I vow to taste the truth of the Tarkatives words. Good evening. Hear that?

[01:34]

When Master Tungshan was leaving his teacher, Yuen Yen, for the last time, and going on his own way. He asked his teacher, how will I portray you? And his teacher said, just tell them, just say, this, just this. If they ask you, what was he like? Just say, just like this. So Tozan went on his way, or Dongshan. Tozan is his Japanese name. Dongshan went on his way, and as he was crossing a stream, he looked at his reflection in the water.

[03:34]

And when he saw his reflection in the water, he had some big understanding. So he wrote a little gatha poem about it, which has been translated in various ways. But paraphrasing Suzuki Roshi's understanding, who paraphrased Tozan's understanding, Tozan said something like, Don't try to see yourself or the world as an object. The you which is seen as an object is not you yourself. As I go my way now, everywhere I turn I see myself.

[04:39]

It is me, or he is me, or she is me, but I am not it, or he or she. If you have this understanding that you as an object is not your true self, then you have your own real way, true way. Dungshan's understanding or his teaching is the fountainhead of our school, so we should understand Master Dungshan's words or we should understand his intent or his That's the purpose of our practice.

[05:56]

The purpose of our practice is to discover or uncover or realize our true Self, which is not the Self that we see as an object, and to realize objects, the world of objects, as not just the world of objects. Tozan said, everywhere I turn I see myself or I meet myself. So in our practice, our daily practice, Our purpose is to meet ourself wherever we turn.

[07:01]

If we don't have this as a goal or as a purpose in our practice, then our practice doesn't have much meaning. Everywhere I turn, I meet myself. This is the koan of our practice. Not just myself in a world of objects, as the center of a world of objects, but everywhere I turn, I meet myself. So where do we meet ourself? Where do I meet myself? How do I do that? How do I not just see everything as an object, but how do I relate to everything as actually myself?

[08:17]

How do we create harmonious relationships with everything around us? And in our activity, what is the main thing? So there's a word that we know about called samadhi. Samadhi is expressed in various ways, explained in various ways, but in our understanding, samadhi means to be.

[09:26]

that which you encounter, to be that which you are meditating with. we let go of thinking mind, discursive mind, discriminating mind, and become one with mind, true mind. In our understanding, there are actually many aspects of mind, but when we say mind, One aspect of the mind is thinking mind, conscious thinking mind, but fundamental mind is not just thinking mind and goes beyond all aspects of thought.

[10:39]

And it's called big mind, daixin, magnanimous mind, or big mind. which is the foundation of all stillness and activity. So in zazen we encounter big mind in its still aspect. And in activity, we encounter a big mind in all of our working aspect, the working aspect of mind, the passing thoughts and activities.

[11:45]

So Samadhi has two aspects to be in Zazen to be one with universal mind that's beyond thinking and discrimination. And in our activity, Samadhi is to be at one with each activity as myself. So, we know what zazen is, sort of, but when we engage in activity to see every activity, every minute activity, big or small, everything we meet and encounter as myself, this is samadhi.

[12:54]

It's not some kind of trick. It just means realizing who you are. If we work in the kitchen, the most important aspect of working in the kitchen is to cultivate samadhi. The reason that you were in the kitchen is to cultivate samadhi. And the excuse for it is, we have to eat. So there are actually two things going on. One is that we like to eat. So we have a kitchen, and somebody goes in the kitchen and makes the food. You go to the kitchen and make the food. I'll work in the office. We divvy up the activity.

[13:57]

And we have these various tasks in order to run a practice place. And one of them is The kitchen is a really good example of practice because, especially here in this building, because it's the one place where a number of people can work together day after day with a teacher. So the Tenzo is the teacher. The way the Tenzo teaches is mainly by example. So if you're put into the kitchen, you kind of watch the way the Tenzo behaves, because the Tenzo is always teaching with his body.

[15:10]

and with his movement, and with his attitude, and with his benevolence, and with his strictness, and with his mistakes. So a teacher is not always perfect. A teacher is half good and half bad. And a student is inspired by the good parts and disappointed by the bad side. But you have to be able to learn from both sides. So when the person is in that position, you're learning from both sides. So a good student has to know how to do that. So if someone goes into the kitchen, they should be prepared for one, cultivate samadhi, mind.

[16:19]

And two, to learn from the tenzo, from their good side and from their bad side. Because no matter where you go, you'll always have the same situation. So someone may say, well, I'll go someplace else. But you end up in the same place. Because it's not so much what the teacher is like, but it's what you yourself as a student are like. we can learn a lot by just watching ants or criminals. It doesn't matter. Whatever, we can pick up a little kid off the street and we can say, this is your teacher.

