Sometimes it's quiet in the city. There are moments when it's quiet. And being grateful for those moments, I'd like to speak a little bit more about the practice of upright sitting. The practice of upright sitting is the realm in which, the way in which we can realize the meaning of Buddha's appearing in this world. Buddhas appear in this world for one great matter.

[01:13]

The meaning of that is they appear to lead us, lead all sentient beings to open to Buddha's knowledge and vision. They wish to demonstrate Buddha's knowledge and vision to us. They wish to lead us to awaken to it. And they wish to lead us to enter it, to enter the way of Buddha's wisdom and vision. That's what they're appearing for And the practice of upright sitting is the realm in which we clarify this one great matter. But before we even enter Buddha's way, or as a way of entering Buddha's way, we have to consider whether we really feel that we can do it, that we're allowed to.

[03:03]

A few weeks ago I received, on behalf of the whole Sangha, a robe which the whole Sangha made. And when I received it, I put it, I raised it above my head and I said, I, Tenshin Zenki, Buddha's disciple, receive this robe, this 25-paneled robe, And I was deeply touched hearing my own words, and particularly I was deeply touched when I heard myself say, I so-and-so, Buddha's disciple. I don't know if I really am Buddha's disciple, but I felt deeply touched just to be able to say that, just to be able to say, I, Buddha's disciple.

[04:54]

Sometimes when we soberly consider who we are, we may think, we may wonder if we can be Buddha's disciple, if we can carry on the work of Buddha And I think some of us feel that way, but at the same time, I also feel that there's nobody else to carry on the work of Buddha. So if you and I don't do it, who is going to? We see faults in ourselves and we see faults in others. And since we see faults in others, we also probably imagine others see faults in us. And they do. So considering that we see faults in ourselves and we see faults in others and others see faults in us, how can we dare to enter Buddha's way?

[06:11]

And yet, when we do dare, and when we say, I so-and-so Buddha's disciple, somehow, after taking that risk and saying that, I felt really great. And I love to say, I Tenshin Zenki Buddha's disciple. I feel really good saying that. Matter of fact, that could be my practice, just go around and say that to myself. You could do the same. Just go around, say your name, Buddhist or non-Buddhist. See how you feel. Somebody said to me that he knows, he heard of a person, a neurotic person, who said, I wouldn't want to be member of any club that would allow me in. But that's really neurotic. The Buddhist club is a club that you are allowed in.

[07:31]

Do you want to be in a club that does allow you in and allows everybody else in, too? Anyway, that's the club I want to belong to. And I'm happy to say I want to belong to it. And I'm happy that everybody else is welcome, too. Now what about this seeing our faults and what about seeing the faults of others? Well, there's a precept about not discussing the faults of others. So let's not get into that. But somehow we see people and really they are kind of, I mean, we do see them the way we see them and they appear just the way they appear. They are appearing like that and they're going to probably keep appearing like that. But there's a subtle shift that can occur in your mind, which is very important.

[08:32]

It's when you shift from seeing that so-and-so is like that to so-and-so is just like that. In other words, so-and-so has got these qualities, but that's just the way they are. They're just that way. As a matter of fact, that is who they are. They're not somebody else who's got these qualities on top of them. They're just that way. And I'm like that too, and you're like that too. And because we are the way we are, people have problems with us. They do. So we think maybe we should be different because of the problems they have with us.

[09:34]

Well, that's nice of us to think that. That's really sweet of us to be willing to be somebody else because we're so troublesome. But we're not somebody else, unfortunately, or in my case anyway, it's unfortunate I'm not someone else. I could try to be somebody else, but It won't work. That'll just be me trying to be somebody else out of my great condescension, thinking that people can't really stand me. Some of you people maybe can't stand me, but the Buddha that has each of you, you can stand me. I'm a problem. But you can handle it. You can live with it. It's true what you see.

[10:36]

But that's just the way I am. I had this vision one time of myself. Coming in the front door is then center. When I come in the front door is then center, not always, but often when I come in the front door is then center, guess what happens when I come in the front door is then center? Yes. It's not that, huh? What? Yeah, people come and say hi to me. But also what happens is when I come in the door is then center, ladies and gentlemen, I come in the door is then center. I come in the door and I stand there. I'm there. That's me. And it's a problem. People got to deal with it. Some, not everybody, but a lot of people have to deal with it. When I walk in the door, there I am and they see me and they say, there he is. They do. And I feel it too. So several years ago, I thought, well, I'll just come in the door and kind of like, I won't really like, I won't really like come in the door and be me.

[11:42]

I'll come in the door and kind of like, I'll kind of like, I'll bring a cane or something and I'll kind of lean on the cane. I'll be kind of like, I'll sort of be a wimpy version of myself. And then I'll be easier for them. You know, it'll be easy. But in that vision I saw, they'll just see it's that same guy that comes in the door and it's him leaning on a cane. It won't cut it. They won't fall for it. They'll just say, well, now on top of everything else... When I was eight years old, I hired one of my friends to beat me up in public so the other kids wouldn't be afraid of me. It didn't work.

[12:45]

They knew what was happening. They said, why is he having that guy beat him up? Wonder what the point of that is. They didn't think, oh, maybe he wants us to relate to him. They thought, geez, that's just really weird. Now we have to cope with this too? What's next? Anyway, it doesn't work. And also, as I said, it's a kind of condescending for me to try to be not what I am just because I'm difficult for you. As though you can't take it. I know you have a hard time, but you can handle your hard time. And you can also handle the hard time you're having with the other people. So they also don't have to be different from what they are. And also, you don't need to get all those people, including me, to be different from what we are. And also, you don't have to be different from what you are so that other people will have an easy time with you.

