I wanted to give, there's a lot of things I want to talk about as soon as possible, but I happen to realize that I won't be able to do them as soon as I'd like, so I have to accept that. But what I'd like to do tonight, one of the things I'd like to do tonight is to give you some overview of the practice period in terms of what I'm going to offer you to work with. Okay, and so the first thing I offer you, which I already did, is the issue or the question, the problem of discovering your ultimate concern. That's the first thing, and I know that's a very important and difficult issue for us to clarify and become more familiar with and hopefully realize.

[01:12]

Ultimate concern is another word for faith, not belief, faith. And the beginning of Zen practice is your faith. And nobody tells you what that is, and you can't decide what it is either. It's a gift which comes to you from your true nature. But sometimes it helps if you ask, you know, so your true nature has a chance to answer you. Can you hear me in the back? Not real well? So anyways, I find that asking, my ultimate concern is always there someplace, but if I ask it sometimes it says, I'm over here, and tells me what it is. Sometimes it doesn't answer right away, but anyway, it helps to ask and look, open the eyes and be present for it. So that's the first thing, and that will be something which you could look at yourself any time of day or night, and also you could discuss and share your explorations into this question in your small groups.

[02:37]

Maybe get some ideas, some possible answers from other people, which you then can know, well that's not mine, or maybe I'll take that one for a while, or something. But anyway, you might want to discuss that in your small groups. Maybe partly share also your difficulties or frustrations in not being able to see it yet, and find out maybe other people also have had or have similar struggles. The vision of this, even if it's clear, it can get clearer. And even if you have a deep sense of it, it can get deeper. And even if you have some realization of it, the realization can be extended indefinitely. That's the kind of thing it is. It's ultimate then. So that's the first thing I present, the first thing I offer, and the first thing I want us to find out about.

[03:42]

Now, I don't know, as I said before, I don't know what each of your ultimate concern is, but coming from mine, then certain things follow, and I'll show you what follow from mine. If you have a similar one, even though it may be put in different words, maybe what I present will follow from yours too. Basically my ultimate concern is bodhisattva vow to work for the liberation of all beings, animate and inanimate. In the whole universe, that's my interest, my ultimate interest. That's what, when I die, I will hopefully have done my best to work for. And following from that, for me, is the practice of immobile sitting, zazen, being upright. In other words, the zen style of practice, which traditionally emanates from that vow.

[04:55]

So I'm pretty much a party line guy. Party line vow, party line practice. Party line means the lineage that I have received, the lineage that I am. So that's my thing. Do you think that's something that you've discovered about yourself, or is it something you've trained yourself to do? Well, I discovered about myself. Like when I first, when I heard some zen stories when I was pretty young, I discovered that that was the way I wanted to be. I said, oh, well that's it. Before that, actually, when I was younger than that, I knew what it was too. But it wasn't zen stories at that time. It was even simpler stories. Like, you know, I told you this story, some guy, a big guy who lived in my apartment building, his name was Dick Grant.

[06:01]

He was National Heavyweight Golden Gloves Champion. He was quite a bit bigger than me. I was a big kid for 12, and he loved me. My father had left my mother, so I was living with my little tiny mother, and she was trying to take care of this precocious boy. I kind of stopped growing when I was about 14. But anyway, at 12, I was a pretty big kid, and he loved me, and he took care of me. And he was a big, much bigger than me. He was 6 foot 4 and weighed 260. But he gave me a lot of confidence and attention. And he said to me one time, he told me, you know, I was enjoying being a naughty boy. We can get in more into that later. Anyway, he told me about when he was a boy about my age and what he did.

[07:04]

So I knew he was just as naughty as me, so I knew he knew about being naughty. And he said to me, you know, it's easy to be bad. And he had some authority when he said that. He said, you know what's hard? It's being good. And there was some authority in that too. He didn't say, I'm good. He told me it was hard. I said, okay, I'll try that then. So I tried, but it was very difficult, as you know, to practice good. Especially when you're a teenager in high school, full of the kind of people that are in high schools. Or so interesting to high school people. And sometimes when you see them and they interact with you, you forget that what you want to do is practice good. And you kind of want to do other things. So I forgot. Anyway, I remembered a couple more times through high school that that's what I wanted to do.

