I bow to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Good morning. This morning, I'm going to talk about this talk, which was titled, To Find Out for Yourself. Can you hear me? No. To Find Out for Yourself. No. To Find Out for Yourself.

[01:06]

Anyway. Yeah. It's got to be like that. There. There. No. There. There. That's better. That's better. That's got to be better. So. Is that better?

[02:14]

Can you hear? Alright. You just have to go along with the shuffle. This talk is about, actually, how we practice. I'll just start. He says, in your zazen, or in your life, you will have many difficulties or problems. When you have a problem, see if you can find out for yourself why you have a problem. Usually, you will try to solve your difficulty in the best way as soon as possible. Rather than studying for yourself, you ask someone why you have a problem. This kind of approach may work well for your usual life, but if you want to study zen, it doesn't help.

[03:19]

So, usually, we try to, we want to get rid of our problem, or solve our problem. And Suzuki Roshi talked a lot about not trying to get rid of your problem, but how to use your problem as a way to find your way. So, what he says, you usually go to someone, you know, we go to someone and ask how to solve our problem, and seek for help in solving our problem. And then, we may feel that our problem is solved, but he also said, when you have your problem solved, then you just have another problem. So, there's no end to having these problems, and getting rid of problems, and then having another problem. So, one time he said, you just change your equipment, but it really resolves nothing.

[04:26]

Is this too noisy? You want the mic on the other side. There. Yes. Thank you. The Shuso to the rescue, and his faithful consort. Soon to be her husband. So, you know, I remember when I used to bring questions to Suzuki Roshi, and we didn't have formal dōkasan very much, actually.

[05:30]

Formal dōkasan, sometimes during tsushin, and sometimes at other times, but mostly informal. But I would bring him some kind of a problem that I was having, but he would never really try to solve my problem. We would talk, and then he'd bring the problem to a different level, and then he would kind of smile or laugh, and he'd say, I know you brought me a problem, and I'm very sorry, but I've just given you another problem, or a bigger problem, and then we'd both laugh. And then I would go home and realize that he'd just turned my problem into a koan for me. So he was always giving me these koans, which were simply my own problems, turned into, which my problem of course was in the realm of duality,

[06:38]

and he gave me a koan to show me where my problem was in the realm of non-duality. This is the nature of koans. The reason why we have so much trouble understanding koans, when we read the koans, is because our minds are, of course, attuned to duality, and the koans are dealing with, from the point of view of non-duality. So naturally, our logic doesn't work, and we get baffled. I read these koan stories, but they don't make any sense to me. Of course, they just give you a bigger problem. So, he says, the moment we are told something by someone, you are told something by someone, and you think you understand, you will stick to it, and you will lose the full function of your nature.

[07:42]

When you seek something, your true nature is in full activity, as if you are feeling for your pillow in the dark. If you know where the pillow is, your mind is not in full function. Your mind is acting in a limited sense. When you are seeking for the pillow without knowing where it is, then your mind is open to everything. In this way, you will have a more subtle attitude toward everything, and you will see things as it is. So, this seeking for your pillow comes from a koan. Avalokiteshvara, this statue of Avalokiteshvara with a thousand arms, and each arm holds some means for compassionate action. These two monks, Dao Wu and somebody, were talking about the koans,

[08:57]

about the function of these thousand arms. And if you are using one arm, the other arms are not functioning. So, anyway, the point of this is, one monk asked the other monk about the meaning of this, and the monk said, it's like seeking for your pillow in the night. Feeling around for your pillow in the night, which means you don't know, not knowing, it's kind of like blindly finding your way, blindly feeling your way. And blindly feeling your way is Zen practice.

[10:01]

So, it's the blind leading the blind, which is the highest kind of practice. It's the most insightful practice. Blindness has many meanings, but in this case, it means truly being able to see. Truly seeing is called blindness. So, when you know something, it covers your true mind. So, we say, not knowing is the highest. Having an open mind is practice. Although we do know things, we don't stick to what we know. Knowing things is helpful for us, but there's really nothing to rely on.

[11:04]

So, we're finding ourselves on each moment. That's our practice, to find ourselves on each moment. Usually, we want to live in a world of security, but there is no world of security, and we create secure situations. But, in the end, there's no security. So, reaching for your pillow in the night is like, without knowing, you are making the best effort to find your way. So, it's kind of like, on each moment, you're stepping off into emptiness. Suzuki once had this wonderful statement that we're continually losing our balance

[12:10]

and finding a new balance, moment by moment. Moment by moment, everything is losing its balance, and recovering, finding a new way to relate to everything. So, everything around us is continually changing, and we're continually changing. So, we're continually looking for a way to be stable in a continuously changing and transforming world. So, he says, if you know where the pillow is, your mind is not in full function.

