This morning I want to begin by saying again that I heard that our great good friend, our original teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha said that the whole of the holy life is good friendship. I'm deeply touched to see how friendly and what good friends you have been to each other so far in this. May you continue during this quiet time to be such beneficial friends to each other and to receive the friendship of your friends so that we practice the Buddha way.

[01:23]

Again, I heard that Our great original beneficent teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha, said that in the context of good friendship, we can pursue and cultivate the eightfold path. We can be successful in the path of the middle way. And I just heard, in what we chanted, I just heard something said here. What was it? Oh yeah. I heard, because they extend their compassion to us,

[02:33]

So Dogen said, revering Buddhas and ancestors, we are one Buddha and one ancestor. Revering Buddhas and ancestors, we, the Buddhas and ancestors, and us are one Buddha and one ancestor. in revering the bodhisattvas, in revering the Buddhas and ancestors, we are all in the difference. And we are one Buddha and one ancestor in this process of honoring the Buddhas and ancestors. We have been doing that. We have been honoring the Buddhas and ancestors Ancestor Dogen says, when we are practicing this way, being friendly to our friends, there is one Buddha and one ancestor.

[03:50]

Awakening bodhi mind, we are one bodhi mind. And then it says, because they extend their compassion because they extend their friendship, their good friendship, to us freely. It seems like the Buddha in India and his disciples down through the centuries have actually extended their friendship freely to us without limit. because they extend their compassion and friendship freely to us without limit, we are able to attain Buddhahood and let go of the attainment. We are able to transcend enlightenment and non-enlightenment.

[05:04]

It sounds like for Dogen Zenji and it sounds like for Shakyamuni Buddha, the attainment of the way. And the letting go of the attainment depends entirely on the strength of friendship, which is the same as depends entirely on the strength of zazen. It sounds like zazen and friendship have the same function, the same amazing function. to allow yourself to hold on to Buddhahood and let go of it, to attain it and not even hold on to Buddhahood. I stumble upon this and offer it to you, that it looks like the good friendship and the bad friendship are the same thing. In the context of good friendship, we can practice the Buddha way in the context of zazen.

[06:12]

Now, for some time in this tradition, we've been using the word zazen. During this retreat, a synonym for zazen is good friendship. Zazen is not something I do by myself. It's the way we practice in a friendly way together is zazen. Zazen is the way we practice together. Zazen is equally the same practice and the same enlightenment of all of us. This is good friendship, this zazen. We are blessed to be able to sit in this room, stand in this room, walk in this room, eat in this room, bow in this room, chant in this room, serve each other in this room, receive service in this room.

[07:16]

We have the opportunity to practice good friendship. we have about six more days to be together practicing good friendship. How fortunate we are. In this context of friendship, our great original friend Shakyamuni Buddha said, Friends, one thing when developed and cultivated is of great fruit and benefit. What is that one thing?

[08:25]

mindfulness of breathing. I heard that our original teacher said that. But again, now today I say, the Buddha could also say, one thing developed and cultivated is of great fruit and great benefit. Good friendship. Again, I'm suggesting that to be in this situation and cultivate and develop good friendship, is the same as to be in the sesshin and cultivate and develop mindfulness of breathing.

[09:34]

I'm saying this and I can't help but think how wonderful what I just said. Sometimes I feel that we practice mindfulness of breathing and we don't enjoy possibility that that's an act of friendship that our breath is our friend and we are a friend to our breath and we take care of our breath we are mindful of our friend we are mindful of our friends and this friend we are mindful of and that this is the one thing this friendship with our body mindful of the breathing body throughout the day is spiritual friendship and brings a great fruit. Spiritual friendship, it occurs to me, is not just liking people, mindful of them.

[10:42]

It's not just liking your breath. You don't even have to like your breath. Buddha didn't say, as far as I know, One thing brings great fruit and benefit, liking your breath. He said, mindful of the breath. There may be likes and dislikes. Some people don't like their breath sometimes. They say, oh, this breath is so irregular and short. But sometimes they do like their breath. That's not what he said. He said, mindful of it. And I'm saying, friendship towards it, regardless of likes and dislikes. This is the one thing. Suzuki Roshi often said, this is the most important thing. And then after he said what it was, it was different things. There's a lot of most important things. The most important thing is enlightenment.

[11:45]

The most important thing is zazen. The most important thing is friendship. The most important thing is mindfulness of breathing. The most important thing is I don't know what. There are a lot of most important things and maybe they're all the same thing. For now, I see the possibility of looking at friendship as mindfulness of breathing and looking at mindfulness of breathing as an act of friendship. Later in India there was a teacher named Prajnatara, which could be translated in English as the jewel of perfect wisdom, the jewel of Prajna.

