A small group of boys, sort of almost becoming young men, about 13 years old, and we have been doing practices together and talking about dharma. And it's great fun, I really enjoy their spirit. So the other day we were talking about morality, and one of the boys said that when he sometimes treats people in a shabby way, he doesn't necessarily feel badly about it or notice even. In fact, he said maybe he does it with some frequency.

[01:05]

But at night, when he goes to bed after having done this, if he can notice and his mind is quiet, he feels a very bad feeling inside, and he knows it's a feeling of regret and shame for how he behaved. And all the other boys in the group agree that they also have those kind of feelings sometimes. And it's usually not when they do something that they don't feel good about, but it's later. If they have a moment when they're not busy, they feel sometimes a subtle feeling, sometimes a hard-to-notice feeling, a bad feeling for

[02:13]

how they behaved. So as we discussed this, we all agreed that somehow this true feeling, and we couldn't figure out where it came from, how to get this bad feeling, who made them have it, they couldn't figure out where it came from, but we did agree that this feeling is the beginning of or the seed of true right conduct, and that to be able to identify this feeling and bring it into our lives consciously is what it means to be mature, because they're concerned with what does it mean to be a mature person. So today we're devoting ourselves to quieting our minds and not

[03:30]

being busy, and to letting go of giving up, making a donation of the surface of our minds so that we can dive deep within ourself to find our true heart, our true feelings. And it's kind of in a way an odd way that we do this. We don't do it by looking for our true feelings. We do it by making a firm commitment to being with our posture and our breathing, having a real devotion and determination that we will let go

[04:37]

of everything and only be with our posture, our body, and our breathing. And this is how, this is our method for uncovering our true heart. If thoughts arise in the mind or feelings of motions of various kinds, we give them up. We make a donation. Maybe by the end of today, Green Gulch will be very enriched by all your donations of thoughts and feelings that you will maybe give up and donate to the temple, to Manjushri. And if it helps, you can, when you notice that you're thinking or preoccupied and not aware of your posture and your breathing, you can label the thoughts that you're having, you know, thoughts of the future, worried thoughts, self-absorbed thoughts, obsessive thoughts, pop music.

[05:57]

I shouldn't have said that. Now you'll all, the Beatles will be reigning in Zendo. Anyway, label it, just lightly, whatever, no special label, whatever comes to mind, and that's a good way of taking note of it and letting go of it and coming back to your posture and your breathing. So that might be useful. And this is the way we, by being aware of thoughts and emotions, labeling them or not, but just being aware of them and coming back to our posture and our breathing, this is the way we give up our surface mind, so that something deeper can arise. Again, it's not that we're ignoring our thoughts or trying to repress our thoughts. It's more like we're paying attention to them but not staring at them, we're looking at them out of the corner of our eye.

[07:09]

Usually, we're either trying very hard to ignore our thoughts and feelings, or we're really interested, too interested. So we have both problems, I think. Sometimes I think that the machine of our American culture is passionately devoted to this process of ignoring our thoughts and feelings, and we are given tremendous amounts of images designed to pull us away from our own thoughts and feelings. If we didn't try to avoid our thoughts and feelings, I think our economy would collapse, and everybody actually said, I'm only going to really be aware. There would be a collapse of the economy. So that's one extreme, you know, let's have sex, drugs, rock and roll, videos, video games, tapes, tape machines, popular books, sports, fashion, Buddhism.

[08:44]

Whatever, we can get our hands on to avoid looking at ourselves. That's the one extreme. The other extreme is that we are so interested in everything that we're thinking and feeling that we can hardly notice anybody else. But today, we're taking a middle path. We're not ignoring our thoughts and feelings, we're aware from the corner of our eye, but we're not all that interested in ourselves. We're interested, but not that interested. Because actually, it isn't all that interesting, is it? That's one of the great things you learn in zazen, you know. I'm interesting, but I'm not that interesting, you know. Actually, there's a certain quality of repetitiveness, have you noticed this? To the thoughts that arise in the mind. So in this way, you know, with this middle ground between being too interested and being, you know, avoiding, it's odd, but somehow through this process of using provisionally

[10:14]

our posture and our breath to focus our mind and find this middle ground, something else emerges. And we notice many things that we might not ordinarily notice. Sometimes we have many insights about our life that we might not have been able to have. Of course, if we do have such insights, we label them and go back to our posture and breathing without being too interested in them. You might, you know, solve all your problems, but don't be too interested, just label it, thought of solving all my problems, back to breathing, whatever it is. We just come back. But like I say, in the process something very unusual often happens. Our life suddenly opens up in all directions.

