Thank you for coming in the rain. It's nice and refreshing that we have all this rain. Oh yeah, a little louder. How's that? Better? Up. Up. And away. Up. Up. Up. No, no, no. OK, right there. I think that's good. Maybe a little loud, so. A teeny bit. Okay. Thank you. So this is the first Dharma Talk of the year. And so I want to use this talk to encourage our practice for the year, to set up a tone for our practice. So I'm going to comment on Master Dogen's Hachidainin, Eight Aspects of Enlightened Person.

[01:30]

This is an interesting title, so I retitled it. There are a lot of different ways to retitle this that are interesting. The Eight Qualities That Allow the Dharma to Flow Easily and Freely Through Our Life. I like that as a title. rather than the eight aspects of an enlightened person. That's okay too, but this is kind of more like freeing ourselves up to allow the Dharma to flow as light. So we use the term enlightened, I think enlightened is okay, but it means letting the light flow. Rather than I am enlightened, it's allowing the light to flow through myself as a vehicle for light.

[02:45]

That's enlightenment. So, this kaku, Dogen, this is apparently Dogen's last writing, and he claims that it was also Shakyamuni's last word. So be that as it may, we won't argue. The eight aspects are having few desires, knowing how to be satisfied, enjoying serenity and tranquility, exerting diligent effort, not forgetting right thought, practicing Samadhi, cultivating wisdom, and avoiding idle talk.

[03:57]

So the first one, desire, having few desires. We tend to think of desire in Buddhism. Desire is sometimes thought of as something undesirable. I desire to be undesirable. But desire, you know, doesn't have any specific right or wrong. Desire is like fire. Fire is not right or wrong, but used in one way, it destroys everything, and used in another way, it helps everything. So, how do we use desire? enlightened way, because fire is light.

[05:05]

As Suzuki Roshi used to talk about, you know, Tassajara, when we first came to Tassajara, we didn't have any electricity, we only had kerosene lamps, and so we had to learn how too high, the chimney flames out and gets all black. And if you turn it too low, it doesn't work very well. So you have to adjust the flame so that you get the maximum amount of light using the least means. This is called the conservation of energy, which is called Zen practice. So we learn how to do Zen practice with that little knob, how you do something precisely and carefully so that you allow the light to come forth without forcing it and without creating problems.

[06:24]

So desire is like this. Desire can either bind us or free us. It's a wonderful thing, actually. It's called life force. So there's correct desire, right desire, wrong desire, and neither right nor wrong desire. Neither right nor wrong desire is the non-duality of desire. So it's something that we're always working with. It's like gravity. Gravity controls our life to a certain extent. Everything we do has a gravitational component. standing up, sitting down, eating, talking, thinking.

[07:30]

Thinking is a little fluffy, but it's still controlled by gravity. We talk about some gravity when we're talking about something really serious. Grave, gravity. But it can also be lightness. heavy and light, or also, how do we balance heavy and light? Light in the sense of lightness. How do we balance darkness and lightness? So, basically, having few desires is like allowing. You know, we say step back, and when we step back, Dogen says something like, We allow the 10,000 dharmas to come to us. When we step forward, we're forcing ourselves on the 10,000 dharmas, but nevertheless, we have to balance stepping back and going forward.

[08:36]

So whenever we talk about something, the opposite is also true. This is where we step into the poop. whenever we get attached to one side. It's very slippery. We always have to balance one side with another. If someone is talking and saying, telling me a story about somebody else, it sounds so logical and right. And then you start thinking, well, that person's really terrible at what they did. And then you hear the other side. and that's so believable, and then you see the other person. So, we always have to balance two sides, or more sides. This is called non-dual thinking or acting, by merging, or not actually taking sides, but allowing sides to work themselves out.

[09:49]

Sometimes we have to make judgments based on which side and so forth. But basically, how do we use desire so that it's beneficial to everyone and doesn't cause problems? So let me talk about self-control. So self-control is important an important aspect to practice. I'm a kind of greed type. You know, desire is associated with greed. So I have a hard time with greed and desire, and so do you. Well, one way or another, we're caught by it. And it's, you know, natural for us to be caught by it. So this is why desire comes first in Dogens or in Buddhism, actually.

