator, the freedom from that comes by admitting that that's the way you think, and that that way of thinking is deeply, deeply ingrained in us. I heard this someplace recently

[39:07]

that it's dangerous to assume that people in positions of responsibility will act responsibly. When I heard that, I thought, hmm, but we're all in positions of responsibility. Everybody is. Whether other people think so or not, we are. Because anybody who assumes complete responsibility for their position can realize the Buddha way. And for everybody, whether they're in what other people think is a responsible position or not, for everybody, that is a full challenge to all of our habits. We have this deeply ingrained habit to not be responsible for what we're doing.

[40:10]

In other words, to not pay attention to the fact that we think we do things. We just do them. We just entertain that delusion without being honest and saying, hey, I admit this. We think, it's not lying to not mention that I did this. It's lying by omission. It's lying by denial. It's lying by unmindfulness. It's lying by inattentiveness. Not lying... Most people don't even think about it. They don't even think that they're not mentioning, not admitting that they're deluded. That they are independent operators. Now, usually,

[41:20]

it doesn't work to read something to people unless you wrote it yourself or something, or unless you're a professional reader. This is probably not going to work. This is a book called The Famish Road, and I'm going to paraphrase a little bit. More than paraphrase. In the beginning, there was the unborn. In the beginning, no individuals made things, and did things. And this unborn was like a river. The river became a road, and the road branched out to the whole world.

[42:25]

And because the road was once a river, it was always hungry. In the land of beginnings, spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds, blue jays. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing, and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity.

[43:28]

We played much because we were free, and we sorrowed much because there were always among us those who had just returned from the world of the born. They had returned inconsolable for all the love that they had left behind, all the suffering that hadn't been redeemed, all they hadn't understood, and for all that, they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back into the land of origins. There was not one among us

[44:32]

who looked forward to being born. We disliked the rigors of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the born in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see. Our queen was a wonderful personage who sometimes appeared in the form of a great cat. We wondered into what circumstance she was born. She always lived the most extraordinary lives.

[45:37]

One could pore over the great invisible books of lifetimes and recognize his genius through the recorded and unrecorded ages. Sometimes a woman, sometimes a man, she wrought incomparable achievements from every life. If there is anything common to all her lives, the essence of his genius, it might well be the love of change, change, the transformation of love into higher realities. With our spirit companions, the ones with whom we had special affinity, we were happy most of the time

[46:44]

because we floated in the aquamarine air of love. We played with fauns and fairies and beautiful things. Tender sybils, benign spirits, and the sense of presence of our ancestors were always with us, bathing us in the radiance of their diverse rainbows. There are many reasons why babies cry when they are born, and one of them is the sudden separation from the world of pure dreams, where all things are made of enchantment and where there is no suffering. The happier we are, the closer we are to our birth. The happier we were, we spirits,

[47:45]

the closer we were to our birth. As we approached another incarnation, we made pacts, we made commitments that we would return to the spirit world at the first opportunity. We made these vows in fields of intense flowers and in sweet-tasting moonlight of that world. Those of us who made such vows were known among the born as spirit children. Not all people recognized this. We were the ones who kept coming and going, unwilling to come to terms with life. We had the ability to will our deaths. Our vows were binding. Those who broke their vows

[48:49]

were assailed by hallucinations and haunted by their companions. They would only find consolation when they returned to the world of the unborn, the place of fountains, where their loved ones would be waiting for them silently. Those of us who lingered in the world, seduced by the enunciation of wonderful events, went through life with beautiful, fated eyes. Carrying within us the music of a lovely and tragic mythology. Our mouths utter obscure prophecies. Our minds are invaded by images of future. We are the strange ones,

[49:50]

half our being always in the spirit world. When the time arrived for the ceremonies of birth to begin, the fields at the crossroads were brilliant with lovely presences and iridescent beings. Our king led us to a place to the first peak of seven mountains. She spoke to us for a long time in silence. Her cryptic words took flame in us. She loved speeches. With great severity, his sapphire eyes glowing,

[50:53]

he said to me, You are a mischievous one. You will cause no end of trouble. You have to travel many roads before you find the river of your destiny. This life of yours will be full of riddles. You will be protected and you will never be alone. We all came down to the great valley. It was an immemorial day of festivals. Wondrous spirits danced around us to the music of the gods, uttering golden chants and lapis lazuli incantations to protect our souls across the interspaces and to prepare us for our first contact with blood and earth. Each one of us made the passage alone.

[51:57]

Alone we had to survive the crossing, survive the flames and the sea, the emergence into illusions. The exile had begun. These are the myths of beginnings. They are the stories and moods deep in those who are seated in rich lands, who still believe in mysteries. I was born not just because I had conceived a notion to stay, but because in between my coming and going the great cycles of time had finally tightened around my neck. I prayed for laughter

[53:01]

and life without hunger. I was answered with paradoxes. It remains an enigma how it came to be that I was born smiling. For those who still believe in mysteries, I humbly say, please don't waste time. Be upright and honest, like the king of the spirits, and there will be no life which will not be lived well by you. There will be no circumstances where the spirit of enlightenment will not be born. If you are responsible

[54:03]

and honest and present you will be able to witness this spirit mingling with the blood and earth, and you will be able to serve the one who has a hundred names and is spoken of in all legends. This ceremony is a ritualization of such a commitment of these people who are half in this world and half in the unborn, which is the way we all are. Half in the world of delusion, half in the world of enlightenment.

[55:08]

We are proof of the non-duality of delusion and enlightenment. To admit our enlightenment is a waste of time. We simply must have faith in it, and with that faith we may be able to be willing to be honest and admit that we're deluded. And knowing that, we believe our delusion is true. So the director said, Now don't tell the people who come to the ceremony tonight that just by watching it they're going to get ordained too. Don't tell them that.

[56:14]

Don't tell them that they will be taking these vows also, just by listening to the other people. So I'm not going to say that. I promise I won't. I won't. I promise I won't.

[57:32]

In the beginning there was the unborn, and it was like a river. I'm caught at a... in a dilemma about whether to sing Old Man River or not. What? May our intention equally penetrate every being and place

[58:34]

with the true method of love's way, to know and stay undone, Om Namah Shivaya Stay undone. Om Namah Shivaya Stay undone. Om Namah Shivaya Stay undone. Beings are no worse. I vow to save them. Divisions are impossible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are thoughtless.

[59:39]

I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it.

[59:53]

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