Kezan said, at tea time, I drink tea. At meal time, I eat rice. So this is exactly the same thing that Suzuki Roshi was saying. And this is the spirit of studying yourself. I want to... This is kind of a little treat here, if I can do it. Do some of you have the text, the book? Yes. Yeah, okay. Yes. Good. It is impossible to study ourselves without some teaching.

[02:23]

If you want to know what is water, because it is impossible to know what is water. So you want science, scientists want laboratory and in various way they may study. what is water. So it is possible to know what kind of element water has or when wind comes what kind of form water takes.

[03:33]

And what is the nature of water? It always comes down. But it is impossible to know water itself. It is the same thing with ourselves. It is impossible to know what is I. That is why we have teaching. By teaching, we understand what is ourselves. But teaching is not ourselves. some explanation of ourselves.

[04:40]

So if you attach to the teaching or to the teacher, that is a big mistake. The purpose of to study teaching is to know yourselves. Through teaching you should know yourselves. So that is why we do not attach to evil teaching or teaching. So that was part of the original lecture from 1965 that this chapter was taken from. I hope you could understand that. I just was very moved when I listened to it this afternoon.

[05:45]

So, The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism but to study ourselves. So this is what we're doing in here. This is what we do in the Zendo. And actually this is what we do all the time. Studying ourselves, I was thinking very much as I was reflecting on the time Los Angeles this weekend, very complicated ceremonies. Zasen is a very simple ceremony, but in each case, at the heart of studying ourself is just the question, how?

[06:50]

How do I do this? And that was one of Sojin's, I think, one of his key teachings. He would say, why is not a good question. Why is not a Zen question. How is the question. How do I move? How do I sit? How do I hold my body? And to do that, we have various teachings that are models for us. But the models are just models. They are not the essence. So this is what Suzuki Rishi says, it is the same thing with us. We need some teaching, but just by studying the teaching alone, it is impossible to know what I in myself am. Through the teaching, we may understand our human nature, but the teaching is not we ourselves.

[08:01]

It is some explanation of ourselves. So the teaching is taken from one perspective. You could look at it as how, but you could also look at it as why, as an explanation. And so we don't want to get stuck on the why. We want to constantly be asking ourselves, how do I do this? How do I show up in this moment? in this difficult circumstance, how am I? And how do I do the next thing? So if you are attached to the teaching or to the teacher, that is a big mistake. And he says, this is interesting, the moment you meet a teacher, You should leave the teacher and be independent.

[09:06]

Does anyone have a sense of what he means by that? Seems a challenging thing to say. Ross? I'm reminded of the story of Sojin's. He was commenting on something similar, where the teacher says, go away. doesn't literally mean or she doesn't literally mean go away it means what i've heard was come back to yourself and don't attach to me yeah i think that's right uh and also just every bit of the teaching is conditional and dependent upon a moment so teacher may say go away and implicit in that is for now. And you can come back.

[10:11]

You know, there's nothing, nothing is permanent. So if you go away, you're just going away for now. And you reflect on yourself. And when you're ready to come back, you come back. And the teacher will or the sangha will welcome you back in. You need a teacher so that you can become independent. If you are not attached to him, the teacher will show you the way to yourself. You have a teacher for yourself, not for the teacher. And this is something also that I remember Sojin Roshi saying, someone asked him, what's the most important thing for a teacher to keep in mind? And he said, never want anything from your student for yourself.

[11:14]

So you don't want to build your ego or yourself on your student's accomplishments. It's just you want to pour yourself as best you can to offer yourself to the student and then let the student find her own way. And I think that's what Suzuki Roshi is talking. Ultimately, you have to study yourself. You're not dependent upon what your teacher, or any teacher, or friend, family member, how you're not dependent upon how they see you, but there's information there. There's important information. So in this next section, Suzuki Roshi says, Rinzai

[12:26]

An early Chinese Zen master analyzed how to teach his disciples in four ways. Sometimes he talked about the disciple herself. Sometimes he talked about the teaching itself. Sometimes he gave an interpretation of the disciple or the teaching. And finally, Sometimes he did not give any instruction at all to his disciples. He knew that even without being given an instruction, a student is a student. Strictly speaking, there is no need to teach the student because the student himself is Buddha, even though she may not be aware of it. So we have these four modes of teaching.

