Suzuki Roshi used to say pretty often that the main job of a Zen teacher is to encourage people to practice Zazen, and during the Sesshin, and I have been doing this for a while, what we mean by Zazen is actually this Jiju-Yu Zanmai, this self-fulfilling awareness. Zazen, you know, literally means sitting Zen, and there are many different ways that some people think or understand Zazen. Zazen in China and Japan is used by different schools. That's why Dogen Zenji says, the Zazen that I speak of is not learning meditation.

[01:13]

In other words, the Zazen that we're talking about in the lineage that we receive in this temple is not the Zazen which is to concentrate the mind. And there's lots of other kinds of Zazen too that you could have heard about. Those kinds of Zazen are certainly wholesome. It's a very wholesome thing to concentrate your mind, of course. But the proposal of the lineage here is that the Zazen we're talking about is actually the Zazen of Buddha, and Buddha is not trying to concentrate her mind. Buddha is not trying to do anything. Buddha is simply

[02:18]

being radiant, pure, concentrated, blissful, compassionate, and so on. It's not trying to get yourself to be any of that stuff. Do you see the difference? So, the Zazen I speak of, as Dogen Zenji says, and I say too, I also say the Zazen that I speak of is the Zazen of the self-fulfilling Samadhi. It is simply the Dharmagate of repose and bliss. The Zazen I'm talking about is simply the true gate to peace and happiness, not just personally, but universally. It is the straightforward approach to universal peace and

[03:22]

harmony. So, for a Bodhisattva in this lineage, our vow is to encourage Zazen in this self-fulfillment awareness, to be devoted to the practice of it, and to do the practice of it in order to encourage all beings to practice it. That when we mean to save beings, we primarily mean to encourage beings, to support beings, to practice this kind of Zazen. Anything else is secondary.

[04:24]

Do you understand the word secondary, Dasha? Secondary. Could you tell her what secondary means? Secondary. I'm going to use some big words today, Dasha, but I'll stop and see if you know them. Okay? Devotion to the self-fulfilling Samadhi. Again, devotion means, D means complete, and the devotion part means vow, to completely vow to live in this Samadhi, to sit,

[05:36]

to stand upright in this Samadhi, to sit upright in the awareness that you are you, and therefore you are not you. This means to sit in the midst of the truth. This means to sit upright in front of God, which is you and not you. And I'm trying to encourage you and me to sit that way, to sit in that world, that total world,

[06:45]

that total ambiguous. Do you know the word ambiguous, Dasha? Ambiguous and contradictory world. An ambiguous, contradictory world means a total world. A world where there's no contradiction and where there's no ambiguity is a partial world, is where we often live. The total world is completely self-contradictory. Buddhas now are sitting upright in the middle of the world of

[07:58]

Samadhi. You are you and therefore you are not you. They sit there. This is also called the dual mirror awareness. You are not it. It actually is you. Now, soon we will be having the shiso ceremony, and I think that the case that the shiso will bring up will be the story of Bodhidharma, the great compassionate radical monk. The emperor of China did great things for Buddhism, and he asked Bodhidharma

[09:08]

about how much merit he had accumulated by this work, and Bodhidharma said, no merit. He was trying to initiate the emperor into the self-fulfillment Samadhi. Of course, the emperor had done great merit, but he wanted the emperor to enter the total world of no merit and great merit. The emperor wasn't interested. Then the emperor said to Bodhidharma, what is the meaning of the highest truth? What is the highest meaning of the holy truth? And Bodhidharma said, vast emptiness, no holy. The emperor said, who is this facing me? Bodhidharma said, don't know.