[08:06]

And then after I got out of high school, I read some Zen stories. And they gave some really good examples, some really cool stuff, that seemed quite accessible. And I really wanted to be like them. So I kind of decided at that point to be like a Zen monk. I didn't think of being a Zen monk. I just wanted to be like those. The monk thing wasn't the thing. It's the way they acted I thought was totally cool and fun. And also they made it look easy, but that wasn't what attracted me. It was just spontaneous that they did this cool stuff. And then I found out, little by little, about their practice. The Zazen practice, so then I tried that. That was really kind of interesting too, as you know. And then I found out about the Vow. And then I found out that the practice which I was doing came from the Vow. And so on. So it evolved. My understanding of my ultimate concern has evolved. It continues to evolve. And it's different every day.

[09:08]

But it evolves. Sometimes it gets deeper, sometimes it gets wider, sometimes it gets smellier, sometimes it gets off. You know, it evolves. But I'd like to just continue to do this overview so that you can listen to it. If you forget what I said. And then you can ask questions later, okay? So write your questions down. So the next step is, I offer you this. The next thing I offer you is, and I'll do it over and over and over. For some reason or other, I'm willing to do that. To talk about what this immobile sitting is. What this upright, being upright is. That's the basic practice. And I wrote down on a piece of paper, in the middle of this paper, I wrote Zazen, you know. Just sitting. Being upright. Being yourself. And then around that I wrote all these other names for that. There's many, many, many other names for it.

[10:11]

Like, just don't know. The mind of no abode. The backward step. On and on and on and on. I'll tell you about them later. I'll keep offering throughout the practice period, as I already have, the basic practice of Zazen. Which completely includes the Bodhisattva vow. And also completely includes all the other things which I will offer. They're all coming from that. The being upright is the gate to all the other studies. That we do in the Zen school. It's the gate, but it's also exactly what you enter to. It's the gate and it's the realm that's opened up to. So it's not like it's the gate and then you do these other things. It enters and then it continues through, all the way through. Just like the Bodhisattva vow initiates the whole process. And initiates the practice of Zazen. And the Bodhisattva vow also goes all the way through all the meditations, all the studies.

[11:13]

So the being present and upright with the vow. So the yoga practice is the Zazen. And the motivation is your ultimate concern. The two together produce liberation. The vow, the wish to bring Buddha's wisdom and compassion to all beings. So they will awaken to it. That vow in conjunction with this practice, this yoga practice of uprightness. Those two together produce liberation for all beings. They both go all the way through the practice. And actually they both started way back before we even knew about them. They're always going on. They're not really personal. We just join them or we don't. We just choose to have that vow and do that practice or we don't.

[12:18]

Anyway, that's the second step. Third step is, in this practice period anyway, is to use this, if you do have some vow in this neighborhood, if you want to use this practice for this purpose, the next step will, what naturally happens, is of course you start, I hope we all get grounded. I hope we get grounded. So one of the things which being upright does is it grounds you. One of the things Zazen does is it grounds you. Of course, when you sit on the ground, when you stand on the ground, it's fundamental that you're touching the earth. It's an earth-touching practice. Just as the vow comes up from the earth, from all beings, the practice brings you back on the earth too. And the grounding means many, many things, but one of the things it means is that, of course, you're aware, you're in your body,

[13:22]

you feel your body, you're aware of your body, where it is, how it is, you feel your feelings, you feel your emotions, you sense and are aware of your attitudes and opinions, all that. And as you become present, you also become aware, of course, that one of your feelings is pain, and another one of your feelings is pleasure, another one of your feelings is you're not sure, and you get grounded in that kind of stuff. You get grounded, you open up to your experience by just being present for whatever. Then you start accepting whatever. But as you do, you may wonder, some people often wonder and doubt that that's a good idea, because it seems sometimes, you know, very difficult to face the pain, the suffering and the anxiety. And the more present you get,

