I just want to say that you may notice that I'm not prostrating myself when I bow. I didn't hear you. No? No? No? That's because I spoke louder. Well, you may have noticed that I'm not prostrating myself when I bow. I bump my knee, and so when it goes down, it says, ouch. But actually, the real reason is because when I'm wearing my new robe, and I bow, it falls off. So anyway, I have to learn to do both things. I have to learn how to wear my new robe. But I must say, I never baby myself when it comes to knees or pain or something like that.

[01:22]

I never... You can't hear me. Could she turn up the volume? Well, she's trying. Oh, okay. Done. Turns hard. That's it? Okay. So... If I bump something or hurt something, I just forget about it. And then I just go on and it always works. It always heals itself. My body always heals itself. I've been doing this for 48 years. And I've gone through everything, all the experiences that everybody has with their body during that time. My practice is to just let it go, to do to when something happens to just let it go and somehow it just disappears. It's funny how we create our own difficulties by harboring our difficulties and being self-pitying

[02:38]

and self-worrying, which brings me to my subject, which is, you know, we have, Shizuki Hiroshi had this term that he used, no gaining mind. And I think a lot of people misunderstand what no gaining mind means. There are several phrases that he used. Of course, shikantaza is our practice. Beginner's mind is our practice. No gaining mind is our practice. These are three main subjects that Sugiroshi emphasized. basically mean the same thing, but the same thing from different points of view.

[03:44]

People think often, well, no gaining mind means that I shouldn't ask for a raise, you know, on my job, or if I eat an ice cream cone, you know, maybe that's gaining mind. There's a difference between greed and gaining mind. There's greedy mind and gaining mind. Greedy mind is not exactly the same as gaining mind. Because gaining mind refers to... It does refer to ego, of course. It refers to getting something for doing something. If I do something, I want to get something. That's our usual way of thinking. And that's... I don't know. Samsaric mind, I would call it. No gaining mind is nirvana mind. Nirvana mind is things as it is, just everything as it is.

[04:54]

But it's very hard to be satisfied with everything as it is, with the way this moment is right now, without adding anything to it. So gaining mind is the mind that wants to keep adding to ourself so that we have more of a sense of ourself. No gaining mind is the mind that is big mind. Big mind which is totally expansive. And expansive mind is boring. So we want to narrow our perspective so that we can focus on something. And then we want to continue adding to it, which is normal and natural and is not bad. It's not bad. It's simply limited.

[05:55]

Our gaining mind simply limits what we think is adding to us actually is limiting us. So this is called topsy-turvy mind. In the Heart Sutra it's called perverted mind. The word perversion is probably not accurate. The actual translation is more like topsy-turvy, upside down. The more we collect, the more captured we are by our ego. Captivated by our ego. So we become slaves of ourselves. And then we become easily prey to advertising. Advertising, not simply, you know, what you see on TV in between plays in a football game. Everything is advertising itself. Advertising all over the place just because

[07:02]

This is the world where everything eats everything else. We become food for something and something becomes food for us. Everything is eating everything else. It's impossible to be a vegetarian. Because all the animals that are in the air are constantly flowing into us. We don't even know it. A lot of our food just comes from the air, from the atmosphere. Anyway. So, no gaining mind. This is the meaning of shikantaza. Shikantaza is a term Dogen used, which means just doing for its own sake. You just do something. and you're totally involved in doing something without thinking about the results or the future.

[08:08]

We do have to think about results, of course, in our samsaric life. But pure activity is to just do something, just doing. And this word, just, is the most important word in practice. That's the most important term in our practice, is just this, just doing. Because we're so used to past, present, and future, we think that the moments are passing by, and then we become addicted to time, the flow of time. the flow of time, and then time controls us. We come under the spell of time and we create it.

[09:13]

So, when I was practicing with Suzuki Roshi, he would watch the windows You would say, just wash the windows. We don't wash the windows because they're dirty. There are two things that are happening when we do something. One is we do something for a purpose, and then the other side is we just do something. You know, when we wash the dishes, people put dishes in their dishwasher, but when you're washing them by hand, you want to wash them to get them clean, and then That's the purpose of washing dishes. The other side is, when you wash the dishes, there's just washing the dish. That's all. So you can enjoy washing dishes.

