There's some variety of background in this group of people here tonight. Some people here were at Tassajara last fall. Some people were here at Green Gulch. Some people were at Tassajara last fall and then were at Green Gulch here in January and are here now. And some people are new to Green Gulch for this practice period. So some of the people have been hearing me and discussing with me the teachings about what we call Zazen for about five months now or six months, of course longer too, but particularly for the last five or six months I've been concentrating on what is meant in the

[01:02]

in the teaching of Soto Zen by Zazen. And I feel that it would be good to bring the new people in on this teaching and then to go forward from there, deeper into it. The Zen teacher Dogen uses the term zazen, but he has a particular meaning for it. Literally, zazen means sitting, sitting meditation or sitting concentration, or you could even say sitting dhyana practice. And dhyana is the name for a systematic process of concentration which is not necessarily, which is not new to Buddhism.

[02:11]

It predated Shakyamuni Buddha's practice. He himself practiced this kind of jhana practice and was very good at it. So the term zazen literally uses that uses that term, sitting dhyana. But in his mature teaching, Dogen Zenji was not teaching sitting dhyana as the practice which he recommended. When he said zazen, he meant, in his mature teaching, he meant the meditation practice of the Buddhas. And the meditation practice of the Buddhas is just actually the way a Buddha is.

[03:17]

Buddhas are meditating, of course. Meditating means that they're Their mind is the way their mind is. It's an enlightened mind, and it has these qualities of being awake, of being wise, being compassionate, understanding what actually is happening. That's a Buddhist meditation practice. Buddhists don't do something to get enlightened. they are enlightened beings and the way they are is Buddha's meditation. And so when our ancestor Dogen says Zazen, he means actually Buddha's mind. He means the enlightened life.

[04:22]

He also calls it unsurpassed bodhi. He calls it perfect transcendent wisdom. He calls it... What else does he call it? Something else. And something else. He calls it the self-fulfilling samadhi. He calls it the samadhi of the ancestors. calls it the jewel mirror samadhi, and so on. But that same term, zazen, is used by other people, other Buddhist practitioners, to mean something different, to mean pretty much some kind of meditation practice that someone might do in order to, you might say, improve yourself, make yourself into like a better person or a really good person, or make yourself into a Buddha.

[05:45]

So some people approach the practice of the Buddha that way, that they do something, and then if they do that, they'll just improve, improve, improve, and improve, just really improve, improve themselves right up to But that's not the way Dogen practices. It wasn't the way Shakyamuni Buddha practiced either. He didn't, like, get better and [...] then, boom, there he was, a Buddha. As far as I can tell you, that isn't what happened. He did try this thing of getting better and better and better, and actually he did get better and better and better, and he got better and better and better, and then he got there, and when he was, like, as good as you can get, he says, oops, this isn't what I was looking for. Because he was still miserable. Even though he was like in the highest meditation heaven, he was still suffering.

[06:50]

He still didn't understand. So anyway, he started practicing Zazen of the Buddhas. And then he understood. And that was what he was looking for. Namely, he realized what's happening. I mean, his life was a realization of the way things are, and that's what we call Buddha. He became the Buddha. He woke up from the dream of gain and loss. He woke up from the rat race of improvement, of gain, of let's make this guy better. And for God's sake, if we can't get better, let's just not get worse. He woke up from that dream. So there are, what do you call it?

[08:00]

In a sense, even though it's not kind of an improvement kind of thing, there are kind of like different phases or different dimensions in the practice of zazen. So as I've been speaking to you, and by the way, if you come to my room, I think some of you I have this diagram for, a little diagram of this process I've been talking about, which is you receive the Buddha's precepts, receive the Bodhisattva precepts. and receive them means you say you accept them and then you actually make a commitment to try to practice them. And so simply speaking, for example, you practice not killing, you practice not stealing, and so on. And again, receiving the precepts and practicing not stealing

[09:14]

is a way to describe what it's like to not move in the religious sense. You don't take anything. You have quite a bit. You have what's called... I feel like yelling. You have life. What you've got is life. Okay? Life. Have you noticed? That's something that's given to you. Have you noticed that life has been given to you? The zazen of the Buddhas is to notice that life is given to you right now. You didn't take it.