[10:15]

So, he offered, he invited the emperor into the absolute, the completely contradictory world of self-identity. The emperor could not enter, so Bodhidharma left. He was trying to encourage the emperor to give up everything and enter Buddha's world. The emperor was not able, so Bodhidharma left. He crossed the Yangtze River, went north to Shaolin and sat facing the wall. He tried again by directly showing,

[11:23]

sitting upright in the world of don't know, no holy, vast emptiness. when people heard about this man sitting there facing the wall, they thought what he was trying to do was concentrate his mind. And he didn't say anything, he just sat there and let them think that's what he was doing. It's always a question about whether when you're actually showing the thing

[12:45]

and people are misinterpreting it, whether you should just keep showing it or whether you should explain that it's not what they're attributing to it. Bodhidharma chose to just keep sitting. His disciples have sometimes just shown, sometimes explained. One day we had a ceremony at Zen Center and we received some priests who already were ordained and already received this Buddhist robe, the Okesa, received a new one made according to Buddhist tradition rather than from a store. And after we received these robes up in Suzuki Roshi's

[13:53]

room, we asked Suzuki Roshi, how do you wear this kind of robe? And he walked away. So then we turned to Kadagiri Roshi and we said, how do you wear this kind of robe? And he said, well, it's kind of hard to explain. First you, and he started to explain and we were of course happy that he was going to explain. Then one of us noticed that Suzuki Roshi was over in the corner of the room putting it on. Did you understand that story, Dasha? We asked Suzuki Roshi, how do you wear this robe? And he walked away. Then we asked another teacher, how do you wear the robe? And he started to explain with words. And he was having a hard time explaining in words because he didn't speak English very well.

[14:58]

But anyway, we were happy he was explaining to us. Then someone saw Suzuki Roshi was over in the corner of the room just putting the robe on, just showing us. So, if you were teaching Zen, all you would have to do in a sense would be just to sit, but the problem is people imagine what you're doing, so you have to keep saying, no, I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that. You have to say, when you're sitting in Zazen, you have to say, what is it, Daiguti, oh Daiguti, is there any Dharma by which the Tathagata has

[16:00]

fully realized the utmost right and perfect enlightenment? So it is, Daiguti, so it is. There is absolutely no Dharma by which the Tathagata has realized the utmost right and perfect sitting. Therefore, because you don't use anything, because you can't attribute anything to it, it is called the utmost right and perfect sitting. Once you're sitting, this is part of the contradictory complex world, once you're sitting in order to encourage people to sit, you might use skillful devices to encourage people.

[17:05]

So, for example, when people die, they sometimes come to a person who is a Zen monk who is sitting and ask that person to do the funeral ceremony. And recently, Galen mentioned to me that at the temple she went to, the teacher gave some instruction to the priest there about how to do the funeral ceremony. And he said, it's important that you learn about the funeral ceremony and become knowledgeable about it and knowledgeable about the teaching about how people go through birth and death. Because if you're knowledgeable, the people who you do the ceremony for might respect you and they might think, hmm, those guys sit, maybe I should sit too.

[18:21]

So by being knowledgeable about the funeral ceremony which you perform for people, you might encourage them to do real Buddhist practice. So priests learn certain things and if they learn them well, it might encourage people to sit. Of course, these things are somewhat good in themselves. It helps people to do the ceremony anyway, but what would really be wonderful is if after you did a funeral ceremony for a family, can you imagine this? You do a funeral ceremony for a family and everybody in the family starts sitting Zazen after that. This would be the point, the real point, the greatest hope of a Zen priest. Or imagine doing a wedding ceremony for people and the parents of the bride and the parents of the groom would start practicing Zazen, would give up everything and just enter into the

[19:25]

Self-Fulfillment Samadhi. This is actually our hope. We actually hope, even though it's almost ridiculous, we hope the very best for everybody. And this is the very best, that they would be able to actually enter into Buddha's mind. And we use the funeral ceremony, the wedding ceremony, we use Kasahara, we use the grounds, we use the cooking, we use the guest program, we use the pool, we use the library, we use the shop, we use staff meetings, we use everything, hopefully, to encourage people to enter into this kind of Zazen.

[20:26]

One time I was in a panel discussion at the end of a symposium in Boulder, Colorado and I was on the stage with various of the leaders of this symposium and at some point, anyway, the host Trungpa Rinpoche said first thought is best thought. And then the Theravadan teacher Joseph Goldstein said, I think first thought is first thought. And then someone asked me, what do you think? And I said, I think first thought is not first thought. A first thought is best thought is actually can be a skillful

[22:04]

teaching, because first thought really is a wonderful thought. And first thought is you learn so much from the first thought. Like I mentioned before, beauty is the beginning, the beginning of a terror which you can just barely stand. Beauty is the first thought of terror which you can still stand. This is very encouraging. So someone might say, that first thought is the best thought. I agree, but I also agree that that first thought is just that first thought. That's also a skillful comment.