[10:17]

I think most of us enjoy washing dishes. Some people don't. But the joy of washing dishes is not that you're completing something, but that simply your whole body and mind is involved in doing one thing. without the idea of a result. And so you have this perfect freedom from time. You're not becoming a slave of time. You're not becoming a slave of continuity. Just having total freedom. And when you wash the window, of course you want to get it cleaned. I mean, that's samsara. Nirvana, actually. You're washing the dishes in nirvana. Because you have total freedom. Total freedom from result. There's no result. The result is in the action itself.

[11:19]

So each step, the road to nirvana, ends here. There's a tendency to think that nirvana is just great, you know. release, which it is. But it's actualized in every step. This is called beginner's mind also. Beginner's mind is that every moment is a new beginning. So that's our practice. Every moment is a new beginning. Even though there is continuity. So some people call this mindfulness. There is an aspect of mindfulness, which is to remember what it is that you're doing. So it's like finding ourselves in each moment and making each moment count.

[12:23]

Counting is a form of time, but counting is a sense of The value of each moment is in its virtue, which means when we simply let go of self-centeredness, then, as my teacher used to say, the big mind takes over. We let go of our small mind of accomplishments and allow the big mind to inform us. And when we have the faith, the big mind, and let go, then we know what to do, without much worry. But so much of our world, you know, everything will fall apart if I do that. Because we've constructed our lives in such a way, often, that if we take the pin out, it all falls apart.

[13:31]

So before you construct it, if you become ordained as a priest, you start a new life. You begin your life from that point, and your old life, you're not creating the same life as your old life, even though your karma, the results of your karma continue until they fade out, until there's nothing to supply them anymore, to supply your karma debt. But we can do that anytime. As a matter of fact, we should do it all the time, because this practice is letting go. moment by moment, not on Sunday or once a year or something, but letting go moment by moment.

[14:41]

That's how we practice. I mean, that's ultimately, ideally, that's our practice. So, Beginner's Mind means starting over on each moment, taking it, this step, stepping into a new world. So that you're not burdened by the past. You're not burdened by the karma of the past. It's very difficult. This is why practice is difficult. Not because of the pain in your legs. But, you know, if you take care of existing moment by moment, that takes care of the pain in your legs. If you make a continuity, oh now it's getting worse and now blah blah blah, then that's just self-indulgence.

[15:45]

If you simply live on each moment in Zazen, letting go of past and future, you can just simply enjoy your life. moment by moment. It's complex. And there's no rules, but it's an attitude toward our life. Even though we have rules, rules help us to orient ourselves. But after a while, external. And when we let go of self-centeredness, then the internals will take over. So practice is kind of like reform school.

[16:53]

When I was a kid we used to call it reform school. Now they call it something else. The name keeps changing according to the levels of incarceration. So, how do we reform, allow ourselves to be reformed? We don't reform ourselves. We allow ourselves to be re-formed. In other words, formed in the image of, not in our own, egocentric image, but how do we... There are no rules for this. This is why practice is something that we do every day, because it's our life. Practice is not something extra.

[17:56]

It's our life. And when we are able to do this Tun Zazen every day, then it reforms our life without us trying to do anything special. We let the practice do the work without trying to gain something. As soon as we try to gain something from practice, we lose it. It just makes it harder. As soon as we expect something, it just makes it harder. So practice is easy. It's the most difficult thing and the easiest thing at the same time. It's the most difficult thing because it's hard to let go, and it's the easiest thing because all you have to do is let go. So of course the hardest thing is the easiest thing, and the easiest thing is the hardest thing. I'm fortunate, but it's also fortunate because it gives us something real to do.

[19:06]

It gives us a path to reality instead of a path to dead ends. So, Suzuki Ueshiba used to say, moment by moment we're falling out of balance. Everything is falling out of balance and regaining its balance. So if you think about that, every moment, every movement is falling out of balance and regaining our balance. Everything is doing that. And so we're living in an unstable world. It's like, you know, an exaggeration of that is like, I don't know if you've ever been to what we used to call the fun house. I don't know if they have fun houses anymore, but in the fun house there's always this, you'd walk into this room and the floor was going like this, you know, and you'd try to negotiate your way, you know, through the room and the floor was going, undulating like crazy, you know, and everybody's like, ha [...] ha, you know what I'm saying?