[13:28]

To say something direct to a student, to say something direct about the teaching, to give an interpretation for the student or of the teaching, which is basically, this is my sense, how is it with you? What do you think? And finally, just to let the student find out for her himself to find themselves. But the teacher is always there. The teacher is not ignoring. As we talked in the control chapter two weeks ago, The teacher is always just observing whether they respond or not.

[14:34]

So I'll say, you know, from my perspective, and I've thought about this a lot, and maybe it's correct and maybe it isn't, when I'm meeting with a student, I wait for the student to open the door, to allow or invite me to say what I see, or the student reveals something about themself that is new, And sometimes I may know, sometimes I may already know this, but even if I know it, if a student hasn't actually opened that door, I'm not going to go in.

[15:41]

Now maybe that's right, maybe that's wrong. But that's, I feel like that's the way I've learned. And generally I feel like that's what what I learned from being with Sojin and watching him. You know, he would wait until I opened up some subject, and then, if I opened that door, he could be very direct. He could be strong. He could be fierce. But I had invited that. Does that make any sense to you? I don't know if any of you who studied the Sojin, do you have some experience of that? Sue? My experience was in docusons.

[16:43]

Speak up, please. My experience was in...my memory is of some docusons where... He would sit quietly always and wait for me to bring up the topic. And it might be about just what's going on in my life, a personal frustration. He was always encouraging and sympathetic. And if I asked him a question, it was often about oryoki. He had endless patience for that. Thank you. By the way, anyone If you have something to say out there, please raise your hand and I'll call on you. I'm watching the screen. Yeah, we had two hands up earlier. I'm not sure, Heather or Jeremiah. Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah, if either of you wanted to unmute and share. Sure. Well, my thought is from earlier.

[17:51]

it's still lingering with me and um that's the first time i've heard suzuki roshi's voice i've only read or heard people repeat so it was very powerful and i was really struck by the question of the role of English as a second language and the way it would slow down the delivery and how it might land differently, whatever he was teaching because of that. I really enjoyed listening to the slowness of his message. And I just wonder if you have any experience relating to that. I have a lot of personal experience relating to that.

[18:53]

I learned it the hard way. You know, I spent a lot of time in Asia, in multicultural settings where English was not the first language. And I really had to simplify my language and also to break it into discrete clauses and be patient with the process of, in that case, in the process of translating. And I have grown to really enjoy that, that it helps me. I feel like there's a refinement of my thinking and language that is different from kind of our fast-talking, fast-thinking, fast-responding method that we might have with our peers.

[19:56]

And I think with Suzuki Roshi, you could hear the wheels turning, right? It's quite wonderful. Susan, I wondered, English as a second language teacher, do you have any comment on that process? more about Suzuki Roshi. What I've noticed over the years is the way in which students say something, the essence of what they're saying is sometimes different than the translation. So I think in Suzuki Roshi's transcripts, you see that, that the essence quite different than reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which is also good but it's edited.

[21:00]

Yeah. So sometimes it can just be a word or a phrase or the wrong order to the sentence but in the original language it makes sense so there's some essence there that we possibly miss when we read this. Yeah, I know that Sojin worked with and puzzled over editing Suzuki Roshi. And this was an interesting piece because it was sort of close to what's in the book, but not exactly so, right? Some of them are quite different. Some of the chapters are much more highly edited. And as I I think I said in the introduction two weeks ago when Suzuki Roshi got his copy of the book, you know, he said something like, oh, I have to read this to see what it is I teach.

[22:03]

So, yeah, I really love listening to him because there's a, also, there's something about the human voice and the emotion and the affect that it carries. that's quite different from what you get off the page. Yeah. Peter has his hands up. Yeah, Peter. I recall from my early years around Zen Center with some embarrassment, actually, that there was a There was a period of time when people were expressing their understanding about Buddhism or Zen or something like that. It would sound like they were speaking as though English were their second language. And when I think of it now, it seems a little weird, but it's understandable, I suppose.