[23:10]

And then what I say at the end is, first thought is not first thought. And also second thought, which is not as good as first thought, is not second thought. And also first thought is not best thought. Please sit in this world. I also plan this coming year to teach Buddhist psychology to the teachers of Zen Center. They have a course of teaching the teachers about Buddhist psychology. And the way I see this is that, although I'm teaching Buddhist psychology and I find Buddhist

[24:18]

psychology very interesting, I really do this so that I can demonstrate my knowledgeableness of Buddhist psychology. And then people will respect me. And then if they respect me, then if I do something so stupid as Zazen, they might be willing to do it too. But unless I prove I'm really smart and insightful and well-educated, if I do something stupid, they might just think it's stupid. It's like a friend of mine, the father of a friend of mine, who was also a friend of mine, said about certain modern painters, he said, I don't trust those guys. He said, now Picasso, you know, when I look at his early paintings, he could actually draw, you know, he could actually paint well. So I trust him to do some of the stuff he did later. But some of these people who are doing this abstract expressionist art or something, they can't even write their name

[25:23]

straight. So I don't trust them. Sometimes we have to prove to people that we understand that two plus two is four, before we can explain to them that two plus two is not four. You first, I first, must be able to do the straightforward, concrete work of being myself. I must do this work first, before I can teach people the way of, you are you and you are not you. Also, I can't really understand that for myself either. And if I say to people, you are not you, before I realize that I am me, I am breaking a precept. So, as part of encouraging us, myself, to practice Zazen, I bring up this

[27:05]

teaching about radical evil. I do this to encourage Zazen. Radical evil, fundamental root evil, is the same as fundamental delusion. And the fundamental delusion is that this self is separated from others. Because of that deeply ingrained attitude of this self, independent and separate from other selves,

[28:10]

because of that, I also separate myself from my life. I also separate myself from the total world of my life. And then, I ignore that I did that. And then, I say, I'm alive. And I believe it. And then, I walk around thinking that I'm actually alive. And I meet other people, and I tell them that I'm alive, and they say, oh, I am too. And then, there's two of us who think that we're alive. And then, we get some more people,

[29:12]

and then we have a large group of people who are walking around thinking that they're alive. And we feel more and more sure that we're actually really living. And the whole thing is people who have totally separated themselves from their lives, telling each other that they haven't done that. Whereas, actually, what we've done, in the words of a psychologist, is we have fallen asleep in the waiting room of life. Do you know waiting room, Dacha? We have fallen asleep in the waiting room. We have what is called consensus trance. Do you know consensus? You don't know that, do you?

[30:14]

Consensus? Consensus? There's no consensus. Consensus trance. Do you know trance? Consensus trance. Consensus trance. Now, I mentioned to you people, didn't I, about one of my friends whose mother is an alcoholic, and recently her co-workers, where she works, did what's called an intervention. I told you about that, didn't I? I didn't? Oh, good. So, she's an alcoholic, a heavy-duty alcoholic, world-class. This lady's got some life. The funny thing is, these really powerful alcoholics, the ones who are totally

[31:18]

poisoned themselves, those are the ones that are really alive, because they need a tremendous dose of this stuff to numb themselves from the reality which they keep seeing, the reality of their life which says, you know, so this lady's alive. I won't tell you what she does. It's just horrendous. That's not the reason I won't tell you. I won't tell you because you might know who she is then. But anyway, she got an intervention. They said, you can't work here anymore unless you go into this treatment program. So, she went to the treatment program, and when she got there, after a little while, she said, she heard about these other people that she was in the program with, and they told her about interventions, and she said, that sounds terrible, that's never happened to me. Then, she noticed that the other people in the treatment program were suffering a lot, and she was amazed. She said, these people are having a hard time. I'm not.

