I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. The first part of our talk this morning is for those under 75, for our dear children. So I want to hear everybody's name, Alex. I'm Alex. Mira. Yeah. Milo. Okay. Well, welcome. And today we're going to talk about circles. Circles.

[01:00]

You know what a circle is? Of course you do. There's one. Exactly. That's it. That's a circle. Right. How many circles can you point to in this room? I? Yeah? I can see circles on your glasses. Glasses. Yeah. Yeah. That post. That's right. Yes. Well, the box is not a circle. Beyond the box. The pot. Yeah, the pot. The big pot and the little pot. Yes. Yeah. So everywhere you... Almost everywhere there are circles, right? Almost everywhere there are circles. There are lots of names for circles. Can you think of some other names for circles?

[02:01]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's, do you have a bi? A bi or a tri? Well, does anybody have a bicycle? You have a bicycle. Anybody have a tricycle? A wheel. Yes, a wheel is another name for a circle. And a cycle is another name for a circle. Do you have a bicycle? Or a tricycle? Well, a bicycle is a vehicle which has two circles called wheels.

[03:08]

But they're not bicycles or tricycles yet. They're only tricycles or bicycles when you get on them and start moving. Because the two wheels are two circles. And a cycle means when they move. They're moving around in a cycle. And there is a yuna cycle. Like a one wheel. That's right, just one wheel. And there are circles that we don't see. Cycles that we don't see. Like inside your body. The Buddha has a little circle in the middle of his forehead. And that little circle in the middle of his forehead is for light. That's for light to come forth.

[04:14]

So, you have a circle inside of your body called cycle, called blood. Do you know about where, that every circle has a middle, a center? It's called the axle or the hub. You know what a hub is? Hub is the center of a circle, and the circle circulates around the hub, around the center. So you are a circle. Yeah. You are a circle, and you have a center. Can you tell me where your center is? Where is the center of you?

[05:22]

that's pretty good I like that one he goes like this yeah that's that's your center and where's the rest of you well that's good I like that So, there's also circulation. Circulation. That's where energy circles around, right? So, did you ever see an orange tree? Or orange tree. A tree is round. That's another circle. But the leaves aren't. The roots are kind of circular. They go into the ground and they suck up the nutrients.

[06:29]

Trees eat food. Do you know that? And they drink water. They eat food and they drink water. And they grow up tall and then they produce fruit. An orange tree produces fruit, which is round. and then that little ball falls down and feeds the plant as well as planting new seeds which grow up and make new orange trees. That's also a circle called a cycle. Water evaporates. Do you know what evaporation means? The sun heats up the water and then the water dries out and then it's not there anymore. Where did it go? Where does water go when it dries out? Yes. It goes up into the sky, but you don't see it going up, but you see it when you see the clouds.

[07:35]

The sun reflects on the water. The clouds? The clouds hold the seeds, hold the water. Then the water comes down again and is called rain. So that's another circle. So the only time you get to see it is when it comes down. You see it when it comes down, but you also see it when you go to the ocean. And you also see it when you turn on the tap. So water is always circling around. It's circling around all the time through everything. You know, the trees hold gallons and gallons of water. Trees are all full of water. And the water comes out through the leaves, goes back and keeps circling around. Water circulates through everything, round and round and round.

[08:38]

He's talking about on the top of an umbrella, there's a circle. What? Umbrella. Umbrella. He was talking about on the top of that umbrella, there's a circle. That's right. The umbrella keeps the rain from... But the umbrella is also... round. Everything is round. Well, in some sense, everything is round. That's right. So... If everything is round, where does a circle begin and end? Does a circle have a beginning and an end? No. It just keeps going.

[09:57]

It keeps going and [...] going. Round and round and round. But we can say this is the beginning if we want to. So we make beginnings and endings. But actually the circle just keeps going around and around. Yes, everything is always just going around and around and around. And make new things. New things are always being made by just going around and around. And this going around and around takes new shapes all the time. And one of those new shapes is called you. Woo, don't fall off of your, don't fall off of your what?

[11:00]

No. Circle. Circle. This is round. This is another circle, right? Yeah. So you're sitting on a circle and your circle is sitting on a circle. Well, the circle that your circle is sitting on is called the world. And the world is also going around and around and around. And all the planets are also going around and around. In a circle. In a circle, yeah. Circles, within circles, within circles. Do you have any questions about circles?

[12:06]

No. Those are circles. Those are circles up there. Yeah, those lamps are circles. Lots of fruits are like circles. Lots of fruits are shaped like circles. That's right. That's right. Your bowls and your plates are circles. Your cups and glasses are circles. And balls are circles. Balls are circles. And the end of your spoon is a circle. Yeah, the end of your spoon is a kind of That's right. The end of your spoon is a kind of oblate spheroid. The end of that beater is a circle too. That was pointed out in the beginning.

