over and over that the source of Zen practice is the heart of great compassion. Can you hear me, Tia? I've heard that the source of something is the heart of great compassion. Can you hear that? Is that about right? Other people in the way in the back can hear okay? So, these beings who want to live a life of wisdom and compassion make great vows and are thinking about how they can live in a beneficial way, a way which helps and is best for all beings.

[01:40]

Always thinking first of what's helpful to other people and other forms of life. We call beings who make this vow, enlightening beings. They're always concerned with what is right action in this world. with what's the right response to what's being presented to us at this moment. When I was a boy, about 12 years old, I realized that there was a window of opportunity there for me.

[03:16]

I was a big boy. I'm not very big now, but I was big then. Because I was about the same size then as I am now. I was precocious. So I had kind of a big boy's body and I had a lot of energy and a lot of good ideas. I realized I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to do for a certain number of years until people would punish me for it. Because I noticed that other people, other bad boys, about the worst they did to you was take you to jail for a few hours.

[04:24]

So I decided to do what would be most exciting and, I don't know what, most like certain movies that I'd seen, like On the Waterfront, Blackboard Jungle, The Wild Ones. and of course, rebel without a cause. And I got myself the uniform, the James Dean uniform, a nice brown leather jacket and boots and jeans and long hair swept back in various sweeping gestures. I wore my pants very low and put my hands in my pockets, which meant my shoulders were weighed down because my pants are so low.

[05:41]

Rolled my sleeves up, almost exposing my large young man's arms, put cigarettes in the wrap, in the part that was rolled up, even though I didn't smoke. And I felt pretty good. And then I did various bad things. Having the uniform on. And... I lived in an upper middle class neighborhood, so I didn't have to do such bad things to become very famous in my neighborhood. If I lived in some other parts of the city, what I did wouldn't even have been noticed. But in my neighborhood, to do certain wild things was considered to be newsworthy. So I became... I got tremendous...

[06:52]

social reinforcement for my evil ways, my naughty ways, there was that window of opportunity which I jumped through. And after I jumped through it, a certain man who was a generation older than me, he was about 35, he was a huge, wonderful man. And he told me about how he also had jumped through that window of opportunity when he was a kid and about what he did, and so I felt like he was a peer. And then he said to me after establishing his peerage with me, not that he was superior to me, although he was much bigger, he wasn't looking down at me.

[08:01]

He just said at one point, you know, it's easy to be bad. And I knew it was true. It was. Especially during that time when you didn't get punished for it. I said, what's hard, you know, is to be good. And from somewhere in my body and mind, someplace deep down in who I am and who we all are, I knew that was true. And I decided at the time, okay, well, then I'll be good. And when I was a little kid, I also wanted to be good, but I took a break because you got much more attention for being bad when you were a young teenager. So then from then on I tried, and I think, you know, again and again I've dedicated myself to the path of goodness and benefit for all beings.

[09:09]

And I think as far as I know, most people I know around here are also doing that, and I think everybody's doing their best. And I would say, doing your best, doing my best, under the circumstances of our understanding. So even though we intend and sincerely dedicate ourselves to always think of what's helpful to other people, to all other people, still The way we understand things sometimes undermines that intention. Still, I think that is our intention, and we're really doing well given our level of understanding, which is sometimes, what do I say, in need of help.

[10:14]

from an early age we may start to realize that we are suffering and other beings are suffering and we really want to help people be free from suffering and we really feel that that's really what we want to do and that's really how we want to be. And we really feel that very clearly. And then somehow our mind our mind, our attitude becomes fixed and we decide what to do based on that fixed attitude and things backfire for us. So again, I think we're doing the best we can considering our sentiments, that we have sentiments, most of us, and we have dispositions and obsessions.

[11:35]

Actually, sentiments, dispositions and obsessions are really synonyms. They mean that we have, you know, biased, set ways of seeing things. We have fixed views. And we live, basically we have to admit, I have to admit, that I live in the world of my mind. That I live in my mind. I live in my thoughts. I live in my views. I live in my sentiments. This is a world I live in. I live in that world. And in that world there is a blue sky or a gray sky, there's sun and moon, there's people and fishes, there's right and wrong, good and bad. And there is some rigidity in my mind about what is good and what is bad. There are some set patterns

[12:40]

in mind. Just like there's a set pattern of seeing the sky above and the earth below unless I stand in my head. And there's a set pattern of seeing myself separate from other humans and living beings. I live in that world. I should admit that. I do admit that. But the world I live in is not really what's happening. It's just my view. The world all of us live in is not really what's happening. It's just the world that's born of our mind. It's just the world that's made kind of, what do you call it, it's the real world made pint-size so we can get a hold of it, so we can use it.