[14:25]

in some ways your reward for more presence is that you open up to more. And if you can be present, if you can open up to more and then be present with even more, and get settled with that and grounded in that, then your reward for being so present and grounded would be that you open up to more. The amount of anxiety that there is in the universe right now is... it's just that amount, whatever it is, and no one knows exactly how much it is, it's just whatever it is, and now there's a different amount, I suppose. In a way, it's a very large amount of anxiety that there is in the universe. And if you can be present with what you're aware of now, your reward is you'll get to know more about how much there is. Until finally, through practicing being upright, practicing being present and being patient, and finding how to be stable and courageous in the middle of your experience, you can finally open up to, you know, much, much more of what's going on

[15:30]

than you could when you were a baby, or when you were, you know, in some past lives. And the more you open up, that means the more you open your eyes, then you not only see more and more anxiety, you see more and more of a lot of other stuff too. So you start to opening up, you start opening up to not only the anxiety and how big it is, but because you're willing to see the anxiety, you also get to see how it happens, how it comes to be, what its causes are, what its conditions are. In other words, you start to see from this grounding of yourself and your experience, you start to naturally, spontaneously see the dependent core arising of your pleasure and your pain, and your confusion, and your delusion, and your attachments. And the relationship between your delusions and your attachments, and your confusion, and your pain, and your anxiety, you start to see all that. That's what I will offer you,

[16:36]

is an entrance into that cave, that dragon cave. An encouragement that it's healthy to go there, that it's healthy, and that only by facing this stuff will you achieve liberation. And by turning away from it, I hope to convince you that that will cause you to be sicker, and sicker, and sicker. Whereas facing it, is just facing your illness, and opening to it, seeing its cause, and seeing its effect, and seeing its cure, its healing. And I've been doing this, some of you know, I've been doing some workshops in fear, and anxiety, and they're very encouraging, because people really, really got into it,

[17:37]

and they really got anxious. They've been open to their anxiety, and their fears. It was great, great to see people do that. It wasn't just the workshop that created the anxiety. When I first was going to do it, I wanted, I thought of very scary things to do to make people frightened. Some of them, some of them I realized would jeopardize Zen Center's corporate existence. So I didn't do those. But I finally realized that through the middle of the first workshop I did, I realized the scariest thing for people was to be themselves. By far. Everything else pales in comparison to just being yourself or flat out. Because when you're yourself, you're very vulnerable. They can find you. They can get you. Whereas if you're being what they want, they'll never find you. And you're totally protected.

[18:38]

Anyway, I'd like maybe to do a little fear and fearlessness anxiety workshop here with you. It's already started of course. But maybe a little bit, maybe to sort of a little bit of encouragement for that purpose might be, if you want to, we could do that. After all, all I'd be asking you to do is getting considered being yourself with these people. Expressing yourself before the Great Assembly, which as you know is one of the main fears. So, all this is, you know, this is grounding, this is getting into your actual experience. And then, I would like to, if we are very much on the ground in our bodies, in our feelings, in our thoughts, in our emotions, in our delusions, aware of our attachments and anxieties and fears, when we're there and everybody's cooking, then I would like to discuss

[19:41]

this incredibly subtle and magnificent teaching of Dogen and Nagarjuna and of course Buddha, Shakyamuni, on how their vision, what they saw about how it works. After you have your own experience of it, then sort of see some of the stuff that they saw so we can get into the subtleties of attachment and show how they have examined all the different ways you can hold and twist and then how the ways you can, after being released from holding and twisting, how you can hold that. Anyway, but to get into that now, would just send some of us into, you know, such a state of realization of emptiness and you get so far off the ground, we might never be able to pull you back. So we have to make sure everybody's got a lot of ballast before we set sail on the teachings of Nagarjuna and Dogon on this matter of the dependent co-arising of birth and death,