[13:10]

That's a circle, it only has a tail on it. Well, that's the end of our talk. And I hope you're now more aware of circles than you were before you came here. You're welcome. So as an introduction, now that we're aware of the circularity of things, practice is called the circle, the ring of the way.

[14:56]

Ring is a circle, and the circularity Yes, the practice is called the endless circularity, endless circle of the way, which has no beginning and no end. So this is why we say we practice for the sake of practice. which has no beginning and no end. There's no special result. There's no special state of mind. This zazen itself is simply sitting in the center of this circle.

[16:02]

and allowing, you know, we say, as I said, the Buddha up here has a little circle in his forehead, which is where light, in the Lotus Sutra, in various sutras, the Buddha's emitting a light from his forehead. But that's of course metaphorical because light just emanates from the whole body, not just from the forehead. So zazen is the practice of sitting in the midst of the center of the circle. Each one of us is centered and each one of us is a circle.

[17:11]

For a Buddhist or a Zen student or anybody, the main thing in life The main purpose of life is to let that light from the center of the circle emanate. If we try to attain something or get something or have some other purpose, it's off the mark. So that's why we say attainment of non-attainment. The real attainment is making sure that there's no attainment, nothing to get. When we get something that stands in the way of emitting light,

[18:28]

So it's a substitute. Our worldly life is a gaining practice. We work for some purpose and we expect some result. We want something. So in the world of wanting, that's called worldly life. in the realm of letting go is called Buddha life. So purpose of Zazen practice is simply to let go and let Buddha's light come through. It's not easy. This is why practice is not easy.

[19:30]

It's not that your legs hurt when you sit zazen. It's that it's really hard to keep practice pure. It's not that worldly life is different than Buddha life, but when worldly life and Buddha life have the same merge, emergence, or purpose or non-purpose, then practice becomes pure. So often in practice, Buddhist practice, there's always the attempt or the tendency to separate worldly life from practice life because it's so hard to put them together. It's just easier to fall into, to let, you know, reduce, let go of the world of gaining, working for some special result.

[20:46]

But our practice is to, in the midst of our worldly life, to let Buddha's light emanate. And so sometimes we don't know whether we're practicing or not practicing. Most of the time we don't. Most of the time we don't know what we're doing. But we continue to do that. We continue to make that effort And it's so easy to fall into the realm of wanting something because worldly life demands a product. So very hard to actually keep our practice without a gaining idea.

[22:00]

this very radical kind of practice for anyone. And no one is perfect. No one can practice perfectly. No one can keep the precepts perfectly. In a, Soon, next month, we'll have a lay ordination and we'll take the precepts and we'll say, but I can't keep the precepts. There's gotta be a precept that you know that you can't maintain. There may be 10 precepts that you, or 16 that you feel you can't maintain. But you take them anyway.

[23:08]

That's practice. You do it anyway, even though you know you're gonna fail. Or you're not gonna be able to maintain the precepts or maintain pure practice. But if you wait until you can do that before you have a lay ordination. There won't be any such thing as lay ordination. So we bring all of our doubts, imperfection, stupidity, greed, anger, delusion, we bring it all to practice with us and enter into practice with it. And this becomes the compost for our Buddha tree. As Suzuki Roshi would like to say, all of the stuff that we have becomes compost for our practice so the Buddha tree can grow.

[24:21]

Just like The circularity of our practice, all of our problems and shortcomings and transgressions become the stuff from which the lotus grows, actually. We don't try to get rid of it or eliminate it, but we should understand what we're doing. So if we think in terms of circularity, a circle and a center, to always make the effort to stand in the center of the circle. to sit in the center of the circle, to always know where that is.

[25:28]

That's our practice. Main thing in practice is to always maintain the center. We get off the center, we get eccentric, and then we have to become concentric. We get egocentric, and then we have to come back to being buddhacentric. over and over again, it is over and over. And in Zazen, the mind wanders and you bring it back. In your daily life, the mind wanders and you bring it back, or the body wanders and you bring it back. What am I doing is the koan. So re-minding, it's called the practice of recollection. always continually reminding ourselves what our practice is. If we do that, then you have consistent, constant practice, which includes doing things right and doing things wrong.

[26:32]

It includes screwing up, and it includes getting the boat on an even keel. So the boat is always rocking in the waves. It's always rocking in the waves. And to maintain a deep keel, you know, boat has to have a keel. Otherwise, it just flops around. So the keel is like the center board. And the center board, depending on the weight and the dimensions of the boat, has to be deep enough to keep the boat from going over. And the boat keeps, a good boat will center itself. So it's constantly centering itself. Constantly finding center.