[13:47]

Because they won't have an easy time with you. It'll just make things more complicated. Because you'll be you, plus they have to deal with this fact that you're kind of like trying not to be you. So you come on kind of like, well, I'm not this. And they say, well, what does that mean? Still, it's okay to come on like that. I'm not criticizing it, really. It just makes life more interesting. Like I've noticed in my life, excuse me for making this generalization, but Taurus women often come up to me and say, I mean, they go out of their way and they walk up to me and say, I don't like you. But then I'll often think, well, why did you come and tell me that then? They go way out of their way and come up and say, stay away from me, don't come near me. And I think, well, that's kind of interesting. What's going on? It makes me very interested, it has a... But, you know, I don't quite understand what it means, but it attracts me.

[14:50]

And then I find out later, usually, that they didn't really mean that, that actually they went out of their way to tell me I really am quite interesting. That's why I put it that way. I'm not the ordinary kind of person that says, please pay attention to me. I'm the kind that says, don't pay attention to me. Stay away. Of course, that's just not really true what I said, but that's my experience. But I'll tell you what is true is it makes me interested when somebody comes and says, I don't want to talk to you. The condition of a living being, the condition of being a living being, like these living beings in this room, the condition of being a living being itself is what we mean by Buddha. It's not like a living being gets kind of like worked up and made better and then becomes Buddha.

[16:01]

Precisely what a living being is, is what we mean by Buddha. including that living beings think that they can't be the way they are. But you have to confess the way you are. I have to confess. I'm this way. That's the way I am. And by admitting that, I get closer and more intimate with the living being itselfness of me, which is my Buddha nature. And you do the same. And that honesty, confessing your human state and being willing to be a human being itself, that is the practice of upright sitting. And it is in that honesty and that willingness to be who you are and face the difficulty that everybody, including yourself, has when you're yourself, Facing that music, living with that, is the realm of upright sitting. And it is there, of all places, where we clarify the great matter, where we clarify what Buddha's wisdom is.

[17:12]

It's in that hot world, which has a cool center, that we find this subtle dharma being perfectly opened, demonstrated, awakened to, and entered This practice, the actual ongoing practice of accepting what's happening with us, including that we think something else should be happening, that practice is what I've been calling initiation by fire. It's a yogic practice, and before there were yogis, it was called a shamanic practice. the shamanic practice of becoming intimate with yourself.

[18:16]

Someone described Buddha's enlightenment when he was first in enlightenment as two-thirds shamanism and one-third philosophy. I have some, besides my body and my clothes and my books and other toys I brought, I have more visual aids. One, two. OK, so I want to start with the first visual aid is a Chinese character. See it? I drew the outlines, and Maya and Vicki colored it in. I made a Zen coloring book this morning, and I told them to use black.

[19:24]

That's pronounced in Japanese, Zen. I wrote down at the bottom, ugly. Some people thought this was an ugly character. It's not ugly, is it? I am ugly. And I'm not going to stop being ugly. And I'm ugly in a particularly disgusting way. Because I'm not ugly like a hunchback of Notre Dame is ugly. I'm cute ugly. Anyway, that says Zen, OK? See it? This part here, this is made of two parts. The two parts are called radicals. All right? Radicals are parts of Chinese characters. And each one of these radicals is also a character by itself.

[20:27]

Now, when the Chinese chose this word, the way they pronounce it is chan. And they chose this word with another word, which is pronounced naa. And they chose those two words to transliterate a Sanskrit word, dhyana, or a Pali word, jhana. So using their own characters, they made up the sound chhana to transliterate dhyana, which means concentration. And the way the Japanese say the word chhan is zen. All right? But the character they chose not only has a sound, chan, or like John, but it also, the two parts, the two radicals, have interesting meaning, too. Interesting shamanistic meaning, yogic meaning.

[21:39]

Now, what do the two parts mean? This radical is combined to make lots of characters. This one on the right is used to make lots of different characters. And most of the characters it's used to make means some have to do with happiness or religion or holiness or divinity. The word for Shinto shrine or Shinto god, like the kami, the gods in Shintoism, have this radical on the left side. The character which has to do with good fortune and happiness has this radical on the right side. On the left, on the left, okay? So this side means happiness, freedom, all that good stuff.

[22:46]

The other side means alone. So the character has the possible semantic expression or conveyance of happiness through being alone or being one with yourself. And Zen, this word Zen, by itself can mean the happiness which you get by being completely alone, by atoning to yourself, which is what I've been talking about, right? Which is this initiation by fire, this shamanic initiation by fire, by admitting and admitting and admitting and confessing and atoning to yourself, over and over all the way until you are released from yourself, until you hit the bottom of yourself, until you find the place you come from and go back to.

[23:50]

Okay, that's Zen. Zen, this meaning of Zen anyway, is, as Suzuki Roshi said, the key that unlocks Buddhism. You have to get to this place But this isn't the whole story of upright sitting. And that's why we have a word called zazen. This is a character for za. OK? You see it? Also, another page from the Zen coloring book. But again, only one color is used this morning. But you can use other colors later if you like. Now, yesterday I told you about another Chinese character. Do you remember from yesterday? Huh? Person. See it?

[24:51]

Person. Remember person? See, this is a person walking, but this line also is supported by this line. Take away this line, it falls on its face. That's person. You take a person, take away the other people, you don't have a person anymore. You got a dead boy. People do not exist by themselves. They exist by the support of others. So this character, Za, do you see any people in there, Tayo? See the people? One person? Two people. There's two people in there. Do you see them? Can you find the people? Do you see them in there? Two people sitting. And this character here, this one which is a vertical line and two horizontal lines, see it? That character means earth or ground. Or universe. So you can see that what this character is saying, this character for sitting, and there's other characters for sitting, but this character for sitting, the Chinese chose for their Zen practice.