[23:15]

But anyway, I'm glad we have those recordings. with some different ears. I think somewhere in Sojin Roshi's book, he says, you know, we found ourselves talking like him. And that's easy to understand. You know, we have these voices are so deep within us that we take on the shape of their expression or even the... manner of their voice and their syntax. It's really interesting. Yeah, Gimple. Yeah, I mean the other thing that strikes me kind of based on what Peter said is there's a little bit of two things going on because we can ascribe him being a second English as a second language resulting in this sort of vocal habit

[24:22]

but also it seems pretty apparent that he's just being very methodical in his word choices. And that's a little bit different. You can hear him thinking about what the right word is. I think in Crooked Cucumber, David Chadwick's biography of Suzuki Roshi, somewhere in there was a passage which someone who was a Japanese priest and speaker said there was something, there was a different character and depth to his teaching in English than his teaching in Japanese. And I think we can, I don't think there's any answer to that, I think it's just something that we can ponder and reflect on and feel grateful for. Grateful to have it.

[25:23]

I'm going to read on a little bit, okay? So speaking about the student, Even though she is aware of her true nature, if she is attached to this awareness, that is already wrong. When he is not aware of it, he has everything. But when he becomes aware of it, he thinks that what he is aware of is himself, which is a big mistake. So, I think that this awareness is It's not that it isn't oneself. It's an expression of oneself.

[26:30]

It's an expression of one's thinking mind, which is not mistaken. The problem in all these cases is if we get caught on it. If we get caught on a teaching, if we get caught on a teacher, if we get caught on a particular awareness, then usually we're missing what is happening in front of us. When you do not hear anything from the teacher but just sit, this is called teaching without teaching. But sometimes this is not sufficient. So we listen to lectures and have discussion. So traditionally there are three ways that we, there are three aspects of our practice that kind of make us fully rounded as students or as practitioners.

[27:36]

The first method is just sazen. And the second method is dokasan, meeting with a teacher. And the third aspect is study. All three of those go together in the formation of ourselves as a whole practitioner. These are the necessary elements to this practice of studying yourself. Any one of them is not necessarily complete. They all reflect on each other. So we listen to lectures and have discussion, but we must remember, we should remember, that the purpose of practice in a particular place is to study ourselves.

[28:44]

So, to study ourselves, the function or the purpose of this is so that we can be free of ourselves. And he goes on, he talks about that later, where he talks about Dogen's verse, Dogen's lines from Genjokan, to study the self, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the Self is to forget the Self. And then it goes on. So, in order to be free, we're doing this very broad practice of studying ourself. And we're studying ourself from different angles. We're studying it internally. We're just facing the wall and we're encountering

[29:53]

the activity of our mind and body and meeting it and adjusting to it, making minute adjustments in our posture, in our state of mind. And when we meet with the teacher, sometimes the teacher, often the teacher is listening and so we're expressing ourselves and then sometimes we are listening to the teacher who is mirroring back what she or he sees in us at that moment. And when we study the teachings, we study the sutras, we study Dogen and all of the ancestors, we're looking at the collective knowledge, the collective vision of wisdom that has accumulated over 2500 years. And what can we make of this?

[31:00]

How can we use this? What's the teaching there for us that we can really incorporate into our lives? To be independent, we study. Like the scientists, we have to have some means to study. We need a teacher because it is impossible to study ourselves by ourselves. But you should not make a mistake. You should not take what you have learned with a teacher for you yourself. The study you make with your teacher is a part of your everyday life, a part of your incessant activity. So, We have to have this... I think in our school we don't take the teacher as a guru.

[32:08]

We don't necessarily assume that everything a teacher says about us is correct. I can't tell you how many times Sochin was often very tough with me because I was a kind of wily student sometimes. And, you know, sometimes he would say things that were painful, say things that were hard to hear. I came to a position where if there was something like that that was presented to me, if it hurt, it hurt. And it hurt then. But I never, every time I walked out of his room, I would tell myself, there's something

[33:25]

I should try to understand and learn in this encounter. And I'm not going to dismiss this out of hand. I'm going to hold it lightly and think about it. And I did that many times. And I would come to a point where I might have some understanding of what was true and useful in what he was saying. It might still be painful to accept about myself. And also, I may not fully agree, but I would always try to find that kernel of truth. And if I could find it, then I would go back and share with him what it was I understood.

[34:30]

And thank you. So I wonder if we should take five minutes or a couple of minutes and stand up and stretch? In this sense, there is no difference between the practice and activity you have in your everyday life.

