In Buddhism, of course, the main point is how to deal with suffering and how to deal with problems which cause suffering. So this is the main point which brings people to practice or study Buddhism, should be to learn how to deal with suffering and the various problems we have that cause suffering, like desire and so forth. So, the approach that Buddhism takes, you know, is if we have less self, we have less suffering. This is the main approach of Buddhism.

[01:05]

If you have a lot of self, then you have a lot of suffering. If you stand up as a target for things, then you get hit by things. So when you know how to get out of the way, then you let things go by. And so what we have to learn in Buddhism is how to get out of the way. But it doesn't mean to hide, you know, not to hide from life, but how to see our life realistically. So what we do is investigate ourself. What is this target? What is this self that becomes a target for suffering, for all of the things that cause suffering?

[02:12]

So as we begin to practice, a well-trained monk Buddhist monk, comes to have less and less personal problems because there's less and less person. Now this may seem negative to us, but what we mean by less person in a sense means more person, more real person, unless what we usually think of as ego person. So in Buddhism, the point is to find our true personality, which is often replaced by our ego.

[03:23]

And as we lose our ego personality, our true personality emerges. And true personality is less subject to attachment to the pains and sorrows of life. So as we begin to lose our ego and our true personality emerges, we worry about ourself less and less. And we take on more responsibility for others and toward the world in front of us. The world that emerges in front of us. As our own self-worry becomes less and less through practice, then it's much easier to take care of just what's in front of us, and to take care of just what comes next, and to see things more clearly in a bigger, wider sense.

[04:57]

And our life becomes more dedicated to taking care of the human situation. In other words, we become more compassionate toward others, and that compassion allows us to help other people, to work with other people, and help them to cross over, so to speak, as we say in the Heart Sutra, to cross over into the world of reality.

[06:04]

You can tell a more mature student by the less they dwell on personal problems and the more they're able to help the situation that they're in and help other people and respond to things. So it's necessary for us to get rid of our self-obsessions. But it's not something that we can do easily or quickly. It takes years of practice to develop true personality.

[07:16]

True personality isn't something that we develop like we make something. But by taking off the hindrances, our true personality emerges. So our practice is not involved in building up something so much as it is in allowing us to dismantle our coverings. So you can... tell a mature student who is usually alert and friendly and willing to do something right away without hesitating because they have a certain kind of freedom.

[08:19]

And it's this kind of freedom comes from being able to live completely within, to focus completely on the situation that presents itself at the moment without holding on to something from the previous situation. You know, our life is like sometimes likened to a movie and each A movie looks continuous. Our life looks continuous in a movie. The story looks continuous. But when you stop the movie, you can see that it's made up of little frames. A whole series of little frames, and each frame has its own action, has its own picture. And when you take the movie up to speed,

[09:26]

take all these little frames up to speed, then we have a continuous movement, continuous moving. And our life is, we think of in terms of the continuous moving. But when we practice, start to practice Zen, Zazen, we see, we slow our life down in some way to where we can see the frames, the separate frames. And each moment is a different frame. And to be able to live in that moment, just as that moment, without the past and without the future, but for that moment's activity to have its own past and its own future, is a kind of living in stillness, activity in stillness.

[10:36]

So, we have both of these features in our life. The activity, continuous activity of the movie and the complete stillness of each frame. each moment's time frame. Of course, the moments are very minute, and you can't stop and say, here's this moment. The Diamond Sutra says, past mind, future mind, and present mind cannot be grasped. So what mind do we live with? So a Zen student should be able to, through practice, not to grasp present mind, but to be able to live within present mind. To be able to live a life within present mind from moment to moment is only possible

[11:52]

when we have our true personality, when we don't have... when we can... when we're not bound by desire, not bound by self-interest, and not bound by the past or the future, It doesn't mean that we don't have any of those things, but we're not bound by them. In Buddhism, we talk about desire as being a cause of suffering. The first noble truth of Buddha says we're subject to suffering. Suffering is common to everything. And the cause of suffering is desire.

