I vow to face the truth of the Tathagata's words. In... Dogen's Gakudo Yojinshu, Guidelines for Studying the Way. The first thing he talks about is the need to arouse the enlightened mind, or bodhi mind, or way-seeking mind. I talked about this a little bit last time, the thought of enlightenment. the enlightened thought, which we also call, there are various names for it, Bodhi mind, thought of enlightenment, way-seeking mind, but they all refer to the same thing.

[01:17]

And it's necessary to have this focus in order to really practice. And in order to have this focus, it's necessary to realize the transient nature of our life. So the most important thing to know or to study is the nature of transiency. or impermanence. And this has always been the basis of Buddhist study, transiency, impermanence. It's the most fundamental thing in Buddhism. And why it's the most fundamental thing in Buddhism is because it's the most fundamental truth of our life. If there was some other truth that was more fundamental, then that would be the basis of Buddhism.

[02:26]

Suzuki Roshi always used to say, everything changes. And when he was alive and teaching, that was probably his most famous statement, everything changes. I don't know anything else, but I know everything changes. You can speculate about everything else in this world, but the one thing is that everything changes. So if we put our attention to studying the nature of transiency that's called arousing the way-seeking mind or the thought of enlightenment.

[03:33]

Sounds very simple, but it's not so simple. It's simple, but the simple things are the most difficult. We're always looking for something beyond our inherent understanding. So this enlightened mind or enlightened thought or way-seeking mind is really our true mind, not something that we add to our mind or add to ourself, but something that's our inherent treasure, as we say. Education, you know, means to bring forth something, not to stick on something.

[04:45]

Educate means to bring out something that's there. And to study Buddhism means to investigate something that's there, to bring forth what's inherently real or true. So without studying or educating ourselves, there's no way of understanding. So Buddhist practice is a kind of education, but it's not the kind of education where we pour a lot of information in to you, but rather where your knowledge becomes apparent. So that's why Dogen says Real practice is beyond learning. It's beyond study.

[05:51]

And he's in this Gakkudo Yojinshu, he says, scholarly activity will not do you any good unless you actually are practicing. in the sense of bringing forth your true understanding through your activity. And then he says, when that mind that sees into the rise and fall or the flux of life is enlightened to it, then the mind which seeks fame and gain just falls away. The mind which sees in just a limited way or sees itself only as ego drops away and is no longer active.

[07:00]

So Buddhist practice, you know, is always, all meditation practices in Buddhism, and Zazen, although we don't count Zazen as meditation practice exactly, in the sense of usual meditation practices, still, it includes all the meditation practices, and The purpose of meditation in Buddhism is to see into the flux of life, to watch the rising and falling of phenomena, and to understand it through its activity. So, in Buddhism, strictly speaking, instead of saying, if you were meditating, in a Buddhist way, instead of saying, I am going across the room, I am walking across the room, you would look at what is walking across the room.

[08:44]

You would look at your feet and legs and body and arms and head and so forth, the various parts of this body are walking across the room, but you never say, I am walking across the room. I is not a part of it. And if you get very absorbed in that kind of meditation, then you watch exactly how your foot operates or how the foot operates. and exactly how the leg operates, and how the foot operates in cooperation with the leg, and with the torso, and with the arms, and the head, and so forth. This is a kind of vipassana meditation. When we do kinhen, actually, that's how we should be doing it.

[09:54]

We don't think, I am standing here and very slowly walking around the room. Actually, you don't say anything to yourself. Just watch the various parts of your body working together. The various parts of this body working together and how they work together. And when you meditate in this way over a period of time, then you begin to see that there really is no self-entity, but just parts phenomena acting together, various phenomena acting together in various ways that create various temporary objects. This is a very cold way of looking at life.

[10:57]

This is the cold eye that looks at life. and sees just how life appears, the forms of life appear and disappear. This is an almost kind of scientific way of looking at life, how the forms arise and how they cease. And if we look at that closely, we can see that there's a constant arising and ceasing of forms. And what we call this world of birth and death is constantly being formed and disappearing.

