I'll be around to speak the truth to the heart of darkness It's an old story.

[01:14]

Master Hyakujo, a monk came up to Master Hyakujo and he said, what's the most wonderful thing? And Hyakujo said, sitting alone on Mount Daigo, on this mountain, The monk made a deep bow and Hyakujo hit him with his stick. The month of October, this month, I haven't been around very much. It's been a... I've taken this month as an unscheduled time, as most of you know. And from time to time, come back and Satsazen.

[02:18]

And then, next Tuesday, I'm going to Japan for two weeks to attend a conference on translating Japanese Buddhist texts into English, sponsored by the Sodo Shu, Shu Mucho. There's seven of us going. So that should be an interesting conference to decide what we're going to do, to decide how we will approach translating in a kind of an organized way. We've done a lot of translating on our own, but we've never done it in conjunction or with any help from this other source. So it's a nice coming together. And it's the first time anything like this has happened with us.

[03:24]

So it'll be interesting, and I'll tell you about it when I come back. That's not what I want to talk about. I just wanted to let you know. So I really appreciate how the Sangha has kept the practice going. It's one of the benefits of having a good strong sangha that things continue whether or not I'm around or someone else is around. And it's to the credit of the sangha that the practice continues on its own, so to speak. But when I came back today, I really appreciated our Saturday schedule, sitting a couple of periods of zazen, having service, eating breakfast in the zendo with everyone, a short work period, another period of zazen, and a lecture, a very complete kind of

[04:44]

morning practice. I remember when I first started to practice how I was driving a taxi cab in San Francisco in 1964 and I was driving all night so I'd get off at four o'clock in the morning and I don't remember whether I slept a little bit maybe a half hour or so, and then I'd walk up, I was living at Divisadero, on Fulton and Divisadero, and I'd walk up Fillmore Street at 5 o'clock in the morning, and go to the old Bush Street Zen Bo. And at that time, we only had one period of Zazen in the morning, daily Zazen, at 5.45, just like we do here. And I remember one day a woman said to Suzuki Roshi, wouldn't it be good to have two periods of zazen starting at five?

[05:56]

And he said, yeah. So we started having zazen at five o'clock. This was back in the 60s, which made people get up earlier. And the woman, I never saw her again after that. But for years and years, in Berkeley, we had Zazen at 5 o'clock in the morning, every morning. And the morning practice was very sparse. For years and years, just the sturdiest people would get up in the morning. At the time, when I started practicing, I didn't have a family, and I had nothing that I wanted to do more than sit zazen. When I started sitting zazen, I knew this is the thing I want to do more than anything else in the world.

[06:58]

It's just practice. Everything else can go. So even though it was hard for me, because I was a night person, the thing that I always hated to do more than anything else was get up in the morning. And when I was working at jobs, I was always late. 10 minutes late or 5 minutes late. Terrible. But here I was getting up to go to Zazen at 5 o'clock every morning. And often it was a struggle. But it's been my life for the past 30 years. Past 30 years or so I've been getting up doing Zazen at 5 or 5.45 or 3 or 4 depending on where I am. Monastery, you get up at 4 or 3.45 depending on schedule. Now it's easier.

[08:00]

The last couple of months it's been easier. I'm just kidding. But I've always, ever since I've been practicing, I've always enjoyed morning Zazen. People sometimes say, how come you have to get up so early to sit Zazen? Why don't you do it at seven or a reasonable hour? Because in conjunction with people's working schedules. And that sounds very reasonable. But if you look at it, it's not really possible because people go to work They have to eat breakfast. They have to do various things. And so it's difficult. And in order to sit zazen in the morning, you have to go to bed early, which is a kind of sacrifice for many people.

[09:04]

The 10 o'clock news comes on just about the time you should be going to bed. And if there's anything interesting, pretty soon it's 11. Oh yeah, all those other things you have to do before you go to bed. Then it's 1130. So if you keep doing this, then you get very stressed out. You don't get much sleep. So, and then you go into your busy day and you're falling asleep. It's not very hard. But, um, uh, we changed our Zazen back to 545 about, I don't know, ten years ago to make it easier for people to come in the morning. And that helped a lot. People started coming in the morning more easily. Why do we sit morning zazen? Why is that so nice? Well, it's like at a certain time everything

[10:14]

a certain time of night, say after midnight, things start to calm down. And as the night progresses, life settles down. And it's just wonderful to be up at that time in the morning before the daily activity starts, before all the toilets start flushing. I have to think about the drain at a certain time of day, in the morning, where all the clothes are flushing at the same time. The drain on the water system. This is something we don't usually think about. But that time of morning, before anything is stirring, I ride my bike two miles to Zendo every morning.