[25:56]

They put this with Zen. It's two people sitting together in the universe. two people sitting together on the earth. You put these two together, and what you have is usually like that. What you have is zazen. You have two people, or all people, sitting together in the universe, each person finding happiness by being herself all the way. This character here, you know, this one here, This vertical line here, this one going down here, it's fun to draw it and keep going all the way off the paper down to the bottom of the universe with it. All the way to be yourself. Okay? So we start sitting with other people and do our Zen practice.

[27:04]

And after we have... completely given ourselves to the Zen practice, then we go back in a sense and understand what it means that we're sitting together. Now, it's already almost time to stop, and I haven't really started yet with what I want to talk about. And before I start with what I want to talk about, I want to tell you some more, to give you some background on Buddhism. All right? What I want to tell you about is that traditionally we speak of five paths in Buddhism. But maybe you're not ready for these five paths.

[28:13]

Maybe you should take a few breaths before I tell you about them. What's that look mean, Hillary? Translate into English. What? You don't want to say it? No? OK. She made a face, and I wonder what it meant. So you ready? They're five paths. I'll say them in Sanskrit just to show off a little bit, all right? First one is called Sambharamarga. Next one's called Trayogamarga. Next one's called Darshanamarga. Next one's called Bhavanamarga. And last one's called... Well, sometimes it's called a Shaikshamarga and sometimes it's called Anushayamarga. And I'll translate it into English. Sambhara marga means equipment or packing up, making your bag lunch.

[29:23]

Next one, marga means path. It's the path of equipping yourself. Pra-yoga, pra- means it's an intensifying prefix. And yoga means whatever that means. It means intensive yoga or applying yourself yogically. entering into the shamanic work, you know, intensively. Equipping yourself is also the yogic work, but the pra-yoga is when you really go to town. The next path is darshana-marga. Darshana means the path of seeing or the path of insight or the path of penetration. The next path is called bhavana-marga, which means the path of cultivation or meditation. And the last path, ashaiksha marga, means the path beyond training or the path beyond learning. Or anushaya marga means the path with no gain or loss involved anymore, the pure path.

[30:26]

OK? Those are the five paths. You look kind of dazed. Please wake up and listen to this. What? It sure is. I want you to understand that what I'm talking about this week is just regular straight line stuff. So if you ever run into any Buddhist teachings, you'll know that what I've been talking about is how to relate to it. Say one thing, what's that about? You didn't tell us about that. How come we're not doing this five-stage program here? Well, you are. Yeah, what? That's your problem.

[31:29]

I'm not criticizing you. I just wondered if... Maybe sometimes if you tell people that they look dazed, they snap out of it. They feel so insulted they wake up. I don't know. I'm just saying what you look like. They don't know what to do with their faces? Right. Yeah. I don't know what to do with my face either. That's the point. What are you going to do with your face? You need a face, right? But once you have a face, people have problems with it. It's a persona, right? Personas get in the way, but what are you going to do without one? Anyway, why don't we admit we got personas and tell each other what each other's personas look like and tell each other what problems we have with each other's personas. So you put on day's persona, I say day's persona.

[32:33]

What am I supposed to do with that? I can just keep going with this five-step thing if you want to for a while, or I can completely change to something else. Okay, just a minute. Yeah, right, that's what I'm going to do. So she wanted to see the relationship between Zazen practice and these five steps. And so what I'd like to... also relate these five steps to is what I've been talking about as initiation by fire and initiation by water.

[33:35]

All five steps, first of all, all five steps are zazen. All five steps are included in what we mean by zazen. Zazen includes initiation by fire and initiation by water that I've been talking about. So, equipping yourself means kind of like, you know, getting packed up for the trip. It means starting to, you know, create a situation in which you can look at yourself and find out some stuff about yourself and start taking an inventory, start admitting who you are. Start tuning into yourself until you start to get kind of a picture of how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself and what's happening. get more and more settled. And then when you're quite settled and you actually start tuning in to what you're really going to focus on, that's when the pra-yoga marga sets in.

[34:46]

And then you get more and more concentrated and more and more narrowly until you're very narrowly concentrated and also down to each moment. And when you're very narrowly concentrated on each moment, at that extreme is the initiation by fire. And at that point, you break through into the path of vision, the path of insight, where you forget the self, where you forget what you've been focusing on so intensely. In traditional Buddhism, the demarcation point between the path of equipment and the path of concerted effort is when you start seeing yourself, when you shift from seeing yourself in terms of rather gross descriptions of yourself to you start seeing, you see all that still, but you also see in conjunction with everything you see, you see that everything you see has certain qualities.

[35:54]

For example, you see that everything you see is painful. is impermanent. And you also start to see that everything you see lacks an inherent existence. And also you start to see that things aren't pure. Each thing isn't purely itself. So you see these characteristics of each thing. You still see all the things grossly, but you see they all have these marks. And when you see that things have these marks, then you shift from preparing yourself to really going to work on seeing what you are. And then as you proceed more and more, intensely what you start to mostly see finally is not forcing yourself to see it that way but finally as you get more and more concentrated and come down more and more to each moment you start to focus just on the fact that everything has the quality of pain or dissatisfaction or that you think something's wrong you got a problem with the way it is

[36:58]

when you're finally focused down to the each moment of experience and that each one you have a problem with that's basically you've done your work you have reached intimacy and then it's just a matter of time when you basically forget all the stuff which you used to be holding on to in other words body and mind drop off And you see what that's like. Then you take that vision and you integrate it with your daily life. Then you go talk to people about it. You bring it to your teacher. And the initiation by water starts. And when the initiation by water is finished and this this this dropped off body and mind has gone to work various circumstances of your life has been integrated with various circumstances of your life then after that's all over you get to be in the stage called beyond learning where you basically you become like you become a woman or a man in other words just become an ordinary person you don't have to train yourself anymore you're done with the course you're just a person

[38:22]

In other words, you trust what you trusted at the beginning when you said, I'm like this, and I'm Buddha's disciple. At the end, you're saying, I'm like this, and I'm Buddha's disciple. But you really thoroughly believe and understand it. You've clarified that. The original sin, I think, I agree, the original sin is that you stop trusting the other. You have to. In order to be a human being, you have to separate yourself from the universe and be something separate. You lose your mother. You have to go away from your mother. You have to. You go off and you go do things you have to do. You have to go off and do these things. So you do, and you have a life of problems.