[12:05]

And if we look at it very closely, we see that it's so continuous that what we look at and what we see as entities is just this process. And the forms have some temporary existence. But within the process, we form certain notions in our mind, which is also a process, about how things exist. And in order to create a stable world, we agree on certain existent entities. We agree on how things are supposed to go and how they do go.

[13:10]

And we order our life in a certain way. We agree how things should be and then go about living our life according to the agreements that we make. And the different parts of the world are always fighting each other because they can't come to some common agreement. about how it should be. You'd think that there's some order outside of us that creates us and that we should all follow that order. But actually, we create our own world and we agree on how it should be. So wherever you go, you find different societies And they all agree in some different way about within themselves how the world is and how to live within that conception.

[14:16]

And when they come together they can't harmonize very easily because they all have a different conception of what the world is. until we can actually agree on what kind of world we create, want to create. The strong forces of fear and opposition will create a situation that will annihilate us. That's kind of what's happening. People just can't agree as to what the world is about. But we can create the world any way we want to, because we do create it. Of course there are forces, you know, physical forces. We can't say how a human being appeared, or how the animals appeared, and so forth. We can explain it in some genetic terms, maybe, but how things appear is a mystery.

[15:26]

But the fact that human beings are here and constantly creating the human situation in conjunction with nature puts a lot of responsibility on the human being. So in Buddhism, we are very aware of the responsibility that we have as a person, as a human being, to create a situation that is harmonious for everything around us, including ourself.

[16:28]

But the only way we can do that is to forget ourself in some way, to see the reality of what we are. If we don't really look at the reality of what we are, then what we create is just based on a false view of ourself and will never work. So in order for us to create something that will work, we have to know really what we are, who we are. So the basis of Buddhist practice is to be able to realize who we really are, what we really are. And we kind of do that for ourself. But when we do that for ourself, then everyone is helped. So to understand this transient nature of ourself is very important. And when we can really understand it, our activity becomes less self-centered and allows for a more harmonious world to appear, to exist.

[17:50]

Because through that activity, through that understanding, we create a harmonious world naturally. Because we're not interfering with reality, the world will naturally be harmonious. But it's not so easy. As a matter of fact, Dogen says, practice In order for it to be practice, it has to be difficult. He says, in order for practice to be true practice, it has to be really difficult. And we have to exert ourselves to the utmost. If we want easy practice, some easy going practice, it won't work.

[18:59]

And the reason it won't work is because it's in the realm of creating ourself, creating something to its limit. There has to be total use of the instrument. So our body and mind are like the instrument. And in order to play it to its utmost, we have to give it everything. We have to completely give our whole attention to the instrument. So Dogen sounds very extreme.

[20:05]

When you read Dogen, you say, this guy is so extreme. Who can practice like Dogen says? Who can really give themselves over that completely? Maybe even Dogen couldn't give himself over that completely. But in order to do something, that takes to do something so complete, we have to have a standard that's more than we can reach. So Buddhism, which is exemplified by Dogen, our teacher, Dogen, is always much higher, much more exemplary than we can ever deal with. almost no one can reach Dogen's level of practice and understanding.

[21:13]

Or even no one, very few people, can ever practice or reach the understanding of Buddhism completely. But if it weren't that way, then we wouldn't be so interested in Buddhism. If Buddhism were just some easy thing that we could put in our pocket and walk away with, then it wouldn't amount to much, and it would hardly be expressive of the truth of our existence. But since Buddhism opens up such a wide high gate. It allows us to investigate as far as it's possible to investigate.

[22:22]

Somebody said the other day, well, you know, if... Here we are, you know, caught in this kind of dilemma. If, according to Buddhism, there's no really reincarnation, you know, according to Hindu beliefs, And most beliefs in India, especially in the time of Buddha, they believed in reincarnation. And Buddha talked about rebirth using the terms of the old Brahmins and terms that were in common usage during his time in India. And it sounds like Buddha was talking about reincarnation. But actually, he wasn't talking about reincarnation.

