I allow to taste the truth of that which packages words. Good evening. Well, it's nice to see everyone, even though I haven't seen everyone. I understand that you've been studying this I will amplify. We've been studying, not always so, and when I sat down this evening to decide which talk that I would I read one and I thought, oh, I'll talk about that one.

[01:05]

And then I read the next one and I thought, oh, no, I'll talk about that one. And then I read the next one and I thought, oh, no, I'll talk about that one. So I'm just going to talk about the last one that I read, which is titled, Respect for Things. It's interesting because what came to my mind when I was thinking about that is often we talk about mindfulness, how we treat things with mindfulness, but mindfulness is such a overworked term. Overworked, it's like stereotypical, It's such a stereotype. Respect for things, I think, is more personal and more intimate and really addresses something, whatever we're dealing with, in a very personal way.

[02:16]

So, Suzuki Roshi says, in our Zazen practice, we stop our thinking and we are free from our emotional activity. We don't say there is no emotional activity, but we are free from it. We don't say we have no thinking, but our life activity is not limited by our thinking mind. In short, we can say that we trust ourselves completely without thinking, without feeling, without discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong, Because we respect ourselves, because we put faith in our life, we sit. And that's our practice. So there's a lot that he's talking about here. We stop our thinking.

[03:20]

Well, actually, we don't really stop our thinking. You know, he says so, but we are not attached to our thinking. We're not caught by our thinking mind. I was talking to somebody last night and he said, an old student, he said, Well, when we sit zazen, you know, a lot of emotion comes up and thoughts come up and feelings come up. And then when we get off the cushion and we address somebody or relate, that stuff is still there. And I thought, it is? I said, not for me. He said, well, you know, you're more advanced than I am or something.

[04:22]

That stuff is there, it comes up in Zazen, but I can't remember anything I thought about or felt about in Zazen. Sometimes I think, oh, I have to remember this, and I'm going to say this to someone, so-and-so. Yeah, I know, it's hard to hear. I think what he means by stop our thinking is that we don't encourage our thinking. we don't make an effort to think about something.

[05:30]

That's stopping our thinking. But to try and stop our thinking is just another thought. And you will stop your thinking, but before you know it, you'll be thinking again. Sometimes I say to people, what you should try to do when you're sitting zazen is Catch the moment when a thought appears. Just be like a cat waiting for the mouse, and you just wait for the thought to appear, and see if you can actually catch that thought when it appears. But you can't. You may, but pretty hard. Before you know it, oh, I've been thinking about something. We don't really try to stop our thinking. We just don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it.

[06:32]

Don't get upset by what you're thinking about. In the previous chapter, Sugiri says, be kind to yourself. In Zazen, you should be kind to yourself, not try to limit, you know, or to, you know, beat yourself or create some kind of problem thinking that you're doing something wrong because you're thinking. Thinking is the natural process of the mind, and it just goes on. The alaya vijnana, which is the source of the thinking process, is characterized as a rushing torrent, which never stops, continuously producing thoughts. So we just live with it.

[07:38]

We live with this rushing, and every once in a while, there's no thought, right? And that's kind of interesting. But then, huh? Yeah, that's kind of interesting that sometimes there's no thought, but then it starts again. So it's really there all the time. The thinking process is continually going on, but we just don't get upset. We just keep coming back to our original commitment, which is, to pay attention to posture and breathing. That's the commitment of Zazen, to pay attention to posture and breathing. And the thoughts come, and then we let go of them, and so forth. Anyway, he says, in our Zazen practice, we stop our thinking. That's what he means by stop our thinking. He doesn't mean to stop the thought process, or the feeling process, or the emotional process.

[08:47]

He says, in our Zazen practice, we stop our thinking and we are free from our emotional activity. He doesn't say we stop our emotional activity, he simply says we're free from it. Emotion comes up and we just feel the emotion, but we know, we're sitting Zazen, this is just an emotion, just a feeling, that's all. It's an angry feeling or a, or a sexy feeling, or a kind feeling, or whatever. It's just a passing phenomenon. Did you want to say something? Yeah, yeah. No, they're just not our approach. If you want to get somewhere, or if you want to get something, you can do that.

