People came and weren't at the orientation meeting, is that correct? Partly I'd like to say a little bit about the history of this retreat here at Green Gulch. It's just my history. Other people could tell other stories of how this retreat was born. But one of the main ideas of the retreat was that Green Gulch for some time have been having sesshins and practice periods, but the practice periods are periods of intense practice where a lot of people come from outside Green Gulch or a subgroup in Green Gulch does the practice period, but it had been quite a long time since all of Green Gulch was able to be freed of work and other kinds of responsibilities to such an extent that we could organize a time we would practice formally together.

[01:01]

Of course we practiced in work together and other ways together, but it was difficult for us to get together as a whole community and sit and meditate and chant and study together. So we set aside a special time. We thought we could do three weeks when the whole community would be able to do that. And also we thought that old time Zen center students, people who had experience with practice periods, this would be a time when they could maybe get away and come back to practice for a while. So our original concept was that it would be residents and experienced people, people who have monastic experience at Tassajara or Green Gulch. But people who do not have much monastic experience also expressed, have become interested in this retreat.

[02:02]

And our policy was, if the senior people, if the people with monastic experience sign up, we give them first choice. So if we had had 90 people who had practice period experience and then another 20 who didn't have practice period experience had signed up, we would have given priority to the older, more senior practitioners. And in fact, in our first acceptance, originally we had quite a long waiting list. In our first acceptance, we did accept people by seniority. But it turned out that even though some of you are kind of new to monastic practice, we were able to get everybody in. As a result, there's some people here who are kind of new to the forms of practice. And that's what I'd like to talk about, is the forms of practice.

[03:04]

The monastic forms, the traditional forms of Zen, I would say, practice, but also Zen training. So we have lots of forms in Zen practice, and to me, I guess the fundamental, the most important reason for these forms is to, well, I guess first of all, to surface, to expose, to highlight, the self, the individual, isolated, egotistical self.

[04:08]

And then with this self highlighted, brought into relief and somewhat exposed to awareness with the aid of the monastic forms and disciplines, we then study the self, the self that has been this separate self, this self which wants to get stuff for itself, this self. We study it. And through the study of it, we realize that It's not as independent and separate as we thought. Matter of fact, there is really no independent, separately existing self. There is only an interdependent, insubstantial self.

[05:17]

And there is that. But we tend to think that the separation between us is quite substantial and that ourselves are substantial, and we tend to act like that, and that's our problem. So the forms are, they tend to They tend to flush out the self. And then the self that they flush out is the self that's the troublesome self. So these forms are not like in themselves like the holy and the lovely. They're also not separate from the holy and the lovely, but you know, They themselves could be different, I suppose, some of those forms. For example, we have this thing called gassho, you know.

[06:19]

And in Soto Zen, the way we do gassho is usually put the hands together flat like this. We were taught by certain Soto Zen priests to make the hands flat together, no space in between. But as you know, some Buddhist teachers teach to make a space there, to do it like this, as though you had a little lotus blossom, a lotus bud in your hand. And even our founder, Suzuki Roshi, had a broken finger. His gassho is like this. A bent finger in it. If you look at the, there's two hands joined at the stained glass windows in the city center kitchen, between the dining room and the kitchen. One is Kadagiri Roshi's gassho, which is perfect soto shu, no air between gassho. The other one's got this finger sticking out there, which is Suzuki Roshi's.

[07:21]

And some people may think, oh, I think Suzuki Roshi's is better. But anyway, the point is that there's a form there, so this finger can stick out. And the schedule is another form so you can stick out or not. And I saw, you know, like, for example, at service last night, lots of people were late. I know it's raining and everything, but anyway, there was a lot, like, about twenty people were late. So there you are, you stuck out, and we know who you are. Thank you. So anyway, that's pretty much it, that the forms are ways to surface your self, your self-clinging, your self-concern.

[08:37]

And your self stands out when resistance manifests. Or, put it the other way, if you have any self-clinging, when the self meets the form, there'll be some resistance to the form. And there's two kinds of resistance. One is you indulge in the form, and the other is you reject or rebel against the form. Okay? And we have right here in this room people who do both styles. And some people indulge in one kind of form and resist another kind of form. Some people indulge in all forms and some people resist all forms. There's different varieties of people. But almost everybody, unless they have perfect understanding of the insubstantiality of their separate self, they either indulge a little bit in the form or resist or reject it a little bit.

[09:46]

Okay? Now, for example, again, the gassho, the hands together. Some people do it like this. Yes. Oh, yeah? To come to the gassho? Yeah, sure. Okay. Some people just don't gassho at all. Try to gassho, they won't gassho back. Gassho, that's a certain kind of resistance called rebellion. I, separate from you, is not going to do, me is separate from the form. There's the forms and me, and I'm not going to do them. At least I'm not going to do the gassho thing. when you want to, or when the rules say, or whatever. That's rejection, that's rebellion against the other.