[12:48]

He is the teacher, we say, of Bodhidharma. And by the way, some people think that actually Prajnatara was a woman. The teacher of Bodhidharma was invited by an East Indian Raja for lunch. Lunch was the meal often offered to Buddhist monks and nuns. And the lunch could be a big lunch. so big that they wouldn't be able to finish it, but they could take monkey bags and pack up the extra food and bring it back to your friends. The Buddha often got more than he could eat and brought it back and shared it with the less successful gatherers.

[13:56]

After lunch the monks would often chant in the home of the of the donor, of the supporter. But Prajnachara didn't chant for the king. And the king said, Teacher, why do you call me teachers? And Prajnachara said, This poor wayfarer, when breathing in, does not dwell in the realms of body-mind does not dwell in the elements of psychophysical existence. I didn't say that quite right. This monk, when breathing in, does not dwell in the realms of body and mind. This monk, when breathing out, does not dwell, does not abide in the elements of psychophysicality.

[15:08]

I chant this scripture, this scripture, breathing out without dwelling and breathing out without dwelling. I chant this scripture, hundreds, thousands, millions of scrolls, So here we see devotion to friendship, devotion to mindfulness of breathing, and devotion to not dwelling in body or mind. Mindfulness of body and breathing, mindfulness of the breathing body, and mindfulness of not dwelling in it. Here is a great friendship of Prajnatara. Prajnatara's amazing successor, we tell the story, was called Bodhidharma.

[16:29]

And he traveled from India to China and transmitted this Buddha mind seal of good friendship, of non-dwelling to the people of China. And this Buddha mind seal, we say, we consider the possibility that this Buddha mind seal was then transmitted from China to Japan and Korea. and Southeast Asia and Tibet and Mongolia. And in Japan we have a wonderful ancestor named and he taught about the treasury of light. He taught about the

[17:31]

the light of perfect wisdom, and he said, trust everything to breathing in and breathing out, thus leaping into the treasury of light. Thus leap into the treasury of light and don't look back. Now I say, trust everything to good friendship and leap into perfect wisdom and don't look back. And then we tell the story that the Buddha Mind Seal was generously brought by Japan Airlines to San Francisco

[18:37]

by a Japanese monk named Shogaku Shinryu Daisho. He wanted to bring this wonderful good thing from the Buddhas and ancestors and give to America. San Francisco and was there for about eight years and then Well, actually, he was there for about eight years, and then Tazahara was started. In early January of 1970, in the temple on Page Street in San Francisco, which the Sangha had just recently moved into in November of... We moved into the building on 300 Page Street.

[19:46]

We hadn't yet even given it a name, but we were happily practicing there with our teacher and with each other. Practicing there were quite interesting. And in early January, background on this is that for the first few years I was at Zen Center, there was some process of meditation. And one story was, you start practicing sitting by being mindful of your breathing and counting your breaths.

[20:57]

And Suzuki Roshi usually recommended counting the exhales or counting on the exhales. But there's also the possibility of counting inhales and exhales. Usually people don't say just straight the inhale. That's less common. But we mostly taught at that time counting the breath, counting the exhale. And Suzuki Roshi did talk some about what it's like to count on the exhale. Because then, in other words, then if you're somewhat successful at counting your breath, then you could move on to following, which in Asian Buddhism, it was often where counting was taught, it was often thought that going from counting to following was going from relatively gross to more subtle.

[22:12]

that the mind, when it's counting, isn't as subtle as the mind when it's just following. So there was more advanced than counting. There was a sense like that among the interesting people that were practicing at Zen Center. And then, after being successful at following, then an even more subtle mind of just sitting So it was like counting, following, and just sitting. There was another rendition which wasn't so popular at Zen Center, but was more popular at, I think, some at the Los Angeles Zen Center and some other Zen Centers, which was counting, following, koan practice, and then sitting, just sitting. In other words, In order to really practice just sitting, you have to practice koans first. You have to have wisdom to practice just sitting.

[23:15]

So just sitting had high status. And among the students, there was some conversation of, what are you practicing? And some people say, oh, I'm just practicing counting. Can you hear that in the back? I'm just practicing counting. Anyway, they did not necessarily say it like that, but anyway. Oh, you're practicing counting, huh? And then some people say, well, I'm practicing following. And then somebody else says, well, I'm practicing just sitting. Things were rough back in those days. The friendship factor there sometimes was obscured by what your status of meditation on your breath was. Can you believe that? Anyway, it seemed like that was going on, that people were not exactly competing, but anyway, subtly comparing where they stood in the hierarchy of breath meditation.

