I have outstretched the truth of God to better just words. Now that we're in our Zen Do, it gives us a good opportunity, we have a good opportunity to renew our practice or refresh our practice. Actually, we should be renewing and refreshing our practice every day, every moment. But when we have some new event,

[01:03]

It makes us mindful or remember about renewing our practice. That actually, our enlightenment is about how we renew our practice. And renewing our practice is about our enlightenment. We say that in Buddhism, that Buddhism is about enlightenment. That's what we're always saying when we pick up the books. books say that Buddhism is about enlightenment. And everybody says, what's that? And if you read the Zen books, they're talking about kensho all the time. Enlightenment experience. Experience of enlightenment. But unless you have actual practice and someone who can guide you in that practice, All you have is an idea about enlightenment.

[02:05]

So, if you enter into an actual practice we always find that enlightenment is concerned with the practice itself, with how we do something, how we do what we're doing. Outside of that, we don't talk about enlightenment. We only talk about enlightenment within the fact of what we're doing and what we are, who we are. To look for enlightenment outside of our own activity is like beating the bushes in Alaska trying to find an elephant

[03:26]

So, with this new Zen Dojo, we should be mindful of renewing our practice, because we have a lot of different things to think about. Our usual way of doing everything has changed, and sometimes some of the changes are very subtle, some of the changes are very slight. So if you go about doing things in our usual, habitual way, we tend to miss what's happening. And we tend not to do things correctly. We just do things, everything in our habitual way. Or we'll say, gee, you know, something's wrong. I don't know what it is. So this kind of change helps us to be alert enough to see what's different and to respond to a changing situation.

[04:48]

How we respond to a changing situation in a correct manner is what our practice is about and how enlightenment manifests. How we express our enlightenment is by how closely we are aware of how everything is changing, and how we respond to that, and how we find ourselves in every changing moment. So we can say, that change is our teacher and every problem we have is our teacher. So we always welcome our problems.

[05:51]

If you have an enlightened mind, you will welcome your problems because you understand that your problem is your opportunity. to find yourself. And it's a matter of life and death. If you are not aware, then when the opportunity comes for life, you miss it. So our practice is to always be aware so that we don't miss the opportunity for life. We say that we're already alive.

[06:58]

Well, I'm already alive. What do I have to worry about? It looks that way. Looks like we're already alive. We say, something created me and so I'm alive. But in fact, we must create life in order for life to come to life. We must bring it to life. We can't wait for life to just create us. We must also create life. So we have a responsibility to ourselves and to life itself. Not to miss life. Not to let it go by.

[08:03]

Tsukiyoshi was talking about when he was in the hospital and he was laying in bed for three months in the hospital. I'm sure that other people have had this experience. Maybe some of you have had this experience of having to lay in bed for three months in the hospital or longer. And his whole challenge was to find himself in bed. It's pretty hard to stay in bed for a long period of time because you have to move around until you find the right position. And then after a while, there is no right position. It's just nothing but discomfort. But for him, he recognized this problem. He didn't ask for some other problem. or for some way out of it.

[09:09]

Just dealing with this problem of how to find himself moment after moment, hour after hour, day after day, in his position. He could appreciate his life without trying to escape from it. So even in the most uncomfortable place, he knows how to practice. If we know how to practice wherever we are, then we have practice. If we only depend on certain situations and expect the world to be stable, and expect everything to stay the way we put it.

[10:11]

That's delusion. So if we become too attached to our problem, by attached I mean trying to get rid of it. We can never settle on the reality of our situation, settle ourselves into the reality of our situation. And when we can settle into the reality of our situation, we find that most of our problems are, most of what we consider our problems, are not really problems at all.

[11:20]

Most of them we create or make up, cause. you can finally be free enough, have the kind of freedom that comes from settling on ourself, finding ourself. Then we find that we really have very few problems and we can help other people. And we accept all of our problems immediately as a gift. When we can do that, then we can help other people. But if our problems, you know, we accept them as great weights, big stones.