[39:30]

For various reasons, you have a problem, you lost your mom, and also you don't trust her anymore. You separated from your mom, you separated from the universe, made yourself a separate thing, and you don't trust it. You feel bad. Plus you try all kinds of grandiose things. You got problems. You realize it, you hear about whatever, maybe Buddhism, and then you enter into admitting who you are, admitting who you are. And you enter this process of initiation by fire, by exposing yourself to the criterion of other people. You separated yourself from them. Now you use their criterion, their standards, to train yourself, their standards of stillness, their standards of honesty. Of course you still have your own, but you basically, you don't adopt theirs, you expose yourself to them.

[40:37]

You don't switch over to other people's views, you expose yourself to them. You expose yourself to the fire of other sentient beings. You expose yourself to the fire of Buddhist teachings, and you give up your own truth You give up yourself by honestly admitting yourself. And then you have to get free of that. You have to get free of your liberation, which means you come then and bring your understanding, bring your liberation for further working. And when that working is done, you're back home again with mom. You're back home again with the universe. But this time, you're not a baby.

[41:41]

You've gone through this process. You're one with the universe again, but you're also different. And you can stand that truth. So clarifying The great matter happens in the realm of upright sitting, but also only a Buddha and a Buddha can exhaustively clarify the great matter. We have to do it with somebody else. And the somebody else we do it with has to be somebody who has done her work. And also for that person who has done his work to help us, we have to have done our work. If we haven't settled on ourselves, that's okay.

[42:46]

If there's somebody who's done her work, who settled on herself, it's okay that we haven't done our work. It's just that they can't meet us and we can't settle the great matter together. The first step in settling the great matter is to settle ourselves on the self, the Zen, and forget ourselves and bring this forgotten self to meet somebody else who has forgotten himself. To become intimate with ourselves and go meet someone who has become intimate with herself. This is still what we call Zazen, But you could break it up into zazen and meeting someone else. But all of it's really zazen. All of it's really what we mean by upright sitting. The mind of upright sitting, the self of upright sitting is not just the one who settles completely on herself, but it's also the one that goes to work in the world and meets others.

[43:48]

It meets some others who have also settled themselves, and it meets some who have not yet settled themselves. And it tries to inquire into who has settled and who has not settled. If someone has not settled, such is seen, such is found out, and one encourages. If one has settled, one encourages others to settle. If you meet someone who has settled, then you try to say, hey, I've settled. Do you see it? And they say that they see it. Through this kind of interaction, we reach the stage of being a person, a woman or a man. That's the end. Sometimes I see people, young students, and when I see them, you know, I see my face 25 years ago.

[45:10]

I see my face in young women and in young men. I also see my face in not-so-young men and not-so-young women. To tell you the truth, when I see my face, I love it. I love the person. I love to see their, you know, the way they want to practice, the way I wanted to practice. I love to see their commitment, their sincerity, their willingness to be who they are. I love it. But that doesn't mean we can meet We can't meet until we both have done our own work. So, we can love, we can root, we can wait, we can practice patience.

[46:25]

But we can't meet until the other person does her work. We can't meet until we do our own work. But just doing our own work isn't enough either. We have to meet because only two Buddhists together can settle the great matter. I can imagine that what I said might scare you. I don't mean to. When my daughter was younger, I heard about, actually, the great joy of seeing your own child learn how to ride a bicycle. I could imagine it. So when she was quite young, I found a little bicycle, a used bicycle, and I fixed it up and I painted it over and I got a new bicycle seat for it.

[47:28]

And I bought training wheels for it. And I gave it to her. And it was really cute. And I tried to get her to ride it. But she didn't want to. But somehow, just to be nice to me, she tried a couple times and didn't enjoy it. Then a year or so, a few years later, I tried to get her, I got her a bigger bike. Didn't buy it. I borrowed it and tried to get her to ride that one. And she didn't want to ride that either. And then about a year or so after that, I think she was with one of her friends and used one of her friends' bikes and started to ride on the bike and almost learned how to ride it after one try or one day's practice. And then she came to me and she said, Dad, I'd like you to teach me how to ride a bike now. So we got a bike. We went out to the park. And I held the bike. And she got on it. And then I pushed the bike along, holding the seat of the bike so it wouldn't fall over.

[48:35]

And she pedaled, and I held the bike. And she pedaled and she steered, and I just held it up. And she pedaled and she steered, and I held it up. And she pedaled and she steered, and I held it up. And pretty soon, I wasn't holding up very much. She was mostly holding up herself. And she pedaled and she steered, and she pedaled and she steered, and I held lighter and lighter. And also, as we were doing this, we went by a park bench and I saw two women sitting there. And I looked in their eyes and I could see in their eyes that they saw what was happening. And they were very happy to see a dad doing that. Because that's what dads are for, at least partly. And finally she said, okay, let go. Let go. I don't need you anymore." And I let go and she went off. And she went off.

[49:44]

She flew away. My understanding is that for myself, and I think for all... Anyway, my understanding for myself is that before and after that girl learned how to ride a bicycle, I loved her. I didn't love her more afterwards than before. I didn't think she was a better person. And I was fairly patient over those years when she wasn't ready to ride. But still, I really enjoyed being there when she learned. It was a great joy. Her back was to me so she couldn't see my face when I saw her ride off.

