And now here in this temple we are in the midst of a fifty or sixty day practice period, and this is our first one-day sitting during the practice period. Some of you have come here for this one-day sitting, and I want to welcome you to this practice period and introduce you to kind of emphasis that is being offered for this practice period. maybe more than one emphasis.

[01:01]

But again, I offered the idea that the point of the practice period is to help others, and helping others is understanding, is the wisdom which understands that others are our true self. This is the vision which helps others. This is the understanding which helps all beings. And another point of practice I was thinking just a moment ago as I was bowing that Suzuki Roshi said, our practice is group practice. And sometimes people think that means that a group practice is a place, is a practice where you go and practice in a group.

[02:11]

And I think I kind of thought about practice that way for quite a while, that I was practicing in a group. But then I came to feel that I'm practicing in the middle of a group practice, or I'm practicing in the middle of the practice of a group, and that the group practice is the actual practice. that what the whole group is doing together, that one great practice, which is the same practice for all of us and the same enlightenment for all of us, that that's the practice of our ancestors. And I do a practice, and you do a practice, and I understand that the practice that we do, or the practice that I offer,

[03:13]

is a ceremony, a ceremony of the practice of all beings, a ritual to realize the practice of all beings, a ritual to realize that others are our true self. So, again, the emphasis then is the emphasis on performance of the Buddha way by rituals, by ceremonies, and actually aspiring to make every action of body, speech, and mind a ceremony to enact, to embody, to realize the practice of all of this.

[04:26]

In the great vehicle, the highest truth is sometimes called emptiness, vast emptiness, that all phenomena, all beings are empty of any independent existence from each other. All phenomena cannot be found. The bottomless vastness, all of us are ungraspable vastness. And the Lotus Sutra teaches this ultimate truth of emptiness, this ultimate truth of selflessness as the one vehicle. For the Lotus Sutra, the highest truth, the ultimate truth of emptiness, is that we're all doing the same practice.

[05:40]

All Buddhists are doing the same practice, but all Buddhists and all members of other religions and all members of no religion, all beings are on one vehicle doing the same practice. This is the highest truth of the Lotus Sutra, which is the same as the truth of emptiness. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Form is the one vehicle. The one vehicle is form. Each person and each experience of each person is practicing together with all other beings. And to realize this inconceivable one vehicle, we can practice various forms and ceremonies to realize it.

[06:51]

When we practice ceremonies in the realm of ceremonies, the world we are living through body, speech, and mind and the world we imagine, the world of practicing together with everyone, are the same world. When we sit together here, each of us sits as Buddha, together with everybody else sitting as Buddha. We're living that way. We're doing a ceremony which is living that way. And in that world, it's the same world as where we are all actually living that way, with all beings. We imagine a world where we're working together on the same path, and here we do a ritual of practicing sitting together in the same path.

[08:09]

And we walk together in the same path. And in this group practice, the ceremony of the whole group is the performance of the actuality of all beings practicing together. I also want to mention that if you have any trouble understanding this discussion of ritual, I think it's normal because the word ritual and word ceremonies I think there's a wide disagreement about what they mean. And so you may have very different background or history using these words. So what I'm saying may be something that's difficult for you to understand or that you may disagree with. But I think that's normally part of this process of using these words.

[09:14]

For example, one senior priest said to me recently when we were talking about ceremony, he said, the way you're using ceremony is like kind of the opposite of the way I'm used to hearing it. I was used to hearing ceremonies as some act performed to get some results, like to do a ceremony to, I don't know what, get it to rain or something. And the ceremonies have been used that way. Like even, you know, sacrifices were done to get certain forces to make it rain or something, or to make diseases go away. So some people, some beings, some humans have done ceremonies that way. So he says that's very different from what you're saying of doing a ceremony as an offering with no expectation, performing a physical, vocal, and mental act as an offering without trying to get anything, with no expectation.

