Good morning. Today is the first day of spring. Summer, excuse me. I'll get there. First day of summer. So it feels like something. A good illustration of our way of practice is the story of Dao Wu and his disciple, Lung

[01:22]

I talk about this story at least once a year, maybe sometimes twice, but it's one of my favorite stories and pretty meaningful for us. Dao Wu was a Zen master who lived in the Tang Dynasty in China. He had a young disciple named Lungtang. And Lungtang eventually became Dashan's teacher. And Dashan was one of the most famous Zen masters in China. Lung Thang lived with his family when he was a boy close to the monastery and Lung Thang, Da Wu saw a lot of potential in him when he was very young and he let Lung Thang and his family live in a little hut on the monastery grounds

[02:52]

They were very poor, and they used to bake little cakes. Little cakes always somehow get into these stories. And to show his gratitude, Luangta used to bring over to his teacher, Dao Wu, ten little cakes every day. And Dawu, every time he received the cakes, he would take one of the cakes and give it back to Lungtang. And he would say, this is to prosper your descendants, to help the prosperity of your descendants. And one day, Lung Thang said, he didn't quite understand, you know, he's a little boy, and he said, every day I give you these ten cakes, and every day you give me back one cake.

[04:02]

Why do you do that? And Da Wu said, I'm only giving you back what is originally yours. and this is very impressive to little Moong Tan and then he became very tight with his teacher Da Wu and later he moved into the monastery when he became ordained and studied with Da Wu when he became older as a monk and when he was practicing for several, after practicing for several years as a monk. During that time, Dao Wu didn't give him very much teaching.

[05:06]

You know, in a monastery, it's not common to get direct teaching. You do this and this is how you do that. If you do this, that will happen. You don't get that kind of teaching so much. Not like learning something, some method. So one day he said to his teacher, Tao Wu, Lung Tan, said, you know, I've been here for for some time now, and so far I have not received any teaching on essence of mind." And Dao looked at him and he said, that's funny. He said, I teach you essence of mind constantly. I don't understand why you don't understand that.

[06:14]

Lung Kong looked kind of surprised. And Dao Wu said, when you bring me something to eat, don't I receive it? And when you bring me something to drink, don't I drink it? And when you bow to me, don't I bow back to you? Where have I fallen short? And at this, Lungtang had a big realization about essence of mind. Da Wu said to him, just be present on each moment in all of your activity.

[07:29]

Just be completely present on each moment. And then Da Wu, I mean Lungtang, his disciple, said, how do I maintain that kind of mind How do I maintain that kind of attitude, practice? And Da Wu said, I have to paraphrase this. This is my paraphrase. When you sit zazen, sit completely. Just be completely present. This is a very touching kind of simple practice, you know, basic practice.

[08:43]

There are many ways to practice Buddhism, many ways to practice Zen, many different teachings, some of which are complex and some of which are simple. But Dao Wu's way, you know, very simple and very difficult, very simple and very difficult way to practice. What Dao Wu is showing us is all the missing parts of our life. We usually pay attention to the main subject in our day-to-day activity. We decide what is important to get done.

[09:47]

And then we go about taking care of the important aspects of our life. And then there are all the in-between linkages. Like you may want to go to the toilet. That's the main subject. That's the idea you have in your mind. you walk to the toilet. But in your mind is, I have to go. But you don't think necessarily about your feet. And about the process that your body and mind is going through is just going there. I remember in the old days, a long time ago when we used to take LSD and we used to eat morning glory seeds when I was a youth. Morning glory seeds were very powerful and you couldn't get out of the room because just going from taking one or two steps was such an incredible experience that you didn't need to go anywhere.

[11:09]

But I'm not talking about that exactly, that's a real exaggeration, you know, and in a way it's quite wonderful to experience that. I'm not saying that you should all go out and do that, which you probably have anyway. But just the experience of going from one place to another, just being in that moment, in the moment of connecting activities. And when we're motivated, when we have some deep motivation, we tend to forget about the process and being in our body and paying attention to the minutia of our life, and experiencing that as our life, as the essence of mind.