[20:42]

the dependent co-arising of misery, and of course, by understanding the dependent co-arising of misery, you understand the dependent co-arising of liberation. By understanding the dependent co-arising of birth and death, you understand the dependent co-arising of nirvana. Same study, different dependent co-arising, different sides of the same coin. And as part of that, we'll put in the sutra book one of Dogen's most beautiful, for me, beautiful teachings about the relationship between Tsao Zen, dependent co-arising, and how we enter the realm of us saving the world and the world saving us. And Nagarjuna's, part of Nagarjuna's fundamental verses on the Middle Way, Chapter 1 and Chapter 24. Chapter 1, the basic one, the dedication of the fundamental verses on the Middle Way, Mula-mahajama-kakarakas, the dedication, which is basically a dedication to Buddha for producing

[21:48]

the teaching of dependent co-arising. And then studying the first chapter on how things are, which is very much a treatise on Tsao Zen, and Chapter 24, which is about dependent co-arising. These mouth-watering possibilities will start to appear to you soon during morning and noon service. So this stuff will start circulating through you and you'll start chanting it, and we won't discuss it for a while because if I start discussing it I get so excited that I might distract you. So I'm going to restrain myself until you're so heavy with experience that I don't have to worry about getting you excited anymore, because you'll be like, what, fifty-five mountains, and then I can share my enthusiasm about this teaching with you without bothering you. You can just have pity on me. And if we should possibly get through this material, which is two chapters and Dogen's

[22:57]

two pages, if we could possibly get through this material discussing it, then we'd discuss some of the ramifications and extensions of the subtleties that they bring out about how attachment and liberation. Just a few pages of text, but it's such an incredible text that we could of course spend the rest of our lives on it with no problem, but we'll have a little time here, as someone said, a little time on earth here, to see if we can stand the rays of love, the beams of love. So these are Nagarjuna's beams of love. This is the way he, this incredible Bodhisattva, this was his beam of love to us. It's not, you know, it's a Bodhidharma's beam, you know, it's not what you might think compassion looks like. And yet, two thousand years, he lived around the turn of the first century AD, two thousand

[24:05]

years of Buddhists consider him to be the most compassionate philosopher after Buddha. Incredibly compassionate and wise. And it's hard though. So that's why we need a lot of grounding and help from our fellow practitioners to look at this teaching of Nagarjuna, it's very, can be very daunting. Part of the dauntingness of it is a lot of people look at it and they say, I must be really stupid, I don't get this. But almost everybody feels that way, when they first, or second, or third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth time look at it, it's very, it's so bright that it looks totally dark. But that's why I think we just keep going over it, day by day, chanting it, getting used to it, and in our groups getting discussion, and we'll be able to go at least a little bit into it, which will be a great thing.

[25:06]

So that's it. That's the overview of what I'd like to present to you, and then other practice leaders and issues, so we'll have other things they'd like to present, and you may have things you want to do, but that's my dream for this practice period, we'll see what actually happens. What is the Dogon Vesicle? Well, it's that section of the Bendo Wa, the middle section on the self-fulfilling Samadhi, the self-fulfilling awareness. The beginning of Bendo Wa, he says, basically, the standard, the touchstone of the practice of all Buddhas is a self-fulfilling awareness, and then in the middle of the text, he totally freaks out, you know, expresses himself on the matter. So, we'll chant that middle section, but you might want to read the first part, too. The first part of Bendo Wa, he says some things, too, which are lovely about this awareness.

[26:16]

This awareness, this self-fulfilling awareness, is the awareness of dependent co-arising, or simply is dependent co-arising realized? Same thing. This is Dogon's poetic way of putting it, which is so apropos of us living here in these mountains, and our 20th century concern with our relationship with the planet. So, Dogon was kind of telling us about how this works, how we can enter into the relationship, the helpful, curative relationship with the planet. He was talking about that in his fascicle. And Soto Zen establishment in Japan, the way they act shows that they did not understand that until quite recently, because they let certain things happen that one wouldn't do if one understood this, called this teaching of Dogon, in relationship to the environment. Anyway, that's the overview. And one more thing I want to say before it's too late, and that is, as part of this, as