[12:25]

And don't make the effort to find ourselves within the problem. then we're always feeling attacked, persecuted, burdened by life. So when we turn toward our practice, our zendo practice, we need to be alert, mindful, and present, and ready to accept something.

[13:58]

You know, if we stand outside of practice and say, with the feeling, they're doing it, they're practicing and I'm joining their practice, that's miles away from practice, that kind of attitude. In order to really have practice, you have to say, this is my practice. This is mine. This is me. If you just follow along with practice, Well, there's a schedule, you know, we sit zazen in the morning, and then we do various activities, and you kind of follow that along.

[15:04]

That's tagging along, you know. That's okay. At first, we should practice like that. We should practice just following along. But at some point, you have to be able to say, this is my practice. I own it. belongs to me. Then that part that's just following along comes up and joins the part that's present, that owns the practice. Then you become, you move yourself within practice. you move yourself within the practice. And when you can move yourself within the practice, that's your motivation. Then there's no inside of practice and no outside of practice.

[16:14]

This is a very important point. As long as there's something outside of practice, something sticking out, your leg, or your arm, or your ear, or your nose, sticking outside, you know, it's very painful. It's as much as everything being outside. It's the same as everything being completely outside. Almost the same. until all of you is right there, so that there's no outside. There's only inside, which is no inside or outside. Only then can you think about enlightenment. Enlightenment is being totally inside.

[17:19]

So there's no inside, no outside. This is... certain Zen people talk about Kensho a lot. This is what they mean by Kensho. Totally inside. No inside, no outside. Whatever you do is one with things. Then all of your activity is enlightened activity. But we don't talk about Kensho so much. What we talk about is putting ourself into the activity, being in it, being the activity.

[18:27]

being our activity, settling on our activity, finding ourself on each moment. So finding ourself on each moment means being totally total, not leaving anything else. Leaving something out means to objectify. To objectify is to see the universe as different than yourself. To see people as different from yourself. Although there are differences. you are not different from everything else.

[19:30]

So if we want to practice, our effort should be to accept our problem, whatever problem presents itself, to find ourself moment by moment in each moment's critical position. You have a position on each moment, and the things around you have a position on each moment. And on each moment, your position is different, and the positions of everything around you are different. It's not that you're changing and everything is standing still, or that everything is changing and you're standing still. Everything is changing together. All situations are changing together. You and your surroundings are all changing together, moment by moment.

[20:46]

There's nothing stable. Nothing stands still in this universe. Nothing is repeated in this universe. Satsang is never repeated. Sitting cross-legged is never repeated. And to understand this changing situation, not to take anything for granted. Don't take anything for granted. Things are this way now, but even though it looks stable, things could be radically different tomorrow. But we're used to them being gradually different. We're used to things being so gradually different that it looks very stable.

[21:48]

Over a long period of time, people have developed civilization, and trying always to make our lives more and more stable. And in America, our lives are very stable, especially in California. Go to the grocery store, and you expect to find cheese, The cornucopia. It is the cornucopia. Just overflowing with everything you want. And if you want something, well, I'm going to go to the Berkeley Bowl and I'll get it. But supposing you went to the Berkeley Bowl one day and there was nothing there. And then you went to the Safeway and there was nothing there.

[22:50]

That can happen. So our lives are very stable, very comfortable. And because our lives are so comfortable, we don't have to do much. We have to set our patterns, get a job, go to work, find a place to live, find your friends, get married, have children. If you do all these things within this system, we'll be very comfortable. Everybody plays their part. We'll be able to make it work. But it doesn't, you know, it doesn't work. It works to a certain extent, and it works, the forms seem to work, but the content gets mushy. Things don't go the way we expect that they will. There's always something wrong.

[23:55]

So when we come, you know, because we feel there's something wrong, we look for some stability. What is stable? Where is the enlightenment in this situation? So we come to some kind of practice. We go to church, come to Zen practice. And it's so easy, even if we come to Zen practice, which teaches us about the instability of everything around us, including ourself, it's still easy to be lazy.