[12:20]

That's why in Zen practice, you know, it's pointless. Zen practice is pointless, useless activity. And the reason that it's useless activity is so you can experience your essence of mind without anything interfering. So we do Kinhin. Kinhin's no big deal. Where are you going? Nowhere. You're walking, but you're not going anywhere. You're just experiencing body and mind completely. Walking. Cleaning windows, even if they're not dirty. Just clean the window. You don't clean the window because it's dirty. You just experience yourself completely, with no special purpose. So, purpose is okay.

[13:28]

I'm not saying that that's wrong. But practice... I was talking last week about finding ourself on each moment. That our practice basically, essentially, is to find ourself on each moment. And sometimes our desire interferes with that. Our desire and our accomplishment, worldly accomplishment, interferes with finding ourself completely on each moment. It doesn't have to, but it does. So we have both sides of our life. In Zendo, everything is taken away completely, and you're just sitting there with

[14:35]

And then in the world, in activity, it is still there, whether we see it or not, but it functions. How do we allow it to function? So, back and forth, back and forth. full and empty, empty and full. This relationship between Lungton and Dao Wu is very touching, without having to say anything. Monday morning we were talking about animals and When I think about my relationship with animals, with dogs, I've had a lot of relationships with dogs.

[15:46]

Dog forms a bond with a person, and then they don't have to say anything. From then on, that bond is deep and sincere, and it's just body. some telepathy, sensitivity. In the East, not the East Coast, but the Far East, and in our Japanese practice, and to be specific, body movement is the language. Body language is really important. We don't verify body language. We need something more to hang on to because we don't read the language so well.

[16:54]

We need verbal confirmation. That's our style. We need a lot of verbal confirmation. But in Japan, body language is the real language. How you move and how you do things is, you know, how you move in connection with other people and things. And when I was at Tassahara in November, there was a Japanese monk, some of you may know him, Rei. And I had people talking about their lives to each other. And I asked Rei if he would give a little talk about his life.

[17:58]

He said to me, Yes, I need to tell people about body language. He says, if people in Japan acted the same way toward me that people in America do, it would be completely intolerable. Because we don't pay attention to what we're doing with our body. And when we approach something or approach somebody, It's not that important to us. We don't have that awareness. We do pay attention, but we don't have that awareness of how what you do with your body sets off something in somebody else, and it's a communication in a language. And he was really going crazy, because people would address him in certain ways, or walk up to him in a certain way, and it would just... completely set him off, so he's always angry.

[19:03]

He understood, you know, that part of the problem was himself and not being able to let go. But we don't know, you know. When teachers come to America, they read our body language, which we don't even know we're talking about, saying. So, In Zen practice, we learn body language. Subtly, not directly. You know, we come into Zen Do and we bow. That's body language. If somebody comes into Zen Do and their arms are dangling at their sides and they walk up like this, you know, no body language. even though they're quite innocent. But it's a shock to see somebody do that in a Zendo where everybody knows a certain kind of language.

[20:11]

And when we sit and have a meal, the servers come and we bow to each other. But the way we bow to each other is the language. What are we communicating when we bow to each other? So, if we're, we're very often just mechanical, you know. Just like those oil wells down the coast, you know. But I was looking at those oil wells last time I went down the coast and they're very graceful. Actually, I had to think twice about that. They're very graceful. They're bowing to each other. So, teaching is sometimes by lecture, mostly through zazen, but through the forms that we have.

[21:30]

You walk into the zendo and bow at the door, and the teaching is right there. and you walk to your seat, and the teaching is right there. You bow to your seat, and the teaching is right there. The way somebody responds to you when you bow to your seat, the teaching is right there. The way you get on your cushion, turn around, face the wall, cross your legs, the teaching is in each movement. Just the going around, and then when you're finished, you go around this way. There's some meaning in that. The way you hold your hand in your mudra, the way you hold your hands when you bow after Zazen. So it looks like

[22:35]

just formality, but when you put yourself through the form, when you come into the zendo, to do zazen, and you completely put yourself into each form, come in, sit zazen, do the service, go out, you're a completely new person. If you do that, One period of zazen should be a completely renewing experience. Not just refreshing, but completely a new start. When you walk out of the zendo after zazen, the world has infinite possibilities.

