I think that we're having a rather sleepy day. in our sashim. I thought maybe it was just me, but I think everyone's having a little bit of a sleepy day. But in order to make our zazen come to life, it's good to go beyond our sleepiness, make some effort beyond our sleepiness. It's just like giving in to our thinking mind or giving in to our kind of laziness. There are three legs

[01:31]

of dharma that really characterize our practice. One is wisdom, the other is meditation, and the third is sometimes called morality, but discipline, some kind of discipline. the structure that underlies all of our practice and makes it possible. So in Zazen, all three are present. And in our daily life, all three should be present. But it's easier to bring them to Zazen it's easier to manifest the three together in zazen, much more difficult to manifest the three together in our daily life.

[02:37]

So in zazen, the discipline is really important. The structure of our the underlying foundation of our sitting, which is good effort, effort that goes beyond sleepiness and thinking mind. In our daily life, discipline or is how we keep our lives together, how we keep our life together in a way that makes it into practice. So really two ways of discerning the same thing.

[03:52]

Most of us are drawn to practice either through the doors of wisdom or the door of meditation, samadhi. And the discipline is something that we meet when we meet the practice. It's not something that we necessarily expect or even want. A lot of the time we find that monks criticize lay people, you know, Quite often you find articles written by monks that criticize lay people's practice.

[05:19]

They say, we practice the true practice because we have the discipline. Everything in our life is set aside in order to practice the discipline. And then they say, therefore, lay practice is meaningless. There are people who have that extreme attitude. But even though that's not so, still there's something there that has some truth in it. And the thing that has the truth in it is that there has to be some discipline, something. There has to be some way that practice is continuous. And the only way that it can be continuous is through some kind of discipline.

[06:23]

So most of us come to practice because of the enlightenment and zazen. And when the teachers, Japanese teachers brought our practice to America, they emphasized either wisdom or samadhi. And some discipline, but Discipline, you know, in the zendo. Discipline in the zendo or at the monastery. And discipline as a layperson is so much more vague and something that hasn't really been addressed to my knowledge.

[07:32]

How you lead, we always say, well, you follow the precepts, that's the kind of discipline, that's morality and discipline. Follow the precepts, but that's good, very good. But there's something missing, something else missing. How you bring your practice into your home life, to make it a discipline in your home life and in your working life. I don't really know how to do that, how people should do that. But my feeling is that in order for our practice to continue in a way that works for everybody, there has to be some form of discipline that makes practice visible in your daily life.

[08:54]

By discipline, I don't, you know, discipline has a strange ring to our ears. It means you have to do this, you know. That's not what I mean by discipline. Discipline is maybe like the structure that holds things together. Like this building has some discipline, otherwise it would fall apart. Your body has some discipline, otherwise it wouldn't maintain its form. So in order to maintain the form and character of practice, there has to be some visible way, some visible form that it takes in your daily life, in our daily life, so that we know what we're doing all the time.

[10:04]

And that gives a foundation to the other two legs. It's a counterpart to the other two. Quite often we find ourselves coming to being interested in zazen, but only interested in zazen. Now our teachers have said, and even Dogen Zenji says, just zazen alone. Only Zazen is enough. But I think that what that means has been misunderstood. In the practice of Buddhism, there's the enormous sutra collection. the various practices of Buddhism.

[11:12]

And Zen kind of cuts through all of that. And that's what people like about Zen. The simplicity and the cutting through. You don't have to study hundreds of volumes in order to practice Buddhism. You can study Zen and just cut through all of that, we think. But if you're going to cut through all of that, it means that you have to be all those volumes of sutras yourself. You have to get to what all those volumes of sutras are talking about. So yes, it's simple, and you don't have to read them. You just have to be them. So in order to be them, you have to be practicing pretty hard all the time.

[12:20]

So, you know, a lay person doesn't have the same kind of practice as a person in a monastery. And we shouldn't expect that. But to make our practice real, all those three factors are necessary. And lay practice and monk's practice are two sides of practice. and they compliment each other. And the monk practices in a restricted way, leaves all affairs of the world go. Let's go of all the affairs of the world. Whereas the lay person is involved with the affairs of the world. But without being too greedy,

[13:38]

for things in the world, or too attached to things in the world, or too seduced by the things of the world, too infatuated by the world. So how to live in the world with true wisdom is the lay person's practice. How do you live in the world with true wisdom and strong samadhi. Well, it takes some discipline to do it. So to have a serious practice, not too serious, but serious, meaning you want to do it, you have to have some framework, create some framework for your life in order to practice. So that's something that's evolving, I think, in our American practice.