[20:27]

But that's just an exaggeration of what's really happening. Don't forget the mirrors in the front. Yeah, the mirrors in the front. I mean, you're long, you're tall, you're short, you're fat. So this is an exaggeration. I mean, this is it. You know, it's always everything is falling out of bound. One day the Republicans are in office and they say that Democrats are novice and everything, all the gains of the past get slashed. You think everything is going to be fine and then, you know, it all smashes up. So how do you maintain your equanimity and your balance in this undulating world? Samsara actually means undulation. The undulating world.

[21:27]

Really? That's what it means? Well, it means various things. When I say that's what it means, it means that's what it means at this moment. I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it does make a lot of sense. But I'm pretty sure that's somewhat literal. But there are other literal meanings as well. So it's the undulating world. You can't stay still, right? And so how do we find our balance or our gyroscope? Scope means view, right? To scope something out. And gyro is... How do you stay still in... How do you find a level? You maintain your level when everything is going like this.

[22:29]

So this is the falling out of balance, and this is maintaining the level that is not subject to disruption. So this is the core of our practice, how to find that level that's not subject to de-undulation, but undulates with everything. without losing itself. So there's the idea of transcendence. In a way, you can say that Zazen or Zen practice is transcendental. But it's not transcendental in the sense of rising above. It's transcendental in maintaining not maintaining the equanimity within the undulation, without escaping, without going to some other realm, but finding release or nirvana within the undulation.

[23:59]

How do we find our total freedom within our situation, every situation. Just doing. Beginner's mind is starting fresh on each moment. And no gaining mind is just being present without trying to accomplish something for our ego.

[25:03]

There is accomplishment. It doesn't mean there's no accomplishment. It doesn't mean there's no path. Or we used to also use the term, no goal. But no goal doesn't mean there's no path. Or that there's not a way to go. There's always a way to go. Matter of fact, when we let go, there's always a way to go. It's interesting. When we let go, something always opens up. This is why we say, don't know mind. Not knowing is the highest. Because not knowing means that our mind is clear. And that we always have an opportunity. There's always an opportunity. Always an opportunity. I'm confronted with something.

[26:10]

It's a big question. And I say, I don't know the answer. I don't know. Something appears. Why does it appear? It appears because I'm allowing something bigger than my thinking mind to come up and inform me. That always works. So, this leads me into thinking about our teacher-student relationship. How a teacher deals with students, relates to students. Various teachers have various ways of relating students. When I think about the way I relate to students, it's mostly with great patience. Patience actually is my practice.

[27:17]

Because I don't feel that I'm doing something. This is just natural. It's not something I contrived. But it's just natural for everyone to find their own way. Every student, no matter what we're studying together or doing together, each one is finding their own way. And as the teacher, I'm simply... I don't know if I'm helping. But I'm encouraging everyone to find their own way. not to find my way, or to copy me, or something, but each person has to find their own authentic, authenticity, their own authority, each one to find their own authentic way, that is, their own true way.

[28:24]

But when you find your own true way, you find that our way is exactly the same. So we have to discover that Discover means to uncover, take the disc off, to allow our own way to manifest by taking off the coverings. So everybody comes with their coverings. We all come to practice with our coverings. And it doesn't take very long for all the senior students and the teachers and so forth to realize everyone's coverings. And so, you can't just take off your coverings. Through practice, through the practice itself, you become transformed.

[29:32]

Then the coverings drop away. Little by little. For some people, they'll never drop away. For other people, it takes a long time to drop away. For other people, not so long. For other people, right away. And some people come with very few coverings. Some people come with lots of coverings. Coverings mean covering myself. I'm not going to let myself pop out there because I don't want to get hit. So we have a lot of self-protections and our self-protections often are demonstrated through anger, fear, resentments, jealousy, all those unwholesome dharmas. But, you know, our practice is a little different than some other practices which kind of analyze all that's on us.

[30:54]

In a sense, in our practice we don't try to change anybody. The way you are, What you have, who you are, is accepted as you are. But little by little you come to see how you create your own suffering through the problems that you have with each other. It would be nice to see some people change. Not to change anybody. To just accept each other as we are. And to encourage those aspects of our personality that are positive. So my practice with students basically is when people are angry, to not let myself react to get angry.

