Today I'm going to talk about, give a comment on one of Suzuki Roshi's talks, which is, he uses brown rice as a metaphor for practice. Chewing, actually, chewing. Chewing practice, chewing brown rice. He says, how do you like zazen? This is, of course, in the 60s, right? He says, how do you like zazen? Oh, it may be better to ask, how do you like brown rice? Zazen is too big a topic. Brown rice is just right. Actually, there's not much difference. When you eat brown rice, you have to chew it, and unless you chew it, it is difficult to swallow.

[01:00]

When you chew it very well, your mouth becomes part of the kitchen. I'll explain that. And actually, the brown rice becomes more and more tasty. When we eat white rice, we don't chew so much, but that little bit of chewing feels good, and naturally, the rice goes down our throat. In the 60s, of course, brown rice was big. It was the era of health food becoming very popular among the children of the era. and eating healthy food, you know, was important. So, Suzuki Roshi all his life ate white rice.

[02:04]

And in Japan, nobody eats brown rice. Except nowadays, some of the monasteries have caught on. They must eat brown rice. But, you know, brown rice is Very unrefined way to eat, you know. So brown rice and whole wheat bread became very popular with Zen students. Real healthy, you know, whole foods. Whole foods and fresh vegetables. Because our mother always served us canned spinach. and white bread, white rice. So there was a big revolt. So Suzuki Roshi came just at that time when everybody was eating brown rice.

[03:07]

And of course, it probably was not good for his health, but he really appreciated us for eating whole foods, unrefined, unprocessed, unrefined foods. So he likened that to eating, you know, Zen practice is unrefined, unprocessed practice in the same way. And in order to bring out the taste of brown rice, you have to chew it. So even though he had bad teeth, he appreciated the fact that when you chew brown rice, you really get the flavor. So he compares it to white rice. You eat white, you know, you chew white rice a little bit, and then you swallow it, and that's satisfying. But it's not the same as chewing brown rice, in which the true taste of the rice comes through without having the processing doing the digestion for you.

[04:14]

So in the same way, he's talking about zazen. When you really engage, you really chew your practice thoroughly, then it becomes very tasty. But if you don't chew it thoroughly, you may think it's too coarse, too difficult. I remember there were people who said, well, you should chew each bite of brown rice 100 times before you swallow it. So there are really no rules as to how to chew brown rice, but some people want to make rules for everything. So they said the rule is 100 times for each bite, which is good. Chewing each bite 100 times means chew it thoroughly. That's a very Indian kind of conception. East Indians always exaggerate everything in order to make a point.

[05:21]

10 million billion of this and so forth. But if you chew brown rice 100 times, you really get the flavor of it. And it becomes, you don't want to eat white rice anymore. But you know, Zen practice has changed in the last 30 years or so. And a lot of Zen students prefer white rice, white bread. Anyway, so Suzuki Roshi's talking about, you know, getting the full flavor of a practice by chewing it thoroughly. That's what he's talking about. He's not really talking about brown rice. And there's a saying, a monk's mouth is like an oven. A monk's mouth is like an oven, which means everything that goes in gets cooked. And it's like, you know, when a monk engages in practice, everything is practice.

[06:31]

So everything comes into the mouth and gets digested one way or another. And Suzuki Roshi once likened it to a fish. A fish is swimming in the ocean and going like this. Something goes in. Or... If you've ever watched that. So, but everything is taken in and dealt with in a proper way. It either gets swallowed or spit out. So there's a choice. But it's at least acknowledged. Everything is met. Whatever activity you're engaged in, you meet it thoroughly. And you don't avoid something. You meet things squarely. So then he says, we digest food completely.

[07:43]

When we digest food completely, what will become of it? It will be transformed, changing its chemical nature, and it will permeate our whole body. In the process, it dies within our body. To eat and digest food is natural to us, as we are always changing. The organic process is called emptiness. The reason we call it emptiness is that it has no special form. It has some form, but that form is not permanent. While it is changing, it carries on our life energy. So, this is an interesting and well-taken point about how to think about the term emptiness. Emptiness means that things have no special form or shape, but the form and shape of emptiness is,

[08:51]

Whatever phenomena appear are the forms and shapes of emptiness. So if you want to study emptiness, you have to study it through the forms. So if we want to understand what emptiness is, chew your brown rice thoroughly. chew everything thoroughly, engage in the forms of life thoroughly and completely. That's how we understand emptiness. Because when we thoroughly engage, we can understand the meaning of transiency. Transiency is the changing, constantly changing forms of emptiness.

