Well, my son Daniel, who is now seven and a half, has discovered baseball. And so baseball is everything. And I find myself playing baseball more and more. And I rather enjoy it. although I was never a baseball player. And I'm starting my baseball career a little late in life, later than most. But it's quite good, actually. And so I've been reading him a book by a Japanese baseball player called Sadaharu Oh, who was quite a famous baseball player in Japan. And he wrote a book, a biography of his life, which he attributes his success to what he calls his Zen practice.

[01:15]

So he considers himself a Zen baseball player, and he disciplined himself in that way. I haven't read the book, the whole book, so I just read a little bit of it so far, because I read little increments to my son when he goes to bed. But one interesting part of his story is when he talks about how the school he went to he missed the major school that most Japanese kids try to get into by one point. And so he went to another school. And at the other school, there was a lot of emphasis on baseball. So he thought that was rather lucky.

[02:20]

But he said, though, that When the kids went out to practice baseball, went out for the team, lots of kids participated. But they had to do a lot of things like not play baseball. They had to be cheerleaders. They had to learn how to chant. And they had to learn how to stay after school and pick up papers clean up the field and do all kinds of work that wasn't really directly connected to baseball." And he said, after a little while, most of the kids quit, but only the ones who really had the spirit to stay, stayed.

[03:22]

Whether they were good baseball players or not was not the didn't matter so much. He said the thing that it was a kind of self-regulating participation, so that there may have been a lot of potentially good baseball players who quit, but only those kids who had the tenacity to stay with that. And the determination to do what they were doing, even though they couldn't really play baseball, were the ones who made it. So these qualities of determination and being able to stay with something, even though it wasn't fun,

[04:26]

or it wasn't the main subject in order to do what they had to do. In other words, their willingness to go through whatever they had to go through in order to do it. And their tenacity and their strong spirit were the sustaining qualities that allowed them to actually play baseball. and to continue and to see the whole game or the whole thing through to the end. There are people who have lots of talent, but there are many factors that go with talent. in order to make a complete person, or in order for a person to actually do something completely.

[05:38]

There are many genius types who, because they're not so well-balanced or well-rounded, can't really function correctly. In our Zen practice, there's some parallel. Many people are very talented, and their understanding is very good, but maybe unbalanced. Someone may have very good understanding, but they can't sustain a practice. Or someone may be able to cross their legs very easily, walk in the Zen Dojo and cross their legs very easily, but they don't have the other sustaining qualities to which create a sustaining practice.

[06:56]

So tenacity and vigor are really two qualities or related qualities which are central to making anything work. Dogen Zenji says, practice doesn't depend on whether you're bright or not bright. whether you're smart or dull, it's not so important, but that you enter wholeheartedly, accepting the limitations and the success that you have, equally.

[08:28]

In the Mahayana, the Mahayana Buddhism talks about six qualities, six prajnaparamitas, which are six qualities that sustain bodhisattva in his or her practice. And all six, each one contains the other five. But the thread, or the sustaining quality, of course, is prajna, or non-dual wisdom, the wisdom of non-duality. One may be very generous, but the difference between ordinary generosity and dana is that dana, as generosity, is a paramita, a prajnaparamita.

[10:02]

In other words, It's generosity which has as its base non-duality. Usually, or often, giving is a kind of egotistical activity. When we give, Either we expect something or it makes us feel good. Makes us feel, kind of raises our ego a little bit. But generosity or dana, which is, as the Prajnaparamita, is just giving. That's all.

[11:09]

Just giving. There's no... Even though there's a giver and a receiver, giver and receiver are not two different things. So, Dana, or giving, although is, giving is a wonderful quality. It needs to be balanced with wisdom. Wisdom, if wisdom or non-dual, non-duality is not present in the giving, it's not truly giving. And if ethics are not part of our giving, if we don't understand the rules, then we get mixed up.

[12:32]

And our giving can become self-indulgence. So many factors need to be balanced. We need to bring into account many factors when we do something. And our practice is to be constantly aware of many factors whenever we do something. Giving, generosity, how to go with rules, how to go with ethics, or how to abide by the way, and patience.

[13:39]

But patience, when Not exactly patience. Patience is to wait for something, but not in the sense of waiting or endurance necessarily, but in the sense of abiding in your spot. Abiding right here, right now. Kshanti has that meaning. Abiding right here, right now. not running away, not getting lost, but to be awake in the present and to cover your entire place. effort, right effort, energy, vigor, to do something with your whole body and mind.