[27:33]

Rocking this way and rocking that way and finding its center. And sometimes we have problems which are really big, big problems. And when we have a big problem, we have to find a deep, deep, deep keel that keeps us stable in the face of anything, no matter what happens. This is what Zazen is about. It's not about gaining anything. If you could gain something, then it's not yours. If you can get rid of everything, you find out what is yours. So Zazen is not gaining, it's giving up, letting go, and finding that deep keel, which is yours.

[28:42]

already. So that's what's called finding yourself. That's why Sashin is important, because in Sashin there's something demanded of you that you don't ordinarily Situations arise which you would ordinarily avoid, but because you can't avoid the situation, you get into a position where you can't stay and you can't leave. That's the critical point where you go through, where you find the way through, and where you go down deeper. So deeper, deeper, and deeper. That's the point.

[30:01]

Thinking about circles and cycles, Our life is a cycle, each moment, every breath, inhaling and exhaling is one cycle of life. And each cycle is conditioned, the next cycle is conditioned on the present cycle, which conditions the next cycle. So our life is really from moment to moment, birth and death on each moment. And then there are bigger cycles of birth and death, and larger cycles of birth and death. To describe what happens is not appropriate for me. But my experience and understanding is that one cycle follows another and there are bigger cycles and bigger cycles and cycles that we call, there's a semi-circle called birth and death.

[31:18]

What we think of as a straight line Buddhists think of it as a semi-circle of birth and death, but a full circle is birth and death and back around. So if we understand the nature of cycles and circulation and the way everything is continually in nature circulating, we can understand the circulatory nature of our birth and death. Anyway, I'm reminded of Master Hongjue's practice admonitions. where he says so many wonderful things.

[32:26]

I've read this before. He says, the way wanders in the empty middle of the circle, reaching the vacancy where appearances are forgotten. This is what we sometimes call the absolute samadhi, where we're not We're not fooled by appearances.

[34:01]

We can see through appearances to the reality or the essence. So the way wanders in the empty middle of the circle, reaching the vacancy where appearances are forgotten. The pure ultimate self blazes, brilliant, simply from inherent illumination. Facing the boundary of the object world without yet creating the sense gates, relate the subtlety of how to eliminate the effects of the swirling flow of arising and extinction. Rely only on the source of creation. If you feel a shadow of a hair's gap, nothing will be received. Just experience and respond appropriately.

[35:04]

From this singular impact, many thousands of roads open up, and all things are preeminent. With this unification, I radiantly speak the Dharma. The self divides into 10 billion distinct illuminating spirits. Distinguish these without falling into names and classifications, and accord fully without effort. The mirror is clear and magnanimous. The valley is empty but echoes. From the beginning, unbound by seeing and hearing, the genuine self romps and plays in samadhi without obstruction. When embodied like this, how could it not be beneficial? The question comes up, who is the boss?

[36:08]

Who is the master? Who's directing things? How do you know what to do? When we stay centered in the center of our life, we know what to do. When we know how to trust ourself, actually, when we know how to trust ourself and trust in what we call our practice, which is to stay in the center of our life, then everything works together because It's the universe that's saying what to do. When we divorce ourselves from the universe, from the center of things, then we have to create a self, a special self that needs to feed itself, needs to protect itself.

[37:28]

So, whole idea is to let go. The hardest thing to do. You know, we say the koan, step off from the 100 foot pole. You have to step off from the 100 foot pole. Once you get up there, you have to step off. Into what? Scary place. Scary place stepping off from your 100 foot pole. because we really cling. We cling to ourself. You know, when we're sitting in zazen, we cling to ourself. And sitting zazen is learning how to let go so that you find what it is that's holding you up. What is it that's holding you up? What is it that you're relying on? How can you let go and at the same time cooperate with the source?

[38:56]

When we don't trust, then we feel that we have to do a lot. But when we trust and let go, we find that we're held up and we know what to do. And we don't have to do so much. We can let the universe work through us. We can let the light work through us. Because we become vehicles for that light, that essence. This is the basis, actually, of all religious practice. It's not peculiar to Buddhism or Zen. It's really the basis of all religious practice is to let go. Sometimes we say it's said by Zen edicts that Zen practice, this practice is the basis of all religious practices.

[40:12]

It doesn't matter what your religious practice is, as long as you understand the true essence. As long as you know how to practice the true essence, which is basic. It's not Buddhism or Zen. It's just called that. When you actually are truly practicing Zazen, there's no Buddhism. There's no Zen. There's no you or me. But we just call things by names in order to identify them, to delineate things so we can think about them, discuss them. So everything is empty. Everything is empty of its own nature. And by emptying out,

[41:17]

We let the nature do its thing. So when we came in here, little Sam was giving the talk. And the rest is just commentary. Do you have a question? Okay. Beings are numberless.

[42:16]

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