I vow to face the truth of the Tartars worse. Morning. Well, I've been thinking about certain aspects of our practice, when I talk to people and see how we deal with our practice, I realize that practice is a kind of double bind. Our Zen practice, our Buddhist practice, is a kind of double bind. It's something that we want to do and something that we don't want to do.

[01:06]

And in the Hokyo Zamai, the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, it says, touching and turning away are both wrong because it's like a mass of fire. Massive fire can mean various things. But it means that when you go toward it, it gets pretty hot. But it's very enticing, this heat. It's very enticing. So we really want to go for it. But when we get close, Really, it's hot. So we kind of, whoa, wait a minute. It's too hot for me. So we have this ambivalence in our nature. The problem with Buddhism is that it's too truthful.

[02:13]

It's too real. So we want what's real. But when we get close to what's real, we don't want it. So it's a problem. And in each one of us, this problem arises. Every Zen student has this problem of wanting the real, but when you get close, you say, wait a minute. And then we think of all kinds of reasons why we shouldn't go any further. Sawaki Koro Roshi says, Zazen is completely useless.

[03:18]

Completely useless. Until your thick head realizes this fact in Zazen, then your zazen is really useless. But it's very hard for us to understand this uselessness. In order to have complete uselessness, we have to give up everything. Who wants to do that? Right? Who wants to give up everything? In order to be happy, we want to have everything.

[04:22]

The basis of happiness is to have everything. But in the real world, the basis of happiness is to let go of everything. And I think we can understand that. But to actually practice it is very difficult. In Buddhism, the well-known three marks of existence that we're all so familiar with everything, all things are impermanent. That's the first one. All things are without a substantial self. That's the second one.

[05:25]

And all things are full of suffering within the realm of nirvana. That's the third. We don't usually hear within the realm of nirvana as the third mark, but that's Mahayana teaching. Usually, old teaching was the third mark, all things are marked with suffering. Mahayana teaching is all things are marked with suffering within the realm of nirvana. And we can understand this, but very hard to embody this teaching.

[06:29]

First place, all things are impermanent, but we don't want all things to be impermanent. We want things to be always the way they are, things that we like. We want the things that we like to be always the way they are. And we want the things that we don't like to not be the way they are. But this is wishful thinking. This is not the realm of reality. So we base our lives a lot on the realm of wishful thinking, fantasy, and illusion. So the most beneficial practice for us or teaching is the practice and teaching of disillusion. Disillusionment can be the basis of the springboard for realization, but we always miss our chance.

[07:41]

Many times in our life we're very disillusioned. Your friend leaves. Someone close to you dies. You lose your career, or what you thought you wanted to do, and you're down. Disillusioned. Life is losing its meaning. But when life loses its meaning in that way, it's a great opportunity to find the meaning of your life in reality. And people often do this. This is often the case. Someone will get down to the bottom of their life and then they spring back up.

[08:44]

you have a realization. So difficulty and disillusionment are great teachers, great opportunities. So in the realm of impermanence, impermanence is full of opportunities. Every moment is a great opportunity for realization, because everything is going by so quickly, and there's nothing that can be grasped. And yet, wherever we are, with whatever we're doing,

[09:48]

we can appreciate each moment. Because this moment will never come again. We have to really appreciate what's going on, whether it's good or bad, whether we like it or don't like it. Events are continually changing. All forms are in transformation. Everything is totally useful and totally useless. all of our striving is totally useless.

[10:55]

And at the same time, completely useful. We try to fix the ills of the world, you know. And every generation tries to fix the ills of the world. And it's like this game that every generation plays. And we say, when will it finally be fixed? Well, nothing will ever be fixed. There's no final fix. How can there be a final fix? Every generation has the same game that we play with the same blocks. And we play it as children, we play it as youths, we play it as middle age, and we play it as old age. And it's the same game. And how do you win the game? Because the circumstances will always be changing, but the structure is always the same.

[12:09]

The structure is always the same. Peace and war. Men and women. You know? Hate and love. It's the way it is because of the way we respond to it. So each one of us is tested by this set of circumstances. So how do we be happy? How do we be settled? How can we be content? How can we find peace of mind? in this constant flux where the circumstances change but the structures are always there. Peace and war, men and women, love and hate, grasping and rejecting.