[10:53]

The other. Self-other. Other in the form of the hands to get together. The other way of doing it is, gosh, you're like this. Anybody who doesn't do it this way is wrong. Some people put so much into it, they put 111%. They do it too much. They sink into the gassho. They make the gassho a nest. They make a gassho a way that they're better than other people who don't do it quite right. They know exactly how to do it, and they do it exactly that way, except they don't know exactly how to do it because... they're still holding back and they're still doing it really well. They, the person, is still doing it. When you completely do the form, you don't make it a nest. And you can drop the form when it's appropriate. And you don't use the form to be better than other people or worse than other people. Some other people try to do it sincerely, they're really sincere, they try to do the form, but they keep thinking, oh, I'm not doing it right, I'm not doing it so well, I'm not good.

[12:03]

Still some self-concern, some resistance to the form. When you really do the form, with no resistance, there's just the form. There's no you there anymore. And this is not killing, not stealing, not lying. This is all the Bodhisattva precepts right there. When you do a form like Gassho, 100%, not 101%, not 99%, you give your entire self to it. But nothing left over. Nothing left over and nothing held back. Nothing held back like I'm doing it. A self that does it. Just the form. Just the gassho. Just the schedule. There's just a schedule. There's not you in the schedule anymore. Just orioke.

[13:05]

Just a bow. Just sitting. Just sitting. Not you sitting. Not you doing zazen. Just zazen. But it takes a little while. 30, 40 years to get to that point for most people. struggling back and forth, overdoing it, underdoing it, overdoing it, or just like overdoing it, overdoing it, for years, for decades, overdoing it. For years, decades, underdoing it. All different patterns. But most of us feel, feel, the form tends to give you a chance to feel that extra, or that clean. Because, fortunately, it feels, it hurts. It's uncomfortable. that resistance is uncomfortable. Sometimes the way it feels uncomfortable is you feel really bloated and puffed up and arrogant and powerful. That's sometimes the way it hurts because you're the best bower on the block.

[14:11]

But if you look carefully, it's uncomfortable when this form is done with any self-cleaning. Now, of course, some people don't need these forms to surface their self-being. So they don't need these forms. They have other ways to become aware of themselves and study themselves. This is just one way to do that. But it is a way. And part of the reason why we do it together in groups is that sometimes you may be resisting a form and not notice that you're resisting it. Because sometimes you resist it in a way that's most comfortable to resist it. And then your resistance may show, and then someone may ask you to come in line with form, and then you experience more pain and more selfishness.

[15:20]

Sometimes we adopt the relationship to the form sometimes that hides our self-concern, hides our selfishness. But that often looks funny, so someone can ask you to try it another way, and if you try it the other way, actually as soon as they ask you to try it another way, right there's an opportunity to suddenly feel, hey, wait a minute, how come they're talking to me? How dare they ask me? Who are they? How dare they ask me? Well, there it surfaces. I was kind of comfortable, and now I'm into, like, this person's a real jerk. They don't like the way I'm following the schedule. And, you know, maybe they don't, and that's their problem. An experienced fellow practitioner will ask you about these things, by experienced I mean really experienced, will ask you about these things not because they think they're better than you or they think you're wrong, but because they're actually interested in you as a human being and they want to know how your practice is going.

[16:37]

They want to know what you're up to there doing such and such form in kind of an unusual way. Is it because you weren't instructed? Is it because you're resisting? It is because you're resisting. How is that for you? And would you like to do it the other way? And would you like to study yourself? They actually want to know about your practice and where you're going with it. They're not thinking they're better than you or there's something wrong with you. They just see it as a great opportunity to meet. I think it is. Has it gotten heavy enough yet?

[17:42]

I have some stories to tell, lighten things up a little bit. When I was in my first practice period at Tassajara, it was a small practice period, and our teacher for the practice period was supposed to be Suzuki Roshi. Oh, by the way, one of the things about these classes is that there's a tendency for us to bake ourselves in here. See, we have like 90 people in here or whatever, and we have the windows shut, and we have the fire burning. So feel free to open the windows when you feel a lack of air or overheated, because it does tend to get hot, so... And even if you're not overheated, maybe open the windows for other people. So our teacher for the practice period was supposed to be Suzuki Roshi.

[18:46]

He was going to come down, but he was feeling ill, so he didn't come. And it rained a lot that practice period, and the road got washed out severely. And so we gradually, our diet got simpler and simpler and simpler. We lost, you know, after a while we ran out of things like kerosene, got darker and darker in the zendo, and we ran out of flour, so we stopped having bread. We never really had a meal where we didn't have three things to eat, three different things to put in three bowls. We never really got to that point. But we stopped having things like bread and kind of like solid, kind of like chunky things in our food. So our food tended to get kind of like, just like grains pretty much. And we collected vegetables around Tassajara.

