Well, we have a nice spring day today. And next week, we begin our spring practice period. Six week, maybe seven week practice. Oh, sorry. That better? Oh, it's got to be better over here. Is that better? Is that better? Yes, yes. That's better. Thank you. So next week we start our six or seven week practice period, and so I want to talk about our attitude and what we should concentrate on during practice period.

[01:06]

So I have a list which I usually go through just before practice period, and there are many points Whether you're sitting practice period or not, attending or not, these are very critical points for daily practice. I just want to say that it's important, if you sign up for the practice period, that you attend the opening sitting. This is when we install our shuso, or head student, and that's very important. And you might as well start at the beginning.

[02:06]

So I notice that although there are many people signed up for the practice period, not so many people are signed up for the opening sasheen. So please do that, unless you have a reason, not an excuse. There's a difference between a reason and an excuse. And if you look at our government, you'll see the difference. So if you do have a reason, please let us know what that is. So practice period standards. Practice period is like a renewal of our practice. Once a year, we start out with this renewal in the spring. And during the year, everything changes for us.

[03:09]

And by the end of the year, our practice may be rather scattered. So we bring it back together again once a year in the spring. When I do practice periods at Tassajara for three months, I used to do them, the beginning is very energetic, and then the middle kind of goes down like this. then so I have to say something to encourage everybody to renew their practice, to have an energetic ending. So our year goes like that, you know, our years we start out in the spring very enthusiastically and then there's so many elements in our life that that it's not easy to maintain a practice period, to maintain a certain level of practice for a period of time.

[04:11]

Very difficult. So we recognize that. So there are many factors that are important in order to do that. So realizing that we're setting a tone for our practice for the year. And so the important point is how we balance and integrate our Zazen practice with our daily life. Of course, this is going on all the time, but here we have to really pay attention. So I always encourage everyone to really look at how possible it is to extend your practice a little bit more or to tighten up your practice so that your Zazen practice is intentional, which means that you decide what days you're going to sit at the Zendo.

[05:27]

how much participation that is. Since each one of us has a unique circumstance in our life, the circumstances in our life are unique to each one of us, each one of us has to decide how we're going to participate in that sense. So to mark on your calendar Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as an example. or Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, as an example. Saturday's really a good day to come because it's a fuller time to practice. And then you balance that with all the events of your life, your family life, your work life, and so forth, so that you know how to balance and create a rhythm for practice. An important thing is how you create a rhythm or practice. If Zazen is just an arbitrary activity, like today I feel like going to the Zendo because I'm happy, or today I feel like going to the Zendo because I'm unhappy, those are arbitrary reasons.

[06:40]

This should not depend on your feelings in that sense. but on your intention. So what we call practice is intention. Whether I'm feeling good or bad, I just do what I intended. Then you have some real practice and you begin to see how our feelings are kind of captivating us and we become kind of directed by our feelings. I'm not saying that feelings are bad or wrong or that they don't direct us, but when we become captivated by our feelings, feelings are too fickle to lead us. We have to be, if we're led by our intention, then our feelings can fall into place in a correct way. So this is very critical.

[07:49]

Otherwise, it's really hard to maintain a practice. So I say, put it on your calendar. You mark down, these are the days that I sit at the Zen Dojo on your calendar. Then you have made a commitment. So commitment is really important. So the practice period is making a commitment. And then making a reasonable schedule and then honoring your commitment. And you may not be able to completely follow it, but to the best of your ability, you make that effort. So when you make the effort to do the practice period, you have to limit your activities somewhat. Limiting your activity so that you can actually do something.

[08:57]

You know, there's so many, as I said before, there's so many activities that are interesting and inviting us. And it's so easy to simply do something else. staying up late at night, or watching TV, going to the movies, or whatever, you know. So, to have some limitation is a good aspect of practice. Important. So, We divide our activity between Zendo practice, home practice, work practice. Those are three major categories. And so we carry our practice into our work, and we carry our practice into our home life, our family life.

[10:08]

So how do we practice? How do we make a continuous practice that includes zazen, family practice, work practice, and so forth. So there's no real gap between all those activities in our life. That's the hardest part. If you're in a monastery, everything's very clear. But when we have so many different activities that are not supported by your dharma friends, it's harder, much harder. So when we enter the zindo, everything's very clear. The atmosphere creates, the atmosphere of the zindo creates a feeling of practice.