[13:10]

This is the realm of impermanence where we all have our being. And then there's the mark of no self, no permanent self. When we look deeply at what constitutes our nature, we realize that there's no inherent self in things. There's the self of the universe, and this self of the universe is constantly transforming. And each one of us is an element in this process. And within our own bodies are countless universes going through the same transformations. And each one of us is just a part of everything else, transforming

[14:20]

This is our self. This transformation is our self. But we like to cling to this identity, personal identity. Of course, it's natural to cling to this personal identity. But yet we know better. So we go toward practice in order to Buddhism and practice Buddhism in order to free ourself from ourself. But what's more difficult than freeing yourself from the thing you want to keep? So it's a double bind. We want to let go of it at the same time we want to keep it. This is called the realm of suffering.

[15:24]

That's the third mark. The third mark is the realm of suffering, because we want to keep that which can't be kept. It's called the realm of suffering. So, suffering within the realm of nirvana. Nirvana People think nirvana means bliss or freedom. We use this word nirvana when we want to designate some wonderful state. Nirvana is a wonderful state, the most wonderful state. It's the state of completely accepting our suffering without trying to change it, without trying to get anything, which is called sasen, completely useless.

[16:44]

Zazen is nirvana. If you sit, if you can really practice zazen completely, it's a state of nirvana. Which means just doing it. Just seeing clearly. It's not getting something. It's not doing something for some other reason. Nirvana is total existence. It means good and bad are not different. It means right and wrong are not different. And at the same time, they are different. Different and not different.

[17:54]

at the same time. And the way you understand this is through sitting, sansen, in its true sense. But you know, there's always somebody that wants something. When you sit in Zazen, then you begin to realize how much you want, or what you want. We want something good. We want something pleasant. We want something blissful. We want something comfortable. This is our usual aim in life. But that can't happen because there's something painful, there's something slippery, there's something changing.

[19:02]

All these things are happening to prevent us from having something blissful that we want, some permanent state that we want, something always undermining us. So somebody once said, life is a joke, the great cosmic joke. Somebody presented that to me once in Shosan. Somebody said, some 90 year old, 94 year old person said, life is a great cosmic joke. And in a way, you can not deny that. But we should be able to laugh at a joke, right? But it's no joke. It's a joke of no joke. So Buddhist practice, you know,

[20:25]

is to let go of our illusion, delusions, while in the midst of our delusions. Delusion is also part of nirvana. The old Buddhists said suffering is the third mark of existence, but Life isn't always just suffering, right? Not always suffering. We're not always suffering. But someone is always suffering. There's always suffering going on in the world. And sometimes you feel relieved. But someone else is doing your suffering. It's like, maybe, like a big war or a battle.

[21:34]

Some people are on the front lines. Everybody's in the army. But some people are on the front lines and other people have a leave of absence. You know, and they're at home kind of partying it up. But sooner or later they have to go back to the front lines again. So suffering is something that we share with the whole world. And our part, each person has their own part in it. And we can be in a very pleasant place and say, well, life is not just suffering. That's just our momentary reprieve. Sooner or later it will come around to you. But it all happens within the realm of perfect bliss.

[22:45]

When we can free ourselves from self-centeredness and accept the pain of our life equally with the pleasure of our life. This is called nirvana. Our striving is to make life pleasant, to make happiness, to do something useful. That's where most of our striving is. So we want something good to happen and something bad to not happen. The mark of suffering is

[23:55]

Basically, to not have what you want and to have what you don't want. To be with people that you want to be with and not to be with people that you don't want to be with. To be in a situation that you want to be in and not to be in a situation that you don't want to be in. These are our wishes. That doesn't happen. We try to make that happen in a very ambitious way. But even though we can get to it to a certain extent, something always pulls the rug out and we end up suffering. So we, of course, it's human nature to do this. To understand the realm of reality, or to understand things clearly, we have to put ourselves in the middle.

[25:16]

This is called the middle way. Middle way is the way of non-duality, to be able to see everything equally, to experience everything equally and accept everything that happens equally, without liking or disliking. Of course, liking and disliking come up, but when something happens, just as it happened, When something unpleasant happens, it's just an unpleasant feeling. When something pleasant happens, this is a pleasant feeling. This is Buddhist meditation, basic Buddhist meditation. When a pleasant feeling arises, oh, this is a pleasant feeling. When an unpleasant feeling arises, this is an unpleasant feeling.

