Today I want to talk about right effort and right thought. Right effort and right thought go together. When you talk about one you also are talking about the other. They're very close. If we don't have right thought, even though we have good effort, we don't know what to direct our effort toward. Right thought is knowing what to direct our effort to, and right effort is focusing our energy so that things will work. 

Right thought really refers to keeping our attention on Dharma; keeping our attention focused on practice. In a very narrow sense it means to know what Buddhism is about, so that whatever you are doing you don't forget that what you are doing is practicing. For us this can be a very hazy place, the place of keeping our attention on practice all the time. The central point, you know, of our practice is zazen. Dogen Zenji's attitude towards practice was that zazen includes everything. If zazen includes everything - if zazen includes all of practice, all of buddhadharma - then zazen cannot be just confined to sitting, but must go out into activity as well. To come to sitting and to go out to activity, and back to sitting and out to activity in that kind of never ending cycle, is what he means by zazen. Ultimately in a kind of eternal life.

To be able to have a kind of focus, which enables us to always see our life as a state of practice - always within practice - is most necessary. Someone said to me, you know what I feel about this zendo is that it's like country practice, as compared with city practice, or monastic practice, or something. Country practice - I don't know exactly what that is - the sense I have is: not so strenuous. What I mean by strenuous is not so focused in one place, but focus is more spread, more diffuse and spread out. I feel that our practice is like that, the focus is more diffuse and spread out.

But in a realistic sense, no matter where our activity is, if we are really focused on practice, it's always focused on the same place. So whether it's country practice or city practice or monastic practice or whatever our activity is, is not so much the point. Our activity will always be changing, the things we do will never be the same in any one place. Our particular activities are always changing. This twentieth century is not the seventh century - but surprisingly enough our activities are not much different. The point is, in any activity, how do we focus on practice? How do we keep right thought in every single situation of our life, no matter what that situation is involving?

I think that when we first begin to practice some of us come from having studied something about Buddhism or Zen, having read some books. Some of us come just because some friends told us about it, or we hear about Zen in some way - maybe Zen Center is becoming popular.

One time, when we were on Dwight Way, somebody was driving his car down the street and just stopped, [laughs] parked the car and knocked on the door and came up and sat zazen, but didn't really know what was going on at all. [Laughs] It's a very strange thing, I don't know why that happened. Very interesting story. 

There are various reasons for coming to practice. But once we engage ourself, once we start to practice, we find some reason for doing it. Our reasons are not all the same, and the reason we come to practice is at all not the same for everybody. It can't be, and our understanding can't be completely correct. Maybe subconsciously our reasons are more correct, our unknown reasons. But our conscious reasons are almost never completely correct for why we practice. 

As we engage in practice, become more and more confident, and our realization becomes greater, then we need some kind of guidance. Some way to keep ourself focused. At first everything is new to us. The whole situation of practice is new, and we start discovering things we didn't know before. We start discovering our body, and how to relate to the world in a more clean kind of way, an empty way. And our practice has some kind of joy in it, even though there may be difficulty and pain and various other things. Still we have some joy of engaging in something in a new way. But as our practice becomes deeper, and as we become pretty good at sitting and get some handle on what we're doing, then it's kind of like a marriage: at first you have this great, wonderful kind of joy of being new, and then after a while you settle down into everyday existence [laughs]. Practice is kind of like that; has that quality.

So how to keep that everyday existence relationship going is the real test and the real guts of practice - in both marriage and Zen practice. How to keep our practice fresh. And, you know, at some point we may say, well I'm stuck with this. Being stuck with this is actually where the second stage of practice really begins. You can leave, but if you don't leave then you accept the challenge of deepening practice, or deepening marriage. I'll leave marriage alone and talk about practice [laughter]. 

At some point we need to expand our understanding. Usually we don't ask people to study for the first year or so of practice. Study can be a kind of a hindrance to practice if you don't have some confidence in what you're doing. But at some point we should know what our predecessors found out and what their way was. Because our way, actually, of practice is based on the whole history of Buddhism.

Our practice looks very simple, but it's like an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg is like our practice. It's showing above the sea. But underneath the sea is this huge thing which supports the tip. At some point we should investigate what this huge iceberg is. We should investigate and try to understand what this mountain is. We can know the mountain just from the tip - it's true. We should know the mountain just from where we are. This is zazen. Zazen is becoming one with the whole mountain just from the point where we are. So that no matter which point we're at - whether at the bottom of the mountain or the top or the side - every place we stand includes the whole mountain, and is supported by the whole mountain. But we know that it's supported by the whole mountain, but at some point we should investigate what is this support.