[11:17]

Nothing is happening. The paper boys. Was that you this morning operating your bike? No, I passed you up. I showed them my car. But usually I ride my bike. And it's just wonderful. Nothing is stirring. Not even a mouse. And to come to the zazen, to the zendo, and sit without anything going on, very different than afternoon zazen. In the afternoon, you've worked all day, your mind has been busy, you've been in the dust and fury of the life in the city. And then you sit Zazen and it's quite wonderful. But it's this buzzing mind. It takes a while. But it's a different experience sitting Zazen in the morning than it is sitting in the afternoon.

[12:23]

So I recommend trying sitting in the morning sometime, coming to the Zendo. and partaking of morning zazen, which is a little longer, it's an hour. But then we have a little bell where you can change your legs after 40 minutes and then sit the next 20 minutes. And we also have very short service in the morning, not so long as it used to be, in order for people to get out and go to work. So, mourning Zazen is something very wonderful about it. And, you know, in Dogan's time, back in the 13th century, they used to regulate Zazen by the sun and the moon.

[13:35]

They would... I'm not sure how they did this, But as the seasons changed, and the sun would come up earlier or later, they would regulate the time of doing that. Rather than going by the clock, they would do it by sun up and sunset. I'd like to find out a little more about that. I think that we always have to go by the clock because our society is run by the clock. It's not run by so much by the sun and the moon. So we have to go by the clock, but it's a very interesting concept. So the monk came up to Hyakujo and he said, what's the most wonderful thing?

[14:42]

Meaning something like Say something wonderful about enlightenment, about your enlightenment. Give me some indication. Express your enlightenment to me. Give me something that can inspire me. Yakucho said, just sitting on this mountain, sitting all alone on this mountain. And the monk made a kind of formal bow. Yang Gu Jo is saying, what I'm doing is not something extraordinary. This extraordinary thing is not extraordinary.

[15:49]

And the monk's bow had a little bit of facetiousness in it. Now, he took the stick and hit him. Kyakujo's practice was daily practice. I heard a monk I read something that a monk wrote recently talking about American practice. But he was talking about a certain kind of American practice where people go to retreats a lot, but they don't have a daily practice. So he said that the practice of going to retreats People may be doing this for a long time, but they don't have much freedom in their life.

[17:01]

Because they go to retreat and then come back home. And when they come back home, there's not a lot of practice in their life. So they go away to practice and then come back home. That was his observation. Suzuki Roshi, when he came to America, initiated everyday practice, daily practice, as the way to practice. And he always criticized people who went to retreats as their practice. At that time, there were teachers coming from all over the world, Japan, who would have a lot of sashins. They'd go from one place to another doing sashin, which was a way of initiating people into practice. But then the people, when the teacher would leave, the people didn't have any practice.

[18:07]

And Suzuki Roshi was very different. He put himself in one place and had a daily practice, and that's what that his students did was just daily practice. Even Sashin was, although Sashin was a big part of practice, the daily practice was more important. That practice should be not something special, but just a part of your daily life, like getting up in the morning, eating breakfast, washing your face, sitting Zazen, going to work. Zazen, to do Zazen and practice with that kind of attitude, then Zazen and practice becomes integral with your life without trying to do anything.

[19:13]

It's just one of the things that you do, it's like When you eat breakfast, you eat material food. And when you sit zazen, you eat spiritual food. So we need spiritual food, daily spiritual food, and daily physical food. Both is necessary. I remember how I was so unsatisfied with the religion because it was on Sunday or Saturday something you did on Sunday or Saturday. And to me that was not adequate. It was not enough. And when I discovered our practice, I was very joyful that here was a daily practice that I could do. As soon as I sat down for the first time in Zazen,

[20:16]

I realized this is something that I can do. It's not just an idea. Not just an idea about religion. It's actually putting your body and mind into the present. This is Hyakujo's sitting all alone on Mount Taiyuho. All alone, as I said many times, alone has two meanings. Its root meaning is all at one. And our usual meaning is isolated. When we say, I am all alone, it means I am isolated from other things. All alone, in its root meaning, means all at one. So it has these two meanings, but they're both legitimate.