[11:33]

And then we can appreciate ourself and our conditioning, our repetitive mind and our confusion. We can appreciate this when our life opens up wide in all directions. We can appreciate this narrowness of our life as a kind of gift, a kind of offering that we uniquely are making, coming out of this wider, wider life, a life that almost has no boundaries at all. And when our life opens up in this way and we can really appreciate this almost boundless life and appreciate our individual life as coming out of that life as a gift, then we call this bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, the mind that accepts and joins with all of reality.

[12:45]

The mind that is in love with the whole world. The mind of the bodhisattva. We become a bodhisattva, a being in love with the whole world. Like all love in this human world, the love of the bodhisattva is not always an easy love. If you love something, you will feel pain sometime. I think I probably said that before, but let me say it again because I think it's really true. If you love something, you will feel pain sometime. If you protect yourself from love, your life will be dead.

[13:58]

Maybe it is possible to avoid pain, but in doing this you will avoid your life. To be alive is to love something, and to love is to be open to pain. So when our life unfolds in this wide way that I'm speaking of, it's a tremendous relief not to be stuck anymore with our limits and the smallness of our life. What a relief, you know, not to have to drag that around anymore and feel like that's it. So it's wonderful. But also there is a lot of sadness too, and a lot of grief, because to be human is to be imperfect, to love is to be open to pain, and to share personally in the grief and imperfection of all human beings.

[15:22]

So the bodhisattva has a lot of joy in his or her sense of relief not to be limited to this small self. And also the bodhisattva has a lot of suffering and a lot of loss almost every day, some feeling of loss. One of my Zen heroes is the poet Ryokan, and some of you know about Ryokan. He's my ideal Zen priest. And I remember his dharma name was Daigu, which means great fool. And one of the people who was here in the Togobetsu Sashin was named Daigu after Ryokan. And we were talking about that name and about Ryokan, particularly since one of our members at Zen Center also has that dharma name, Daigu. So we were talking about it, and I was saying, yeah, Ryokan is my favorite, my ideal, you know, that's who I'm trying to emulate.

[16:39]

And all the guys in the Togobetsu Sashin looked at me, you know, askance, like, what? Because Ryokan is kind of weird. He was famous for being foolish rather than enlightened. And there are many wonderful stories about Ryokan. I'll tell you one. Somebody once told him that it was good luck to find money on the road. So he wanted good luck, and so he figured, well, so he had some money, he threw it on the road, and he found it. He picked it up, and he waited for the good luck, but nothing happened. So he kept trying it again and again, you know, throw the money down and sort of look around and go find it and wait for the good luck, and nothing happened. And he was a little kind of absent-minded, so once when he did this, he forgot where he had thrown the money, and he couldn't find it.

[17:46]

So he's looking all over for the money and, you know, getting very upset. And eventually he found it, and he said, wow, what good luck. So then he was convinced. And there are many stories like this about Ryokan. He was kind of a complete failure, you know, he just lived in a little hut, didn't do much for anybody. But he's probably the most loved figure, you know, in Japanese Soto Zen. And he was a wonderful poet. Here's a little poem of his. One bowl for water, one bowl for rice. My life is like an old, run-down hermitage. Poor, simple, quiet.

[19:02]

Today, for noon service, we're going to chant and bow and dedicate to the people who were killed in the horrible bombing in Oklahoma City. I guess the worst, by far the worst act of terrorism in this country, I don't know if in any country. And I find it personally almost impossible to understand how people could do such a thing. I mean, I have never been able to understand terrorism, but there is political terrorism that you could almost understand.

[20:36]

But this is a kind of lunacy, complete lunacy. And whoever did this thing must be terribly, terribly confused and twisted up about the nature of their own heart. And it seemed as if this event was done by a militia, what they call a militia group that is a kind of white supremacist, survivalist group. And apparently there are many, many people belonging to such groups. It's become quite a thing in the last five or ten years as people become more confused.

[21:53]

So it's hard to really understand something like this, which comes out of the tremendous violence that we have all around us every day. Some act of violence happens, many acts of violence happen in our human world, and one would like to go to a quiet Buddhist temple and forget about such things. One would like to go to a place, a place that's safe and peaceful, where people are not violent, and despite their shortcomings, are kind to one another. And it is wonderful to be able to be in such a place, where you can see that human beings don't have to be shut off from one another.

[23:11]

But when our life opens up in the way that I'm speaking of, when we enter the Bodhisattva path and open our life in this way, we can't avoid not only remembering and thinking about events like this, but we have to be able to completely accept and digest such events. A body and mind is impermanent. My body, your body. My mind, your mind is impermanent. All things pass away. Our world is passing away, and we must incorporate this into our zazen practice. We must breathe into it. We must face it. We must let go within it. We can't avoid it. So we must accept it.