[36:40]

So to find the meaning of your life in the zendo is to find the meaning of your everyday activity. To be aware of the meaning of your life, you practice zaza. And this is why, as I've often said, we have this practice which is unusual for many zendos, Usually when you leave the Zendo, in most places, at the door you turn and you face the altar and you bow. You do a Gatsho bow. Here we face the door and we do a Shashu bow, a small bow, and step over the threshold because we're not closing an activity, we're actually continuing our activity and taking it into the world. I think, to me, that's a beautiful expression of our practice. So, the zendo is just, to me, the zendo is a safe place.

[37:47]

A relatively quiet place. It's a little less busy than the world outside the gate. but it's not different from that. And the idea is to cultivate ourselves in Zazen so that we carry our Zazen with us so that we're always studying ourself. So I'll leave some space here for questions or comments. Anything here in the room? Anything out there? Zoom land. Yeah, Ellen. Right at the beginning you talked about the koan, ordinary mind is the way.

[38:48]

Yeah. And you said it was just like this koan of studying the self. And I was just wondering kind of how you see that. That's not what I said, actually. What I was saying was just that What I was talking about was Kezon's words, when tea is served, drink tea. When the meal is served, eat the rice. I was equating that with what Suzuki Roshi says. We just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism. That said, Ordinary mind, to me, is... Ordinary mind, ordinary life is the regulation of our life.

[39:50]

So, it's to do what we want to do at the appropriate time. And I think that's what... Ordinary has that envelope of meaning of things in the proper order. So when it's time for tea, you drink tea. When the macadamia nut chocolates are passed around, you take a macadamia nut chocolate, unless you can't. So I do see that there's a resonance. And what Kezon was, Kezon was explicating for Gikai what ordinary mind is the way meant to him. Does that make sense? No. Can you say what does make sense? So you weren't equating it with studying the self.

[40:55]

I am equating with studies. The way we study the self is to do everything in its appropriate moment. That is how we study the self. That isn't what I would say, but that's okay. What would you say? I would say studying the self is sort of You know, just paying attention. That's what I would say. But that doesn't necessarily have to do with ordering the next thing. I'm not talking about ordering the next thing. I'm talking about... I think what he's talking about... Now we're talking about Keisa or Suzuki Roshi? Doesn't matter, it's the same. Is... do everything in its appropriate moment.

[42:01]

So there's not thinking about the next thing. It's like when we're drinking tea, we just drink tea. We don't think about the zazen period that's going to follow it. And I believe that's my understanding of what he means by ordinary mind, just everything in its appropriate, proper moment in its Dharma position. Does someone want to help me with this? Ross? Well, I thought, when I think of ordinary, I think of nothing extra. Because we get, when we're out of the ordinary, it tends to be something layered onto it. So, if I think about Logan's to study the Buddha ways, to study the self, we get to see what's extra and what's not. And if we study the self and forget the self, then that to me feels like what you're saying, that we just take the tea and sip it.

[43:11]

We just take the bowl of rice. But we tend to want to be special and do something extra and flamboyant. I remember when Soja was talking about sounding the makugyo, the fish in the front of the azendo there. And some people like do a little flourish, you know, they'll like, um, it's just, you just, bop, [...] bop. We want to, we want to entertain. We want to be something a little extra. Yeah. But wouldn't you say studying yourself is seeing that you do that? Wouldn't you say, I mean, I would say studying yourself is seeing that you want to add that extra thing. That comes up. Yeah. This is... Or someone might be kind enough to tell you that you're doing something. Yeah, but you said it to yourself. It's not like somebody else was telling you, but you're watching yourself do that. Yeah. I think that's part of it. I'm sorry, I don't know your name.

[44:13]

What? Someone else, someone out there. One of the things that I love about... I'll get back to you in a moment. One of the things that... that I really felt when I went to Japan to do some training was that what I really appreciated about the practice that we have here is that there were none of those extra curlicues that I think Ross was referring to in our practice. We had subtracted stuff But we didn't add anything. We didn't make it more Baroque in any way. And I could see that in what I saw in the Soto temples. You know, it was, oh, I can see where this comes from. And we simplified it to fit our, appropriately, to fit our space. And that really gave me a good feeling.

