I love you. [...] Today is the first day of our study period, six-week study period, and we're going to study Dogen's Gakudo Yojinshu, Guidelines for Studying the Way, a pretty uncomplicated kind of study. you can read it through pretty quickly. But if you read it carefully, you can study it over and over again.

[01:06]

So just to read it is pretty simple. But to read it and understand it, And to know what Dogen is talking about takes some study, actually. So on the face of it, you may say, well, what is there to study here? So everything that Dogen says is meaningful. When you study it, you have to study sentence by sentence to understand what is he saying here. Dogen begins, he starts out by talking about the need to arouse the enlightened mind.

[02:12]

as the most necessary requisite for studying. And then he talks about the need for practice to invite enlightenment. Practice invites enlightenment. we have to be very cautious when we talk about things like enlightenment. Whenever we talk about enlightenment, whenever we talk about enlightenment, we make enlightenment into an object. So as soon as you talk about enlightenment, it You're talking about something that is an idea in your mind.

[03:19]

And so the thing that we talk about, what we talk about and the thing itself are not really the same. So we're always fooled by enlightenment, because what we talk about and the thing that's talked about are two different things. As soon as you open your mouth, you've already made an object of it. So I talk about this a lot, and I've talked about it before, but I want to talk about it today. Delusion. Why do we practice? That's the question. Why are we doing this? Do we practice to gain delusion?

[04:20]

Or do we practice to gain enlightenment? Enlightenment and delusion are two sides of something. And when we talk about enlightenment, we have to talk about it in a way that brings up its opposite, which is delusion. So whenever you talk about enlightenment, we always talk about delusion as well. If you talk about enlightenment without talking about delusion, then you're really making an object of enlightenment. So do we practice?

[05:28]

to practice delusion or do we practice to practice enlightenment? Or do we practice to practice practice? Why we practice, actually, the reason we practice is in order to practice. If you don't understand that, then you should do something else. If you don't want to do that, you should do something else. But on the other hand, if we don't have the thought of enlightenment, then our practice doesn't have any place to go or any object. You can do anything. Why practice? Why not just do something else? So there's the thought of enlightenment.

[06:37]

But the thought of enlightenment is objectifying enlightenment again. If you have the thought of enlightenment, you're objectifying enlightenment again. But within practice, we should have the thought of enlightenment. So the thought of enlightenment is a kind of thought that you have maybe before you enter practice. But once you enter practice, then you have the enlightened thought. Do you see the difference between the thought of enlightenment and the enlightened thought? The enlightened thought doesn't have an object. It's not dividing the object, the subject from the object. So when we start thinking about enlightenment, we start dividing the subject from the object.

[07:50]

And as long as you do that, there's no enlightenment. There's no oneness of things. So in order to have enlightenment, you can't split it and have enlightenment over here and delusion over here. Otherwise, you just have some two objects. We just practice to practice. And within practice, there is enlightenment. Within practice, there is enlightenment. This is called faith in practice. So the most important thing, actually, is to have faith in practice. And so then what is practice? What does that mean?

[08:53]

Practice looks like something that's set up for us by somebody else. That's making an object of practice. If you look at the process or procedure of practice, in a way that looks like it's something set up by somebody else for somebody else. And you kind of hop on the practice train, you know, and take the practice trip through the practice track that you're practicing. But the only practice is the practice that you create.

[10:00]

What you do creates practice. And only when there's no gap between you and practice is there enlightenment. As soon as there's no gap between you and practice, then there's no gap between you and enlightenment. But as long as there's the slightest gap, as Dogen said, I think I talked about that last week, as long as there's the slightest gap, it's like the distance between heaven and earth, of which there is no distance, but there's this huge gulf. So... Yes, we should have the thought, the enlightened thought, no gap between our activity and practice and enlightenment. You create practice, and practice creates you.

[11:10]

And this is called faith in ourself, not faith in some prescribed religious practice. Not faith in something that somebody made up for you. The only way you can prove practice is by entering practice. The only way you can prove yourself in practice is by entering practice, becoming practice. And the only way that enlightenment will manifest is by becoming one, the creation of practice. So if you want enlightenment, you have to be enlightened, be enlightenment. If you want practice, you have to be practice.