[11:13]

I mean, you walk up to the gate, and there's the Zen Center, and then you walk in. Pretty soon, your mind starts leaving your activity outside the gate, and then you enter into the atmosphere of the Zen Do, and you bow, sit down, cross your legs, which are different activities that we usually do. So there's the atmosphere, and that's it, that's practice. But then when we leave, our practice becomes wider. And it's like when you have a confined space, like a closet, and you light a match, it lights up the whole closet. That's the Zen Do. But when you go out into the world in the daytime and light up a match, it doesn't make any difference. So how do you find that light in your daily life?

[12:16]

So there are various ways of doing that. And one is paying attention to your center, to your breath, to how you relate to everything around you, and how you treat people and how you treat things. So there are many ways to practice in the world. And that's really what we have to do because that's where you spend most of your time. So creating a harmonious family life and a harmonious workplace. We can't expect everybody to understand the Dharma, but if we practice the Dharma wholeheartedly, then our influence, we have some influence in the world.

[13:22]

and we shouldn't be discouraged because everyone isn't practicing dharma. So another aspect is helping others. You know, it's very difficult to help other people. We may want to do that, and sometimes we do, and sometimes it's helpful, but in a true sense, in a deep sense, how we actually help people is not so easy. But we can practice helping people. If you've been practicing here for a while and you see a new student, you should help the student. If you're in the zendo and everybody's getting ready for service and the new person's kind of looking around, you should help that person, give them a cushion. tacitly, silently, show them what to do. So they're not just kind of flailing around and wondering what all this is about.

[14:29]

So if you really extend yourself, that's really helpful. And then the person feels like they're part of things, even though they don't know what they're doing. But we should be careful not to correct people. I hear this a lot, that people are always going around correcting everybody, so we should be careful about that. There's a way to help people and there's a way to dominate, or always being right. We always want to be right and we want everybody, the more we want to be right, the more we want everybody else to be right. And the more we want to be right, the less we can tolerate other people not being right. So then we have the tendency to correct everybody. we should refrain from that.

[15:33]

I have to be very patient and let everybody make mistakes and fumble around without being too directive. That's called patience. Little by little, people will pick up on things. So be careful about that. The other thing is that I would like the people who come to the class to be prepared for the class. In other words, at least read the subject for the next class. You don't have to understand it, but at least you've looked at it and you know what that is. Sometimes when I give the class, at the next class, I'll say, what did we talk about last time? Nobody will say anything, but that's just shyness. Hope so, yeah.

[16:37]

So I wanna go back to practicing with our intention. Practicing with intention and there's practicing karma. Karma is like following our feelings and getting caught by our mistakes and continuing to perpetuate them. So practicing with intention is hopefully to avoid making mistakes and putting our attention toward the dharma instead of just getting, allowing ourself to follow various dead ends. For instance, every night I walk my dog and he wants to smell everything.

[17:43]

Dogs with long noses tend to have more olfactory sensitivity. So they really wanna smell everything and stay there. So I have to keep moving him along. So my intention is just to take a walk, and I want his intention to be taking a walk as well, and he does pretty well. But I went to Japan for three weeks, and we had somebody take care of him, and when I got him back, he just wanted to smell everything and forgot about taking a walk. So he has to be retrained in a way. There's a little Zen story about, in China, Mount Yishan, Guishan. There's a great teacher, Guishan, who lived on Mount Guishan in China, in the Tang Dynasty.

[18:52]

So this student of his said, for 30 years I lived on Mount Guishan, but all I did, I didn't, but I was on Mount Guishan, but I didn't study anything. All I did was I ate Isan's rice, shit Isan's shit, and tended to a water buffalo. And that's all I did, was tended his water buffalo. And when he was, he was a very, you know, energetic guy and he would, trample off other people's gardens, and then I'd have to pull him back, and then he'd start to wander off, and I'd have to pull him back, and then he'd follow anything, anybody who was nice to him, and then he just, and I'd have to pull him back.

[19:55]

They kept pulling him back, pulling him back, pulling him back. He said, after 30 years, I kept doing that for 30 years. He said, but now, He's such a nice, sweet water buffalo. He just stands in front of me, and even though I try to push him away, he won't go anywhere. So this is kind of like, you know, we're all like this. We all want to stray. We all want to get caught by all these opportunities that we have, and it's hard to stay just on the path. The basic thing that we should keep in mind is that in our practice, we set an example for everybody. We set an example for ourself, but we have to realize that we're not practicing alone.