[19:47]

Curly dock and miner's lettuce was our fresh vegetables. I developed some kind of reaction to miner's lettuce during that practice period. Like 25 years later, I actually tasted some miner's lettuce on a hike, and it's delicious. But during that practice period, switching from ordinary vegetables to miner's lettuce, I had some trouble with it. Anyway, we got a very simple diet. But there was occasionally bread, and sometimes bread was served to us in the form of croutons in soup. So you had this soup, and there was some stuff in it, little chunks in it. something actually to get your teeth on, called bread, in this kind of soupy soup. So we somehow were attentive to whatever was going to be cooked, and we knew, most of the monks knew, that there was going to be croutons in the soup. Now croutons, when they absorb the liquid, sink to the bottom of the soup pot. And so I was looking forward to getting some croutons

[20:56]

Now the servers, the servers, there was two servers, two people serving the soup that day. One server was a server who I, we know, we learned each other's serving styles too. It's an intimate situation, small practice period. So we knew which people, which server tended to go down to the bottom of the soup bowl and get the chunky stuff that sinks to the bottom and which servers tended to scoop the liquid off the top. and save the chunky stuff for the servers. Can you imagine such a thing? So I was sitting on one, in the old zendo at Tassajara, at two sides, and I was sitting on the side, and on my side was one of those servers that scooped from the bottom. And I watched him or her coming up the row, giving people these very... kind of like high-gravity servings of chunky stuff.

[22:01]

You could see the stuff tumbling out of the dipper into the bowl, going clunk, clunk, clunk. And I was looking forward to a wonderful soup. On the other side of Zendo was the primo surface skimmer. But he was moving very fast. And if he didn't finish the other side of the zendo before my side of the zendo got finished, then he would come around the corner and start serving my row. And I was watching the good server come from my left, and I was looking over my shoulder to see if the bad server would get there. And as the good server approached the bad server... started coming around the corner, kind of like a doing a, what do you call it? You know how they turn on two wheels around the corner, kind of skidding around the corner at a high speed?

[23:05]

And here I was, sort of wishing, hoping that the good server would get to me first. But the bad server got to me first. And indeed, did serve me pretty much colored water. And I looked down to see this bumpy stuff down at the bottom there. And then he went away. And so there I was with my liquid. And there were no seconds during that practice period for things like that. And when I left the zendo after the meal, it was a luncheon. It was a luncheon, a vegetarian luncheon. When I left the zendo, I was crying. I wasn't crying because I didn't get the croutons. I never cry when I don't get croutons. I was crying because I was concerned to get croutons.

[24:10]

I was crying because I was a person who cared about something like that to such an extent as to let his mind be used to pay attention to which server was going to get to him first. And that seems, I felt so petty to be concerned about that. And it was, I really, another part of me felt great joy to be in a monastery where I could find out that I could be reduced to caring about a crouton or two. Because people don't necessarily know, without the forms, that they would care about a crouton or not a crouton. When you live in San Francisco, if you're a Zen student and you live in San Francisco, when you're hungry you just go to the refrigerator, most middle class Zen students anyway, or if you want a cookie you go to the grocery store. But in the monastery, during the meal, when the server serves you kind of whatever they serve you, you take what they serve you.

[25:14]

And you don't say, although some people do, would you please reach down the bottom there and give me some of that stuff that I want? Because of the form. Now, of course, you can resist the form. No problem, just give me the croutons. And if he doesn't give you the croutons, just take the Layla out of his hand. You know, it's no problem. I don't have any problem. I mean, I'm not attached to fruit trans. I just want some. So give me this ladle, you. So and so. As a matter of fact, you know, during that same, not during that practice period, but the next practice period, one of my old friends who was the Eno, one time served himself, what do you call it, oatmeal with his hands out of the serving pot. He stuck his hand in a moat meal and scooped it out into his pot. So, this is another form of resistance. The point is anyway, is there self-concern there?

[26:15]

Is there belief in self? Are you really worried about you getting the croutons rather than all beings get the croutons? And how do you feel about that? So that's what the forms do for you. And it's tiring, too. It's tiring to resist the forms. To put your hands together with resistance takes a certain amount of energy, whether, I don't know if it's 10% more energy, or 100% more energy, or 500% more energy, but when we do these forms with self-clinging, they're much more tiring. When you get to the point where you do them Without much self-concern, they're much, much, much easier. But part of the training is feeling tired as you put too much or too little into the schedule. As you put too much or too little into caring about how you do the forms.

[27:20]

Being too concerned with doing them right, that's one type of person, they're like they're really having a hard time because they feel like they're going to make all these mistakes. So they're stressed. That tires you. The other kind of tiring is you don't care whether you do them right or not. That's tiring too. If not to you, to somebody else. And then they give you some feedback which tires you. So anyway, that's the main thing for the forms is that they offer this opportunity. And so to do the forms in this this way which finally there's no holding back or sinking into them, is, well, when you hit that point, you hit that point. I mean, you hit the point of your life. You realize the place where you and the form are not two different things. Which means where you and other are not separate.