[50:48]

But I think she felt it. It's like a chicken and an egg, you know? You got a chicken outside the egg and a chick inside the egg. So the chick inside, at a certain point, if the chick came out of the egg too early, the chick would die. So it's got to be big enough and have lungs and stuff before it can break out of the egg. So there it is, growing up in the egg. But at a certain point, and actually this may not happen anymore with domesticated chickens, but anyway, at a certain point, things start to change. For a long time, the chicken's just sitting on the egg, warming it up. But when the chick inside the egg reaches the limit of what it can do in the egg,

[51:50]

it start pecking, peck, peck. And when the chicken hears the pecking, it pecks back. When the chicken inside pecks, it peck, peck. The chicken outside pecks back, peck. When the chicken inside pecks, peck, peck. The chicken outside peck, peck. When it goes clunk, clunk, it goes clunk, clunk. They meet. And we don't know who breaks the shell first, but there's a kind of mutuality there. If the teacher or the chicken or the parent or whatever pecks too hard, harder than the student or the chick is pecking, and breaks it before they're ready, it doesn't work. They've got to match, and together they break the egg. And this is a great moment for everybody. Who is greater for we don't really know. It's so mutual.

[52:54]

Both are very happy. So I kind of failed today because I wanted to talk about case 32 and I didn't get to it. I'm really sorry. Yangshan asked a monk, where are you from? The monk said, from Yu province. Yangshan said, do you think of that place? The monk said, I always think of it. This monk is honest.

[53:57]

This is when the monk, Teacher directed the monk to his own mind, and then he admitted what he's doing. He's starting the initiation by fire. Then the teacher gives further instruction. The active mind, the thinking mind, or the thinker, is what we call mind. And the passive mind, or the mind which is thought of, is called the environment. They're both mind. But the mind is broken up into subject and object. The subject's the part that can do the thinking. The object's what's thought of. And in that, in what's thought of, there are

[55:04]

myriad things, there are multitudinous things. The teacher says, look at the part of the mind that can think of things. Look at your ability to think of things. Look back at the subject that can think of things, he said. This is further instruction on how to initiate yourself by fire. First instruction is, where are you from? It's a question instruction. Next, the question is, do you think of where you're from? I always do. Okay, now, you're always thinking. Now, the mind is broken up into these two parts, thinker and thought of. Look at the thinker. Look at the part of the mind that thinks of these things. He said that. And then he said, Are there so many things there?

[56:09]

When you look into the mind that thinks of things, are there things there? And the monk answers right away, but there might have been a long time between those two. He might have gone and meditated for a long time and looked back at the mind which thinks of things to see if there's anything there. We know that we can think of many things, but if you look back at the mind that thinks of things, if you look back at the ability of your mind to think of things, do you find anything there? In this story here, it's the next line. He says, when I get here, he says, I don't see any existence at all. So whether you do it immediately and don't find anything, or whether you go back and look for hours and days and don't find anything, anyway, that's what you find. You don't find anything. That is, if it's true, that's initiation by fire. The monk has done his work.

[57:14]

So then the teacher says, This is right for the stage of faith, but it's not yet right for the stage of the person. In other words, you've done this first part okay, but the way you answer is not yet... He's reached stage of insight. He sees as he's forgotten himself, but his answer is not good enough. He can't say, I don't see anything at all. That's not good enough. So here he's reached the stage of faith. This is the character for faith. He's reached this stage. And this character has two parts. This part here is a slightly altered form of this character here. So the character for faith has the radical for the person on the left side.

[58:16]

On the right side is character, which means word. So word, word, or speech, language. Not really language, but more word. Person with word, in other words, the person goes with the word. You stand by your words, you could say, but also when you hear the instruction, which is, for example, do you think of it? The person says, yes, I do think of it. In other words, says so and also notices the words in the head that are going on and admits them. Here's the instruction, the verbal instruction, and the person does them. That's faith. This monk was faithful. When the teacher gave the instruction, think of the mind which thinks, he did it. And he reached the stage of faith. But he didn't yet reach the stage of the person. Didn't reach this stage.

[59:25]

His answer, when you get to that place, at the end of the initiation by fire, where you drop body and mind, it's true there's nothing there. That's true. And that's the stage of faith. You got there. That's good. That's great. That's enough for the stage of fate. But there's another step where this person who's forgotten herself, where this dropped off body and mind person then goes to work and then she has something different to say. She doesn't just say there's nothing at all. I don't know what she says. That's what I'm waiting to hear. What does she have to say? What will he say when he comes from that place? This monk spoke from that place, and he said there was nothing at all. The teacher said, OK, that's OK for the stage of faith, but I want to hear more. And so the monk did say more. And when the teacher said, that's OK for the stage of faith, but not OK for the stage of person, that's the beginning of the initiation by water.

[60:41]

Now his insight is being worked with the teacher. to see if it can be integrated with his new life. And the monk says next, don't you have any other particular way of guidance? He wants the teacher to guide him in this stage of water initiation, which the teacher has already been doing, but he doesn't seem to get it. He doesn't seem to get it, folks. The teacher has given him instruction. He just told him, that's okay for this, but not okay for this. It's okay. You follow the instruction. That's good. You've realized you forgot yourself. That's great. But this isn't good enough for the stage of person. In other words, be a person. Do something. He already gave it to him. But the monk doesn't realize it, so he says, would you give me some further instruction? He doesn't say, I just did.

[61:44]

He gives up. The teacher takes a break and says, to say that I have anything particular or not would not be accurate. Based on your insight, in other words, he's achieved, he's entered the Buddha way. I mean, he's become, he's liberated. He has had insight. He's done the stage three of the path. He's had this path of insight. He has seen that all dharmas are empty. But that's all he can say. He can't yet, like, take a walk. The teacher says, you've got to take a walk now. Come on, walk. And he says, give me more instruction. No. Okay. You don't want to play anymore? Okay. You have reached this stage, and based on this stage, Based on this insight, you get one mystery. But there's another one. You get one. And you can take the seat.

