Welcome again. Noticing how much more light, I mean, clear evidence is spring is on the way. Like every day, a little more every week, a little more light coming in through the window at this hour. So tonight is our last conversation about Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, at least for now. Of course, everything we talk about is included in those teachings because that's what Suzuki Roshi cared about. We're the Buddha's teachings, and that's what he's talking about. So we'll keep talking about the Buddha's teachings, and we may end up referencing some of these lectures that we've been covering this past year. So this is the 39th week that we've looked together at this series of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, which were published back in 1970. It's been quite a while. And this book has been translated into many languages around the world. It's perhaps the most, I don't know, popular Buddhist book that has been produced in the West and continues to be, you know, in former generations.

[01:20]

And so I feel very lucky and very grateful to have had this chance to look again at these talks. And I've read this book so many times. I think it's the first thing I got when I was living outside of the Bay Area. And as a young woman, I had gone to live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, of all places. And I worked in the bookstore there. And the book that I found on the shelf that had the spirituality... you know, section on spirituality, about five books, I think. The one that I found and picked up and actually bought was in my beginner's mind. And it had a lot to do with that photograph on the back of the book. I remember looking at his face and I thought, wow, that is a very different kind of face. You know, something so direct and simple and just there with a slight smile. You know, I can't quite tell if he's smiling, but definitely this penetrating presence. So that book and me have been together a very long time.

[02:25]

And still having this opportunity to look at it more closely and to really appreciate the skill that Suzuki Roshi had in introducing this incredible teaching from East Asia into our Western culture, which had very little, as far as I know, very little exposure to East Asian wisdom teachings. And, of course, now we've got quite a lot. All the various Buddhist traditions and Hindu traditions and so on, so on. The Islam, all of that is in our culture now, and we have access through the Internet to just do anything we'd like to... Somebody is not muted if you wouldn't mind noticing if your little red mic is on or not. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Anyway, so, you know, the Dharma of the Buddha, as we all know, has traveled for over thousands of miles for hundreds and hundreds of years.

[03:25]

And now it's arrived here at the tumultuous beginnings of what we are calling the 21st century. So, This collection of lectures has an introduction. Maybe some of you read that. So I looked back through the book as I'm getting ready to put it on the shelf again. And there's this introduction by Professor Houston Smith, who himself was quite a character. So Houston Smith was a professor of philosophy, comparative religion at MIT, and was extremely well qualified since he had studied for a decade each of the major religions. of the world. He was born in China. I think he spoke Chinese. His first language was Chinese. His parents were missionaries there. And then he came back to the States and studied. And he also was companions with Timothy Leary and those guys who were doing all kinds of experiments with spirituality and intoxicants. So he had his own journey. It was quite extraordinary. And you might want to look up

[04:27]

Houston Smith, if you're interested in that. So he was invited, being one of the names during that time, back in the 70s, 1970s, to write the introduction to Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. And in this story, he recounts this time that he visited Suzuki Roshi in the final months of his life. So it must have been at the San Francisco Zen Center where Roshi finally died in December of that same year. When he went to see him, he said to Suzuki Roshi, I notice you don't really use the words Satori or Kensho in your teaching. And he asked him why that was, because that was kind of the main gist of a lot of the earlier Buddhist teachings that came into America were about Satori, you know, getting enlightened, having a big experience, you know, and then that would kind of transform your life forever and ever. But Suzuki Roshi doesn't talk about that. He won't find those words and send my beginner's mind.

[05:29]

And so Houston Smith says, well, so he asked Suzuki Roshi that question. And Mrs. Suzuki, who was my teacher for many years and was quite a character herself, she leaned over to Houston Smith and said, well, that's because he hasn't had it. You know, he hasn't had Sudori. And then Roshi feigning, you know, his displeasure with his fan, kind of whacking his wife. gently with his fan, says to her, you know, shh, don't tell him, you know, don't tell him. So there's this wonderful little humorous bit at the introduction of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which also gives us a good flavor of Suzuki Roshi, who really had a great laugh. And the students remember him fondly as having a wonderful sense of humor, as well as being a strict teacher, strict in the sense of disciplined and asking others to be disciplined and serious about their practice. So after the laughter had died down, Roshi says to Houston Smith, it's not that satori isn't important, but it's not the part of Zen that needs to be stressed.

[06:38]

Very important point. So then Dr. Smith says of Suzuki Roshi, his non-ego attitude left us no eccentricities to embroider upon. Though he made no waves and left no traces as a personality in the worldly sense, the impress of his footprints in the invisible world of history leads straight on. His monuments... are Tassajara, the first Soto Zen monastery in the West, its city adjunct in San Francisco, and for the public at large, this book. So wonderful tribute to this amazing teacher. So with that and many more tributes in mind, I think we can turn to this last talk in Zen My Beginner's Mind with our own feelings of gratitude and, dare I say, a great love for that remarkable man. So this final talk is called an epilogue, and the title is Zen Mind, followed by these words.

[07:42]

Before the rain stops, we can hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow, we see snowdrops and some new growth. Before the rain stops, we can hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow, we see snowdrops and some new growth. So in this talk, Suzuki Roshi makes his very famous statement, well, famous for those of us who were Zen students at the Zen Center anyway, that we are not priests and we are not completely lay people either. He then says that we are not priests is easy to see. I guess it was for him that we're not priests is easy to see. But that we're not lay people is more complicated. He then offers this prediction that we are here in the West to find our own way of living a sacred life, a way of life that really comes from our culture, that grows out of our culture.