[27:30]

part of this practice period, I'd like you to memorize something. And there's some good authors and good candidates. So not only might you chant some of these things, but you might also memorize them, so that not only could you go along in the service, and follow along with the sutra card eventually, but that even if you took the sutra card away, and the rest of the people away, you could still recite it. If you can get this into your body, you know, learn it by heart, if you can learn these texts by heart, and they aren't that long, even if you can learn a little bit of them by heart, then if you've got it in you, you can use the text to comment on the text, you can use the text yourself. And when you're reading, when you're thinking about a line in a text, you can use the other parts of the text to tell yourself about that part of the text. So it's very useful. Tassajara is a place where you can memorize things. People do it, and I really encourage you to do that, ask you to do that, and I will also

[28:37]

make my efforts to memorize some of these texts that we're going to be studying. And I think I'll be able to memorize some of them by heart. I memorized 30 verses last time I was here. That's good. Very useful to me. Now I can recite it. So I'd ask you to do that, and suggest you do that. And that's, again, part of traditional Buddhist practice is to get the teaching into your body, don't have it up on your shelf. Maybe you could stop the tape now, for a second. And one more thing I want to say is that, again, I always, somebody always reminds me to do this at the beginning of anything, and that is, I have to say this, and that is,

[29:38]

I forget sometimes that the train's going along, and somebody's getting left out. And so I have to tell you right away that if you feel you're getting left behind, you always have the prerogative and encouragement to stop the train for a second and say, I'm getting lost. You can always do that. And if you're one person who's getting lost, probably ten people are getting lost. So always feel free to stop the process and ask questions. Okay? With a much better world, a much better practice period, everybody feels the privilege and responsibility to stay with the program, to stay with the flow and process. Okay? We need you to do that. Okay? Yeah, I'm not clear on whether ultimate concern is the same thing as intention. At the end of Tongariro, you said something about you have resolved your intent, and

[30:44]

I was going to myself, uh-oh, because I didn't, I mean, after five days of sitting, I didn't have any idea what my intent was. Uh-huh. And so... Well, I guess what I meant was that the purpose of Tongariro, to some extent, is to resolve whether you do intend to do the fall practice period. Okay. That's what I mean. Yeah. So that's what Tongariro is for. Sometimes people come to Tassajara and they think maybe they want to do the practice period, and then, like, actually one person did come and she thought maybe she wanted to do the So she thought that was her intention, but then she changed her mind. And actually, there are some other people right in this room who have sat Tongariro with the intention of doing the practice period, and in Tongariro, decided that that was not their intention, and then didn't do the practice period, and then came back later and did Tongariro again, and then did finish, and did decide they wanted to do the practice period, and did the practice period. So that's one kind of intention, for this limited intention for this three months.

[31:47]

Okay. So intention is a lot of little things, and ultimate is one thing. Exactly. And there's lots of little intentions, like I have intention to do. I've done a certain number of practice periods, a certain number of sessions, and so on, and each one of those was I had intention to do every one of them, and I completed the ones I completed. Actually, I completed all the ones that I intended to complete. But one intention has been in every single one of them, and it probably will continue to be in the rest of them. That's the one I want to know about. That's the guiding principle which I would like to know about. I think everyone here would like to know as much as you want to tell us about that, because then we can help each other with basically this one thing in our life. The practice of the Buddha is the practice of what the one thing for that being is. There's one practice that includes all practices. There's one practice which is the embracing or awareness of the wholeness, not just of your life, but the wholeness of life.

[32:48]

What is the thing that gathers your whole life together? Your whole life right now, and your whole life if you now were to die, that would go back and gather your whole life. What would it be? There is something. What is it for you? That's ultimate. Okay? That's your fate. It may not be real clear to you right now, but say whatever fuzzy vision, however you see it, say it now. Then you can get feedback on it by dialogue. You can get clearer. Okay? Thank you. Tom? I'm not clear, ever, on how the practice of the Buddha, which is my favorite Buddhist practice, comes to me, but it's like a thought. Well, originally, I mean, there's innumerable stories of how it comes forward, but the first one is Shakyamuni Buddha, okay? Shakyamuni Buddha wanted to find the solution to the problem of this yucky stuff that he

[33:54]

saw, people suffering and in all kinds of torturing, you know, unadjusted states, okay? He didn't just see people sick. He even saw people having trouble with being sick. Like he himself, he said, sorry to say, I, you know, here I am, this kind of like, this person, he kind of had a sense of who he was, that he was this person who had a lot of gifts and had very high aspirations, and yet, even when I see people who are really sick and getting old and twisted and in pain, even when I see this, I kind of feel queasy and kind of would like to get away from them. I'm very embarrassed, because everybody's like that. I'm no better than the most common person, he said. I'm embarrassed. And he wanted to become free of that, and he wanted all beings to be free of the embarrassment of going through the process of birth and death. In other words, embarrassment means having a little trouble adjusting to your circumstances.

