I vow to teach the truth of the Tathagata's words. Morning. Well, two aspects of our nature are stillness and motion. And you could call it being and doing. You could call it pure existence and purposeful activity. And our life is the harmony or balance of these two factors.

[01:22]

Pure existence or stillness or existence for its own sake. may be also called purposelessness or selflessness. And then there's activity, which is purpose and accomplishment and motion. So for a Zen student, for someone who is studying Zen, practicing Zen, to be aware of both of these qualities at the same time is our practice.

[02:37]

So in the midst of activity, to always be aware of the stillness of your nature and realize that activity comes out of this stillness, comes forth from this stillness. When we sit in Zazen, we're very aware of this stillness. of this purposeless activity, activity for its own sake, called pure activity, not to accomplish some special thing, but simply to be settled on the impartial

[03:43]

quality of our nature. So this is sometimes called big mind or the practice of shikantaza. Shikantaza means just doing. In Zazen it's called just sitting with nothing extra. So in Zazen, there is accomplishment, but the accomplishment is just to be where you are. Just to be satisfied with where you are. Moment after moment, without anything extra. This is our life of wholeness or stillness.

[04:53]

When we sit in tsazen, we don't need anything. You don't necessarily get hungry. You don't necessarily feel overwhelmed by heat or cold. Your body adjusts to temperatures and adjusts to its own needs, so that there's very little need. But the other side is, of our life, is activity. We need to have some goal in our life in order to make our life work for us. And we need to have some kind of work and problems to deal with in order to bring out our energy and our spirit.

[06:08]

So we create wonderful problems and not so wonderful problems. So our life centers around our activity. But although our life centers around our activity, we should never lose sight of the still point of our life, moment by moment. This is Zen practice. So whatever we're doing in our busy life, our activity is balanced with composure. How to find our composure moment by moment. Suzuki Roshi used to say, every moment

[07:13]

we're falling out of balance and regaining our balance. Moment by moment, we're falling out of balance and regaining our balance. And if you look at that, you can see that that's true, because everything is continually changing. And we have to regain our balance, regain our composure every moment. You can't count on something staying still. Life is a moving dance. And each one of us is a little dancer. And how we move and interact with this flow is our life. and how we remain centered and composed is the fundamental point.

[08:33]

So Zazen teaches us how to do this. Zazen is a microcosm of life. Sitting still in this posture and dealing with the problems that come up in this posture is just like the rest of your life. only in a very compact way. If you want something too much, you fall into suffering. It's very plain. If you don't accept what comes to you, and know how to deal with that, you fall into suffering.

[09:59]

So, Zazen simply proves the Four Noble Truths that wanting too much or wanting things to be nice or pleasant or attaching to what's pleasant and rejecting what's not pleasant is the cause of suffering. So Zazen teaches us how to settle on the still point and find our composure moment to moment.

[11:03]

So in our activity, we are always wanting to do something. we go from one activity to another. And often what happens is that we get bound up with the result or bound up with wanting to accomplish something. This is our life of accomplishment. And we lose, we are so intent on accomplishing our task that we lose the still point of our life. It becomes obscured because we're into one activity before we finish the last one. An example of this is, I noticed when we had our sashin, and on the last day, the senior students were doing the serving.

[12:35]

Everybody enjoyed watching the seniors, having the senior students do the serving. humbling and wonderful. But I noticed that the senior students were not very mindful. Our life is not just isolated. The more egotistical we are, the more our life is isolated. Our life is our surroundings plus ourself. We don't exist in a vacuum. I remember in the 70s, I think it was the 70s, 60s or 70s, Psychologists came up with an idea of an isolation room.

[13:53]

You put somebody in water and isolate them so that there's a vacuum. And how do we exist in a vacuum? That was the experiment. How does one exist in a vacuum? Well, in a vacuum, actually, one loses one's existence. because our existence depends on what we interact with. We say a fish can't live in pure water. We have to interact with our surroundings. So how we interact with our surroundings, because our surroundings is ourself. When we interact with our surroundings, our surroundings create us and we create our surroundings.

[14:58]

It's interactive. It's not just I am creating my surroundings, I'm creating my little world. The little world that I create is also creating me at the same time. So how we respond and how we interact with the world around us, including objects for our use, and people, and trees, and animals, is what creates our world. And so, if you have a spoon, you pick up the spoon by the handle because that recognizes what the function of a spoon is.