[13:50]

The world we live in is a usable world, a world that we can manipulate somewhat successfully, somewhat unsuccessfully, but basically it's a world where there's some possibility of promoting the ups and preventing the downs. In that world we cannot fully realize our intention to benefit all beings unless we remember and understand that that world is just a very limited picture So Dogen Zenji says that when the truth or the teaching of awakening does not fully fill us, our body and mind, then we think that we understand and that our understanding is sufficient.

[15:04]

But when the truth fills our body and mind, we realize something's missing. It's like going out in the ocean, away from the land far enough so you can't see it anymore, and where there's no islands, and the ocean looks like a circle of water. But the ocean is not a circle of water, as you know. But it always looks like that to us. So everything we see is actually like an ocean, and we always see it as a circle of water. That's because of the way our mind works. But if we think what we see is what is, then we will be obstructed in appropriate responding.

[16:18]

If a farmer goes out into the fields here, a farmer may be concerned with how the crops will grow and how much money they will bring in. If an artist goes out in the field, the artist is not concerned with how much money the crops will bring, but more maybe perhaps with what colors are being given by the field and how paint can be used to express her life. If some people walking down the street see a policeman, it doesn't mean anything to them. For other people it's very important. And as you may have heard again and again, if in the water, when a fish is in the water, the fish sees the water very differently than we do.

[18:08]

The fish sees its world. And it doesn't see its world, if it's in a river, it doesn't see its world rushing by. It sees its world as constant. This is the home of the fish. It's their address. They have neighborhoods and front and back yards. They know their way around. They can see a world there that we can't see. And they can't talk, but if they told us how our world looked, we wouldn't understand their point of view. When Buddhas look at the world we live in, where there's sky and mountains, they say that the mountains are walking.

[19:17]

But we usually don't see it that way. In the world we live in, there's mountains and sky and people and there's right and wrong. And there's things existing and not existing. And it's possible to approve of what happens and disapprove of it. So we do. We say, this is happening and that's not happening. Because our minds are that way, we see the world in terms of things that are so and things that are not so. When it comes to acting, we see right and wrong. If beings in other worlds look at us, they won't see it the same.

[20:28]

And since we can see the world in terms of right and wrong, we feel, although we're in pain seeing the world that way, we feel comfortable because we can use the world, we can use what's happening to... assign things to these categories and we feel some power and some vitality in using our minds that way. So we do. And we think that when we assign something to good and bad that it's more than just that we assigned it. We think it's actually so. Because there was reasons that we used to assign it to good and to assign it to bad. And because of those reasons we think, therefore, it really should be in those categories. So we really think it's so.

[21:37]

When we think something is bad, when we have the thought that that's bad, we don't just have the thought that that's bad, we also think that we're right. And if I say this to somebody, that not only do you think that's bad, but you think you're right that it's bad, they say, well, yeah, because it is. In other words, yeah, I do think I'm right. And when you think you're wrong, you do think you're wrong. And the reason why you're wrong is because you are. You think. Or you could say, and if you act that way for a while, for a week or a year or 20 years or 50 years, you may notice that thinking that way

[22:52]

directly, significantly, significantly interferes with finding out what is beneficial. Because if you meet a being and you can tell what's right, and you can tell what's right and what you think is right is in fact right, then that must be right, and then you have to then either do that, act that way, and then be in a line with what you see as right, or if you don't, you feel bad. So... And if you act on what you think is right and you also know it's right, you'll notice, I think you'll notice, that this causes damage.

[24:00]

Because if it's really right, what if somebody doesn't agree? You have no alternative. You can't do wrong just because they don't agree. So then some people decide to swing to the other extreme and say, okay, what I think is not true. It's really just my idea and I'll just forget it and deny it. And also if I don't hold to my view, I don't get in so much trouble. People don't fight me anymore. So they swing to the other extreme. And sometimes I use... I don't know what, they use drugs and alcohol and so on to help them swing over to that side.