[32:07]

When people are resentful, to not allow myself to get caught by resentment. When people are bossy, to not let myself get caught by reacting to that bossiness. Even though I do. As human beings, we do. But, even though we do, we know that's what we're doing. That's the main point. Because anger comes up. Everything comes up for us. Unasked. Unasked. Stupidity comes up. Unasked. You see somebody and you say, oh, isn't he beautiful, blah, blah, blah. And then we say, well, so is this one. And so is that one. It's really interesting. We fall in love easily, some people. And then you have to realize, well, everyone's beautiful.

[33:10]

Why don't we? Why not? Everyone's beautiful. When we look at people, when I look at people, I see the beauty in everybody. And so it's easy for me to fall in love with, you know. But then I realized, this is just my idea, you know. There's something there that recognizes its beauty. everyone, because I don't know why, but I do. So how to realize this is just my mind creating something. If I let desire come up along with that, then I realize that my mind is creating a problem. So to allow everyone to be beautiful, no matter who it is, I just see that.

[34:15]

But there's something deeper than what comes up as my desire. So to let that person be beautiful without me taking something from it, or becoming attached to it, desiring it, because that does come up. So I think this comes up with psychiatrists and therapists all the time, and with teachers and students. How to actually not back off, but to open up to that without being caught by it. So then everyone becomes encouraged. and recognized and seen without fear or without attachment.

[35:22]

Teacher is emotional. Teacher creates mental formations. And all of these... Because if... The teacher was simply cold and not being able to relate. He couldn't relate to the way everyone feels and thinks. So you have to be able to relate to the way everyone feels and thinks and actually experience that in some way. And at the same time, have distance so that you can actually help people. But helping people is not like telling them what to do. Sometimes we suggest you do this or that, but if the teacher is solving everyone's problems, then it's not teaching.

[36:49]

So the teacher has to allow everyone to make their own mistakes and to find their own way through hard knocks or whatever it takes. And at the same time, keep encouraging. So the way I see a teacher is in the middle, just going around and around, and with vision all the way around. And the way I first thought about this practice when we started was that people would just come through, and learn something about the practice, and go on. That was my original thought. People come, and however, you know, what their relationships were, with me and the Sangha, and the Dharma, and then pass through, and lots of people pass through. That's why when we give Zazen instruction every Saturday morning, sometimes people say, no, very few people ever come back.

[37:57]

That's fine. To me, that's fine. It's not a problem. Because people touch the Dharma, even though they know they're touching it or not. They get something, and they may forget about it. It doesn't mean anything. Or some people need something. Some people are ready to practice, and other people are not. So, lots and lots of people give us instructions. Some people come back. Some people don't. Most of them don't. But that's fine. Something is touched. And that's for me, but the way our practice turned out is lots of people stayed around. And continued to practice. Maybe continued to practice too long, I don't know. But my attitude is still the same, without being attached to any student, to anybody, to just let the Dharma flow. So, that way people feel you can come and go, you can do, you know, it's your practice.

[39:07]

You design your practice according to your abilities. And some people are very earnest about practice, and that's perfectly casual. But we pay more attention to the people that are in earnest. But, not really. Not really. Everyone should be treated exactly the same way, with respect, even if they don't deserve respect. Respect something. We respect everyone's nirvana mind. I think that the role of the teacher is to see the true person underneath or within the ego person. That way, people know what they're looking for.

[40:12]

If we react to the ego person, if a teacher reacts to the ego person, it's all over. So we always have to respond to their buddhanature. No matter how they're kicking and screaming and tossing punches at you, you can't let that be a factor. It's a little factor. People often complain about how the teacher does this and that without ever realizing, well, do I hurt the teacher? Suzuki Roshi pointed out some guidelines for teachers. And he was talking about how a teacher points out the student's mistake.

[41:20]

He talked about the precepts, actually. But he's saying how a teacher points out the student's mistake make a mistake. If a teacher thinks that what a student did is a mistake, he's not a true teacher. That was a very interesting statement. Because there are no mistakes, even though there are mistakes. So how do you deal with someone's mistakes, even though they're not mistakes? How do you deal with a mistake when it's when it is a mistake, but actually the truth of it is that it's not a mistake. So the attitude, that brings up your attitude. What kind of attitude do you have toward somebody's mistake? It may be a mistake, but on the other hand, it's an expression of the student's true nature.

