No, no, no. You got to meet him. How great you're hanging. Whoa. My mound is too big. So welcome to Hosunji Beginner's Mind Temple, where we meet the Dharma for the first time each time in a new representation, a new physical form. new people that haven't really been here before.

[01:01]

And before I get into the talk, I wanted to say to you, I wanted to come to work circle to say to everybody, I'll be gone until July 6th. It has nothing to do with this talk, whether it goes well, but I'm on vacation, so I didn't have time to say goodbye to people. And I'm going to go to Arcata for 10 days. I invited there to take a vacation, so I'll be gone. And one other thing, somebody left me a bouquet of flowers, but I don't know who it is outside our apartment door. So if you would fess up after this, I'd like to thank you. The wonderful sunflowers that would make a grand gold cloud. They're quite beautiful, so if you'd let me know who it is, it would be nice. But you don't have to. So tonight I wanted to talk about several things that have been coming up for me.

[02:02]

I'm teaching a precept class. You know, I was within Dharma Transmission by Dharu, Michael Wenger, several years ago. So I'm teaching a precepts class, some people are beginning to say. So the precepts, of course, come up for me. You know, I'm interested in other ways I haven't been before. And my name, the name that Nell Rensman, a surgeon with me in 1991 when I got my rocket suit, was Kokodan, which was a field of precepts, or a virtuous field, or the precepts correctly handed down. And I never... I actually never really liked the name very much, you know. I've always, for some reason, sort of held back from studying the precepts. It never really propelled me. And I remember when, maybe a few years after that, my teacher, Michael Lehner, was talking with me about my two names, and he said, you know, Tottenham's a pretty interesting name for you.

[03:13]

You know, you kind of want to be a good guy. You know, you want to be a nice guy. And you're very kind, I pray. But Maybe there could be more, in other words, to that effect. And my second learner, Shuri, which Hakun Zen Jin is a true Zen illness or Zen sickness. He called it a true heart or a vital heart, a true or key to have vitality. So, you know, it's always been a little bit the koan of my practice, this being steady and doing the right thing and what's beyond the right thing. Is there such a place? Can we abide on just one side of this equation of being correct or perfect or kind? So what about this other area, this difficult place of confusion maybe?

[04:13]

Or maybe the place I call the land of Mara. So with that, if you put my show and tell, you'll see my picture. This is a Tibetan image of dependent colorizing, the Kravnadanas or links, ignorance, volition or action, consciousness, name and form, going through contact, sensation and ending in death. And all there was Yama, the God of death, usually. So you can see Yama, sort of a fearsome aspect. with skulls or Yama's neck. And so that's one depiction of Maya or this deity that hinders us. And the wheel is depicted. This is a more iconographic look. There are wheels in there. In the middle, a mood, hidden delusion are normal compass points.

[05:14]

of dualistic thinking that try to help us navigate this wheel. And what happens is loops or circularity or being trapped in our own stories often. But at the same time, I'm very fond of Mara in an interesting way. So in the office I have, I have this over the altar, Mara, or this image of dependent arising. And the Tibetans, so one of the images of this is Maya, and then another quality is this is also Avalokita. This is also the way of compassion. Both of these images are aligned, actually, when we begin to investigate more closely good and evil, this nature of light and dark. So... I felt, you know, my hesitation with the precepts was a privilege done right and wrong or absolute right and wrong.

[06:23]

The similarity of that kind of existence where, you know, I'm lining up on the good side where the good people are and there's kindness and light and discounting this other part, which is also the realm of shenky or vibrant quality. So I felt almost saying, I'd like to explore darkness, but I thought, oh my gosh, how would that sound? This is an interesting, for me, question as I study the precepts. What's this borderline between good and evil? How do we understand it? Does it exist out there in those things that are happening that hinder us in some way? Where does good and evil flourish, and what's the relationship? How do we work with this fundamental situation? And what's beyond just good and bad or right and wrong? And so this is not, you know, usually when that question is raised, we think, okay, well, I just run amok.