[24:38]

And yet as a human being, we cannot accept such things. Such things shock us and make us angry, make us grieve, make us dismayed, make us almost ashamed to be human. And we feel that we have to do something in whatever way that we can to promote peace and understanding in our world. Peace and understanding are not noble ideas. They are realities that enter our lives and that we work on in our lives every day in the Dharma. And if our zazen, together as a Sangha, is not deep enough and wide enough and stable enough to meet this kind of violence and to tame this kind of violence, then what good is our zazen?

[25:58]

What good is our practice? In Genjo Koan, Dogen Zenji says these famous lines, To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be confirmed by the myriad things. When confirmed by the myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and mind of others, drops away. No trace of realization remains and this no trace continues endlessly. So real Dharma study is not a matter of intellect. It's not a matter of faith. It really isn't anything to do with Buddhism even.

[27:17]

A real Dharma study is to honestly and deeply study the self. Honestly and deeply study, admit, incorporate, accept everything that's in our body and mind. And as Dogen indicates, if we do this process with real devotion, with real honesty, and really alert, then we go beyond our self, because the self, as we usually conceive of it, simply doesn't stand up to this kind of study. If we really study in this way, the self dissolves and opens up. And this is what Dogen means by forgetting the self.

[28:22]

This forgetting the self is to let go of and be willing to give up our protective and narrow strategies of putting a wall around our self. To forget the self is to really penetrate peace and understanding in our own living, not just as noble ideals. This doesn't mean we stop having an ego, or we stop being the person that was conditioned by our past. Rather, it means that we now have, with every moment of conditioning, with every moment of ego, a wider, a truer, and a more appropriate context for that ego, for that conditioning.

[29:29]

We can bear it lightly, and not be twisted by it. And we can actually see that there is a world that surrounds us, and we can be confirmed by that world, magnified by that world, not threatened. And when we can be in the world in that way, as Dogen Zenji says, body and mind of oneself, as well as others, drops away. We can feel liberated within this body and mind. And we can see that we're not separate from others in this liberation, that all things, even our own thoughts of grief and confusion, share in this liberation.

[30:35]

We don't need anything to complete ourselves. We're just content to be alive and appreciate our life, and we're content to die and appreciate our dying. And with a good spirit, we can accept the grief and confusion of being human, and we can work to overcome this kind of violence, and we can work to overcome injustice. And yet we can even, and yet we can bear and celebrate the world as it is right now. This is another poem by Ryokan. Buddha is your mind, and the way goes nowhere.

[31:56]

Don't look for anything but this. If you point your cart north, when you want to go south, how will you ever arrive? One of our four great vows that we will chant in a minute is, Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. Dharma gates are entry points into the fullness of the teachings of Buddha. There are not 100 or 1,000 or many, many, many Dharma gates. There are an infinite number of Dharma gates, and I often marvel that each person that I meet is a completely unique Dharma gate into the fullness of Dharma.

[33:12]

And each moment of each person's life is a new practice, a new way to practice. So we speak of teachings and we have guidelines and sort of general shapes of how the Dharma goes, but the actual practice is infinite. It's limited only by the human imagination. We practice with our mind, in studying and thinking about the teachings. We practice with our emotions, in feelings that arise in our hearts, in feelings of tenderness between us, and in relating to the wonderful myths of Buddhism, Bodhisattvas and offerings and incense and bowing and chanting.

[34:17]

But mostly, and this is what I want to emphasize just for a moment with you today, mostly our practice is very simply physical practice with our body. And I mention it particularly today because when we're devoting today to sitting practice, to just being quiet and mindful, we have a real chance to explore deeply how we practice with our body, simplify our life and just practice with our body. So I would ask you to pay special attention today to this simple physical practice. Now when you stand up after Zazen, before Kinhin, please make a special effort to meditate on what is it to stand up on two feet.

[35:35]

Can you find your balance? Can you find a way to stand that is really balanced? A way to stand that is in connection with the floor and connection with the air above your head, connection with your breathing? Can you explore and be more aware in your standing? So please pay special attention to that. You know when you stand in Zazendo, your feet should be just pointed straight ahead and they should be about as far apart as your breasts are, like up here, like that far apart, maybe two fist widths apart or so, but depends on different people's bodies are different. So be aware of how you are placing your feet.

[36:43]

And your hands, you know how to make Shashu posture, take your left thumb and your fingers, put the right hand on top and the thumb on top, like this. And then your arms parallel to the floor, and you can see what it's like to turn it backward a little bit toward yourself. See what it feels like to experiment with how you hold your hands this way. Walking and standing this way, Kadagiri Roshi used to say it's like holding a temple pillar. Most Japanese temples have pillars inside the Buddha Hall or Zazendo that hold the roof up, and they're very solid. If you hold on to the temple pillar, you really are anchored.