[21:01]

Whatever we do affects everybody else. When you have a period of practice, where everyone's doing the same practice, each person's activity affects everybody. So in a sense, in that way, each one of us is a teacher because we're affecting people. And we should realize that when I'm doing my practice, I'm helping other people. because I'm encouraging other people. And what a teacher does is simply encourage other people. A teacher may do other things, like teach things, but basic teaching is simply doing your practice wholeheartedly and encouraging other people. Because each one of us, although we all practice together,

[22:05]

we all have our individual practice. So in a sense, although each one of us is a student, each one of us is also teaching something. And just simply by encouraging and staying with the program. Then there are various practices which we can concentrate on. One is patience, practicing patience, which means don't be behind and don't get ahead. Just really being totally present is patience. without allowing yourself to be pushed or pulled.

[23:08]

And when you're waiting for something, we think of patience as waiting for something, but actually, well, forbearance is another name for patience, but simply being present and letting, and if you're waiting for the bus on a dark night, and there's nothing going on, and just kind of, I wish it would come. But without wishing for anything, just to be there. Not let ourself get hurried. When you find yourself getting hurried or anxious, just come back to just being present. and have patience, and that's one of the major activities that we should be practicing, how to be settled on each moment.

[24:12]

And another is completing one activity before you go to the next. In other words, we all have some place to go. we're motivated to go somewhere, but at the same time, we're simply where we are. So sometimes when we're motivated to move, we forget where we are, or we're all ahead of ourself already. This is related to patience. It's to complete one activity, then go on to the next, and to be thoroughly present in this moment's activity, thoroughly present in the next moment's activity, thoroughly present in the next moment's activity. When you open the door, you open the door, that's one activity. You step out the door, so you're inside and outside at the same time. And then you step outside, rather than opening doors, stepping outside, and you don't know where you are, because you're already ahead of yourself.

[25:30]

So when you're walking down the street, it's one step at a time, even though you're going somewhere, to be thoroughly present in our body and mind on each moment. that's also connected to being centered. To always know where our center is and to move from that center so that we're always balanced. This is called the key of C. I'm the C of key. The C of key means breath. It means the essential thing. right here, and this is the center of our body. So we're always moving from the center, or we should be always moving from the center. You always know where your center is, and you're, therefore, you always know where you are, not just up in your head.

[26:37]

So this is the vital place from where we live as a Zen student. when we are centered in our hara, so to speak, then all of the other parts of our body, mind, are balanced, or are allowed to be balanced, because they're all balanced with this as the center. So our head, our intellect takes its rightful place, and our emotions take their rightful place, and our feelings are balanced, ideally. And then when we do something to be engaged totally and wholeheartedly. So when you open the door, you're totally engaged in that activity. Your whole body mind is totally engaged in that activity. You open the door, your body mind is totally engaged in that activity. When you're washing the dishes, you're totally engaged in that activity.

[27:44]

This is most important. So all these are connected to really the various aspects of one activity. And then constant awareness of breath. Breathing is a very fundamental activity as we know. We are being breathed, actually. It's a misnomer to say, I am breathing. We are just being breathed. Breathing just happens. And for us to be aware of our breath all the time, down here, sometimes our breathing is up here. This is anxiety, fear, and so forth. So when we're breathing up here, we should be aware, oh, this is where the breath is, and then get the breath down. when we get the breath down to here, we can see what our anxiety is or what our fear is.

[28:48]

Sometimes we don't know that we're breathing up here. So we should know all the time where our breath is. And when we're used to breathing from our hara, then we automatically do that. And if you have a sudden surprise, your mind always goes to here, so that you're centered and breathing in the right place. And then, well, this is actually practicing Shikantaza. Shikantaza is bringing each moment to life. It's just doing. without an extra motive, without anything extra, just doing, just being present, just this activity.

[29:55]

And of course, mindfulness is a practice, which means returning to the present moment, being aware of what we're doing and coming back to the present moment. And then there's paying attention to how greed, ill will, and delusion arise, as well as loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy. So to be aware of our feelings and our thoughts and how they arise. And when anger arises, what do we do with that? And then being aware of our self-centeredness and letting go. Letting go of self-centeredness

[31:07]

is to take our place in our activity, take our true place within our activity so that we have humility. Humility means just being ourself without anything extra. Then we know who we are. treating everyone respectfully, this is not always easy, but if we treat everyone as Buddha then we can see we're more deeply into somebody rather than just reacting to their actions. we treat everyone as Buddha, then people sometimes will act that way. We can actually create Buddhas by treating people as Buddha.

[32:18]

And then they realize that they're Buddha. And then treating all material things with respect. I remember Suzuki Roshi used to say, Don't sit on the table. The table is meant to be a table. It's not meant to be a chair. So don't sit on the table, because the table is meant to be a table, and it's dishonoring the table. When you move a chair, don't scrape it on the floor, but pick it up and put it down. Otherwise, you're not being respectful to the floor or the chair. When somebody wants something on the other side of the table, don't scrape it across the table, but lift it up and hand it over.