[10:53]

The second noble truth is the problem that we have is caused by desire. So that's what we're always working with. So a person with high desire should study Buddhism and practice Buddhism. A person with their desire type, hate type, and delusion type. Desire type should practice the dharma because it would be helpful for the dharma. And anger type should practice the dharma because it goes against their desire. And delusion type doesn't know enough to practice the dharma, but should. This is a little bit about, well, I can't go too far into this, each one of these, because I won't have time. But the next one is knowing how to be satisfied.

[11:56]

This is also an aspect of desire, so the two are really related, but they're treated separately. So how to be satisfied, you know, in our life, in our culture, we're continually being coerced and seduced into thinking that we need more than we need. So what do we really need? When we, you know, amongst eating bowls, orioke means, The word orioke, which is the name of the bowl, means something like just enough, just enough. How do we know when enough is just enough? It's really hard, because material, materiality,

[13:07]

desire is always being thrust on us. It's always being thrust on us. There's so much, and in our particular society, the problem with many societies is they don't have enough. The problem with our society is we have too much. That's a big problem for us. So that's our main problem, actually, is because In order for the economy to continue, if we withdrew all of our desire, all of our needy, what we call neediness, needs, stopped spending money, society would collapse. Of course, it could collapse into something wonderful, but it really would collapse into something terrible. So we're caught in the web. of not knowing how much is enough, because we don't have a standard.

[14:13]

We really don't have a standard for how much is enough, because our standard of living means to have more and more, and the newest thing, and the latest thing, and the more, you know, the computer is a great example After five years, your computer's not good anymore, not good enough, or dangerous, or whatever it is. And so you have to keep buying new ones. And then there's more information. And then all the technology becomes more and more complicated and complex. So those labor-saving devices make us work harder. So we live in a kind of crazy society and we don't know how to deal with it, actually. And we're all caught in it. We're all caught in it. You look in everybody's garage, people don't park their cars anymore in the garages, mostly because they're all full of junk.

[15:22]

So this is knowing how to have enough, knowing how to be satisfied. So what do we really need? So a monk's life is to be a poor person, but the poor person who is a monk is actually wealthy. Whereas a wealthy person has so much burden, is burdened with all that stuff, and burdened with the idea that they have to work harder and harder to get more and more, so they're actually poor. But you may or may not agree, but Zen students pretty much agree with that. If you don't agree with that, you have to work harder to be a Zen student. So we're really seduced by, and we work at seducing each other.

[16:34]

It's called advertising. Everything's advertising itself by me. Look at me. You're fired. So the third one, Third aspect is called enjoying serenity and tranquility. If we actually can enjoy serenity and tranquility, we actually are wealthy. We have everything that we need. Serenity is like, just sometimes described, serenity is like a beautiful sunset. The sun is going down, the birds are returning to the trees, there's a beautiful light and everything is serene and so our mind is like that, a certain kind of serenity.

[17:47]

Tranquility is like a pond or the ocean when there's no wind, and it's kind of glass-like. And this calmness is, of course, some people can't take it, you know, because we're so revved up that we have to keep moving all the time. If we stop, I remember one time, I've told you this before, I was doing, when I do a wedding, we do five minutes of zazen, people are sitting in the chairs, but we all just stop before doing the ceremony. And one woman after the ceremony, she said, that is the most still I've ever been in my life. Five minutes, I stopped moving.

[18:49]

So, serenity and tranquility, but within serenity and tranquility is dynamism. When you see the sunset, it's very calm and beautiful, but it's very dynamic. And when you see the ocean, placid ocean, peaceful placid ocean, it's also very dynamic even though it's not moving. It's like when you spin a top or a dreidel, when you spin a top, the top looks like it's standing still, but all that energy is contained within the movement. So this Zazen is exactly what this is. We don't sit Zazen in order to be serene and tranquil, but serenity and tranquility are the characteristics of Zazen.

[19:57]

We just sit Zazen to sit Zazen, but not to get some special feeling. But nevertheless, it's there. So the true tranquility and true serenity is like the top, stillness within great dynamic activity, the great dynamic activity of total stillness. So this is also called nirvana, right? Nirvana, sometimes there are various ways of expressing it, not explaining it, but expressing it, is the cool space, the cool place, the cooling off. Sometimes people think of it because of the words that are used, like annihilation or something like that.