[13:11]

Your mind is acting in a limited sense. When you are seeking for the pillow without knowing where it is, then your mind is open to everything. In this way, you will have a more subtle attitude to everything, and you will see things as it is. I remember when I was in Japan, and I was visiting my friend Shunko at Ryutakaji. We had a nice day, and then I left in a taxi to go to the train station. And it was getting toward night. It actually was. The sun had just gone down, so it was nighttime. And so the taxi driver took me to the train station. It was a kind of middle-sized train station. Lots of cars, taxis, milling around.

[14:12]

And so I took out my wallet, and I paid him. And I left my wallet on my lap, because I was interested in paying him, and I didn't think about putting my wallet back. So when I got up, of course my wallet fell down in the cab, and I closed the door, and I went to the train station to get a ticket. And I reached for my wallet, and there was this terrible feeling of, oh! Stuck. And then I realized, here I am in this train station, or whatever it is, and I don't know anybody. I don't have any money. I don't have any passport. I don't have any credit card. Nothing. And then I turned around. Where's the taxi? And all these white cabs, every one is the same color, milling around, you know, coming out in front and getting passengers and moving off,

[15:14]

and they all look exactly the same. All the taxi drivers look exactly the same. So, I said, I have to find my wallet. I just zeroed in on, I have to find my wallet. Well, I have no clues, but I have to find my wallet. So, there was this place in the middle, kind of a little parking area, where taxis are waiting. And I thought, maybe if I go over there, I'll find the taxi. It's the only clue, the only thing I could do. So I walked over, and there was about 10 or 15 taxis there. And I looked at the drivers, they were sitting there, and I said to the cab, is that the guy? They all looked like farmers who were driving taxis. And, I saw this one taxi driver,

[16:17]

I said, that looks a little bit like him. So I went over to the cab, I couldn't speak any Japanese. And I started explaining, and he was looking at me funny, and then somebody came over and said, what do you want? You can see there was a problem. And I said, well, I may have left my wallet in this guy's taxi. And so we opened the back door, and there it was. So, I had to find this thing, I had no way of finding it, except through sheer determination. That's all I had, it was sheer determination. And that determination kind of led me to where I was going, somehow. And it was very direct. So, I see it as an example of not knowing anything, and just reaching in blindness for my pillow.

[17:17]

And, I think that's what our practice is, finding our way, when there's no way to find our way. And sometimes, that's what happens in Zazen. We can't stay where we are, and we can't leave. We get to that point where I can't stay here like this, but I can't leave. And that's when we find our way through. That's the critical point of Zazen. Can't stay and you can't leave. And that's the koan of Zazen. And something opens up for you. And nothing will save you. You know? You pray to God and that won't help. You pray to Buddha, that doesn't help. Nothing helps. You just give up. You just let your big self find its way. So he says,

[18:25]

if you want to study something, it's better not to know what the answer is. Because you are not satisfied with something. This is a funny sentence. Because you are not satisfied with something, you are told, and because you cannot rely on something set up by someone else, you study Buddhism without knowing how to study it. Sounds like a criticism, but it's not. It's a very clumsy sentence. What he's saying is because we don't really rely on, it's hard for us to rely on something somebody tells us or what we study, so we find out for ourself. We have to find out for ourself. That's what he means. So he's confirming you instead of criticizing you. In this way, you find out for yourself what we really mean by Buddha nature, practice or enlightenment. So he's saying when you practice, this is how you go about it.

[19:25]

Because you can't rely on these other things. All you can rely on is your determination to practice. Because that's not enough to satisfy you. So he says, when you seek freedom, you try various ways. Of course, you will sometimes find out that you have wasted your time. If a Zen master drinks sake, you may think the best way to attain enlightenment is to drink sake. Even though you drink a lot of sake as he does, it may look like you've wasted your time. But that attitude is important. If you continue to try to find out that way, you will gain more power to understand things. Whatever you do, you will not waste your time.

[20:26]

I remember when in Berkeley, there's the Dharmadhatu. They have a big practice place downtown. Once in a while, they would invite me to come to some event. So I would come to the event. Afterward, they would invite me upstairs. When I go upstairs, there were five or six students, head students, and they were drinking what I thought was water because it was clear. So they offered me this glass and I drank it. I thought, this is like gin or sake or something like that, but big glasses. But this is their style

[21:30]

because their teacher was drinking all the time. Trungpa was drinking all the time. So I remember Trungpa very well. As a matter of fact, when he first came here, I was Suzuki Roshi's Jisha, 1970. So I kind of set them up together to talk to each other. Suzuki Roshi liked Trungpa a lot. Trungpa loved Suzuki Roshi. Every place, every Dharmadhatu place has a picture of Suzuki Roshi on the altar. So he really felt that Suzuki Roshi was a teacher of his for a predecessor maybe in America who was successful. But he liked him as an old grandfather or something. Trungpa was very young, but he drank like a fish all the time. Of course, his liver finally complained and he died. But that was their style to drink a lot.