[17:23]

And if you submit to that, you learn everything you need to know. If you really concentrate on that and accept it, you'll learn everything you need to know. One of Dungshan's questions when he was looking for his teacher was, somebody said, rocks, tiles, pebbles, streams, birds, all preach the Dharma. And he said, is that true? Is that true? And he kept going from one teacher to another, asking this question, saying, is that true? So when your mind, body and mind, is the body and mind of samadhi,

[18:39]

you realize that everything is your teacher, including your teacher. You don't need to be angry, or upset, or evasive, or fast or slow. Dogen Zenji in the Tenzo Kyokun, his talk on how the Tenzo should behave, says there are three kinds of mind. Big mind, parental mind and joyful mind.

[19:49]

Now, the thing that everyone likes is joy. And what people mostly are looking for is happiness and joy. So, why not be joyful? That's what we want. How come we're not? Why is it that we can't always be joyful? We should be always joyful. Because that's what we want. And if that's what we want, how come we don't make it so? So our natural state, you know, is joyful. Have you ever been in your natural state? Sometimes.

[20:50]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Samadhi is natural state. By natural state, I mean the state of mind which is before discrimination. The baby's mind. The baby's mind is a samadhi mind, innocent mind, before discriminating, before blaming, before projecting onto others, the mind that takes care of itself. the responsible mind, the responsive mind, the mind which doesn't think of someone else as other or something else as other.

[22:09]

So when our main purpose is to cultivate this open mind, wide open mind, wide open, fundamental, innocent, receptive mind, then we're naturally in a joyous state. because there's nothing hindering this joyful mind. So the most important thing is to cultivate this mind. When I say cultivate, you can say it's not something that we create, but something that we nourish. So we have two things that we want.

[23:24]

One is to get out the food, because everybody wants to eat. They're all hungry. And the other is to just be where we are, doing what we're doing, with complete open mind, nourishing that open mind, and relating to each other as ourself. So, what happens often is we get caught up in our goal. The goal is to get out the food, make the food, do the recipes and get everybody there on time and make sure everybody's working and and get the food out so everybody can eat on time and make it good.

[24:28]

And that's admirable, but that's one side. The other side is to be completely present for its own sake. It has nothing to do with, I don't say nothing to do with, but it's not dependent on getting the food out, getting something done with a goal, it's just being present in each moment's activity with what one is doing, at the same time. When people eat the food, they're thoroughly nourished, because we eat the food with the same mind, samadhi mind.

[25:31]

When we eat dinner, we have a little bit of silence. And in that silence, we can just eat. And when we are cooking, we can just cook, completely cooking. completely chopping, completely washing bowls. Dogen says, when you wash the bowl, you should treat the bowl as your own head. You know, when you're sounding the bells for service, you should sound the bell as your own head. If you hit it too hard, you give yourself a headache If you hit the Mikugyo too hard, it may have a heart attack. You have to respond to these objects, not as objects.

[26:39]

The bell is not an object. You don't hit the bell. You never hit the bell. You never hit the Mikugyo. Do you hit yourself? You can. Sometimes we take it out on objects, right? We do. Not only do we take it out on objects, we take it out on each other. Our anger and our frustrations. We have to be very careful. So when we get a bunch of people together, a group of people together in the kitchen, who are continually moving around each other and each one has a little different capability, different personality, different problems. There's an edge.

[27:45]

And if we only see it as a job and not as a practice, we lose it. Same thing goes for when you're working in the office, or with anyone, in all of our activity. If you just see it as a job, you're better off going downtown. At least you get paid. I can't imagine why anyone would want to be working around anywhere in Zen Center. and not want to be harmonious and create something wonderful when you have the opportunity, not just feed off of Zen Center as if it was your mother's milk or something, you know. We have to grow up and contribute something, you know.

[28:47]

you know, when our practice is not mature, then we see Zen Center as a kind of big beast, you know, which we can slice off a piece and eat it, get nourished by it, you know. But when our practice is mature, we want to support it, we want to make it work, we want to put all of our energy into helping everyone to practice. That should be our goal. That's maturity, is to help everyone, you know, put your life on the line so that everyone can be benefited by what you're doing. Otherwise, what's the point? So, in order to develop or nourish samadhi, the power of samadhi, when you enter the kitchen, you just forget all of your ... let go of your mind and just be completely open with nothing in your mind at all.

