But what do we mean by mind? There are several meanings of the word mind or shen. Basically, it means either mind or heart. It means either big mind or small mind. Usually it doesn't mean small heart, it usually means big heart. So it means the heart of something, the essence of something. So it is our five senses and our will, our monkey mind, which should be controlled. So it says Shin, the five senses and the monkey mind are to be controlled, but when we control our monkey mind, we resume our big mind. When monkey mind is always taking over the activity of big mind, we naturally become monkey.

[01:07]

So monkey mind must have its boss, which is big mind. However, when we practice zazen, it is not that big mind is actually controlling small mind, but simply that when small mind becomes calm, big mind starts its true activity. So most of the time in our everyday life we are involved in the activity of small mind. That is why we should practice zazen and be completely involved in resuming big mind. So that's why we said zazen. Monkey mind and big mind. So these are two minds. They're really one mind with two aspects. Because monkey mind is an expression of big mind. Monkey mind doesn't exist without big mind.

[02:10]

But monkey mind is just the monkeyish activity of big mind. It's not some special thing that's outside. So he says, in Zazen we do not try to stop thinking or cut off hearing and seeing. If something appears in your mind, just leave it. If you hear something, just hear it and just accept it. Oh, that's all. No second response needs to appear in your zazen. Sound is one response, and the second response is usually, what is that sound? Is it a motor car or a garbage truck or something?

[03:12]

If you hear a sound, that's all. You just hear it. Don't make any judgment. Don't try to figure out what it is. Just open your ears and hear something. Just open your eyes and see something. When you are sitting for a pretty long time watching the same place on the wall, You may see various images. It looks like a river or it looks like a dragon. You may then think that you should not be thinking, even though you see various things. Dwelling on the images may be a good way to kill time, but it's not Sushi. So, just stop creating stuff in your mind. So, to be concentrated, here he's talking about concentration. I'm back to the first lecture. To be concentrated on something may be important, but just to have a well-concentrated mind is not satsang.

[04:20]

This is very different than many other teachers will say. just to have a well-concentrated mind is no zazen. It is one of the elements of practice, but calmness of mind is also necessary, so don't intensify the activity of the five sense organs, just leave them the way they are. So intensifying means to focus on something intensely, which is also usually a central aspect of most meditation practices, to focus on something very intensely, to focus on one thing very intensely. So he says it's also So don't intensify the activity of the five sense organs.

[05:25]

Just leave them the way they are. Just let seeing see, let hearing hear. Don't try to see something. Don't try to hear anything. Just let everything be totally open. Just let everything pass through. And when something comes up, there it is. So it will pass, as everything does. That is how you free your big mind or your true mind. When you can do so in everyday life you will have a soft mind. You won't have many preconceived ideas and bad habits and your way of thinking will not be overpowering. You will have generous mind and big mind and what you say will help others. I want to skip over two. He's saying, so in our practice we rely on something great and sit in that great space.

[06:36]

The pain you have in your legs or some other difficulty is happening in that great space. As long as you do not lose the feeling that you are in the realm of even though you have some difficulty. When you want to escape from your difficulty, or when you try to improve your practice, you create another problem for yourself. But if you just exist there, then you have a chance to appreciate your surroundings, and you can accept yourself completely without changing anything. That is our practice. And it's the most difficult, because we are always expecting something, and we want to change something. We want to improve. So if you're brave enough to throw yourself into Zazen for seven days, a little bit of understanding will help your rigidity and your stubbornness.

[07:39]

Although, almost all the problems you create because of your stubborn mind will vanish. If you have even the smallest understanding of reality your way of thinking will change completely and the problems you create will not be problems anymore, but it is also true that as long as we live we shall have problems. So you don't practice Zazen to attain some big enlightenment that will change your whole being or solve all your problems. That is not the right understanding. That may be what people call Zen, but true Zen is not like that. So often people feel that I'm resisting them because I don't verify their experiences or their desire for something. I'd just say, mm-hmm, that's nice.

[08:56]

You know, the hardest thing is just to sit in a settled way, just to be here, settled way, totally present, totally present with everything that's happening. without trying to make something happen. But you're totally involved, even though there are two sides of our nature. One is the side of our self, and the other is the side of our not-self. So sometimes we get mixed up. Monkey, monkey mind and big mind. So monkey mind is our usual way of thinking about ourself.