[23:55]

You have to decide what to do. When you're still walking out, still in the building, walking to the door and you start thinking about what you have to do, you're no longer there. What will I do next after I get out of here? You've lost it. This is the kind of space where you don't need to do that. You don't need to think about what you're going to do next. As soon as you get out the door, you can start thinking about what you have to do next. And it could be anything. But since you have some continuity, we all have continuity to our lives, it comes back to us immediately. We don't have to worry. But we could, you know, start wandering, maybe walk down to Mexico, you know.

[24:59]

We could do that. So communication with a teacher is very important on this level, on the level of when you offer something, I receive it. When I offer something, you receive it. And it doesn't have to be very much. So how we practice together is to be together.

[27:26]

That's why we have daily zazen. So you can be together and practice together. You may ask some question and then go away, think about it. But it's not the same. I think, you know, what's important about our Saturday morning, this Saturday morning schedule for us, is that we have the opportunity to really be together and practice together for a good space of time. Sometimes I feel that we don't take advantage of that opportunity enough. It's one opportunity we have in our week to really let go of everything.

[28:29]

I know our lives are very busy, and for the rest of the summer, starting from today, we'll be traveling around and want to do many things. But I want to encourage everyone to continue practicing during the summer. I want to encourage people who come to lecture to try to make a little more effort, if you can, and do our Saturday morning schedule. Zazen, service, breakfast. A big part of our practice, and we don't get to do it so often, eating together in the zendo. A very important practice for us, eating with our oryoki bowls.

[30:03]

And working together for a space of time. Working supported by our samadhi mind, zazen mind. and helping to support your practice place. Our lecture is good, it's okay, but my lecture mostly is to help you to practice yourself, you know. Just encouragement for you to practice. I really don't have anything to tell you. Do you have anything that you'd like to say?

[31:19]

So really the way that, what is, what I see is the way, what's important is that how he took, how he returned the tea cake, how he received the offering and so forth, was critical. The forms themselves aren't particularly meaningful. I mean, they're nice. Bowing is a meaningful form. But it's the how. Yeah.

[33:35]

Well, that's why I say, you know, don't be mechanical. Not to be mechanical. What Ram was saying, I've been thinking about something, you know, very much the same. Maybe it was, I think it was something that Suzuki Roshi said, and maybe it was in the last newsletter, his talk, something. I'm not sure where this came from, but it's something, and I think he said that But I got out of the woods. It's important for us when we have the forms and the ritual, for us to all do the thing in the same way, because it's only when we're doing the same thing in the same way that our differences, like our true self... You can see the difference. That's when you can see it. Whereas if, you know, just coming into the zendo, if we all just came into the zendo any old which way, you know, then I don't know, what is it? That's our ego, but it's not that true thing that expresses, but when we do all come into Zen in the same way, then we're really expressing ourself.

[34:47]

Yeah. When everyone does the same thing in the same way, then each person's individuality stands out against that background. in a way that's actually more true. When we each do our own thing, we have a lot of, quite often, not always, overlay, acquired mannerisms, so forth. So this is a kind of an acquired mannerism. When we learn the forms, it's a kind of acquired mannerism. But it's a manner. It shouldn't be a mannerism. But that's subtle.

[35:51]

When we all have the same thing, that each head is different, each way of doing something, even though it looks the same, it's very different. And we come to know each other in a very quiet way. Now I can tell often how people feel in my house. or in the Zen Dojo, or different places, by how we bow to each other, in our home we bow at times, meals and other times. You know, I can tell when your mind is going, you can tell when mine is, even without a word. And you can tell someone who has served some, and really thought about the relationship with people being served.

[36:57]

And you can tell somebody who's a little scared and moving through the form the first time. It's real. These are the highlights of life if you're in practice. These are the big moments. If somebody makes that little journey through the forms, in the forms, and starts out bowing and just kind of in a form-oriented way and then some mornings you finally settle in yeah and you all you meet some uh sacramental kind of moments it's very often like this you know I think for me the most gratifying thing is, like you have said, these quiet moments when people meet wholeheartedly, when we meet each other wholeheartedly.

[38:15]

Thank you.

[39:11]

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