[30:24]

And when someone asks you to do something, okay, how do you want me to do it? How should I do it? But so often we go in and we say, oh, I know how to do that. I've chopped onions a million times. What do you think I am, baby? I know how to make this thing. You don't have to tell me how to make this. I know how to do that, blah, blah, blah. Contentious mind. Disharmonious mind. Wanting to do everything our own way. Always wanting to do things our own way. When we know how to let go of our own way, you know, The doorway to Zen practice is letting go of our own way.

[31:30]

And some people can be practicing for 10, 15 years and still not enter the door. It's literally true. The doorway is to let go of all your opinions and all your ideas and all the ways you think you know how to do something. And just let your mind be wide open. That's the quick way to realization. And when you can do that, you learn very quickly. And then people say, why don't you do it? Why don't you do it your way? And people ask you to do it your way. when you have some realization.

[32:35]

So sometimes we think, well, if I let go of all my ideas and all my opinions, what'll happen to me? I'll be at their mercy. But if you let go of all of your ideas and opinions, and wanting your own way, then you'll be your own boss, actually. That's when you become your own boss. That's when you become a mature person, because you have no more fears. you become a fearless person. The more opinions and ideas and wanting to do it our own way just means we just have that much more fear.

[33:48]

The most aggressive people who want to destroy things are the most fearful. Territorial. This is mine. I want this. That's yours. But I'll take it. It's all fear. To let go is to find yourself. And when you let go and allow yourself to be turned, then you find that you're actually turning at the same time. Turning and being turned in a very easy way, harmonious way, interacting with everything as yourself. Because when you let go of what you think you are and what you think you want, you become yourself by letting, by dropping body and mind.

[34:59]

become your true self, and then you realize that everything around you is yourself. You're no longer fighting with things or contending. It doesn't matter if people call you something you don't like. There's nothing to defend. So, samadhi, to nourish this samadhi, which is the power of this instant, called samadhi power, and it's not something mysterious or exotic. It's simply letting go. In the meal chant, it's called the natural order of mind.

[36:07]

It's also called clear mind, unobstructed mind. In zazen it's the same. When you have samadhi power in zazen, you can allow the pain in your legs to be there. You can allow all the thoughts to rush through your mind like a torrent. You're just not bothered by it. Not a problem. Nothing to worry about. And when you're working with people or wherever, nothing to worry about. Every moment has its magic. Everything you encounter is alive and well. And happiness is underneath all of your activity.

[37:31]

even in the most wretched, painful state. When you see someone who has realization, even though they have problems, there's something buoyant and happy about them. and they make people around them happy just by their presence. But it doesn't mean no problems, or no pain, or even no suffering. Matter of fact, nirvana arises through our suffering.

[38:39]

Suffering and nirvana are inseparable. So, You know, we say in the practice, there's no goal. You know, that's what people understand, there's no goal. But no goal doesn't mean that there's nothing to do, or nothing to focus on. The goal of practice is to come to yourself. That's the goal.

[39:43]

The usual goal is to go out somewhere and follow some path, some road, some object. But the goal of practice is to come and meet yourself, or to meet yourself in everything that you do. So it's a goal of no goal. It's not someplace that you're going to. It's every moment's activity. Don't waste our time. That's the point. Can we waste time? Yes and no. Every moment, you know, is a moment of life, we think. Every moment is a moment of life and death, actually. So we can appreciate our life and we can appreciate our death in each moment.

[40:46]

And we can appreciate the life around us and the death around us on each moment. Birth and death go on and on and on. this existence, what we call our existence, is constantly transforming. But life itself is continuous. So in Zazen, we live this, we touch this continuous life And in our activity, we go through the realm of transformations. But they're not two different things.

[41:57]

So we can appreciate everything that happens to us and we can appreciate our life moment by moment if our mind is completely wide open. If we don't get caught up in expectations and dreams and opinions and likes and dislikes. It's just all there to appreciate. Heaven and hell are just our own attitudes. So maybe that's enough.

[43:05]

I have a few minutes if you have any questions. What is the difference between pain and suffering? Well pain is pain and suffering is when you don't like it. Losing the self is the same as meeting the self. forgetting the self, you know, we use the same words, the opposite words to mean the same thing.

[44:14]

So one way of saying it is to meet, the other way of saying it is to forget, right? Yeah, so when we drop, that's when we meet. So, you know, there are various ways of meeting. There are people who meet by playing the guitar together, people who meet by singing together, and people who meet by playing games together. Those are all meeting. For a Zen student, we meet by dropping everything. We meet at the bottom of activity, where in the deep silence, which is common to all of us, you don't have to do anything, and we meet in other ways also, but fundamentally we meet in a deep stillness, in deep silence.