[12:16]

So it boils down to being yourself. Just be yourself. But what does that mean? How do you be yourself? As Suzuki Roshi always used to say, when you are you, then Zen is Zen. You can't have something You really can't have it. If you want enlightenment, you can't just have it. Today, when we were eating breakfast, I said something about, don't look around. just when we eat breakfast using our bowls in a kind of formal way.

[13:20]

That's zazen. We should be practicing zazen by eating, just being one with eating, just creating that situation. You know, no matter how much we talk about it, we tend to think that zazen is this cross-legged position. And well, I know that zazen is the extension of our practice into every activity, but still, it's hard to see it. You know, when we eat the meal, we tend to kind of... Well, this is a kind of interlude between zazen, between service and the break. Not everyone is like that, but there's a tendency to feel that.

[14:32]

But this is a break between... kind of activity that we do between service and... Actually, the break, you know, is zazen. How do we practice zazen during our break? How do you thoroughly lay down? How can you thoroughly rest? How can you thoroughly... be satisfied with yourself when you're just sitting down. And you know that you have, say, 15 minutes before zazen. What kind of a time is that, anyway? We say our life is very precious.

[15:48]

Each moment is very unique. It does not come again. How do we bring that moment to life? We think that life is something that happens to us. Whether we do anything about it or not, we tend to have that feeling. Life does us. But in enlightened life, we create life, and life creates us. It's really up to us to bring life to life.

[16:51]

So when we have one moment of practice, we have one moment of enlightenment. When I say practice, I mean thorough, real thorough practice. One moment of real thorough practice is one moment of enlightened practice. So you can measure it if you want to. How many moments of enlightened practice? So, you know, in this practice, Dogen always emphasized how we do things.

[18:25]

He talks about enlightenment a lot, but really he's always talking about how we do something, how we... what the quality of our activity is like. The word samadhi, you know, we use a lot, and we don't talk about it so much, but one way of talking about samadhi is when a subject and object merge. when there's no gap between subject and object, then we call that samadhi. So when we sit tazin and we are completely absorbed in our breath and body, then there's no gap between body, mind,

[19:38]

the universe, really no gap, no object, no subject. And so we have samadhi, very obvious samadhi. But how to maintain samadhi mind? through every moment's activity is what we call practicing. How to stay... When you meet an object, how to become one with the object that you meet so that you don't think of what you meet as an object. So samadhi is just being yourself. We call it the natural state of mind.

[20:44]

Natural order of mind is samadhi mind. Not some special state of mind, but just our real state of mind before paranoia, before the idea of gain and loss, before the fear of good and bad, right and wrong, just our undivided mind. So why we have so much trouble is because we like to divide our mind.

[21:47]

An extreme example is schizophrenia. Our mind is, of course, you know, we have to deal with objects all the time. And each one of us is an individual. Everything we meet has its own seeming nature. But, you know, you can reduce everything that you see to nothing if you wanted to. If you made a big effort, you could reduce the whole world to nothing. Actually, some people are going to do that, want to do that. But everything you see, you could reduce to nothing if you wanted to. But we don't want to. We enjoy each other. But this each other doesn't really have...

[22:57]

isn't so substantial that you couldn't get rid of it if you wanted to. So behind all of these faces that everything has, behind these objects is We call ourself, which is what we meet when we don't divide everything into subject and object. When we don't divide everything into subject and object, we meet ourself. If the world is destroyed, we will meet ourself But we should be able to meet ourself without doing that.

[24:04]

We should be able to meet ourself wherever we go, just by meeting each other. No need to destroy everything in order to do it. So it's not necessary so much for us to worry about enlightenment. Just worry about how to practice. That's what we should worry about. How can I do something? What can I do and how can I do it best? That's what we should be thinking about. Delusion is the other side of enlightenment. And enlightenment, you know, comes out of our deluded activity.