[10:08]

That's a kind of exaggeration in a way, but monkey mind stands for myself. Big mind stands for my true self. My conditioned self is my monkey mind, monkey body, monkey mind. So, this has been a problem in Buddhadharma. Shakyamuni Buddha embodied all of the qualities of a mature person, accomplished person, enlightened person. Shakyamuni Buddha is not an object of reverence but not of worship because Shakyamuni Buddha is not a god, although in Buddhism he's actually deified in many many schools of Buddhism.

[11:12]

So how do we maintain, or how do we get from small mind to big mind? Big mind is what people would usually conceive of as the great spiritual aspect. Small mind is like mundane aspect. So, big mind is called dharmakaya. dharmakaya is actually ... there's no way to explain dharmakaya because dharmakaya has no special characteristics but everything is a characteristic of dharmakaya, even though dharmakaya has no special

[12:17]

characteristics, every characteristic is a characteristic of dharmakaya. So, the dharmic body of the Tathagata transmigrating among the five forms of sentient existence is called sentient beings. pervades everywhere. So nirmanakaya is the transformation body. In other words, you and me and our body-mind, which is in that process of continual transformation. So how do we get from the transformation body to the dharmakaya, to the essence body? How do we bridge that gap?

[13:18]

How does monkey jump up to the 33rd heaven? So the Mahayana Buddhists kind of say created but formed the understanding of sambhogakaya Sambhogakaya is the essence body which is in between Dharmakaya and Sambhogakaya. It's the place where ... it's the spiritual body. So it's our spiritual body, so to speak. Suzuki Roshi used to say, our practice is not a spiritual practice.

[14:26]

It's not an ordinary practice and it's not a spiritual practice. It's above ordinary and spiritual. Most religious practices will call themselves spiritual practices, but this is not a spiritual practice, because spiritual divides, spiritual is a divisive term which creates a non-spiritual practice. So it's just like enlightenment and delusion, it's not an enlightenment practice, it's beyond enlightenment and delusion because all those terms create duality, those are all divisive terms. So dharmakaya and nirmanakaya are kind of divisive. If you use the spiritual body and the mundane body and divide them then you have this divisive thing, you have this dualistic existence.

[15:41]

So sambhogakaya is the body of Buddha which creates the oneness of spiritual and mundane. So our practice actually exists in the realm of sambhogakaya. The body, the, you know, dharmakaya is too rarefied and too abstract in a sense. And nirmanakaya is too ordinary. So to have ... the Sambhogakaya is like the truth body, which is the essence of how one practices. So, it's called the enjoyment body or the reward body, sometimes called the reward body, sometimes called the enjoyment body.

[17:01]

So, when we sit zazen, this is called jijuyu zamae. Jijuyu Samadhi. Jijuyu means enjoyment. It also has the meaning of satisfaction. So Jijuyu Samadhi is actually the essence of Sambhogakaya. Jijuyu samadhi, but it has two meanings. Jijuyu samadhi is enjoyment, self-enjoyment actually, which is your reward for practice. Maybe fulfillment. Fulfillment, yeah. Self-fulfilling. Tajuyu means other.

[18:04]

So there are these two, self-fulfilling and fulfilling for others. But Jiju-yu covers both of those in a bigger sense, which means that the self-fulfilling or self-joyous reward body that one receives through practice is given to or transmitted or not transferred but transmitted to others for their enjoyment. So in other words your enjoyment body is shared with everyone. So it has the sense of receiving and giving. If you only receive then you're a but giving and receiving is Bodhisattva practice in the realm of Sambhogakaya.

[19:19]

So, there are many names for our practice. But G-G-U-Z-M-I is what Dogen talks about as self-fulfilling samadhi in the realm of Sambhogakaya. He doesn't use the term Sambhogakaya, but if you study this Trikaya, you see that all those kinds of understandings come from that Trikaya. That's why when we have the meal chant, we pay homage to the Dharmakaya-Vairochana Buddha, the Sambhogakaya-Lochana Buddha, the Nirmanakaya-Shakyamuni Buddha. Vairochana is the anthropomorphic representation of Dharmakaya.

[20:32]

So it's very interesting because if you look at it anthropomorphically as a kind of model, Bhairavachana is sitting in Zazen emanating light. That is called the light emanating Buddha. and that represents the dharmakaya and it's like the sixth ancestor saying that samadhi is the lamp and prajna is the light, the lamp. So zazen is like the lamp and its light. Samadhi is Zazen and Prajna is the light that's emanated from Zazen. They're not two things. They're one. They're one.