[33:25]

Because it's being disrespectful to the table or the object that you're moving. So we don't often think about that. Material things are just material things, right? But material things that we use are part of ourself. Ourself plus our surroundings is what ourself is. This is really important. There's some societies that are very built on respect. There are other societies that are not. But it's something I think that we really need to pay attention to if we're gonna understand what our practice is about. There was, in Japan some years ago, there was a man who collected brassieres.

[34:28]

He had thousands of them, but he put them up, he made a shrine out of them and offered incense saying that these are, you know, very helpful items for women, you know, and so we should honor them. So I thought that was kind of interesting. But Dogen says everything has a place, all the objects have a place, and he also, when he would talk about rice or any object, he would give it an honorific. Gohan, O Gohan. So the O is a kind of honorific. So if we think that way, then we treat everything as our self.

[35:34]

Basically, how do we treat everything as our self? That's basic practice. And these are simply ways of doing that. This is how we let go of our self-centeredness. So then there are the personal practice choice examples. You may feel there's one thing that I would like to practice with during this time, like the precept. You could take a precept like, not taking what doesn't belong to you. You know, each one of these precepts is actually treated as a koan, but I won't get into that. How to remain faithful in your relationship, to be truthful, and how do you deal with intoxicants?

[36:45]

Intoxicants are not just dope and liquor. Intoxicants can be anything that you're attached to that you have to have. It can be ideas that are intoxicants. So not dwelling on the mistakes of others, that's really a good one, very practical. Not praising yourself and looking down on others. Sometimes if we, in order to raise ourself up, we lower others down. So we don't really have to get up there. Just by contrast, we can get higher by putting others down. and also not withholding anything, not withholding the Dharma or material things, and not harboring ill will.

[37:57]

And those are all, those are just examples. But then there's, you know, like if you are given to opinionatedness, you recognize that, then that would be something for you to work on. How do I, when I find myself always giving my opinion, And people are saying, to recognize that and how I can stop, how I can control myself from always having to dominate with an opinion. And if you're prone to taking over, like always having the first word or dominating a conversation, to kind of pay attention to that. Or if you're, always drawing back and withholding yourself to be able to come try coming forward and being more open and if you always have a critical mind criticizing everything you know this we we have a tendency to criticize but if you find you're always criticizing or you're always looking for something to criticize you know you got a problem

[39:14]

And to look at that, practice with that. Or value judgments. This is good and this is bad. I like this, I don't like that, la la la. To look at that. Or if you're prone to gossip. You can't wait to tell somebody everything that you heard. The inability to say yes to something, to anything. You just can't commit yourself to anything. Or the inability to say no to anything. You're over-committed. You can't help being over-committed because you can't say no to anything. So you should be careful of that. If you have a habitual problematic behavior problem, that would be something to work with.

[40:20]

Or forgiveness, if you can't forgive, think about being able to forgive. Or if you can't acknowledge or repent, some transgression, think about doing that. Or if you're holding a grudge, Think about how you can deal with that, not just keep letting it eating you up. And then competitiveness. Each one of us has a totally different practice, and we're all at a different stage of practice, and we all have our limitations. So competitiveness is not a good idea. We're not trying to get ahead of somebody or even ahead in the practice. We just practice together with each other, promoting each other and helping each other. Some competitiveness may work in a certain way, but I don't discount it altogether, but it's not something that we should strive for.

[41:31]

If you find yourself too competitive, then it doesn't smell good. You want to get some power or some position or something. So think about that. Those are all things to practice with. Sekito Kisen in his Jewel Mirror Samadhi says, work secretly like a fool or an idiot. To do this continuously is called the host within the host. And then Dogen Zenji in his Genjo Koan says, to study the Buddha way is to study or practice the self. To study the self is to forget or let go of the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened or confirmed by the 10,000 dharmas.

[42:37]

To be enlightened by the 10,000 dharmas is to free one's body mind and the body and minds of others. With no trace of enlightenment remaining, this traceless enlightenment continues forever. So these are five koans of Dogen Zenji, which, by the way, we're going to be studying koans in our class during the practice period. And Dogen's Ginjo Koan is our basic koan. And I'm sorry that we don't have time for any questions, but maybe we do have time for one or two. Yeah. One or two. I don't know yet. You got a good point. After the first time, then I'll prepare.

[43:52]

Oh, I have to take a drink of water. I love you.

[44:23]

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