[26:19]

to be able to accept and see very clearly what is happening. Which doesn't mean not to be emotional, you know, we are emotional beings. But emotion, emotion and thought distort reality, even though they are reality as it is. But in order to see clearly, we have to be able to see through emotion and through thinking mind. To see, to experience just what is. This is why zazen is completely useless. Because in zazen, we don't gauge through our emotions and we don't gauge through our thinking mind.

[27:30]

We just let everything be as it is. Emotion comes up and says, Oh, I don't like this. Oh, I like this. And thought says, It should be this way, it shouldn't be this way. So, to practice zazen is to go beyond emotion and thought. Not that emotion and thought are bad, but if we don't get beyond them, We can't get beyond the distortion of our preference or our discriminated way of thinking.

[28:34]

So this is where we get stuck. Going beyond our preference and our discriminated way of thinking. This is where we always, the place where we turn back and say, wait a minute, and then think of many excuses why we shouldn't be doing this. And it's very subtle. We live in a world of comparative values. So we're always comparing one thing to another. The materialistic realm is the realm of comparative values. But the realm of zazen is the unconditioned realm, where each thing has absolute value.

[29:56]

If you compare your pain to your pleasure, that's the relative world, the world of comparative values. But if you let go of the realm of comparative values, then what you're feeling has absolute value. This is just painful. This is just pleasurable and it's not prepared to anything. You can just experience everything for what it is without discriminating it. This is nirvana. It means you can accept your whole life completely, moment to moment, with joy.

[31:19]

Of course, you know, we'd rather have something pleasant than something painful, but this is the realm of duality. So, in the realm of non-duality, whatever happens, oh, it's okay, okay, okay. This kind of understanding is the realm of equality. When you reach this understanding, it's the wisdom of great equality. Our ego sense of self-centeredness dissolves and we realize everything, we can see everything equally.

[32:45]

And at the same time, we can appreciate each individual thing just as it is. So this is the realm of Buddha. Buddha's life. Each one of us has this capability to live Buddha the life of Buddha. Buddha's message is to deal with suffering in the most appropriate way. Often translated as, get rid of suffering. Get rid of suffering is a very radical statement. But to deal with suffering in the most appropriate way.

[33:56]

To get rid of suffering implies that something replaces suffering. Or that you separate suffering from your life. But you can't do that. Suffering is a fact of life. To accept our life completely is to transcend our life. To accept our suffering totally, without wishing for something, is to transcend suffering. There's no other way. To just settle into it. Just settle, settle on our life, you know, as Kadagiri Roshi used to say, settle self on self. Stop trying to get away.

[35:01]

To be completely there is to escape. The hardest place to be is where you are. This is why we have resistance. Because the hardest place to be is where we are. It's fine to be where we are when we like it. But it's hard to be where we are when we don't like it. You know, I always admire those plants at the edge of the ocean. Ice plant, all those little scrubby plants, they just stay there all the time. When the wind blows, they just stay there. When the sun comes out, they just stay there. When the sun comes out, they respond to that, and they're beautiful. And when the wind blows, they're waving around like that, hanging out with their teeth.

[36:12]

But there they are, you know, and as the seasons go by, they become more beautiful, according to our way we see them. This is Buddhist practice. Even the problem we have is that we have the ability to move around. This is our blessing and our difficulty. When Suzuki Roshi was in bed, when he was sick, you know, I'm talking about his practice of being sick in bed, and of course, you know, everybody wants to be out of bed when they're sick, and so did he. But he, you know, was saying, yeah, sometimes I I'd rather be out of here, but I have to remind myself and laugh at myself for thinking such egotistical, self-centered thoughts.

[37:25]

This is where I have to practice, right now. And it's okay. So to be able to walk through this life without being pulled this way, without being pulled that way. And to be able to harmonize with our surroundings and harmonize with our present situation. And, of course, we initiate life and life initiates us.

[38:33]

We say, no self. No self means that this body and mind do not belong to me. although we say they are mine. So we have to be careful of me and mine, because me and mine are ideas that fool us. This body appears regardless of whether I wanted it to or not. The blood runs through the veins, Lungs breathe, mind thinks, legs walk, and we say, me and mine. But it's not a real me and mine.