[14:57]

And meditation or zazen, To always practice Zazen. How do we always practice Zazen? To always be at one with the present moment. Without ego. and of course the non-duality of wisdom. Always balancing these six factors. So this factor of effort or tenacity belongs to effort.

[16:37]

To stay with something. You know what you want to do, but When we come to a place where things get boring, or difficult, or impossible, then we always look for some other way. We start to back out. We start to move around. This is the point of Zazen itself, is to be able to stay in our place. no matter what's happening. This builds the quality of tenacity which is so important to be able to see something completely through and not be pulled around by feelings You know, it's like when everything else is gone, when you can't rely on your thinking, and you can't rely on ideas, all you can rely on is determination.

[18:04]

Determination and tenacity. This is really the bottom line in Zen practice. So that's why it doesn't matter if someone is brilliant or stupid. What really matters is determination and tenacity. Same thing, I think, in baseball. For these kids, the ones that had determination and tenacity were the ones who became baseball players. And they learned how to play baseball.

[19:10]

they develop their skills. I think that this holds true for most disciplines. We see many brilliant people who burn a very bright light, but at some point they burn up or burn out. unless they have those other qualities. And I think that a lot of us come to Zen practice reading books. When you read the books about the old Zen masters, you get some little story about someone's enlightenment experience. This is kind of like a burning light.

[20:14]

We're attracted to that light. We're attracted to that kind of brilliant personality. And in the dialogue, the student asks a question and the master says something and then the student gets enlightened and is enlightened ever after. And we say, that's what I want. And so it looks like this burning light. But what we don't read about so much is the student's determination and tenacity that brought about this little incident, or that brought about that turning through this little incident, we may feel that the enlightenment experience was the big thing in the person's life.

[21:31]

But actually, that experience isn't any greater than the student's day-to-day, mundane, boring practice. The thing to do after you have some enlightenment experience is to forget it. If you try to hold on to it, plunged back into delusion. This is a big problem with enlightenment experience and with being some kind of star, bright star. For most Zen masters, most Zen masters come to maturity gradually.

[22:50]

But when you read in the book, what you read is some spectacular kind of opening, which every one of us should have every day. Every day, each one of us should have some spectacular, wonderful opening and then forget it. Just go about our business with determination and tenacity in a quiet way that doesn't draw a lot of attention to yourself. If you've ever had a wonderful opening experience, you'll most likely be very humble and not draw much attention to yourself and just go about your business in a way that looks like nothing happened.

[24:11]

So Dogen Zenji says, even though you don't have some marvelous awakening experience, you should still continue to practice Zazen. We don't practice to have some, to be a star. We just practice. to practice. And then sometimes you get an ice cream cone. Sometimes you get potatoes. Sometimes you have carrots and peas. Sometimes you don't have anything. But when you have enlightenment, then plain water is just fine. So continuous practice is our everyday life.

[25:55]

Continuous practice means that all of the little mundane insignificant parts of our life are our enlightenment experience and should be taken with attention. Continuous practice means going with our life over and over, day by day, moment by without even knowing that it's practice, necessarily. Sometimes we wonder about our practice, but the most insignificant stuff of your life is where your deepest practice lies,

[27:17]

Washing the dishes. Arguing with somebody. Paying attention to feelings. Being confused. Going to the toilet. Walking from one room to the next. Blowing your nose. Scratching your head. Putting on your clothes. This is where our deep practice lies. Real insignificant stuff. Usually, we're following some idea. And in following an idea, we get an idea which is a dream. and then we act out our dream. We get some idea and we follow it.

[28:31]

That's all right. We're in the dream world. We're in the realm of dreams. So we create an idea and then we follow the idea. We act it out. That's what we pay attention to, mostly. But in acting out our idea, the body moves, and the mind moves, and the body and mind moves with its surroundings. And this moving with our surroundings is our life. The idea is part of our life. The movement is part of our life. The surroundings are the stuff of our life. But paying attention to how the feet are moving, paying attention to how the body is moving, paying attention to the subtleties of movement,

[29:45]

for its own sake, not just to fulfill the idea. So there are two things, at least, going on at once. One is acting out our dream, and the other is the reality of our actual movement in time and space, with everything, as part of everything. If you have a koan like Mu, you may think about, what does Mu mean? What does Mu mean? It's all up in your mind. But actually, while you're moving and acting with things, that's Mu. But you don't see it, because the mind is always working, trying to figure something out.