[16:00]

If you pick up the spoon by the bowl, you're not recognizing the function of the spoon. And so it's not a spoon. It looks like a spoon, but it's not a spoon until you pick it up by the handle and use it as a spoon. So it's like when you pick up the spoon by the bowl, it's not only disrespectful to the spoon. It is disrespectful. you're demeaning yourself and losing the mindful quality of who you are and who the spoon is. Also, in wanting to

[17:09]

In serving, there's a certain pressure on the servers to get the meal out in time. So there's this pressure to move quickly and efficiently. But in that surge to move efficiently and quickly. Unless one is composed, or unless one is centered, you lose your composure. And then you're just trying to hurry up and get something done. And you lose the sense of wholeness. So when we're doing that kind of activity, even though there's some need to make things work on time, to be in the moment of each moment's settledness, to be settled on each moment,

[18:29]

within that activity. If we don't do that, we've lost our Zen practice. So, even though you're working to make things come out on time and there's pressure and you're going rather quickly, you're still composed and not rushing. There's a statement, the hurrier you go, the further behind you get. I remember when I was driving taxi in the 50s, you know, you come up against all kinds of situations where you have to stop quickly or, you know, move quickly.

[19:55]

And If you slam on the brakes when somebody comes to the intersection in front of you, you probably hit them. But if you find your composure in a split second and just ease on the brakes, you'll stop. without, you know, this surge, without this... but to just move calmly in a split second and just put on the brakes and then let them off. You will stop easily. So, to have this kind of... develop this kind of composure is practice.

[20:58]

So it's the balance between wanting to get something done and being totally still within that activity. It's not always easy. Yesterday someone was asking me about, I was talking about how you take care of your practice outside. So somebody said, well, how do you take care of your practice outside of the zendo? I was talking about posture, posture of zazen, to sit up straight and to maintain that attitude. Well, how do you maintain the attitude of posture outside? Because you always have different postures all the time. you always have continually different postures, and your postures are conditioned by your activity, by how you meet circumstances.

[22:17]

So you meet a circumstance with fear, or you meet a circumstance with anxiety, or you meet a circumstance with lack of mindfulness, or worry, or desire, and all of those circumstances condition our posture. So zazen, you know, is unconditioned posture. It's not influenced by anything. It's simply sitting up straight, not leaning to the right, or the left, or forward, or backward. There's nothing That's conditioning your posture, if you're letting go of everything. But in our daily life, our postures are conditioned by how we enter into relationship. So you can't keep a straight back all the time because you're bending over.

[23:22]

You're doing various activities where you're not standing up straight or sitting up straight. But to find your balance in all of your activity is the same thing. So when you're talking on the telephone, at the same time, what is the posture of talking on the telephone? Are you tense? Or what part of you is tense? So can you let go of that? Can you actually be mindful enough to let go of the conditioning of what you may be dealing with. So this carries over into all of your activity, all of our activity.

[24:30]

How do we find our composure and our balance in every moment's activity? That's aspect of practice. Also, how do we stay with our breath. In Zazen, the breath is deep. We breathe in what feels like our lower abdomen. How do you maintain that throughout your day, throughout your activity? When we get anxious or frightened or something, our breath gets up here in our chest. So we should always be aware of where our breath is. If we find we're breathing up here, just take a moment to let the breath fall down to here.

[25:36]

And keep establishing your breath down here all the time. And this gives weight to this part of your anatomy. And then it's easier to stay centered and composed and find that still point. This is the still point. If you can keep some part of your attention here, no matter what you're doing, then you can stay composed and you can settle on the still point of your life. So usually when we say, where is my mind? We point up to here. That's our brain. And it's also our mind.

[26:41]

But this is also mind. This center of our body is also mind. It's not the thinking mind. It's the mind of intuition. The intuitive mind, the mind that, you know, when something happens, you feel it here, right? You're called gut reaction. That's an aspect of mind which is intuitive. So intuitive means to feel something through your gut. So you know something through your gut. And then you can think about it. So this is first, and this is second. This is the discursive, discriminating, thinking mind.

[27:48]

And this is the whole mind. These are just simply, you know, pointing to points, but that's not where they are, really. But that's where they feel. That's where we feel it. So when our activity is based on non-activity, This is called shikantaza, or just doing. Although we want a result from our activity, our activity is based on non-self. Our activity is self-promoting, self-building.

