some more about everyday mindedness. Everyday mindedness is referred to in Buddhism as being faced with a cliff or some steep place. Because there's no way to No way to give you an understanding of what I mean. So I feel, yesterday I felt rather frustrated to talk to you about something that I can't actually give you a feeling for. something so ordinary as everyday mindedness, which at the same time fills the void.

[01:15]

Nyocho Zenji, Dogen Zenji's teacher, said, the endless sky is filled endlessly. Another, Tofuku, said something which sticks with me. One or two bamboos are bent. Three or four are slanted. I like that. One or two bamboos are bent. Three or four are slanted.

[02:20]

means billions of bamboos, 10,000 bamboos. So let me try to speak about our path, Buddhist path, as everyday mindedness. When everything is quite near, Like I said, the ocean has no bottom, or the bottom of the ocean is not outside the ocean.

[03:33]

When you feel that, also we can say, whatever you have is enough. Just what's at hand is enough. This is called right livelihood. Right livelihood is interesting words in English, too. But when everything, what you have just now, is enough, you really have that feeling, not because you have given up everything else. But because you now completely know how what's near you reaches everywhere. When you feel that way, you know, your eyes

[04:44]

A voice is as intimate as mine. To hear someone's voice is like seeing them, like a tiny mouse. My books are gnawed by some tiny mouse, and I take them up in little teeth marks, carefully he's chewed, He or she, I don't know, just chewed the cover away very carefully and, you know, with great detail. And why, I don't know, if the ink tastes good or what it is that tastes good, but, you know, at some hour of the night, you know, this mouth is working away. It's like the story, you know, the story I've told before, Dogo and Bunga, our ancestors, who studied together, practiced together for 40 years, so they knew each other.

[06:09]

I think you'd have to agree, pretty well. And one of them says, Why does Kanzeon have a thousand arms and eyes at the tip of every finger? And Dogo, I believe, says, it's like looking for your pillow in the night, maybe with your left hand. should look for. It's like looking for your pillow in the night. And Dogen here points out that night has its own activity. Night and eyes, he says, are equivalent here. Night has its own activity.

[07:12]

Darkness has its own activity. The moth gnawing on the book maybe is the activity of nighttime. That mouse has paid much closer attention to the cover of the book than I have, very carefully looking at the book. But what I'm talking about is that kind of a detail, eyes quietly seeing, a voice silently or quietly speaking, speaking quietly with your voice, hearing, very quietly hearing. With this kind of feeling, I expressed earlier, in the morning you do morning things, afternoon, afternoon things, evening, evening things.

[08:33]

With this kind of feeling, I don't know if actually the Indian musician should not do this, but not being an Indian musician, I feel it's something funny to play. evening raga in the afternoon, or a deep night raga in concert at the wrong hour. Something, I don't know whether Indian people feel that way or not, but for Buddhists, that kind of thing is terrible. You lose everything when you disrupt things in that way. Some purity is necessary. Just because the person wants to hear it or you can make a concert or people can't come at any other time, there's no reason to play evening raga in the afternoon.

[09:39]

And so when you feel this way, your consciousness does not lose its continuity or rhythm with events of daytime or evening time. When you have this mouse consciousness, or eyes, or sound like eyes, you won't have any difficulty in session. When you have, as Sugiyoshi said, a hasty mind, then you lose the rhythm. And losing the rhythm, many disruptive thoughts will come in. Gratuitous thoughts, not imaginative thoughts, but gratuitous thoughts. So a practice or everyday mind or samadhi counting your breath of primary consciousness means you don't have a hasty mind anymore some desire or disruptive feeling just you stay with events

[11:44]

stay with morning, afternoon, and evening. The manifold dharmas reveal you. This is the meaning. If I say locked in, it's not sound trapped, but unlocked in, I don't know how to express it. It's like you click into it. Once you're into it, if your mind expands to cover heaven and earth, as Zeppo said. So Sashin and the pain and rhythm of Sashin just just like the month.