[12:55]

But by desire, we don't mean that when you're hungry, you eat, or when you have to go to the bathroom, you go to the bathroom. When you have to sleep, you sleep. Those desires are natural desires. But when we have to eat and we find something in front of us to eat, we don't wish we had something else to eat. If you are eating a potato salad, you may wish that you had a steak to go with it. And then when you get the steak, you wish you had a lobster. And then when you get the lobster, you wish you had roast beef or something. So to keep, it's natural to have desire, but the desire that leads to suffering is this kind of desire which always wants something unobtainable or something which when it is obtainable isn't satisfactory.

[14:13]

It's not enough. So desire is a distorting element, which when it's carried to an extreme, which is not very difficult, gives us a distorted picture of life. And so our life becomes a fantasy world instead of a real world. And so when we're carried away by desire, which doesn't take very long in our life before that happens, we find ourselves living in a fantasy world. And when we study Buddhism, we come down, we put a pin in the fantasy world and come down to essential, what we call essential life. A life where

[15:18]

which takes place in the present and not in the fantasy of our mind. So when desire is brought, when the bubble of desire is punctured, then personal problems also become less and less and less. And since we're no longer worried about ourself through wrong desire, we can plainly see the situation that presents itself to us.

[16:22]

And as Dogen Zenji says, we become confirmed by everything we meet. I want to read a koan from the Mumon-Kan. This Mumon-Kan koan is number seven, and it's a very famous koan, where Joshu says, wash your bowls. I'm pretty sure most people have heard of this koan. Joshu says, wash your bowls. And Joshu was a very famous maybe one of the most famous, well-known Zen masters, and very simple person. And he started studying with Zen master Nansen when he was quite young, and studied with him for 40 years.

[17:36]

He stayed with his teacher for 40 years. And then when he was 60, around 60, went on pilgrimage for 20 years visiting various teachers in various parts of China and he said when he went on pilgrimage he said his attitude was if I if there's a little girl of seven years old who can teach me something then she'll be my teacher and if there's an old man of a hundred who doesn't know something, then I can be his teacher." So he put himself in a very balanced position, unassuming position. The thing about Joshu was that he's completely free. That's why he's such a good example of a Zen master.

[18:38]

He knows a lot because he doesn't know anything. So, after he was from 60 to 80, he went on pilgrimage, and from 80 to 120, he taught. So he didn't start teaching until he was 80 years old, and he lived to be 120. So once a monk made a request of Joshu, And the monk said, I have just entered the monastery. Will you please give me instruction, master? That's a very sweet monk. Will you please give me instruction? Very good. And Joshu said, have you had your breakfast?

[19:46]

He said, yes, I have. And Joshi said, well, please wash your bowls. Go wash your bowls. And the monk had an insight at that point. He had some realization. Have you had your breakfast? Well, yes, I have. Then go wash your bowls. This is a very famous story. And then Muban's commentary goes like this. He says, Joshua opened his mouth and showed his gallbladder and revealed his heart and liver. If this monk, hearing it, failed to grasp the truth, he would mistake a bell for a pot. So Muban's

[20:49]

saying that Joshu is very direct, and everything was hanging out from the inside for the monk to see. And so, how could he fail to see? If he didn't fail to see, he would mistake a bell for a pot. And then Mumon has a poem. He says, because it is so very clear, it takes longer to come to the realization. If you know it once, candlelight is fire. The meal has long been cooked. This is Chinese poetry. Because it is so very clear, it takes longer to come to the realization. Joshu spoke the most profound teaching in the very plainest words.

[21:54]

That was his characteristic. Just using plain words in an everyday situation, he's revealed the great teaching. But because it's so plain, it's easy to miss what he's saying. Very easy to miss it. So, Muhammad says, because it is so very clear, it takes longer to come to the realization if you know at once that candlelight is fire. Candlelight is fire means something like the fire is the light itself. Joshu's words are not indicating something else, but they themselves are the fire.