[09:58]

But our approach is not to get somewhere and not to do something, but simply to enjoy our life. This is not a progressive practice. It's not. It's not a progressive practice. It's simply like, hey, this is it, folks. Enjoy it. And you can also enjoy your thinking. Or you can enjoy the thinking that appears. But don't hang on to it. When a joyful thought arises, enjoy it. When a sad thought arises, feel sad. When an angry thought arises, feel angry. And then let go of it. That's all. It's simply, there's no special state of mind The enlightened mind is no special state of mind.

[11:15]

So states of mind are continually appearing and disappearing. Continuously. What's that again? That's dropping off body and mind. Is to just experience each feeling, each thought, each emotion, as it appears and leave space for the next one. And in zazen, that's what we do. We simply let everything come up and let it go. If you try to stop something or start something, you're interfering. Then when you interfere, that's when self arises. When there's no interference, there's no self. Self appears with clinging. Self appears with grasping, holding on, grasping and clinging.

[12:19]

So, you know, if you have an emotion that comes up, you may think, well, this is my inner child, or you may think something like that, you know, and I have to pay attention to this. That may be. I won't deny that. is simply a passing phenomenon. And when you take hold of it, then a self arises. When there's no taking hold, there's no self. So we're always wondering, well, what is no self? What is no self? No self is when there's no clinging or grasping or holding on, simply letting everything arise and pass on, and taking responsibility for what you do, of course. It's not like you're just passive, right? Passivity is not. There's an active principle in zazen, and the active principle is to sit up straight and pay attention, and not get turned around or caught up by passing phenomena.

[13:33]

What if you have Cultivating wholesome seeds? Cultivating wholesome seeds is cultivating wholesome seeds. And that's good. That's very good. Cultivating unwholesome seeds is very bad. But zazen is above or beyond good and bad. And it's like not cultivating any seeds, so it's free from karma. But you should cultivate wholesome seeds, it's good. But we have to be careful. Zazen gives us the opportunity to let go of everything.

[14:49]

It really gives us the opportunity to let go. In our daily life, it's harder to do that because we have to function with things. It's important to cultivate good seeds, wholesome seeds. But in Zazen, we let go of that dualistic even good and bad, which doesn't mean that we ignore good and bad. Well, suffering in zazen, you mean in zazen or? In zazen, suffering comes from wanting something that's not there, wanting it to be a different way. And in our daily life, same thing. It comes from not accepting what's there. So pain and suffering are not the same. They're associated.

[15:51]

But pain is pain, and suffering is suffering. And pain is a sensation. Suffering is the clinging to the sensation. I mean, that's simplistic, but it's basically so. So he says, we don't say we have no thinking. He says, in the first sentence, we stop our thinking. And then he says, we don't say we have no thinking. That's the third line. But our life activity is not limited by our thinking mind. We don't let that thinking mind take over. and limit our life activity. Yeah? I think when he says that, he means it's not limited to some special posture.

[17:14]

I think that's what he's saying. It's not limited by any posture we take. So the various postures we take, we should be aware of. And I think that's kind of, you know, this respect for things. We should have respect for all the postures that we take, respect for our body, respect for, you know, how, when we relate to things, things create us. Whatever we relate to is creating us. Like I'm sitting here in this chair, and the chair is determining my posture. It's determining what I do with my hands. It's creating me. And so there's this relationship going on. And this is what Suzuki Roshi is talking about in this chapter, actually.

[18:16]

We haven't gotten to that yet. So all of our postures are important. Whatever posture we take is important to be aware. And how we, you know, use our body. So, and the first part? Well, if you approach your ordinary activity as practice, then there's no difference. So, we're never outside of practice. There's no outside of practice. We're either practicing well or, you know, with attention. or we're not practicing with attention.