[21:26]

I am all alone, meaning independent from everything, and at the same time, I am all at one with everything. This is zazen. Zazen is to be completely independent and at the same time completely dependent. We say Zen students should be independent, which means to be completely dependent. We depend on everything. There is nothing else except dependency. And at the same time, each one is independent. Someone asked me a question one time about in most religions we say that the priest is an intermediary between heaven and earth or

[22:43]

God and the mundane aspect of life. What about Zen? What about Buddhism? And I said something like, priest in Buddhism A priest should express the fact that there is no gap between heaven and earth. There is no, there's nothing to be an intermediary about. There's only an intermediary when we split the world into heaven and earth. When we split the universe into heaven and earth, then we need intermediaries. But a Zen student should express the reality of no gap between heaven and earth.

[23:57]

This is what Hyakujo is talking about. Just sitting all alone, all at one, and independent on this mountain. This mountain is Hyakujo himself. but there is a Mount Yakujo where he was sitting. Yakujo means something like a hundred foot chasm, tall mountain. So when I came today, this morning, I really appreciated our practice, which starts so early.

[25:03]

And we used to do Saturday morning practice at five, and then we had a one-hour work period. But people complained that it was too long, so we started sitting at six. which is pretty late for Zen practice. And cut down the work period to just cleaning up. But you know, our work is very important. I know that all of us work, you know. We have busy lives. We work all day. And when we come to the Zen Do, why should we work? We've been working all week. But work practice is not the same as our usual practice.

[26:19]

Whatever we do in our Zen practice at the Zen Dojo, is selfless activity. We don't come to practice to gain something or to do something just for ourselves. So work practice in Zen is the same as Zazen. There are many kinds of zazen. Sitting on this mountain, he could have said, Hyakujo could have said, eating rice, going to the toilet. This is the most important thing. When you really have to go to the toilet, the most important thing in the world is going to the toilet completely and wholeheartedly.

[27:26]

That's a kind of wonderful time of enlightenment, you know, when there's just one thing you have to do and you do it wholeheartedly and for no other reason than because it has to be done. That's enlightened activity. Dogen says, blowing your nose is really enlightened activity. When you have to sneeze, just... the whole universe disappears. And you come up into a completely new world. Unfortunately, it only happens once in a while, inadvertently. It's not volitional action. it would be nice to have volitional enlightenment, where all of your activity was completely selfless and wholehearted.

[28:38]

So I want to encourage everyone to take advantage of our morning practice and to take advantage of our Saturday practice, not just Zazen and lecture. But Zazen, and Zazen, and service, and eating. Eating in the zendo. At first, you know, in the beginning, eating in the zendo is, you look around and everybody seems to be doing the right thing but you. I can't do this. And besides, my legs hurt. Why do we sit here with our legs hurting while we're eating our breakfast? But if you continue, you'll see how wonderful it is. Eating a meal, eating ordinary breakfast in the Zen Dojo is completely different than eating a meal at a table.

[29:48]

Completely different. The food tastes different. the way you eat is different, and the way you receive the food is different. So it's not just eating, but it's also the way the meal is served and the way we accept the food. It's a, I don't like to use the word spiritual, but it's a wonderful example of the non-separation of spiritual and material, the oneness of spiritual and material activity, which is what our daily life, what our practice of our daily life can be. The monk wanted Hyakujo to say something spiritual, but Hyakujo hit him.

[31:07]

I'm not going to give you something spiritual. Just do what you're doing completely and unselfishly, wholeheartedly. find the spirit within every ordinary daily activity. So, Sanzen, or Zen practice, is not something that you get through your head, although it's helpful. It can be helpful. It's something that you get through your pores. That's why we talk about practice so much.

[32:12]

Daily practice, day after day. Dogen says, to study the Dharma is to study the self. Well, studying the self doesn't mean studying the self through books. It means, this word study means doing something over and over and over again until there's no separation. That's getting it through your pores. When you do something over and over, it becomes part of yourself. Otherwise, there's always this gap. So, to close the gap. That's our practice. To close the gap between heaven and earth. Heaven and hell are states of mind.

[33:26]

How do we close the gap? Do you have a question? Yes, Ross? You said that work practice at the Zendo is selfless practice. It's different than the work that we do outside. And I was thinking about resistance, and people's resistance doing work here at the Zendo, and how that is very similar to the work that we do in our livelihood, and how ultimately we should have selfless practices. Yes, I did say that, and when I said it I thought, I don't mean that the work we do, the ordinary work, should be selfish.

[34:45]

It should also be selfless. Do we work for a paycheck? Or do we work in order to involve body and mind in selfless activity. Do you think about, well, there's another hour, another $20. If you think that way, you're not very happy in your work. You know, we tend to do one thing in order to do another thing. And so we have a kind of step ladder life of doing one thing to prepare for doing something else, which is a preparation for doing something else, which is a preparation for doing something else.