[23:01]

They're the real thing. Don't look beyond it. Don't try to think up some special meaning in Joshu's words. Don't try to intellectualize Joshu's words. What he says is what he means. Very simple. very plain. The whole meaning of the Buddhadharma is in Josh's very plain words. Don't get caught by your mind. If you know at once candlelight is fire, the meal has long been cooked. In our practice, you know, when we eat in the zendo, we have our orioke bowls.

[24:11]

And eating, of course, we do sitting in the same way that we sit zazen. And our attention, our mind, body and mind, should be in the same samadhi as when we sit zazen. Sometimes people feel that, well, this is eating. It's sitting cross-legged, zazen is zazen, but this is eating. And so we can look around, you know, and we can let our mind wander, and it doesn't make so much difference. You see, eating and zazen is two different things. But eating, with oryoki, is the same expression as sitting zazen.

[25:19]

It means that our bowl has to be empty. This empty bowl is on several different levels, actually. Have you had your breakfast? Is Joshu's way of asking the monk, what's your understanding? Have you had some realization? This monk is kind of naive and he says, yes, I ate my breakfast, which should mean, yes, I have some realization. So she says, wash your bowls. Don't carry your realization over into this moment.

[26:22]

Now in the usual kind of life, we accumulate knowledge and we carry our knowledge. Knowledge is a kind of additive process and we keep adding to our knowledge. And the more we know, the higher our status, and the more information we have, and the more things we know about, the higher position we have in the world. But in Buddha Dharma, What we do is empty our mind, keep our mind always clean and clear, so that whatever understanding we have, we don't carry it over into the next moment.

[27:37]

In other words, the movie goes on, but the pictures are clear. pictures are clearly each frame or each moment is its own complete picture. So we have a kind of discontinuousness. We recognize the discontinuousness of time as well as the continuousness. And it's not that we don't have memory. And it's not that we don't have additive knowledge, but if we only have memory and additive knowledge, then we miss the clarity of each moment's reality as it is.

[28:41]

So when we sit in Zazen, we just let the movie go. We let go of the movie and just pay attention to, bear attention to this moment's reality. Then there's no problem, except the problem of this moment. We always have to deal with some problem, but what we deal with is the problem of this moment, not the problem of the next moment or the problem of the last moment, but just the problem of this moment. And if you do that from moment to moment, then your mind becomes very clear, very clear and very clean. And when something comes up, you can respond to it.

[29:50]

immediately from clarity. And when you eat oryoki in zendo, your mind has the same samadhi, the same clarity. And it's always a very joyful experience to eat the very plainest food in the zendo. When you have experience of eating over and over again, with bo-yoki in the zendo, the very plain food and eating, active eating, takes on a tremendous significance. I remember at Tassajara, in the summertime, during the guest season, when the students would eat orioke meals in the zendo,

[31:04]

And the cooks would be serving the guests very sumptuous vegetarian meals, very famous sumptuous vegetarian meals. And the students would sometimes feel, I'd like to eat some of those meals too. But when they'd go to eat the meal, sometimes they'd say, well, go ahead and eat the meal with the guests. And when we'd go to eat the meal with the guests, something was missing. There was the food, it was very sumptuous, but everybody was talking. for one thing, not paying attention to the food at all, but their mind was like a big cloud over the table. And you'd eat the food and it would taste okay. There was some special quality to it, but it wasn't the special quality of concentrated eating. And you come to realize that it's not the food that makes a difference, it's your attitude toward what you do that makes a difference.

[32:06]

So, instead of trying to get the satisfaction from someplace outside, or from objects outside, or from some desire we have, our satisfaction comes from our attitude toward what we do. It's got to come from there. Moment by moment, it's concentration on each simple act. Living your life, as Suzuki Roshi used to say, living your life moment by moment. Not preferring something special in the moment, but whatever that moment presents, that's what we deal with. It's called non-preference, non-attachment. We always use the negative terms, you know. Negative terms is necessary because if you use positive terms, then you start to create something.