[12:48]

So much detail and so much space that each day goes by very easily, widely. Painful legs will make your mind hasty, you want the belt to ring, you want it to be over, but when you can slip away, slip out again of hasty mind, your pain will go away. We've had very good Sashin here. I felt it even before I came up from Tassajara that the Sashin would be a good Sashin. For the first time we've used all the corners of the Zenda. We have enough people to make the zendo get up and walk around, or sit down. The zendo for the first time feels alive completely to me, and we all have helped each other

[14:06]

most of the sasheen, some sasheen has carried us. When Illich was here, I said he quoted Saint Thomas By the way, people like Ivan Illich and other people are going to, because of Buddhism nowadays in America, are going to come to Zen Center. And please don't let it disturb you. We have to make some place, opportunity for them to come here. unless they want to practice of just some space or small amount of time.

[15:21]

When the curiosity is over, maybe we'll be left alone. But Buddhism is one vast curiosity. can be curious in Buddhism for a long, long time. Anyway, he said, we were talking about possessions, and he said, Saint Thomas Aquinas, said, you want no possessions that interfere, that separate you from people. So you don't want some position, some possession that gives you position or status or makes people envious of you. You want only those possessions which enhance or encourage your relationships with others.

[16:31]

This is a very Buddhist idea of right livelihood. Livelihood is, in English, As far as I can tell, a very interesting word. The life, according to the etymological dictionary, the life part has a very unexpected meaning. Life means, according to the dictionary, something sticky, something oily, and it comes in Greek, to anoint with oil, but it means something continuous, something that sticks to, something that has some continuity. I think that's fairly nice, actually. But the lively, life or alive, liveliness, and hood, the hood seems to have two derivations which have enhanced it.

[17:41]

means basically life course or life way and the root literally means to go out to die, to go along the course to death. Or I think the same is to cross over. Death, you know, trying to characterize a death recently. I found I said, I don't think I said it here, I said death is like taking a photograph, trying to possess something. When you see something beautiful you take a picture of it. to possess it. That's living death, to try to grasp things.

[18:48]

But when something, no matter how extraordinarily beautiful, on the mountains of Tassajara, covered with snow the other day, with many green bushes sticking up through, it's like a vision. But to be able to just let it go, let it melt, let it disappear, you know. If you can let it go, you bring that awakened stance to the next thing you see and it will be so beautiful. But if you try to photograph it in your mind, the next thing you look at will be, comparatively speaking, you know, not so beautiful. So to be able to let it go is awakening for us. To be able to let it go is to die. To let something die.

[19:52]

And the more you can let something die, each moment, let each moment die, the more it will be so easy to die. Just let The next moment go. The other meaning of hood is a load. some weight but literally it means many colored in Sanskrit many colored or variegated and it seems to mean aura that which you carry with you but some aura so a hood sometimes the shape of the nimbus around the Buddha is shape of a cobra hood

[21:06]

So sense here is, again, close to the sense of right livelihood. Right means straight, or to extend your hand. I think its root is to extend your hand, to extend out to something in a straight line. So it's right hand, because we usually extend our right hand. This one is literally left behind, and it means weak. But Nancy Wilson Ross's book, she wrote a novel called Left Hand is the Dreamer. Left side is very important in Buddhism. Anyway, right livelihood. in which you don't have many possessions, you let go each moment.

[22:24]

Or, that's right, stepping stones in each previous one disappear. middle way in the Maha Parivarna Sutra is called that which is neither in nor out. So because it's neither in nor out it's called middle. This is the same meaning as bottom of ocean, as I expressed. And it says, Buddha nature is an in and where the nature is, and in and out. This is the same kind of meaning as I'm expressing with this path of no possessions, where you give up previous moment.

[23:44]

You don't attach to previous moment. You don't attach to secondary consciousness. When a person is dying, they attach to secondary consciousness. You don't attach to secondary consciousness. You don't attach to something beautiful. And then this moment is enhanced. Everything is brought, is in this moment already. You didn't grab that any other moment. So everyday mindedness is like this. The path which is umma, the path which is right before us, there is no other path before us.

[24:46]

You should attain this stage, reach this stage where there is nothing to day-minded. Only when you have this complete freedom from past and future, as attentive as that mouse, can you penetrate fully. So this action really leads, without hasty mind, to next step, your path. So this path is a kind of rhythm, or everyday mindedness, or mirror mind, like old woman who looks in the mirror in rank number two, old woman who looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize herself.