[10:18]

You didn't take life and then now you got it. Life has been given to each of us. To overlook that and think you've got to take something for your life is called stealing. And that's not what we mean by being still and quiet and upright. Also, when you don't move you don't kill anything. You don't kill your life. You don't kill other life. What do you do with life? You say, well you do whatever you want, but if you're going to do anything what you do in your non-moving state is you get to move your mouth. where you get to think. And what you think is, thank you. Thank you for life. You don't push it and shove it. You don't insult it by trying to make it better.

[11:22]

You don't say, okay, thanks for life, but can I have another one, please, or a little bit better one? No. You don't spit in life's face. You say, thank you for it. That's called... not moving, that's called being upright, that's called non-thinking. In non-thinking you don't kill, you don't steal, you don't lie, you don't misuse sexuality. If you're alive, you have sexuality. It comes with life, at least human life. And actually somebody told me that when he was in high school, Somebody told me that when one of his teachers was in high school, his teacher, one of his teachers, was told by one of his teachers that bacteria do not sexually reproduce. And this guy thought, I don't believe it. I think they sexually reproduce.

[12:24]

But he didn't fight with the teacher. He just left high school and started doing some experiments. And he actually proved that bacteria sexually reproduce. So anyway, I don't, I really don't know what I'm talking about. But I have a feeling like maybe all life involves sex. But you know, I'm not sure. Maybe I'm wrong. But I think so. And there's a wide variety of sex. But I think that's pretty much part of the deal. But zazen is to not misuse that sexuality. And again, what does it mean to not misuse it? It means be honest about it. It means don't take it. It means say thank you for the sexuality that you've got.

[13:31]

And so on. It means appreciating it for what it is. And that's it. And if you appreciate sexuality, if you appreciate your life, if you appreciate your voice, if you appreciate your body for what it is, that's called non-thinking. And that non-thinking, that being upright, is the gate to the inner dynamic of Buddha's mind. So in the diagram that you have or that I will give you, first you receive the precepts. And by receiving and practicing the precepts, you realize this upright being, this non-thinking. And then from non-thinking, you enter into the content of zazen.

[14:37]

So this upright non-thinking is the gate enter into the actual working life of Buddha's mind. And every moment you re-enter, kind of you sign up again for Buddha's mind by receiving the precepts, practicing the precepts, not killing, not stealing, not lying, saying thank you, thank you, thank you for whatever's happening, I'll work with this, this is good enough. I'll work with this, I'll work with this, I'll work with this, I'll work with this. Every moment you re-sign up for that and then every moment you re-enter into Buddha's mind. And then what's it like in Buddha's mind? Well, at noon service you read about what it's like. What's it like? By being upright you enter

[15:45]

the samadhi where the self is fulfilled. You enter into the awareness of how your self receives its function. If you go around trying to get a peek-a-boo at your self receiving its function, that attempt to get it means you're overlooking that you're already getting it. If you try to see how your self receives its function, try to look for it or go someplace where you could be able to see it, you step over and you miss the fact that it's already happening right now. But when you practice non-thinking, when you're upright, you don't go looking for the self which is receiving its function.

[16:53]

It appears to you. You naturally, without moving a particle of dust, you naturally see your self as it receives its life. You see the coming of your life. You see how things are realizing your life. And then this vision imprints itself on everything that's happening here, on your voice, on your posture, and on your thought. And at that time, the entire sky and the whole earth become enlightenment. That's what it's like in Buddha's mind. And Dogen Zenji wrote this big, long... Well, actually, he didn't write a big, long... He wrote many, many short lectures.