[21:39]

But they're the two aspects of one thing. So if we talk about Samadhi, You also cannot separate it from prajna. If you talk about prajna, you can't separate it from samadhi. So, our zazen practice, I'm sure it's modeled after this. So, this is like Vairochana's practice, or the practice of Vairochana, sitting in samadhi, emanating prajna, the light of prajna. In the dharma transmission ceremony there is a place where the preceptor says, I am now Vairajana Buddha sitting on the lotus throne of a thousand petals. On each petal sits a Shakyamuni Buddha.

[22:42]

It's like Bodhisattva vow. It's a very noble kind of practice if you approach it in the correct way. I don't know what people feel when they sit sans in. I think people feel various different things, but when I sit sans in, this is the way I feel. I don't try to attain something, I just try to be here, as present as possible, even though I fall asleep and I dream. I have all kinds of weird thoughts. But I do feel that way.

[23:55]

Especially when I sit up really straight. That's the best. Tom? I was thinking about the idea of being totally here. It doesn't matter. I asked Suzuki Hiroshi about that once. I said, when I sit zazen, I don't really feel ... if I have my eyes half closed and they want to drop all the way, so I keep my eyes open and it feels better. He said, that's okay, that's good. It's like we have these rules, but then they look like rules.

[24:57]

but there has to be space for, and I think that this is really important in all of our practice, is what looks like rules usually often come about through, we do something once and then we do it twice. We do it once and then we are free. We do it the second time and then we have a choice. We do it the third time and we say, this is the rule. That's the way it happens. So you have to be careful about making that choice the second time, because we get hooked into these rules and then we can't change. We say, well, that's the rule, you know, we can't do any different. But, you know, there's lots of room. We shouldn't be bound by the rules. Actually, rules are to help us, not to bind us. So we get in a lot of trouble. a lot of our rigidity comes from being rule-bound, and a lot of people like to be rule-bound, because then you don't have to make a decision.

[26:06]

And so we become rule-bound, and we become emotionally bound, so then our mind becomes rigid. remaining flexible is the important part. As soon as you find yourself getting rigid, you should see that as a warning sign. And it appears in our postures. It's really easy, often, to see where somebody is through the posture. I remember Suzuki Roshi and Chino Sensei saying, I can tell where your mind is looking at your back. And when I straighten people's posture, I cannot believe the rigidity of some people.

[27:14]

I don't know how people can go through life with that kind of rigidity. I mean, wear yourself out quickly. So keep in mind that zazen is flexibility. The main thing about zazen is remaining flexible. We sit up straight and hold our back. That's not virginity. That's simply correct posture. But we often think of this as being extreme posture because we've lost our understanding of what real posture is. So we have to get back to that. Sometimes it's very hard. But when we're sitting up straight, it's not rigid, it's just simply allowing all the energy to flow in a very smooth way.

[28:18]

Sometimes I'll come up against, to adjust somebody's posture, and I act this way. And so I take the person, I go like this, shake it, stop it, up it, let go. Then I take their elbows and start shaking them. Lift it up. I studied body anatomy for 30 years. One told me if you take a skeleton and you prop it up, without any muscles or flesh, it sits up. As long as you have the vertebrae just stacked one on top of the other. That's right, we're just resuming our natural posture and our natural mind, big mind, that's pretty good.

[29:29]

And the body is designed to stand up by itself, to balance, everything is created through balance. Well, body-mind is created from balance, and when we keep ourselves in nice shape, we have that balance, and we don't have to work so hard. So we don't have to work hard until we get to the point where we don't have to work hard. But you should be working toward the point where you don't have to work so hard. And yet, everything is working perfectly well. That's where we keep our attention in zazen. And we keep coming back to that. So there's a sentence here that I found somewhere.

[30:42]

It says, to see the enjoyment body, which is the Sambhogakaya, means to see the essence body in the transformation body. To see the enjoyment body, which is in between, means to see the essence body in the transformation body. In other words, when I see you, I see Buddha. That's what that means. The essence body is Buddha nature. It's another name for Buddha nature. Dharmakaya, essence body, Buddha nature, same thing. So, to see the Sambhogakaya is to see the essence body or Buddha nature in the Nirmanakaya.

