What I'm really interested in is the work, you know, of the world. And, or the returning, the guy returning to the world with a sack over his shoulder, you know, in the last of the ten ox-herding pictures. And this work of the world doesn't mean necessarily some physical work or job or community organizing or institution creating or something like that, though it may mean that. Work is also enlightening others, making others understand the real meaning of work. This is the work of a day of no eating, a day of no work is a day of no eating. This work isn't just the idea, the economic idea of

[01:33]

supporting ourselves or doing our bit in order to get some food. But it's a very big idea of work, of returning to the world. Work, I guess, maybe the root of the word work is a combination of energy and that which gives energy form, or tools, or that by which you express energy. So maybe work means form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Not the onerous work of something we're obligated to do, but how we work, how things work, how we work in the world. anything you do, you know, from this point of view, from the Zen way of looking at it, the most deep contemplation in the mountains is work. We don't think of it as some solitude or contemplation, in those words so much as work.

[02:57]

very nature of practice and the world requires this deep idea of work. But before you can return to the world, before you can work in the world really, you have to make the world disappear. The world has to end for you. As in the 10 Oxfording pictures, the picture before the returning to the world is just something, just a circle. The world has disappeared. And in Zen, it's important to realize that Usually we understand these lists from the back. We start at the top of the mountain. We start at the last of the ten pictures. If you do it this way, you don't see it as a progression in time. Oh, I start here and I see the tail and then next time I see, etc. If you start from the end, which means sudden enlightenment, if you start from the end,

[04:25]

You see, it's actually an inner progression, a process of which you recognize one thing inside the other. Inside the work, you recognize that the world has disappeared. Inside the world that has disappeared, you recognize a man or a woman or a person. completely at ease, no thing, seeking nothing, doing nothing, able both to do and not to do. It means you've come to be able to participate at the level at which things are created, which not doing means. And within that, you know, there is the person who has found the ox. So within the work, within the world that has disappeared, is you.

[05:48]

And it doesn't mean because the world's disappeared you don't care anymore. It means you don't care about the world anymore. You actually don't care about it anymore. It doesn't make much difference. But you care for it. Care about it looks to the present or the past or some static idea or some possessive idea. But to care for it is just to take care of this moment. Always just ready to care for, not care about. Do you understand what I mean? some difference there. But it means you have to give up who you are. You have to give up your hopes and desires and even caring about Buddhism. If you're a person who cares

[07:18]

about Buddhism, feels at home in Buddhism, likes to practice. This is very nice, but it's not making the world disappear. And I don't know, I don't know if you can do it. I'm sure you can, but I don't think you realize how radical it is how truly radical it is to actually get beyond that point where you have likes and dislikes. And if you have a family or responsibilities, you have to do it rather gently, step by step maybe. For your family and your responsibilities, it's step-by-step reassuring. For you, it's not step-by-step, but for your family, it's step-by-step with some reassurance. But if, as I talked about at first, you find your gravity, when you are in proportion,

[08:42]

you are up and down, vertical and horizontal. And that gravity, as I pointed out in Green Gulch, that word gravity or grave is same word as guru, same meaning in Sanskrit. And that kind of connection is not so important, it doesn't prove anything. but I think it's true that your guru or that which is no longer petty, no longer in the realm of likes and dislikes, that which you can be totally alone with, a kind of radical solitude Nothing, you know, nothing to keep you company. As an empty house, you've taken everything out of the house. You've even taken the boards of the floor and the walls and everything. And you then have nothing except what comes in the door. And what comes in the door will be familiar and also surprising.

[10:05]

To be alone with that without anything to give you some feeling of recompense. To take everything away. To be inaccessible. not to use your self, not to use other people, not to use your own history. How tempting it is to use our own history, to use our own history, maybe it's the best word, to accomplish things, to establish something with another person. How frightening it is to even give up that. But letting go, even systematically letting go until there's nothing there.