[17:59]

And they put them all together into various collections, and they called them the Shobo Genzos. There's different collections. But basically, what's in these books... are explanations or descriptions of what it's like in Zazen. In the Fuka on Zazengi, he talks about practicing non-thinking and how that's the essential art of Zazen. That's the way you... That's like the necessary art. You have to go through that door of non-thinking. You have to go through the door of not violating the precepts. You have to go through the door of give up messing with what's happening. If there's a slightest bit of manipulation or bargaining with your experience, that messing around, that greediness, closes the door. You're stuck in your selfishness.

[19:03]

When you drop trying to get something out of life, in the midst of all of life, when you stop trying to meddle with your mind in the middle of all the activity of your mind that's the essential unavoidable art of zazen and then the door opens and you naturally see a new self being born right now and when this self becomes intimate with all your activities then there's no world, but the world of everything being enlightenment. And each fascicle, each chapter of the Shobo Genzo, describes what it's like, describes what the gift is like, what the gift of Buddha's mind is like. From various points of view, it is described.

[20:05]

So if you read the Shobo Genzo, one way to read it is that what you're getting is descriptions, is explanations of what zazen is like. And these explanations are not about something you do to be like Buddha. It's descriptions of what it's like when you are Buddha. And it's a way of talking that you can talk when you understand. So here's a little sample. This is a classical called Only a Buddha and a Buddha. And I'm going to, not read the very beginning, I'm going to jump into it a little bit and read a sentence that I think would be good to start with.

[21:25]

Doga Zenji says, please reflect on this. What you think one way or another before realization is not a help to realization. What you think one way or another before realizing enlightenment is not a help to realizing enlightenment. Although realization is not like any of the thoughts preceding it, this is not because such thoughts, such previous thoughts, were actually bad and could not be realization.

[22:46]

Those past thoughts in themselves were already realization. But since you were seeking elsewhere, you thought and said that thoughts cannot be realization. What you think before realization one way or another does not help realization. But that's not because those thoughts are bad and are not themselves realization. Actually, all the thoughts you have ever had from beginningless time were themselves realization.

[23:52]

But those thoughts have not helped you realize the way. They were, every step of the way, realization itself. But if you have not yet attained realization, it's because you thought those thoughts weren't good enough. It's because we don't say to each thought, we don't say, you know, 100%, thank you. The gate to Buddha's mind is no matter what's happening, you're grateful. Whatever thought it is, basically your attitude is, Thank you.

[25:00]

I'm not kidding, but that's kind of funny. I think that's kind of funny. I'm twisting this piece of cloth in my hands. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Now I'm putting it down. Thank you. That's the gate. The gate is, thank you. Non-thinking is, thank you. Something happens, thank you. Not thank you, can I have another one, but thank you. Then you enter the realm where, guess what? Where that thought is not something that you have and then you get enlightened. You see that that thought itself, which you said thank you for, is realization. And all the thoughts that have ever occurred prior to saying thank you, they also were realization. But you didn't say thank you, so you didn't understand that they were realization.

[26:13]

And so you thought, this is not realization, this is not realization, this is not realization. Boy, I'm getting kind of a raw deal here. And I've been practicing Zen now for like six weeks and still I haven't got realization. And now here's another one. Here I am being kind of like, you know, what? I'm ungrateful. I'm kind of a grubby little guy. This is also not realization. This is not realization. This is not realization. Each one of those thoughts, like this is not realization, this is not realization, or looking at the thoughts and saying that they aren't, each one of those thoughts of that this isn't realization is also realization. That's what it looks like when you get inside Buddha's mind. Everything is Buddha. But you got to be stopping, you know, what do you call it? What do you call it? They call it a social climber. You got to give up being a social climber. And as you may have noticed, most people are social climbers.

[27:17]

So you might be one of them. but we have to just gently, kindly drop it. Stop trying to climb higher and say thank you for the level that you're at. The door opens and you see that your current thought itself is realization. The current thought that you're having is yourself receiving its function to be able to think. that thought. You see that the thought you're having right now is realizing your life. And understanding that is the gate that all Buddhas have used to enter the Buddha way and realize the Buddha Dharma. Every thought is realization itself.