[28:28]

And the same applies then to your relationships with people on your cruise and so on and so forth. It's just that there the forms are much more complex so it's a little harder to find that. So you might find a way to do some of these forms in such a way that you weren't rebelling and weren't indulging where you felt that that was pretty much the case and where other people feel that way about it too. And other people also then are inspired and encouraged when you hit that place. Because, you know, you emanate, you emanate selflessness, at least to the extent that the form is offering you that opportunity. You emanate joy, the joy of selflessness. the joy of following the schedule, selflessly the joy of bowing, of sitting, not for yourself, and not even for the other, because at that time there's not really another.

[29:43]

But you sit just for sitting, and you walk just for walking, and you bow just for bowing, and you eat just for eating. And this encourages everyone. You have no room left over to think even how inspiring you are. But you are. On the other hand, don't worry. When we resist, we also inspire people. Because it's kind of entertaining to see people, you know, fighting against the form or like, you know, indulging in it and doing it perfectly. I finally did a perfect bow. Did you see that? So we're all kind of inspiring. It's kind of inspiring that we would try to do these practices before we can do them. It's lovely and sweet that we are willing to subject ourselves to the form before we find this place. So everybody's actually inspiring. It's just we inspire people in different ways. We encourage people in different ways. It is encouraging to people sometimes for us to walk into the wall because they see, oh, there's a wall there.

[30:51]

Or look what happens when you don't look where you're going. That's, thank you. Or, oh, that's a glass window, thanks, and so on. We can help people by making mistakes. Or, oh, it's slippery there, thank you. So it isn't that we don't help people, it's just that we help people in different ways at different ways we practice. So that's kind of a pep talk. You don't look very peppy. But it's not just a pep talk, it's also just my understanding of the point of the forms. It's not that we are the good Zen students who have our neat forms, like we're the only group that's got Oriyoki. The point of this all is to realize selflessness

[31:56]

through the grimy, grimy, gritty work of dealing with the self. One person told me, I want to get rid of this self-clinging. I want to get rid of this self. I want to forget about this self. How can I do it? There are various ways to do it, but for me... seems like, let's face it, people have got them. Why don't we just start where we are and admit that we've got one, and if we can completely be completely aware of how selfish we are, we forget the self. But it's very painful to take the road to perfect awareness of how selfish we are. It's hard to look at that. So we have to practice patience with the pain of our selfishness in order to settle in, and we have to be kind to ourselves with that.

[33:05]

So part of what I'm leading up to, in a way, is that at the beginning of the practice, the foundation of the practice of realizing selflessness, is to want to realize selflessness and to want to understand the self. And to want to understand how the self is really something that's interdependent. And to want to do that sort of for an interdependent idea. I mean, based on interdependence, to want to understand interdependence. And that's called, we call that bodhi mind, or the thought of enlightenment, or bodhicitta. And bodhicitta is sort of the ground of the bodhisattva precepts. I mean, it's the ground in terms of our experience of the ground. But I get the impression that I just introduced something that maybe I shouldn't have introduced yet.

[34:18]

Because you look like maybe I just took too big a step there. So do you want to maybe have a little break now and talk or jump up and down or something? Any questions? Yes? You mentioned at the outset that people choose different types of forms. This is not necessarily the only. The so-called Zen way is not the only form. Right, right. How do you distinguish between choosing a different form and resisting? Oh, well, if you're choosing one form and then you try it for like five minutes and then choose another form and try it for five minutes, choose another form for five minutes, then you are indicted for resisting. I think you can, I would suggest to you that any form you choose, you can kind of assume that it's going to be quite a few years before you're not going to be resisting that form. And if you're switching from one form to another, then I think you can kind of assume you haven't even started to practice any form.

[35:26]

You haven't barely started to practice anything. So, just any form, any, the point is, the point is we're all, basically we're resisting reality. Human beings are resisting reality. human beings are resisting their interdependence with all things. That's our basic resistance. So then any practice you would enter into to understand reality, any practice that would give you an opportunity to actually experience how you don't understand reality, it is possible to experience how you don't understand reality. It's not really possible in a sense to experience reality, because reality is not an experience. Reality is the totality of your life. It's not what you're experiencing. It's you and your experience. It's your awareness and your experience. But you can experience your separation, because separation is you and your experience.

[36:32]

So to enter into a practice where you free yourself from ignorance is to enter into a practice where you admit that you're somewhat ignorant, that you have some delusions, and then you won't be surprised then if you're deluded and ignorant that you'd have some resistance. You might still be surprised that you had any resistances. You might say, well, I knew I was deluded, but I didn't think I was deluded enough to resist, too. But what I'm saying is that until we don't have any delusions, we'll resist reality somewhat. So let's just assume that we're resisting. I don't know, I guess I would say, consider, instead of let's assume, consider the possibility that you're resisting reality. the world, considering the possibility that you're resisting some or all other people, plants, animals, and the sky and the mountains and everything, consider that you're resisting everything. Consider it. Consider that you're deluded and that you think you're separate.