[62:46]

You can take the seat. And you can wear the robe. After this, you see on your own. In other words, you can enter into this path of cultivation. where you scrub your life with this new insight. You're going to enter into the path of water initiation. You don't want to do it today? Okay, fine. There's several meanings of you can take a seat and wear the robe. But one, which I offer you today, is now. You can take the seat means you can sit on your seat. Because now you really know you've got the right attitude. Your vision has cleared up. You've got insight. Now when you sit, you can see what you've got and you can now wash yourself with this insight and see on your own. So as I said yesterday, I think this story shows the first two stages of meditation, the first two stages of zazen, and the third, the first three, and the beginning of the fourth.

[64:00]

It shows in very short order the first three paths of Buddhism up through the path of insight and the initiation into actual meditation. You can take the seat and you can wear the robe And it shows the beginning of the stage of water initiation. It shows the beginning of the stage of scrubbing, of completion, of meditation, after meditation has been completely purified. But it isn't a whole story. It isn't complete. The monk couldn't use the full story. So it's kind of a sad story in a way, even though it's partially successful. And again, I don't know how long the story took, whether it took five minutes or months or years, but it's a half-successful story.

[65:07]

It's a half-successful story. The monk did not get enlightened in this story, like in our previous one. In the previous story, when the monk had been an attendant For a long time, he had done the initiation by fire. So when the teacher said to him, what's the business under this robe? And the monk didn't have an answer. And then the monk asked, what's the business under this robe? And the teacher said, intimacy. It was complete. the water initiation between them may have been going on only that long, or it may have been going on for years. We don't know. I don't know. And one other thing I want to say before I stop, and that is, this may look like a path like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then... And it is.

[66:13]

But it's also 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... One, two, three, four, five. It's a circle, too. Round and round. You don't just fly away. There's another season. You do it endlessly. And every time you make a loop, it gets a little bit more fun and a little bit more challenging. Okay, you spun this room of straw into gold. Now do a bigger one. I, you know, I got a problem here because I feel like you're, it's, I can almost see this all coming together, but we only have a little bit of time left.

[67:23]

And tomorrow, a bunch of new people are going to come and join us. It's lecture time, so I got a problem. Do you have any questions about this? The initiation by water is like this. You have done your homework. which means you somehow feel intimate with yourself.

[68:25]

You feel like you've really admitted yourself, accepted yourself. You don't feel squeamish about yourself anymore. There's problems, there's lots of problems about being yourself, but finally you're accepting that you're yourself even though you've got these problems and also these problems probably will be here forever. Or let's just sort of not be planning on them going away soon anyway. Let's just say you've settled with yourself. Okay, that's who you are. Then you go meet somebody else. And who do you go to meet? You go to meet somebody who you respect. Somebody who you think is somebody. Somebody you think is over there being herself. Not somebody who is not accepting herself. Somebody who has done that work too. Now, ideally, you've made yourself so comfortable with yourself, you've accepted yourself so much, you've actually also forgot yourself.

[69:29]

And you feel released from yourself and happy about the fact that you don't really see anybody at all anymore. And therefore, you can do whatever you want because you're not Brian anymore. You're not even Kokaku. You don't know who you are. Therefore, you can be whatever. and you see other people, and you look for somebody, a companion, and you go find somebody you think is somebody, somebody you see somebody over there, and you go and you meet them, and you say, I'm here. This is me. I don't know what that is, but this is me talking right now. You express yourself. And also you watch the other person because you're interested in them, and you recognize them, and you see them, and you see yourself in them. And also they... are doing the same thing. They are recognizing themselves or they are expressing themselves and admitting themselves or admitting themselves completely and expressing themselves to you. And they recognize you. Two sovereign beings, two Buddhas who are accepting themselves and liberated from themselves who also see somebody else and respect that person.

[70:40]

and recognize that person and empathize with that person and feel compassion for that person, both of them doing that. At the same time, not giving up themselves, forgetting themselves but admitting themselves. That's the initiation by water. And that's what it takes for Buddhism to be complete. And there's nothing as completely challenging as that. But, you know, it's no big deal. It's just the most wonderful thing in the world. That's all. It's just having your hand on the back of the bicycle seat of your kid. That's all. You're totally there. You're being the dad or the mom. That's what you're doing. And you're not holding back from that. You're not, you know, you're exactly the kind of mom or dad that you are with whatever athletic ability you've got. You've got to do what you've got to do. That's what you're doing. And your child feels you back there holding the seat. They can feel it. They're depending on it. They love you. They know you're there.

[71:43]

They recognize you're there. That's why they can ride the bike. If you weren't back there and they didn't know you're back there, they wouldn't even be trying this. And you know they're up there, and you recognize them, and you love them, and you care about them. It's mutual. That's the initiation by water. Initiation by water is riding that bicycle, learning how to ride that bicycle. That make sense? So how can we do that same kind of thing in Zen? How can we, like, say, okay, now I'm ready to learn how to ride the bicycle. How do we do that? In this case, riding the bicycle is you're ready to ride the bicycle, in this case, when you have become intimate with yourself, when you're willing to be you. and let somebody else see that and want somebody else to see that. But not just you, but you intimate with yourself.

[72:46]

You having forgotten yourself through intimacy. And in this story I just read you, it had to do, the way they talked about it had to do with vision. What do you see there? Teacher said, okay, look back at that mind. Think has to do with your vision and your thinking. Think of the mind that thinks. Look at the mind that thinks. What do you see? And then you say what you see. And then the person says what they think of what you said you saw. And then you say whatever you say. In this case, he said, that's good, but you've got to take another step. And the guy wouldn't take another step. So he said, okay, you don't want to take another step? Fine. You got this far? Great. Now you can really meditate. But he could have taken a step right then. And I'd like to tell you some stories about what it was like when they took the next step.