[28:31]

Every thought dependently co-arises. And since every thought dependently co-arises, it is insubstantial. And because it's insubstantial and dependently co-arises, and dependently co-arises by some kind of story, because all that's going on, the middle way is right there. every thought, every feeling, every emotion, every smell, touch, taste, tangible. They're all like that. All dependently co-arisen, all insubstantial, all simply linguistic designations. And that story, that pattern is the middle way. And the gate to that vision is called non-thinking.

[29:34]

And then the activity that occurs in that space is the activity of wisdom and compassion. So maybe that's enough as kind of like, what do you call it, setting the table. Do you understand what I was saying? Sounds pretty simple to me, so I guess you got it. Is there anything you want to talk about before we adjourn? Yes, Nora? I want to know what delusion is. You want to know what it is? She wants to know what delusion is.

[30:42]

Are you asking me to help you find out what delusion is, or is that just a declarative statement? Yes, I'm asking you to help me. Okay. Would you help me, please? Yes, how would you like me to help you? Well, you said that everything, every thought, saying thank you to every thought. I said that, yeah. So if it's our own thoughts, if it's my own thoughts that are leading me away from being able to say thank you, So you just said, she said something about her own thoughts are leading her away from saying thank you? Right. In other words, you sometimes feel like you have a thought that might lead you away from saying thank you. The thought, for example, might be, well, this is like not something to say thank you about.

[31:52]

Like, for example, you know, now I have the flu or, you know, now I have cancer or now, you know, my speech is becoming slurred or, you know, now I have a broken leg. This is not something to say thank you. You have that thought, okay? That's an example of a thought that makes it harder to say thank you. The thought like, don't say thank you. This is ridiculous. What are you talking about saying thank you? Are you crazy? This is terrible, right? So thoughts like that make it a little harder to say thank you. Those thoughts are kind of like the kind of thoughts that you have to have kind of like deeper confidence in Zazen to say thank you for. The thoughts don't lead you away from saying thank you. The thoughts are what you're saying thank you for, including the thoughts of don't say thank you, whatever you do, don't say thank you until you get certain thoughts.

[33:05]

Okay? So what leads you away from saying thank you? It's that you have another kind of thought, I guess, or opinion that this couldn't be realization. This couldn't be realization, and I'm not going to say thank you until I see realization, or something fairly close to it, or something at least that's going to, like, get me there. Right? So is that delusion, to sort of think like that? Yes. That's delusion. Thoughts are not necessarily delusion, although they usually are. But to think that this thought doesn't qualify for a thank you, that's like heavy delusion. But when you have the thought of, this is not something I'm going to say thank you for, you could look for that thought and say, Thank you for that. I'm not going to say thank you for that, but I will say thank you for saying that I'm not going to say thank you. Because I can obviously see that the level of delusion is getting strong enough now, so I better start saying thank you.

[34:14]

Now, if the delusion gets more intense and you don't say thank you, then what usually happens is it gets stronger until finally it gets so strong that you might say thank you. But I wouldn't recommend intentionally elevating it, though, just to force yourself into saying thank you. Do you understand? Probably you don't. Because that's kind of weird, what I just said, in case you didn't notice. In other words, when you finally get to, like, bottom of the line hell, usually then most people say, oh, I get it. I get it, okay, okay, okay. Yes, yes, okay, amen, amen, hallelujah. I get the picture. This way is not working. You know, I've been sort of like waiting. I'm not going to say thank you until it gets better than this. I'm not going to say thank you. No, no, no. I know it's getting worse. The more I say no thank you, I know it's getting worse, but I'm not going to change. But finally, when it gets bad enough, you say, okay, I'll change.