[11:46]

Nothing there which you can identify. No house, no person, no world. No realm at all of what you want, of like or dislike or prefer or right or wrong. All your generalizations and all your programs all your ideas about the way you want the world to be are gone. Finding out, you know, if we make the world disappear, what do you think the world is? You know? You have some idea of a world in which you live and act. And as long as that's so, your acting is conditioned. It's not the real work I'm talking about. So what is your world? What do you think the world is? And whatever you find it to be, that most dear thing, that thing which is most important to you, that thing itself you have to remove. So you are completely alone, no thought even to keep you company.

[13:27]

no hope to keep you company. You die. So your job is to make the world disappear, but unless you can't do it, unless your desire to do so is very deep, your understanding that it's necessary is very deep, and you make the opportunities, not opportunities based on, if it's good I'll continue, but the opportunity beyond likes and dislikes, that you are just going to do. This sesshin can be an opportunity. No one's there with you sitting. No one's ever going to ring the bell. No one's ever going to help you.

[14:57]

Only you have your own resources. And those resources can't be dead resources, memories or plans or hopes or history or personality. Taking those away, what resources do you have? Nothing you can name. And are you willing to be? dependent just on that which you cannot name or identify. It's some actual experience I'm talking about, some unwavering experience. When you start to waver, start to want to think about something, start to want to take a rest, you feel some deep-seated return to that unwavering place. And every time you return, something goes.

[16:59]

You only have to return because you're drawn away. Actually, there's no... The returning itself is our practice. so that there's nothing, no other thing. You know, as I said, no rules, it says in the Lotus Sutra. The Bodhisattva is one who finds no rules. That is his sphere of action. No rules, no rules means no law of gravity, no plans or programs or generalizations or any past or future. No rules. That's his sphere of action. That means, you know, as I said, Newton's apple is gravity itself. You're Buddha, you know, you yourself are Buddha.

[18:27]

But to know that, to awaken to this work, you must be able to make the world disappear. So all those things your friends like you for are gone. There's no control anymore. We have no, nothing in the basket. No way we can possibly know what will happen next. no stakes in anything, you know, except maybe your own heart or some warm, open-hearted feeling. It doesn't mean some practice which excludes others.

[20:08]

It means you're inaccessible because you're like a field. Anyone can come in but there's nothing there. I think this idea of work is important because day of no work is a day of no eating. This idea of work is important because we too much have the idea of some contrast between silent meditation and being a priest and layman's life or working in the world. But a priest is should have same idea of work, direct, active working with every fiber and yet not a work that excludes other things by asserting this and negating that.

[21:36]

a work which understands how we do things, how we make things, how we make the world disappear and reappear. At that level you can work with people, with society, with individuals. And the work with society or individuals is the same enlightening process, starting from zero. starting from and entering each situation and person as it's being created. Actually, the world disappears every moment. So it's foolish to care about it. Some dirt embankment, you think, oh, that dirt embankment will be there. So we should plant it or do something with it. But actually that dirt embankment is constantly disappearing. And only when you understand that it's constantly disappearing can you properly landscape it, taking into consideration its millions of existences.

[22:55]

So that when we look at it, we don't see something permanent. Ah, that person who landscaped that thought this embankment was permanent. A Zen garden is landscaped by someone who knows that embankment is constantly disappearing. So when you see it, you see the caring for it or the disappearing of it or the mind of the man and the embankment as one. To think anything is permanent is to ask for death. Death of this building or Zen center or your individual bodily existence. But to see that this building is constantly disappearing that you are constantly disappearing, that everything you call your life is gone. Then you can enter, you know, work in the world, how things work, how things are created.

[24:26]

How form and energy, form and emptiness are one. It means to not care about anything, but each new situation includes everything you ever cared about and is your opportunity right now to do something. And that readiness to do something right now is working in the world. And you don't have to seek anything, it will come to you. Your empty house will reappear. This tatami is reappearing to hold you. I'm not just talking some metaphor. We say it reappears because we. It's more practical to say that than to say it's something static. It's just that our observation is not minute enough.