[19:17]

So as long as we're in, say, in this environment, this is the environment of practice, right? And so we should ask ourselves, we may feel, you know, I don't know, that wonder what is practice at some point. And then you have to discover what that is. Because, you know, well, this is the environment of practice. Why am I feeling this is not practice? What am I doing? And that's another thing that Suzuki Roshi talks about, like the rules We think that we should do everything by rules. We think, if you do everything by rules, you miss your actual practice. Because your actual practice is to discover what you're doing.

[20:20]

Okay. So then, in short, we can say that we trust ourselves completely. Trust ourselves completely when we are actually discovering what we're doing. In short, we can't say that we trust ourselves completely without thinking, without feeling, without discriminating between good and bad, right and wrong. Because we respect ourselves, because we put faith in our life, we sit. That's why we practice. We don't sit to do something, we sit because we put faith in our life, in our practice, in our life. We don't sit to get enlightened, to accomplish enlightenment. We sit because enlightenment is what leads us to sit. And then,

[21:27]

Enlightenment leads us to practice, and practice stimulates enlightenment. So it's... The two work together. So we may not feel. Where was that enlightenment that led me to practice? I never felt enlightened. That's because our idea of enlightenment is not the same as enlightenment. Excuse me. Our idea of enlightenment is not the same as enlightenment. So it didn't come up to this, what it said in the book, you know. So-and-so had this big enlightenment experience and the ground fell away.

[22:29]

This is the way enlightenment experiences are expressed in books, because they want to make a dramatic effect. And somebody did have that kind of experience. But that's not the only enlightenment experience. Your enlightenment experience will be totally different from somebody else's enlightenment experience. or from the stereotypical enlightenment experience. Do you recommend not reading any books? I do, but please read them. I recommend that you read books, but not be attached to what you read, in the same way that you shouldn't be attached to the stuff that goes on through your mind in Zazen. read the books, but glean, you know, like, you know, and read between the lines, or as Suzuki Roshi said, read the other side of the page.

[23:37]

On that same vein, would you say, you know, get back to what you're saying right now? Don't be attached to what I'm saying. You should discover your own. I'm just saying what I think, but you don't have to believe that. It's just my experience or my understanding, but you should don't cling to it. When our life is based on respect and complete trust, it will be completely peaceful. So our relationship with nature should also be like this. We should respect everything, and we can practice respecting things in the way we relate to them. Okay. I have a lot to say about that, but I'll read on a little bit more.

[24:41]

This morning when we were bowing in the zendo, we heard a big noise overhead in this room. Because upstairs in the dining room, People were pushing chairs across the tile floor without picking them up. This is not the way to treat chairs, not only because it may disturb the people who are bowing in the zendo underneath, but also because fundamentally this is not a respectful way to treat things. I remember Suzuki actually talking about, actually, this is in Page Street. Yeah. He didn't like the idea that the Zendo was underneath the dining room, because usually you put the Zendo above the dining room or above, you know, other activity rooms. But because of the configuration of Pate Street, we put the Zendo

[25:45]

underneath the dining room. And people, they get up and mindlessly scrape their chairs across the floor. And you can hear that downstairs in Zendo. But he said, you should lift your chair when you get up and you put your chair, lift your chair and put it, but don't sit on a table. The table is meant to eat off of. The table is not a chair, and the chair is not a table. Sometimes, you know, you can use things in various ways, but strictly speaking, you respect an object by using it in the way it was meant to be used. A few years ago, In Japan, there was a guy who collected 10,000 brassieres, and he put them in a big shrine and paid respect to them because they were so useful.

[27:01]

paying respect to their usefulness. And as funny as it seems, you know, he was making a point, you know. I think it's really funny myself. Yeah, they were being used for the purpose they were designated for, and they were, you know, But in Japan they do pay respect, they respect the pots and pans. And often, you know, they'll have a ceremony for the pots and the pans. And, you know, it's paying attention and being, realizing that things have a nature. You know, the objects around us have a nature, and their usefulness helps us, right?