[25:12]

So what most people do is they swing between self-righteousness and nihilism. Between thinking that this is right and this is wrong, and I can tell what's right and wrong, not that I'm so smart, but just because it is right and that's wrong. This is self-righteousness, that way of thinking, which, I don't know, that may be familiar to some of you. Where you think, oh, that's wrong, and you actually think, well, that's right, that that's wrong. I mean, it's obvious. Fish would agree. Dogs would agree. Gangsters would agree. Everyone in the universe would agree with me. Jesus would agree.

[26:16]

Buddha would agree. I know this. That's wrong. Now this over here is right, and everyone would agree with that. Now, of course, some people might not agree, but then those people are bad people. Every intelligent, clear-eyed person would agree with me at this moment. Now, if I'm not sure that they would agree, then I'm not sure of what's right, and then I'm not so self-righteous. Then I'm more wondering what is right, and maybe wanting to do what is right and what is good, but not knowing what it is. This is different. This is closer to the spirit of living to benefit beings, is to meeting a being and not knowing for sure what would be beneficial to them, and maybe asking them what they think.

[27:24]

Asking them how they are, trying to find out what they would like, where they want to go, what their problem is. In other words, listening to their suffering, listening to their aspirations. What is being requested here? What is being said here? What is being cried for here? And then, not deciding all by myself, but continuing to wonder with everyone what that is. And how do you wonder with everyone? How do you get enough people together to wonder with everyone? And then what comes up is a practice which

[28:31]

Could you turn that down a little bit? It's kind of ringing. Then what comes up is a practice which kind of is a mirror image or very close to our established habit, and that is the practice of instead of spending our time saying this is so and that's not so, or in other words, spending our time approving and disapproving of things, we look for... We look for a mind which is not approving and disapproving. And where is the mind which doesn't approve or disapprove of our views, of our sentiments? Where is that mind? Where is that attitude? This is the attitude of our spirit which wants to benefit.

[29:36]

It's the attitude of the spirit which really wants to benefit. And it's an attitude which we say has no abode. It has no address. It's not here and it's not there. It's the attitude that goes simply with the way things are. And the way things are is not useful. No one can use the way things are. The way things are is inconceivable.

[30:38]

You can use pain. I can use pain. You can use pleasure. But no one can use the fact that pain is pain. that's naturally real, that pain is pain, but it's inconceivable and useless, but true. The world where right action and benefit come forth is the world where things are very simple, useless, peaceful, and inconceivable. Now is that world some other place?

[31:50]

If it was, it would be conceivable. Is it some other time? If it was, it would be conceivable. If it's here, it's conceivable. If it's now, it's conceivable. It's not now. It's not later. It's not before. It's not here. It's not some other place. If it were any of those things, you could use it. We could cash in. We could sell the world from which right action comes. We could get people to to go to that place and that time, and then everyone would act right. But the world from which right action comes has no location, has no time, has no space, has no qualities, including that it's someplace other than time, space, and qualities. The world from which right action comes is the world of the way things are,

[32:53]

It's the world of each of us being like we are right now. It's the world of, if you ask me, what is this that I'm holding up in the air? I say, it's a hand. The fact that this hand is a hand is naturally real and yet it's inconceivable. It's simple. It's quiet. It's useless. And it's the basis of right action. People, however, do not necessarily like to hear this because people like to have something they can use.

[34:17]

The funny thing is about this kind of place is you can use everything as a point of departure, but then you have to give it up. You have to give it up being okay or not okay. I was paging through a recent Vogue magazine, day before yesterday, and one of the statements about style this time of year is that it's becoming more seductive, and what do you call it, seductive and, well anyway, I don't know anyway what the other word is, but high heels are in now. these real high heels, stiletto, stiletto high heels, okay? And one of the picture portraits is of this tall woman, tall blonde with short hair and black on, and she's got really high heels, and she's sitting in a wheelchair.

[35:25]

And then another picture of her, she's using crutches. And another picture, and she has bodyguards. You know, guys with those sunglasses and those earphones, headsets on, and suits. Serious guys who carry her around. And I looked at that and I thought, well, that's kind of like... Well, first of all, it's kind of, I don't know what the word is, but anyway... It's that way, right? But then also it's like us, ordinary people, in that we walk around on high heels all the time. We're walking around on stiletto heels. And because we walk around on stiletto heels, we need bodyguards and crutches. Do you know what our stiletto heels are?