[10:00]

Everything is arising and returning to emptiness, changing its form and contributing to some other arising. So when we eat something, that whatever it is we eat is changing its form as we eat it and becoming a part of some other form. So everything is eating everything. This is the universe of consumption, conspicuous consumption. Everything is constantly eating everything else and being eaten by everything else. So our form is changing into some other form, and the forms that we're contributing to are changing into other forms. So everything is adding to everything else, and everything is dying to become something else.

[11:04]

So actually, in a way, our life is an offering. Our life is an offering to the universe. When we're stingy with our life, then we're kind of not contributing to that flow of things. So it's interesting, generosity means to give yourself away. And when we give ourself away, we become recreated. So our life is a constant recreation. It's a recreational activity. True recreational activity. Constantly giving away and being recreated. And the more we give away, the stronger we become. But since we don't understand this, we try to accumulate, thinking that accumulating will make us more secure and stronger.

[12:31]

But it really doesn't work that way. We feel that it works that way, but it doesn't. So those people who are the freest are those who are giving the most and taking the least, because we realize that taking is a burden. rather than security. So when we understand how life forms flow into each other and contribute to each other, we know how to act in every situation. So this is why Buddha calls desire the source of suffering. So he says, in the process, when we digest food completely, what will become of it?

[13:41]

It will be transformed, changing its chemical nature and will permeate our whole body. In the process, it dies within our body. To eat and digest food is natural to us, as we are always changing. This organic process is called emptiness. And the reason we call it emptiness is that it has no form. It has some form, but the form is not permanent. While it is changing, it carries on our life energy. So we need this constant renewal, constant changing in order to allow renewal to happen. So there's no such thing in a large sense as dying and being born. Because there's only change. There's only transformation, continual transformation.

[14:44]

So what is food? We eat, we think of food as something we put in our mouth to satisfy our body, but we eat with our eyes, we eat with our nose, we eat with our feeling, we eat with our taste, we eat with our ears, We're always eating something. When we see something, we feast on it sometimes. And we find wonderful things to hear and we feast on that. So we get nourishment through all of our senses, not just eating. Eating is only one way. Actually, a lot of our nourishment comes through, just through the air, through our breathing. When we're in a non-polluted environment, a lot of our energy is taken in through the atmosphere.

[15:53]

And in a polluted environment, that same thing happens except that it makes us sick. And also, we feed ourselves through our imagination. So there are many ways of what we take in and what we express. So what do we feed others with? How do we contribute to this flow of energy? Energy flows through us and we contribute to the flow of energy to other forms. So understanding this is very important to practice because we have to know what we base our life on in order to know how to live.

[17:05]

So he says, we know that we are empty and also that the earth is empty. The forms are not permanent. you may wonder, what is this universe? But this universe has no limit. Emptiness is not something you can understand through a space trip. Sometimes we think that emptiness means the sky, but the sky is just another form. Sky is not empty, actually, but we use it as a metaphor for emptiness. Emptiness is not something you can understand through a space trip. Emptiness can be understood when you are perfectly or completely involved in chewing rice. That is actual emptiness. When you are totally involved in just chewing. The most important point is to establish yourself in a true sense without establishing yourself on delusion.

[18:18]

So most of us are establishing ourselves on delusion, on the having faith in the forms, the ephemeral forms. And yet we cannot live or practice without delusion. Right, so we have to take into account the forms. We practice our life of emptiness through the forms. The Heart Sutra says, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. We study emptiness through the forms and we practice. Our life is based on emptiness, which is truth. And It's expressed through the forms that we encounter. But the forms are called delusion when we don't understand what they are. We talked about enlightenment and delusion.