[26:03]

It's easier to understand this story, that poem, when you think that at that time they didn't have mirrors, almost not at all. Rich people could afford some polished metal. But it was quite rare to see yourself. So not seeing yourself. An old woman might easily look in the mirror and not have seen herself for 40 years. No wonder she wouldn't recognize herself. Oh my God! It's my grandmother. So not recognizing something so familiar. So it's same and different it means. Different is same. So, this sense, you know, again, of just trying to give some suggestion of Seppo.

[27:10]

Don't follow in my tracks. Say something for me to see. Maybe I could express it, because there's a sense of parallel development, of everything is simultaneously changing and developing in relationship to each other. So it always has to be something new. Don't stay in my tracks. Don't answer yesterday's question. Uman says to that prince who came and asked for instruction when he said there's no other path. He said, don't ask questions hurriedly and distractedly at any place. at any opportunity. When you have this, what the great patriarchs call everyday mindedness, you won't ask questions anymore.

[28:28]

Questions will come out of you. You'll be filled with some rush and the questions you and the question are the same thing. We learn to allow this rush to occur. This sincere, some deep sincerity. Opportunity not hasty mind, non-intentional mind. So, right livelihood means the path of few possessions, including possessions like wanting to study, being too involved in books, thinking of your own time separate from other people's time, or wanting some time.

[30:19]

In this sense, a possession is anything that is a load or separates you from others. Attaches you to past and future. Involves you with the previous moment. Light, weight, light. So mostly maybe you carry just your mind. Funny how difficult it is to achieve this everyday mindfulness, how distracted we get.

[31:57]

It takes quite a lot of strictness with yourself to keep coming back to this situation with the attention, minute attention of the mouse. without any hasty thinking. You find it out when everything is very intimate with you, your mind is not so hasty. As I said, a voice is as gentle as eyesight. Do we hear things in a vast or wide way? The only way is when you waver, you bring yourself back.

[33:12]

When you waver, you bring yourself back. No big secret, just like that. When you waver, you bring yourself back. One day you just stay. When you stay, next moment fully comes out of this moment, almost like a foundation. foundation for next. for 7 days, afternoon, morning, evening, night time, 7, 24 hours we've been here together, sitting here.

[34:51]

What does it mean for the next seven days? In the next seven days, will your hasty mind take over? Can this deep flowing stream of consciousness, primary consciousness, every hour, every second with you not too far behind This is what we mean by visionary experience.

[36:20]

find out how to use things with others, so your possessions don't separate. So, I forgot to finish the story, but from Gandonjo, he says, what do you mean, Dogo says, after he says, looking for your pillow. I mean, his entire body is hands and eyes.

[38:13]

The entire body is hands and eyes. And Dogo says, your answer is quite good, but it's not quite enough. Or, your answer is 99% right, Sukhyoji said. Your answer is quite good, but not quite enough. You know, truck has, there's a live, I guess in trucking, live load is what the cargo and the dead load is the truck itself, chassis and stuff.

[39:23]

In Buddhism we find out that there's no dead load, it's all live load. This is what Sosan meant by the withered tree never dries up and withered branch never dries up. If you can have this kind of confidence, everything will reach out to you and your practice and your life and your livelihood will penetrate It's this kind of penetration which allows us to have our energy for practice allows us to find out what we are what we do, what we want

[40:57]

what we see and your intention in this is so important how to discover our intention our inmost request your intention is you not your body, your intention is you. And from other people we receive their intention, we receive the intention of everything. If a person is near or far, alive or dead, you can receive their intention. So this is the end of the session and I never put too much pressure on you Sometimes at the end of a session I encourage you to practice more strictly But my meaning here is that the end of this session should be the beginning of your next session

[42:46]

The end of this session is how you should practice throughout the entire next session by your own intention. So the rest of the day you can sit. I don't know how to express it exactly wordlessly. aimlessly, one with, united with your breathing, undisturbed, tranquil, condensed, luminous mind, continuous with everything, covering heaven and earth This is right livelihood, this is right livelihood, every day, mind you.

[44:00]

Your path in emptiness, as Third Rank says. Dogen says, the no-trace which continues endlessly. Give up the idea that you're a body or a mind and just sit without any idea. What is sitting? You don't know.

[45:11]

You have no reason to be alive or dead. Somehow, we can say, we will say, you arrived at 10 o'clock tonight. Maybe we won't arise. Let's not arise. Aimlessly sit. And maybe at ten o'clock no one will be here. Everyone will have gone off in a direction. Maybe we'll all open our eyes and be here.

[46:24]

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