[21:04]

It simply means cool. When we say warm feet and cool head, when we sit Zazen, we say warm feet, cool head. So from here up it's cool, and from here on it's warm. There's, you know, the story of where, I don't know if I can tell you the whole story, I got to start someplace, too long, but where Dashan, this is in China, the Tang Dynasty, Master Dashan, who was a scholar of the Diamond Sutra, went to visit Lungtang on his mountain,

[22:10]

And Dashan was very skeptical of Zen. So he wanted to find out what these Zen masters had. So he visited Lungtan on his mountain, and they had a very nice talk. And when it was time to go to bed, lit a lantern, a paper lantern for Dashan, because he had to go outside and find his way in the dark to Little Hut. And Longtan handed the lantern to Dashan, and when Dashan reached out for the lantern, Longtan went, blew it out, and there was everything with total darkness, and Darshan woke up.

[23:22]

This is enjoying serenity and tranquility. There was nothing left. There was nothing left of Darshan. The next one is called exerting, the text is translated here as exerting meticulous effort. But meticulous is a little too special, specialized. Meticulous is, it's not necessarily meticulous. Meticulous is okay, but it doesn't cover everything. It's more like exerting continuous effort or diligent effort is good enough.

[24:26]

Continuous effort or right effort, but that's another, I think, diligent effort or pure effort. I like pure effort because pure effort means just effort without any special desire, attachment to it, any special attachment to anything, just do, that's pure effort, just do. So Suzuki Roshi used to talk about washing the windows, we don't wash the windows to get them clean, because they're already clean. That's why we wash them. You can't wrap your head around that, which is really good, because that's pure effort, is to not try to understand it. Oh, I understand it, even though you don't.

[25:32]

Even though you don't understand it, you understand it. So pure effort is not being attached to result. There's a result, okay, or there isn't a result, but the effort is not attached to a result. Of course we want to see, we want the window to be clean, but the window's already clean. Water is already pure, even though It goes into your toilet, right, but the water is always pure, no matter whether it's going down the toilet or not. We have purification, we can purify water by taking out the impure elements, but the water's always been pure.

[26:35]

So, you know, effort, good effort, induces energy. Pure effort induces energy, so even though we work very hard and contribute our whole body-mind to what we're doing, the effort keeps renewing itself. When we start complaining about, oh this is too much, or this is hard, or the effort, the renewal of energy slows down. When I was at Tassajara, I told you this before, the mountain, up the trail, to exercise.

[27:46]

And sometimes it's a little, you know, hard. And I think, do I really want to go up there? Just think about how hard it is. When I think like that, I can't do it. But if I just do it, no problem. If I'm thinking about something else, I just do it. without even thinking about it. But if I look at it and start thinking about it, I think, God, that's going to be hard, or I'm going to get tired. So I create the problems for myself. So to do something wholeheartedly is called exerting continuous effort. Just be wholehearted about what you do. And then, I don't know why I'm coughing, but the sixth one is not forgetting right thought.

[29:02]

This appears in the Eightfold Path, another. Not forgetting right thought means, Dogen says, this is called maintaining right thought, protecting the Dharma and not losing it. That's basically right. This means right thought, or not forgetting right thought, Maintaining the three treasures is called right thought. So you're always coming back to what you're doing. What am I doing? Oh yeah, I'm maintaining the Dharma. That should be our constant thought. What am I doing? What am I doing? That's a very basic koan. What am I doing? I think in Korea they use that koan a lot. What is it? Or what am I doing? Well, what am I doing?

[30:05]

What should I be doing? What I should be doing is maintaining the Dharma and protecting it. So what I should be doing, what I should be doing, what I want to be doing, and what I am doing are all the same thing. That's called maintaining right thought. Well, it means whatever it means. It doesn't mean one specific thing. It means all the things that you can think of that are protecting the Dharma. If it's beginner's mind, that's good. If it's something else, that's good too. is the next one, and that's where I was going to talk a little bit about beginner's mind.

[31:12]

But when we say practicing and protecting the dharma, that means whatever you're doing. It's also called beginner's mind, but it's called many other things as well. has various meanings, and there are various samadhis. There are many different kinds of samadhi. There's samadhi which is, it means single-mindedness, but it also means imperturbability, basically. doesn't necessarily mean only thinking of one thing, but when you're thinking of one thing or doing one thing to do it thoroughly without self, without self-centeredness.