[07:29]

Or the temptation is there to indulge myself, to search out my true freedom by random acts of of sensual desire or anger. And as a way to sort of get through, and you can say this is kind of a little bit of a whispering of Mara, this kind of token freedom. So Mara kind of whispers, you know, sometimes, what's the difference? You're going to die anyway, and nobody really knows the truth. Or why make such a big effort? Go with the flow a little bit. You know, that shouldn't be enough. So how to hear this quality of good and bad and to see its relationship and to see that one side is fruit and that one side is a hindrance, but they're connected. They're intimately connected. And we can't dispose of this question of our existence so neatly.

[08:35]

So ever since I've started liking Mara a little bit, In fact, the lecture topic will be called Buddha and Mara, if you have to come up with the title. You know, I've kind of gotten interest in this idea of the difficulty of life and the seeing incomprehension of life and the wall that's put up and the possibilities of how to actually work with that in a whole way, in a complete way. So the precepts have kind of come alive from that point of view for me now that I'm teaching the class. They don't have a static quality. In fact, the absolute nature of it is disappearing for me. I just went into Amy, so I was petting a dog before coming in. She's my favorite dog, Boone. And everyone said... Gosh, what a terrible day. I was robbed, you know, at 3 o'clock today.

[09:38]

So in the middle of the day, somebody stole some things from her. And I thought, wow, you know, what a complex world we live in. What an unknown situation. And part of it, I feel deeply the sadness for Amy and then the sadness for these two guys that just came in to steal an iPhone, you know. the perplexing nature of a situation like that. So what's even beyond right and wrong here is a little delve into these compelling situations of difficulty that we find ourselves in. Kind of has been my question in this precept class, and the way I'd like to propose the precepts. So rather preliminarily when we say don't steal, really don't steal. This is not an equivocation. But just to hang out there as though this were the absolute answer isn't quite correct.

[10:42]

There may be situations where stealing is going to come up that who knows? You steal for somebody who is starving to death. I don't know. Life is much more complex and interconnected than simple solutions to things. And so having the precepts I was thinking is we'll be defeated. At some point we'll feel separated from things and we won't be able to enter into them in a deep enough or profound enough way to actually respond, you know, to respond accurately and in a caring way. So a little bit, I think, with the precepts, I'm trying to bring more of that to the fore. And then we become quite an interesting encouragement to investigate our lives. They're no longer separate from insight, you know, or waking up, which serves a much more compelling than just doing good.

[11:46]

They're not really different, actually. Although sometimes I think the idea of Weaking up has more of a dramatic flair to it, more of a dramatic aspect that confuses us, actually. You know, that I think confuses us. You know, when Dogen says, don't mistake the true drag, and I think he's pointing to that, that we have an idea of escape, that we're going to get off of this wheel of Aba Mokita and Mara and how clear or be okay. And this is about not being okay. about fundamentally staying back in this place where light and dark are not so clearly understood. So I kind of bring that quality, I think, to studying the precepts and practice. Now, it's been an interesting change for me. There have been more people irritated at me, I think, in the last six weeks than in the last 10 years.

[12:49]

And it's kind of okay, you know. Not that it's right or wrong. It's beyond right or wrong. It's simply the situation that I'm going to be connected to my activities and their activities. And we're looking something out together. It's a little bit beyond what I think is absolutely right or wrong. You know, it's a ceaseless desire to investigate this together, which is... I think the true aspect of Sangha, which is what Sangha is, to stay together, to listen to each other. So that's your truth. That's your truth. That's who you see here. And to really take that in, not just what we want to hear or what supports a certain approach or a certain sense of freedom, but really listening. really listening to each other. And I think there's nowhere to, you don't get off the hook.