[28:52]

And the stillness of our life is our bigger self, which we call non-self. So our activity of our small self is based on the huge, unlimited mind of stillness. So in our activity, we treat everything as ourself. When our life comes from this stillness, we realize that our life is not limited to just this body and thinking mind.

[30:03]

But it arises through the interaction with our bigger self. So we pick up a spoon by the handle and recognize its function. Suzuki Roshi used to say to people, don't sit on the table. People like to sit on tables sometimes. So the table has its function as a table. If you sit on the table, you're not recognizing the function of the table. Then you sit on a chair because that's the function of the chair. You can use a table as a chair sometimes, if that's appropriate. Or you can use a chair as a table sometime if that's appropriate.

[31:10]

But there's always an exception to every way of thinking. But the idea is everything has its function and its place. And to harmonize with the function And the place of things is to bring things to life. To bring your surroundings to life. Dogen says, everything in the kitchen has its place. So some things go on a lower shelf, some things go on this shelf, some things go on that shelf. And that's where they belong. And when you put them on that shelf, you're honoring their presence. and you're interacting with in an orderly way, which creates an orderly mind in yourself.

[32:13]

So we say, I am walking down the street, but at the same time, I am being walked by the street. We say, I am living my life. But life is actually living itself through my activity. But we always look at it from the point of view of myself. One-sided. So whatever I do is also doing me. Things are not objects. When we treat things as objects, then we say, I am doing something with this object. But the spoon has a life as a spoon. It's not an object. It's only an object when I treat it like an object. So the same goes for people.

[33:21]

When I treat people as objects, they become objects. But when I treat them as aspects of myself, in a subjective way, they come to life as people, as themselves. So Dogen, you know, always used the honorific, not always, but often, oh. So this garment here is called, in Sanskrit, a kashaya. And in Japanese, kesa. That's the Japanese way of saying kashaya. But Dogen always said, oh kesa. O means is an honorific, means honorable garment, honorable kesa. And he did the same thing for rice.

[34:25]

I can't remember what Gohan, I guess is the term for rice, O Gohan. He always addressed things with their honorific, so as not to see them as objects, but as living entities. So we always treat our robes in a, not a special way, but the way they should be treated, the way they should be worn, and with mindfulness and attention to what they represent and what they are. Each thing has a life that we give it. So practice of Zen is to bring life to life.

[35:31]

We think, well, life just goes on without me. But actually, it doesn't. Sometimes we see people who are walking around dead. And sometimes we walk around dead, or maybe only half alive. If we really recognized the life around us as it really is, we would all be enlightened. Because we would reflect the light that's around us. So light and life are the same thing.

[36:35]

Just two words for the same thing. So, you know, but we also have to be very careful There's a story of the, if we're too meticulous, that's not it either. There's a story about the, which you probably know, the Zen teacher who asked the student to sweep the leaves in the fall, to sweep the leaves off of the path. So the student dutifully swept the leaves off of the path, And meticulously, there was no blade of grass that was disturbed or no leaf that was left.

[37:38]

And the student was very proud of himself for doing such a great job. The teacher went over to this little tree and shook the tree. you know, when we work, when we do something, there's bound to be some mess, you know. Things are not perfect. People sometimes think that Zen means you should be perfect, to do everything perfectly. Well, we do do everything perfectly, but to do everything perfectly means to include imperfection. You know, when a robe is given to a monk, you know, when we make the robe, we try to do the best we can, you know.

[38:43]

And each stitch, you know, is sewn in a very wonderful way. And we try to, but no matter how much we try to do a perfect job, you know, some stitches are wide, some are narrow. no matter how much we try to do. But what makes the robe beautiful is the imperfections. And when the robe is given to somebody, it's supposed to have this, you know, be as perfect as possible, but the teacher always puts an ink mark on the robe to imperfect it. So it has a flaw, even though it has flaws anyway, but just to make sure that it has a flaw so that the student doesn't think I'm wearing some perfect robe. But flaws, you know,

[39:56]

The world is made up of, it's a patchwork cloth made up of flaws. And it's perfect. So Zen practice is not always doing the right thing. It's continuously making an effort to be. Always making the effort, even though it will never turn out. Your idea, perfect. Do you have a question?

[41:03]

I was wondering, what is that stillness that you're talking about? You know what it is.

[41:17]

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