[45:30]

And when we work together in some place, that has to be the fundamental thing that holds us together. That's our camaraderie. That's the basis of our camaraderie. And there can be lots of different kinds of camaraderie which arise out of that. But that basic meeting at the bottom of Say no. You can tell when someone's taking advantage of you. Say no. It's okay. You have to have your yes and you have to have your no. It's not opinions. It's not an opinion. It's basic

[46:36]

Lack of self-protection doesn't mean that you put your hand in the lion's mouth. Although you could, you know. But to the extent that you need to take care of yourself, you take care of yourself. So if someone puts their hand on you and you don't want that, you should turn around and say, don't do that. My son went to a weekend class, I guess you call it, called Kid Power, and the instructor

[47:48]

dresses up in protective gear and teaches the kids how to protect themselves against an intruder. Little girls this high, you know, and kids kind of raising up to about 12, and then they demonstrated it for us, you know, after the weekend, and these little kids, you know, little girls kicking this guy in the crotch and learning how to use their elbows. And the thing is, first of all, you always say by non-violent means, please don't touch me, please don't. And then you verbalize what you don't want to have happen to you. And then they go through this little act, you know, where the instructor says, well, you know, can't I touch you some more?

[48:53]

And, no, I'll tell my mommy. Oh, don't tell your mommy. If you do that anymore, I'll tell my mom. Okay. But then they instruct her to go tell her mom. Anyway, that's part of the thing. So, I thought about that. There is a kind of protection that you need to demonstrate, otherwise you get taken advantage of, especially women and children. And there has to be a way to protect yourself in an extreme situation and it's good to learn how to do that. These kids felt far more confident after that thing, you know, they felt that they could handle certain situations. Thank you for speaking about the kitchen.

[50:02]

I'd like to invite you to work in the kitchen. I'd love to work in the kitchen. I love working in the kitchen. I love working with you. I was thinking, as you were talking, I was thinking... Okay, don't see the world in yourself, you can talk to it. So, and you said, well, there's not anything in particular that you do talk to it. Well, during sasheen at Tassajara, I worked in the kitchen about an hour a day, because I wanted to have that contact with the kitchen. The kitchen is always so isolated from the rest of sasheen, and so people thought I was going to go in there and do something.

[51:13]

I was going to go in there and make the soup real well or change the ... no, I just said, what should I do? What do you want me to do? And they said, well, cut these onions. And I said, well, how do you want them cut? And she said, well, slice it this way and then slice it that way. And I thought, that's great. And I learned something about slicing onions. I've sliced onions all my life, and I know very well how to slice onions. I've only sliced them one way, but she taught me a different way to slice them, and I was really grateful for that. And then when I went in the next day to slice onions, I knew how to do it. So I just sliced onions all the time, and I made some kind of contact with each onion. Because each onion has to be sliced in a different way, each one has a different personality. Each onion has a different personality and you have to be very careful that you treat it right, otherwise the knife will slip off because they get slippery, especially the big ones, and you're going to cut yourself.

[52:25]

And then to be able to cut all the way to the end, see how far you can cut before you throw the end away. So each onion is a kind of challenge and you meet that onion and the onion determines how you cut it. So the onion is cutting me as well as me cutting the onion. The onion is informing me and I'm cutting the onion, so there's this reciprocal kind of harmonious activity going on between myself and the onion. And when I get out of the kitchen I just feel so happy. It's true. Well, happy onions. They're happy onions, and we ate them and all felt good. Who what? Who went into the soup? Well, the onions and I all went into the soup, but the onions came out visibly as soup. you can't suffer if you're not an object?

[53:52]

Well I think there's maybe something to that. I don't know about what can suffer and what can't, but you're less likely to suffer if you have flexibility and if you don't As soon as you have a boundary, you have suffering. Suffering is caused by boundaries. As you know, when you sit in zazen, you have a boundary called this skin. And if that's your boundary, you will suffer. Your boundary is, this is as much as I can take. If you have that boundary, you will definitely suffer. You have to open your mind to accept everything.

[54:56]

There's a saying that the mouth of a monk is like an oven. Everything goes in and gets cooked. There's nothing that doesn't go in and get cooked. And big mind means that you open your mind to include everything. and the mind just keeps expanding, rather than your limitations getting narrower. So, it's good to know what our limits are, but they're not what we think they are. So, I'd love to come work in the kitchen anytime that I can. But I also have other things to do. But I don't want to work in the kitchen as an example.

[55:59]

I just want to work in there as a laborer. But see, the thing is that you work in the morning and I'm free in the afternoon when nobody's there. Thank you very much.

[56:28]

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