And today we celebrate Father's Day. I wish to acknowledge this celebration of the great responsibility and great blessing of having the opportunity to be a father. And I offer I offer some words today to all the fathers and all the mothers and all beings, whether they're fathers or mothers. To make things simple, I start with a part of a song, which I also offer as a gift.

[01:11]

First there are the mountains, then there are no mountains, then there are. First there are the mountains, then there are no mountains, then there are. This is part of a song. This song seems to be coming from a Tang Dynasty Chinese disciple of the Buddha, what is called a Zen master, sometimes. A person who said, First when I was practicing the mountains were mountains and the rivers were rivers. After 30 years the mountains were not mountains and the rivers were not rivers.

[02:29]

Now finally the mountains are mountains again. and the rivers are rivers. So I could say this is a song about the practice of our tradition. In the practice of realizing enlightenment for the welfare of all beings, We start with mountains, our mountains. Our late teacher, Suzuki Roshi, said something like, Zazen is to sit in a big invisible world, or the big invisible world.

[04:01]

So I would say Zazen is to sit in the immeasurable, imperceptible world. This is the world of mountains are not mountains or there are no mountains. However, even though I say that and our ancestors said that, we also say, first there are mountains. We start with the mountains. We start with our dream of our practice.

[05:13]

We start with our dream of our body and mind, with our dream body and mind. We start with the visible form of the world, the visible form of our body and mind. And from there we enter our imperceptible body and mind. And after we enter into and sit in our imperceptible body and mind we can emerge from there. And emerging from there we can be good fathers. Then our activity is good fatherhood. and good motherhood and good brotherhood and good sisterhood. We can attempt and be relatively successful being a good father with the dream of our body and mind with the dream of fatherhood.

[06:30]

But to some extent it is well, you could say hit and miss or learning by trial and error. But the main thing I'd like to emphasize is learning by trial and error how to enter the realm where there's no error. Learning by trial and error how to open to the immeasurable, imperceptible world of Buddha's enlightenment. And then entering there, we can emerge from there. And then it's not hit and miss anymore. First there were mountains. Then there were no mountains. Then there were mountains again. And the mountains heroically strided and never tripped. Every step was impeccable because these mountains are coming from no mountains.

[07:49]

But we must start with mountains. We must start with our dream body. We must. And it's hard for us to take the next step from our dream body into freedom from our dream because We tend to be a little bit too attached to our dream body, our dream mind, our dream mountains, our dream meditation practice, our dream practice of virtue. It's hard for us to move beyond it because we're attached to it. And as we start to contemplate moving beyond it, we may be afraid. because moving beyond it means moving into an area that we don't know. By taking good care of our dreams, we become more and more ready to move into freedom from our dreams. Our dreams are useful.

[08:55]

We must use them. They're not just useful, we also have to use these useful dreams. I take care of this little girl called Frankie or sometimes called Tiny and she has a little piece of cloth which is called a zebra because it looks like a zebra And it's got little places where the cloth is gathered into little knobs. And it's kind of like what they used to call a pacifier. She can hold it in her hands. And when things get really scary, she can search for the hard spots in the cloth and put them in her mouth. And that helps her calm down. One could imagine, one could dream, I could dream that sometimes her world is on the verge of breaking apart and opening actually into the inconceivable, imperceptible world of Buddhist meditation.

[10:17]

But she's scared of it. So she gets a hold of this cloth and she finds a place where she can suck on it, and she calms down in the face of the inconceivable realm of wisdom. But we must use this for a while before we feel relaxed enough to step into no mountains. I've heard people ask many times, how do practitioners of the Buddha way use dreams?

[11:20]

And I have now become aware that a number of teachers, a number of practitioners, have extensive practice of using their dreams, particularly their dreams when they're sleeping. But in a way, it's understood in a way that in the practice of the Buddha way, we are always, we're basically working with our dreams, basically, first of all, working with our dreams in order to understand that they're dreams, understand the dreams, and enter into no dreams. And from there, return to the realm of dreams in order to help beings. So wisdom has these three phases.