[25:09]

So we should appreciate our deluded activity, the activity of delusion. In Buddhism, delusion means all the activity that we do. You don't have to worry about defining it. It means all the stuff that we do in this world is the world of delusion, the realm of delusion. And the realm of delusion is where our enlightenment manifests. So through all of our deluded practice or all of our deluded activity is where you find enlightenment. So when sometimes I hear people complain, you know, that they want to do something, they want to get rid of their deluded activity in order to have their enlightenment. So instead of trying to do that, we should just appreciate where we are and what we have and what we're doing.

[26:16]

If we can appreciate what we have, where we are, and what we're doing, we'll begin to see a little bit the glimmer of enlightenment. This is a very general statement. You can always say, well, but... Think of a lot of reasons why that's not so. But... You see, we're always looking for enlightenment out there, someplace else. And as long as we're looking for enlightenment out there, someplace else, in some other activity, with some

[27:26]

wonderful teacher or something. We're just going away. So if you want to find enlightenment, you have to go this way. This way. Not out there. This way. It's just up to you and up to your effort. And it doesn't depend on how much difficulty you're having. If you have a lot of difficulty, that's very good. Actually, difficulty is

[28:34]

very helpful. If you don't have difficulty, usually means that you're not really doing something. It's easier for some people than for others to practice. But if we have... If we have a difficult time, then the depth of our understanding becomes deeper. Like Dogen said, the depth of the reflection depends upon the height of the moon, something like that. So it all boils down to practice, which we're always talking about.

[29:43]

But it's true. It just all boils down to practice. Don't worry about enlightenment or delusion. Just worry about, how can I practice? And there's no worry about the subject and the object. If you really engage in practice, You get beyond the subject and the object. And you can enjoy your life moment by moment. That's one side of practice is to be able to enjoy our life. So I'm saying that you can enjoy your life no matter what's happening to you. Every moment you enjoy your life no matter what's happening to you. whether you're sick or well, in this state or that state. You have everything or nothing.

[30:44]

You can always enjoy your life. And you never have to blame circumstances for your problems. But... The other side is that you're able to help other people. One part of having the freedom of enlightenment is that you yourself can enjoy your life. The other side is that you can help other people to enjoy their life. But the main thing is that you can create practice for the sake of practice.

[31:58]

You don't really do it just for yourself or just for others. The main thing is that you do it just for practice itself. And that's the most important aspect. Otherwise you fall into this side or this side. Just take care of practice and that will take care of yourself and it will take care of others. practice. That's why we say we venerate the three treasures, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. You just have real faith in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. That's faith in yourself, faith in yourself in all ways. You have yourself and you have more than yourself

[33:10]

Pretty soon we're going to have a lay ordination, 13th of November. And this ordination, you know, is an initiation into practice to Buddha Dharma. Very important initiation. And we should understand what it means. it means entering into the realm of practice and enlightenment. And being initiated into that realm.

[34:26]

And it means that you, by doing that, you help people. Suzuki Roshi said, I remember when we, the reason that I want to give people lay ordination now is so mainly to help people. Not so much as some distinctive honor for yourself, but because it's a help to people. Okay, I want to talk a little bit about our ceremony today. You know, today we have what we call a Rich Pole ceremony for our new zinda, which is not complete. This kind of ceremony is a ceremony that...

[35:37]

they do in Japanese temples before the completion of the temple when the foundation is done and the ridge pole kind of gives the building a form. We don't really have a ridge pole exactly because our building isn't designed exactly like a Japanese building, but the feeling is the same. And the way it will begin is seven hits of the Han. You know, if you haven't been to Tassajara or someplace, Han is this block of wood. And we use it with a hammer to signal when an event is going to begin. So there'll be seven hits spaced a minute apart. And during that time, everybody will this is after the work period, everybody will gather in front of the zendo.

[36:46]

And then the carpenters will have a little container of salt and they'll walk around the building scattering salt, which is to purify the space. And then they'll go into the building and complete the framing of the beams inside the building. And then we have some nails from the old zendo at Tassajara, which burned down. And we'll put some of those nails into the music to kind of carry over And then I'll make some kind of statement explaining what the sermon is about. And then we'll make some offerings. There'll be an altar in there.