If we want to understand what the old Zen masters were talking about in their dialogues, we can understand something from just what they say, just what we read. But when we understand the background or the bottom of this mountain, then what they say becomes richer and richer; much more profound and deeper. Because what they are saying is a comment on the whole mountain of Buddhism. The interesting thing is that, in a way, even though you don't know anything about Buddhism you can understand, it's possible to know what they are talking about. But if you have some understanding of this mountain, what they are talking about becomes much clearer. Much clearer. 

When Bodhidharma came to China, he brought the Lankavatara Sutra with him - that's what they say. Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch, preached on the Diamond Sutra. And then the Chinese took the Sixth Patriarch's biography and made a sutra out of that. It's not a real sutra in a legitimate sense, but it's definitely a sutra. Sometime we should study the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, again. Not so much because it's written in an authoritative way - not to follow something dogmatically - but to understand where our predecessors, where they were coming from.

So in one sense, keeping right thought is much easier when you're studying the background of our practice. When you study the background of our practice it helps us to focus on what am I doing when I'm studying Buddhism, when I'm studying Zen. One side is just to do what we do. And the other side is to find the support of this big mountain, to learn how to appreciate it and to learn from it. And you find that you yourself are in the same place that these patriarchs were in. And in a sense, no different from them. 

In Soto Zen, the way that we've inherited, we don't study koans as a practice. But we should all be familiar with those koans; we should all be familiar with those stories. They are very meaningful. Our practice, which we call shikantaza or just sitting, is more of our focus. Soto Zen is much more vague way. It's a difficult way to practice because there's nothing to hold on to, very little to hold on to. Everything is up to you. It's not like we have some regimentation [unclear words?] by beating you over the head, telling you what to do. "Get in line." That's good actually, "Get in line. Don't go this way, don't go that way. Get in there." That kind of practice is very good, but it's not so much our practice. Everything is really up to you. That's just the style we've inherited.

Relationship with a teacher is more like when you meet a teacher then you go away from the teacher. But you have a relationship. And when you look at the teacher and the teacher looks at you. It's like, you live your life and the teacher lives his life, but you live your lives independently together. You have some idea of what the teacher is thinking, and the teacher gives you lots of space. But if you take too much space then you get lost. Some people need to be very close because of who they are. Some people can be more at a distance. This is what enables us to have a practice where we have people in different places - our practice - different positions. Some people can practice very close. Other people, way out there.

This Country Zen, so-called, allows us to have relationships where we carry on our individual affairs and yet, in some way, we are all connected. Doing the same thing, yet each one of us has to find our own way. But this can be - finding our own way - can be confusing. Doesn't mean that you just do your own thing the way you want to do it. That's not what that means. When we are living in the woods by ourself we can do whatever we want. But we have to pay attention to the creatures, and the plants, and so forth; and we have to be in harmony with that.

But the more we get together with people, the more we have to conform to the way people do things. And when we get into a situation which has a kind of narrow way, or a narrow practice, then in order to practice with them, we have to give up more and more of our own way of doing things. In a monastic situation we give up our way of doing everything completely. We just toss aside our way of doing things. The only way you can do it, the only way you can be in a monastic situation, is just give up your own way of doing things. That's why there are so few people that can practice that way. 

To give yourself over, hand yourself over, not everyone can do it. But in City Zen you have to do the same thing. But there is more space, more latitude, because of the nature of being in the city. Country Zen, country practice, we think that we don't have to do that. We can practice thinking that we don't have to do that. And that's a kind of problem. How to give ourself over to a situation? How to give ourself up, to a situation, and let practice direct our life? How to direct our life in co-operation with it? We have a lot of latitude. We talk about how to be in co-operation with our lives in practice, within a certain kind of limitation. 

To draw an analogy, it's like a nuclear family and a community. Nuclear family - which is mother, father, and child - have a certain kind of unity. And when that nuclear family becomes part of a community, in order to exist within a community, nuclear family has to have more space. Or be more open to becoming each member part of a community, so that there can be harmony and interaction. That becomes very difficult kind of balance. Because a community has to be able to also to participate in that way. 

For single people, you know, it's easy in a different way. In a sense the question is what is the right attitude? What is the right way of directing our attention in this kind of situation? Someone nowadays thinks the world becomes more and more a community. The whole world is becoming more and more a community. In this country, and other countries, housing is becoming scarcer and scarcer. Berkeley is a prime example of a city that has no place to go. There's no place for Berkeley to expand to. It can go up a ways. It can't go out. And nobody has thought about going down [laughs]. It can only go up so far. And there are so many people.

It means that people, more and more, have to learn to live together as a total community. And as they learn to live together as a total community, in houses that are getting smaller and smaller, in rooms that are getting smaller and smaller, and population that is getting bigger and bigger, people have to open up their housing, and more and more people will live in a house as time goes on. Until maybe there won't be any single family dwellings. At some point there may not be any single family dwellings. 