[37:46]

That's what this is like. When you stand in this way, and the same is true of sitting also, when you sit in Zazendo, you are actually taking this ordinary bag of hair, puss and shit, called the human body, and transforming it into the body of Buddha. It's a kind of magical thing. And with this kind of awareness that I'm suggesting, you can maybe begin to get a sense of the true dignity of Buddha's body, that is within this body that's worth, what do they say, about $1.25?

[38:48]

Something like that. But it's priceless when you infuse it with this kind of attention. So please, practice standing. Also, please, today we have one more time to eat together in Zazendo. I'd like all of us to pay special attention to how we use the orioke bowls. The first bowl is actually, it looks like a bowl, but it's actually the head of Shakyamuni Buddha. Did you notice? Yeah, it's the head of Shakyamuni Buddha.

[39:52]

So you handle it with a lot of respect and care, tenderly and with awareness. And when the servers are serving, they're not serving ordinary people, they're serving celestial bodhisattvas. So they come in with great respect and they offer each scoop of food very carefully. So when we handle the bowls and the cloths, all the details of orioke are meant to show us a beautiful way and a way of awareness. Taking something as mundane as eating a meal and making it into a ceremony, by virtue of our awareness and the physicality of our life, with full devotion. So please, also, pay close attention to your orioke practice today. And one more thing that we can do is pay close attention to sounds.

[41:04]

Monastic life is organized around silence and sounds. Sounds occurring within an endless, deep silence. Of course, there's never any silence. There's only sounds occurring in the midst of endless, deep silence. I'm sure you all know the story of John Cage, the musician, the composer who wanted to find silence. So he got a scientifically prepared room where there would be absolutely no sound. And he wanted to go in that room and hear silence. And he went in the room and, of course, he heard thump, thump, thump, thump. His own heart beating.

[42:10]

So, monastic life, that's why there's no musical instruments or radios or anything in monastic practice. And that's why we go to such lengths to properly sound the bells and the hans. These sounds are the sounds of Buddha's voice. And they make clear, when we listen to them, that also the sound of the bird, the sound of children's voices, the sound of the wind is also the sound of Buddha's voice. So, please practice with sounds today. And not that I want to make the dohans nervous, but please hit the bells with this spirit and we will all be listening very carefully to hear the sound of Buddha's voice in the bell as you strike the bell and release the sound of Buddha's voice that's in the bell.

[43:19]

The sound of our own voices also when we chant. So I mention these things in the hope that you will devote yourself to them for the rest of today. Oh, actually, one more. I forgot. Very important one. That is that today we're going to have a work period. And somebody might say, well, gosh, you know, we have a work period. We work every day and we wanted to sit today and there's not enough sitting. How much sitting is there? You sit a few periods, I'm going to talk, another period, and then pretty soon you eat and then we go out and work and the day's over and that's how we hardly had a chance to sit. But actually, it's good to have a work period, you know, because when we work, how's our body? How are we moving? How are we standing? We'll work today as if it was zazen. In silence, except just to receive instructions.

[44:26]

Without any worry about getting anything done. I think we're going to plant potatoes today. What a thing, you know. Potatoes are really ancient. You put it in the ground, you put dirt over it, a little water, and it comes up. Strong plant, you know, and makes potatoes. It's like each potato is a kind of a miracle. How could such a thing be, you know? If you tried to invent such a thing, you could never do it. If you had endless lifetimes to invent such a thing, you could never do it. And yet, there it is. You can hold it in your hand, put it in the ground, and put dirt on it. So please, with that spirit, as if it were, the potato, you know, was just as profound, interesting, and crazy as all the thoughts that are in your mind, you know, put in the ground. So appreciate the work period. And if you practice this way today with your body,

[45:31]

devoting yourself one-pointedly to your body, you see a very amazing thing. That the body is not just the body. You can't find the end of your body, and separate your body from your mind, and from your emotions. So there's no body separate from mind and emotions. And there's no mind and emotions and body separate from everything else. All the joy, all the lightness, it's all right here, in this body. And I want to close now with a last poem by Ryokan.

[46:41]

In the still night, by the vacant window, Wrapped in monk's robes, I sit in meditation, Navel and nostrils lined up straight, Ears paired to the slope of shoulders, Window whitens, the moon comes up, Rains stopped, but drops go on dripping, Wonderful, the mood of this moment, Distant, vast, known only to me. Thank you.

[48:10]

Thank you.

[48:20]

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