[08:43]

And that's still a process that's ongoing. I think the Zen Center, under his guidance, did become a unique Buddhist institution of its day and of this day. As in Japan, and unlike in the rest of East Asia, we had male priests who were married. But we also had married women priests with children. So men and women practiced together at our monastery at Tassajara, unlike in East Asia, where that wouldn't have happened. And women became leaders of the Zen Center community in what has historically been an all-male hierarchy. So, you know, it wasn't like a big bang. There wasn't a big sound about any of that. This was a gradual growth and a gradual change that came about under his leadership. You know, initially I understand that he was just going to send men down to Tassajara to practice, and then at another time of year, send the women down to Tassajara to practice. And then I hear that the men said they didn't want to go if the women weren't allowed to go too.

[09:46]

So this is the 60s, right? So, well, we're not going to go without our old ladies. That's kind of what I heard. So the women, Suzuki Roshi said, well, okay. It's not something I've ever heard of before, but he said, okay. And so he went along with his students, and the outcome has been pretty encouraging, you know, for everyone. So all of that seemed pretty normal for those of us who lived in the Zen Center community all these years. But for the Japanese teachers and other East Asian teachers who visit us, it's pretty radical what's going on here. You know, just as Roshi had predicted, you know, not really, we're not really seen as priests by the traditional schools of Buddhism, and yet We're not lay people either. They don't quite know what to do with us, but they do enjoy coming to visit, you know, that much I know. So even though this type of social experimentation has marked our community through the years, as Roshi says in this talk, we must know what the undivided original way is and what Dogen's practice is.

[10:51]

The undivided original way that the Buddha discovered at the moment of his awakening. So regardless of all of these things that we're doing, these social experiments, it should never override the point of what does it mean to wake up? What does it mean to be awake? What happened there under the tree? What did that young prince discover that he tried his best to share with the generations that followed? So, you know, the way of awakening is a way that doesn't carve the world up into parts. such as good and bad, or time and space, past and future, male and female. Even though we carry out the same practices as the Buddha did, and as Dogen did, and as Suzuki Roshi did, we may not come to the same realization as they did about the non-dual nature of reality. It's something you've heard about quite a lot in the course of our looking at Zen Mind Beginner's Mind.

[11:52]

So Roshi spends most of his talk on the importance of not making our practice about some distinction between having such a realization, you know, an enlightenment experience, like, oh, these guys over here, they've had this experiment, they're really special. You know, we don't do that. There's no mention made ever of anybody's experience, you know. Everybody's just invited back to the Zendo for the next period of Zazen. So there's no distinction being made between those who have some kind of experience and those who don't. Which I always thought was, at first, when I was a young student, I thought, well, come on, somebody should tell us what's going on here, and who's catching it, and who's not, and so on, because we all had our suspicions, which were really unfounded. But little by little, you begin to appreciate how important it is not to think like that, not to think about differences. Just really appreciate each person and their practice. So this resonates with the comments that Houston Smith made in the introduction to Zen Mime, Beginner's Mime, that Soto Zen places very little emphasis on Kensho or Satori, these breakthrough experiences, and more emphasis on understanding ourselves and the true way of practicing in and as the world, which is what we are, the practice of wholehearted effort, the most important thing.

[13:16]

And Roshi says, if we sit in the proper way with the right attitude and understanding of practice, then that is Zen. The main point is to practice seriously. The important attitude is to understand and have confidence in big mind, in big mind. He then explains that big mind is not something that we can expect to experience in the usual way that we experience things. That's kind of an interesting distinction here. Because sometimes I think, you know, I've often said or thought that, oh, well, it's not about words or language or study or some intellectual understanding. It's about an experience. And now here he's saying or reemphasizing, it's not the kind of experience you mean when you say experience. You know, so when we say experience, we usually think about experience as something that we feel and that that feeling was either good or bad. And that it happened, you know, before the present moment.

[14:18]

It happened in the past. We're just remembering it, right? I remember that great moment when I step out into the light and everything was green and I was just so happy, you know. So that was a couple weeks ago, right? So that's not the experience that we're talking about when we talk about the experience of the way or the Buddha's awakening, you know. You know, that idea that we have about experience is not what the Buddha's awakening was about. Roshi says enlightenment is experience or consciousness that's beyond those distinctions or feelings, beyond our ordinary way of thinking. So there's the challenge, you know. We know how to think in an ordinary way. We don't even, and we're so good at that, we don't even think about it. You know, I don't think about how I think. Well, I do think about how I think because that's part of what Zen invites us to do, is to notice that you're thinking, to notice that you're feeling, to notice that you're here, you know, and what you're doing here, and so on.