Whether we want to or not, we are forced to live in a community. The nuclear family is becoming less and less tight and more and more open, and community itself is taking the place of nuclear family. As that happens, it keeps coming up and we have to know how to include that and deal with it. In Japan for years they've had this kind of problem, but I think they have tremendous sense of community, and also they have a tremendous sense of privacy. How to keep privacy. Japanese people were forced to become very careful about everything. We've inherited, in our practice, a kind of Japanese style of being very careful about everything. How not to bother people even though you are this close to them. How to maintain their privacy in a very crowded space. 

When Suzuki Roshi came to America he lived with a friend, someone I knew, and his mother. And he and his mother had this huge apartment. One of these San Francisco Victorian apartments - three bedrooms, big dining room, and big living room. And he said, "Do you live here with your mother? No one else lives here?" He said [laughs], "In Japan, a house that big would have maybe fifteen people living in it." And they would all just live there. Everyone would have privacy. Everyone would cooperate with everyone else in making it work. We haven't gotten to that point yet. We're still the Wild West. [Laughs] America, we still feel like we're pushing to the west, but actually we've come to the end of the trail. Momentum is piling us up, all against each other. The movement has stopped, but the momentum is, they are like piling into each other, and we're trying to sort it out. 

So this community here is a kind of experiment - it's our real life, so we can't exactly treat it as an experiment. But, it's an experiment in that there's lots of room to figure out how things should be. And people that live here and also people in the wider community influence each other. And we're all learning how to do it, how to live together. 

In some sense this is where our effort is going. How to live together and how to keep our practice going in a strong way. This is one side. The other side is to study how things were done in the past. And what is that big knot, past experience, the result of which has put us on top of this peak. 

Maybe, for about five or ten minutes, if you have something about these questions that you'd like to discuss. 

Student A: I'd like to ask how you, yourself, study? Do you underline things or do you take notes? In other words, so much of the material is so very dense, how is one to absorb it?

Sojun: Yea, how do you open it up?

One way is to study with other people. And another way is study by yourself. When I study by myself I learn something in a certain way. But when I have a class and I teach what I studied, then the whole thing becomes much more opened up. As soon as you start to read out loud what you read silently, it's a whole different thing. It's not only what you read but what somebody else reads with you and studies with you; just opens up the subject. So study with other people is the best way - and also studying by yourself - both.

I'm always studying something because I'm always interested in something. There's so much to study. Buddhist study is so huge and vast, you could never do it in a lifetime. Unless you are completely brilliant person who remembered every single thing you ever read - some people can do that. I keep reading over and over the same things that I read ten, fifteen years ago. But every time I study something it brings me back to the thing I read ten or fifteen years ago. And I see it in a completely different light because it reaches out and touches other things that you don't know what those things are until your study becomes broader. When we study some small thing, or focus on one thing, we can understand that one thing in a certain way. But when we begin to study other aspects, then what we read before, we can see how it's influenced by and touches those other aspects, and those other things have influenced this. Study becomes more and more interesting and more and more deep. 

So we have to have a balance of study and activity. If we study too much and get too involved in that then we become scholarly. For a Zen person, someone whose intention is really to practice, you can't really be a scholar as well. Some people can, very few. Study mainly is to support our practice and allow us to identify this great mountain of practice that's gone on before. After you practiced and then you study you say, "Oh yea, that's familiar. This is familiar." You're just really studying your own practice. 

Student B: Even though we don't use koans, is it possible to use study directly in our zazen practice? We're reading about certain problems, we can do zazen with them too.

Sojun: In what way?

Student B: Well, I mean, just the way the reading that we've been doing, just very basic problems come up about the universal, the particular, and where we are in that. 

Sojun: Whatever we read actually becomes a koan for us, when we study. Someone said that when you read Dogen, every sentence in Dogen is a koan. That's why you don't read Dogen's writing like you read a book, in that sense. It goes on somewhat logically, and has a beginning, middle and end, but each sentence is a koan. And because it's not writing about something, it's writing which is expressing something. 

Student C: Study also can be very soothing. At least I find that can sit and have some vision or idea of how things should be. Maybe an interaction doesn't quite come together the way a vision of life you would want it to be. But study, it's a little bit abstract, but can - for me at least - give me that feeling, some quiet feeling, soothing kind of feeling from study. 

Sojun: Yea, I think so too. 

Anyway, I want us to have at least some background, to know something about the background of practice. In that way, it may confuse us - which is OK - but we don't think it's something that it's not. And it really helps us to think about what we're doing. 

This is kind of the effort we use to keep our attention focused on practice. To use our situation and to use study. And of course in our daily life, we always come back to just what we're doing right now. No separation of body, and mind or things. Even though we talk about things - about absolute and relative and so forth - when we're actually engaged in doing something, we're just doing something, and that's where our life really lies. 

How to not get lost? How to keep from getting lost in that simple situation? And to just go on, day after day, really practice. 

Thank you.