[28:14]

So we pay some respect to the way things, because of the way they help us and so forth. You know, when you have old pots and pans that you, I remember one time, at home, we have pots and pans, that we've used for years and years, and one of the pots that we have, the dog found it and brought it home, you know, about 15 years ago or something, and we're still using that pot. And most of all, we'll say to each other, You remember how we got this pot, the dog pot at home? But it's been, you know, it's like a family treasure, you know? We use it every day, over and over again. And it's just, it's part of the family, you know? So, an old pair of pants. It's very interesting that they started, Levi's started making, as a matter of fact, started making salty pants.

[29:23]

Salty means used, you know? When I was in the Marines, we used to say, we used to love, are old clothes that have been washed over and over because they were salty, you know, that's the term we use, like an old salt, you know. And those are the pants that felt the best, the clothes that felt the best are the clothes that they just have, they fit your body over time, they become part of you. And so those are the clothes you'd really treat with respect. I just wear the clothes until they wear out, until almost nothing gets so thin. And then the thinner they get, the better they feel. But there's something also about how you arrange things together, how you put something down. Whenever I approach the altar, every day, people really, they're whispering about me, but when I go up to the altar, to do service, I rearrange everything, subtly rearrange everything on the office, so that everything balances.

[30:36]

And there's not just the objects, but how the objects relate to each other, but there's space. The space in between things is also something that we have to respect, what we call the negative space. But the negative space is also positive because there's something there and it's called space. There's nothing really that's not, I don't want to say solid, but has its position. And the space between things is what harmonizes, allows things to harmonize. And if we don't pay attention to the space, then we can't really pay attention to how things harmonize with each other. So I try to put things in such a way that the spaces, as well as the objects, are all harmonizing with each other and balanced.

[31:40]

And there's the Buddha's nose, and then there's the incense burners, and so forth. and they should all be lined up this way and this way. So when that's happened, when we do that, then the feeling in the zendo, everything in the zendo takes its place from that alignment. And when you walk in the zendo and things are aligned in that way, balanced and harmonized, then you feel harmonized yourself. It helps, it gives us that settled feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's right.

[32:41]

Everything is, you know, because things are impermanent, we treat them with respect. You know, they're here today and while they're here, you know, yeah, so the same with each other. You know, we're all impermanent, so we should, this day will never come again. This moment will never come again. So, you know, when Suzuki Yoshi's wife, Oksan, was here, she used to come and and do tea ceremony for people, for the students. And every student that came, she would write down their name. And it was all in the book, you know, today was so and so and so, and she'd write down everybody's name, and when time they come, and you know, and then she would know everybody that way, and she was, that was a kind of, you know, treasure to her, that that moment, and this time of day,

[33:50]

It was when she had this encounter with this person. So it says, to push the chairs across the floor is very convenient. We used to talk a lot about what is convenient. We do a lot of stuff for convenience. He said, but it will give us a lazy feeling. Of course, this kind of laziness is part of our culture. And it eventually causes us to fight with each other instead of respecting things. We want to use them for ourselves, and if it is difficult to use them, we want to conquer them. Boy, this reminds me of what's going on today. This kind of idea does not accord with the spirit of practice. Yes, of course. In the same way, my teacher Kishizawa Ion did not allow us to put away the amado more than one at a time.

[35:01]

Do you know what the amado is? The amado are the wooden doors outside the shoji screens, which are put up to protect the shoji from storms. If you look at the kaisando, the kaisando has shoji screens, And then there's an outer rail that has, for the amado, which is the solid doors, which are also sliding doors, but they protect their, you know, more, and there's this box at the end of the building, and the amado all go into that box. So, At the end of the building, there's a big box for storing the amado. Since they are sliding doors, one priest can easily push five or six doors, and another priest can wait and put them in the box. But my teacher didn't like this. He told us to move them one by one.

[36:05]

So he would slide each door and put it in the box one door at a time. So it's not about convenience. It's about how you practice with each thing. You know, often I see Zen students carrying like four or five things, you know, at one time in order to, because it's convenient to get them to one place to another, from one place to another. And then they're, you know. But actual practice is to take one thing and take it over and put it down, and then take another thing and put that down. You know, Suzuki Roshi would always criticize us for carrying around a cup of coffee or tea or whatever while we're walking around. If you're gonna drink your tea, sit down and enjoy it.