[15:19]

But our ordinary way of thinking, you know, before we begin to study ourselves, as Dogen says, study the Buddha way, study the self, before you take that on, you know, it's just to assume that what you're thinking is just about reality, and that's the way reality is, is what you think. No one's ever told me to think otherwise until I tripped over the Zen center. So big mind is not something we can ever know objectively as an object. Big mind is always with us, is always on our side, as Roshi says. And then he uses the example of our eyes. This is a very good example. Our eyes are on our side, but we cannot see our eyes, and they cannot see themselves. Eyes only see what appear to be outside of themselves. So we all have the experience. If you look around, your eyes are not seeing themselves looking around. They're seeing the objects of their gaze. So when we imagine we see our own selves or our own mind, what we're imagining is some mental object

[16:25]

that we mistake for a self or a mind. So we've just basically transformed some idea into some idea we have into what we think we're looking for. I think I'm looking for myself. Aha, there it is. Well, you just found an idea you have that you call yourself, you know. It's like, oh, now that, that understanding is the way that the Buddha came to understand his own mind. Oh, it's my mind that's thinking that it sees who I am. It's just a little trick, an illusion. So we're studying illusions. So the mind that is always on our side is not just our own personal mind. Roshi says it's our universal mind. Our big mind is what's gazing out at the world. That mind is not different from anyone else's mind. And that mind is always the same. It's always the same. It's very quiet. It's very still. And it's very aware. It's awakening itself. So this true mind is always with whatever we see or hear, feel, taste, smell, or think.

[17:33]

Without that mind, there would be no smelling, thinking, tasting, touching, and so on. And then Roshi says, although you do not know your own mind, just like you don't know your own eyes, it is there at the very moment you see something. Your mind is always with the things that you observe. So you see, he says, this mind is at the same time everything. Everything, everywhere, all at once. He then talks about this mind, the big mind, as the watching mind, as the watching mind, the watchtower. And it's not separate from our small mind any more than a fish can be separate from the water in which it swims. or a bird from the air through which it flies. So then he quotes our first Zen ancestor in China, Bodhidharma, who said that in order to see a fish, you must watch the water. In order to see a fish, you must watch the water.

[18:37]

So which reminds me of this New Yorker cartoon from some years ago, in which this baby fish is asking his mother, what's an ocean? And the mother is looking at the baby, very perplexed, like, well, how would I know? So no matter what we see or think when we watch the water, when a fish or a thought swims by, for example, the thought that my practice is terrible, that's not uncommon. My practice is terrible. I'm a terrible person. That was the worst mistake I've ever made. You know, those kinds of fish. When they swim by, it's the experience of seeing your true nature. It's seeing those fish. It's like, oh, I'm seeing my thoughts. That is the experience of knowing your true nature. The true nature of your mind is it produces thoughts. That's all. They can't really hurt you. I mean, they can if you believe in them, if you grab a hold of them, if you try to possess them or act from them, they certainly can hurt you.

[19:43]

But the thoughts themselves are just swimming around in our mind, in our consciousness. So this experience of seeing our own nature, when we see our thoughts, is the observing oceanic mind, our true mind, our big mind, being aware of whatever fish or whatever thought goes swimming by. That's our job. just to simply be aware. So on the other hand, if we see the ocean from the point of view of the fish, if I'm just looking around, I'm in the ocean now, I'm the fish, that's my small eye, and I'm looking out for other fish that maybe got to make trouble for me, or maybe that could be my friends, I don't know what's happening, but I'm feeling like I'm all alone here in the ocean, and I'm being careful. And when I'm in that state of mind, and I'm trapped in my self-centered state of mind, I miss the ocean altogether. You know, what's an ocean? And therefore, I imagine myself to be very, very far away from home, separate. So some of you know or are familiar with Dogen's teachings from the liturgy at the Zen Center, where we chant these things every week.

[20:51]

We read these out loud together during morning service. So there's this opening paragraph in the essay called Fukanzazengi, meaning the universal recommendation for zazen, written by our Japanese founder, Dogen Zenji. And he says the way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The Dharma vehicle is free and untrammeled. What need is there for concentrated effort? Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dusts. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It's never apart from one right where one is. What is the use of going off here and there to practice? So that's the good news, you know. The way is already perfect and all-pervading. You're already Buddha. Your nature is the nature of awakening. You know, who could clean that off? You know, what necessary changes need to be made in such a situation?

[21:53]

So that's the first paragraph. And then Dogen says, and yet... If there is the slightest discrepancy, the way is as distant as heaven from earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion." Mommy, what's an ocean? So then Roshi says, do you understand? You cannot find Buddha nature by vivisection, by cutting things apart. Reality cannot be caught by thinking or by feeling. moment by moment to watch your breathing, to watch your posture, is true nature. There is no other secret beyond this point. So this slightest discrepancy that Dogen mentions is what Roshi talks about when he tells us that our focus on the I or the me, which is incessantly active, you know, it's like the fish or the bird incessantly flying around, is missing the truth, that it's the water that

[22:57]

and the air together with the bird and the fish that makes their home. The fish and the water, the bird and the air. There's nothing other than fish in the water and birds in the air and us humans strolling around in our beautiful garden, the Garden of Eden, as it's been called. Enlightenment experience is to realize the mind that is always on our side and that we can't see. So this is the irony. It's always on our side. It is what we are, but we can't see it. We can't turn ourselves around quickly enough to catch what we truly are. So we have to learn. We have to learn and believe, have some faith in that we are Buddha. In faith that we are Buddha, we enter Buddha's way. It's one of the things we say during ordination ceremonies. In faith that you are Buddha, you enter Buddha's way. So it's not by trying to find a bright star on the horizon and then say to ourselves, oh, this is enlightenment.