[36:39]

What? Huh? Yeah, our beliefs. We do the extravagant thing. We lift ourselves up off the ground and say, you know, what's happening is true. We do that. We get into this rather lofty metaphysical activity of saying, you know, here I am breathing. I'm a man or I'm a woman. I'm a fish, you know, I'm in pain, and then we say, that's so. We lift ourselves up above where we are, high into the air, you know, loft ourselves up there, and so, and it's very alluring, you know, very alluring. If you can do it, why not try? We get up there, but then when we get up there, we need a lot of, we need crutches, because we're very unstable, right? We need to rely on lots of supports to keep up this very unstable, off-the-ground way.

[37:49]

If we would take away the stiletto heels and come back to the earth, put our feet on the ground, we don't need crutches and bodyguards anymore. It's not so alluring. or seductive maybe, but it's much better for your feet and your back. And even if you fall down, if you fall down from your feet being on the ground, somehow it's easier to fall down. And also you don't even break those expensive Italian shoes. But when you come down to the ground again and you're just standing there, somehow we get frightened of the simplicity.

[38:59]

So what do we do? Get ourselves back up on those heels where we can think of some other time or some other place. that we don't have to worry about, you know, whether what will happen to us if we don't hold on to approval and disapproval. When we hold on to approval and disapproval, we cannot, we cannot we cannot respond appropriately to what's presented to us. When we hold on to, when we have a view of who we're looking at, and we approve of that view and say, this is so, we cannot respond appropriately to this person.

[40:05]

But we feel comfortable because we got a hold of who they are. We can't respond appropriately. We have a problem in our relationship, but at least we got a hold of him. So we feel comfortable in the misery, in the miserliness of our relationship and the familiarity of this miserliness. If we let go of our idea of who the person is, we may have some idea of who they are floating around quite nearby. But there's another mind which does not know who this person is or does not say that what we think of them is true. That mind is infinitely, boundlessly flexible. And even though we think this person is so-and-so and such-and-such, there's another mind which simply does not

[41:13]

think that's true or false. That mind is the mind from which beneficial action spontaneously, without bodyguards or crutches, comes forth. It has no assistance other than everything that's happening at that moment. And everything that's happening at this moment is inconceivable and useless and simple and quiet. Everything that's happening is not making any noise. It's not jumping up or sitting down. It's not moving to the right or the left. Everything that's happening cannot be other than it is. It's completely stable and quiet. And it's completely simple. It's just like this. However, that's useless. because there's nobody outside of it that can use it. No one can measure it as big or small.

[42:19]

It's immeasurable. Nobody can be outside it to measure it. But from that world of what's happening, goodness is constantly emerging. If we let go of the approval and disapproval mode and enter the world free of our approval and disapproval, we naturally accord with and harmonize with what is. At that time, we have no address. We have no abode. There's no over here and over there anymore. we have no fixed idea of good and bad. Although good and bad are flying by with the blue jays, are raining down with the water, are gushing out like the lava.

[43:33]

There's a mind which just lets it be like that. And that mind has no abode It's right here, but I can't point to it. It's not inside or outside of me or you. It is simply the way we are right now. This mind has no sentiments, no dispositions, no habits, no obsessions. And it's not the slightest bit different from dispositions, sentiments, habits and obsessions. It is simply that your sentiments are your sentiments, your habits are your habits, your gleanings and dispositions and prejudices are your gleanings, dispositions and prejudices.

[44:40]

That's all it is. And everything, no matter what it is, no matter how good you think it is or how bad you think it is, everything is an equal window of opportunity. The question is whether you make it into a small thing that fits into your circle of water that you can grasp and approve and disapprove of, or whether you just find the mind which lets go of using what's happening and simply stands and sits in awe and harmonizes with totality and witnesses the emergence of right action. The mind which lives in a little circle of water recoils and shrinks back from the mind of the whole ocean.

[46:05]

This is normal. And right in that shrinking back, or that rebellion, or that holding to what was useful, right in that also, is this simple, quiet, inconceivable and useless mind. It's everywhere. It penetrates everything, but nothing enters it. The fact of each of us being the way we are The fact that our self is our self is exactly this mind. This mind totally illuminates us every moment. But in order to enter that mind and realize that mind, we have to leave everything behind.