[45:18]

I think that what I'm hearing, I think, is the question of The question is, what is studying yourself? Is that correct? Yeah. You know, so I think that there are moments when studying yourself calls for awareness and self-consciousness and there are times when your in unity with yourself and your activities, and you don't have to think about it anymore. Is that studying yourself? Yeah. Or that's the... You know, I would say even when I'm bowing, on one hand it's very automatic what I do, and I'm constantly adjusting it according to the decrepitude of my body.

[46:24]

But to study the Self is actually thinking about each movement of my body, of my knees, of my arms, my elbows, thinking, breaking it down, not in a self-conscious way, but just all of the elements of that. And that's part of studying yourself. But you don't have to do that all the time. You know, you can't think about that all the time when you're dancing. You think about that when you're learning something, right? Right. But when I'm dancing, I wouldn't call it studying. I mean, when I'm not thinking about myself, I wouldn't call it studying myself. Maybe not. Maybe you'd call that expressing yourself. But you can't express yourself without having done an awful lot of study. I totally agree with that. Okay. And I think that that's the That is the dynamic in our bodhisattva path.

[47:30]

So when we think about the paramitas, the perfections of the bodhisattva, a bodhisattva doesn't have to think about them. Those are descriptions of how a realized bodhisattva acts. Whereas us, who are on the bodhisattva path, We have to think about these as distinct and interrelated practices. So we have to have some awareness of it, but the awareness is not the goal. It's part of the method. There was a handout here. Mike had his hand up. Oh, yeah, I think I'm enjoying moving forward. I just wanted to touch in that somehow that next line in the Genja Koan really opens up studying the self.

[48:35]

When we forget the self, we're confirmed by the 10,000 beings. When I study the self, what I am doing is I'm seeing that me and all beings simultaneously arise together. and the dropping away of body and mind. That's good. That's right. That's where Dogen would take it, and I think that's in line with our practice. I'm going to read a little further. I have to skip stuff. So to feel something about Buddhism is not the main point. Whether the feeling is good or bad is out of the question. We do not mind whatever it is. Sometimes we do maybe. Buddhism is not good or bad. We are doing what we should do. That is Buddhism. Of course some encouragement is necessary but that encouragement is just encouragement.

[49:36]

It's not the true purpose of practice. It is just medicine. When we become discouraged we want some medicine. When we are in good spirits we do not need any medicine. You should not mistake medicine for food. Sometimes medicine is necessary, but it should not become our food. This is something I've been talking about and I didn't realize it was in here, but everything, every Dharma teaching is medicine. Everything that you read in the sutras is medicine that is designed, and everything that a teacher says to you, is designed to bring you back into balance. So it's a corrective, it's a healing substance, but it's not food. If you eat medicine, if you take medicine as food, you're going to get sick.

[50:41]

Food is also a kind of medicine. And if you eat too much of it, you get sick. So we should understand that underneath that, a teaching is not the absolute truth. A teaching is just, if it's a teaching for us, it's a teaching because it's bringing us into balance at this particular moment, in this particular set of circumstances. And then the next moment, there may be another teaching. And you may hear a teacher give, a student may ask, two students may ask the same question, and they may get a completely different answer because their circumstances are actually different. And so the teaching is just a medicine to bring us back to the balance. Does that make sense? So of Rinzai's four ways of practice, the perfect one is not to give a student any interpretation of himself, not to give her any encouragement.

[52:14]

I'm not so sure about that. Maybe that worked in Japan, but maybe not to encourage them too much. not to make them dependent for a teacher, not to make the student dependent upon the encouragement that they get from the teacher. But still, I think it's really important in our culture to give encouragement, to give acknowledgement when somebody has made an effort. That's just kindness. And I don't want to... I just don't think we're not going to strip that out of our practice.

[53:16]

The teaching may then... I'm sorry, if we think of ourselves as our bodies, the teaching then may be our clothing. Sometimes we talk about our clothing. Sometimes we talk about our body. I was thinking just in Los Angeles we had one lunch where about five or six of us, we did nothing but talk about our clothing. Some Dozen people love to talk about their robes. But we shouldn't get caught on them. Neither our body nor our clothing is actually ourselves. We ourselves are the big activity. We are just expressing the smallest particle of the big activity. That is all. Before we open our mouths, we are already expressing the biggest existence, including ourselves.