[35:48]

And often we miss the moment of doing, just doing. People are very unhappy and very dissatisfied because we miss the moment of just doing. Of course there's progress. Progress is always part of our life, but our progression from one thing to another. Everything's progressing from one thing to another, but each Progression is a totality in itself. And if we're not involved in that totality of each moment, we're missing our life. This is how we practice zazen. How do we practice zazen when we're off the cushion? To be totally, totally involved

[36:55]

in each moment's activity, without selfishness, just for the activity itself. If you're ironing the clothes, you can say, well, I'll be glad when this is done so I can get down to washing the dishes. Or, you can just enjoy Ironing the clothes. Stop. Just stop right here. This is my life. Right here. Ironing the clothes. Ironing the shirt. There's no future. There's just this. When you stop and do that, it comes alive. life presents itself fully.

[37:59]

And you can do anything and enjoy it. David? You can say in the musical world, you can tell right away if you get together with a group of musicians. In the musical world, you can tell right away when you get together with a group of musicians, which ones are playing the music and which ones are playing for dollars. They're a very sad bunch. Yeah, you can hear it. Do you have any other questions? I was introduced to an idea by a Tibetan Lama that in our practicing that it's not as selfish, I mean in terms of the sitting meditation, that to think of it as being a contribution

[39:19]

the individual self is doing towards the enlightenment of all sentient beings. Yes. And I'm wondering, is there a similar notion in Zazen? Of course. Yeah, we don't do Zazen just for ourself. That's why, one, you know, when we first come to Zazen, or come to practice, we have some reason. which is usually a personal reason. But then when our practice matures, we let go of our self-preoccupation. And, you know, we say, sometimes people say, well, it's not for myself, it's for others, right? But that's also just the other side of myself. So we say, it's not for myself, it's not for others, it's just for the practice itself. So when we can actually have that kind of practice, which is just practice for the sake of practice, then that's pure practice.

[40:31]

And we also, when we sit, as I said, all at one, self disappears and there's just completeness. So everything's included, yeah. Same thing. I like your story about the sneeze. About the what? When you're sneezing. Oh, sneezing, yeah. And I was wondering, when you sneeze, you forget yourself. Well, it's letting go of all the sentient beings of your own mind. It's like dispersing all the sentient beings of your own mind. You know... I think it would be safer if you used a handkerchief.

[41:42]

Everything goes somewhere. Nothing is lost. Whether you have a handkerchief or not. Saving all sentient beings is a great koan. How do I save all sentient beings? How is that possible? What does it mean, save? Save from what? We usually say, save from suffering and delusion. So, when we say, I vow to save all sentient beings, that's in response to the First Noble Truth, which is, sentient beings are suffering. I vow to save them. That's the response. So, there's one person that you can work on.

[42:45]

And that's you, right? The one person that you have to deliver is yourself. And when you deliver yourself, you're delivering all beings. Because you realize that all beings are no beings. Or all beings are one being. At the same time, if you think, I'm going to save all these individual beings in some dualistic way, of course it's not. That's like trying to catch the tail of a comet. It's not possible to meet every single person and save them in some way.

[43:54]

When you understand what salvation is, then that's saving all sentient beings. The sixth ancestor says, saving all sentient beings doesn't mean that I, Hui Neng, am going to individually do something for each person. It means saving the sentient beings of my own mind. The delusive mind, the avaricious mind, the lustful mind, all the mental states which are hindrances. That's what he means by saving all sentient beings from suffering and delusion. So, work on yourself. That's our practice. Shakyamuni Buddha is reported to have said, each one of you has to find your own salvation.

[45:09]

And that's your practice. No one else is going to save you. Nothing else is going to save you. So that's why we put practice ahead of supplication. So, that's why in Buddhism, or especially in Zen, we have what's called practice. And if we don't practice, we just think about it. And you can think about it, and think about it, and you can pray, and you can supplicate, and whatever, and that may work. I won't say it won't work. It may work. Anything can happen. But we put our emphasis on the practice because that's all there is. That's why I keep encouraging you to practice.

[46:20]

That's all I can do. All my talks is just to encourage you to practice. You can listen to lectures forever, but if you don't practice, it doesn't mean so much. Some people have an affinity for practice. Some people don't. If you don't have an affinity for it, then there are other practices you can do. But if you have an affinity for it, then do it. and you will be supported by others. So thank you very much.

[47:15]

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