[32:22]

So there are many kinds of concentration. Samadhi is concentration. There's the concentration which is called the It's a kind of Samadhi, but it's a self-centered Samadhi, so we don't really count it as true Samadhi, but it has characteristics of Samadhi. And then there's the Samadhi in the realm of form, which is has more of the characteristics of selflessness, but not completely. It's a kind of mixed desire and selflessness. But the most fundamental Samadhi is the no-form Samadhi, which is what we practice in Zazen.

[33:31]

and hopefully in daily life, but our daily life is so mixed with desire that it's more in the realm of form, but the realm of no-form Samadhi is the Samadhi of Zazen where there's no desire in it at all. except the desire to sit without desire. So the right concentration is in the eightfold path. So we have various samadhis, you know. some of the most important ones is like Ichigyo, Ichigyo Zamae. Zamae is samadhi. Ichigyo Zamae is the concentration of doing one thing at a time.

[34:37]

When concentrated on one thing, you do that one thing thoroughly. And then there is GGU samadhi, which is the self-fulfilling samadhi, which is offered to others. If GGU samadhi is samadhi which is kind of the result of your activity, but it's also the non-duality of your activity, but it's not just for yourself. It's off. Ta jiu yu means offering to others, but qi jiu yu includes ta jiu yu. It's like your practice, the result of your practice which is offered to others.

[35:46]

It's not some selfish activity. When you say offer to others, you mean you're just being yourself and they're sort of taking it like a suntan from the sun or something? Yeah. Naturally interacting or drawing from you what you offer? You know, when you come to the Zen Do, as an example, you come to the Zen Do to sit, right? your activity inspires others or it encourages others, right? So sometimes just being yourself, when you are a totally realized person, just being yourself is enough, right? But we do other things, you know, we teach, and this is called Tajiv Samadhi, this is called Jijiv Samadhi, what we're that we experience in our understanding of the dharma to others, yeah.

[36:51]

And then there's komyo zo samay, komyo means radiant light, komyo zo, radiant light, so the radiant light which is not visible as some idea, is what animates everything. And that radiant light is what creates, sustains everything. It's the sustaining light which is offering, it's like enlightenment. It's a samadhi of enlightenment. So those are some examples of samadhi. and we say samadhi and prajna. Prajna is the next one. Prajna, of course, is wisdom, right? Samadhi and wisdom are not two different things.

[37:58]

So samadhi is like the lamp, and prajna is the light of the lamp, according to the sixth ancestor. So there are four kinds of wisdom. To explain the whole thing is too much, but I will talk about the four kinds of wisdom a little bit. There's called the great perfect mirror wisdom, which means that our consciousness is free of discrimination. Consciousness is free of self-centered discrimination. And so the storehouse consciousness is like a great mirror which reflects everything just as it is, without any bias or distortion.

[39:08]

And then the wisdom of equality, which is when our ego consciousness is transformed, becomes the wisdom of equality, where we realize everything, the oneness of all phenomena. And then the marvelous observing wisdom is transformed and we see this discriminating consciousness doesn't lose its discriminating consciousness but it sees the reality of each And then the perfecting of action wisdom is also, the perfecting of action wisdom means that the six senses, the five senses act appropriately or don't allow themselves to get confused and deluded and seduced

[40:41]

And so this is like creating proper or free activity in the world. So the mirror wisdom and the wisdom of equality are without discrimination. Whereas the marvelous observing wisdom and the perfecting of action wisdom are correct discrimination. Discrimination is necessary. It means that we, discrimination means to divide and to separate. So the first two wisdoms, no separation. The second two wisdoms are appropriate separation.

[41:46]

We can't play ball unless we have some distance. So everything interacts with each other because of distance. Without distance, there's no interaction. And distance means discrimination. Non-discrimination means no separation. So there's no separation and proper separation. That's as much as I can explain right now. We sometimes think non-discrimination means not to discriminate. That's not so. Non-discrimination, true discrimination based on non-discrimination means proper discrimination. to act in the right way with our surroundings instead of getting in trouble. And then the last one, I can see we're squirming a little bit.

