I come to teach the truth of the Hathas word. Well, it's very helpful for me to have a practice discussion with you during Sashi. It helps me to know what to talk about in lecture. And we can keep recycling our mind stuff back. One of the prevailing themes that I find is the theme of the difference or the conflict between our desire and

[01:28]

our intentions. Actually, we were talking about it yesterday in one way. Today, I want to talk about it in a little different way, a little different point of view, but basically the same. Do you know what an oni is? Yeah, Japanese An Oni is a little devil. The first time I heard about an Oni was at Tatsuhara when Tatsugami Roshi was my Sushouji, my Shusou teacher. And he told us about Onis a little bit, and he was the Eno at Eheji for ten years.

[02:35]

And he said, Eno, if you turn Oni around, it's Eno. In the monastery, the Eno is the one that's in charge of the monk's practice and kind of sometimes like a disciplinarian. Maybe someone that could beat the devil out of you. kind of turning it around, it's interesting. Anyway, Oni is a little devil, and it's the devilish side of our nature. The kind of extreme egocentricity, and difficult to manage.

[03:46]

side of ourselves. A side that's hard to take hold of, hard to control. A side that wants to set everything on fire. So here's a picture of Oni as a monk. See, there are famous pictures of Oni as a monk. I'll show you. This is actually a block print that's done, it's an old style of printing that was done by a teacher of a friend of mine in Japan. He gave it to me. teacher teaches this old style of printing.

[04:47]

And my friend Peter Schneider is a student of his. You see it? He's a monk with a devil's face. I think this kind of, You can see it two ways. You can see it as the monk is a kind of devil, or the devil is a kind of monk. This devilish person is a kind of monk. Sometimes if we see someone who is very virtuous, who has a very virtuous appearance.

[05:51]

Underneath, they may be hiding their little devil. And sometimes the devilish side comes out unexpectedly. People are very shocked. But sometimes, a devil, a little devil, wants to train and practice and develop some virtue. And from that point of view, it's a devil training as a monk. And that's what most of us are, I think, is little devils in training.

[06:56]

If we lose that, if we lose that side, lose the fact that That's where we're coming from. We really get into trouble. So, I feel that all of us are very much aware of our Oni side. We're all very much aware of our Oni side, and I think that's very good. And I feel that we may not say that we're trying to perfect our virtue. We may not say so. But I'm not sure if we know what we're doing.

[08:04]

But we all have some desire. to do something, some correct, right activity, right life, to develop our right life, correct life. Even though we don't necessarily know what it is, And if we knew, if we really knew what the end of Buddhist training was, we may not even want to continue. If we really knew, had a really good idea what the end of Buddhist training was, we may not even want to continue to practice. Because we don't really want to lose our devilish nature.

[09:14]

So, as we progress in practice, our oniside runs into trouble, constantly running into trouble in one way or another. I won't call our oniside devilish. That's only one aspect. But oniside devil is a kind of Western concept, but interpretation. Maybe Oni side is the side that wants to have its own head and resists development, developing. So you might say that the Oni and the Saint are on two different sides, two different ends. Zen practice is to bring the Oni and the Saint together.

[10:23]

Not to keep them separated, but to bring them together. And like everything else in Zen, we're always trying to put these opposites to see the oneness of these opposites. So on the one hand, we're developing through practice, developing and cultivating. Chinese call it cultivating. And on the other side, on the other hand, we're just a bunch of little Onis running around, doing our thing. When we sit in zazen, our oni thoughts come bubbling up.

[11:32]

All kinds of thoughts, all kinds of desires and resistances come bubbling up. And sometimes we say, here I am sitting zazen and I'm thinking about sex and I'm thinking about money and I'm thinking about travel and this and that and the other thing. In the midst of my saintly activity, here comes my Oni, popping up right in the center of things. But that's our practice, that's our life. Right in the midst of our saintly activity, here comes our Oni. So what should we do with our Oni?

[12:36]

How should we take care of our Oni? Should we beat our Oni or ostracize our Oni or send him outside? Or are we anything else but? Well, anyway, I've been practicing for 20 years. And I've been practicing with my Oni.

[13:41]

Me and my Oni. I've been practicing together for 20 years. And I hope to continue to practice together with my Oni for a long time. And I've had various kinds of relationships with my Oni. Sometimes I tried to reject my Oni, and sometimes I tried to hide my Oni. Sometimes... I didn't know what to do. But... I respect my Oni. And my Oni is actually my friend. The thing that I like about the picture of the Oni, when the Oni becomes a saint, the Oni still looks like the Oni.

[14:54]

The Oni doesn't take on the appearance of a saint. The Oni still looks like the Oni. And you may even be frightened of the Oni when you look at the face of the Oni. But the Oni's intention and heart are always noble. An Oni with a noble heart is what we appreciate. Actually, we're not so interested in saints. Being a saint is very good, but it's not really our practice. If you are a saint, that's very good, but we can't turn you into a saint.

[16:07]

He can't make you become one. In Buddhism, actually, a saint is a little different in Buddhism than in Christianity. In Christianity, a saint is a kind of savior or something. But in Buddhism, a saint is more like an arhat, someone who is so free and aloof that are kind of unreachable for us ordinary human beings. And so we ordinary human beings have to find some other way. So ordinary human beings like we are have to find a noble heart within the heart of the Oni.

[17:26]

We can't get rid of the Oni. So the Oni is our problem and also our salvation. But if we just let the Oni be, it's not the same.