[33:25]

You start to immortalize something in the cement of words. So we always use negative terms to describe Buddhism. No eyes, no ears, no nose. The Heart Sutra is full of negative terms. But those negative terms also have a positive aspect. We're talking about the positive and negative terms. Because what is positive is Always changing. So by speaking about it in negative terms, we can allow it to change. So whatever we have, whatever we've eaten, whatever we've eaten in our mind,

[34:37]

not just food, you know, not just tomatoes and potatoes, but whatever kind of knowledge we've eaten, or whatever kind of desire we've eaten, we have to always keep our bowl clean from moment to moment. So Buddhist practice, from moment to moment, to wash your bowl, We say that the orioke bowl is Buddha's head. We call it Buddha's head. And so we take very careful good care of it, you know, and always keep it very clean and empty. When there's food in the bowl, you eat the food. Whatever goes into the bowl, you eat the food. And you eat it all. And then you wash the bowl very carefully.

[35:42]

And the next meal you eat is in a clean bowl. So our practice is always to keep our bowl clean. It doesn't mean the dust wiping school exactly. In a sense it does, yes. So it means to be able to exist moment to moment in a very fresh way. When we first come to practice, we have a beginner's mind because there's no other way. we ask like the monk, you know, please instruct me. But after a while we think that we know a lot about our practice and it seems routine to us and we feel that we don't have to ask any more questions or we feel that we know something.

[36:57]

But the most advanced student is the one that can ask very naive questions and doesn't presume to know anything. And without any presumptuousness, just takes on the most mundane tasks, one after the other, without worrying about anything. You know, one of the biggest problems that we have in our lives is that we're not doing the right thing or not getting the right stuff for us, the thing that we deserve or that would make us the happiest. We're always bothered by that problem. You know, even old Zen students are bothered by that problem. I'm not getting enough. If that's your question, you always should realize that you're not putting out enough.

[38:09]

What you lack is what you lack because of what you're not doing. In your situation, it's very easy to fill your life completely at any moment. It's quite easy to fill your life completely satisfyingly in any moment. All you have to do is throw everything away and plunge into what's in front of you. But when we hesitate and we draw back and we start thinking and worrying, Then we're one step removed, two steps removed, three steps removed, and pretty soon our whole life takes place up here.

[39:12]

And we need to do something like go on the roller coaster in order to wake up, in order to feel that we're alive. We had to do something very extreme to feel alive. So it's important for us to know what to do next. The problem of our life is, what do I do next? We all have this problem. And if you have a lot of things to do, our lives are very, very complex. And the more information we have, and the more we're tuned in to the world, the more possibilities we have.

[40:27]

And so we start living not one life, but three or four lives, or five lives. And some people can do it pretty well. Some people can live five lives pretty well, up to a point. But to live one life well, you know, takes a lot of restraint. Take some discipline and restraint and a certain amount of contentment. You know, I don't have to do this. I don't have to do that. I don't have to do all those things out there that are demanding that I have to do them. I can do very simple things, and I can respond to people around me.

[41:37]

You know, we all have this education that says we're supposed to fulfill ourself, our ego, through our ego life. It's like everybody's lined up at the starting line and somebody's saying, on your mark, get set, go. Bang. And we're all running this race to see who can get the farthest ahead in our lives. But we don't have to run that race. When we stop running that race, that competitive race that's programmed into us, we can settle down into our life. Of course, competition is okay.

[42:45]

Having things is okay. But the main thing, you know, is how we find our freedom. If we have to run that race, well, maybe we can find our freedom within that race. So you're very fortunate if you can do it. But the point is, how can we be completely fulfilled, filled full of life, and at the same time be completely free? Have perfect freedom. So that's why we practice. But not just freedom for ourselves, you know. How can we live a life that frees other people as well? How can our freedom free others as well? So these are kind of two sides.