[42:57]

The last one is called avoiding idle talk. Oh, like this. Sometimes we say giving a talk is idle talk, but it's okay, because we make a mistake on purpose. So right speech, basically, in the precepts, there are many precepts that are about right speech. Like, for instance, don't lie, don't discuss the faults of others, Don't praise self and bad mouth others. Don't disparage the three treasures of the 10 clear mind precepts. Those are four. So those are all about right speech. So idle talk means right speech, basically. And no foolish babble.

[44:03]

You know, Babel, I think, comes from Babylon, probably. So, I remember Kadi Geri Roshi used to say, you should let moss grow over your mouth, or just shut your mouth and sit down. Or sit down and shut your mouth. So there, you know. Here, I'm just going to name some useful way of using words. Helpful words, useful words, gentle words, harmonious words, careful words, compassionate words, penetrating words, and truthful words. think about that when we open our mouth, when we take the moss over our mouth, then that would be very good for everybody.

[45:13]

Yeah. You know, it's skillful speech, actually. This speech that doesn't fall into I and mine, So we say, don't talk in order to be the center of attention or to show others how smart you are. This is idle talk, examples of idle talk. So this is like the opposite of right view. or right activity. Words that do not lead to furthering the Dharma is idle talk, basically.

[46:16]

Dogen says, having realization and being free from discrimination is what is called avoiding idle talk. To totally know the true form of all things is the same as being without idle talk. So, you know, gossip is idle talk. Rumors, spreading rumors is idle talk. Talking about things that you don't really know about is called idle talk. So, I think there's time for one question or two. Yes? So I was just thinking, for me this was an oh thing, so I'll just share it, it may not be that for everybody else.

[47:22]

I was thinking the difference between taking an action, and you can say, what am I doing? But really, why is a big question that we don't talk about as much as we do. Yes, that's correct. And why is the difference between doing something, saying something, the same thing. You could say the same thing or even take the same action, and that action is not good or bad, but the why makes it wholesome or unwholesome. Well, the problem, this is on purpose. Yeah. According to Zen, whatever Zen understanding is, according to tradition, how is, it's like, why takes you out of the present?

[48:24]

It's okay. I'm not saying it's not okay. Why is okay, right? But the important question for us is how? In other words, on this moment, what do I do? How? How do I respond to this moment? And the example that's given is from Buddha's time, when the arrow goes in, The questioner, the recipient of the arrow, says, what is this? Why did this happen? What is it made out of? And so forth and down the line, whereas the Zen student pulls out the arrow. The important thing is what, you know, it's not that why is not important, but the important thing, the specific momentous thing is how do I deal with this?

[49:40]

How do I deal with you on this moment? How do I deal with what I'm doing on this moment? How am I connected with what I'm doing on this moment? So that's the emphasis. The emphasis is to get out of why, because if you look at why, it's endless. Why is actually endless, because one thing has led to another, has led to another, that's its karmic activity, whereas how brings us to this moment and this moment's activity. So it's not a matter of either or, it's a matter of what the emphasis is at the time and what we're dealing with. What I was thinking of was kind of, well, kind of the conditions that resulted in an action, because sometimes we do an action, and then we realize that action didn't turn out so well. Yes, I won't do that again.

[50:42]

And we've heard somebody's feeling or whatever, and we don't even know why, I mean, where did that come from, that careless remark or that? Yes, yes, so one doesn't negate the other. Yes, that's how, but what our Zen practice is aiming at is to be present in this moment without past and without future. Lori? Where am I coming from in this moment, coming to this moment, where am I coming from? What is my intention, how am I responding, but where am I coming from? Where am I coming from is okay, but it also means, where am I coming from means what am I doing now.

[51:42]

Right. It means, what am I, but, that's fine. Huh? Just words. Just words. Yes. Well, would you say that it doesn't matter why, really, because the how is, oh my God, I'm in a hole. Here I am. I have to get out of the hole. Exactly, yes. Or I'm in a beautiful place. It's just like emphasizing the present moment, because it's, so where am I coming from? Yes, you know, that's important. But the present moment is the result of the past moment.

[53:12]

The present moment is conditioned by the past moment. But that doesn't necessarily mean that what you're doing in the present moment is impulsive. It doesn't necessarily mean that. You can have an impulsive, but that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about impulsiveness, we're talking about appropriateness. Because you already know what, intuitively, you already know what to do when you let go of why. But if you let your intuition, deep intuition, inform the present moment.

[54:25]

It's a long discussion.

[54:32]

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