[12:25]

One phase is not just mountains, but it's like mountains. It's the phase which is preparatory, getting ready for no dreams. It's getting ready for non-imagination. That's one phase of wisdom practice. It's kind of wisdom practice because you understand you're working with your dreams in order to understand and let go of them. You're working with your pacifiers in order to put them down and enter reality, which is free of imagination. This little girl named Frankie, she's walking maybe with me and she's holding on to her zebra and sometimes she likes to go up and down stairs and if she's going down stairs and she's holding the zebra in one hand it makes it more difficult for her to go down stairs because

[13:39]

It's harder for her to hold on to my hand and, for example, the railing on the stairs. So sometimes she drops her zebra to use something else to hold on to. And then sometimes she forgets about the zebra and just, after she gets to the bottom stairs, she just walks on without the zebra. I pick it up and put it in my pocket. And she strides along the street with no zebra for a while. Then she has both hands and both feet are free to engage with this situation. Again, it's still dreams, but she's not holding on to anything other than her mind and body. And then she gets to a place where things start to loosen up a little bit again and open up to more possibilities than like just who knows.

[14:44]

Like most of us can see there's a street, there's cars, there's houses. But I think her mind and body start to open up to more and that's a little bit too much. So then she starts looking around for her zebra, which I just happen to have in my pocket and I give it to her. Or she just looks up in the air and goes like this, which means pick me up and let me hold your body for a little while. And then she holds it for a little while and then she's had enough and she started wiggling and wants me to put her down again. We must work with the the form of the practice in order to enter the formlessness of the practice. We must accept our attachment to the form of the practice in order to be free of our attachment to the form of practice.

[15:51]

And when we enter our freedom from the form of the practice we emerge from there to use the form of the practice again in this impeccable way because we're coming from letting go of it and using it just to help not to protect against not to protect against freedom or to stay away from freedom because we're afraid, but to show freedom. Not show freedom by staying in formless freedom, not show freedom by staying in non-imagination and no dreams, but show by dreaming again in a way that demonstrates freedom from dreams. another way to talk about first mountains, then no mountains, then mountains, or first preparation for non-imagination, non-imagination, and that which is subsequently attained

[17:33]

that which is subsequent to non-imagination. Another way to talk about it is focusing on conventional truth, a wisdom which focuses on conventional truth, mountains are mountains, a wisdom that focuses on ultimate truth, mountains are not mountains, and wisdom which focuses on the welfare of beings. Mountains are mountains again and they're heroically striding and they're green or blue. When they're blue, actually they're water. When they're green, they're the face of the water looming up high above us. sometimes we hear the expression single mind of faith or single-minded devotion to sitting.

[18:58]

Single-minded devotion to zazen, sitting meditation. So I'm I'm offering the gift of, I aspire to inspire living beings, fathers for example, human fathers particularly. I aspire to inspire them to be devoted, to have a single-minded devotion to zazen, which means a single-minded devotion to mountains. Mountains are not mountains and mountains are mountains again. To be inspired to aspire to take care of the body and mind.

[20:12]

so yeah if we have this another expression is body and mind and there's another expression which is dropping off body and mind another expression is dropped off body and mind first we have body and mind i aspire And I aspire to inspire beings to be devoted to body and mind. So that body and mind can drop off. And then the dropped off body and mind can benefit beings. So the most helpful body and mind is the dropped off body and mind. Devotion to zazen is devotion to body and mind. It's devotion to dropping off body and mind.

[21:16]

And it's devotion to the dropped off body and mind. It's devotion to the whole process. Sometimes the emphasis is put on the middle phase. That's the crucial place to be. Once you get there, the third part will occur. It's hard to get to the middle. It's hard to get to the place, the inconceivable, imperceptible realm. That's what we're afraid of before we enter because, you know, who knows what will happen there? Like that, what do you call it? That was kind of a decision of the school board in this town in Minnesota. the school board, and the town's called Lake Wolbegon, and the school board banned French words, French books, because they said, who knows what they're saying?

[22:21]

We have no idea what those books are saying. There could be something terrible. So we should take care of that dream. that this could be something terrible. Or take care of a dream, this could be something really good. This could be something really great. Take care of that dream so that you can enter the realm of freedom from dreams. And then who knows what's going on there. But that's the realm where the Buddha's work is actually occurring. It occurs in an imperceptible, as Suzuki Roshi said, invisible way. And it is occurring there right now. And it's perfect and all-pervading.

[23:24]

There's no place it doesn't reach. But we have to take care of the visible and the perceptible dream world in order to enter it. And then again, as it starts to open up, we get scared and reach for our zebra. That's part of it. So we practice patience with our shrinking back from where we need to go. And if we're patient with our shrinking back from where we need to go, we'll be ready to consider if we really aspire to enter the realm of ultimate truth. where mountains are not mountains, where body and mind are dropping off.