[13:52]

There's no right or wrong. This is the whispering, if you want, though, of Mara, who is a tripster, too, likes loops. You know, loops go nowhere. And so often the rule of samsara starts and ends and starts and ends. And it's very hard to find a scene to get off of. How do I get off of this? What do I do? So one aspect is, you know, a belief of a story. Maybe I'll be a better person. I'll be a better Buddhist. I'll try harder and I'll get free of this. And remember, it was to actually step more deeply into the mystery of that wheel, you know, to actually step more deeply into what seems to be what is correct and what is incorrect. What is freedom and what is being trapped? And not being so sure we understand, I think, the nature of these two things. I don't learn too many colons I like, actually, or feel good about, so I only have three, I think.

[15:07]

It makes it so much easier. So... This is why I let roots and buffalo passes through the window, which I bring up over and over again. It's like a buffalo that passes through a latticed window. Its head, hands, and furrows all pass through. That kind of tail pass through as well. So we can imagine this massive water buffalo from the Orient easily passing through a lattice window, which has little tiny turns, which is even more incongruous. And then its tail never passes through. So what's going on with this great water buffalo? Is this a dilemma? Is its tail something that holds it back, and is its head a solution, or as Wutzu says, are you looking north at the head or south of the tail? So looking at the dualistic orientation, actually all 10 directions are now open to our view, and maybe,

[16:11]

Maybe getting stuck is getting free. Maybe being caught is the possibility of going nowhere else, of opening up to our true life, the true dimensionality of being a human being. In some ways we model Shakyamuni in that effort. He sure tried in every way for 29 years to enjoy himself, it seemed like. He had reveled in delight. He was given sensual delight. And then for six years, he tried to suppress his own room and body to step clear of the lavish window, to go somewhere else, to find some other place. And then in the end, he's driven back deeply into this situation of Mara and, if you want, darkness or difficulty of his own humanity. There is no other place. And that this separation of good and evil is also somewhat fictitious.

[17:13]

There's tremendous energy in this round, so he sits with it. He no longer ignores his common humanity and even his difficulties, his desires, which still play good. He sees each one openly. And seeing each one for the first time, not deluded by ups and downs and shoulds and shouldn'ts, he... He begins to see their true nature, that there is no, we use the word emptiness, there is no absolute place you can stand outside of the universe, even though you would really like to at times, especially when it's a bad day and you want to fix your life up. He finds that there is no other place to be except with this. somewhat frightening maybe for him, even intimacy and aloneness with his own life, with his own situation. And firing that particular intimacy, he finds his connection to all life, light and dark, Buddha and Mara.

[18:19]

There is no separation anymore. Mara's challenge at that time, and Mara I think rains down arrows and they turn into flowers. Seeing a source of difficulty and darkness coming from here and nowhere else, there is no real danger now. It's all a very workable situation for Shakti Mani. So this kind of abiding activity, I think, practice is in many ways a hallmark or a stone for us, a way that we develop in our practice. And of course, you know, when we move out of difficulties, our anger, our fear, I could list all mine, but it doesn't matter. We all have plenty. You know, they're all, they're all our loops. They go nowhere. You know, anger goes nowhere. Michael talked last week, you know, he used the co-an of Rick Sloan saying, I think, Rick Sloan, no, not Rick Sloan, Rick.

[19:23]

You know, Rick Fields. So when I Rick Fields, I can't die. And there was a river running nearby, and he set us through, and everything was perfect. And then suddenly we heard through the stones the sound of the star-spangled banner, which you found deeply disturbing. And he got up to the river, and it was the stones at night. And this is wonderful and charming. This is a very creative. proposition, a very interesting way to solve it. It's not quite the way that we necessarily suggest you do that. I mean, that's actually the way we live our lives. We're all from the river ranging the stones in the river, or we're ranging who we like in this life, you know. And I was sometimes rather at Tassajara, which was the best part of going at Tassajara, actually, or I wouldn't do so at the time. I rearranged everybody's existence around me. You know, somebody, I would sit there and it was, you know, it was just, I would sit there and somebody would fart.