[23:59]

You know, just like the Buddha, I see the star and now I feel great and I feel wonderful. You know, that's just an idea that I'm having of myself and of an object. You know, me and a star separated through all eternity from one another. We practice, as Zen Roshi says, to express our true nature, not to attain enlightenment. Bodhidharma's Buddhism is to be practice, is to be enlightenment. Not to get it or to find it, but to be it. And then he ends this talk by telling his American students that they have an idea of freedom that concentrates on physical freedom. You know, the freedom to move around, to do what they want and to do what they, you know, say what they want and go where they want. You know, I think we're all, most of us who grew up in America kind of think that way. Oh, yeah, I'm free to travel and go anywhere I want. You know, I have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of this and that. You know, that's kind of an idea that I grew up hearing.

[25:01]

He says that... What we want to do is to limit our thinking. We don't want to limit ourselves physically, but we want to limit our thinking so that we don't have to suffer. We don't have to have unpleasant experiences. We don't need pain. We don't need this sadness. We can find a way to alter our thinking so that we'll always be happy. That's kind of one of the goals I think a lot of us may have taken off on this spiritual journey, hoping to find the other end of the rainbow somehow. And so for this reason, The Zen tradition has developed rules and ways of practicing Zen that engage both our minds and our physical bodies. You know, we have something called work practice at Zen Center. And any of you who've been there, you probably worked because if you spend the night and you had a meal, then usually the way we, you know, we pay for those things, it's not with cash, we pay for them by offering to work. You know, to do the dishes, go down in the garden, help out in maintenance, and so on and so forth.

[26:03]

So I've worked at Zen Center my entire time living there. I always had a job of one kind or another. And as I used to say to people, you know, at first, I was... kind of familiar with telling people that we do work practice meaning that what you're doing is work practice and that you should just understand that and that will be that will be take care of the thing that you might not like what you're doing or you know it just seems like work to you but after a while I started to think no that's not it we give people work you know real work you know cutting down trees and raising vegetables and making dinner and all that kind of stuff it's real work but practice is what we bring to the work It's the same thing whether you live at Zen Center or you live here at Ansel Village or wherever you are. The practice is what you bring to your activity. It's how you understand what you're doing. What you're doing in itself is just something you're doing. It doesn't have a label on it. But if you bring wholehearted effort, you bring an intention of kindness and of honesty and all of these other kinds of ethical virtues, then that becomes practice.

[27:12]

What you do becomes practice. So at San Francisco Zen Center, we call the rules that were created for our practice the shingi, the shingi. And it's kind of like the do's and don'ts of our communal life. So one of those rules that's read out loud at the beginning of a seven-day seshin, seven-day sitting, or a 30-day or 20-day practice period is follow the schedule completely. Sounds simple. Follow the schedule completely. And the schedule is posted, so you don't have to have any doubt about what the schedule is. And it starts at 5 o'clock in the morning, and it ends at 9 o'clock at night. And each one of those hours has something to do, someplace to be, and something that you should be wearing for that occasion. So in the morning, it's robes. After lunch, it's work clothes. back in the evening, you're back in your robes again. So this kind of cycle of working and sitting and eating and so on that really makes up the monastic training program.

[28:18]

So if we just follow the rules, the ones that we have made for ourselves, As a community, we made a lot of these rules, or we also accepted a lot of them from the Japanese monastic model, which in turn was modeled on the Chinese monastic model, which in turn was modeled on the Indian monastic model. So we've inherited a practice that's gone on for thousands of years of how to live together in community. So if we just do those rules without judging them as good or bad, or I like that one, I don't like that one, and maybe I'll skip out on those two, and so on and so forth, or whether we think they're fair or not fair, if we just do the rules, eventually our minds become quite free of preferences. You just show up and you do your best. And when the bell rings, you stop and you put your tools away. It's so freeing in so many ways to not have to figure it all out by yourself. So whether it's difficult or easy to practice with rules, all you can do is practice with them, just like in anyone's life.

[29:24]

All you can do is meet what's coming and take care of what's happening. As somebody said recently, just answer the door and see who's there, and then you respond. So in this way, we find ourselves you know, a way to be in the activities of our daily life, you know, how we do things, how others feel about us when we do them. And then to find that you at the center that is always with Buddha, you know, which means always with the support of everything, you know, and always right now. And Roshi then says, when you do what you do with everything, in each moment, you are already a Buddhist in the true sense, even though you do not attain enlightenment. Meaning even though you continue to think that the big mind, that Buddha's mind is outside of yourself, that it's something you haven't yet realized. Even though you think like that, by engaging in your life wholeheartedly, you're already a Buddhist or a Buddha in the true sense.

[30:27]

You're already helping others whether you realize it, who you are or not. It's not important. And then he says, someday someone will understand. And I'm going to wait for the island that I was told is moving slowly up the coast from Los Angeles to Seattle. He's a very patient man. I'm going to wait for one of you to understand this. While this island, I'm not sure which island it was, is moving up the coast from Los Angeles to Seattle. Could be the Channel Islands. I don't know. Maybe some of you know. So he closes this talk saying... We must have a beginner's mind, free from possessing anything. A mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists, but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Before the rain stops, we hear a bird. Even under heavy snow, we see snowdrops and some new growth.