[24:29]

It's not that there's no body and mind, it's just they're constantly dropping off. Our body and mind is constantly being given away. And we're constantly giving it away, dropping our zebras. We've got both hands and feet open to receive the next body-mind. receive and drop. This is a new body and mind. This body and mind is the one that can help everyone. How? By encouraging them to take care of their body and mind. By encouraging them to be thoroughly careful of the mountains. And by practicing being thoroughly careful of the mountains of body and mind, When the doors of no body and mind start to open and the fear comes, the fear is the body and mind again. And we care for the fear.

[25:31]

And caring for the fear of the body and mind, the door opens again. And finally there's just body and mind of fear drop off. and we enter. So the practice is that we must use the form of dream to enter the dreamless form. The actuality is in the dreamless realm but we must use the dream realm and we need to understand that we use both. We must use the form of the sitting posture. even though this sitting posture is a dream of sitting practice of the Buddhists. So we both understand this form doesn't reach the practice and we must use it. And we must use it with complete respect and care in order to enter the realm where it is being dropped off, where it is dropping off.

[26:43]

I heard the great yoga teacher say something like, I always say that the body is the temple, or he might have said, my body is the temple, and my asanas are my prayer to God. And I thought, that sounds similar to our practice, that our body is a temple. And putting it in, for example, the sitting posture, the cross-legged sitting posture, the upright sitting posture, this upright sitting posture is our prayer to enlightenment. is our alignment with enlightenment, is our worship of enlightenment, is our offering to enlightenment.

[28:08]

So we sit. Yes, we sit. Well, yeah, we sit. Or you could say, when we sit, we can make this sitting posture we can offer this action of sitting as paying homage to perfect enlightenment for the welfare of all beings. We sit upright and offer this upright sitting as homage to enlightenment for the welfare of all beings. We sit upright and offer this upright sitting as praise, as worship, as acknowledging the worth of perfect awakening and freedom for the welfare of all beings.

[29:14]

We offer this upright sitting as an offering, as a gift complete, perfect awakening for the welfare of all beings. And I also heard the Dalai Lama said something about, you know, the mind is a, he said something like this, the mind is a very subtle thing and it sometimes is quite rigid and confining. But it can also become flexible and liberated.

[30:16]

And he said something like, wishing and praying are not enough. But at the same time, I think he might agree that wishing and praying are essential. It is not enough. So, one might wish and pray that this body and mind will become free of attachment and enter reality. But that wish, although it's fundamental, needs to be followed by practice. The practice of making an offering of this posture, of this body and mind, making an offering of it. And then we follow that offering of this body and mind sitting or standing upright.

[31:18]

We follow it by checking the ethical quality of this gift. be ethically conscientious about our giving practice. Notice, examine whether there's any expectation of getting something for this gift, for example. Notice whether perhaps we're calculating and noticing that we gave more uprightness than our neighbor did. And then if we notice that we gave like a huge amount of uprightness and our neighbor gave just a little, to notice whether we think we're better than our neighbor. Because it may be the neighbor said, yeah, I only gave about 10% of my uprightness. And you gave about 90% uprightness, so you gave more than me.

[32:23]

And so... one might actually see that's the calculation. But do you think you're better than the person? This would be, if I thought I was better than someone who was not devoted to offering their body for the sake of enlightenment, then that would be an ethical shortcoming, which I would then acknowledge and move on to try again. Not to mention saying something against somebody or devaluing somebody who was, or even yourself, when you're not being wholehearted of offering your posture, your body, of being unkind to yourself when you notice you're not offering your body and mind to enlightenment, that you forgot, or even that you'd like to, but you're too frightened, so you can't right now.

[33:31]

Not being kind to yourself, that would be an ethical shortcoming. And then again, moving forward to practice patience with our shortcomings that we've just noticed and confessed. And then again to re... refresh our aspiration to practice offering this body and mind for dropping off. Offering the practice of sitting upright. Offering the practice of body and mind sitting upright to body and mind dropping off. Yeah, I aspire to that, right. And again, checking that aspiration. Looking at that aspiration, for example, might even say, yeah, I would like to offer my body and mind in each moment.