[24:28]

I don't know if Suzuki Rishi found out about this, but I think maybe he did. So he said, in early January of 1970, he said, okay, now let's all practice counting our breath. In other words, let's all practice the beginning practice. In other words, he didn't say that. Yeah, he didn't say let's all practice the lowest breath. the beginning. He didn't say that. He said, let's all practice counting our breaths together. I didn't hear a big resistance to that. I said, okay. He didn't say, he didn't say this. Let's all advance practice and practice the beginning practice. He just said, let's follow our breathing. And as though he would do it too. And also I heard him say, people say, well, what's the difference between counting your breathing and just sitting?

[25:35]

And he said, just sitting is counting your breathing. Counting your breathing is just sitting. He said that too. But still, a lot of people were, it was the, up in the top of the pyramid was really crowded with people practicing just sitting. And he just wanted to bring everybody back down to the same level. I had that feeling. And I didn't hear him say anything more about that for a while. And I left with a number of other people. In the middle of January, we went to Tassajara to practice with a visiting teacher named Tatsugami Roshi. And we did that practice together. There's a lot of us down there. Suzuki Roshi stayed in San Francisco for that practice, but he didn't come down to Tassajara that I remember. But after the practice period was over, he came down to Tazara for a good share of the summer.

[26:39]

And during the summer, one of my Dharma brothers said to me, you know, I don't think Roshi wants us to keep practicing counting our breathing. I think it's okay now if we move on to more, to those other things. What do you think? He said to me, and I said, I don't know. And... I could have gone and asked the ziggurish, and I could have gone and said, well, you said in January that we would all practice counting together. Did you want us to keep doing that practice? I don't know. It's hard for me to ask him. If I had asked him, though, he might have been unusually severe with me. But, you know, he didn't do it very often. He never beat me up, but he might have beat me up if I asked that question. But I didn't anyway. So I never did find out if he wanted us all to just continue to practice counting and breathing. I didn't ask him.

[27:48]

And that summer, he taught the Sandokai, which, as some of you know, was filmed. Some of those talks were filmed. And so we have black and white photographs of him giving talks in the old Zendo at Tassajara on the Sandokai. And we also had, it was also, there was audio tapes of it too, and for about 30 or 35 years. And the videotapes were not synchronized, but then someone found a way to synchronize them with his coughs. So now we have You can see and listen to those talks. And so he gave those talks that summer. And I don't know if he wanted us all to keep counting our breathing or not. But at one point he suggested

[29:00]

And I also remembered that when he was giving those talks, he often gave them in the evening. And like now, Tathagatagarbha too, most of the Dharma talks are given in the evening. During practice period, they're usually given in the morning. But in the summer, they're often given in the evening. And it was pretty hot that summer, as it often is at Tassajara. And I remember after the... back in his cabin he was like drenched his robes were so wet and he was he was you know he commented on how sticky they were but he wore them anyway and worked hard to with his dear students and during one of the talks uh

[30:30]

he said something about, he said, my disciples something. And when he said that, I wonder who his disciples are. Like, for example, I wonder if I'm one of them. So after the talk, shortly after the talk, I said to him, Roshi, who? I didn't say, Roshi, am I one of your disciples? I did not say that. I could have, but I didn't. I said, Roshi, who are your disciples? My feeling is that I did not ask him that night after the talk.

[31:42]

My feeling is I asked him in the daytime. I remember it being daytime when he answered. I think he was maybe standing outside of his cabin, but I'm not sure. But anyway, I remember it was daytime and he said, I don't like it. I said, Roshi, who are your disciples? And he said, I don't like it, but my mind works like this. So I asked him a question, you know, in words, and then he looked in his mind and he saw something that he didn't like. Where there's the words running around like, my disciple. And he said, I don't like it, but you know, my mind discriminates between the students at Tassajara. He said, some students are at Tassajara for themselves and some students are at Tassajara for others.

[32:48]

My disciples are the ones who are here for others. So I And then I could contemplate that for a while. Am I here for others? Or am I here for me? And those don't have to be exclusive, but If you're his disciple, you're here for others and yourself. You're here for yourself, to take care of yourself and your body that's breathing. You're doing that for others if you're his disciple, I think he says.

[33:54]

We have a chance to do the one thing today of being mindful of our breathing, mindful of this body that is breathing. We have an opportunity to give everything to breathing in and breathing out. and enter the treasury of light. Enlightenment and non-enlightenment in good friendship. Please continue this good friendship, this 2,500 year tradition.

[35:16]

Not just 2,500, but endless time, this good friendship. Please take care of it. Please keep giving life to it. Please give life to this good friendship of the mind that does not abide in it.

[35:39]

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