[31:28]

In the east, I saw rhubarb already. In Japan in the spring, we eat cucumbers. So that's in my beginner's mind and our precious, precious former teacher and dear, dear teacher, Abbot Suzuki Roshi, what he left for us, a fabulous legacy of words. And this makes me very happy not to come to the end, but just to have gone through. you know, from the beginning and then arriving here. And with all of you, that's been a really reason I did it. And that's why I get to do this. And that's why I'm gonna get to look at the Yogacara again, because hopefully some of you will be interested in joining me on that journey as well. So I'd like to, first of all, go to gallery view so I can see all of you and welcome you and say your names.

[32:29]

Hello, Linda, Nini, and Helene, Kathy, Alisa, Jack, hello, Jack, and Griffin, Amr, Timothy, welcome, Timothy, and Jerry, Jerry, and there's Drew, and Jacqueline, welcome Jacqueline. Ah, that's the picture. Exactly. Did it to you too. Definitely. Lovely. Hi, Michael. Welcome. Shozan, Kakuan, Millicent, Carmenia, Marianne, Dean. Hello, Brent. Paul and Kate. Tom. Hi, Tom. And Kay again. Jerome. Hello, Jerome. Welcome back. And then I see some names. There's Abby and Caroline. Adrian, Kira, and Kosan. So welcome, warm welcome to all of you.

[33:30]

Anything you'd like to offer, any comments about Suzuki Roshi or about this particular talk, very welcome to add your thoughts and your voice. Hello, Drew. Hi. Yeah, I just remembered that, I think it was David Chadwick, one of his books, That picture of Suzuki Roshi, I love it too. But his eyebrow is – I always thought he was kind of like giving you a raise in your eyes. Yeah. But he said it was – when he was a young monk, he was going into the storeroom to steal some chocolate, and there was a hook hanging down, and his eye got hooked in it, and he was there. That was his first – had a first awakening or realization because he kind of spent the night waiting for somebody to come in and unhook him. Oh my gosh, I hadn't heard that. That's amazing. Wow.

[34:31]

Crooked cucumber or one of those. Uh-huh, uh-huh. That tells that story. Yeah, there's also that story about him going swimming down at the Narrows. That was another one that sort of shocked everybody. Like, you know, some of you, most of you maybe haven't been to the Narrows or to Tassajara, but just past Tassajara, it's in a very, very steep canyon. in California, kind of a deserty area. And there's this wonderful creek that runs through the center of the monastery and out to the ocean eventually, Tassar Creek. And so if you go down a ways, these giant granite boulders have created these deep, deep swimming pools. And so as students, that's what we did in summer. We'd head for the Narrows. And we didn't wear clothes. I mean, you know, I mean, that would have been silly back in those days. It's just everybody just jumped into the water. And so Suzuki Rishi went down there and he jumped in the water and forgot he didn't know how to swim. So... He saw all these legs hanging down from the rocks because he'd seen these lovely girls in the water.

[35:38]

So anyway, he thought he was going to die. He basically didn't know what to do. And somebody pulled him up, rescued him from the depths. But anyway, that was maybe his second enlightenment experience. Maybe I should be a little more careful. Thanks. Thanks, Drew. Hi, Griffin. Hi. This epilogue was really a challenge of understanding for me. It brought a perspective of why we practice. I love, you know, he made, there was a sentence about the point is to practice seriously, you know, to the discriminating mind and the reactive emotions and the tense sensations and to have confidence in the big mind which is the kicker to me and then there was a line from Bodhidharma about in order to see Buddha nature you have to watch the mind so

[37:05]

To me, there's sort of a leap between that. So, I mean, in my experience, I've been watching a particular trigger in reaction to another, both because I want to know myself and because if I lose my composure in reaction, I'm likely to say something hurtful and being harmful is the last thing I intend. But that left me sort of in a, I don't know, in limbo or sort of a frozen place. But I was willing to sort of sit there, and then I just felt maybe a bigger ocean of the whole situation, not just my reaction and my intention, but, you know, there was this whole...

[38:07]

sort of ocean of me being afraid to be who I am. It's an ocean of fear that I think connects us all. But in a way, it's also an ocean of love that connects us all. And that's maybe as close as I get to connecting, you know, studying the mind with bigger mind, Buddha nature. You know, well, it's tricky. It is tricky. And because we have these minds that are tricky, that they're very hard for us to understand this really simple. It's very simple, really. You know, it's not like magic. It's not something changes. It's that you begin to see accurately. Like, oh, that's my mind. Oh, that's my mind. You know, the trigger is my mind and my perception of what's happening that is triggering my mind.

[39:12]

So it's like this next study we're going to do of the mind only is very interesting because we're going to be getting drilled and it's your mind. It's your mind, you know, in that whatever it is that's going on, it's your mind that you're witnessing or you're experiencing. And when you separate me from my mind or me from the activity, well, now you've basically created this vast distance between heaven and earth, as Dogen's saying. You know, so the intimacy of recognizing that it's my mind, those fish are in my mind, those birds are in my mind, and that what the mind is is not my mind, it's the great mind. It's the mind of awareness, which all of us are gifted with awareness. We woke up and, you know, somebody gave us a little pat on the butt and then we woke up. We opened our eyes and we screamed, you know, like, oh, my God, where are we? You know, so we little by little, we've been opening up more and more to this amazing world.