[73:54]

Could he have? Really not. Just like my daughter wasn't ready to ride a bicycle before she was ready to ride a bicycle, and the teacher has to be patient. And a teacher loves the student. If the parent loves the child, they're patient. They're not wanting the child to be two years older than they are. They accept. It's not the time. But still, you can see that they will be able to ride. You're waiting for the time, and you're ready to help them. when they're ready. Yeah. Doesn't have to be a Zen teacher. Right. Well, I don't know about that.

[75:04]

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. I hope so. Could you speak up? The faith. Now, what would be the faith again? What are you saying would be the faith? When you gain intimacy with yourself, that shows you had faith to... in the instruction of becoming intimate with yourself. When you've reached that point of accepting yourself, you have trusted yourself. And you've also trusted the teaching which says, admit yourself, confess yourself. So not only have you trusted yourself, but you've trusted the teaching which says, trust yourself. So you've realized and you've come to the fruit of faith. And actually now there's another step beyond faith, which is even more faith. Do you have a question? That make sense? So how do you feel?

[76:16]

Is this too lofty? What? Yeah, it's really sweet. It should be sweet. It's expecting the most of each of us, you know, and it's expecting the most of each other. It's having the highest hopes for each other. It's not having low hopes for each other. It's expecting all of us to be able to actually be disciples of Buddha. It's expecting or hoping that all of us can actually handle reality. So we don't have to, like, backpedal on reality. We don't have to use other people as an excuse for why we can't be ourselves. Yes? Aren't there ways to support people in meeting somebody else and trusting that they're able to handle the reality?

[77:21]

It's like the words that you exchange is often a problem. Not a whole new problem comes up with the words. Okay. So, she said, as soon as you try to meet another, what problems come up is the words. And the words, that's the problem that human beings have. That's the stage of the person. You see? In silence... No problem. But as soon as you start talking, then you have to carry it to the stage of person because the problems that we human beings have is this word problem. So that's exactly what happens is the monk did very well, followed in, he was obedient, he listened to the instruction, he followed them, he was successful. But then when he started talking, to enter into the stage of the person, the talk, the language, he couldn't handle it. Yes? Well, actually there are systems worked out that make it easier.

[78:46]

Yes. There are work, for example, there are koan systems. where you ask the person a question, they give an answer, and then you have this thing you learn, how you check it. Got certain checking things. You check it and you say, you screwed up on that and that, so try that again. It makes it easier. So some people like that systematic approach because in some sense it makes it easier to get started on the initiation by water. But there's a problem of having a system. If you have a system, anyway, there's problems with systems because some people don't like systems. I don't like systems. I mean, I like them, but I feel they're a problem. Because if you've got a system, you kind of hold to it. And then if the student doesn't say the right answer, well, you've got this system. So it's kind of a problem. But there are systems, there are ways to help.

[79:51]

There are training wheels for entering this kind of thing, which are koan systems and other kinds of systematic checks on what the student does after entering the darshana marga. But the systems have problems. Like what used to be a weed in the garden and probably used to need to be removed might be a new plant, which actually is more appropriate for the new environment than the old plant was. So you might expect all these plants to be growing, but a new one grow that really is the most authentic thing for the new generation. And you might say, get that out of here. But you might be killing the most precious thing. Well, if you didn't have a system, you could sort of like check it out. So there's a problem of systems, but there are systems. Yes? It seems like there's a problem if there's a system, and there's a problem if there's no system.

[81:02]

That's right. Because the problem that there is a system is a system. The problem that there isn't a system is me. Well, it's not just you. The problem is also me. The problem is mutual. With the system also the problem is you and me too, but at least it seems to be simpler. But the problem is by simplifying it, you can eliminate some life. There's a possibility. And some people may feel offended by the system and be driven away from practice. So that's a problem. But if the system works for some people, if a system works for some people, I say great. but some of us it doesn't work for. A more confusing and entangling path may be more appropriate. Yeah, exactly. So I don't criticize those who like that kind of systematic approach. If it works, if it produces the thorough understanding of Buddhadharma, great. But for some of us, it's not appropriate, and we have to struggle in confusion for a long time and trying to figure out who is who for quite a while.

[82:10]

Yes? Can you back up a little and say something more about this seeing that everything is selfless? She said, can you back up a little bit and talking about seeing the marks, okay? So in usual mindfulness practice, when you usually start practicing mindfulness, you're mindful of body, right? That's the first mindfulness practice, mindfulness of body and breath. And then you go on to mindfulness of feelings and mindfulness of mental states and mindfulness of dharmas, you know, like skandhas and things like that. emotions, cognitions, perceptions, okay? But even just take the first one, mindfulness of body. As you practice mindfulness of body, you will notice after a while as your concentration and your mindfulness gets more intense, you will notice that there's something, that you have some problem all the time with your body and some problem with your breath.

[83:23]

In other words, as you sit more and more still, you'll notice you're uncomfortable. When you're moving around a lot, and not very concentrated on your body, guess when you move? You move when you're uncomfortable. You go away exactly at the moment you start to be uncomfortable. It's a normal time to get away or think of something else is when you start to feel the shadow of discomfort. The more you sit still, the more you realize that you've got a problem with your body. The way your body is is not what you want it to be. because you have some self-clinging. You have some idea of your body being something. But what it actually is is not coming along with your program. Something's off. The word for dukkha, which we translate as suffering or frustration, means a wheel that's out of round. Something's funny. What's funny is that what's happening and what we expect or what we want are out of

[84:24]

are not in harmony. And the more still you get, and the more honestly you admit what's happening, the more clear it will be that what's happening you have a problem with because there's some self-clinging. And also you'll notice the more you look at your body and watch your body, the more you'll notice is that it's not permanent. It's changing. Your teeth are cracking. Your back's going out. You know? You're premenstrual. Things are changing. And also, the more you look at your body and your breath or your feelings, the more you start to feel there's not some, like, pure thing that's it. And there's no self there. So these marks of existence start to get sharper and sharper the more you concentrate on what's happening. Okay? As the concentration becomes more and more intense and you start to focus even more and more on the moment-by-momentness of it, the one that stands up, the final characteristic, the one that's most salient at the highest level of concentration is this problem, this pain one.

