I think you've all sat, can you hear me? I think you've all sat pretty well, this session, in fact I'm amazed at how well you sit without much encouragement. And I think, I feel you've learned something, this session, about effort, which you didn't know before, maybe not consciously, but by your practice I feel that you've discovered something important about effort. Anyway I have great confidence in your practice, in our practice.

[01:07]

The important thing now is can we carry it into our usual life, and I don't mean just guest season, or life in the city, but the whole scale of our usual life. Can we find our whole life, usual life, now? I'm not asking you about sometimes, I'm not asking you about the last 15 days, or the next 15 days, I'm asking you about right now, what will you do?

[02:16]

What are you going to do? Can you bring your whole future down into this moment? Today, I said to someone, I said to you, [...] about speaking about career and marriage, and I don't mean career and marriage exactly, but it gives you a suggestion of what I mean. What Uman's talking about is living, finding everything you need right now, and it means

[03:28]

giving up your future, finding your future now. It's a kind of marriage with right now, which makes the future past. You've made each moment, you make your future, so we can say your future is past, and you're free next moment for some unimagined possibility. But it means, technically, you have to give up your future. And, usually, we save, often we save space in our future for a career, or a marriage, as if our life had a beginning and end, and we created history in between, it widened

[04:45]

out in some way, and we had to fill that space between our beginning and end. But, to give up those future spaces, as I often say, to follow your nose, to follow your nose. If you are to be married, someone will join you who also wants to follow their nose. You don't have to give them a life. You can give them, you know, what will happen next, but that's, I think, pretty difficult

[05:51]

for us, actually, to give up. We want to think of our life as a possession which we offer. And if we have nothing to offer but following our nose, it seems too much. But, really, what alternative is there? There's no fixed place we ever get to. And if you're hoping for a fixed place in the future, you're completely mistaken. If you meet people from your practice or with your practice as a possession, you're

[07:16]

destroying people. There's nothing but our illusions on this moment. Even if we say illusions or delusions, it's not right. It's something critical. If samsara and nirvana are the same, then delusions are enlightenment. If, out of your weakness, you offer people practice or some correction, you'll end up in a dreadful place. It's like overthrowing your mother and father.

[08:24]

We may be home leavers, but we continue the work of our mother and father, continue the life of our mother and father, as we continue the body of our mother and father. It may be different. They may not agree with it. But, if you don't have some feeling of continuing the work of people, you can never do anything except on a very small, narrow scale, which becomes narrower and narrower. I thought Bruce's example of our leaky pail is other people's stepped-on toes, other people's

[09:45]

toes we've stepped on, was quite accurate. So, there's no such thing as Pratyekabuddha. But I don't like to say there's only Bodhisattva, but actually, that's my feeling. That if you want to find out your fullest capacity, it means Bodhisattva's way of life. And to find out your capacity and not destroy yourself, it has to be bigger than you. It can't be something you define or you name or you possess. So, we need permission, we need to carry on someone else's life work.

[10:57]

And Mahayana Buddhism is our way to realize everyone's life work. Someone's illusions or delusions are just their misguided, maybe, or ineffectual attempts to realize their true nature. But you can't offer them from the point of view of possession, of practice. You have just how do you express yourself on each moment, just what's there on each moment. If it's delusions, it's delusions, that's nirvana, because what we're talking about is not some possession, but if we have to name it, let's call it some trust or feeling, some

[12:11]

profound ease or lack of fear. So we offer people our energy more than our consciousness, our energy which supports them in whatever they're doing. This means to trust your Buddha nature, to trust their Buddha nature, that how they got in front of you, how they got to Tassajara, or how they got in front of you, wherever you are, is by the urging of their Buddha nature. So you don't have to point out that their effort is misguided, or you don't have to feel, I'm practicing, they're not. If you can truly just be one with them in their, if we call it delusion, fine.

[13:22]

That itself is so unusual. To do that is already practice. To do that allows their own urging, to feel, the freedom to speak to. So we trust a kind of rhythm. We can't say that the Absolute is always the same on each moment. Each moment is its own Absolute, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha.

[14:26]

So although we can't say there's time other than what you yourself are time, how you yourself are time and space, we do find some rhythm we can trust, or we can say the suchness of Tathagata we trust. So you don't have to command people or enlighten people. Just join with them and trust Tathagata. Trust their own Buddha nature. If they're free from fear, it will come out. So just to offer people some comfort and let them find out for themselves if there's

[15:32]

nothing to find out. Yes. is only in the context of complete mutual agreement, mutual decision to find out with each other how to continue the work of the patriarchs and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. How to make this glowing mirror wisdom, which just reflects delusions, if you like, perfectly,

[16:51]

This is a test of your practice, whether your practice is, you know, the ultimate one-up of insecurity, of fearfulness. The ultimate one-up, you know, is religious life. And if you treat religious life or practice as a possession, it's maybe the worst sin, if there's sin. To use religious life to establish yourself, to put people down, is terrible. So our practice matures when we can give it up, when we realize our mutual work,

[19:12]

when we genuinely don't find ourselves different from others. Practice, that's possession. Zen as possession doesn't exist. Practice is just what we have on each moment. If what is offered us is delusion, that's what we, you don't hold back, that's what

[20:21]

we join people with, just giving them some feeling of support. In this way, your practice will mature, and mature in the realm of each person you meet. This is how we develop, you know, intentionless practice. This is how we find a scale of life, and that asks everything of our capacity.

[21:51]

No longer are we wondering what to do, or what our strength is. This full life is what, by our practice, we want to find out about. This full life is what, by our practice, we want to find out about.

[23:20]

This full life is what, by our practice, we want to find out about. Not, not 15 days from now. Not in terms of the next 15 days, or in terms of the last 15 days. Not searching around for something. But right now, in your own delusion, in your own practice, to join with yourself, to join as a vow with what you're already doing.

[24:26]

What other alternative could there be? And to trust not future plans, or the last 15 days, but to trust what Dogen calls, this inner dynamic working. Finding out how we exist on this moment, and trusting. That we will find out on each moment, how to exist, without trying to straighten it out ahead of us.

[25:37]

Finding out how we exist on this moment, and trusting. That we will find out on each moment, how to exist, without trying to straighten it out ahead of us. Of your breathing, and kinhin, and it all sounds like little jade to me. It all sounds like our mutual calling to each other. I want each of you to find out what your practice will be.

[27:08]

For I don't completely know, I want to find out from you, what the possibilities of our life are. So I'm waiting with you, for my own practice, and for your practice. Finding out what our complete capacity will be. We can feel some of it dissolve, some of the separation dissolve.

[28:43]

We can feel some of it dissolve, some of the separation dissolve. We can feel some of it dissolve, some of the separation dissolve. One or two more periods, at least two more periods. Completely together, in the voice of the stream. I cannot express fully, I can't express it for you.

[30:25]

Please, please find it for me. Please, please find it for me.

[30:37]

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