Last Saturday, I started to talk again about the eight aspects, Dogen Zenji's eight aspects of the enlightened person, or eight characteristics. or eight practices, actually. Eight practices which characterize enlightenment. This fascicle of Dogen's was the last thing that he wrote. in a very similar way. He said, Dogen says that Shakyamuni Buddha commented on the same eight aspects as his last teaching.

[01:17]

There are various last teachings of Buddha, but Dogen says this is Buddha's last teaching and it was also Dogen's last teaching. And we studied it before and I think we need to study it over and over again. When we talk about enlightenment, it's a very elusive thing to talk about, but we don't want to avoid too much talking about it. So we have to say something about it. So when we talk about What is enlightenment? We have some curiosity about enlightenment, so I have to say something about it.

[02:21]

So how we talk about it is through its characteristics. If we're always talking about enlightenment, then there's something wrong. We have some problem if we're always talking about enlightenment. It means that we're a little bit outside of what it is we're talking about. So when we talk about, in order to talk about something like enlightenment, We put emphasis on our effort or our activity, because enlightenment and activity are two interconnected aspects of one thing.

[03:30]

In the same way, when we want to talk about emptiness, we always talk about form. If we want to understand about emptiness, we talk about form. If we want to talk about enlightenment, we talk about our activity. I talked about the first three. aspects last Saturday. The first one is to not have too many desires. To limit your field of desire. That's the first one. And the second one is to know how to be satisfied with what we already have. And the third is to cultivate tranquility and even-mindedness, peaceful mind, peaceful, tranquil mind.

[04:47]

And the fourth one, which I'm going to talk about today, is exerting sincere or continuous effort. So the fourth characteristic of an enlightened person is our concentrated effort. Without concentrated effort, No matter how much we look for enlightenment, it's just a kind of game we play. Because we can't gain something by looking for it. We can't gain realization by just looking someplace, looking under the table, or looking in the book or something, to our effort.

[05:57]

So that's why we always put emphasis on practice as continuous effort. If you want to make something go, if you want to make something work, you have to make it go. you want to generate a certain kind of power, then you have to turn on the generator. So we have to have our own internal generator going all the time. And last time I talked about motivation, self-motivation, about how when practice is really our own, It's through our self-motivation. We have influences.

[06:59]

We have influence of a teacher, and influence of teachers of the past, and influence of our sangha, people that we practice with. But we also have to be an influence. We can't just leave it up to everyone else. may be convenient to put yourself into a position where you're carried along by something, by some energy. But at some point, you have to start generating energy yourself. You have to be the engine. And at that point, when you can generate, when your activity generates its own power to practice, your practice becomes an altogether different animal.

[07:59]

So we have to get some momentum going in order to have a rhythm that's enough of a rhythm so that we no longer have to be pushed or pulled. It's an interesting thing about rhythm. Your car will move by itself. The system in your automobile is such that once the engine is started, the engine will run by itself. And then you put it in gear, and depending on what gear you put it in, you do various things with it. But before it's started, it needs something to get it going. It needs something to start the rhythm of the engine.

[09:18]

So you press the button and there's a storage of electricity in the battery which motivates the starter and the engine will start. And then the electricity, because the engine is going, the generator is attached to the fan belt. And the fan belt, going around very fast, pulls the generator pulley, and the generator starts generating its own electricity. So you don't depend on the battery anymore, and it's a self-motivating instrument. And as long as it's moving, it's creating its own energy, keeps creating its own energy. And then everything runs very smoothly. You say, oh, the car's running pretty well. And you can do whatever you want with it, depending on its limitations.

[10:23]

But it needs something to get it going first. And we're like that too. We need to have some impetus to get us going. But once we're going, our practice, the rhythm of our practice, should generate enough energy to keep us going and motivate us. But we should also be our own self-starter. We have to be our own self-starter. When I was practicing with Suzuki Roshi, I thought about what was motivating me a lot. And I thought about, who's doing this practice? And I thought, I came to a conclusion at one point that even if no one else was sitting zazen, would I still sit zazen?

[11:32]

If no one else was practicing, would I still practice? Who did my practice depend on? That was a big question for me. And so I decided that even if no one else ever practiced again, that I would continue to practice. So that kind of decision made me independent. But the independence doesn't mean that I go off by myself. When we have a sangha of independent people who are self-motivated and who practice together, then our practice becomes very powerful, very strong.

[12:47]

And our strength helps everyone else's strength. And our practice at that point becomes very creative. When you just follow along, your practice is not so creative. But when your practice is motivated, self-motivated, and the rhythm of practice is very strong, your life becomes very different. because your intention is directed. And it's sometimes described as water, when the rhythm of practice is like water dropping on a stone, one beat after the next, until finally there's a hole worn in the stone.