[39:38]

Who is it? No matter how much you search for who is it, you will not find who it is. So we don't give you that koan. It's a useless koan, but that makes it a good one. So when we sit tsa-zin, don't try to get anything out of it. Tsa-zin is how you offer this mass of form, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness to the universe.

[40:44]

And in turn, the universe manifests through this body and mind. This is called letting go. It's so hard. So hard to let go. We want our identity as a man, as a woman. When we sit zazen, we are not a man and we are not a woman. If we're hanging on to this kind of identity, we'll be stopped. Let go of your name. Let go of your career. Let go of your relationships. Just let go. And yet, be completely and totally present

[41:53]

It's kind of like diving off the Golden Gate Bridge into outer space, inner space. It's like the end of the tracks. Stop all the activities and just be completely present without ambition. without having to compare yourself with anything. It's the realm beyond comparison. That's why we say it's not good zazen. You can't judge whether your zazen is good or bad. And when you say my zazen, that's not right either. It's just Buddha's zazen. So I sympathize with our resistance, because we all have it.

[43:16]

And this is what makes us quite human. And for some reason or another, we are living in this dualistic realm, the realm of comparative values. But in order to relieve our suffering in the realm of comparative values, there is a way to do it. There's a way to let go. And this way should carry through our life. the way of Zazen should carry through our life.

[44:25]

Do you have a question, by the way? I just want to not fall into self-denial. I mean, not being pulled by pleasure, or one way by pleasure and the other by suffering, not discriminating. It seems to, I keep thinking of it as like, well, it's denying denial in some way. Who is being denied? What is being denied?

[45:37]

To who? We have this way of blaming the world. Blaming something out there. for doing something to us and we become victim of circumstances. We also have the idea that we shouldn't be denied anything. American liberty means that we shouldn't be denied anything. We should be able to carry guns if we want to. We should be able to shoot anybody. We should be able to do all the things that our imagination concocts. And why should we be stopped from doing that? This is the realm of fantasies.

[46:40]

What do we need? It's not what do I want so much as what do I need? What's necessary? When we get into the realm of what do we want, then life really interferes with us. But to think about, well, what do we really need? And life interferes with that too. But if we have flexibility, you know, When we're deprived, then we know how to retreat. We know how to get smaller. And when there's abundance, we know how to expand and get bigger. So in abundance, in abundant time, we expand to encompass that.

[47:44]

And in a time of dearth, we contract so that we're not feeling empty, In other words, we have flexibility to conform to the situation. If you don't have flexibility to conform to the situation, you have suffering. This is the secret of zazen, is to be able to conform to the situation. That's what it's about. You sit there and you don't move. And pain comes, and pleasure comes, thoughts come, And you just conform to the situation. If you don't expand and contract inside, then you suffer. It's the great lesson about life. Zazen is the great lesson about life. It's called flexibility. And the only way you can have flexibility is to not have self-centeredness.

[48:49]

Well, I have the same, I'm not depressed, but I have the same response over and over again to this matter of giving up something. But then I guess I catch myself and if I listen carefully to what you say, I actually don't hear you saying we have to give up anything. In fact, it's almost the reverse. Not to give up our desire and our wants and all this stuff, but to just exactly see it and to be present with it. In fact, if we try to give it up in some sense, That's right. So whatever I am, I guess I don't, including my ambitions and disappointments and yearnings and so on, I'm probably not well advised to try to give them up.

[50:06]

I never say to people you should give up things, right? But you should look at what it is that's creating your suffering. And then you should decide. what to give up, what to let go of. The point is, the more solid your self-centeredness, the less flexible you are. The emphasis on resistance to all of this. I mean, I feel that, and I know that you're not talking about that today, maybe in another talk, but there is a really, I mean, I feel this yearning to do, not maybe yearning in our word, but it's to do that. It's not always, I don't want to do that, it's to do that.

[51:11]

And that's a very strong accent. That's the bond, is because we do want to do that. But what it means to do that is to go against our ego, to use a crass term, to go against our self-centeredness. So that's... It's just the feeling of going against creates or whatever the word is, there's this movement toward, and includes, and doesn't feel like resistance or overcoming, even though I'm aware of it. Well, usually I speak in an encouraging way.