[40:13]

And we got a little distracted by all that stuff we were supposed to do. You know, we're supposed to believe and so on and so forth. But we're kind of free now. Most of us are past the age where we have to be trapped by ideas that other people have for us. So we get to think more widely and openly and really imagine ourselves as awakened beings. I mean, that's the challenge. You're already awake. So then, of course, the next challenge is now act like it. So then, oh, okay, back to the drawing board. How does an awakened being behave? Well, we know. They're kind, as you're saying, Griffin. They're kind and they're generous and they're thoughtful and they're a little restrained in terms of their impulsiveness and that sort of thing. So that's the part we practice. Practice speech and gesture and so on, posture. It takes a little while, but it's worth it. It's worth it to keep refining this amazing thing that we've been given, this life.

[41:18]

So thank you. Thank you for that. that offering. Hello, Dean. Hi, everyone. Boo, I would like to know if you... There's two things that I'd like to bring up. One is I'd like to know if you could go back to the very beginning when you were talking about Houston and it started with... And I believe maybe he was talking about Suzuki Roshi and his non-ego presence. And as far as I got, left us with nothing to build on, which is sort of what you said. And I just would like to hear it again because that is so just pure. Yeah, I'd be happy to say it again. It's in the front of the book, so you can always look there.

[42:20]

His non-ego attitude left us no eccentricities to embroider upon. So kind of a fancy language, right? We couldn't make a story about him. Oh, he was the great Zen master and make a brocade robe to put on him. You know, he had a brocade robe and one of his formal photographs has that robe on. And Mrs. Suzuki wanted that picture to be on Zen Mind Beginner's Mind and not this one of him in his kind of casual monk outfit with, you know, with the little grin and his eyebrow up. So, you know, he didn't, he wasn't into that. He wasn't into showing himself as an embroidery event, you know, as some kind of extravagance. He really was pointing out the Dharma. He kept pointing to the Dharma and pointing to the students. It's you. It's up to you. You find the way. So his non-ego attitude left us no eccentricities to embroider upon. Though he made no waves and left no traces as a personality in the worldly sense, the impression of his footprints in the invisible world of history lead straight on.

[43:29]

Right, straight on. His monuments are at Tassajara, the first Soto Zen monastery in the West, its city adjunct in San Francisco, and for the public at large, this book. I just thought that was, it sort of reminded me when I meet someone and I feel like I've just touched magic. That's what that reminded me of. And when we meet someone like that, The trueness of nature of life is just presented to us, and we get to have that moment where, oh, my gosh, there is nothing here for me to make anything up with. Yes. And there's such a—the freedom in that is just remarkable. I really liked the way that it was—and that's in the front of—it's in my beginner's mind? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I have to read that part again.

[44:31]

He was chosen. Again, look up Houston Smith. Oh, yeah, I know. He's been to Berkeley a couple times years ago, and he was quite a character. The other thing I wanted to ask about is you had said something about what draws people to Zen. I didn't get it exactly right. change us and help us find peace. And I think that it's pretty true. If you don't look at it that way and you look at it, this is what I think. If you live it and just keep going, because I know that I have experienced a huge change over the last 25 or so years in my life. And so it's, on one hand, it's kind of nice that that sort of falsity is there because you're not going to like sit and shazam your, you know, this something being.

[45:49]

But it's also true, I believe, that when we do embrace it as it's meant to be embraced, that's kind of where we go. And I'm sure we change our idea of what is finding, you know, true peace, that what we learn that is peace is not necessarily what we thought it was if one is setting out on the path. Right. Right? Right. Yeah. Well, it's always surprising. I mean, I think part of what What kept me interested was how surprising it was. It's not what I thought. Jeez, it's really not what I thought. It's not even close to what I thought. So less and less of the I thought over time, whatever I made up about the world or myself just became like, no, that doesn't hold. It doesn't hold. It's not working. It's not a good working model. So to be given a different model, like...

[46:50]

bodhisattva you know that's pretty nice so maybe you want to try that on as a a way of being in the world like just living for the benefit of others that sounds pretty good you know how to do that is not obvious you know but at the same time it's something we can actually imagine unlike some of the images from the earlier impulses that we may have had of like ascending into the stars or whatever we thought we were going to get out of this, you know, some kind of translucence or some great glow that was going to come about. I mean, that was pretty much in the culture when I was growing up in the 60s. There were lots of promises being made for, you know, extraterrestrial travel. Some of our folks were into astrology and there was... Planetary travel you could do. So that was all kind of fun. But the real thing that was grounding about Zen was, you know, just go do the dishes. Oh, I can do that. Go to the Zen.

[47:51]

Oh, I can do that. There was nothing about it that any of us couldn't do. And I think part of that is what made it so intimate and so much so valuable. You know, it's like, oh, this really is about me. Each of us, you know. And, you know, human first, human first. So I appreciate what you're saying, Dean. I feel that way too. It's not like I didn't, I had no idea what would come of it. The Buddha didn't know what was going to happen when he sat under the tree. He had no idea what was going to happen to him. So it was a big surprise, right? So we just keep waking up in the morning for the big surprise. And there it is every day. And it does feel very much like magic. It really is magic, isn't it? Yeah. I remember telling Sojin, saying, I didn't do anything.