[13:55]

And that analogy for us is the analogy of enlightenment blossoming in our practice. If we want enlightenment to blossom in our practice, then we need that kind of motivation and rhythm. When you least expect it, something wonderful will happen. I'm not promising you something, but I'm saying that through that kind of diligence, our enlightenment comes alive. If we don't have that kind of diligence, then we get tired easily.

[15:00]

discouraged easily, and not much happens. I always have to be careful when I talk to all of us, because we all have such different lives, different lifestyles, and yet we can all come together and practice. And that's a very delicate balance that we have to maintain in our lives. What we say for one person is not the same for another person. And what we expect of one person is not the same as what you might expect from someone else. But our ability to do the best we can with what we have is the main point.

[16:04]

It's not that you should practice like I practice, but what you do practice should be with your best spirit and most diligent effort. So it's pretty important to have a rhythm of practice, whatever that rhythm is. However it suits best your life. And to be able to organize your life to practice is the most important thing. Given all of the circumstances of your life, you know how to organize your life in order to

[17:14]

practice. I want to say to center it around practice. Actually, the best way is to center your life around practice. What I mean by that is so that you can sit zazen and then your life as it extends from zazen is one continuous practice. So the fifth characteristic is called not forgetting right thought, which means to always have the thought of dharma in your mind.

[18:21]

to always have the thought of practice uppermost in your mind. And no matter what kind of circumstances we're in, we never forget that we're practicing dharma, or protecting dharma. Actually, sometimes we say, to protect the dharma, which means to protect the dharma in ourself, to not let that light of Dharma be overshadowed by something or to have it put out or extinguished. So to always keep the light of Dharma burning. Not burning, but glowing in our daily life. And that, of course, One of the great tests of our practice is that no matter what kind of circumstances we encounter in our life, we always have the Dharma uppermost.

[19:31]

So that you can enter into all kinds of, if you have a strong sense of Dharma, strong sense of your own practice, you can enter into all kinds of situations and not get lost or carried away. If you're in the monastery, it's much easier, because all the people that you're with have the same idea, and they're all practicing in the same way. So everyone you meet in the monastery understands what your practice is, and they understand, and they're trying to help you. But when you are practicing in the city, No one understands, except people your Sangha understands, but the people who you are dealing with day after day don't have the same idea about Dharma that you do. So it's much more difficult. But if you understand, or if you have a good conception of Buddha nature,

[20:40]

then you can include everyone in your practice. So it's very poor practice to say, this is me and that's them. When you go out into the world, into the city, that's also the Dharma world. And all those people in the Dharma world have Buddha nature. have your Buddha nature. They may not understand the same way you understand, and they may not be thinking in the same way you're thinking, or they may not have the same direction, but nevertheless, they all have Buddha nature. And even though they may not appear to you as Buddhas, yet they're all Buddhas, So we have to be able to respond and treat everyone as Buddha.

[21:53]

Everyone we meet, we have to dress as Buddha. You wouldn't say, oh, hi, you're Buddha, aren't you? You wouldn't say such a thing, but you might. It's OK if you do. Go to your boss and say, oh, hello, Buddha. But underneath your activity, you realize that your boss is Buddha, or someone you don't like is Buddha, or everyone in your world is Buddha. It has Buddha nature. Suzuki Roshi used to always talk about the most important thing being to realize that we have buddhanature. And to realize that everything has buddhanature, is buddhanature.

[23:00]

So when you, it doesn't matter how people act toward you. What does matter is how you act toward people. If you're worried about how everyone is acting toward you, you shouldn't let that stop you from how you respond to people. Otherwise, you find yourself reacting. So if you only react to how people act toward you, then you get caught hate and delusion. So your activity has to come from your practice. And no matter how people act toward you, you have to, you should be able to, if you have a strong practice, present yourself as a bodhisattva. That's how we have to practice in the world.

[24:10]

And if we are not practicing that way, we should know that we're not practicing that way. If we don't realize that, then we're not really practicing. No matter how someone comes on to you or acts toward you, you should not react, but respond. Reacting is like when you shake a stick at a dog and the dog gets angry and starts biting at the stick, barking, gets all excited. But you should be coming from where you are. Otherwise, you just get pulled off your base time after time, pulled out of your own center. So Zazen, practice of Zazen is to keep us always centered. And to keep ourself always centered continually, no matter what kind of thing is happening, no matter what situation we're in, that's called not forgetting right thought and practicing zazen continuously.

[25:25]

So if you really make effort to keep that kind of practice, then you'd be forced to always get deeper and deeper into practice. I mean deeper and deeper into yourself, into your buddha nature. And then all of your response will come out of buddha nature. All of your response will come out of prajna. rather than just reacting to situations and getting caught by somebody shaking a stick, throwing stones at you. The sixth one, is practicing samadhi or unifying our mind with our activity.