[23:42]

Buddhism actually is not a religion that believes in reincarnation, even though it seems like it. But in Buddhism, reincarnation is not... Although reincarnation is not a part of Buddhism, we talk about rebirth. which is a way of talking about the continuity of life. About how through constant change, if everything is constantly changing, then the world is constantly being renewed. And if it's constantly being renewed, then what existed, exists now, doesn't exist now, but something else exists now.

[24:43]

And then in every now, something new exists. So this is what we call rebirth. Dependent on what went before, something else is now present. But the same thing that existed before is not present now. But dependent on what exists now, in the next moment, that object will exist. So what we call rebirth is our interdependent universe where everything really belongs to everything else. If we don't have, you know, this is a kind of way of looking at our past, present, and future lives. If we think of our life as ego life, then we can say, well, there's no life after death, because we're only thinking in terms of the ego, or using the ego as our center.

[26:01]

Now the Hindus solved that problem, the Brahmins solved that problem by saying that there's a soul, jiva, which exists from life to life. And that it accumulates a body, or a body is, it forms around this soul in each lifetime. So it gives them a sense of permanence and reincarnation. But Buddhism doesn't talk like that. That's where Buddha departed from the Indians of his time by saying there's no atman, no soul that transmigrates from life to life. the phenomena and the energy keeps rolling on and being transformed.

[27:18]

So in Buddhism, we have to see into the nature of that no-self. What appears as a self is no-self. This is a very important understanding. But we have to be very careful here, because if we go around calling ourselves no-self, then we say, well, I do anything. I'm no-self. I can just walk off the bridge. So we have to be careful. It's a very important point. There's no separate self, exactly. But this self that we are is an interdependent self with everything.

[28:25]

So how we take care of everything around us and how we relate to everything around us is how we perceive of ourself. So selfishness, what we call self-centeredness, is when we see ourself, this person, as separate, or an object, and the things around us as objects. And how we get rid of self in that self-centered way is to see our self, this person, in relationship to everything else, but not as the center of our world. When we can do that, then we can say we have no self. But it doesn't mean that we try to eliminate ourself, this body.

[29:32]

So for convenience, we say, I, me, I am me, so forth. I walk across the street. If we understand who we really are, then we can say, oh yes, I am so and so. I walk across the street. I eat, so forth. But we have to know that that I that we're talking about is just a convenient way of speaking. So how we practice no-self is to completely give ourself to our activity. Instead of trying to eliminate ourself, in order to see no self. We give ourself completely to whatever we're doing and become one with our surroundings.

[30:35]

So when we talk about ourself, we're also talking about our surroundings. You can't talk about yourself without taking into account your surroundings. So self is like awareness. Sense of self is like sense of awareness. And the more you can open up your sense of awareness of your surroundings and how you relate to your surroundings and how your surroundings are influenced by you and how you are influenced by your surroundings, the more we begin to appreciate everything around us. And the more we begin to appreciate everything around us, the more we take care of everything around us. And the more we take care of everything around us, and are very, very careful, the less self we have.

[31:38]

Which means the less self we have, the bigger our self is. The less self we have, when we really have no self, then the whole universe, we can speak of the whole universe as our self. And that's the point of Buddhism. To just take care of your world, your small world, whatever you can take care of. if we take care of something very small, that thing that we take care of is connected to something else, which is connected to something else, which is connected to something else. So, when we talk about getting rid of self,

[32:41]

What we're actually talking about is expanding self, opening ourself to ourself. So when Dogen talks about seeing the flux of the universe, the rising and falling of phenomena in our universe, to understand what we really are. When we do understand and when we do expand our consciousness to everything around us and to relating with what's around us, we can forget ourself, really forget ourself.

