I love the days of truth and the night of darkness. Good morning. The basic understanding of Soto Zen... Yeah, that's what I meant. Is that better? No. Is that better? Done, okay. I know it's on.

[01:09]

How's that? This will not be the subject. So the basic understanding of Soto Zen is sentient beings and Buddhas are not two. we have to investigate what does it mean by sentient being, or ordinary being, actually, ordinary being, and Buddha. What is Buddha? What is ordinary being? And since we speak of Buddha and ordinary being, that's two things.

[02:15]

But the two things are one thing. And this is basic understanding. We all kind of understand this, but what does it really mean for our life? And a koan, wonderful koan that we all know, Master Joshu, when he was a young monk, maybe 60, asked his teacher, Nansen, What is the way? Nansen said, ordinary mind is the way. And Joshu said, well, should I seek after it? And Nansen says, if you seek after it, you stumble past. And if you don't seek after it, nothing happens.

[03:17]

So this is a wonderful koan. This is the koan of our life. It's like, what is practice and how do you do it? And where does Buddha fit in? When I was, I have so many thoughts on this, you know, it's a matter of elimination. But as I was contemplating this question in my office, I was looking at my bicycle, and I often look at it, because it's a really nice-looking bike, but I looked at the wheel, and I realized it's like a wheel, the hub is Buddha and then the spokes are the emanations of Buddha and the wheel, the tire and the

[04:24]

And the wheel, what we call the wheel, is our ordinary life. So, our life revolves around Buddha. Now, there are two ways to think about this. One is the aspect of oneness and the aspect of duality. So we're speaking from the point of view of duality, which is just fine, as long as you understand that it's also oneness. So in a dualistic sense, the Buddha is the hub, and our life revolves around the hub. but the hub and the wheels and the spokes are all one piece. So, in esoteric Buddhism we have Vairochana.

[05:32]

Vairochana is the hub, Vairochana Buddha is the hub, and all that Vairochana does is emanate light. we have various ways of thinking about light. We have an idea about light, so when we say light, oh yeah, sunlight or flashlight or fire, but in this sense, light, if you hold to those views of light, then you miss the point. If I look at my hand, I can say, well, that's my hand, but I can also say, that's pure light. But if you have an idea about what light is, then you say, well, no, that's not light, that's your hand. So, our life revolves around, in this sense, Vajracana Buddha.

[06:43]

light emanates from Vairochana Buddha and animates our transformation life, the light of transformation. So when the bicycle is moving, the wheels go round. That's transformation. But they go around, the hub stays still. So stillness and motion are the two aspects of Buddha and ordinary life, ordinary beings. Ordinary, of course, has two aspects. But we usually think of ordinary as transformations, as the activity. So the activity of our life is the activity of stillness.

[07:50]

Stillness is Buddha. Stillness is also activity, but strictly speaking in this dualistic sense, Buddha is stillness. active within stillness. This is Zazen. We enact this understanding through Zazen. This is exactly what Zazen is. When we sit, we say, it's not my activity, it's Buddha's activity. We think, oh, some Buddha somewhere, It's not some Buddha somewhere's activity. It's your activity because you are Buddha. But if you think, it's my activity, then you forget about Buddha.

[08:53]

Of course, we have to forget about both of them. But the sixth ancestor says, don't stray from essence of mind. through all of your activity, don't stray from your essence of mind. And this is practice. This is reality. So to always be at one with essence of mind, which is Vairochana Buddha, which is the hub of all of your activity. So when we sit in Zazen, we are actually Vairochana Buddha. because we're emanating light. That's what Dzasin is. But you say, well, where's the light? If you have an idea about what light is, you can't see it.

[09:55]

You know, the Buddha has a halo. That's just an image that illustrates this thing which you don't ordinarily recognize. But sometimes we do. I remember Kadagiri Rishi saying, the Bodhisattva's halo is the whole universe. So, you can sit with that for a minute. You can't see it because you're looking for something little, but it's quite big, enormous. Joshu asks Nansen, what is the way?

