I love to taste the juice of love, and have it as it burns. When I first began giving Dharma talks, I had been practicing rather a long time and I was feeling quite confident.

[01:02]

Like I was ready. But I have to admit that lately I'm feeling quite different. But as long as You don't expect anything special from me and I don't think that I'm doing something special. Then I think we're safe to talk about the Dharma together. Otherwise I think it's pretty risky if you think that the person who is sitting up here and trying to talk about our practice knows something that you don't know or is somehow special, or if the person who's sitting up here thinks that they're somehow special, I think it's pretty dangerous.

[02:14]

So let's just try to think together about our practice and how we can talk about it together. I like to think there's a story I know you've heard before because Mel likes to tell it too about a teacher or a monk in China who at some point retired not just to a mountain but up into a tree and made a little tree house up there and sat Zazen up in the tree one time and he came to be known as the bird's nest monk and The governor of the province, who was himself a serious scholar and practitioner of Buddhism and a poet, decided he would go to see this bird's nest monk and test his dharma with him.

[03:25]

So he went up and there he saw him, up in the tree, and he started off by saying, Oh, Bird's Nest Monk, you look pretty insecure to me up there." And the Bird's Nest Monk looked down at the governor, who was in a high government position. He says, well, governor, you look pretty insecure to me down there. That sort of ended that line of discussion. The Bird's Nest Monk, what does the Buddha say about how to practice or about what is the Buddha way? And so the bird's nest monk quoted from the Dhammapada from the first teaching of the Buddha to say, refrain from evil, do good, keep yourself pure. This is the way of the Buddhas. And the governor says, well, I knew that when I was three years old. And the bird's nest monk said, yes, but

[04:31]

Even a three-year-old can know that, but even an 80-year-old man has difficulty doing it. And as I was thinking about how it was that I came to practice, it's a little like that. Maybe since three, I don't know, but since very early I had this feeling, you know, very real intense feeling of wanting to do good and wanting not to do bad and wanting to help others, which are the three pure precepts of the Bodhisattva movement. But somehow, no matter how, maybe even because of how intense my intention was, I just seemed to keep getting myself into a muddle and my life was not like that.

[05:35]

And the difference between my idea and my life became more and more apparent to me and more and more unsupportable for me. And somewhere along there when I was feeling in a particular muddle, I happened to be fortunate enough to bump into the son of an old friend who told me about the Berkeley Zen Do. And I went down there in the old attic on Dwight Way and had Zazen instruction. I didn't go right away actually. This person told me about Zen Buddhism and the Berkeley Zen Do. And I happen to know that he was someone who'd been in rather a muddle for some time before I had seen him. And who seemed to be in rather better shape at the time I bumped into him. And he had been down at Tassajara with Suzuki Roshi for about a year.

[06:41]

But, you know, I thought about Zen Buddhism. Boy, that's weird. But anyhow, I was desperate. So I went over to find him. to the Zandoan and had Zazen instruction. And I felt just very much at home there. Though, after Zazen, we did this sort of, you know, we had all these bells and bowing and chanting in Japanese. It was kind of weird. And I found that difficult. So I would go for Zazen and leave. but nobody would talk, you know, so I had to stay through service and an orioke breakfast and dishwashing and then people would talk. So just because I'm rather gregarious sort and wanted to talk about what was happening, I stayed through the

[07:53]

of this unusual forms and unfamiliar atmosphere of the service and the robes and the bows and the shaved head and all that strange stuff. I found out that there were some really neat people there and still continue to feel very much at home. I volunteered to be Jikido because I really liked Zendo and On Saturdays, I would... Well, it wasn't Saturdays. Sometime when I didn't have to go to work, I would just hang around up in the zendo, kind of fussing around much longer than the jikido was usually. The jikido was just supposed to do it and get out of there, and I would just kind of hang out and be late to work. Finally, Mel says, I don't think we're going to be able to let you do the jikido. You're too attached to it. But there was something about the zendo that was rather settled and orderly and my life was so unsettled and disorderly in my mind at that time.

[09:00]

The settledness of it helped me a lot. And the orderliness of it. Putting all the cushions in straight rows and being sure the fronts of the cushions were all straight with the top. Nothing in my life had that kind of order at that time. So it was very, very settling to be in a situation that had that kind of order. So I began to study practice and read about Zen and listen to Suzuki Roshi's lectures and listen to... Actually, at that time, Mel wasn't talking yet in the Zendo.

[10:06]

Katagiri Sensei used to come and talk, Chino Sensei and Yoshimura Sensei. And I began to get all kinds of ideas about what good practice was and what bad practice was. Being very careful to follow all the rules and being rather scathing with people who didn't notice. I think a lot of new students do that. try very carefully to find out where all the lines are and be careful not to step on them and then think that they're a whole lot better than somebody who steps on the lines, doesn't notice that the lines are there. It makes for... maybe not so much in Berkeley, maybe it's in Center, it's more like that.

[11:15]

Anyhow, one of the... earliest, most wonderful, longest lasting lessons that I got about having ideas about practicing good was in one of the first sesshins that I did after Zen Center bought the building on Page Street. We had this big cavernous endo down in the basement, had an asphalt tile floor It had been the recreation hall and so there was a stage at one end and that was the altar and Suzuki Roshi sat up there and there were rows of goza mats and cushions down the whole length of the zendo and as it happened Suzuki Roshi was sitting here and I was sitting just two or three seats back in the middle aisle. At some point we were eating and he made some comment about to please pay attention to the sound that the spoons were making on the bowls and try to eat quietly.