[20:27]

And I would go, oh, what a pig. Do you know who I am? Or someone would smile at me. And I still remember this. And I'd go, oh, what a wonderful human being. I had absolutely no information to judge. And I would just sit there and I was sweating heavily. It really was to spread it up and disappear, you know. Goods and bads came into being. And with the third of us, by not moving and just standing there, I got really tired of it after a while. Tom Gallagher is like chewing old bubblegum, even your best delusion. It really gets tedious after day three. It's that, you're a woman. I'm a victim. They're mad. I shouldn't be here. They don't know where I am. I wish you so. Blah, blah, blah. So the big thing is, Maya whispers, it's not to look like an enemy. This is turning arrows into arrows.

[21:28]

This is our human nature. It's what we are. This is our common, if you want, delusion and our common opportunity. So we look at it and we go, this is really painful. I wonder what's going on. We begin to question it in a friendly way. So we turn back to this fundamental samsaric realm and we begin to question some of our assumptions. Maybe it isn't the river. When will I ever get those rocks right? So we're pushing back in here and here, deeply here. In a way we have to not separate either from our existence or from what we see as difficulty or evil or darkness. We disdain nothing. Bodhisattva disdained nothing. It's a fearless stance.

[22:30]

No ground. I'll stay right here. It's actually our safety. Although when we're doing it, it seems crazy and it makes no sense to us. We want to have some ground to establish. As soon as we do that, space fills in and stories happen and we suffer and we make each other suffer. So we have to give that up. We call it serving all beings. We're also saving ourselves. you know, this activity, this enactment of this helping is how we find our own way. We don't quite know the way, but a lot of it tells us things, but we don't really know the way. In his talk, I took the Letters from Emptiness of Suzuki Roshi, a lecture he gave in 1970 or 1971, and he said, you know, when we're here from emptiness, Or you think about emptiness, it's like receiving a letter from a place you used to live that you can't see anymore, you know? So you maybe can remember an idea of what the flowers smell like or what the fence posts look like, but you don't really know it.

[23:36]

It's not knowing the way you know other things concretely with a discursive thought. It's a sensibility. So this sensibility is more this come back or do you remember this, this feeling? So we're in touch with that feeling as much, if you want, or this sensibility is also our practice. How does that feel? You know, when we move together in practice discussion, it's like two mirrors endlessly changing, reflecting back and forth, trying to understand how to express this again. How to express the, if you want, inexpressible. It's what we do. So we practice, as we say, like a fool like an idiot secretly working within in a worldly sense this looks like foolish practice and that it's it's what we vow to do this becomes our life so um thank and i one thing i wrote in the precept study group was this uh

[24:42]

I came upon this right and called, Rural Precepts are Beyond Words from the Lecture of Jawaharlal in 1971. So, you know, when we say emptiness also, another word for emptiness would be maybe boundlessness, inconceivability. Even when we have some idea of what emptiness is, we say, but it's inconceivable, just like zazen is inconceivable. Why zazen? What's happening? Do we really know what's happening? We have some idea and it's okay if we discuss it. But we say also I think it's totally inconceivable. It's wild and unimaginable. Buddha's path leads off that wheel. That we meant maybe the path to have distinguishing characteristics that we're comfortable with. Paths aren't always comfortable in that way. They can be rather wild and unpredictable. they don't have a beginning and an end the way we would like them to have.

[25:46]

And the way we walk on the path is not quite the way we imagine we walk on the path. Stephen Batchelor uses this phrase pathing. He translates it from the Pali, saying rather than you walk on the path, you undertake pathing. You express something, or actually something is being expressed through you, this uprightness or this... a way of being clear correctly with things, true accord correctly with things, which is, again, unpredictable and unknown. The Dharma's Nagarajuna says, to see into the, what is it? The unknown nature of birth and death or to see deeply into impermanence is to raise the thought of enlightenment. And this impermanence is discontinuous and totally penetrating at every moment. It's totally expressive, and yet it's discontinuous.