[10:34]

A pure act with no expectation. as the mode in which to realize the one practice and the one enlightenment. And a professor over at Berkeley one time said that ritual is, yeah, he said it's pure activity without meaning or goal. And he said that in a talk called The Meaninglessness of Ritual. And again, as I mentioned before, the Chinese character for ritual is comprised of joining the character for person and the character for meaning. So bringing meaning together with person is the character for ritual. But I think that goes very nicely with also it being meaningless.

[11:46]

to embody the meaning, to become the meaning. In a sense, it's meaningless. There's nothing but meaning. Another thing which I mentioned to you today is that it might be helpful for us to think of ritual as the basic social activity, or the basic social act. For example, in the Buddhist temple, we join our palms when we meet other people and bow. That's the example. You could see that as a greeting, but you could also see it as a ritual. a ritual to manifest mutual respect.

[12:55]

But it's not just a personal action, it's a social action. Sometimes you may, it's possible that you might not in your heart feel respect for someone, and yet you might still do this ritual. Even though I don't feel respect, the ritual realizes respect. My own personal mental fluctuations and emotional turmoil is going on, as usual, but the ritual manifests a respect which is bigger than my emotional state. Some other time I may feel neither respect nor disrespect. Some other time I may feel deep respect. I may feel deep respect, which is great for me.

[14:02]

But when I bow to the person, that respect becomes a social reality. It's manifested in the world. So whether I feel respect for you or not, I want to do the ceremony of expressing respect so that the Buddha's teaching that we really do respect each other is realized in our daily life. And I'd like to also, well, yeah, I'd like to mention that, as I often do, that bodhisattvas, I feel, can be described as being in this world to play with all beings, that they come to play.

[15:17]

They come to engage in a playful way with all beings. And some of the beings they come to play with do not know how to play. So their vow is to teach the beings who do not know how to play to play, and to play with those who know how to play. and to learn from those who know how to play, and to learn from those who do not know how to play, to learn how to teach those who do not know how to play how to play, and so on. To be playful. To be playful with the sense of separation between self and other, and to be so playful with it that we realize it's a potent illusion. Bodhisattvas come to play this way, and Buddhas also, in this world to play with us. But sometimes the way they play with us is in such a way that we do not see them.

[16:22]

And sometimes the way they play with us is in such a way that we do see them. In the play with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, freedom is realized. In the play with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, in the play with each other, which is the same play, we realize helping others. So I thought it might be helpful to talk about games and rituals, or games and ceremonies, And just to say that in games, games start with symmetry.

[17:31]

And the symmetry is constructed by having both partners at both sides in the game, or even, I guess, all the sides in the game, both or all the sides in the game, playing according to the same rules. So symmetry is at the beginning of the game. Does that make sense? By the same precepts. And then, through the turn of events in the game, the symmetry turns to asymmetry. And the group turns into winners and losers. In rituals, it's kind of the opposite.

[18:39]

especially, I would say, especially Buddhist rituals, we start with asymmetry. Example, Buddhist and sentient beings, enlightened and unenlightened beings, birth and death, self and other, initiated and not initiated, enlightenment and delusion, We start with the asymmetry. And by the structure of the ceremony, everyone moves to the winning side. There's only one side in the end. The birth and death both win. Sentient beings and Buddhas both win.

[19:44]

The world as lived and the world as practiced become the same. Also in games, which we play, Games which start with the same rules and end with winners and losers, in those games, they're not necessarily playful. The participants are sometimes not playful about who wins. They sometimes have a preference for being on one side or the other. They could even prefer to lose. But they're not necessarily playful. I myself had a wonderful opportunity in 1980. I was staying at Esalen Institute. And I was, you know, younger, 28 years younger.

[20:59]

And there was a gentleman there named Gregory Bateson, who was quite a bit older. He was 76. And I considered him to be an eminent scientist, biologist, anthropologist, and just a great, wonderful, kind person and thinker. And somehow it came up that he wanted to play chess. And he invited me to play chess with him. And so he got out his chess set, which was his father's chess set. And it was the chess set his father played Charles Darwin with. So here I am playing with this wonderful older man, and for the first time it occurred to me that it would be highly, well, I don't know highly, but anyway, somewhat inappropriate for me to try to beat him.