[32:21]

And when I heard that story, of course, you know what I thought? I thought, well, I'm not like her. Didn't you think that? You don't think you're like her, do you? You're not into that kind of denial. Like, you've never had an intervention done on you, have you? Don't most of you think you haven't had an intervention done on you? Well, think about it some more. I mean, I have had interventions done on me, but my first thought is, glad I don't like that. I'm glad I'm not in the waiting room, asleep, outside life. Glad I'm not one of those guys. No, I'm a Zen teacher. I'm encouraging people to come into where I am. I'm really in life. No, it ain't that way. It ain't that way. Everybody's in this waiting room.

[33:35]

However, it's just delusion, this waiting room. But if you don't admit you're in this delusion, then you're going to stay in there. Because we have been entranced, and we have also been instructed in this trance to ignore the evidence that we're in the trance. Now, is the fact that this guy is saying this to you, is this evidence that you're in the trance, or is it evidence that he's just in some kind of a strange state? Well, I'll tell you, it's evidence that I'm in some kind of a strange state. But there's a lot of strange states I could be in, and I'm in this one, and I'm talking to you. And you're done for. And I mean you. And although I'm kidding, I'm not kidding.

[34:44]

And I recently read an article in the New York book review section, which goes like this, Furthermore, Sabuddhi, self-identical is that truth, and there is nothing at variance with it. Therefore, it is called the utmost right and perfect enlightenment. Self-identical through a lack of self. So, this article is titled Divas to Die For. Do you know what a diva is, Dasha? Diva. Diva, you know, in opera? Opera? You know diva? A diva, somebody say what a diva is. A diva is one of these singers who are, they're like goddesses of the opera world.

[35:57]

Okay, we call them divas. I think this is a good title, Divas to Die For. You'll see more why I think this is such a good title. The name of the book is called Queen's Throat. So, that's a kind of a pun there, in the sense that it's the throat of the diva, of the opera star, her throat. But it's also, the word queen refers to the subtext of this book is, the subtitle of this book is Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire. What this book is about, actually, is about what are called opera queens. An opera queen is a word for male homosexuals, for whom opera has become an intense obsession.

[37:03]

I don't know how many opera queens there are, but apparently enough for him to write this book, and the guy who wrote the book is an opera queen. He's also a professor of something at Yale. Do you understand opera queen now, Dasha? Opera queen is a man, a male homosexual, who loves opera very much. Who has an obsession, you know obsession? Who has an obsession for opera. A male homosexual who has an obsession for opera is called an opera queen. I used to be called, in my early days at Zen Center, a dairy queen.

[38:08]

Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. That's true, by the way, they used to call me dairy queen. Because I like dairy. I'm from Minnesota. I used to eat a lot of ice cream. So anyway, the phrase opera queen is an accusation. It has a pejorative, negative accusation in there. Because it's actually criticizing this person's affection for opera. And it has even a deeper slur in it. It has a slur in the sense of homosexuality being degenerate. Can you feel that? The author says, you can call someone an opera queen if you want to criticize his affection

[39:31]

for opera. But the author wholeheartedly embraces this. Opera queen is like a beauty queen title, like Miss Cucumber, or Miss, you know, Garlic Clove, or, you know, Miss Harley Davidson, or whatever. It's opera queen is like a beauty prize title. It subtly mocks the girl riding on the float, but it thrills her also. And the author accepts this deeper slur of homosexual as degenerate and says, I embrace and impersonate the degenerate image because there is no way out of the stereotype except

[40:38]

to absorb it, to criticize it by ironically assuming its vestments. I am already clothed with the mantle of degeneration. I cannot refuse it. So I say, degenerate, c'est moi. How we are represented by others shapes how we represent ourselves. What is real for us and the worlds we imagine,

[41:40]

images and representations are formidable cultural forces. Each can become a sacred icon, a taboo, something to die for. What other people imagine you as shapes how you can see, represent and understand yourself. If you're a homosexual, some people imagine you, some people represent you as degenerate. This shapes you. If you're a woman, people imagine you a certain way, this shapes you. If you're a man, people imagine you a certain way, this shapes you. You cannot escape the stereotype which has been projected on you

[42:59]

except by impersonating it, by embracing it. If you resist it, you become its slave. There are people in this community who have appeared to some of us as, for example, angry, as perhaps degenerate, as perhaps powerful, as perhaps perfect, as perhaps intelligent, as perhaps rebellious, as perhaps menopausal, as perhaps anything. We have perceived them that way and because we perceive them that way, they have been shaped by our perception. And when our perception has become very strong, they have been strongly shaped.