[54:18]

I'm sorry, I skipped over something. We're just expressing the smallest particle of the big activity. That is all. So it's all right to talk about ourselves. but actually that there's no need to do so. Before we open our mouths, we're already expressing the big experience, including ourselves. I also say it's okay to talk about yourself. Sometimes it's important to talk about yourself. But we talk about ourselves not to have a friend, a partner, a teacher fix us. Sometimes we have to talk about ourselves because what I find is that's the way I can unload my head. And so if I say something, then I hear myself saying something, then I don't have to carry it around. Now that may be because I fall short of enlightenment, but that's part of my methodology.

[55:24]

Dogen Zenji said, to study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves. When you become attached to a temporal expression of your true nature it is necessary to talk about Buddhism or else you will think the temporal expression is that. What I think he's speaking about here is he's encouraging us to use Buddhist tools. So to understand, to talk about Buddhism means to understand Buddhist principles, to understand the basic teachings, going back to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Paths, and all of the different approaches that we find in our teachers over many, many hundreds of years. So that's, to me, that's the tool set that I rely on. when something is challenging me, when something is troubling me, I mostly rely on what I know to be Buddhist tools because they've proven useful over many, many years to ancestors, Buddhists and ancestors before us.

[56:57]

There are many other tool sets, right? There are psychological tool sets. There's different modalities of studying the self. And those are fine. And they're important. And if they work for you, great. Yep, Sue. What does temporal expression mean? When you become attached to a temporal expression of your true nature, it means when you think the way things are, at this moment is real. You know, so somebody insults you and you get really angry. We tend to reify those things. It tends to seem very real. And we attach to that. And we can form resentments, we can form all kinds of

[58:01]

There can be all kinds of mental formations that arise with that. So that's what I think he means by a temporal expression. It is necessary to talk about Buddhism or else. You will think the temporal expression is it. But this particular expression of it is not it. And yet, at the same time, it is it. For a while, this is it. So this is a really important thing to be aware of when you have a strong feeling. And when you have a strong feeling, just to recognize this is it right at the moment. And you can ask yourself, how is this going to feel an hour from now?

[59:06]

How is this going to feel tonight or tomorrow morning? And I guarantee it's not going to feel exactly the same. That fire or intensity or urgency that you feel at this moment is going to shift. And that is looking at the nature of impermanence itself. And so that, if we want to say, what is it? It is this impermanence that is it. It's moving. So whatever we feel at any given moment is a manifestation at that moment. And at the same time, we understand that it is of a nature to change. so that you will realize this fact it is necessary to study Buddhism. But the purpose of studying Buddhism is to study ourselves and to forget ourselves.

[60:16]

When we forget ourselves, we actually are the true activity of the big existence or reality itself. I think this gets back to your question, right? To Ellen's question. Yes, we have to go through this process of studying ourself. If we don't study ourself, we're not going to be able to forget it. Self is going to come back and keep knocking us in the head. But when we forget ourself, then we just act. I'm always using metaphors from playing music or any other kind of expression. So today I had a rehearsal doing a concert or a concert show at the back room in Berkeley on Sunday and it's wonderful because in the course of rehearsing I notice my mind moving in and out of awareness and forgetting.

[61:29]

It's just constantly flipping back and forth between those modes. And when something comes up, you know, it's interesting, if somebody misses a cue, I hear that, I notice that, and awareness kicks in. If everything is going and the music is flowing, then I don't really have to think about it. But I think that that's just the same as the rest of our life, that there are places where we're aware and we're thinking about what's unfolding, and they're thinking, and there are other places where it's just unfolding, it's just flowing. And neither one is it. Yes? Can you explain a little more the meaning of big existence? I'm sorry, should I repeat that?

[62:36]

I'm sorry, your name again? Alex. Alex is asking, what is the meaning of big existence? And what Suzuki Roshi says is, when we forget ourselves, we actually are the true activity of the big existence or reality ourselves. The big existence... You could call it big mind. You could call it, as Dogen calls it, total dynamic working. The big existence is the manifestation of the entire universe. And that it is always unfolding. It's always in motion. Within that there's a stillness. And within the stillness there's emotion, but it's big, all-inclusive existence.