[24:59]

Very easy to be lazy. You know, he kind of sits us in, even though become a sit zazen every day, we can still be lazy. We still don't get it. We're still out of it. So, with this zendo, with this new zendo, I would like us to make some good effort to live in enlightenment. live within our enlightened practice, to enlighten our practice. There is no enlightened practice. We have to enlighten our practice. And it's very hard, very hard to do, because it means all of our cherished

[26:07]

All the things that we, all the ideas that we cherish have just got to go out the window. And we always have to be in the fundamental place. We can do whatever we want. if we're in the fundamental place. We're always in the fundamental place, but we don't realize that. So first, We have to be careful not to take anything for granted.

[27:10]

We should always have that uppermost in our mind. Not to take anything for granted. And if we have love from people, that's a gift. expect it. If we want love, you know, the way to get love is to always give it. It's just like, you know, we talk about Dharma transmission. Dharma transmission is recognition of the teacher to the student, and the student to the teacher, so that there's no gap between the teacher and the student.

[28:20]

The student is the teacher. The teacher is the student. But the teacher doesn't give anything to the student. Because the student and the teacher have the same mind, we call that dharma transmission, but nothing moves. If you want love, then you should find love in your own mind. You should find, you should study what love is. And you should know how to give love without wanting anything.

[29:22]

If you give love without wanting anything, without any kind of desire in it, then you'll have it. But if you expect someone to give it to you, you'll never have it as long as you live. Love is something that's always there. And, you know, we talk about love between two people. Why we have love between two people is because the same love exists in both people. You can't give love to somebody. You can awaken it. Just like a teacher awakens enlightenment in a student.

[30:23]

But the teacher can't give love, enlightenment to the student. Because all of us have enlightenment already. We can awaken it in each other. And the same with love. You can't give love to people. You can only awaken it. But it's not something that we can grasp or hold on to or expect. We have to find it in ourself and then freely give it. But you'll find that when you find what love really is, you'll find that it's the same thing as enlightenment. So we shouldn't sell it short. We should keep investigating what that is.

[31:29]

What is love? We think we know what it is. If we see it in movies, two people kissing each other, it's not love. Going to bed with each other is not love. There's love in it, of course. forms and lower forms. Higher forms have nothing to do with self-interest. So we need to know what is love and what is enlightenment. Neither one has to do with self-interest.

[32:32]

So, if you practice enlightenment, you should question that. What is enlightenment that I'm practicing? What is this enlightenment that I'm practicing? If you're practicing love, you should question yourself. What is this love that I'm practicing? What does that mean? And it has nothing to do with self-interest. And love, actually, the practice of love is a very conscious practice. It's not just some feeling we have. You know, we tend to think that love is some feeling that we have about somebody or about something, and we tend to think of it in a very emotional way.

[33:45]

But it's not just that emotional feeling that we have. And it's actually a very conscious practice. It's the kind of practice that we have when we become a cook. How do you, when you become a cook and you feed people, how do you practice love at that point, in that situation? How do you practice enlightenment in that situation? Same thing goes for if you have a child or if you have a job. If you go to work and you're surrounded by people in one capacity or another, how do you practice love in that situation?

[34:49]

Or how do you practice How do you manifest enlightenment and love in that situation, any situation, every situation? How do you practice love on your way from the kitchen to the bathroom? Or when you're sitting in the toilet. Not a joke. You can't leave out anything. You can't leave out any moment or aspect of your life. If you neglect some aspect of your life in order to favor some other, it's not enlightenment. Enlightened mind is how you manifest.

[35:50]

Enlightened mind manifests Constantly. If it's not constantly, it's not an enlightened mind. If it ignores some situation, it's not an enlightened mind. So, our practice is how we take care of everything. Not meticulously, but carefully. You don't have to be meticulous. You just have to be mindful and careful. If we built this building meticulously, we'd still be working on the foundation, trying to make everything perfect. It's not a matter of trying to make everything perfect. It's how we do something mindfully and well and completely and with care.