[34:56]

He wanted to be able to like settle and solve the problem of existence. And then he tried various things, like he tried learning meditation, and he got really good at it, and he said, this is not the solution. And then he said, okay, I'm going to sit, and I'm not going to move until I resolve the problem of birth and death. And he sat still. And then various things happened to him, and he kept sitting still. And then various other things happened, and he kept sitting still. And gradually, dependent co-arising presented itself to him, and when it did, in his stillness, he understood it, and understanding it, he accomplished his goal. So his sitting was motivated by his Bodhisattva vow. He was the first Bodhisattva. There didn't have a word before Shakyamuni. He was the Bodhisattva. He was the baby Buddha. And the Bodhisattva sat still, realized dependent co-arising, was liberated with all beings. So his Bodhisattva vow led him to sit still and practice Zazen, and practice of Zazen

[36:03]

opened the gate of Buddha Dharma for him. So he's the prime example, and all the other ancestors did the same thing. They had the vow. They were led to sitting. They practiced the sitting, the Zazen. They understood dependent co-arising. They achieved liberation, and then spent the rest of their life helping beings pull out the nails, draw out the pigs. I understand when they're pulling out the nails, how that comes from the vow. You have a resolution. You follow the path. You say, was liberated with all beings. Yes. That gives me the sense that all beings are liberated at the same moment. Exactly. You got that. That's right. Did you know that before? I don't know. Oh, you heard it before. I can't explain it. I don't think you do. Yeah, I can explain it. I don't know. I mean, a lot of people can explain it. But, you know, if you don't mind, I'd like to...

[37:08]

Can you remember this thing? It's kind of a big question. You probably won't forget, right? No. We can talk about this later. That's what you will be reading about, how this happens in the self-fulfilling awareness. That's what he's talking about. How that awakening happens at the same time. But I also have to talk about this, but it's sort of like out of scale. That's such a big thing that I'd rather postpone the discussion until later, if that's okay. But you're right anyway. It does happen. The awakening of Shakyamuni Buddha is the awakening with all beings. He said when he was awakened, I, together with all beings and the earth, the great earth, are awakened. Not I'm awakened. I and all beings. That's the kind of awakening he had. There are such things as personal awakenings. He also had those. And you see the stories of various Zen teachers. Some of them had quite a few personal awakenings. And then they had what's called the Buddha awakening, which is the awakening of the whole world.

[38:12]

There's a difference. One is sometimes a predecessor to the other. Some people jump right into the big one and don't have these nice little personal liberations on the way. Which is one of the criticisms of Soto Zen. We don't have a lot of personal liberations. Because we're kind of not that concerned in some cases. We're just going for the big one. Which is not all that big. Mark thinks maybe it is. Okay. So, any other questions on his overview of the program that I'm talking about offering to you? Peter? I'm sorry, but I didn't quite understand. Did you say you wanted to memorize the texts? Do you mean like the Karakas of the Zen books? Yeah.

[39:14]

For example, you can memorize one chapter of the Muddha Madhyamaka Karakas by Nagarjuna. Memorize chapter one. Or you can just memorize the dedication. Just memorize the dedication of the Muddha Madhyamaka Karakas. Just the dedication. I will have to say no more. If you do that, you'll be so happy. You will be happy. If you memorize the one, just the dedication. If you memorize the whole text, the whole first chapter, well, what can I say? If you memorize the first chapter and the twenty-fourth chapter, I will be happy, you will be happy, everyone will be happy. Now, if you'd also memorize Dogen's thing, that would be great too. And then you could also memorize some other stuff too. Like I asked one person to memorize the Lotus Sutra. He's not here with us now. I said you don't have to memorize the whole thing, just memorize one chapter.