[85:42]

The impermanence kind of backs off a little bit. the impurity and not self back off a little bit and the one that the initiatory one is the pain and when you just focus on that pain and you don't back off of that somehow the other ones aren't the problem we the pain is the one pain is the key not that we should have pain but pain is the thing we turn away from we don't so much turn away from the other ones it's the pain and that's the initiation point is a complete acceptance of this even though we become vividly aware of this pain. That's the place you turn. And then the pain goes away at the same time that you lose track of the sense of self, of things are supposed to be this way. And then the other ones come back. The other marks start coming back. And then you start to understand more thoroughly what not-self and impermanence are.

[86:43]

But you have to enter at this very sharp point so the path gets narrower and narrower and narrower and narrower in terms of time and space and topics. And you perforate this one point. And then you open up again and gradually integrate the other marks and your whole life. And then when you integrate your whole life, you're just a person again. But you're Your freedom from pain, because you've dropped your body and mind, is integrated with all aspects of yourself so you can really be this person moment by moment. Exactly. So, to me, that's the interesting thing about Buddha. Or people's inability to reach that level of mind, you know, has to do with embrace of pain.

[88:01]

And it's not taught, and it's really not taught very much. So nobody really wants to do it. Nobody wants to do this. Who would want to embrace? And actually, I wouldn't say embrace pain. You don't have to embrace it. Just admit it. Just admit it. You don't have to embrace it. That's too much. Just be honest, you're in pain. And nobody wants to do that. The only reason why you do that is because the Buddha told you that you have to. You wouldn't do that unless you saw you had to. And the Buddha said, the main, the primary cause... The primary cause of enlightenment is patience. Not the only cause, it's just the big one. Patience. And guess what you practice patience with? You practice it with pain.

[89:03]

If you don't accept your pain, you don't have to embrace it. That's too much. But if you don't accept it, you can't practice patience. And you can't practice patience if you have no pain. Fortunately or unfortunately, everybody's got pain. And if you can't find any, all you got to do is to sit still. If you sit still, you'll find pain. And that pain you find won't be some pain you trumped up. It won't be a pain you went to look for. Because the pain you go to look for is not the one you should work with. You should work with the one that's delivered to you by the cosmos, which comes to you by sitting still. And if you then accept that one and get to the very center of that, that's patience. And at that place, at that cool place in the middle of your pain, Your willingness to drop all your attachment will get stronger and stronger. Your willingness to let go of body and mind will get stronger and stronger until finally you let go. And in fact, body and mind have already been dropped off.

[90:06]

It's just a question of whether we're willing to catch up with that fact. And we're not willing to catch up with that. We will not be willing to let go until we see that that's the problem. And if you practice patience, you get to the middle of your pain and from your patience, you can see the problem is this attachment. That is the problem. Pain's not the problem. The attachment's the problem. But you can't see that attachment's the problem until you accept the pain. Because if you turn away from the pain, you can't see the problem. If you blind yourself from the pain, you can't see the cause of pain. So the first truth is pain. The second truth is it's a cause. If you see the cause, you'll see the cause is actually empty. There's nothing to hold on to, and the pain will go away. But you can't see the cause, really, unless you admit the pain. If you admit the pain, then you see the cause. You're actually there. You can see it. You can say, well, I just assume let it go. And when it gets strong enough, you can see, by God, it's already let go.

[91:09]

It's let go. I must be free. Then go check it out. Go play with somebody. Go talk to somebody and see if you are free. Or see if you slip back again and turn away from the pain and get confused and say, well, maybe now that I'm free, I don't have to face the pain. Well, if you're free, you can actually face the pain. And if you can face the pain, you can see the cause. And you can even talk to somebody and stay with that. But our culture has a big weak point. It says, let's get away from the pain. Therefore, it says, let's get away from reality. Therefore, it has no way to save itself. So we are lucky that we're practicing Buddhism. We have job security because we're on the key to saving this country. if we ourselves can do it and we can enjoy it, if we can have fun facing our pain, not fun facing the pain but fun at developing patience and dropping body and mind and interacting with other beings, we have a great chance to help.

[92:25]

And helping people is like teaching your kid how to ride a bicycle. It makes you so happy to see somebody start facing their pain and see the cause of their pain and drop the cause of their pain. Nothing's more fun than to see that and to have them see you see them do that. Such is the greatest sweetness of life. It's good enough to do it by yourself, but then to do it with somebody else is what's called a Buddha and a Buddha. That's the possibility of the Buddha way. Not just personal liberation, but the truth is so great that we do it together. Huh? What? And that's why teachers have to practice patience with the rate the student learns. Because the students don't learn at the teacher's rate.

[93:29]

The teacher would just as soon have the student learn instantly. Why wait? The teacher already sees. This is a beautiful person. Why don't they just realize it? Let's get it over with and go on to the next person. But part of what the student has to find out is if they wait a long time, is this person so loving and so patient that they'll be able to tolerate my rate? And that's the test. That's right. That's the first story I told. And if you sit still, you realize that. So the most painful is right on the other side of the most wonderful. To clarify the great matter is the most wonderful thing. It's all Buddhists care about.

[94:31]

At the same time, not to do it is the most painful. Other pains are not so great. They're painful, but they're not as much as that one. That's why we have to settle intimately on ourselves, because that intimacy, and then intimacy with another, can contain the intensity of this inquiry.

[94:51]

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