[34:45]

I would like to remember that having a body and mind, oh, having a dream of my body and mind, I wish to offer this dream body and this dream mind, I wish to offer them to enlightenment. And I wish to do so ethically. not again again I wish to learn to do it I'm offering I aspire to offer it but I don't aspire to be better than other people who are offering it or be better people who aren't holding on to it and do not want to offer their body to any enlightenment actually offering to enlightenment sounds to me like un-American or un-Christian or whatever who knows what people might say or what we might say ourselves and to be not look down on that person not hate that person and not lie if we have such fear and such resistance and again I aspire to all these practices which simply put are caring for body and mind in such a way that body and mind drops off or

[36:12]

That's not maybe the best way to say it. It's more like caring for this body and mind so we may realize that we're already living, that where we're actually living is in a realm of body and mind free of dreams of body and mind, including all dreams of body and mind. All dreams of body and mind sponsoring the arising of dreams of body and mind's That realm is actually not caught up, not stuck in the dreams. We're living there already. It's just that it's imperceptible, ungraspable, the workings of enlightenment and freedom. So by caring for the realm of bondage and dreams in this way, we enter into the realization that we're already in a big world where we're all practicing Buddha's meditation together.

[37:18]

And from that realization we re-enter a world of dreaming again, and take on particular dreams, at particular times, in particular places, with particular people, with particular dreams. I hesitate to use foreign languages on Sunday morning to a group of people who are not all native speakers of Japanese or Chinese or whatever. But sometimes Japanese words are handy. Sometimes... For example, zazen is kind of handy.

[38:24]

Or zen, the word zen is kind of, it's a nice short word, three words, z-e-n. And you know, it means so much, right? It's become, it's almost, it's a nice little thing for people to use who are English speakers. And zazen, you just put a za in front, that's not too difficult. Zazen, so you got zen and then you got za, sitting zen. So Zen put into the form of sitting. It's not just Zen, which everybody's got, and everybody can use, right? At their will. But you know, he put a za in front of it, so he makes Zen into a practice. So this other expression, body and mind, Japanese, it's actually Chinese, Sino-Japanese way of saying it is shin-jin. The word for body is shin, and the word for mind is shin, pronounced that way. Put them together, they say, instead of shin-shin, you say shin-jin. So we take care of shin-jin.

[39:29]

And then we realize shin-jin-datsu-raku, which means body and mind dropped off. And then we have, after shin-jin-datsu-raku, we have datsu-raku-shin-jin. which is dropped-off body and mind. So first is dropping-off body and mind, then is dropped-off body and mind. So, first there is Shinjin, then there's Shinjin Datsuraku, then there's Datsuraku Shinjin. We always care for Shinjin, And when we're thorough about it, we realize Shinjin Datsuraku. And because we've realized Shinjin Datsuraku, based on caring for Shinjin, we enter Datsuraku Shinjin.

[40:31]

Because we care for body and mind and offer the dream body and mind for enlightenment, we enter the realm of dropping off body and mind, realizing awakening, and then we bring awakening back into caring for body and mind. The same caring as before is just that the caring after is attained after realizing ultimate truth. And therefore, it's faultless. Once again, in summary, the wisdom teaching is of the great vehicle of the enlightening being.

[41:33]

The wisdom teaching is that wisdom is threefold. Preparation for non-imagination. That's first. Second is non-imagination. Third is that which is realized after realizing non-imagination. Another way to say it is focusing on conventional truth, focusing on dreams, focusing on ultimate truth, or there's no dreams, and focusing, wisdom which focuses on the welfare of beings. I aspire to practice this wisdom. I aspire to practice this single-bodied faith in order to inspire others to have a similar aspiration.

[42:45]

And I aspire to be generous to myself and careful of myself and patient with myself in this process. And I aspire to be generous and careful and patient with others who are trying to enter this process, who wish to enter this process. And I wish to be generous and careful and patient with people who do not yet want to enter this process or who have forgotten that they want to enter this process, which is often me. I was thinking about what song would be good at this point.

[43:59]

And I really don't know this song, but I know some of the words. It's something about, what is it, the President of the United States, Barack Obama. I think he sang this song a while ago. Something about when you fall down on your face, what do you do? You get right up, dust yourself off. and try again? Is that how it goes? Start all over again. Yeah. So, what's the situation? You fall down? Just before you get right up, dust yourself off and start all over again. What happens before that? What? When you're down and out? When you're down and out, when you forgot to practice, when you forgot to be kind, When you forgot to offer your life to enlightenment, get right up, dust yourself off, and start all over again. That's the song.

[44:59]

But I don't know the melody. So I'll just let it go at that.

[45:05]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_92.89