[11:02]

Nansen says, ordinary mind is the way. So what does ordinary mean? We think of ordinary as our usual activity, but ordinary is also Buddha. Our ordinary activity is Buddha's activity. Our ordinary mind, our ordinary activity is just based on stillness. So, in all of our activity, Where is the center? Often people say, when I leave the zendo, how do I practice? You practice exactly the same way. You practice realizing or putting your mind here at the center.

[12:08]

We say, this is my center, this is your center, where is the center of the universe? This is, for all practical purposes, this is not scientific. For all practical purposes, this is the center of the universe. So, it's at the bottom of our breath. Breathing in and breathing out. When we breathe in, we come to life. And when we breathe out, I would say we are born. When we breathe in, inhaling, we are born. And when we exhale, we let go. I don't want to say we die, but we do. and then we come back to life, to birth, and then we let go, and we come back to birth, and we let go. This is why letting, exhaling is so important.

[13:13]

I remember Suzuki Goshi in his talk would say, it's more important to be able to breathe out than to breathe in. And I thought, whew, that's interesting. But I realize now why he said that. Because in order to live our life totally and completely, we have to let go. When we inhale, we tend to want to hang on to life or hang on to something. This is called grasping. And when we let go, it gives us the opportunity to start life afresh. So each moment, we start our life fresh. That's called appearing, appearing totally and wholly on each moment. You know, when we breathe, which is a very important act,

[14:26]

when we are holding on, we tend to breathe up here, and when we breathe up here in our upper body, our chest, this is clinging, and it causes all kinds of physical and mental problems, emotional problems, to be able to actually breathe, to let go and let go deeply. When we say breathe deeply, it really means to let go deeply. And then we can start our life anew on each breath. We have this opportunity on each breath to start our life completely in a new way. And so that way we always are centered So that's why this is the center, the bottom of the breath where you die, and then you come back to life.

[15:31]

In Buddhism, there's a lot of talk about reincarnation and rebirth and all this, and there's a lot of speculation about many lives and all this. But actually, if you really contemplate your breathing, You realize that birth and death are continuously happening in the realm of transformations. This is Nirmanakaya Buddha, the realm of transformations. You are Buddha in the realm of transformations. Nothing is repeated. Unrepeatable universe. And so every moment is a new aspect of life. And if we don't allow ourselves the freedom to let go, it's hard to appreciate our life on each moment as it arises.

[16:41]

So this is what's called freedom. And it's freedom from suffering. Because we suffer by holding on. But we think that we suffer by letting go. But it's just the opposite. The more we hold on to, the more it causes suffering. this rhythm of breathing is so important, the basic fact of our life. So breathing is letting go, coming back, but brings us to our center.

[17:49]

And when we can breathe deeply, we have composure. And composure, true composure, is to be centered on the hub, so that our life is rotating in activity around the still hub. So in Zazen, we're sitting without moving and without discriminating around the hub. And then when we go out into the world, it's the reverse. Our life is an activity, but the hub of our life is the vital place where we should always be focused. which gives us equanimity and settledness.

[18:57]

So always settled on the hub. But we get off because we forget the hub and we get lost in the activity. And our life is only so long. Sometimes I think in this way, I can't help thinking in this way, it's like the world, this world is like a corridor, and we appear in this world for some reason, and we migrate through, and then we leave it, so to speak. It seems like we come into the world and leave the world, but actually, there's simply a rising and falling. We don't go anywhere. It's understood by many Zen masters that our life is, life is potentiality.

[20:16]

And when the conditions come together, certain conditions come together, I arise as myself. And when the conditions are no longer there, I no longer exist as this person. But there's no coming from someplace or going to someplace. It's simply manifesting and not manifesting. When the conditions arise, we manifest. And then when the conditions are not correct for that manifestation, we disappear. But we're always here. We're always here.

