This morning I sort of have a topic. People during the week will call up and I call the office and say, what's the subject of the talk? And if I answer the phone I usually say, oh, I don't know. It'll be something about Buddhism, maybe about... in how some churches will have an actual title of the sermon, you know, blah, blah, blah, verse so-and-so, chapter so-and-so, you know. And this morning I actually, I think I came up with a title. I could have answered something if I had to at least give a title, which is sort of like this, The Natural Order of Mind, is to be free from clinging.

[01:04]

So there. I'll take it from there. I've heard this a lot in many different ways. Free from clinging. We also say it in a different way in the meal chant, in part of the chant before we eat in the zendo. And we say, To desire the natural order of mind, we must be free from greed, hate, and delusion. That gives you a little more something to get your teeth into, I guess. But before I go into and get my foot more in my mouth, I always look at, I'm always inspired, and when I see folks coming in here on this Saturday morning, I say this every time I give a talk. But I really am. I mean, I look out there, it's a beautiful day, and here you are, here.

[02:09]

I wanted to check the records on why it seems that Saturday morning always seems to be a beautiful day. I can't always be beautiful, but it seems that way. I thought I could check the weather records and find out. They have that in those statistics around there. But then I say, well, why do you come here? And do you ask yourself that sometimes? Why do you come here? I ask myself, why am I still here? Why did I come here many years ago? I'm still here. And it's a good thing to renew your intention every once in a while. Why am I doing this? when I was sort of preparing for this morning, when I was sitting upstairs and downstairs and all around the town, I thought of Gauguin's painting which over the years I've thought of a lot of times, the one where the whole group of people that he was living with in Tahiti or wherever he was, they're kind of standing all in a group.

[03:19]

And he titled that painting something like, Why Are We Here? Where Are We Going? What Are We Doing? Something like that anyway. It's a very powerful painting, not just because of the title, but I mean, the title is pretty strong too. It's a question we have all asked ourselves. What are we here for? And titles of songs and things like that. Why are we here? Where are we going? What are we doing? Well, Gauguin left He left a very sophisticated life besides leaving a family also in Paris and went off into the simple life. So I don't know if he was looking for the natural order of mind. I mean, he felt these people were very simple and that they were much better off than the sophisticated Parisian society that he lived in.

[04:24]

Anyway, it's just sort of a little side thought I had. So where are we going? A lot of times people will ask, usually when we give Lausanne instruction, I say, what is the purpose of Zazen? And depending how I feel, I feel like I just want to be funny or something, or the Zen stereotype, I say there's no purpose, it's useless. And that's not so good to say to somebody who's come here sincerely trying to find out what we're doing, but there is always something to it, because if you... set up a goal or a reward or something for this, and that gets in the way.

[05:35]

And that could be part of what we call clinging. You're clinging to what you think is the reward, so you don't get there. It hinders you. Anyway, this is very unusual. I had a title and I had notes. I went to the dictionary to look up mime. Sometimes that's really very rewarding to go to a dictionary and just kind of see where the word began, what the use is. I didn't go to the Oxford because my eyes aren't so good now. We only have one of the little mini print Oxfords. But I just went to the Webster Collegiate. They said the root is, I wrote it down as Manos, but Michael reminded me that it's probably Manos, and probably Michael is right.

[06:37]

But anyway, it means spirit, a Greek word that means spirit, and that was one of the origins. And become aware of. It's an element or a complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons. Sound familiar? Some of us may. Well, you know, we have stuff, we talk about that, right? We call them skandhas. And another one, The organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activities of an organism, normal, I put that in quotations, or healthy conditions of the mental faculties.

[07:39]

To be careful. Lately I've been reading this book by this guy named Terence McKenna. The name of the book is called The Archaic Revival. He uses that title to say that we have lost something way, way back in prehistoric times, and he thinks that we could go back to it and learn something from it. I like the person who wrote the introduction or the forward to this book. His name is Tom Robbins, and he describes Terence as sort of like a tailor who makes alterations. He says, he lets out the waste on the trousers of perception and raises the hemline of reality.