[40:20]

Which is quite a bit longer than this thing. The Muddha Madhyamaka Karakas are not long chapters. The first chapter is just two pages. And the second one is six pages. The first one is two or one? Two. And then the next one is six. Six pages is not that long. The first chapter of the Lotus Sutra is quite a bit longer than that. I think harder too. So I'd love it if several people would memorize the Lotus Sutra. If that would happen, the merit of that would be like, you know, the world would be a better place. And you would certainly, whoever did that, would be a very concentrated person. And you have to excuse this person if they tried, that they might not have time to chat with you. However, I recommend that you give up your memorization if anybody wants to talk to you about anything reasonable. If anybody needs your help, give up your memorization.

[41:25]

Give up your great attainment and talk to them. But if nobody needs to talk to you, like during study, memorize the text. Okay, is that clear? But just, you know, it might be hard for you to memorize that much, so do less. But I bet almost everybody could do one verse. Or at least the first word of one verse. Like, for example, I'll tell you what the first verse is. Never, never, nowhere, and at no time, has there ever been anything that originated or was caused by itself, by another, by both, or have no cause. There it is, the first verse, you got it.

[42:25]

And that's Zazen. And that's Nagarjuna, and that's liberation right there, flat out. One verse. Understand that one verse. It's enough to understand Zazen. And the Pinnacle of Rising, and everything. But the other ones bring out some details which you might not understand, are totally contained in the first verse. So, you might want to check out the rest of the chapter too. Anyway, you will be chanting it, so that'll be fine. And that'll be great. And that's the program. Charlie? Well, in other words, I care for the mountains being healthy. And the rivers being happy. And the rocks in the river being happy. I care about that too, because their happiness is necessary for me

[43:28]

too, to realize my work to help inanimate beings. They're all... The rocks can be happy. That's part of the Pinnacle of Rising is the rocks are happier if we're practicing. The rocks are happier when we look at them and love them. Is there any way to know if a rock is happy or not? No, there's no way to know. And there's no way to know if people are happy or not either. However, that realm where you don't know whether the rocks... in what way the rocks are happier, how people are happy, whether they are or not, that's the realm where rocks are happy. That's the realm of just being upright. Where you give up everything. You give up knowing and not knowing. And enter into the Pinnacle of Rising. And if you have any questions about it, bring up your questions and we can reason this out with the help of the ancestors.

[44:28]

They've asked a lot of these questions already and we can ask some new ones. I read a while back, I read Meaningful to Behold, which is a Tibetan teacher, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's book commentary on the Bodhisattva way of life. In their tradition, taking the Bodhisattva vow, it's a very serious thing to actually say you take the Bodhisattva vow and have a lot of preparation and study with the teacher before they're able to do that. But in the Zen tradition, I don't feel like there's any support in that way to actually take the Bodhisattva vow. Like nobody... I don't know if there's that type of thing that the Tibetans do. Would you comment on that? Maybe there is, I just don't... It's not so formalized. Generally speaking, Zen is not as formalized as Tibetan. The Chinese are not...

[45:31]

The Chinese Zen school was not a formal... was not systematic. Generally speaking. There were systematic approaches in Chinese Buddhism where you'll find intense preparation for receiving the Bodhisattva vow and things like that. Chinese Buddhism did do that thing. But Zen was a different style. So Zen style is different. Zen style is more... You might say that preparation style is more like what you might call what do you call it? Sambhogakaya approach to Buddhism. And the Zen style is more Dharmakaya. So Zen is more from the point of view of emphasizing practice after or based upon awakening, rather than practice leading to awakening. So if you have a sentient being here and the sentient being should be prepared for this dangerous, risky path of the Bodhisattva vow. So if your perspective

[46:35]

is that we have sentient beings in the room then maybe they should be prepared for that. But if we don't have sentient beings in the room, if we have Buddhas in the room then they just do the Bodhisattva vow and then we deal with the problem of having Buddhas in the room for making the vow. It's a different style.

[46:52]

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