[35:16]

I'll change, and I'll say thank you now that I'm in hell. And you know, when you're in hell... Did you know what the karmic quality of being in hell is? It's undefiled. Because you're just like, you know, nailed to the, nailed to the, you know, nailed to the frying pan or whatever. You're just like that, just like sizzle, sizzle, sizzle. You know? And then you say, oh, okay. But until then, We may be kind of like, you know, I don't know about that. So basically, you just have to not grab it and not turn away. You have to pay attention because when you say thank you, by the way, when you say thank you, you don't just kind of like say, thought goes by, thought goes by, you know, zip.

[36:24]

Whatever that was, thank you. No. You have to say thank you, you have to say thank you like, you know, like, okay, what was it that you said thank you for? Well, I don't know. Well, that doesn't count. You've got to say thank you for that. I'm willing to say thank you in theory, but not in actuality for this thing. I'm willing to be friends with people in general, but not specifically. I'm willing to accept, basically, what's happening, but not what's actually happening. No. And in order to say thank you, you have to actually feel it. You have to say thank you for this pain, for this confusion, for this awkwardness, for this hysteria, for this anxiety, for this... So you have to be attentive. You have to be attentive. And also, if you're going to say thank you, you cannot jiggle what it is that you're paying attention to at all because that's not very grateful. You have to be right there and let it be just like it is and not mess with it at all and let it be what it is.

[37:30]

And then say, thank you. Or you don't have to say it, actually. Oh, God, this is so great. I am so grateful. Oh, wow. That kind of thing. That's called non-thinking. And that's what you use to enter into Buddha's mind. Anything else is a little bit or a lot delusion. Do you understand now? I don't know. I don't know either. You probably don't if you don't know. If you do know, you'd probably just say, oh, thanks. Switch right now to thanks, and you'd understand. No? Not yet. John? you have this confidence that everything is given.

[38:35]

In other words, it's a sort of gift. But it seems like unless you have this sort of confidence that everything is given, in other words, there's some kind of gift, no matter how terrible it is, that it's very problematic to say a thing. Yeah, right. So I had to cut through the problem. You have to, I think, act like thank you before you understand that everything's a gift, before you actually can see or understand that everything's given to you. And you can't actually take anything. Before you actually understand that, you have to act like that. That's called non-thinking. So even though stuff's buzzing by, you know, stuff's buzzing by like, hey, John, see what's happening now? This is called the worst thing that you could imagine. And this is called, I don't believe that this is given. That's the thought. You have to be unprejudiced about that.

[39:36]

And you can say, well, if I already understood, it would be easier to be unprejudiced. But you have to be unprejudiced and not manipulate before you understand. So that's called, I guess, trusting the teaching of non-manipulation prior to understanding that that's the way a Buddha... Even if you understand, I guess... I guess you kind of have to understand that Buddha would not be manipulating with what's happening before you give it a try. But before you have Buddha's wisdom... in a sense, before you have to act like a Buddha. And Buddhas do not kind of like, when something comes to a Buddha, they do not say, Buddhas do not say, you know, get that out of my face. No matter what it is, Buddha wants what's happening and Buddha has a deep desire to, you know, to make this being, to make this situation realize Buddha's wisdom, no matter what.

[40:46]

So you need to act like that before you have that feeling, which means you really act like you would if you were grateful. And if you're grateful, how would you act? You would not try to get something other than what's happening. If somebody gave you a dollar, you wouldn't say, well, how about $1.50? You would just say, dollar. This is a dollar. That's about it. you wouldn't say, oh, it's too much either. Now, I know it actually is kind of, what do you call it, very sweet to say, well, it's too much. I don't really deserve it. You know, you're too generous. But this is not, you know, you don't have to be nice. When it comes to being a Buddha, you don't have to be nice. You can actually just, if somebody gives you a dollar, you can just say, you gave me a dollar. That's good. If you practice like this more and more... you will eventually realize confidence that you don't have to steal anything.