[08:46]

I really like that. The trousers of perception. But Terence takes in the waste. If you don't know, who knows of Terence McKenna? Oh no, this side is pretty good. You might say his thing that he thinks is our savior is the ingredient in the psilocybin mushroom. he's kind of taken over the mantle that Tim Leary was carrying around for a while. But he doesn't approach it the same way Leary does. He doesn't think it should be a mass, you know, take everybody, take the mushrooms. He thinks it should be more respect than that. And anyway, he said something about the mind or close to the mind that I kind of liked when I was reading this. He says, we have moved ourselves out toward the edge of the galaxy...

[09:50]

when the fact is the most viable organized material in the universe is the human cerebral cortex. And the densest and richest experience in the universe is the experience you are having right now. Well, that sort of fits in, doesn't it? So we teach this without mushrooms. We can arrive at this sort of state, the natural order of mind. So someone who might ask me why we do zazen, I might say to find my true nature or find my natural order of my mind. which is maybe almost impossible to find. And that's why we do it.

[10:51]

There's a whole sutra that deals with this, called the Lankavatara Sutra. And the sutra, the story goes, is that Bodhidharma carried it with him from India into China. And it has to do with the mind. There's a few passages that I like to read, short passages from there, that talks a little bit about the mind. When things existent are regarded as being free from the bondage of mutual dependence, there is decidedly nothing but mine. I say nothing but mine. So free from the bondage of mutual dependence. Clinging?

[11:56]

Mind is a measure of all things. It is the abode of their self-nature and has nothing to do with causation and the world. It is perfect in its nature, absolutely pure. This is the measure indeed, I say. There was something I was reading in an old, well, I would call it Hindu teacher, a while back, and he has to deal a lot with who we are. His whole practice that he teaches is, who am I? So it's pretty close to what we do. He was constantly asking that question. Who is sitting here? Who's hurting? Anyway, I think you're familiar with that. And he said, when thought stops, the mind ceases. So we also teach that in Vazen.

[13:04]

We teach to not cling to the thoughts, to try not to think. In fact, in Dogen's Fukuoka Zenji, it says, how do we stop thought? We think non-thinking. So is this a way to stop the mind? Because the mind is nothing but thought. Without thought, no mind. Yet they say, everything is mind. So are we trying to stop everything? Well, the worldly way of thinking views the mind as the individual self. And there is no such substantial reality So with the substance of the skandhas, the worldly way of thinking views it as real.

[14:07]

In reality it has no existence. Mind is beyond all philosophical views, is apart from discrimination, It is not attainable, nor is it ever born. I say there is nothing but mine. Well, I better quit. That's good stuff to get working into. But it's also extremely difficult. Sounds nice. I can pretend I understand it. Oh, yeah. I can sit with it, too. You examine it. You search for the mind. You look at the thoughts. You listen to the sounds.

[15:11]

Who's hearing it? Is there nothing there? No. There is no suffering? I think so. There is. So we go on sitting, breathing, coming here on Saturday, hearing somebody tell you what we do here, trying it for yourself, maybe giving up and doing something else.

[16:34]

I like to read poems, so I picked a few. Two, actually. which I think may have something to do with my subject, what doesn't have to do with my subject. This is called, An Old Man of Few Words. The silent old man asked me to write a poem for him. The silly contradictions in the one I composed made people laugh to death Look carefully again at the truth of nonduality, and even Vimala Kirti's jar will drop like bark on a birch tree.

[18:13]

Old man at leisure. Sacred or secular manners and conventions make no difference to him. Completely free, leaving it all to heaven, he seemed like a simpleton. No one catches a glimpse inside his mind, the old man all by himself between heaven and earth. To desire the natural order of mind, we should be free from greed, hate, and delusion. Give it a try.

[19:29]

And equally penetrate

[19:40]

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