[25:51]

And it's our own doing that makes the tatami stay there. And if you give up that doing, or that doing gets mixed up, you'll see how radically altered your world is into something horrible, something monstrous. But how trite and narrow our world is, is when we try to control it, to keep it in some generalized pattern which we're familiar with and which we expect to be that way. it narrows it down into something solid. And if you lose that ability to, as somebody who goes quite crazy does, loses that ability to hold it together, it becomes monstrous.

[27:10]

But for our practice we should be able to know from how we make it whole together, and how it becomes monstrous, and how it exists in its own terms. Now from this point of view one thing, now from that point of view another thing, and no matter how many points of view, each different. And yet it not being caught even by all those points of view, It can't be defined even by all the sums of its points of view. And in itself it has no particular nature, nor some of all the points of views it itself is seen by. Why Suzuki Roshi always liked to say he was a cloud. Cloud is always changing. From here the cloud is over that building.

[28:48]

From over there, it's over that building. From cloud's point of view, I don't know what it's passing. From airplane, something else. From the moon, something else. From inside the cloud, something else. From very close up, drops of water. From inside the water, some myriad of whirls with Buddhas. Now we call it a cloud because it's useful, and we call this tatami, we call you so-and-so. But if you get caught by that which we call you because it's useful, that's death. When you can practice with what's beyond what you know, with all those points of view, and open to their active, active, active acting, Without you doing anything, that's practicing with Buddha, transcending Buddha, attaining Buddha. I think you can do it when you're ready to.

[30:10]

ready to realize your own heart. ready just to give yourself to whatever you're doing without any thought of past, present, or future ready to understand what we mean when we say we feed Farmer Brown's cows and Farmer Mr. Smith's cows

[31:54]

are no longer hungry. Or what Dogen meant by, we offer, don't offer incense with the hand with which we wipe ourselves. That instantaneous and simultaneous, simultaneous appearance in which each act creates everything. Words, because the scale of words is meant for something small, when I say it this way it sounds like something big compared to the usual scale that words are intended But if you can get out of the scale of the words, trying to make practical or material sense of it, what I say is actually so. I think so. I find it so. That anything less than that

[33:27]

you know, is merely not recognizing it or holding back. It doesn't disprove it. When you can do it completely, you will disappear. No more so-and-so. And you'll find everyone quite friendly to you, so relieved you've gone away. It's about time. And they will awaken with you. Actually, they will awaken with you, because they'll recognize their true friend. for the first time. This means you have to do it completely in every moment, not just in sesshin or during zazen. There isn't a time for practice and a time not to practice. That's some therapeutic idea.

[34:55]

There's only this holy every minute, which there's no reason for it to be any other than this holy. So, now you creating everything. No need to be afraid. just one with things as they are. Sometimes taking one form, sometimes taking another form, you know, to relatively work with this or that. We don't say, we can't say everything, just some part, hoping we snap into it. And the bodhisattva may not be you or you or you, you know. It may be all of us. One whole bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means anything that functions as a bodhisattva. In the Lotus Sutra it speaks of wondersound bodhisattva. Wondersound bodhisattva. And the Lotus Sutra asks, who is wondersound bodhisattva?

[36:41]

and sometimes wonder sound bodhisattva is you. So we have some work to do, I think, but first we must make the world disappear. And that work to do may not be realized can't be realized completely now. It's like dead branches in the springtime, but they may pop out with leaves or flowers, but they may not pop out for one generation or two generations or three generations. But still, maybe we're all just dead branches Maybe Zen Center is just dead Buddhist branch. But that doesn't make any difference. Whole forest is here. Whole bodhisattva is here. Don't delude yourself into thinking, I must be bodhisattva.

[38:09]

Bodhisattva is something wonderful. That appears in all of us. That appears in everything you see. And this, with this kind of activity, we actually can accomplish something. our strength together, when we're together or when we're far separated, as we will be in the future. Some of us will be very powerful and strong and yet invisible and hard to see. Anyway, this kind of working in the world is what interests me, and the strength I feel coming from you, and which we should realize in this sesshin and in this specific moment, this right now. There's no other time.

[39:41]

Yeah, boo.

[39:56]

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