[33:45]

But forget ourself means that we don't see ourself as an object. As long as we see ourself as an object, we call it ego. And then, right understanding comes out of our intuition. We don't have to pour information in. Our natural ability comes forth. You know, enlightenment is sometimes described as a bucket with no bottom. Sometimes,

[34:48]

When you hear stories in Zen, the bottom fell out of his bucket. No matter how much is poured in, nothing stays there. Bottom fell out of his bucket. means that there's no object. Just everything passes through very easily. Everything works very easily. When you have that kind of freedom, you can turn your attention to anything without getting bored or upset. The mark of a good, of a Zen student who has understanding is that they're always looking for something to do.

[36:02]

Always ready to do something. Always ready to do the next thing. Without worrying about what it is. Because what's the difference? So the mark of a good Zen student is that they're always busy, always doing something, usually, and always willing to help with something. But you never feel that they're doing anything selfish. just flowing with life because of their freedom, they have tremendous vitality. So the mark of a good Zen student is not how can I get out of this or how can I hide, but

[37:23]

What can I do? What's next for me to apply all this energy to? When you have that kind of freedom, you have that kind of energy. Since you're not attached to anything or any place, you can't do anything. And since you're not attached to yourself, you can devote your life to helping other people. But the most important thing, you know, is to really be able to see our interdependence, our interdependent nature.

[38:38]

Before we see our interdependent nature, we're always hanging on to something, you know. But when we get the feeling, you know, that we're really being held up and have some confidence that we're being supported in this world, then we can let go, just let go. But before we feel supported in this world, we hang on to whatever we can hang on to, and it's usually ourself. We hang on to our sense of self and clutch at it because we don't feel supported. We don't feel that the universe supports us. But if you can feel that the universe supports you, then you can let go of your sense of ego, self, and just depend on the universe and work with it.

[39:48]

Do you have any, oh, yes, a question? I wanted to ask you, say some more about difficulty and the difficulty of practice. And I wanted to ask it from two perspectives. One is that often one image that's used as a model Zazen is the frog who just sits and doesn't try but does perfect Zazen. And it seems that the frog doesn't have any difficulty and doesn't have to try hard. And so I wondered if you could say And the frog doesn't.

[41:10]

That's one question. And the other is, you talked about Zen students having, when you're really practicing, having vitality, and having more and more vitality, presumably, as you get to be a better and better student. Does that mean that it's easier, that practice is easier, It becomes easier as you get lighter. The frog, that's like a picture of a perfectly composed person. It's like the end of practice. But the beginning of practice is like the Pali walk. He's just doing it as much as he can, you know, he's swimming around in that water.

[42:16]

And if he doesn't do it, if the polylog doesn't do his utmost, then he just doesn't make it. We have our kind of, see as society, in our particular society, becomes more and more sophisticated, it's easier for us to survive. 50 years ago, there weren't anywhere near as many children that survived birth as there are today. I mean, in the last 20 years, 30 years, there weren't anywhere near as many children that survived birth as there are today. And 100 years ago, and as you go further back, it became more and more difficult to survive. you had to work hard to survive. And that brought out some kind of spirit, you know, real strong spirit if you have to survive, if you have to really work hard to survive.

[43:24]

And as we get, as life becomes more and more convenient, as it becomes easier to live, survive and so forth, we have a lot of people who don't really have a strong spirit, but they're all, you know, a lot of people. And they don't know what to do. They get sick easily. There's a lot of people, but there's no quality, not much quality to the race. It becomes weaker. And Zen practice is like primitive society more, in order to really bring out that spirit, you have to practice hard. And the harder you practice, the more the spirit is brought out. So that's the whole thing about practice, is to bring out that kind of spirit, that kind of independent spirit, that self, when I say self-reliant, you know, I don't mean in the sense of ego, but has a

[44:42]

complete sense of itself. And that kind of spirit is brought up by hard practice. And that kind of spirit is the kind of spirit that is needed to investigate completely. It's not enough to just know something. So Dogen says, rather than know anything, you know, it's better to It's better than to think you know something or to depend on that knowledge. It's better to just do away with knowledge altogether and just concentrate on activity. Because that's the most valuable thing. And it's like anything, really. I mean, you know, if you're going to play good music, you have to work as hard as you can. If you're going to be good at anything, you have to work as hard as you can. Why should it be different with Zen practice?