[26:48]

Really being sincerely involved in our activity without a gap between ourself and our activity. in the sense of zazen, it means to gather our attention to where we don't leak, not having any leaks. In Buddhism we're always talking about not leaking. It means having our mind and our body and our activity so unified that there's no gap, no place for the energy to flow out. So it's also called guarding the senses.

[27:55]

And in Theravada Buddhism, The monks make a very careful effort to have no outflows. In Mahayana Buddhism it's a little different. We have, we include our the world into our life. Rather than setting ourselves apart from the world, we encompass the whole universe in our life. But we still need to be very careful that

[29:09]

We don't just let our life force be drained by a weak concentration. This goes back to having a good you want to accomplish something, then it's like the water dropping on a stone with a good concentrated rhythm. But if you really want to accomplish something, then you have to make a limitation. And the limitation You have to include the things that will work within the thing that you want to accomplish, and other things have to not be included in that.

[30:22]

You know the famous tapestries at the Cloisters in New York. There's a wonderful tapestry of a unicorn in a fence, lots of flowers around, and there's a tree in the fence. And that kind of symbol of the unicorn with the fence is like the beginning of the journey. In order to do something, to begin the spiritual journey effectively, you have to build the fence around the unicorn so that the unicorn has good concentrated samadhi, unicorn samadhi, within that corral, without letting anything in or out. And that concentrated power

[31:33]

is what's necessary to break open the seal of your enlightened heart Enlightenment is sealed in here. And it takes a very strong samadhi to penetrate into it. So samadhi is a kind of exotic word. Concentration, single-minded concentration is But samadhi is good if you don't let it, if you don't get to thinking about it in some exotic way.

[32:49]

Just single minded concentration. One of the problems that we have, you know, in our practice is we may have single-minded concentration in our zazen, and then we kind of exclude sometimes our responsibilities from that concentration. And I think that we're kind of, in our American practice, beginning to learn how to take care of our responsibilities with the same kind of concentration that we sit zazen.

[33:55]

I think we have to be careful that We don't get too attached to zazen. And neglect our families and other responsibilities. It's easy to do that. It's always a balance, delicate balance. How to take care of everything that we have to take care of. That's why having few desires is so important. It doesn't mean having no desires, but we have to choose. We have to choose what it is that we're going to be involved in. And then we can put our energy to good use. And as I said before, we can't have everything.

[35:08]

We can't do all the things that we'd like to do. And when we have some maturity, then we accept the limitation of what's possible. But It's important to cultivate samadhi power. The power of samadhi is the power that allows us to be it, instead of the power to just see it. Samadhi power is the power to be it, to unify ourself with it, so that there's no separation between ourself and it.

[36:31]

Then the seventh characteristic is cultivating wisdom or prajna, which means the ability practice all of the eight awarenesses. It includes making right decisions and being able to see things as they really are. It means to see delusion as delusion. to see enlightenment as enlightenment, to know when something, when to know your own mind.

[37:59]

And it means having a clear enough perspective to know how your practice is and to know, to be able to let, allow the intrinsic wisdom to arise. If our mind is always covered by our thinking, then we can never allow that wisdom to really arise. So this wisdom of prajna is basic buddha-nature, intrinsic wisdom of buddha-nature. But we keep it covered. with our thoughts and ideas.

[39:21]

Not that thinking is also it. Ideas is also it. But what's necessary is to know what do we depend on? Basically, what do we depend on? If we depend on prajna, then we can use our thinking mind, emotions, freely. But if we only depend on our thinking mind, then we become very paranoid, because our thinking only goes so far. The characteristic of someone who depends on prajna is that they have a very free feeling and are not so worried about things.

[40:30]

Even if there is a lot of danger, a person who depends on prajna will worry, but not so much. Even though their person is worried, they have some foundation or some religious security, which Not security in the usual sense. Not security that something nice will happen, or that everything will be okay. But security in that whatever happens is okay. So our usual kind of security is built on If we stick our foundations in the ground far enough, you know, the wind will blow our house over.

[41:31]

But no matter how much we do that, there's always a big enough wind that it will blow our house over. But the roots of prajna are limitless. So when we can depend on prajna mind, whatever happens is okay. We can accept it. So we have that kind of security that wherever we are is a good place to be and we can practice there. because we're always at home. There's some places that we don't like to be, but there's no place that we can't be or that we shouldn't be.

[42:42]

Suzuki Roshi used to say that for a bodhisattva, hell is just another place to practice. It doesn't mean that we don't try to make some place for ourselves. We try to make things the best that we can, but we should always realize that there's no security in this world. There's no secure place in this world. So we shouldn't become complacent. or feel that because we have a nice zendo, that everything is okay.