[42:34]

When we understand this, we have respect for our students true nature and we will be careful how we point out mistakes. And I have to say that I'm guilty of pointing out students mistakes at the wrong time. That makes them into mistakes. And also when you point out a mistake to somebody, that pushes them back into a corner because they either have to defend themselves or swallow it. So when someone is pushed back, they strike out. So it's very important never to push someone into a corner unless you have a student who's a really good student who knows who you can do anything you want with, then pushing it into a corner is good.

[43:42]

Because that helps them. But you can't do that with everybody. So there's no rule. You can't do that with everybody. The student you're really giving a hard time to is a good student. Is that good student somebody who's What do you do with it when you swallow it? Okay, I was interpreting swallowing it as being some kind of thing where I'm wrong, I've done, yeah, it's my fault. Thank you, teacher, for telling me how I've been wrong. Kind of a very self-effacing. Well, it's like when you swallow the hot iron ball, what do you do with it? It's like you're in the fifth day of Sashin, or the third day of Sashin, And you can't leave. It hurts so much, you can't leave and you can't stay. What are you going to do?

[44:48]

So it gives a student a kind of koan. A koan. But you can't do that with every student. You can only give it to a student who you feel will let it explode. will be able to help the student. But it wouldn't help everybody. And so he says in the scriptures, I'm going to go into the Apocrypha a few more minutes. In the scriptures, five points are made about how to be careful. One is that the teacher has to choose the opportunity and not point out the student's mistake in front of many people. That's good. If possible, the teacher points out the mistake personally in an appropriate time and place. That's why we always ask the student to come and ask the teacher, how was it? Instead of the teacher going to the student and saying, this is how it was.

[45:50]

You understand? It puts the responsibility on the student to find out something. Because the teacher doesn't want to go around criticizing everybody. I pointed out, if I made a remark about everybody's mistakes, I'd be run out of town. So it's up to the student to come and say, how am I doing? How is this? How is that? And then the teacher has an opportunity, give the teacher an opportunity to help you, point things out to you. So secondly, a teacher is reminded to be truthful, which means the teacher does not point out his disciple's mistake just because he thinks it's a mistake. That's tricky. When the teacher understands why the disciple did so, then he can be truthful. So it's important to know why somebody does something, and not just react to the surface.

[46:56]

Always go beneath the surface to what is the real cause of something. The third reminder is for the teacher to be gentle and calm and speak in a low voice rather than shouting. This is something very delicate like truthfulness, but here the scripture puts emphasis on having a calm, gentle attitude when talking about someone's mistake. The fourth one is that the teacher gives advice or points out the disciple's mistake solely for the sake of helping him and not just to do this to get something off his chest. Here the teacher is very careful noticing when the student is making some excuse for what he did, which happens all the time, or when the student is not serious enough. Then the teacher should ignore that person until she becomes more serious.

[48:05]

Even though we give advice only for the sake of helping the student, still, Sometimes we should be very tough with a student, but we cannot help in a true sense. So there's no rule. There's just response. Not reaction, but response. You've got to be very careful not to react to a student, but to give the right correct response. Response is not reaction. Response comes from a deeper place. The reaction comes from the surface. It's like... I always like to... Similarly, when you shake the stick at a dog, the dog will go for the stick. And then you can lead the dog anywhere you want with the stick. So the last point is to point out the student's mistake with compassion, which means that the teacher is not just the teacher, but also the disciple's friend.

[49:22]

As a friend, the teacher points out some problem or gives some advice. This is different than the therapist. Because the therapist is not the friend of the patient. They don't intermix. There's no... it's just... When the patient sees the therapist on the street, you may say hello, but you don't stop to chat. It's not that kind of relationship. But with a teacher and student, it has both those aspects, which makes it far more complex. And it becomes a different kind of relationship. And how to keep those two separate is not separate but distinguished. It's important.

[50:24]

Because if the teacher becomes too much of a friend, then it's hard to be straight. You have some other kind of relationship that's diluting the teacher-student relationship. So the teacher is a student's friend, but only on a certain level. I can't explain that. So he said, it's not easy to be a teacher or to be a student. And we cannot rely on anything, even the precepts. We have to make our utmost effort to help each other. on true nature, which I call the confluence of wisdom and compassion.

[51:24]

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