[22:12]

It just seemed like disrespectful to try to beat him. And it's possible that I could because I was young and he was older, and old chess players are not usually very good. An average young chess player can easily beat fairly old chess players. But anyway, I just thought it seemed like I should not be trying to beat him. Maybe I couldn't anyway because he was so smart when he was young. But I did something, I said, I'm going to play, I'm going to make the moves, the best moves I can as gifts to him. I'm going to make moves that he would find entertaining to play with. So I just thought, well, what move would be interesting? And I didn't think just, you know, a move that would, you know, just the stupidest move probably wouldn't have been the most interesting. So I actually tried to make, I thought, well, that would be an interesting move, you know. And I just kept making moves I thought would be interesting to him.

[23:19]

And he did find my moves interesting. He actually enjoyed them and wanted me to make more moves. And so he really wanted to play chess with me. And he was dying at this time, too. By the way, he was dying. And so I really enjoyed playing chess with him, and he enjoyed playing chess with me, and I really pretty much did not try to win. And sometimes I won. But sometimes he won. But I never was trying to beat him. And I don't know what he was doing. I didn't ask him what he was trying to do with me. And when I left, I gave him my beads. And he said, well, he didn't say it that pain. But then later, he came up to UC Medical Center.

[24:23]

And he sent word to me that he wanted to play chess with me some more. And he came to Zen Center to die. And he died at the guest house. I didn't think of it at the time, but I think I was practicing a ritual with him. I wasn't trying to win. I was trying to express through chess my respect for him and my appreciation for his appreciation to invite me to play chess with him. So again, many times when people are playing games, they're not being playful. We're playing to win. But in rituals, we are not playing to win. We are being playful. We have no expectation, I would say, in Buddhist rituals. We're not trying to get anything. We're just giving with no expectation.

[25:25]

We start with asymmetry. We end with symmetry. And all along we're playful and not grasping how the process will go. So we come into this room and we sit, and we can practice sitting the same way. We have a body, we have breathing, we have a mind, and we just offer this living being through this form, we offer this to the Buddha way. We offer this to the practice of all beings.

[26:32]

We try to make the posture, the nicest posture, the most interesting posture, to offer to Buddha. We try to offer a posture that Buddha will find interesting and enjoyable. Here, Buddha, here's this posture. We don't offer any stupidest posture. We don't offer a posture to beat her. We offer her a posture that she would steal. Oh, thank you. That was a really nice posture. Oh, there's another nice posture. Oh, you're offering me all these nice postures. Thank you. Like that. And also we offer our neighbors a good posture. Not a posture that's better than theirs. Just a posture that encourages them, that makes them feel like, oh, it's so nice this person's really sitting here to help me. How interesting the way they're sitting. How wonderful the way they come and sit with me. My brother, my sister. They give me strength.

[27:59]

I sit to give my partners strength, to give them encouragement. That's why I'm here. I'm not here to get some state for myself. I do get a state, of course. Everybody gives me one, moment after moment. But then I give my state to the Buddha way. That's the ritual I'm doing when I'm sitting, giving my practice, moment by moment. And they forget, but then if I remember, I remember, oh yeah, what's the practice again? Oh, the practice is giving this posture to all Buddhas, to all Bodhisattvas, to all beings. The way I used to sit, I kind of apologize that I don't sit that way anymore. But during this practice period, I'm going to try to start sitting that way again.

[29:04]

And I just did it a moment ago. And some of you may have thought when you saw me, you might have said, oh, he doesn't usually do that. Did you notice? What did you notice, Jerry? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I used to do it that way. I was instructed to do it that way, and then I kind of stopped for quite a while. Sorry. Sorry. I need to start again. I don't know how long I'm going to continue, but I think I now commit in your presence to do it for the rest of the practice period, which is after sitting, and getting somewhat settled into posture, to place my hands with my palms up on my thighs or near my knees, and then rock to the right, kind of quite a ways over, and then to the left quite a ways over, but a little bit less,

[30:18]

And then to the right again. And the left again, a little bit less. That's three, four. And then back to the right again, five. And back to the left again, six. To the right again, seven. And to the left again, eight. And then to the middle. So I commit to do that practice at the beginning of sitting here. And you're welcome to do that ritual also. And then make the cosmic concentration mudra. And then at the end of sitting, when the bell rings, I'm committed to join my palms and bow a little bit forward, and then put my hands back.