[45:44]

And he says, you know, those, in Kakudoyu Jinshu, he brings out the point by saying, an educator says, unless you study hard, you know, you won't know anything. Why should it be different in Zen practice, unless you put yourself completely into it, with your whole body and mind, how can it be anything? So, the point is that you create it. It's not something that's there for you, you know, already. You create it, and how you create it is to do it. And if you want to create something great, you have to do something great. If you want to create something wishy-washy, you do something wishy-washy. We create our world. And it's just all in proportion to what you do. Yes.

[46:51]

Now, I understand what you're saying about the importance of practice. However, the excellent congregating of Buddhists in this morning and the relation of the self to process seems to me to be highly intellectual and admirable way of approaching Buddhism. You know what I'm going to say next because I'm tired of perhaps hearing you say it. But I can't understand why the intellect is so downplayed. I should think it would be equally important with practice. If you want to use your analogy, a musician and devote yourself to practice, you have to first understand something about the importance of music and want to go in that direction. Yeah, that's why we talk about the thought of enlightenment. Beg your pardon? That's why we talk about the thought of enlightenment. If you want to practice, first you have to have the thought of enlightenment. And it's not that we're taught... You have to understand this, Catherine.

[47:55]

It's not that we are not appreciating intellectual understanding. Intellectual understanding goes along with practice, but practice is first. This is so hard for me to understand. I know. Keep trying. Well, I translate what you're saying in terms of what I maybe want it to be, or think of it, and my translation is highly complex. kind of interaction, which is very sophisticated. Yeah. You know, you talk about ego as an object, and that sounds to me like some notion of yourself that you have, which may or may not be true, and some notion that the world may have that you also have, which may or may not be true. And then that becomes the intellectualization of who you are.

[48:59]

And I think what you're trying to get at is who you really are. Yeah, that's right. What you're trying to get at is who you really are underneath your idea. And what the world really is. And what the real world really is beyond our conventional ideas. Sure, sure, of course. And beyond... Buddhism goes beyond the thinking. Thinking is included, everything is included, but Buddhism goes beyond the thinking mind. Unless we can grasp that, you can't grasp that by thinking. You can't grasp beyond the thinking mind, except as an object. You can only objectify it with a thought. It's like the difference between thinking about swimming and swimming. You can talk about swimming, you can think about swimming, but when you're swimming, there's only swimming. And that's what we're talking about.

[50:00]

You can write books about swimming, and think about it, and it's fun to talk about. It's not that there's something wrong with the intellect, or the intellectual world, That's not what we're dealing with at this point. Doesn't right understanding come first? What is understanding? Understanding first and then talking comes second. It's an order of events that bothers me. But what is understanding? The sort of explanation you gave this morning. That's explanation. Understanding is Do we understand in words? Or concepts? First, I would say. And that is the practice of God. One can dedicate oneself to one's own... I would say that first, there is understanding, and then there is thought and explanation.

[51:12]

Understanding, in this case, is before thinking, and before conceptualization. So, right understanding comes, is what we would say intuition. And then thought and conceptualization come out of that. So, you know, thought and conceptualization is very important. But first, the basis is understanding, standing under. What really is the experience? Because whenever we explain something, it's objectifying. And talking can be fine, you know, in its various categories, and sometimes talking is the thing itself.

[52:21]

Sometimes talking and the thing are the same, and then talking is not objective. When speaking and acting are the same thing, then it's not an object. But explanations are objective. So what we're always talking about is before the object, before objectification. So that's why it's a little difficult, you know. Nothing wrong with thinking, but everything has to be put in the right order. Some hand back there, but, yeah. And that's you. Nina? Well, reference to taste has always been helpful in this context. The taste is sweet.