[30:56]

and creating a dream, creating a dream about Boo. So, to really pay attention to how we do something, to wake up. This is what Zazen is. Moment by moment waking up to this. Sometimes we wake up to this and it's not very interesting. What's interesting is the dream, creating a dream. But When we really wake up to this and realize this is it, this is me, this is it, we come to prefer reality to the dream.

[32:15]

The dream has its own reality, but its reality is as a dream. Dreaming is necessary. The problem is that we substitute the dream for the reality, or we get so caught up in our dream that we disregard reality. As human beings, we have this ability, capacity to dream, but Our capacity to dream also gives us the capacity to ignore reality. So when we look at the animal world, we say, well, you know, the animal world, in the animal world, the animals are awake to reality, even though

[33:30]

a lower form of life, so to speak. So, it's more difficult for humans. And we have this kind of problem as human beings. We have the wonderful ability to dream, but it comes with a problem. It comes with the problem of removing ourselves from reality. So zazen is to continually wake up. We dream, then we wake up, then we dream, and then we wake up. And the way to practice Zazen continuously is to continue to wake up.

[34:43]

No matter what you're doing, wake up, wake up. And in order to do this, the most important factor, so to speak, is determination and tenacity. Discipline. It's called discipline. You have to be your own disciple. Somebody can scold you or remind you once in a while, but nobody's going to be your mother. You have to be your own mother. You have to be your own parent. You have to take charge of yourself. Each one of us has to take charge of ourself. So the end of Zen practice is when you completely take charge of yourself.

[35:53]

That's called self-mastery. And when you have self-mastery, you can be called a Zen master. When you really take charge of yourself. when you don't need anybody to tell you what to do anymore. It's just being called grown-up. You can actually wake yourself up and stay awake. It's hard, really hard, really hard. The most difficult thing is to stay awake. It's very simple, but it's the most difficult thing because we want to get caught up in our dream, our dreams. Dreaming is fine, thinking is fine, but it must be balanced with all the other factors.

[36:54]

So, Zen practice is kind of like this, you know, rather than like this. This is what we like, you know. We like the great highs, but the great highs bring the great lows. What goes up really hits hard when it comes down. So Zen practice is more like this. Determination and tenacity, not so much being pulled by this and pulled by that or allowing ourselves to get too high, We're too low. But when we get high, we really get high. But when we get high, we're also at the same time real low. So we don't get turned over. So, whether we're sitting in the dharma seat or in the zazen seat or in the middle of the marketplace, it's all the same.

[38:26]

The events are different, but it's like being in the middle of a hurricane. The middle of a hurricane, the eye of the hurricane very still, completely still, peaceful, heavenly, the eye of the hurricane. But the hurricane is all around. So how do we stay in that eye? That's called zazen. If you lose the eye, then everything becomes hurricane. And you just get tossed around. So this is where our effort goes.

[39:31]

Our effort goes to find the eye of the hurricane and stay there in every situation. This is your reference point. So whatever happens to us, events will change, our lives will change, and events will cause us all kinds of pain and discomfort and aggravation and one day will disappear. And when everything starts coming apart, what will we do?

[40:38]

Some Zen master said when just like putting the lobster or the crab in hot water, that's the way you cook a crab. The crab is alive when you put it in hot water, boiling water. And when that happens to you, what would you do? You can't think your way out of it. No way you can think your way out of it. So, this kind of determination to find that I in the center of the hurricane, this is Zen practice. This is the kind of tenacity and determination that we need in our practice.

[41:56]

It's dealing with pain and difficulty and boredom and not wanting to be where we are and Having to deal with stuff we don't want to deal with. Having to deal with a world that we think we didn't make. So every situation is our zendo. Every situation, without exception, is the place where we practice. There's no place you can't practice zazen.

[43:08]

And our task actually is to keep waking up to that place over and over and over again. You know how it is in Zazen? Keep waking up, falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep and waking up. That's the rhythm of our life. It's okay to fall asleep because it's natural. But we always have to say, wake up. Wake up. All the time. And when we're confronted with a situation, we have to wake up and come back to the reality of the eye of the hurricane.

[44:21]

calmness of mind. How do we sustain that calmness of mind? That's our koan. It's the koan of zazen. Think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? hasn't got anything to do with whether you're thinking or not. Just wake up. So this afternoon, we have a party, is it called?

[45:49]

Picnic. It's called a picnic. So bring your baseball bats. and your tenacity. Thank you.

[46:12]

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