[31:34]

on my legs again, palms up, and then do the reverse of starting to move a little bit, just a little bit at the beginning to the right, a little bit to the left, and then a little bit more to the right, and a little bit more to the left, and a little bit more to the right, and a little bit more to the left. And a little bit more to the right. And a little bit more to the left. And a little bit more to the right. Was that eight? So seven returns, that is a ritual that has been recommended for a while in in this tradition.

[32:36]

And as I say, I used to do it, and I stopped. Somewhat not real. I didn't make a commitment to stop. I just stopped, and nobody called me on it. So that's a ritual, a ceremony, which you might want to try when you're sick. There's quite a few people in the room, so it's a little hard to practice kihing, but I just wanted to mention again the way of doing walking meditation is that we take the left hand and put the thumb down, and then wrap the fingers around it, and then place it sort of at our sternum, heart chakra, and then cover it with the right hand, placing the thumb sort of in a crevice between the thumb and the other fingers.

[33:46]

and hold the arms away from the body with the forearms fairly horizontal. And people find different variations of this that are more or less comfortable. But if you experiment with this, you may eventually find a really comfortable way to hold your arms. when you're walking. For a long time, I couldn't find a comfortable way to do this. My upper back in the middle and my shoulders were kind of tense when I did this. But then eventually I found a place so that now this is actually really comfortable for me, more comfortable than having my arms hanging down, actually. They feel lighter this way than hanging down. So now I'm quite comfortable walking this way. So if you want to, you can experiment with the way of holding up your forearms and your hands to find a comfortable spot.

[34:48]

And the torso part of the posture is the same as in sitting, right? That you're standing up. and you're feeling your head being drawn up from the crown, and your eyes are down, open, looking down straight ahead, and your tongue is on the roof of your mouth. And this walking practice is the point of this walking practice is to help others. The point of this walking practice is to understand that the people you're walking with are your true self. You're walking in order to help the other people who are practicing with you.

[36:02]

When I say that you're walking in order to help the other people that you're practicing with, I mean, that's what I think the point of the practice is. And when I say, I mean, you could think that. You could think, I'm walking to help others. You could think that, if you think that would be good. then regardless of what I think, regardless of what I think, your walking becomes helping others. And regardless of what I think, you become helping others. You become that regardless of me thinking that you will become that. It's just a coincidence that I think that and you will become that.

[37:18]

Games have a disjoining effect. Ceremonies have a conjoining effect. And even before they have an effect, they're already conjoining. They're immediately conjoining. They are cause and effect united. And again we use forms. For example, we use the form of bowling to join Buddha and sentient being. We use the structure with the form of a prostrating body. or even a standing and bowing body.

[38:44]

We use that form, that structure, we construct a way for the practitioner of the bow and the Buddhas to be one body. When we bow, Buddha is bowed to and Buddha is bowing. Buddha is bowing, and Buddha is the bowing. The bowing is Buddha, and the Buddha is bowing. We are the bowing, and we are bowing. By this ritual, we become that unity. We overcome the duality of enlightenment and delusion. We don't eliminate delusion. We bring them into complete mutual assistance, which they always were.

[39:56]

We manifest them by the ritual of bawling. When we sit, we sit in the posture of Buddha. We let the Buddha's body be our body. So then our sitting is Buddha's sitting. And the same with the walker. And the same with the talking, and the same with the cooking. Amen.

[44:37]

As our teacher said, sometimes when we're sitting together, I feel like we could sit together forever. And when the bell rings, I get up and do wapna meditation. Thank you. [...]

[46:06]

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