[22:32]

So in some way he may be referring to this here. Even though your teacher drinks and you follow him in doing that, you may not get enlightened by drinking the same way. But the fact that you are making an effort to practice like your teacher is a good thing. That's what he's saying. So your time may not be wasted because your effort is good even though the object is not so good. The wrong object. But the effort is good. Sometimes we say, I wasted 20 years doing this and that until I finally came to practice. But all those 20 years is not wasted time. Eventually, your practice, your life leads to some meaningful practice and all those

[23:34]

byways, dead ends and experiments or whatever all add up to something. They're not wasted. There's nothing, no activity that's wasted because everything you do is leading to something else and you're learning something through steps. So each one of those steps is an actual stepping stone to where you're going even though they may look like wasted time. So he says, when you do something with a limited idea or with some definite purpose, what you will gain when you do something with a purpose in order to accomplish something concrete. This will cover up your inner nature. So it is not a matter

[24:37]

of what you study but a matter of seeing things as it is and accepting things as it is. So we have a problem here. This is what when we do something so we study in a certain way to accomplish something. There's always a tendency in Zen center or in practice to systematize the practice to make it into a system. So you ordain priests and then after a certain amount of time they reach this level and then they reach that level and then they reach that level. In a sense that's okay but in another sense it's not okay because every time you create a system for doing something

[25:38]

then you have this goal that your system is geared toward you cover up the intuitive aspect of your life. And in Zen the intuitive aspect is the main one not what you've accomplished but how you've opened up how you've opened your intuition. Doesn't matter what your rank or accomplishments are or what you've learned or how much you know it's how your intuition is opened up. There's several ways Suzuki Roshi talked about well Tatsugami Roshi talked about our practice as being like a tiger

[26:39]

or a cat actually. Well I like a tiger or like a cat. Like you know when a cat is interested in a mouse the cat simply waits all day long. When the mouse appears boom! So just open with nothing nothing in the mind just totally open and at ease. But at the right moment boom! When something needs to be done boom! Okay in other words not really needing to do anything but totally attentive and totally open and at the right moment boom! And a tiger is a kind of cat

[27:39]

but a bigger one. And a tiger pays the same attention to a mouse as to anything bigger like an elephant. A tiger wants a deer he has the same kind of attention but he gives the same attention to something as small as a mouse. Mice are delicious anyway. Tiger. But the small thing is just as important as the large thing. Also like a like a frog you love to talk about a frog the frog sitting on a rock not moving not blinking just totally at ease and totally at attention open mind and when the fly goes by

[28:40]

the tongue goes gets the fly and it goes boom! And if he likes it he'll go if he doesn't like it he'll go and just remain sitting. So I think a frog is much better at our practice than we are. I'd love to be a frog. Anyway Some of you may study something only if you like it. If you don't like it you ignore it. That is a selfish way but it is also limiting your power of study. Good or bad small or big we study to discover the true reason why something is so big and why something is so small why something is so good and why something is not so good. If you try to discover only something good you will miss something and you will always be limiting your faculties and when you live in a limited world you cannot accept things as it is. So what he's really talking about is picking and choosing.

[29:41]

To see things as it is or to practice things as it is we study something that we like and we study something whether we like it or not. To do something whether we like it or not is a big aspect of practice. Not picking and choosing but just whatever is there to be done we just do it. This is addressing things as it is and not simply giving in to partiality. As soon as we give in to partiality we lose the perspective of things as it is and we start and we create good and bad right and wrong like and dislike and we just fall into partiality and dualistic thinking. So we can't see things as it is because we only pick out the good part. I remember I once had a girlfriend and who was somewhat egotistical

[30:45]

and I opened her refrigerator and I looked at this watermelon that was cut in half and the watermelon had the heart ripped out of it and the rest of it was just you know and I just thought there's something about that that was like what about the rest of the watermelon? I don't know. So even if a Zen master has just two or three students he would never tell them our way in detail. The only way to study with that person is to eat with her talk with him and do everything with her. In other words just association you know through association we get the Dharma through our pores rather than through our head or rather than through studying

[31:48]

we absorb it through our pores and so we practice Zazen have monastic practice sit every day so that it just becomes we get it into our bones. He says mostly you will not he will not seem to be very happy and he will always be scolding you without any apparent reason. He's really not talking about himself he's talking about people he knows. He did do that but because you cannot figure out the reason you will not be so happy and he will not be so happy. If you really want to study with him you will study how to please him and how to make your life with him a happy one. In other words how to harmonize. Noiri Roshi