[41:52]

In the meantime, you try to practice not stealing in terms of every experience. And when you finally do that completely, the door will open and then you'll see that it was impossible to steal. But I'm not... Although this is simple, it's not necessarily easy. What I'm saying is simple in a way, I think, but not necessarily easy because you have to drop something. What do you have to drop? I already said it, right? Do you remember what I said you have to drop? Remember? I know it's been a long time. Yes? Yeah, you have to drop trying to get something. You have to drop... gain, the gain agenda. And that means you have to drop basically almost all your agendas, because most people are primarily almost always into gaining something or avoiding losing something.

[43:01]

That's most of what people are doing all day long. Some people notice it, some people don't. But even though you don't notice it, it still doesn't count just because you don't notice it. I mean, just because you don't notice you're trying to get something doesn't mean you're not trying to get it. The people who notice it are pretty unhappy about what they notice for a while, for a few years. You'd be kind of unhappy when you start noticing this because it's kind of embarrassing to be such a greedy person. So then you think, well, maybe I'll just go back to the way I used to be when I didn't notice it. I was happier then. But I always encourage people that are starting to notice this because the Buddhas, all the Buddhas go through that phase of noticing how greedy they are and feeling kind of uncomfortable about what they're noticing. It's not actually that pleasant to see, to catch ourselves at greed. It's not very pleasant.

[44:02]

But it's liberating. And you could even have some joy that you're noticing what you need to notice in order to be a Buddha. In order to be a Buddha, you have to notice your greed. You have to notice your gaining thing. When you notice it and [...] notice it, you're getting more and more intimate with the time and the place and the way of being where you'll drop it. And there you'll be. Not trying to get anything. for a moment anyway, and the door will open to Buddha's mind. It's a price of admission. Yes. Well, you say me, I say you. I'm not sure whether I really understood you in one point. You said that non-thinking as well as feeling grateful would be the gate into mindfulness.

[45:16]

So I am wondering whether feeling grateful and non-thinking Yeah, basically. Pardon? They're the same. Basically the same, yeah. Well, not necessarily feeling grateful, but if you felt... You could also not really feel grateful, but act like you're grateful. That would be okay too. In other words, you don't have to feel grateful to be practicing non-thinking, I don't think. But you'd act like you're grateful if you're practicing non-thinking. So if somebody gives you a thought or a dollar, you act like you're grateful. In other words, you don't ask for more or less. In fact, that's the way you would act if you were grateful.

[46:19]

You might not actually feel grateful, but you would be. But maybe I'll take that back. It looks like it's too hard for you, but you will feel grateful. It's the same. Yes. Yes. Did you say welcoming? Welcoming? Let's say welcoming. Welcoming maybe is a little bit too much. A little bit too much, I would say. Excuse me. Well, when I say welcoming, I mean what I understood, what I thought you meant by welcoming was something comes and you say welcome, rather than when it comes, you've already welcomed it.

[47:37]

In other sense, anything that happens actually has been welcomed. Okay? If that's what you mean by welcomed, then I say okay. But if you mean like, come on, come on, please come in, that's too much. Okay, that's fine. That's fine. Which is also similar to... The word welcome is nice because in that sense of welcome, you realize that everything that ever happens comes well. Nothing in your life doesn't come well. If it doesn't come well, you don't have it. Whatever comes, comes well. And seeing that it comes well, you're grateful. And seeing that it comes well and being grateful, then you get to see something else.

[48:43]

You get to see how it actually comes well. And that's wisdom. Okay. You all right? You all set? All right. Thank you. And thank you for that yawn. Yes? Yes? He said taking the precepts. It's okay that he said taking the precepts.

[49:45]

It's okay. Receiving the precepts is a condition which seems to be supportive of saying thank you. You know, you receive the precept of not stealing, and you try to practice this precept of not stealing, and that helps you switch from taking things to saying thank you for things. Rather than trying to get more, you say thank you for what you've got. So that precept of not stealing helps you. You know, it is kind of a condition. Receiving that precept has been a condition for many bodhisattvas to realize thank you. And not killing also is a precept, which is the opposite of killing. And killing is a big, heavy duty, no thank you. No thank you. No thank you, bug. No thank you, enemy. No thank you, husband. You know, whatever. In other words. Yeah. Simplifying the environment also helps develop thank you because when you simplify the environment, one of the things you notice is how you don't say thank you.