[44:06]

Right in here, in this community, not to mention in the society they grew up in, the movies they saw, the television programs they watched, the things that were said in the playground shaped them. We're all subject to stereotypes and now even in Buddhism people see me, for example, certain ways and this shapes me. But we must become, I propose, we must become these accusations in order to free ourselves from them because we are such sensitive, such wonderfully responsive beings that when people consider us a jerk, we take that on, at least by saying it's not true. We don't have no reaction. We don't say, yeah, I am, or, I mean, we do say, yeah, I am, or no, I'm not.

[45:11]

All this is overlaid on fundamental delusion of evil. So, in a situation like this, I feel very encouraged to practice the self-fulfillment samadhi. There's no way to manipulate yourself out of such a mess. So, to impersonate the consensus stereotype clichés that have been projected on you,

[46:39]

which you are now affected by, you don't have to do anything to impersonate these things. You have already impersonated them. You've done it perfectly the way you've done it. That's the way you should embrace yourself, the way you are. You may have to write a book about this. You may not. Your necessity to write a book will be characteristic of, whether it's been projected upon you by your mother, that you're a writer, or that you're not a writer. We are puppets.

[47:43]

I had this real neat, somebody gave me this nice cartoon of this guy. He was a guy, and he was kind of dancing around, and he had these strings coming off his arms and legs and stuff. You know, he was a, is that a marionette? That's a marionette. He was a marionette. And his hands at the end of the strings were up above holding the strings. We are controlled by our own manipulations. We're the ones who are manipulating us. And the bottom, it says, self-actualizer.

[48:49]

We are marionettes. We are puppets. We are deluded automatons. And we're the ones who are deluding ourselves. These other people who are influencing us, who are entrancing us with their stereotypes about who we are, in other words, their stereotype that we're the person we were yesterday, or that we're the person we were a moment ago when they loved us, they're not deluding us. They're influencing us. The thing that's deluding us is that we think those influences that they're exerting on us, which will always be there, we think those influences are not us. That's how we delude ourselves.

[49:55]

It's our fundamental delusion that they're not us that makes them control us. But really, we're controlling ourselves because everybody else is us. That's why I really mean it when I say, please sit still. Don't move in the world where you are you, and you are not you. Where you are you and you are not you. Therefore, you are me, and this person over here who's talking to you is you. And that should be a bit of a shock, but it's probably not a shock,

[51:05]

it's probably just something you hate. But whatever you say about it, anyway, this is not somebody else talking to you, and I'm not talking to somebody else. What I'm doing is I'm trying to encourage us to practice zazen. Because the situation, and I can talk more about this, is hopeless. It's totally contradictory and screwed up. The whole thing, everything you see, is based on radical evil, fundamental delusion. That's the way the world appears. You do think you're alive, and this is just not correct.

[52:10]

And if you get all the other people in the room, but me, I will not agree, if you get all the other people in the room to sign a petition that you are alive, that will not cut it. Even if you get everybody who's alive to sign that document, it still won't cut it, because I have more dead people on my side. All the Buddhists say this, they say that people are deluded, and they say that they are deluded too. And they also say, you are right now enlightened. But in order to realize your enlightenment, you have to admit your delusion. So,

[53:32]

so, [...]

[55:46]

so, in this contradictory world, I have to tell you that I'm sorry if I have been rude to you, and if I've, but I'm sorry if I've been rude to you, or harsh, harsh, and obnoxious, and if I've harmed you in any way by this outburst, I actually am sorry, I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want to discourage you, but I'm this way. So,

[57:03]

this is the way you think I am, therefore, I must be this way in order to free myself of the way you think I am. So, The means are numberless. I vow to save them.

[58:14]

Divisions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to end them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become him.

[58:39]

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