[14:47]

Practice has only been in America for 20 years, 25 years. It's a long way to go and a lot to evolve. It's gone pretty fast in a certain superficial way. It's developed pretty fast in a superficial way. But in a fundamental way, it's still kind of way back there. We can see something of it in a superficial way. There are all these people practicing, you know, sitting zazen and so forth. But in a fundamental way, it's still pretty primitive. Back in square one. Square one's pretty big. There's a lot of room in there, but still, it's square one. So I think that we know how to, to a certain extent, we know how to sit zazen, and a lot of people have sat zazen, relatively, and people know a little bit about Buddhism,

[16:10]

But we haven't really found out yet how to make it our life, make it work in our life, and make a life which allows us to really practice continuously in our daily life. So I think that's what we need to start developing. And as I say, I really don't know how to do it, but I think that we all have to find out how to do it together. And I really think that that's our next, the most important thing that faces us

[17:17]

We know a little bit about discipline of practice in the zendo. And how do we apply that? We've been sitting zazen for years, we've been sitting sushis for years. How do we apply that discipline to our daily life? In a way that's not just casual, or arbitrary. But, you know, you say, well, we do this, and we don't do this, and we do this in a certain way, and that gives us some real discipline. We know, by doing certain things and not doing other things, that we're within the realm of practice. And it keeps reminding us. When you set up ways of doing things and limitations, it gives you a field that reflects your practice back to you.

[18:44]

If everything's just wide open, it's pretty hard to see what you're doing because you don't bump into things. You don't have anything to mirror you back, or at least you don't recognize what's mirroring back to you. So I think in a monastic setting, it's very clear. And in our daily life, I don't think we can set up a monastic setting in our house, but we can set up a way of life that creates practice for us, that creates an environment for practice, and an environment where we recognize what we're doing.

[19:54]

And what do you think of that? At this stage of my involvement here and in the practice generally, it seems to me that the zazen and zendo and sashins are really the easiest part of it all, and that The whole point of it is to be able to apply it outside. That to have everything so limited and scheduled and defined and ritualized and at this point being comfortable with all those things now myself, that's easy. And I think that's what we're all doing.

[21:10]

That's why we're here, is to be able to do it better. Well, you use the word arbitrary, then if discipline is going to work, if it's a discipline in the healthiest sense of the word, it has to be something that you feel inspired about yourself. You have to feel good. and inspired, and I'd say wholesome too, there's some wholesome feeling. And the difficulty, one difficulty, is that he, I'll speak for myself because it's safer, we can go through the outward forms of discipline within a Zen center or within a monastery and feel something but not really penetrate through to find out where it comes from in ourselves and that we can rely on the outward forms in a way that we may not even see so clearly.

[22:27]

And because we can get along quite well that way, it looks fine. And there is some problem there, it's not so easy to do. To get underneath that, to link up where it comes from in ourselves, and also at the same time to conform to some outward pattern, to do both, is what I think is necessary. What I'm saying is it's easy, maybe not easy, but you can just go through the patterns of outward discipline, which the group kind of supports and sustains. and yet not really find out in yourself how you really feel about that in an honest way, and how it really affects you strongly. So it doesn't really come out of you in the end. You're talking about the negative side.

[23:35]

Yeah. That's the problem. That's why, that's one problem, that's one difficulty. So the positive side is how it's defined, even though we're doing the same thing, and it's kind of, you know, it's kind of, you can adopt to what's being done and you can see the rules and limitations. Not to just rest on that, but to bring that to life for yourself. And in a way that's kind of a lonely process. You cannot rely on just what it looks like or how other people support you if it's going to really come from your own guts. I think I'm sort of on the same track as Ron.

[24:37]

structure in our lives or of our external forms, but really... You do these things enough, you practice, you do zazen, and gradually there's a way of, there's a structure, you're restructured internally somehow, but how to put a word to that or a name to it is impossible, but that's the kind of structure that I hear, that you're talking about, and I think Ronald's talking about.

[26:10]

that the problem and the answer lies in the nature of what's meant by the Sanda. And seeing that movie, or that tape that it had on the white train, was a very emotional experience for me. And in that, or after that, I thought that they were doing. In other words, monks and Zen buddhists and monastery followers, individuals, it's a group. It's a group that's gathering. It's a group operating essentially as a group. And these people that were involved in that train were I was real struck by the movie also, and one of the things, as I thought about it, that was new to me had to do with witnessing.

[28:02]

And I thought, you know, we come to the Zendo to be together, not only to support and to encourage each other, but also to witness each other practicing. And that was a new dimension to me, that it's important to witness people It's an intention to be present, an intention to live the precepts, that we do it in front of other people, and we do it in front of other people in the world also, but here we're acknowledging that, and it's very important. And I thought about this thing about practicing in one's life a lot, because I sit at home all the time, and I feel like I've learned over the years, things like the dishes are myself. So I'll have times when I'm putting away the dishes and I'm practicing the dishes. I'll have things like that in my day. I'll have godhoods about my bicycle. And it'll last for a while and then it'll fizzle out.

[29:04]

And then a new one will come up and it'll fizzle out. And I've had a wish that we had a support group where we talked about the ways that we are trying to practice in our lives. I've gone out and been more, practiced more in my life and had the class to come back to. So, that's the one thing that I've thought about over the last month or so, witnessing support group. And then I think, would I make time for that? If it would be a community. Yeah, that's interesting. Go ahead. I like the idea of more community. I hadn't, that's not generally the way I do my practice. When I come here, things in my mind are a microcosm of what goes on in my daily life.