[48:53]

I just came and I sat and I sat and I sat. I didn't do anything and something happened. How can that be? And that's what it feels like. What did he say? He just, well, you know. Smile. Yeah, yeah. He smiled. Does his little nod like. Yeah, right. Yeah. So, but it was, it's, yeah, magic. Yeah, it is. Well, we are. We are. We're the magicians who forgot we're doing the tricks. Okay. Thank you, Dean. Paul and Kate, or Paul or Kate? I guess it's me. Okay. Other than magic. What did you say? There is nothing other than magic. In listening to this last talk, it suddenly hit me that I want to thank you for bringing Suzuki Roshi alive to us.

[49:56]

We've read and we know the lineage at Zen Center, but you're bringing direct experience and talking about him kind of makes him, you know, be able to practice with him through you and with you. So it's really, it is magical too, but it was, you know, you're special, but he was also special too, but he's passed. We don't have direct access to him. So through your words, you're making him alive to us. And yeah, That just hit me now. But I want to also share a revelation from, if anybody listened to Kokyo's Dharma talk at Green Gulch this morning, he spilled the beans on the secret, which I thought was kind of humorous.

[50:59]

He sort of acknowledged it, but he was talking about Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. And he said, historically, it was not to be shared with ordinary people because it was Dongshan's dharma transmission to his disciples. So I'm reflecting on that commentary from Kokyo, accepting at face value that I believe him. That's pretty special that it is the total teaching of Damsang embodied in this recitation. So does that seem true? Oh, I think it is true. I think a lot of this stuff was pretty esoteric. Well, it was all held within monastic compounds. Lay people weren't... getting involved in much of this stuff. There was the rare layperson who was a scholar who really got involved in the teachings, but mostly with professional monks who were scholar monks and spent their entire lives, you know, reading scriptures and talking to each other and coming up with these, the next school and the next school, like Dongshan founded a school, you know, so they were really brilliant.

[52:18]

You know, many of them are quite brilliant. And the fact that we get involved to go in there, we get to get in there, into those libraries. It's amazing. I hope it's good. When the so-called barbarians broke into the libraries of Europe, Back at the beginning of the Dark Ages, so-called Dark Ages, they basically burned the books because they used them for fuel. They didn't know how to read. So let's hope we're not like those barbarians who have ill intent when it comes to cracking the code on all these talks. They're so wonderful, and I think we're just so lucky. But again, I think it's kind of a small grouping so far of people who are really taking the time to be impacted by these teachings. Our wish is that it grows and more people would be interested, you know, to their benefit. But we don't proselytize. We just keep going like, well, we have some really nice stuff here if you want to come by, you know.

[53:20]

So it's kind of a slow grow. And I always think, oh, God, shouldn't we be going faster? I remember I said to Rev one time, I went in, I had my robes on, my okesa, and I said, some terrible thing had just happened in the news, which isn't very infrequent. And I pulled on my okesa and I said, is this fast enough? You know? And he said, to save the world. And he said, well, it might save the world from you. I thought, okay, thank you. I'll go back to my room now. I agree with with that feeling of wanting to speed it up. Yeah, yeah, I really do. It's magical. Because it's readily available to us, the availability of that song of the Jewel Mara Samadhi is not special. It's sort of like, oh, it's just, it's there. But wasn't it kind of hidden or not, was for centuries not available?

[54:25]

No, yeah. Certainly in... It's not published or not shared. Dogen too. Dogen was back in the files. They forgot about Dogen for centuries. It wasn't until some monk went back into the stacks and pulled up some of his writings that he was revived and brought up to his proper position as this great teacher. But it's not hard for stuff to vanish. And so maybe that's part of our job in this era is to have so much opportunity to bring these things into our awareness. The tricky part is, you know, you've got so much stuff, how do you know what to look at? I mean, how are you even going to know to look at the Jewel Mirror Samadhi? I think that's the other problem. It's just so much material. So that's what I'm hearing.

[55:25]

That one seems... really special to revisit. And is that... That is part of the... Tokyo's doing the same book that you are proposing. The Yogacara, yeah. Am I correct about that? Yes, yes. He was... That's part of... Do we go back to the Jumara Samadhi as part of the Yogacara? Or... Yeah, well, we're going to go back to it also as part of this discussion of the two truths. I'm going to be doing, we're all kind of complementing each other right now, like Taigen's doing the five ranks, he's doing Dongshan for two classes right now, and then I'm doing the two truths, and Kokyo's doing what you've been hearing and an ongoing reading of this text by Waldron. So I think right now these are the foundational teachings. the Majamakar, the middle way teachings, and the Yogacara, mind-only teachings, are the two primary schools that underpin Zen.

[56:33]

So we're kind of putting those schools up and visible so that when we begin to talk about things like koans and other kinds of a little more abstract examples, that we can say, oh, that's a Yogacara influence. That's coming from the Yogacara sutras. Oh, that's coming from the Prajnaparamita Sutras. So we begin to be better educated about the source materials. And so that's kind of the, I think that's kind of the idea of what's going on right now. It's just trying to get the foundational teachings, like the Jewel Mirror Samadhi for Soto Zen. And so, yeah, I think the answer is yes, if I'm correct in understanding your question, that we will go back, we'll look at that. And don't wait. I mean, you can also look at the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. It's a beautiful poem. And also, if you look at Charlie, I sent all of you Charlie Bacorni's notes on the Jewel Mirror Samadhi at the time you were looking at it.