[37:50]

And then we'll come back out. This is the short version. I know I'm explaining you the details. and carry incense and throw flower petals around the building. Scattered flower petals. And then I would go back into the building and go through things. The rest of the Ceremony will take place inside the building. I don't want to explain anything. So it should be a very nice ceremony. And I want everyone to attend. Most people that are here will all attend. And that will start.

[39:00]

around 3. We plan to have it starting around 3. Begoroshi was supposed to do the ceremony, and I was at Tassajara the last few days going over that and some other things with him. But, you know, I know he's too busy to do it. And so we decided that if he doesn't come, I'll do it. He said, well, you'll do it for me who's doing it for you, who's supposed to be doing it for you. So I feel pretty sure that that's the way it will work out by 3 o'clock. But he might be here. But I know he's very busy. Do you have any questions about anything that I talked about?

[40:11]

to ask about concentration. And the stream of thoughts that come on, there's something like, sometimes like this rushing torrent. In a sense, that is what's happening. And it seems strange to me to constantly making the effort to come back to your breath is like throwing little pebbles at this enormous stream. And so what, you know, what is right concentration? Right concentration is to, bringing your attention back. See, because those thoughts, the torrent of thoughts, is not the thing that you're doing. It's the thing that's doing you. So your intention is the thing that you're doing. I mean, in other words, what you're doing and your intention should match, right? Okay, so while you're doing, sitting here with your concentration being focused by your intention to sit in a certain way without thinking about something else, does something else is intruding

[41:31]

That's a kind of intrusion, but it's your own mind. It's not something from outside. It's your own stream of thoughts. It's intruding over and above your intention. Now, when an intruder comes, what will you do? Shoot him? Tell him to get out? Close the door? If you close the front door, they'll come in the back door. or in the window and you lock all the doors and windows and come down the chimney. So it's really hard chasing him around. So the best thing you can do is to just do what you have to do and let, okay, sit down, but you're not going to pay any attention to him. He'll be talking, or she'll be talking to you, but you don't want to talk back because you don't want to hold a conversation. You don't want to respond, actually. As soon as you start responding, then you're caught.

[42:34]

It's like somebody comes and you don't want to talk to them, but they're sitting there, they're talking to you. Okay, then you start talking to them, and pretty soon you're in this thing that you don't want to be in. But then it gets interesting. So before it starts to get interesting, You know, take care of your business. You can sit there, but I'm not going to serve you anything. I don't want to get involved in what you have to say because this is what I'm doing. So to maintain your intention is the most important thing. So you go through a lot of stuff, you know, just being sincere with yourself. Maintaining your intention. Yep. If this is too much to get into, but I wondered if there is any overlap between transmission and lay ordination, if they're totally different or if in some way they're not different, and what the relation is to the teacher.

[43:54]

That's a big subject. See, when you talk about, but I'll make it short, okay, lay ordination is not something that you do that's different than what you're already doing. In other words, you don't walk down the street, you know, and sit there and say, oh, I think I have lay ordination, and you go inside, you know, and do that. It's because you've been practicing, and you're already there, that it's a confirmation of what you are doing. So, Dharma transmission is a confirmation of what you already have. It's not that the teacher gives you something that you don't already have. So Dharma transmission is something that students have already.

[44:59]

And sometimes it's confirmed and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's made into, it's confirmed in such a way that there's some reason to confirm it, but sometimes there's not a reason to confirm it. That doesn't mean that that transmission isn't there. For instance, quite a few of Suzuki Roshi's students have had natural transmission through studying with them of Dharma. Not that he gave them something, but their practice verified the transmission. Not like here.

[46:02]

It's not like you bring something out of it. The teacher influences the student, then the student has his own inherent enlightenment, which is brought out. But sometimes you want the lineage to continue. So you get Dharma transmission to a few students to carry on that lineage. But actual transmission is, a lot of people have, you know, most students of a teacher have Dharma transmission, just in reality. But ceremony is like to, because you want certain people to carry on the tradition, they have a ceremony of Dharma transmission. Lay ordination is also a kind of transmission.

[47:12]

You don't call it Dharma transmission. You call it initiation, which is different. But it's a kind of transmission. Is that enough? We could go on talking about it, but I think we should stop. We'll talk about it again.

[47:41]

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