[30:15]

So I find to the extent that I'm calm and mindful in the Zen Do, especially during Sashin, it sort of squirts out of the Zen Do with me into my life for a brief period of time. And I had this idea, which may be wrong-headed, that the more I do, or the longer I do tsa-tsang, and more sa-shin-tsang, sit-tsang, and things like that, the longer the mindfulness and equanimity that seem to come with me out of here will last in my daily life. Because exactly the same things go on in my mind here, as going on in my mind outside. Exactly the same stuff. Judging, feeling bad about myself for various reasons. The same reasons. I'm not bouncing them off of other people, it's just going on in my head.

[31:16]

So that, I guess, that's just sort of one side of it. I like the idea now of, from what I've heard here today, I like the idea of support. I think to a certain extent I also admit hanging around with people who give support more than I used to. A little more selective, perhaps, about who I see. And that's helpful. That crazy song that I sang, that came up during the sashim. And all of a sudden, some ideas like that came up, and now something came up, an idea of I just, it really seems difficult if you want to do and improve yourself.

[33:11]

In the outside world, you've got so many things going on there, and then here, it just to take that outside world and just turn it around and be right back here. I'm not sure how to deal with that at all. To me, that seems to be the main problem that I'm trying to overcome. Well, I think it's, you know, being a resident or when you come here you get job.

[34:34]

And there's different aspects of, say, the 20 hours a week I put in, plus or minus. And a certain part is sitting, and a certain part is being a work leader, or now that I'm head resident, doing that, or both last week. And it's really interesting because I've really jobs here like normally I wouldn't be a work leader or I might but then and now I wouldn't normally be a head resident either those are kind of you know people I normally I'd be you know maybe I'd work for somebody or I'd have a job by myself or something like that so I've got a lot of I've had to organize my life a lot, whereas before it didn't matter so much.

[35:39]

But now my time is really tight, so I just, I'm always focused on it. So that's kind of a way that, you know, things that are growing can happen. And I guess, you know, I think as a resident, Like the monks can say I just want to say something.

[37:12]

It's getting a little late. I'm not really talking about what kind of more things you can take on. I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is how you sanctify your life as it is. That's what I'm talking about. Bill? I think that They're just easy, small ways that don't involve more time. You know, coming home in the evening as a resident, or you meet somebody that we practice with, instead of a lot of chatter, we can bow to each other, you know, and talk. Or come home and greet our friend or our mate, we can bow, and then kiss, you know, something like that. You know, there's a gata for using the bathroom that you can put by the door.

[38:21]

Just those small little steps. We tried burning incense at work, but the smoke went up to the floor and people came down My point is this, it doesn't have to be some huge thing, just that one thing, it can be no new form, I think, but some sense of what you just said, to sanctify the things that we do. That's a big thing that involves not adding more time, but giving some more thought to it. In a sasheen, we seem to do two kinds of things. One is to simplify, reduce the number of things that we're paying attention to.

[39:25]

And the second is to have very strong commitment to those things. You can call the commitment a vow, but it basically says, I'm going to do this reasonably well, beyond pleasure and pain. And the way that I find the similarity between day-to-day So, if there's pleasure in zazen, you sit, and if there's pain in zazen, you sit. And if you're committed to a marriage, or a child, or a political cause, or a career, you find that takes a different meaning if you're committed to it, regardless of whether it's pleasurable, or painful, or rewarding in a material sense, a few things.

[40:33]

If you're committed to ten different things, the depth of the commitment can't be very great. There's maybe room for zazen and one or two other things, and that's it. So one of the things people have trouble with is finding something to be committed to. In the old days, I guess it was sort of handed to you. You took on your father's profession, and that was it, or you were assigned a wife and an arranged marriage. Now you sort of have to pick something, Stay with it for a little while, and then choose. That's the one. If you wait forever to find the perfect one, you won't be committed. There actually has to be an active choice at some point that says, you know, I've kind of looked around, and this is the one I want to be committed to. That's sort of my attitude through this practice. I've been practicing for about five years, and the first couple of years was kind of determining whether it was, well, I had kind of an affinity for it. But beyond that, I never really looked elsewhere.

[41:36]

It felt pretty good, and this is it. Unless something big comes up, there's no need to change that commitment. It should stay for life. Yeah, I guess what I try to do, or what I really have been looking for, and I'm really glad that we're talking about this today, is It's like each moment, what is my practice? And I work with developmentally disabled adults. So part of my practice there is always trying to determine whether I'm helping them be more independent or whether I'm interfering in their independence and I'm doing too much for them. And it's that kind of thing that I don't know exactly how to... I read books on Buddhism and I read about the precepts and I come here and I sit. but how to incorporate all of that so that each moment I'm focusing on what I'm doing and whether it's with my partner or with my child, taking care of them, how to be aware of what I'm doing and just how to do that.

[42:49]

And that's what I want to find out. That's what I'd really like to know about. I'm trying to acknowledge that, trying to acknowledge the situation as it is.

[44:20]

So it has ups and downs all through the day. But it seems to me this attempt to acknowledge everything, everyone, and oneself, is a source of a structure in this body of life. I do it very... I think this kind of getting it to step out and telling each other about it is very helpful. like us to do it more. We get a sense of how we're practicing and what we can learn from each other.

[45:36]

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