[18:50]

We really have to confront the Oni. and work with the Oni. It's easy to say, you know, well, you know, I'm just as I am, this Oni. That's okay, but it's, we have to do something to move the Oni. in some way, we have to move the Oni. Otherwise, we're nothing but an Oni, nothing but a devil. So it's always a kind of struggle.

[20:03]

we're always in the midst of a struggle. And in the midst of... This is our progress, actually. If you want to talk about progress, progress is how we engage with our owning. Sometimes the owning is on top. Sometimes the seed is on top. When I say we, who is we? That's a good point. We and the owning. Me and the owning. Who am I and who is the owning? So sometimes we feel, let's just let the Oni have a free reign.

[21:25]

Sometimes we get tired. Sometimes we get tired of dealing with this situation and it's just easier to let go, let things be. Sometimes we have to do that. Not everybody is ready to engage in practice. And sometimes people come to practice and find out what it is and immerse themselves, but they can't sustain it. They can't sustain a sustained practice. Oni is too powerful. And so they have to go away and work things out. Give reign to their... whatever it is they have to do.

[22:32]

And so you just have to let somebody do that. Say, okay, go out, work it out, you know. Then somebody will come back after they've worked it out and continue to practice on a different level. and then they may have to go away again and work something out. But this constant, it's almost impossible for us not to deal with it. And the constant round that we have with Oni nature, is what builds our character, like Kate was saying. If I think about Zazen, maybe sitting in Sashina is building my character.

[23:35]

If I think that way. But actually it's true. You're constantly dealing with Oni nature. And how you deal with it, It is creating your character. So we say sometimes Zen practice, the purpose of Zen practice is to develop your character. And that's so. We're constantly dealing with resistance. When we sit in Sashin, the difficulty we have is the difficulty of our resistance, almost entirely. And how we deal with that resistance brings out our character.

[24:46]

Our character is revealed by the way we deal with that resistance. So Siddhi Sasheen is a way of developing our character. Dealing with big difficulties. How do you do it? and those same difficulties arise in our daily life. But it's important, I think, for us to know

[26:01]

that we all are Onis. Then we don't, we're not fooled by people, and we don't fool people. And we can always, we're always down at a level where we won't fall over, like water reaches a low level. And In the same way, we reach a low level. We realize the low level of our own character. And therefore, we don't get pushed over by thinking that we're up here. If we think we're up here, then somebody will come along and push us over very easily. I'm not really talking about good and bad so much. I'm just talking about the way things are, as is.

[27:08]

In Christianity, the reason why you do good is so that you can go to heaven. If you could, you'd go to heaven. Buddhism also has heavens and speaks in that way, but if there's no deity, no Buddha is not watching you, you know, to see if you're going to do good or bad. But what is it? Why then do you choose one thing over another? Why do you choose to act one way over another? Why can't you just do whatever you want? What's the difference?

[28:13]

The difference is that if you understand cause and effect, you be very careful what you do because when you do something that's a cause which creates an effect which comes back to you or to this person or to you and as we create our life what we create, what we're constantly creating, is the result of what we're creating always comes back to us, but we can't understand why that's so. It's hard to understand why what we're creating comes back to us, or how it does. But the older you get, the more you see how what you do comes back to you.

[29:30]

I used to wonder, Does that come back to you? But as I get older and older, I realize that what I do, what I did 20 years ago or 30 years ago, has a lot of meaning for me now. What I did 30 years ago determines the suffering I have now. Or 20 years ago. something like that, but you don't know it at the time. And so in order to stop creating our own suffering and the suffering of others, we make an effort to do right action, which may go against our desire. and quite often does, mostly does.

[30:33]

But that's hard to see when you're filled with it, when you're filled with your, what I want. It's hard to see what the consequences of that, fulfilling that is going to be. So it's not that God judges you, it's that when you do this, comes around and hits you on the head over here. But you can't see that that's going to happen. So Oni is not necessarily somebody who's bad, but just kind of ignorant. It's our ignorant self.

[31:37]

In Buddhism, we don't talk so much about evil, but about ignorance. Our ignorance is what gets us into trouble. study in Buddhism is to educate our ignorant self. And to be very careful not to act out of impulsiveness or ignorance. And to take care of the oni. Take care of them. This Oni is very precious. Oni is maybe like a child and like a... in some ways very innocent.

[32:55]

Wants to do everything. But we have to teach it and take care of it, nurture it. Be kind to your own. This is, I guess, a few more minutes. Do you have anything that you would like to say about anything? Sashin? Monis? You said that one thing that happens to us in this process is we find out how low our character is.

[34:02]

Is that how you said it? Yeah. The low point. We should be at the low point. We should realize the low point of our character and not feel that we're so high. Not fool ourselves that we're so high. In other words, be in contact with the low point of our character so that we don't feel that we're so high that we get knocked over. As a person who is a small saint and lives in the shadow of a very large oni, I have to work extra hard to keep balance. Although we laugh about it, at times it can be profoundly discouraging and very frightening to live in these conflicts. It's not always so comical, although it's good to have some comic relief and laugh at it. But one thing I wanted to just to share with people is that When I feel discouragement, I have this little saying of Dogen's that has always helped keep me walking on the path.

[35:11]

It's about arousing the thought of enlightenment. He says, to arouse the thought of enlightenment is following the encouragement of others, to do good even to the slight extent that one is capable of, and to bow to the Buddha even while you are Thank you.

[35:35]

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