[43:52]

So what we do, is instead of worrying about ourself, instead of worrying about other people, we just practice the practice. And the practice takes care of ourself and it takes care of other people. This is a very important point. If you can, the practice means, what I mean by the practice is when you can stop worrying about your own self. That only comes about through the practice, by paying attention to practice. You shift your attention from your own self-worry to your bigger self. Instead of worrying about this little self, you're shifting your attention to your bigger self, which includes everything.

[45:04]

So that you can take up anything at any moment. You're not worried. Whatever is in front of you, you can take up because that's yourself. When you know yourself, whatever is in front of you is yourself. So when you can do that, you don't have to worry so much about yourself. That's called putting attention onto Dharma. We were talking the other night about overwhelming activities.

[46:23]

You know, everybody feels overwhelmed by activities, by stuff, by everything that enters into our life and demands our attention. And the competition between all of the elements that are asking for attention, demanding our attention. If we Well, one thing we have to do is to limit ourself to what we can take care of. But even if you limit yourself to what you can take care of, it's not enough, because when you direct your attention here, stuff is coming up from behind. And you turn around, and there it all is. Even though you limit your life, there's still a lot of stuff, and it just comes up. It's like, I was describing it like you dig a hole in the sand, but it just keeps pouring in.

[47:32]

The sand just keeps pouring in. So how do you keep the sand from pouring in so you can have your hole? One way to do it is to form it up and pour concrete. you know, like down at the beach. And that's like making a big wall around yourself. But how can you have your space without making a wall around yourself? In some sense, you have to make some kind of a wall, something to keep the sand back. But you also have to be able to walk through the sand like a I remember when I was a little kid down at the beach, all these horny toads, you know, that they would just burrow and walk through the sand. They could do it pretty well, just dealing with things as they came along, one by one. How do we stop the world so that we can put our attention on something without worrying about all the other things?

[48:43]

How do you stop doing one thing in order to do another thing? If you're busy, say, typing or writing or cooking, and someone comes in and says something and wants your attention, what do you do? How do you respond to that? Something is always interrupting path. Something's always stepping in front of our path. How do we take care of that? How do we keep from being bothered? So if we get bothered, you know, that means that we don't have much freedom.

[49:47]

The more we're bothered, the less freedom we have. So someone who is always flying into a rage or always feels put upon or always feels that their load is very heavy and is always complaining, you know, is caught somehow. But we blame it on the stuff around us. We say, oh, all these things are on me. But we don't see that it all comes from our own attitude about things. It's really hard to see that, because we always see it from the point of view of ourself. Things are coming at me. Things are burdened on me. Very hard. to actually find our freedom and let go of ourself and respond to things.

[51:02]

Until we get to the point where whatever happens is no problem, we're bound by ourself. You know, in the famous dialogue between Taiso Eka and Bodhidharma, Taiso Eka says, I have no freedom in my mind. My mind is bound. And Bodhidharma says, who binds your mind? Who keeps you bound? And show me this mind that's bound. And Eka says, I can't present it.

[52:04]

I can't find this mind that's bound. How can I present it to you? And Bodhidharma says, you're already free. Rinzai, Zen Master Rinzai, always talks about the man of freedom who has absolutely nothing to do. So just be, never mind learning or anything, just, all you have to do is have nothing to do. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do something. I don't want to explain it, I just want to say that much.

[53:06]

Just from moment to moment, keep a clean bowl. How much can you respond to? That should be a great challenge. How much can you respond to? How can you let go of this and respond to this? And how can you let go of this and respond to this? In our busy life, we have to let go of things and respond to things, one after the other, moment by moment. A reluctance to let go is attachment that causes suffering. So the point is how to have real freedom and to allow others to have real freedom.

[54:32]

It's getting a little late, so we won't have any questions. Thank you.

[54:48]

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