[52:19]

And of course, we're all, inspiration is what brings us to do something, right? But what we encounter after, when we're inspired, we're inspired to do something, we want to, why do we do this? We want freedom. security, we want enlightenment, right? But what we run up against is ourself, okay? That's all. When we do this, what we run up against is us. That's what I mean by resistance. We just run up against ourself. We meet ourself when we do this. And that's great, you know, but ourself is a big problem for ourself. That's all. That's what I mean.

[53:29]

Susan? Well, I want to go back to what Greg brought up and the idea of how you find the balance between seeking to improve your situation in life and trying to get pleasurable feelings are just pleasurable feelings and they'll go away, they'll change. Still, to what extent is it okay to say, well, gee, it would be really great to have a delicious Chinese dinner tonight and splurge a little or put a second bathroom in my house that I kind of would like And, you know, I mean, it's okay for me to do that, right?

[54:31]

Right, my love? But then I think, well, I'm just seeking after worldly happiness, you know, or maybe I should, I mean, sometimes we try to do things, okay, the second bathroom's okay, the meal is okay, but at what point does it not become okay when you're really looking for something to make you feel good that isn't going to work. How do you know when you've crossed over that boundary? You feel it as suffering. When you have suffering, then you say, why am I suffering? That's all. It's very simple. I don't have suffering. Why? Because I don't have a second back. Your problem is very simple. Just get one. Then I'll be suffering over something else. Why?

[55:31]

Then I'll try to get back. Why? Why? Well, just what you said, I never have quite what I want. I don't have what I want and I have what I don't want. Okay. So what do you want? So I'm trying to fix those things and then I keep trying to fix them and that isn't really getting to me. You cannot fix it. What? You cannot fix it. You should know by now that you can't fix it. So why do I even bother to try? Well, um, are you? Yeah. What are you trying to do? Well, I'm still talking about these circumstantial things that I try, you know, I'm getting this second bathroom. I mean, I think I'm, I know that it's really going to fix it, but I think I'd be even I don't think this is what makes you happy. This is what makes you comfortable, in a way. It's not what makes you happy. You'd be happy if you had something else, you know.

[56:35]

But these are things, you're talking about just general comfort, you know, eating dinner in the bathroom. Well, like say, you know, if you had a lover, that you can count on. You'd feel that would make me happy. But even that is, I won't say that won't happen, but there's something beyond that that's even more basic. That each one of us has to get to by ourself without the help or without the leaning on anybody else. This is called without a companion. Well, I clearly believe that, but my question is really about to what extent do I involve myself in activities that are trying to put my energy into things that

[57:46]

make me have a happier life, even knowing that... Well, until you solve the bottom line, all the stuff up above it will not help. You have to solve the fundamental thing before all the other things will work. But I'm still going to go on doing that other thing. That's right, and you keep on going being frustrated. Just get to the fundamental matter. Take care of the roots. You've got to take care of the roots before you'll have nice leaves. When I hear you talking about deep love, I was at first impressed with it. But acceptance isn't so.

[58:51]

It's serene. What I hear you talking about is detachment. Certainly we can put another bathroom on the floor because that may make us more comfortable. However, we need to be detached. We need to be detached. Happiness is not attached to that material thing. That's what I'm referring to, attachment to material things. We're all attached to life, right? Attachment is necessary. I never said the word detachment in my life. Non-attachment is not detachment. Detachment means to be separate from. Non-attachment in our sense means within your attachment to have some freedom. We all have attachments. You have to have attachment. But within that attachment, you have room to turn.

[59:54]

So of course, you know, we want this, we want that, we want Chinese dinner. I like to eat Chinese dinner too, you know. I like a lot of things. But, at the same time, I hope I'm not fooled by things. We also have our karma, which is our habitual way of doing things, and our obsessions, which are very hard to get rid of. That's a whole other area. But we all at the same time have an opportunity to practice the fundamental thing, and until we can practice until we actually put ourselves seriously into the fundamental matter, then our life will always be on this level of trying to make it work, and then sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and trying to fix it.

[61:12]

We all have an opportunity to practice. We can listen to the lecture, but we have to put ourselves into the practice. And I'm sorry it was a little depressing. That may be OK. It's OK. It's OK. Beings are numberless.

[61:56]

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