[19:23]

Delusion is important. We don't try to eliminate delusion. You know, in the old days, in Buddhism, the monks tried to make a separation between delusion and enlightenment. And they made a lot of rules as to how to live a life, a pure life, free from delusion. But you can't live a pure life free from delusion. You can only be free from delusion within delusion. Only by engaging in the ephemeral forms without being attached to them. And just by understanding what the ephemeral forms are, that that's exactly what they are. and basing your understanding on emptiness or your activity.

[20:32]

So the most important point is to establish yourself in a true sense without establishing yourself on delusion. And yet we cannot live or practice without delusion. Delusion is necessary, but delusion is not something on which you can establish yourself. It is like a step ladder. Without it, you cannot climb up, but you don't stay on the step ladder. With this confidence, you can continue to study our way. Many practices are step-by-step practices. But Zen practice, or our Zen practice, is not step-by-step practice. It's not you do this, and then that leads to this, and then that leads to this, and so forth. That's called step-ladder practice. Zazen, or Soto Zen practice, is not learning one thing and then learning something else on the basis of that.

[21:38]

It's simply diving in to the ocean right away. When you practice our practice from the very first moment, it's exactly the same as the very last moment. You know, the 40, 50 years of practice is the same as the first moment you enter practice. It's the same and different. And you just dive right in. And there's no special place to be. Step ladder practice is learning one thing after another in order to get to some place. But we don't do that. So sometimes people wonder, well, what's next?

[22:40]

Now that I've done this, what's next? I remember Suzuki Roshi talking about when he was giving zazen instruction to some children. And he said, you put this leg here, and you put that leg there, and you sit up straight. And then they said, and what's next? There's nothing next. That's it. When am I going to get there? What? When are we going to get there? What we don't realize is where we are. The hardest place to get to, really, is where we are, moment by moment. The hardest place to be, to settle on this moment, on this place. So, of course, you know, he says, without it, you cannot climb up the step ladder. But don't stay on the step ladder.

[23:46]

With this confidence, you can continue to study our way. That is why I say, don't run away. Stick with me. I don't mean stick to me. I mean, stick with yourself, not with delusion. Sometimes I may be a delusion. You may overestimate me. Oh, he is a good teacher. That's already a kind of delusion. I am your friend. I'm just practicing with you as your friend who has many disciples. Or has many step letters, actually. He has many step letters means to help people, you give them some encouragement. And this is your practice, and this is your practice. They may be a little different. Everyone's practice is the same, but everyone's practice is different. So what one person needs may not be the same as what someone else needs. You know, there's the poem, a very famous poem.

[24:51]

The, The white cloud is the child of the blue mountain. The blue mountain is the parent of the white cloud. All day long, they depend on each other without being dependent on each other. The blue mountain is always the blue mountain. The white cloud is always the white cloud. So this is like a relationship between a teacher and his students. They're always, they depend on each other, but they're also independent. So teacher is kind of like a beacon, and student goes round and round, but student is independent and student finds their own way. Sometimes the teacher says, go away.

[25:55]

Sometimes the teacher says, stick with me. But he doesn't mean stick to me. Stay with this way. Stay with your way. That's what he means. Sometimes people will think if the teacher says go away, he means to leave. But it doesn't mean that. There's a lot of intuition involved and a lot of sensitivity involved in the relationship between teachers and students. And it's not like going to school. It's not like getting an A or a B or a C or getting to some place. It's a matter of the student finding themselves. and it may take forever. But when there's that relationship, the student and the teacher may have differences, they may have confidence, there may be big problems, but the relationship stays the same.

[27:11]

So I think this is good, you know, he says, you may overestimate me and say, oh, he is a good teacher. He said, that's already a kind of delusion. So, you know, it's good to understand how to relate to a teacher. If you stick too much to the teacher, teacher doesn't like that. Go away. Or if you stand too far off, that's not so good either. You know, come a little closer. So having many stepladders means to have different relationships because each relationship is different. So he says, you shouldn't be disappointed with a bad teacher. or with a bad student.

[28:19]

You know, if a bad student and a bad teacher strive for the truth, something real will be established. That is our zazen. So, you know, sometimes the student is not so good, sometimes the teacher is not so good. So when a student makes a mistake, teacher points, should point that out somehow. If the teacher makes a mistake, the student should point that out somehow, but there shouldn't be any quarrel. And each should be sensitive to how they treat the other. If the student makes a mistake, teachers should be very sensitive in how to deal with it. If the teacher meets that head on, it may not be so good because it will create a problem.