[37:35]

Now, some of you, after considering that, would say, yeah, I agree. I do think I'm separate. I am deluded that way. And I do see I resist certain situations. So, If anybody doesn't think they're resisting, I would like to extend a personal invitation to hear about this, just to witness this wonderful event. This would be wonderful. And we could talk about whether we will show you to someone else, whether we'll exhibit you. You know, anyway, resistance is another name of the game. It's the friction we, you know, climb the mountain on. It's the way we, it's the way we find balance. It's through that, through being alone. Bernd? If the forms are vessels for the study of the self, does that actually mean that forms are completely arbitrary?

[38:44]

No, it doesn't mean necessarily they're completely arbitrary. As a matter of fact, no forms, nothing is completely arbitrary, I would say. There are no things appearing in this world. We have no evidence for anything that is completely arbitrary. There are no things like that that are completely arbitrary. Everything that there is, everything we have any evidence for, you could make up something as arbitrary, but anything you actually have evidence for is not arbitrary because it everything that we have evidence for depends on conditions. And everything depends on conditions in a very rigorous, non-arbitrary way. You, for example, are not arbitrarily what you appear to be. There's a rigor in you. There's a rigor in all things. Everything does depend on its conditions. Even being a non-rigorous person rigorously, dependently co-arises and is very lawfully supported by its conditions.

[39:50]

Laziness is a rigorous phenomena. All phenomena are rigorous. They must be exactly what they are. They cannot be otherwise. And the way they are is that they depend on other things and therefore they have no core. They're insubstantial and they're impermanent. but there's a rigor in insubstantiality and impermanence, namely everything is adamant, [...] huh? Adamantine. Adamantine. Adamantly adamantine. Everything is that way. So, even arbitrariness is adamantinely, adamantly adamantine. There is a phenomenon called arbitrariness, but you are not arbitrary and the forms are not arbitrary. They arise because of human bodies, because of the history of Zen, because of the realization of yogis. The human body under certain circumstances naturally does certain things.

[40:53]

When you sit upright for a long time you experience certain phenomena that certain lawful things start happening to your body depending on on how you sit, what you eat, how much sleep you get, what exercises you've done. All this works according to certain laws. Yes. I'm asking, this is kind of very important to me, because I feel there's something almost essential in the form of sitting practice that is conducive to, let's say, an upright mode of being. So I'm saying it couldn't be this form. I'm having form right now. It's crossed and slightly hunched over. You're saying it couldn't be that form. I think it couldn't be that form. It would be more difficult to be in a right mood. Did you hear what he's saying? He's saying he has legs across, he's bending forward, and he said it couldn't be that form.

[41:55]

So I don't want to... I want to get around your couldn't be, okay? And just say that when people go to the Zendo... to sit upright the way you think is not arbitrary, and I don't think it's arbitrary either, the traditional form of sitting upright, you think it's pretty good, right? Has some opportunities, right? And then you say, it couldn't be such and such. But in fact, people do sit the way you say they couldn't be. People do sit, I don't know, you have perfect posture, but some people, some people do sit bent over. So to say that it couldn't be that way, The point is it can be that way. People can go to the zendo and sit bent over and they can sit with their legs crossed in lots of different ways. But the point I'd like to make is that whatever position they're in, they will experience the rigorous consequences of that posture. And they can experience what it's like to sit whatever way they're sitting. So although there may be an ideal way that's very comfortable,

[43:00]

and balanced. All the other varieties of that sitting posture are potential sites of awakening. And the point is, human beings are, they sit, they stand, they walk, they lie down, and they do all the postures in between those four postures. Right? Okay? Okay? So, in fact, we can't avoid sitting, standing, walking, and reclining. We're involved in those postures. And those are the postures we work on. But also the postures in between we work on. And all those postures are forms which we are doing wholeheartedly, or half-heartedly, that we're resisting one way or another. we're 99% present, 80% present, 60% present, 20% present, or we're 110% present.

[44:06]

We're present perfectly or we're a little off depending on basically self-concern, which deviates us from whatever posture we're in. Now it is true that people who sit a lot tend to start sitting up straighter over the years. But then at a certain point, they start to bend over as they approach death. Even our dear teacher, Shizukurashi, as he got older, he said, now I'm old, I can't sit up straight anymore, but I try. He's still working with the form, even though he can't sit up straight anymore, because he's heading towards the ground. So the reality of the ideal posture for a given person is always there, namely there is a posture which is best for each of us, But sometimes we can't find that posture. But even if you can't find the posture because of your physical situation, you can't realize it, or because you're resisting, you can still, the point of the posture is not to get into this great place that's a substantial place, but to use whatever posture you're in to realize any kinds of ignorance of the interdependence of all life.