[12:28]

I continued eating and I could still hear a few clicks and clicks. And I remember having this, something, those clots, didn't they hear him say to be quiet with their spoons and bowls? And then I had this thought, I wonder if he notices how nicely I'm eating with my bowls and my bowl I had my soup bowl in my hand. Thank goodness it was empty. It flew out of my hand. It flew out of my hand and went clattering across the floor. And I looked up at the soup grocery and hadn't noticed anything at all. Either how nicely I was eating with my bowl or what a jackass I had made of myself. Either one. And it was just all happening in my head. And it was just me and the bowls and my mind making all that noise. I've, ever since then, had a great affection for eating in this formal way that we eat, in this endo.

[13:38]

Because there's nothing happening there except that you're eating. And everything else that happens is extra. My experience around eating is that I just have a lot of extra. Oh gosh, this is good, I wonder if I'll be through in time to get seconds in. Just, just... And somehow it becomes quite clear in that situation and then it carries over to other situations that in this practice it's just me doing the best I can and trying to pay attention to what I'm doing and the three pure precepts that I knew since I was three. And I begin to understand how it is that in the Rinzai tradition where they study koans, you know, this whole sort of systematic study of koans, after all of the other koans

[14:48]

are studied with a teacher and passed, whatever that means. The final koans that a practitioner in that tradition studies are the precepts. What does it mean? How does one take whatever you've understood through all of this effort of zazen and discussion with a teacher and studying the ancient teachers and whatever, how does one take all of this and live your life? After all, this whole practice is about how do you live your life? How do I get up in the morning and refrain from evil and do good and help other beings? What else is there to do and how do we do it? And I think that we have to begin just by settling ourselves enough so that we notice, how am I living my life right now?

[16:02]

Mostly our head is so full of all the ideas of what we should do and what we shouldn't do and what we are doing and good and bad and rules and whatever that our mind is always somewhere else instead of just right here. What am I doing right now? What is the situation right now and how am I living my life in this situation right now? And that's where Zazen practice comes in. It allows us to slow down in the great confusion that we find ourselves in and just try to locate ourselves right here and take a breath and settle right here and find out, little by little, what is this right here? What am I doing right here?

[17:09]

In this moment, in this situation, does this feel right? Is this appropriate for this situation? Not does it match up with some rules, but can I settle myself enough to know right now, from inside, is this appropriate for this situation? Is this refraining from evil, doing good, helping all beings? when we've been chasing about after ideas for so long it takes quite a lot of sitting to settle down and we never come to the end of it we can sit and be quite settled

[18:37]

feel quite clear about just this. But when we get up from our cushion and go about and interact with all of the people and events in our lives, we need the opportunity to settle down again and again and again. It's not something that we outgrow. It's not something that we finally become completely settled and clear and perfectly realized Buddha and we never need to settle down again. There's no end to stepping forward from the cushion and entering the activities of our life, trying to be present, losing ourselves, coming back to the cushion, settling ourselves. and stepping forward again and entering the activities of our life.

[19:41]

Even during the day, we find ourselves rushing around to slow down and take a breath and come back to here. And then continue. It's very helpful. if you have some idea about this is good practice or this is bad practice it's maybe not so helpful, it's maybe something extra it takes us away from settling right here and just noticing what is this Because if we have some ideal, some idea, some ideal of how we ought to be, then that's some gaining idea, and as soon as we get to where we think that is, then our gaining ideal will set up another goal, ideal, that we will keep not being.

[21:11]

And we'll never be right where we are doing the best we can. I don't mean by that that it doesn't matter. I don't mean by that that the more specific precepts, the ten prohibitory precepts, don't matter. But I mean that we study the precepts, and we try to find out, in each circumstance, what it means.

[22:13]

Because I think that we could... There are many stories, actually, of monks whose complete attention and intention and effort and practice was to follow the precepts, all 237 of the Vinaya precepts, to the letter, but who somehow missed the spirit of the pure precepts and somehow, in spite of trying to stay exactly to the letter of the precepts, missed what it meant to live Buddha's life. Somehow the compassion that's necessary for us to be in the world with other beings and in a way that's actually helpful can get lost if we don't

[23:34]

and try to see the precepts and the light of each particular circumstance, what is the right thing to do here, now, in this circumstance, without checking a list of rules and trying to see. By that time, the circumstance is all gone. I believe it may have been that the... I think it was at the first Jukkai ceremony at Zen Center that Suzuki Roshi did, Jukkai means receiving the precepts. After he had given the precepts to all of the people who were receiving them, and they had all vowed, even after achieving Buddhahood, I will keep these precepts. He said, as you leave this room, you may find that, strictly speaking, you have to break every one of these precepts in order to do the right thing in a given circumstance.

[24:39]

That was very striking to try not to get so caught up in the letter of the law as to miss the spirit of living in the world in a way that actually responds to each moment most appropriately. And so it's said that the whole of the precepts can be... the whole of the precepts grows out of the first precept which is to take refuge or to be one with Buddha. to settle ourselves on our original nature, to be completely one with all being.

[25:54]

From that, all of the precepts then flow, and our action in each moment can be completely in accord with the And so again and again we return to just sitting without any idea of being something different than we are or gaining something that we don't already have but of finding out who we actually are What we already know is settling right here with the confidence that we are complete just as we are.

[27:24]

And when we get up from our cushion, to step into the world settled on that completeness, acting from that completeness. And when we lose track of it, stopping, taking a breath, finding it again, and continuing, moment after moment, actualizing this greatness in the world. The nation being tired of us.

[29:39]

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