[21:20]

There's no place that we go to or no place that we come from. This is basic understanding. When the wheel is turning, the conditions arise because motion makes conditions arise. And when all the motions are working together, I arise, and when they're not, I stop arising, but there's no place to go, so we are always present in one form or another. This is very different than a usual way of thinking about we go to heaven or we go to But that's not so, according to Buddha Dharma. But our basic life, which includes birth and death, is always present.

[22:34]

So instead of being centered around birth and death, we're centered on life, which is not the opposite of dying. It's like two sides of a coin, birth and death. The coin itself is life. We have to use this term in a non-dualistic way. So, when we are life-centered, instead of centered on birth and death, we don't have so much fear. Isn't it interesting that in this passageway, so to speak, everybody enters and exits? So, as someone said, don't worry, when you die you'll know how to do it.

[23:47]

Everybody knows how to do it at the end, even if they think they don't. So, what is it? It's a big question. What is it? And when we think of our life, we think of time. Time, as someone said, either time eats us or we eat time. We're either devoured by time or we eat time. When we're devoured by time, it means that we are enslaved by it and we allow it to control us. But when we eat time, we don't allow time to control us because we're living in the present on each moment. When we're living in the present on each moment, there's no time.

[24:51]

Time is concerned with past and present, and past and future. But you can't find the present. And we're all here in the present, but you can't grasp the present because it's already the past. If we live in the past, we're caught by the past. If we live in the future, we're caught by the future. If we live in the present, we're caught by the present, which is pretty good, but it doesn't exist. but it is, everything is present. It just points to something, you know. You can't explain it exactly, but it points to something. So, in our practice, you know,

[25:58]

How do you practice when you can't, where if you chase after it, it's elusive and you stumble past? If you don't do something, you never get to understanding. So how do we do that? So what is ordinary? Buddha is ordinary, and our life of activity is ordinary. Ordinary way. Ordinary life is the way. But ordinary life means being Buddha. You know, everything goes around in circles. When I was looking at my bicycle wheel, I could see that it was a circle, and circles are the basic thing of life.

[27:13]

The world is a circle, our world is a circle, all the planets are circles, because everything is rotating and moving in that way. And we're stuck on this planet, even though we're upside down. But where's upside and where's downside? There's no upside or downside. We don't fly off the world. We hop up and down in various ways, but we always come back down. So where's the center of the world? The center of the world is what keeps us on the planet. Because that's the gravitational pull. We're all being pulled toward the center of the earth. We may go to the moon, but it's just a kind of long shot. We're pulled to the center of the earth, and the axis,

[28:18]

that the earth rotates around is the same axis that we rotate around. In Western religion it says that a person is created in the image of the creator, and certainly we are created in the image of a Buddha. which means reality. We rotate around the center. So to always be centered is our practice. This is Buddha. To always be centered, and when we become centered, then we are a vehicle for light. So what is the purpose of being a human being? Make money?

[29:22]

Have things? Have fun? Avoid pain? What does it mean to be a human being? What do you want? Everybody's searching for something, but they search for it in different ways. and it's like a maze, you know, all these dead ends. I think for a Buddhist, for someone who is practicing the Dharma and has understanding, to be a vehicle for light is our purpose. This is called being free from suffering. Buddha says the main purpose of Buddhadharma is to be free from suffering, but you can't really escape from suffering.

[30:22]

That's another koan. How can you escape from suffering when suffering is endemic to being alive? How do we free ourself, be free within suffering? Also, how do we free ourselves from causing suffering for ourselves and others? So it's not that we become Buddha or become enlightened. But how do I free ourselves to allow Buddha to lead, rather than ego? When we say ordinary being, what we really mean is egoistic being, because there are no ordinary beings.

[31:28]

There are only Buddhas who are free from ego. So if we're half Buddha, half ordinary being, who's leading? Who's doing the directing? That's called practice. And so Buddha becomes an obstacle. Buddha is an obstacle to our life. because we want, and our life of desire is ego, and Buddha kind of stands in the way and says, that's not gonna help you.