[37:09]

Sit down and just do that. Give that space. Don't dilute it by doing something else. Everybody used to smoke. We all smoked in the beginning. And he said, I'm not telling you not to smoke, but when you smoke, sit down and smoke your cigarette. Just find a place to sit and enjoy your cigarette. And then he used to tell us about this Zen master who loved smoking. And he said one day he walked up to the mountain in the fog and he said, you know how nice it is to smoke in the fog. I don't know how he knew that. If you smoke cigarettes, You know how nice it is to smoke in the fog. The smoke just blends with the fog, you know.

[38:17]

So he said, so the Zen master went up. the top of this mountain, climbed the top, and he pulled out his cigarette and he smoked it in the fog, you know, in the kind of wonderful, misty mountain. And he said, this was so wonderful that I'm never going to smoke again. And he stopped. That was pretty good. He really got the full flavor of the cigarette. a real peak moment, and there was nothing, you know, he couldn't cap that, so why just keep smoking, right? No. Yes. Carrying thing, yes. Yeah, he carried more than one thing, but Carrying more than one thing, yeah.

[39:19]

Yes, it's the relationship, that's right. So there's no rule. You have to remember, there is no rule. That's the... Because you think there's a rule. Somebody thinks there's somebody. I remember also, you know, when we used to live across the street, I mean, when we used to be at Sokoji on Bush Street, there were students rented apartments across the street eventually. And one time, Katagiri Roshi and Suzuki Roshi and myself and another student, I can't remember, it was after Zazen and Suzuki Roshi's wife was in Japan and Katagiri Roshi's wife was in Japan.

[41:02]

And so we went across the street to this apartment that was empty to have breakfast, but there No table, no furniture. So we wondered, well, what should we do? And Suzuki Roshi picked up a newspaper, and he unfolded the newspaper, and he spread out the newspaper on the floor. And when he handled the newspaper, it was no longer a newspaper. It was our table. It was our table and tablecloth. And he arranged it in such a way with such great respect that it was like, kind of like magic in a way, just a very simple thing. And then he arranged the, I can't remember what he had, some fruit or something, maybe some bread, and he arranged all that in such a way

[42:11]

that it was beautiful, you know? And then we sat down and we ate breakfast. And we didn't need tables and chairs and all this. We didn't need anything. We just used what was there, but used it in a way that was very respectful for everything and just improvised. So to me, that was a great, you know, to me, that was one of the high points of my study with him, was that particular incident. how to just take the most mundane, simple thing and with great respect to make something wonderful out of it. It's like when he says to make a Buddha, a 16-foot Buddha or a temple from a blade of grass. So when we pick up the chairs one by one carefully without making much noise, then we will have the feeling of practice in the dining room.

[43:28]

We will not make much noise, of course, but also the feeling is quite different. When we practice this way, we ourselves are Buddha, and we respect ourselves to take care To care for the chairs means our practice goes beyond the zendo. I don't know why that happened, but that means to go beyond the zendo. So that's like taking it out of the zendo, right? That's how you practice outside the zendo. So wherever you're working, how you pay attention, in the kitchen, Of course, the kitchen has this mindfulness, has this kind of practice anyway. We put a lot of effort, a lot of attention, and we always talk about the kitchen being this way, but the shop is the same. How you take care of the tools, how you take care of the benches, how you take care of the...

[44:30]

of putting everything in order at the end of the day, you've been using, how you put things away, how you, you know, if you're working in the garden, how you take care of the shovels and the picks and the trowels, you know, washing them off, keeping them clean, keeping them in order. All this is our practice. And there's no place that you're working that's not a practice place, or that you can't do that. So when the place is taken care of that way, and people come and they say, oh, there's some practice going on here. But when it's not taken care of that way, then people come and say, well, I wonder what the practice here is. So, we have to be very careful and know how to relate to things.