[37:00]

love, which has nothing to do with self-interest, although we don't neglect our self either. Our practice is for our self. Each one of us individually practices for our self, but without self-interest. Without self-interest means not building our ego through practice. We practice for ourself in order to find out who we're not. So we don't have to do anything extraordinary.

[38:12]

We never say that we should do something extraordinary, but just do what we do ordinarily. You know, if we can just do just the ordinary things, that's enough, let alone doing something extraordinary. Very hard for us just to do, just to get through one day doing everything that we know we have to do, and to be mindful of things that are not just in our own

[39:24]

mind, not just in our own realm. If you walk up to the zendo and there's something laying on the ground, it's not supposed to be there. When you see it, what will you do? Will you pick it up and find out where it goes, or will you just walk past? You know, to be alert enough to see how things should be, or how things are off, or how they're on, and be able to do something, to respond. So, to take responsibility is when you own the practice. I think that's what I'm talking about, in a sense, is responsibility.

[40:26]

really have responsibility, feel responsible for the practice, then it's your practice. And then you can practice within that practice, because you're responding to it. And then when you respond to it, it makes you, and you make it. When we make something, it also makes us. So that's what I mean by bringing our practice to life, bringing life to life. Life appears to be going on, As long as we're standing outside of it, it's not going on for us.

[41:31]

A semblance of life is going on. It looks like life, but unless it's your life, it's not life. So as soon as we step into life, step into this, then this makes us. Dogen talks about life as a boat. A person steps into the boat and hoists the sail and picks up the anchor and the boat moves when the wind catches the sail. But, and he says, when the man steps into the boat and hoists the sail, and the wind comes and picks it up.

[42:36]

The man makes the boat, and the boat makes the man, makes the person. As long as you're standing on the dock, it looks like a boat. You say, there's the boat. There's a boat. It looks like a boat. But in actual fact of life, until you step into the boat, hoist the sail, and move, it's not really a boat. Up to that point, it's not really a boat. And you are not really you. When the man steps into the boat, or the person steps into the boat, hoists the sail, and the man, or the person and the boat are moved, then the person and the boat are one thing. And that's enlightenment.

[43:41]

As long as you stand outside just looking at the boat, it looks like a boat, you call it a boat, you call yourself you, but it's not it. We can watch TV, you know, talk about the stories, the ideas, blah, blah, but it's always Something going on on the screen, and you're over here. It resembles life. There's some life in it. But it's not... The example is standing outside. So, you know, in the training situation, we take everything away. And you have to be There's only this. No way you can get out.

[44:54]

And even then, you can still be standing outside. Even in Zazen, you can still be standing outside. But Zazen creates a situation that enables you to step inside of yourself, to step into the universe. No separation. But that should be our activity all the time. Finding ourself moment after moment in our situation, within our situation, not outside of it. And in a monastic situation, you have very little opportunity to think about things.

[46:30]

You just go from one activity to the next, so that you're always within activity. You're never standing outside wondering or objectifying. Always within activity. And when the activity changes, you just drop what you're doing and go into the next activity. You're not hindering this unification, merging. If you stand out and think too much, thinking is good, but it also separates you. The longer you ponder, the more you become separated. There's a place for thinking. There's a place for not thinking so much. And within training, we're always encouraged to just do something without thinking so much.

[47:41]

Stop wondering, or is this going to blah, blah, blah. Just enter into it. The story, you know, of Ananda and Mahakasyapa. Mahakasyapa calls up to Ananda and says, Ananda, Ananda says, yes. Just like that. Exactly the same month, they have. Just one month. Is he following me? What shall I say? No following, what shall I say?

[48:44]

Yes. So, Zen practice is based on that kind of simplicity. That kind of response. Leaving our mind open to respond to a situation. But don't get me wrong, don't stop thinking. You'll get run over or something. But leave some space in your mind, leave some space to Getting a little late.