[43:50]

Someday we may be practicing under the bridge someplace, or who knows. But wherever we have to go, that's where we will practice. And the less we depend on circumstances, the more we can enjoy our real life. It's really true. The less we can depend on circumstances, the less we can depend on anything and learn to enjoy our intrinsic life that doesn't depend on anything. the more we can enjoy our circumstances and our surroundings, people that we're with, because we don't depend on anything. And we can see things as they are, and just take up wherever we are.

[45:09]

kind of wonderful, very wonderful. I remember one time when I was practicing with Suzuki Roshi, we had, this was at Sokoji Temple on Bush Street before the Zen Center is where it is now. And Suzuki Roshi's wife went home to Japan for a while, And there was an apartment across the street that somebody rented. And they invited him over for breakfast. He had Katagiri Roshi. And when they went over there, he took the newspaper out and he spread the newspaper out in front of them. And he said, this is my tablecloth. He put his dishes down. and bowed and started to eat.

[46:13]

And there was something so wonderful about it. He just took the piece of newspaper, put it down, and that was his tablecloth. It could have been anywhere. It could have been at home, anywhere. It could have been under the bridge, in the middle of Montgomery Street, in a palace, anywhere. He just used what was there. and made it into a wonderful thing. So that was, I appreciated that very much, that kind of attitude which can make any circumstance into a wonderful thing, just using what's available, using what's there, transforming phenomena And the last, eighth one, eighth characteristic is avoiding idle talk.

[47:25]

Strange one for the last one, but... In Buddhism, it's very important to give up all of your opinions and ideas in order to understand the Dharma. When we sit zazen, we give up all of our opinions and ideas, and we don't think about things in the usual way. And when we can give up all of our opinions and ideas, then dharma appears. So we kind of make room for the dharma, make room for prajna and the dharma. As long as we're holding on to our ideas and opinions, we put a cover on it.

[48:32]

You know, dharma, sometimes we learn dharma from outside, but the dharma that we learn from outside is just in order to release the dharma that's inside. So the main thing is to release the dharma that's inside. All of our practice is geared toward releasing the dharma that's intrinsic, your own dharma. So if we have what Kanze calls thought coverings, thinking which puts a lid on intrinsic wisdom, then we can never really allow that Dharma to rise up, to fill us. So even knowing a lot about Buddhism is not so good.

[49:43]

In one sense, I appreciate the fact that students here don't know very much about Dharma. It makes me a little nervous sometimes, on the other hand, because we should know something about Buddhism. But on the other hand, to just practice and let the Dharma arise is the best way, and it's hard to always trust that. It's hard to always trust that, that by practicing we let the Dharma that's already in us arise, and the wisdom. So, you know, we need to have some reassurance from outside, which means to study and to understand what other people have done and be encouraged by history of Buddhism.

[50:52]

So, idle talk is like not necessarily frivolous, but sometimes frivolous, but it's like talking in a way that's speculative or just kind of expressing ideas. For someone like Dogen or Buddha, speaking should just be speaking Dharma or speaking something necessary. and not letting your mind, your imagination get all wound up, entangled up in some twisted way. When you can allow that dharma for prajna to arise, then even frivolous talk is dharma.

[52:05]

Even just the most frivolous kind of talk can be Dharma. But it depends on where it's coming from. I know it's hard to do, but we should try to limit our speaking. It's one of the problems we have in Zen, that we don't talk so much, and people criticize us for not talking so much. to limit frivolous talk and to give up our ideas.

[53:25]

When we talk about dharma, to give up our ideas and just let dharma arise. Just act, to practice sincerely. Interestingly enough, when you speak, the right speech will come. If you know how to do that, the right speech will just come. Sometimes when we're stuck for words, you know, we say, And we try to grasp something, or find something to say. It doesn't work. But if you just stop and just say to yourself, or to whoever you're talking about, I don't know.

[54:28]

I don't know. Then that I don't know clears out this huge well, takes the cover off this huge well. And something comes up out of that well, and it's the right thing. So, I don't know is probably the most important thing that we can say underneath it all. I don't know is probably the greatest affirmation because it means I know. I do know one thing. It's that I don't know. that affirmation allows all kinds of knowledge to come up.

[55:28]

We don't have time to discuss anything today. You say everyone is a Buddha. Do you mean that everyone has the potentiality of realizing their Buddha nature? Well, I think what I said was, we all have Buddha nature. You know? That's what I said. We all have Buddha nature. And you should treat everyone, you should respond to everyone's Buddha nature. So that will bring That will help to bring the buddha nature out of people, up in people. They can become aware of their own buddha nature by the way you see them as buddha.

[56:35]

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