[45:20]

And therefore to see that ignorance and to see that that's the source of suffering and to see that and awaken to the reality of the pinnacle arising of all things. And you can do it bent over. You know, like Ananda. I told a story a few years about Ananda. He was the great disciple of Buddha and he was meditating. I think Ananda probably had a pretty nice posture. He was kind of a cute guy, and very smart, but he wasn't enlightened, and they needed him to come to a meeting, and all the people at the meeting were enlightened, and only enlightened people were allowed to come to the meeting, but they needed him because he knew all the certain things that they needed to know. So they had this crash course on him, upright sitting, you know, and... And it was the night before the big meeting, you know, and he was just like, kind of like, oh, crap, you know.

[46:25]

I'm not going to be able to go to the meeting. It's going to be a flop because I know certain stuff that they need to know. And he just kind of like threw himself into his bed, like without even like touching the edge of the bed, he just kind of threw himself in bed. And as he's flying through the air to his bed, he woke up. So you can, so, you know, off the ground, in the air, bent, you can wake up, you can wake up in any position. But the point is that when you wake up, you're in that position and the way they are is that they're not the way they appear. And you understand that when you completely settle into it. Okay? So now, Maybe you're ready for what I tried to talk about before, but I did not stop. Mainly, I was going to talk about Bodhi Mind. And Bodhi Mind is what you need as a basis for flying through the air and realizing awakening. Because if we try to practice hitting this point, hitting this mark of things being just so,

[47:35]

And things being just so means things are dependent on other things. That we have to like really completely give up our own ideas. I should say give up our old ideas. Drop everything and just be one with what's happening. But that should be grounded in this bodhicitta. It should be grounded in the thought of enlightenment. Otherwise, we can get kind of spaced out and abstract about what it means to just be, you know, hit the mark of the form and realize interdependence. In other words, to study the ultimate teaching of interdependence. That's the ultimate teaching. It should be grounded in the thought of enlightenment. So Lathasahara, at the beginning of the practice period, I went right into the teaching of suchness, the teaching of how it is, and the practices of training in suchness.

[48:39]

But this practice period, I'd like to warm up to that a little bit by grounding in the forms, grounding in the awareness of the resistance to the forms and the self-clinging involved, and the bodhicitta which arises in conjunction with our awareness of our selfishness. So I'm postponing the talk about the teaching of suchness, the training in suchness, for a little while. Nagarjuna says, first of all he said the Buddha taught two truths, a conventional truth and an ultimate truth. And then he said, without being grounded and well-versed in the conventional truth, it's not appropriate to teach the ultimate truth.

[49:41]

And without the ultimate truth, nirvana cannot be realized. So the ultimate truth is the truth of emptiness and interdependence. But we can't, it's not appropriate to get into that unless we're grounded in conventional truth. So I'd like to do some work on conventional truth at the beginning and a conventional situation of our self-clinging and so on at the beginning of the practice period before talking about... Ultimate perspective. Too much. I already did a little bit. And in the morning, during the heart sutra, we do a little bit. All dharmas are marked by emptiness, so you've already been exposed to this ultimate perspective.

[50:43]

But you don't seem to be too wrought up about it, so I guess it's all right. Okay, any other... But I think maybe it's too much to start that today, so then later I'll bring up this bodhicitta. Actually, no, I won't bring up bodhicitta. I'll do it now. Because the paper's right here. I might as well do it, right? I see this thing that says... It says three kinds of bodhicitta in Soto Zen. And in a way, there's really four. But anyway... One kind of bodhicitta is a bodhicitta which Dogen Zenji teaches, which sounds very similar to bodhicitta as taught by other Mahayana practitioners, which is the wish or the desire or the intention to liberate other beings before yourself.

[51:49]

Or to put it another way, to attain unsurpassed enlightenment in order to liberate other beings before yourself. So there's a fascicle called Hotsubo Daishin, The Arousing of the Bodhi Mind. And in that chapter he says over and over, to liberate or save others before oneself. To liberate others and save others before oneself. To attain enlightenment and liberate others before oneself. And somebody told me that this is one, this is called the shepherd's approach to bodhicitta. You know, shepherd everybody else to freedom before yourself. But there's another approach which is called more the kingly approach or the monarch approach monarchical or sovereign's approach where you actually just want to attain enlightenment period that's the main thing you just enlighten them of course when you are you will liberate others before yourself but of course you can't liberate others before yourself it's impossible because as soon as you liberate others you're already liberated as soon as you enlighten others you're already enlightened so they can't be before you it's actually at the same time

[53:14]

which is another kind of teaching of Soto Zen, is that self and other are liberated, are enlightened at the same time. You attain the way at the same time. The attainment of the Buddha way is simultaneous with all beings. You don't attain it first or second. But still, the thought of bodhicitta is to want others to be liberated before you. That's one way he puts it. Another way to talk about bodhicitta is bodhicitta is the mind which sees impermanence. The mind which sees impermanence. And there could be some debate about what this seeing means, whether this is a real intimate seeing or just a glimpse. You can say, okay, it's just a glimpse, but it's a real glimpse. It's a glimpse of you really see what impermanence is.