[50:59]

It's like it's time, you know, time for a lecture, no thank you. Time for zazen, no thank you. Time for doksan, no thank you. Time for work, no thank you. Very simple. Whereas if you're not in a schedule like this, then you think, well, let's see, what should I do now? and you find a way to not notice that you're not saying thank you. And you arrange things so that everything seems fine, and then you can say thank you because you got all this play. But a practice prayer is nice because it puts you up against this mind which doesn't say thank you. And that's part of what helps you realize that that's the problem. And then you notice that when you go through a day of saying thank you to everything, you notice you're happy. And you notice when you don't say thank you for everything, you notice you're miserable. But because the schedule's set, it's kind of easier to see that trying to work, trying to manipulate it makes you miserable, and saying thank you makes you happy. Whereas if you don't have a schedule like that, you think, well, you know, you don't notice that you're trying to manipulate.

[52:05]

So since you don't notice you're trying to manipulate, you don't notice that you're miserable. Because your manipulation is, you know, is obscured to you. Does that make sense? Do you see that? It's like people who, you know, just live and have an apartment with their own refrigerator. They just go eat whenever they want to. So they don't notice that they're manipulating their food intake. Because, you know, to say, I'm just going to eat something now. I mean, I'm not manipulating my food intake, right? Right? I'm just eating. In other words, I'm a Zen master. Because that's what they do. Like when they're hungry, they eat. And when they're not hungry anymore, they stop eating. That's all there is to it. So if you have your own refrigerator, you're basically like a Zen master. Because you eat when you're hungry and you stop when you're done, right? Which is like never. Forget about eating between meals.

[53:08]

It's one non-stop meal your whole life. Because, you know, you're deciding when to eat, so it's like always you're deciding to eat. Do you understand? Whereas if you're in a monastic schedule, there's like actual meals are set at a certain time, so you can eat between meals. So if you eat between meals, you notice that you're manipulating your food intake. and you notice that you have these problems. So you start to notice that you're manipulating, and then you notice how miserable that is, and you say, oh, I get it. And then one day you go through and don't do it, and you say, oh, I'm happy. Oh, I get it. So yeah, these are conditions which are conducive to showing us basically how it doesn't work. but they don't really do anything other than show you what doesn't work. What does work is just to work with this.

[54:10]

Yes? Pardon? How could they not manipulate? How could they not manipulate? How could they not manipulate? I guess they'd not manipulate by, you know, at time like, let's say right now, here you are, Katie Whitehead, and you've got a refrigerator. You actually do have a refrigerator, don't you? It's a small one. Now, yeah, what I said does not apply to small refrigerators. Only like these big ones. So here's Katie. She's got a refrigerator, right? She is an example of this, all right? So how could you possibly not manipulate? Well, you not manipulate by right now. Right now you feel grateful for your present state.

[55:17]

That's how you don't manipulate. You actually feel your state and you say thank you right now. Then, in a few minutes, when you get up and walk out of here, you say thank you every step of the way out of there, and you say thank you up to your house, and when you get to your house where the refrigerator is, you say thank you to watch how you feel. Now, will she ever eat? From this state of gratitude, from this state of non-thinking, will she ever eat? How could she possibly eat without manipulating? What? You get hungry. So there she is, I'm hungry. And what does she say to those hunger pangs? She says, thank you. That's all. She doesn't say, I wish I wasn't hungry, or what can I do to make this go away? She says, thank you.