[29:24]

So how to say something in a way that the student feels that they discovered it themselves. That's the best way. Oh, gee, I've been doing this all along. I didn't realize it. Rather than the teacher pointing out, your mistake. So a teacher hopefully would be skillful enough to be able to allow the student to have self-realization, realize it themselves what the problem is. But that may take a long time. But, and the same, when the teacher makes a mistake, the student should be very careful about how they deal with the teacher. So it requires a lot of sensitivity and we shouldn't lose our original intentions and we should base our practice on emptiness and not on falling into delusion, within delusion.

[30:42]

So we must continue to practice zazen and continue to chew brown rice. Eventually, we will accomplish something if we do that. So this is a short talk. So how we practice within delusion, you know, And having that realization is enlightenment. Enlightenment is to realize our delusion, not to try to get rid of it, not to stomp on our delusion, but to appreciate our delusion, actually appreciate our delusion and recognize it and practice within it. Because delusion, when we do that, then delusion becomes purified. If we try to take away the delusion and simply have the enlightenment, that's dualistic.

[31:52]

A big mistake. We'll never understand enlightenment. Enlightenment purifies delusion. So without delusion, we don't have anything to practice with. So delusion is called sometimes our problem. But actually, there are no problems. It's only when we treat some situation as a problem that it becomes delusion. When we treat it as an opportunity, it becomes enlightenment. So every situation is an opportunity to express enlightenment, which means, how do we practice with it? How do we practice with every situation that comes up? Sometimes we fall into one side or the other, but you know, boats are like, are practiced like a boat, right?

[32:55]

So in the storm you see it goes like this, but still the keel is heavy enough to keep it upright. That's called our practice. The basis of our practice is that heavy keel that keeps the boat from tipping over. That's called sometimes calmness of mind or equanimity. Even if, as long as we have our understanding, good understanding of our practice and how to keep that weight deep, then whatever happens to us is okay. It's really okay. If we die, it's okay.

[33:58]

If we live, it's okay. If we're sick, it's okay. If we lose everything, it's okay too. It's not that it's okay. It's okay because it's It may not be okay because you like it. It's just okay because that's the way it is. And there's always another place to go, another way to go. Do you have a question? I have some friends who are Christian ministers. Speak up so people can hear you. Above the hammers. I have friends who are Christian ministers and they often speak of recreating.

[35:07]

And there's some kind of rule where they get two days off a week. To recreate? To recreate. Because they're putting out this spiritual energy. So they need to recreate. It sounds to me like, and I've been kind of getting on board with this, like I need time to recreate. But maybe I don't. Yeah, well it depends on how you want to think about it. If you totally give yourself, without holding anything back, the recreation It's like when you open a faucet and the water is coming out, you're watering the garden, right? The water is coming out, but it's also coming in. So as long as the water is going out of the hose, it's still coming in. And as long as there's a source, the water is filling the hose. So as long as you're embedded in the source, there's no problem because the energy just flows.

[36:11]

So opening yourself and giving, you know, It just brings more energy. People sometimes say, how can you do dokasana all day long, seeing 20 people in one day? It just energizes me. It just totally energizes me. So at the end of the day, I feel energized rather than depleted. If you're not giving yourself fully, you feel depleted, and then you need to renew your batteries. But I never feel that way. You said it's okay whatever situation you're in, but then there's another way to go. Oh, yeah. When you lose everything, there's always another way to go. There's always some place to go. If you are... established on emptiness.

[37:29]

You're not stuck in any one place. it works out. How can you tell when someone is truly seeking the truth? How can you tell if you, not you yourself, but how can I tell if I'm truly seeking the truth? Well, if you're not aiming at the other person. If you're trying to shoot down the other person, then it's not aiming at truth. It's like finding the reality. in the center, rather than, you know, slinging arrows, right? You find the truth in the middle.

[38:42]

are they seeking the truth? Yeah, yeah. Some people seek revenge, some people seek various things, but seeking the reality is more difficult, because you have to let go of your own judgment. So it's really letting go of judgment and personal views, and just looking at the reality.

[39:21]

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