[32:48]

was I haven't heard that he died he may be still alive but Noiri Roshi was like the expert in Dogen for our particular in the 90s 80s 70s after Nishiyari Bokusan after anyway and he lived actually near Rinzowin I met him in Japan when I had Dharma Transmission and he helped Hoitsu to do that so but he was a very high figure and demanded a lot of respect but in his temple he only had three or four students two or three three or four students and those students were always kept on their toes they never knew what he was going to do and they always had to respond to what he was doing without knowing what he was going to do that was his practice

[33:49]

with them kind of like samurai practice you know where the teacher the student never knows when the teacher is going to draw his sword so he's always alert to what's going on but not knowing anything that my friend Jeff Broadbent practiced there with him for a while and that was his that was his style and not very many people could study with him for very long so that's the kind of thing that Suzuki Roshi is talking about that kind of practice Suzuki Roshi was much more gentle and he would even explain things sometimes but not he would give you answers but he wouldn't but they were not explanations so one time I asked him about the rope chant I didn't

[34:49]

we only chanted the rope chant in Japanese so I said to him what is the what is that chant that we do in the morning when you put your robe on your as a matter of fact nobody had robes so they didn't put them on their heads so I said what is that chant we do in the morning and what does that mean Katagiri was there and Katagiri was looking through the drawer he said wait a minute I think I have a translation Suzuki Roshi said put his hand on him like don't look for the translation and he said he pointed to his heart and he said love that was his way of expressing himself he didn't try to tell me the literal meaning of the chant word for word he was he always wanted to get to the essence the essence of the chant

[35:52]

is love when we chant at the Bodhisattva ceremony when we say homage to the seven Buddhas before Buddha it's a love song we should chant it as a love song if you do that you won't go too fast and you won't be superficial and you won't just try to when are we going to get through with this so many 21 times and I went to listen to that so if we chant it with that kind of feeling then we enjoy doing it we should enjoy the stuff that we do if we don't enjoy it why are we doing this stuff why are we doing it every day why do we have to do well we don't have to do this we only do it because we enjoy it and if we're not enjoying it why are we doing it so

[36:55]

sometimes I enjoy the service sometimes I really don't enjoy it at all but I do it anyway that's non-dualistic practice so it's this is a problem good one though because it's it's solvable I always keep hoping that we will solve this problem but foolish wise people filling the snow with snow filling the well with snow so anyway he says you may say that this way of practice is very old fashioned it may be so but I think that you had this kind of life in western civilization too although not exactly as we did in Japan what we call it is apprenticeship kind of like apprenticeship you know we don't have the apprenticeship model so much anymore

[37:56]

whereas someone would study if you know if you were a tailor you had an apprentice or a couple of apprentices who learned from you you ate together you sewed together you know and you lived together and so you were brought up in the same household in a sense in all the trades and in various other ways so the apprenticeship was very common not too long ago and now of course we all go to school to learn things which is too bad actually because there is something missing when we just go to school to learn things and we don't have that personal relationship so the reason why people had a difficult time with their teachers is that there is no particular way for us to study in other words there is no curriculum you do not have

[38:57]

a curriculum so it makes it difficult people had a difficult time with their teachers so each one of us is different from the other and each one of us must have our own way I think he is talking about teachers as well as students according to the situation we should change our way goodbye he is also talking about flexibility according to the situation we should change our way we can't stick to some particular way and the problem with Soto Zen is that there is no particular way and people get very puzzled you have to find the way you have to find your own way so from the very beginning a person will enter page street and say these people

[39:57]

are kind of aloof and cool even though they are not they seem aloof and cool and then you go in and although people are welcoming they are not inviting particularly so you have to you have to find your way in the way is open for you to come but it is not pulling you in there is no invitation you may enter but you have to find your way and it is that way from beginning to end you just have to keep finding your way all the time and that is what keeps you alert and attentive although sometimes we get we think that we have found a comfortable way to do it but something will always move you from that

[40:57]

comfortable seat so each one of us must have our own way and according to the situation we should change our way you cannot stick to anything the only thing to do is to discover the appropriate way to act under new circumstances so when things change instead of complaining we should know how to adjust to adjust to the circumstances over and over again there is no no fixed way and that is the essence of our practice we don't have a a co-on curriculum where we pass one and go on to the next one and the next one we don't have that kind of curriculum we don't have any

[41:59]

curriculum although sometimes it seems like we do but we don't essentially it is moment to moment finding your own way but we find our own way together that's very interesting we all practice together we are all doing the same practice and yet each one of us is finding our own way at the same time so even though we are doing the same thing in a sense we are not doing the same thing you are doing the same thing in your way and I am doing the same thing in my way so I am going to leave it there do you have

[43:04]

a question? everybody wants to get back to Zazie may our intention be with you

[43:26]

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