[54:17]

You really see the actual import and significance, the actuality of impermanence. You actually have a glimpse of it. Full intimacy with impermanence is tantamount to Buddha. That's another aspect or way of talking about bodhi mind. And another way of talking about bodhi mind is to emulate the conduct of body, speech, and mind of the Buddha ancestors. Kind of to copy the Zen ancestors. It's another way. And in the process of copying the ancestors... You don't just get to be a cute little Zen master or Zen mistress by copying these ancestors.

[55:26]

What happens is that in the process you realize that you're a selfish little sentient being who's trying to copy something great. So all this, that's where the forms come up, is where you try to emulate the masters of the past Try to be just like the great teachers of the past. Live just like them. Walk just like them. Talk just like them. Think just like them. Do the same practices as them. And this again surfaces any self and brings you back to look at the self. So another way Dogen Zenji talks about how to give rise to bodhicitta is just look at your ordinary clinging, your ordinary greedy striving for fame and profit. Look at the self which is always trying to get something for itself. Take a good look at that. Look at that. Look at that. Look at that self which is trying to get something, trying to gain something, trying to improve something.

[56:33]

This society is very strongly influenced by the impulse to self-improvement. self-improvement is considered a virtue by a great number of people. I think all of us to some extent feel this thing of the virtue of self-improvement. This is the ordinary mind self-improving ordinary mind. Look at that self-improving mind, that mind which wants to improve, improve, improve itself. Look at that, look [...] at that. This is what Dogen's energy recommends as a way to initiate the realization of bodhi mind. Because again, as you look and look and look at this greedy mind, gain-oriented, fame-oriented, egotistical self, if you look at that thoroughly and you hit the mark in your observation of it, then you can forget the self and practice quietly.

[57:41]

Then you realize the bodhi mind. So in a sense, having this ordinary greedy mind, the greedy mind is not bodhi mind, but looking at the greedy mind opens the door to the bodhi mind. Looking at the fame and profit-oriented egotistical mind, looking at that, the looking at that opens the door to the mind which forgets this stuff. So, I guess some of us have got that ordinary mind so we can look at it. If anybody doesn't, I could loan you one. And then with this loner, ordinary mind, you can open the door to bodhi mind. You can open the door to forgetting the self. You can't forget the self if you don't have one, so I'll give you one if you need one. And I'll not just give you a self, I'll give you a self that really wants to improve itself and get better and gain.

[58:44]

And if you can find that self and study that self, you can forget that self. And then we've got bodhicitta. And then with bodhicitta we can study buddha-dharma. The awesome selfless teaching of dependent core arising and emptiness. The teaching of suchness. The teaching of a suchness which there isn't even a suchness of. But we won't get into that for a little while until you're a little bit more grounded in the practice period. Okay? Any other... Does that make sense? Sort of? It's on tape. If I say things that don't make sense, sometimes if you memorize them, it helps. A lot of this teaching about dependent core arising and so on and emptiness is difficult, but if you study it and memorize it, it helps you. Yes, tantra-sama? You said there were three Soto Zen teachers on Bodhicitta.

[59:56]

Did you just give us those three? The first one was Dogen? Soto Zen means Dogen Zenji. So in Hotsu Bodai Shen he teaches... That bodhicitta, bodhi mind, is this kind of impulse and wish to want to attain enlightenment so you can save all, all, all, all other beings before yourself. It's got to be, by the way, all other beings. If it's not all other beings, not enough. Okay, that's one kind of bodhicitta. That actually wanted to do that. Next kind of bodhicitta is a real glimpse to actually see impermanence. That's another kind of bodhicitta. that Dogen Zenji feels is important. And then that kind of bodhicitta, seeing impermanence, once you see it, then you have a chance to become intimate with it. Intimacy with impermanence is, I would say, realization of the way. And the third kind is copy the ancestors.

[60:57]

Emulate the behavior of the enlightened masters of the past. Okay? But then kind of the other tip I'm giving you is that in all these cases if you haven't got these if you can't see impermanence or you can't really feel like you really do want to attain the way in order to save beings and you really do want to emulate the difficult example of the ancestors if you're not ready to do those kinds of bodhicitta a kind of way to get into it is work with the way you are now. Look at your ordinary mind. That will give you a way to get into these three types of bodhicitta. And in fact, particularly, that's why the third kind, which is kind of unusual, the kind of following the example of the ancestors, That naturally brings up this resistance and self-clinging because you say, well, I want to be like the ancestors. So there's your greedy mind comes right out there like, you know, I want to follow the schedule just like, you know, so-and-so did. I want to do it, you know, just perfectly like so-and-so did.