[56:21]

And then maybe she walks over to the refrigerator, thank you, thank you, thank you, opens the door, takes out a non-dairy treat, you know, and starts eating it. Now, does she close the door before she starts to eat it? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I can't say what she'll do. But the point is that she's not eating out of ingratitude. And she is realizing the Buddha way every step of the way. And you're not eating out of ingratitude. And you're not eating to manipulate. You're eating because you're hungry. And you're grateful for the hunger. And you're grateful for the opportunity to eat.

[57:24]

And you do this with everything in your life, just like that. the advantage of not having a refrigerator is that it's a little easier for you to realize when you do manipulate because you know in the middle of night you have to go all the way down to the kitchen to do that eating thing and if you do that and it's not because you're grateful you'll be very likely to notice it but it's possible for those of you who do not have what do you call it, refrigerators in your rooms, and is there some rule that you're not supposed to go to the walk-in in the middle of the night and eat? Is there any rule like that during practice period? No. Let's say there was. At Tassajara, you're not supposed to do that. Let's say there was a rule like that, and then you find yourself walking to the kitchen to have a snack. If you're doing that in an ungrateful mind,

[58:32]

You know, the trouble you go through, knowing that you're violating a policy to do that, that might help you realize if you weren't being grateful. But you could be going and totally grateful every step of the way. And if you were going that way and someone asked you, like the Tenzo or some other kitchen official asked you, where are you going, you would not have to lie about it. You could say, I'm going to get a snack because I am hungry. Now, you might say, well, maybe I should talk to a kitchen person beforehand because they might be assuming that I'm not going to go. And in some sense, I'd be lying. But it's the middle of night, so maybe they don't want me to wake them up. So you might leave a note. or something like that but the point is you wouldn't you'd be perfectly happy to be honest about this because you'd know I'm not going to eat because I'm ungrateful I'm going to eat as a celebration of my gratitude for having a life I'm not trying to improve my life or be better by doing this but if you weren't doing it for that if you weren't doing it gratefully and you were doing it because you think

[59:51]

that what you think has one way or another has something to do with enlightenment, if you thought that, then having this schedule and having these rules would tend to be somewhat conducive to catching yourself at your ingratitude. That's the advantage of having structures and policies. But you can still go against these policies and be completely Buddha. But you wouldn't break the precepts by doing that kind of thing because the precepts are only broken when you're manipulating. That's what I would say. They're only broken when you're not grateful for what's happening. So just take a little sample right now.

[61:07]

Are you grateful for the talk to continue? And are you grateful if the talk stops? Is it the same? Is it the same as it goes on second by second? Are you grateful for it? Grateful for the situation you're in? You're alive. You're in this room. Are you grateful moment by moment? And when it stops, are you grateful that it stops and that you're moving out of the room? When does the manipulation, when does the maneuvering, when does the gaining start or has already started? See if you can find a pause, a break in the gaining idea. See if you can find a place where it drops for just a moment. And at that place, the door opens and you see that the current event, the current hunger, the current pain, the current thought itself is realization.

[62:14]

The current pain, the current thought, the current attitude, the current emotion is being given to you. It is your self receiving its function. And this is the vision that the Buddha enters the way by. And this is what we call zazen. Both the practice of non-thinking by which you enter and the realm of inconceivable enlightenment once you enter. If this wasn't clear to you, I welcome you to bring up questions about it as time goes on. Because Dogen wrote fascicle after fascicle because it's hard to understand this.

[63:33]

Tonight it seems simple, but then your life, everything starts happening again and life gets complicated and you forget the simple, how simple it is. It's simple to be grateful to someone who is, you know, I mean it's the idea of being grateful to someone who is being cruel to you, the idea of being grateful to them is a simple idea, but it's hard to practice when someone's being cruel to you. When someone doesn't appreciate you, it's a simple idea that you would appreciate them, but it's hard to practice

[64:38]

people scowl at you and look at you like they don't trust you. It's a simple idea that you would say that you feel grateful for what's happening and not try to fix it or gain anything or improve the situation. It's a simple idea, but it's hard not to try to improve it. But that not improving is what I'm talking about as non-thinking. It's being upright.

[65:11]

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