[49:56]

What do you think? It seems like you're saying that finding yourself every moment and love is the same thing. Well, I was talking about various things. But where is the love in finding yourself on every moment? So I was talking about love and enlightenment, you know, equating them. So you can, if you say, finding yourself in every moment, where is the love in that? Well, why don't you just say, where is the enlightenment in it? Love is, first you should be able to give love to yourself. This is actually an old Buddhist law, you know, that you should be able to give love to yourself. first. And if you can do that, then you can also give love to others.

[51:02]

So that's a good question for you. Where is the love in that? Good question. I wouldn't want to answer it for you. With what you were saying about meticulousness and carefulness, what about appropriateness and impeccability? I would say appropriateness is very good. Impeccability could be too much. Yeah, but that's when you stink of Zen. You know, we have a kind of stinky Zen, where we always try to do everything just perfectly, you know, and then... So those words like impeccable and, you know, become... start going the other way.

[52:24]

Appropriate is really good, because that's a resting place. It's like a good, you know, where can you go from there? Appropriate fits every situation. And impeccable fits into appropriate. But... But, you know, it's enough to just do something just right. Impeccable is maybe like polishing it, you know, too much. What we like, actually, is to see kind of a rough diamond and then to cut it just right

[53:28]

But if we rub it too much, then it's a little too dazzling. And if we spend too much time on one spot, too much time rubbing one spot, then it's easy to neglect the whole thing. Or if we see somebody No one else can match it. It's too matchless. I think that what's really appropriate is for not to try and do something to make a crystal palace, but just to make our ordinary life come to life.

[54:31]

Sometimes it's crude. Sometimes it's refined. has different aspects. If we try to be impeccable, you know, it means we'd never have any holes in our ropes or, you know, threadbare. We wouldn't be threadbare, you know. Every time our clothes got a little bit threadbare, we'd have to change them in for new ones. To me, that's impeccable. You can't do anything wrong. We should do something wrong. We should have enough flexibility to do something wrong. That's also right. So we use those extreme words, like impeccable,

[55:37]

for rough spots. It's like when you have a board, you know, and you're playing the board, and you go, whoosh, once. And it's perfectly smooth, except for some rough spots. But if you try to sand out the rough spots, that's impeccable. But if you just go, whoosh, once, And it's perfectly smooth, except there's some rough spots. You appreciate the rough spots. Because you appreciate that one swoop. This is the way it happened. You know, this is life and death. One swoop. And this is what happened. And there's no going back. No erasing. No touching up. But we appreciate it. We appreciate that there's flaws. And in this building, you know, same thing. We went through it. But if you go over it, you know, try and sand out all the flaws, you know, erase all the flaws, then try to make it impeccable.

[56:58]

Not so good. We just accept the flaws, they become part of it, and we appreciate them. They're just as much a part of it as everything else. Just like our lives. So we're not trying to make something perfect. on the outside. Perfection is, the flaws are part of that perfection in our lives. So we appreciate, you know, we want somebody to be this way or that way, or ourselves to be this way or that way, but we also appreciate, you know, what's not so good about us, that we're not so good about each other. You know, you should be able to love yourself even though you're not perfect. But if you don't keep trying to do something, then you don't like, you know, you get disgusted. So we accept how we are, and we're always trying. We stop trying, then we're standing outside again.

[58:04]

So we're in this thing, you know, and we're doing this thing. And we're making mistakes and doing something right, you know. As long as we're totally Everything comes out perfect, including mistakes. Mistakes are part of the perfection. But the main thing is that we be within it, not apart, not set apart. It's a perfect day-to-day koan.

[59:12]

Take it up on Monday. When we look at our life in this way, the koan comes up every moment. So don't think we don't have koan practice. If you're really practicing, you have a koan practice moment by moment. But the koan comes up Pass it. Yes. What is loving oneself without selfishness? That's your point. I don't want to answer that for you. You tell me.

[60:06]

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