[62:00]

I want to do it in this really inspiring way that so-and-so did. Well, there you got, there's this selfishness right there. So I think the third one is kind of an important practical aspect of bodhicitta that surfaces the real way for ordinary people to get into bodhicitta. So it's kind of a fourth way. Any sense? Well, I guess... Somebody told me, he said, well, you know, that thing about saving other beings before yourself, that's not really such and such and so and so. There's another way which is called the kingly way or the sovereign way. Do you want to know about that? You can talk to Helen. Helen, she knows something about the kingly way. I was just telling you about the shepherd's way. That's Dogen's way. It's the shepherd way. It's what he called the... The Catcher in the Rye way.

[63:04]

By the way, you know what? I just found out my wife, I guess I can't tell you this. Huh? What? You already know who. You already know who. Something about my wife that's really interesting. And I have to ask you if I can tell you. Next time we get together, I'll let you know. Anything else? Anything else you want to know about my wife? Or me? Yes, Lee? Well, if we could follow the way of the ancestors to check this out, did they all do different things or did they all do the same thing? I think they probably all did different things.

[64:08]

And yeah, I think so, probably. But they did whatever was happening at the time. I think that what they mastered is being intimate with whatever was happening at the time. I think that's a similarity between the ancestors of the Buddhist tradition, is that they managed to be in accord with reality. That's a similarity among them, that they all entered into the dependently co-arisen life space. Did they all do the forms that were current? I would say to you, you know, both from the scholarly point of view and from the kind of what I call it the school point of view, the religious practitioner point of view, because I kind of like go on both sides sometimes. I have trouble on either point of view ever finding anybody who really was really, really, really helpful that didn't run into some forms.

[65:21]

Not just within Buddhism, but it seems like all the great beings that have lived are people that have met with the tradition. They weren't just people, they struggled with tradition in some way. And so I think in Buddhist tradition, all the ancestors worked with tradition, but how they did it, how they found that point, that intimacy with the tradition would look different in each case. Because some of them were, you know, deformed. So they couldn't do it according to some objective standard. Pratyekabuddhas didn't do that. Pratyekabuddhas, I think, Pratyekabuddhas, one of the understandings of Pratyekabuddha is a Buddha is one who awakens by conditions. And one of the conditions could be that in a previous life they did it. But if you look at the present life, you can't see in the present life the conditions for their awakening.

[66:27]

That's one understanding, is that conditions means you can't see the conditions. Whereas for an arhat, you can see the conditions, namely they're in discipline. But Pratyekabuddha, like Albert Einstein or something maybe, you can't see all his lives as a Buddhist monk. Right? And you can't see him as a Buddhist monk in his last life, right? You'd think he was a Jewish monk. But even in his last life, he still bumped up against forms, the forms of physics and mathematics. So there are forms. Human beings come with forms. And so the question is how to interact with them in a liberating way. I can't see how anybody would not... be able, how someone would be able to not have to deal with forms. Because they're there. Yes? What kind of Buddhas?

[67:30]

Pratyekabuddha. So there's Pratyekabuddha, arhats, and bodhisattvas, and Buddhas, right? Yeah. Yeah, well this is, this is a kind of like Buddhist doctrine is that there's different kinds of enlightened beings. Arhats are enlightened. They're enlightened beings. They're free of personal hang-ups. Pratyekabuddhas had equal understanding. They do not any longer believe in... Both Arhats and Pratyekabuddhas do not believe in an independent selfhood. And they attain nirvana, which is, they attain nirvana called pratisamkhya nirvana, which is the nirvana or the cessation due to their effort in practice. But the Pratyekabuddhas are not like, they are enlightened, but you can't see that they were enlightened by being in the Buddha's community and receiving Buddha's teachings. But the Buddha did recognize that such a phenomena could exist. They don't teach. They could teach, you know, and they can teach.

[68:30]

It's like your grandmother or somebody. Yeah, like your grandmother. Or your dog, yeah, right. Yes. In this fourth way, looking at one's own self-improving mind and realizing the greediness of that. And then in realizing the greediness of it, studying it more and more thoroughly, more and more thoroughly, until you see just how the mind is and just how the self is, and then forgetting the self. Okay? Then it becomes possible to forget the self once one has really seen it thoroughly. Yes. Right. Once you've seen yourself and yourself clean thoroughly, it becomes possible to forget about yourself and yourself clean, to drop it all. But you can't drop it by absentee ballot. You have to drop it right in the middle of being involved in it because that's where it counts.

[69:32]

That's where it hurts and that's where letting go counts. It's not a theoretical letting go therefore it's not a theoretical experience of selfishness. But it's painful to experience selfishness so we like a little distance on it which is more selfishness and more pain and so on. Is that enough for today? So let me know when you want another class and we'll have one.

[70:07]

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