[32:30]

This is the way to go. and we reluctantly go that way, or we may happily go that way, but still there's so much resistance with our ego. So to turn ourselves over to Buddha, our Buddha, this Buddha, is called the direction of practice. What is the practice? What is the Tao? How do I do this? We turn ourself over to Buddha and let Buddha lead. And then we have to think about, oh, who is Buddha? What does that mean? So our life is a koan. This is called, Dogen calls it the Genjo Koan. the koan of our daily life as it unfolds.

[33:32]

On every moment we have this koan. We have this koan at every moment. And all the koans, the 250,000 koans, are all this koan. But if we keep, if we stay centered, then our wheel of life will go in a smooth way. The Earth itself is not a circle exactly, it's an oblate spheroid, a little bit off, and so we're a little bit off because we belong to this oblate spheroid. So we're kind of eccentric, off-center, we wobble. But that wobbling is vitality. All my life I've thought there's something imperfect about being a person, there's something extra, and that extra thing is what gives us vitality and also gives us a lot of trouble.

[34:49]

So, Buddha gives us a lot of trouble, but also leads the way. So, do you have any questions? But then towards the end, you said, you know, suffering is endemic to life. Yeah. So when we say suffering is endemic to life, but that doesn't mean we can't let go of it or stop causing it. In other words, if I say,

[35:59]

I don't like this, or I don't want this, there's a little bit of suffering in that. And depending on what it is you don't want or don't like, there can be a lot of suffering or a little bit of suffering. So letting go is also acceptance. Letting go, and so there are two sides. One is letting go, the other is averting. So, letting go, grasping and averting are the two aspects. By refusing to look at something or accept it, accept what is, and by grasping to what you want. So that's painful, and you're not going to like that, I think, no matter how enlightened you are, I imagine, but you can accept it.

[37:15]

Yes, and you can also accept the suffering, because suffering, I hate to say this, suffering is good for us. The problem is there's only one word for these. Well, there are many words, but we do use that one word. Yeah. It's like love, you know, a word that stands for so many different things. So yes, that's right. I agree with you. I mean, whether that's right or not, I agree with you. But it's important to be able to suffer. You know, we have to be able to accept suffering. If you can't accept suffering, you can't be free of it. Another layer of it is you have to even accept your own clinging. You have to accept your own clinging, that's right, and before you can let go of it.

[38:22]

At some point maybe you can actually let go. Oh yes. After you've accepted that you're clinging. Until you accept these things, they're difficult to deal with. So, acceptance or realization is, in that way, very important. We don't like suffering, but if we can accept it, whether we like it or don't like it, That changes it, right? And being able to accept suffering and not trying to avoid it is maturing.

[39:25]

So you said this light manifests out of causes and conditions that arise from motion. What's that motion? Well, when you get on the bike, you start pedaling. Is this person pedaling? Yeah. Well, that's a good question, but for all practical purposes, yes. But ultimately, it's Buddha that's pedaling. It's all Buddha, even the ego. Ego is also Buddha, but Buddha is an obstacle for ego. So we keep creating our egotistical suffering without realizing that that's what we're doing. So we need some ego, but I like to think of it as cooperation.

[40:46]

It's a cooperation between Buddha and me, and how do I reconcile that or balance that so that all the time it's Buddha doing that, but ego is necessary in order to our illusion of life. Ego is strictly illusion, but we need the drama. We don't need it, but we can't help it. The only way you can eliminate the drama or reduce the drama is by sitting Zazen all the time. So Zazen, you let go of the drama and then when you go back in the world you pick up the drama. Right, so the practice is to offer your services to Buddha.

[41:49]

It's called compassion. Offer your services to Buddha. If you read the Monkey King, You know, Xuanzang, who is this great saint, is accompanied to the Western land by the monkey and these three guys who are his egos, you know, and they're helping him actually to do this. So they've offered their services to the saint. you know, to help him, and he's like wonderfully saintly, but totally naive, you know, and they keep saving him from all this, but they're saving themselves at the same time. Thank you. Yeah. Too late, Cope. Everybody's legs are aching. I'm going to let you go.

[42:46]

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