[45:38]

We treat things as objects, and there are no objects. We talk about no subject, no object. When we treat things as an extension of ourselves, then there are no objects. And we don't have that subject-object division. Objects, things are still things. This cup is not. But when I pick it up and drink it, then it's fulfilling its function as what is teaching us and telling us to do.

[46:43]

And if we use the tool in the wrong way, things don't work right. So we don't just impose our will on things, but we listen to what things have to tell us, and then we work together with those things. When we walk You know, we say, I am walking down the street. That's true, but that's only one side. The other side is, I am being walked by the street. Because without the street, I'm not walking. So the street is telling me how to walk. It's telling me what to do. And when I'm walking down Broadway here, that's one kind of walking. When I'm walking up the road, that's another kind of walking. The road is telling me what to do going up that way.

[47:45]

And when I'm walking this way, the road is telling me what to do going that way. So we have to pay attention to what things are telling us and teaching us and how we work together with everything with great respect. Then we begin to respect things. If we think it is easy to practice because we have a beautiful building, that's a mistake. Actually, it may be quite difficult to practice with a strong spirit in this kind of setting where we have a handsome Buddha and offer beautiful flowers to decorate our Buddha hall. We Zen Buddhists have a saying that, with a blade of grass, we create a golden Buddha, which is 16 feet high.

[48:47]

That is our spirit, so we need to practice respect for things. We don't really need to have a fancy place to practice, but we make it fancy, you know. Sometimes maybe better not to, but... I used to think, you know, when I used to go to Sokoji, it was the flower arrangements are so beautiful, you know, but I wondered if that was necessary, you know, and the lay people provide all that kind of thing, you know. But actually, it is, because it's quite wonderful, because they respect it, out of respect for the space. I was writing my memoirs yesterday, and I was writing about my first experience at Sokoji, walking into the zendo. It is a strange place, you know? And then sitting down on the seat for the first time, facing the wall,

[49:52]

And I realized that, you know, and then I started describing the room, what the room was like, you know, the altar going across the room and then the altar and the Buddha and the flowers. And then it occurred to me that everything was so well taken care of and every object in the room was expressing something. You know, it was expressing its presence because everything was so well taken care of. And at the time, I couldn't really describe it, but looking back on it, I realized that everything in the room was expressing itself and shining out. And I was sitting there just like, and all those things in the room and myself were all, everything was sitting Zazen together and expressing this Zazen together with me.

[50:57]

And I was sitting together with those things expressing the same thing. And we were all in this kind of harmonious, wonderful space. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's right. The grass, trees, walls, tile, all expressing the Buddhadharma. Absolutely. And you know, when you sit Sashin, and you know, the fifth day or sixth day, and you come out and you look, and everything is, you know, vivid and bright, It's not because everything has become vivid and bright, it's because you are open to what's actually been happening all along.

[52:06]

You let go of the barriers, let go of the... That's the nice thing about Sashin, is in spite of ourself, Yeah. Well, when I sat down, you know, after, I mean, when I walked in, I just saw all this stuff. And then I sat down and did Zazen, you know. But I didn't realize it at the time, only looking back on it, you know, when I thought, well, what was that feeling? I tried to describe the feeling I had, you know. because I couldn't describe the feeling I had at that time. But in retrospect, looking back, I realized that's the feeling, that was what was happening without my actually realizing it.

[53:13]

Yeah. Well, when things are well taken care of, it helps us to see, you know, when we shine up the silverware, then you see, you know, you've taken the coating off of it, and its true nature shines out. And the same thing with our mind. When we take the dust off our mind, regardless of what the Sixth Patriarch says, then our mind shines out.

[54:20]

Say that again. Preference for shining? Well, you know, sometimes we should let things shine out, and sometimes we should cover it. So, when... And you should know when to do which. So, you should hide your light in the dust, ordinarily. But even though you hide your light in the dust, if you have it, it will shine out. Well, don't show off. Don't show off your brilliance. Brilliance. Now don't, you know, don't be a smart ass spouting Dharma like me.

[55:29]

So, it is 8.30 and I know that We have to be on time. So thank you for participating.

[55:55]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