[63:39]

Does that make sense? A little bit. What doesn't make sense? Just how can my temporal self be the same as the universe? How could it be different? Where else could you be functioning? Someplace apart from the universe? of the universe, not as the universe itself. No, but every component is in microcosm the whole thing. Every component is linked, intimately connected to the whole thing. That's miraculous and impossible to get your mind around. But That's, I think, what we come to understand in practice.

[64:40]

But isn't that only true if we give up this I? Yeah. Well, no. It's true, irrespective. It's just when we're attached to the I, we can't see it. It's not that it is or isn't true. It's always true. It's just that we're blinded by the self. Right? All we can see is our self as the center of the universe. And we do think we're the center of the universe. But you're the center of the universe. You're the center of the universe. It's all centered. But when we're attached to the teaching, when we're attached to the teacher, when we're attached to the self, then we can't see the forest for the trees.

[65:44]

When we realize this fact, there is no problem... I'm sorry, I'm going to go back a sentence so we just get the context. When we forget ourselves, we actually are the true activity of the big existence or reality itself. When we realize this fact, there's no problem whatsoever in this world and we can enjoy ourself without feeling any difficulties. Maybe so. Maybe not. There's still suffering in this world. But from another way of looking at it, it's complete. It's not perfect as it is. It's as it is. I'm not comfortable with this. Once we inject this idea of perfection, we create another problem for ourselves. But it is as it is.

[66:51]

It is complete at this moment and can change and will inevitably change. The purpose of our practice is to be aware of this fact. So we have a few more minutes. Any thoughts or questions? Mary, you have your hand. I'm just wanting to ask you, are you hedging the idea that we can enjoy our life without feeling any difficulties? Am I doing what? Are you hedging that? You're questioning that? I mean, that sounds like a complete statement. And it sounds like a promise. And you were questioning that. I think what Suzuki Roshi is pointing to, and what Sojin pointed to, and maybe I haven't got there yet, is that we can appreciate

[67:56]

difficulties. Our difficulties are also our teachers. This is why, as I've often said, the Buddha realm that we live in is the Saha world. It's the world where we, the modality of waking up is enduring difficulties. That is the mode. It's not glorious celestial flowers raining from the heavens, that would be very nice. Or a wonderful, enlightening bomb dripping off of trees, that would be nice. No, we wake up by having to deal with the challenges of our life. And so what we're pointed to is, yes, it's hard, and this is part of the the path of awakening so we don't wish it away. I'm just wondering if there's a place where the difficulties become something that one experiences as necessary or a gift or

[69:20]

part of everything, like the idea of holding everything, the idea of it is all present, and that experience of it all being present in the same moment, the difficulties and the gift in the blessing, is complete. I mean, that's the completeness that he's talking about, that it includes everything. Yeah. That is one kind of openness that we can come to. That's, I think, what Suzuki Roshi is saying here. Any thoughts about this here? Ross? I think about the lotus and muddy water. that we think that our muddy, murky life of pain and suffering and all that is just that.

[70:25]

So what is the lotus blossom that comes out of that? What does that look like? Did you hear that? Yeah, I think that that's right. We think of muddy water as dirty. But something incredibly beautiful arises out of it, which draws, actually, the nutrients from that muddy water. I mean, if it was completely clear and distilled water, the lotus couldn't grow. So we grow. We're lotuses in that muddy water. Yeah, that's really helpful. Other thoughts or questions? Yeah? I guess, I mean, it seems to me that the place where we come to appreciate our difficulties as our teachers and as students positive in some way is, I believe, is a place one can get to.

[71:33]

I would be surprised to be told it was a place where we could stay. You don't stay anywhere. Right. You cannot stay anywhere. And... When you're sitting by the bedside of someone who is ill or who is dying, we accompany them. We come alongside. We can help them breathe. Or we can just, just sit by the bedside and without doing anything. be helpful presence. And that's what we can offer as bodhisattvas. And so that person doesn't necessarily stay in that distress.

[72:36]

But it's also really good not to romanticize or idealize suffering. Someone once asked me, is suffering redemptive. And I said, not necessarily. And they got really pissed off. But it can be, but not necessarily. Irrespective of that, you will suffer. And what we're learning here, by studying ourself, we're learning in very minute particular ways how we respond to what is arising in our body and mind and our circumstances.

[73:37]

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