[57:41]

You probably have it somewhere on your computer. Everything you'd ever want to know about the Jewel Mirror Samadhi is in those notes that Charlie Bacorni made. And if you can't find it, I can send it again. Yes, it was every alternative translation of each phrase. Yes. It was on a spreadsheet, basically. Yes, and all the different teachers, what they said about it, including Reb. They had all these teachers' comments on each of those lines. So it was quite an extensive research project that he did. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Paul. Millicent. Just a quick question, firmly in the realm of ideas, please. In the epilogue, Suzuki Rashi is talking about

[58:48]

experience and enlightenment experience. It's not some experience we should have in terms of good or bad, time or space, past or future. It is experience or consciousness beyond these distinctions or feelings. So my simple question is, is consciousness a synonym for big mind? Well, I would say not exactly, because I think consciousness includes our small mind. So it's one aspect of big mind is awareness. But, you know, we can also, we have this awareness, this cramped down awareness that we call ourself, which is another form of consciousness. So I would say the big mind, when he says beyond consciousness, I think whatever concept we have of consciousness and being conscious of and subject-object splitting, which is how we basically use our consciousness, is to separate things into parts, discursive.

[60:00]

We cut things into parts by our discourse. I would say that that is an aspect of big mind, but being the fish that it is, it doesn't realize itself. It doesn't recognize its vastness. It just sees its tininess. this tiny bit of the ocean, like the tiny circle of water Dogen describes. Even though it is only a circle of water, we know that there's much more there than that. It's kind of a knowing or a faith in the vastness beyond what our small-mindedness can do, the kind of understanding that it's much more than that. It's beyond what you're able to understand or recognize. and relaxing into that vastness without having to know it. Is that making sense? Kind of? Yeah, sure. And I realize I'm splitting, splitting, splitting, so I know I'm in the realm of fish in the ocean.

[61:08]

So consciousness is another fish. Your idea of consciousness is a fish. Your concepts are fishes. Your feelings are fish. Sure. All your sensations are fish. There is the consciousness beyond my thinking about it? Yeah, there is beyond thinking about it. Beyond thinking. And Dogen, you know, think not thinking. Try that. Think not thinking. And the monk says, how do you think not thinking? And Dogen says, non-thinking, neither thinking nor not thinking. Yeah. Well, that just finishes the conversation, doesn't it, once we're into non-thinking? Kind of does, yeah.

[62:09]

Yeah, kind of includes everything. It includes thinking and non-thinking and not thinking. Vastness and smallness is all included. And all these sutras do that. They talk about the tiny little elements and the vast elements, the galaxies and the molecules. You know, it's like all of that is reality. What we call reality. All-inclusive. I'd say that's big mind. All-inclusive reality. Thank you, Fu. You're welcome. And my own small... The wise one, the truly wise one. Truly wise one. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You're welcome. Hello, Amr. Welcome. Thank you. Just wanted to express some gratitude for the time and effort you put into bringing us these teachings and bringing them alive for us.

[63:11]

And... Sometimes I think about, wow, I'm actually, Suzuki Roshi is my great grand teacher, which is pretty special too. Very special, very special. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. Yeah, I just, you know, I never met Suzuki Roshi. I only know him as a kind of a ghost or a phantom that was haunting the halls of Zen Center when I arrived in the form of grief. Because his students were so sad. You know, my teachers were all students of Suzuki Roshi. And they were so sad that their wonderful teacher was no longer visible. You know, but his impact, his impress, as Houston Smith said, is surely visible and still visible. And I think will always be visible as long as humans are, you know, finding their way in this practice. So I think we're all very, very lucky. to be in those footsteps, following those footsteps. Thank you, Amr.

[64:13]

Okay, dear ones, I'm going to say goodbye. So please enjoy your evening. Many blessings to all of you. And next week we will start. I'll do some introduction to the Yogacara. You don't need to read ahead unless you'd like to. I'm going to be using a few texts, but I'll probably spend... quite a bit of time the next few weeks on, or months maybe, Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara by Ben Connolly. And if you don't have it already, it's really good, and it's very, very clearly written. It's such a good book. And then I also am going to read to you about some of the things Bodhidharma had to say, who was the Indian monk who came to China with the Lankavatara Sutra, which is a Yogacara mind-only sutra. I also have that. to read you little excerpts from the Lankavatara Sutra. So we'll just keep looking in at the Yogacara teachings and start to see what we can pull apart that we can talk about. And one of the nice things about Yogacara teachings is you can actually make diagrams.

[65:18]

You can draw things and illustrate the different aspects of consciousness. And this big bag of tricks that we carry around called the alaya, the unconscious. which is basically what we sprout out from the unconscious. That's what we are, or we're sprouts from the unconscious that we carry with us. So we'll talk about that and how they explain that relationship and how we practice with the way we are. Okay, so I look forward to that, and I will see you soon. So if you'd like to unmute and say goodnight, you're certainly welcome to do that. Good night. Good morning. Good morning. Good night. Thank you, Fu. You're welcome. You're welcome. Be well, everybody. You look great. Take care.

[66:20]

Thank you. Good night. See you around the corner. Around the corner.

[66:29]

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