[47:10]

This room is a room for entering that mind. Therefore, you come in here and I talk about it. There is an invisible sign over the doorways, which, of course, your eyes could not see. And the sign says, check is the self you see. is the mind of Buddha. The fact that it's just what it appears to be and nothing more or less than that appearance is the useless, inconceivable, simple, straightforward, childlike, natural mind from which the total working of all goodness emerges.

[48:21]

I'm circling around this mind. I can't grasp it. I can't get a hold of it. And I really can't turn away from it. I've been circling around this mind for a long time and I shall continue to do so. I guess all of you will be walking around this mind too. I don't know. I don't know who I am or who you are. I have ideas of who you are and ideas of who I am, but I hesitate

[49:42]

And then I vow not to approve or disapprove of my ideas of who you are and who I am. I vow to forsake approving and disapproving of the reign and approving and disapproving, which means approving and disapproving of what I think the rain is. I have a limited idea of what the rain is. I don't approve of that idea, and I don't disapprove of that idea. And if I say I don't do that, I mean I vow not to do that.

[50:47]

I hesitate to do that even though I have a tendency to do that. I vow not to do that. I vow to find the mind which doesn't approve or disapprove of its idea of the ring. And when I make that vow sincerely, everything drops away and I'm in a vast space and I can't stay there any amount of time, but another mind comes back in and says, help, let's get something we can use. And then my Va may come back and say, it's okay, you'll be all right. Allow us to enter this huge space this simple space, you'll be okay.

[51:49]

You won't be destroyed. You'll be able to continue to think in terms of approval and disapproval. But give this other mind a chance. And in the moment that you give that mind a chance, you might be able to see that right action is born there. One time I was talking to a woman, and I had a thought about what she was. And then I noticed that I was believing my thought of what she was.

[52:52]

And then I noticed what would follow from belief in my thought of what she was. So I kind of stood up and started jumping up and down and saying, I don't believe what I'm thinking of you. I don't believe what I'm thinking of you. What I think of you is not true. It's not true. It's not true. I don't believe it. I can't believe it. It's not true. I kept doing that. She started to change when I did that. Which helped me, actually. Because then I thought something different about her, which I also thought was true. But it was a different thing, which led to different actions which I didn't have to jump up and down about anymore.

[53:56]

In fact, I never did act on my belief. in what I thought she was. I acted upon my belief of the harm that would occur if I acted upon my belief in what I thought she was. So I stood up and jumped up and down to tell myself not to act the way I would act if what I saw was true I still thought somewhat I was still tempted to think that what I thought of her was true but I could see that it was so evil for me to believe in this story I had about her that I had to stop myself

[55:04]

I had to ridicule myself and tease myself to make sure that I didn't act from my belief in this image I had of her. Now years later, of course, I can see that there was something, something about her that led me to think of that. But still, she's much, much, much, much more complex and greater than that little picture I had of her that day. But I had that picture, I fixed on that picture, I approved of that picture, and I almost became a slave of my approval of my picture of her. But I stood up and rebelled against my own approval. And I protected her and me and all of you by admitting that I was making a mistake of believing my picture of her.

[56:14]

And gradually, as I say, she changed and I made a different picture of her, which I probably also believed. But the consequences of that belief were not so terrible. Each of us has the ability to not be fooled by our mind. This is called Buddha nature. I think you got the idea, but I just want to say one more time that when you see certain people, because of the way you've thought of them in the past, because of the way you've seen them in the past, because of the way you've imagined them in the past, because of that, you're going to see them and imagine them

[57:54]

in a related way. There's going to be consequences of the way you saw them in the past. You're going to still think they're you know good or bad because you thought so before. But you don't have to approve of what you're thinking. And you don't have to swing to the other extreme and say, what I'm thinking is not true. You can just see that you think this is good or this is bad and not add or subtract anything to that.

[59:03]

It is possible. There is such a simple, quiet mind which is present with all the noise and confusion that our mind is also generating. In order to fulfill the vows of great compassion, we must find that mind. We must enter that mind which has no abode. Excuse me for being me. intention.

[60:07]

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