[31:44]

Yes? The Nirmanakaya is always transforming. That's you. Yeah, and the Dharmakaya is unchanging, has no quality at all. No, it's like no particular quality that you can point out and say, oh that's that. It's the quality of everything. That's in between. It's what connects the two. It's that connection between, in other words, the space that we actually experience. It's how we experience the essence body. How we experience Dharmakaya is through Sambhogakaya.

[32:48]

So we say, which Buddha wrote the Lotus Sutra? Well, it's the wisdom body. Somebody wrote the Lotus Sutra. It wasn't Sakyamuni. But that person was inspired by the Sambhogakaya, the wisdom. So Sambhogakaya is our wisdom. The Sixth Patriarch says it very simply. Dharmakaya is our essence. Sambhogakaya is our wisdom. That's why we say that's our practice. And it's... Nirmanakaya is our body, our body-mind. Mundane body-mind. Sambhogakaya is our wisdom body. It's just the Nirmanakaya, the samsaric body?

[33:54]

Could you or anybody say what it's like experientially sitting Zazen to experience any of these bodies or to notice one becoming another one? No, don't try to do that. Because then you're creating a particularization. You can't separate them. They're just ways of talking about something. should understand that. We divide them into three in order to be able to talk about three aspects of something, but it's really one thing. So if you start doing that then you get into intellectualizing and discriminating. So all three aspects are sweeping the floor, that's the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya, all working together at the same time, because it's sweeping the floor as a spiritual activity.

[35:21]

It's taking out the garbage as a spiritual activity. So there's no separation. between spiritual and mundane. So that's why the Sambhogakaya is there, to make the connection so that there's no separation, to eliminate the separation. In the story you told yesterday, before yesterday, about a Suzuki Roshi meeting his colleague in a train station... I didn't say that. The mundane was the greeting, but the dharmakaya was the still point of being transmitted. I mean, you could separate it that way. I don't know if that makes sense. You could think about it that way, but you wouldn't want to separate it that way.

[36:22]

You could identify it that way. Yeah, yeah, you could say that, you could say mundane reading. Sambhogakaya was his essence being transmitted and then the Dharmakaya was the whole business. But because they were attuned to each other, because they had the same practice, that moment was perceived, that moment was missed. Another person would have that encounter and actually it would affect them but they wouldn't realize it. Noiri Roshi realized it because there was something, because he had this container of zazen. So Sambhogakaya is also called Lochana Buddha.

[37:27]

Lochana actually means Amida, we say Amida Buddha, which is the Buddha of the pure land and the Pure Land School worships Amida or asks Amida Buddha. Amida Buddha is like this great generous compassionate Buddha, who is also a light Buddha, but Pure land. Pure land is Sambhogakaya. And Sixth Patriarch says, Pure land is not off there in the east, it's right here in your mind. Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmalakaya are all our own body-mind. So when we're talking about them, it's not some celestial thing, although you can think of it on a celestial level, but it's really on a level of our own body-mind, and we should relate to it that way, that this is about us, it's not about some unreachable, speculative, idealistic

[38:50]

idea. It's just a way of describing our nature. And the Shakyamuni Buddhas all over the world, so those people who practice are all Shakyamuni Buddhas. That's nirmanakaya. This is going to be kind of a mash of things, I'm not sure. But what I'm thinking is, you know, monkey mind and ordinary mind are not necessarily the same thing, right? Or would you think of them as the same? Well, monkey mind is simply our self-centeredness.

[39:52]

Monkey mind is our ego. So, but that statement you said about how through the ordinary mind you can get to dharmakaya, right? Sambhogakaya is what sees, is your mind, your understanding that sees the dharmakaya and the nirmanakaya. Nothing gets to anything, it's just that we see what's already there. So monkey mind, when it's calm down allows big mind to appear. It's like the water, you know, agitated water is monkey mind, but it's all the same water, it's just disturbed. So when we're disturbed, when our mind is disturbed and we can't settle down, that's monkey mind. When our mind is not disturbed and the water is clear, that's big mind. But big mind is the ocean and monkey mind

[40:52]

So, the waves in the ocean are the same thing. I was just thinking that... I understand that. I was just thinking that in a disturbed state you can penetrate. No, not really. No. I mean, yeah. I mean... No, but the disturbed state, you know, we say that in each wave, each wave is an entrance. So, because each wave is simply part of the whole thing. It's all there, one piece.

[41:55]

It's all one piece.

[41:56]

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