[53:23]

No matter how many times somebody tells you about the sweetness, you won't know it until you taste it on your own time. And also, you don't have to know the word sweet before being able to explain it in order to taste it. So the taste comes first. Then comes some kind of explanation of the taste that comes from their reasoning or intellectual capacity. But no matter how much explanation you give about the taste of sweets, you can't taste it. And conversely, it's not necessary to be able to explain it in order to taste it. Does that make sense? Did you want me to answer? I was thinking about creating your world. It seems to me that ultimately everyone gets to the point that they realize that in order to be happy or self-realized or whatever, you have to do things out of a sense of service.

[54:36]

taking care of things or helping other people or whatever, and you're no longer doing it for your own sake. And this comes out of what you were saying. But I wonder that in Buddhism there doesn't seem to be so much of a tradition of service to others, I guess, in an organized sort of way. So it seems you reach this understanding that you're interdependent. But Buddhism very often seems to have stopped that, or that means I won't harm anything. This notion of no killing has no harming. But it seems that in order to create the proper world, the harmonious world, you have to go beyond that and to put a huge amount of energy into not only not harming and letting things be, but also creating a different reality. And that seems to me to be as much a form of practice as it is the more passive, observing state of reality.

[55:49]

First you see the reality as it is, and then you say, all right, this is what I'm going to do. And you create a different reality. But there doesn't seem to be that much emphasis on that further stage. Maybe it's too far beyond most people. I don't know. Well, I think that they do, actually. Most Buddhists in Japan have the same kind of service organizations as Christians do here, you know. But Zen Buddhism in America is more just dedicated to practice, which, you know, it's more monastically oriented. I think that people will find their way eventually as to how to bring their understanding into the world, but mainly, you know, practice is just to help us understand what Buddhism is about, what our practice is, to help us have some realization.

[57:09]

That's a lot, you know, and we really have to devote our energy to that. So it's true, I think I said this last week, that it's kind of like arhats and bodhisattvas. And we have both are present in our practice. Our practice for ourself is arhat practice. And our practice to help others is bodhisattva practice. And they both exist within the one practice. And actually, we put a lot of emphasis on our hot practice, even though we don't say so. We put a lot of emphasis on sitting Zazen and practicing the Dharma. And not so much on helping people out in the world, but that's happening more and more.

[58:16]

But first, you know, we have to establish our own practice. Otherwise, we can't really help people so well. we can help them in some conventional way, but what we're really trying to do is help people in a more fundamental way. That's why we put so much emphasis on practice. If we really help ourself, then that extends to people. That's our attitude. It also seems clear and the conspicuous failure of all these service organizations and world peace organizations over the centuries, their failure to produce world peace or to produce elimination of poverty or suffering, that the conventional mind has no real power to deal with these problems.

[59:21]

toward that kind of help may be more an expression of less interest in me. Well, I think that it's good to do that. I don't see that there's anything wrong with that. And just because of the failure, you know, depends on what the goal is. If it's, you know, you help people whether it works or not, you know, whether your effort fails or doesn't fail. If you feel people need something, then you help them with it. I don't know if... I think peace organizations maybe don't work because peace and war are always in balance. You know, if you have a peace organization, you don't do it because you think it's going to bring peace to the world. You just do it because you have to do it. And I think that we need to have that kind of attitude. We have a kind of peace organization too, you know. And I don't think it's going to bring world peace. I think that because you want world peace, you do that. And it helps to balance out the forces of war or un-peace, you know.

[60:36]

So it's always in some balance. There's never going to be either total, well, there could be total war, but very rarely will there be total peace for any length of time. It's just not in the nature of things. But you put all your energy into peace activity to balance the other side. It's a necessary thing to do. It's not a waste of time. But it's always out of balance. I mean, it's always finding its balance, and there are always these sides. I don't mean to say that the ideal or the inclination toward improving society is wrong, but I disagree You have to persist in something that's clearly effective, beneficial, worthwhile. I don't say nothing should be done, but I think that there is some need for a change in the fundamental idea of how things can be helped.

[61:45]

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