[26:50]

So we're left with a very interesting expression of life, of how life is, we say, or the true nature of our life. So how would we, you know, then I'm thinking, and I'm teaching the course, now how do you hold the precepts dangling like this? and being created by every situation around you, not separate at all. How do you define good in that? What do you do? So in this little essay, Suzuki Roshi says, Just as soon as many letters in the world. Do you understand that? The point is to know what an important practice it is to just be yourself. Just to come back and be yourself without hiding anything, without knowing anywhere else. Even to indulge in your freedom is to go somewhere else right away, but just to come back in this very straightforward way.

[27:52]

When a stone is completely stone, that's real stone. A stone is really a stone when it is stoned through and through. That is really a stone. That is really a stone. When it really is a stone, the stone includes everything. So nothing is left out. This is Buddha saying that the moment of enlightenment I and all sentient creatures express this fundamental activity of Buddha mind or of awakening. When it is not a stone, someone will pick it up. When it is really a stone, you cannot do so. You cannot do anything with it. It is you who thinks you picked it up, but actually you didn't. It's a little convoluted here. You cannot do anything with it. It is you the things you picked it up but actually you didn't. It's still part of the universe. You cannot pick up the whole universe. If you say so, if you say I can pick up the whole universe, where are you?

[28:54]

If you're outside the universe, you're a ghost. And that's just a delusion. So, this... This belief, this is kind of Dengshan, our founder, Dengshan Yun-chi's expression, after his insight. Everywhere I go, and then now, everywhere I go, I need myself. Never inside or outside, no good or bad or up or down, just this, right here. Just unmitigated existence that... We meet as friends, you could say, that expresses itself through us, expresses us at the same time. So the precepts for me really picked up steam. The precepts now have this kind of lively quality, you know.

[29:55]

Not so easy anymore, you know, to be the good guy or to know my way forward. You know, this is stepping out into the unknown. This is a little bit where Modi Dharma asks, when he's asked, who are you, says, I don't know. That's a profound no-no. But I can't come up with an answer. But I don't. It's just some words now. This guy, you could say something. Yeah. This person. I'll go too much longer. I heard it was Wednesday night and we get tired, so I'll be too much longer. To do this practice, to stay on the wheel of samsara and not, or to mute this Mara and Luda, is to have real confidence that the world is just the way it should be.

[31:05]

that you don't have to fix anything up. It's a very difficult term for us to believe that things are okay. They don't really need to be tidied up by us in quite the way we imagine. I'll do some housekeeping. It's part of what humanity does, some housekeeping. But through the lost in our housekeeping is nonsense. It's just nonsense. It's important to come back to this open acceptance of things. This odd paradoxical place. In Mahayana, the highest truth we say is nirvana and samsara really aren't distinct. You know, this is the Western paradise. Oh my gosh. How so? How so is this the Western paradise? So I think I could say more words, but I think the big thing is never give up on yourself, your own inquiry, your own search inside.

[32:27]

You know, this is the, if you want the taking refuge in Buddha, one aspect, the absolute belief that you're okay, that you can abide exactly where you are. You can wake up exactly as you are. And this is not an impossibility. It doesn't require deities or another place to be. It doesn't require authentication. It requires an intimacy with your life. An intimacy and a caring for things just as they are in your life. A personal friendliness, you know. The first Brahmavihara of loving kindness sometimes I translate, although a lot of people don't like it, just being friendly with yourself, hanging out with yourself. This is how you get it told in this realm of samsara. When you see that in the activity of anything, everything is expressing itself or it couldn't happen.

[33:29]

And it does it over and over again right before our eyes. And the only true magic show that happens every day, every minute. When we don't see it, we become confused and we turn on our compass points of greed, hate, and delusion, our operating system. It becomes excruciatingly painful. Somebody said to me, well, what would you, in our theater, they said, if you came up here as a teacher, what the hell are you going to teach? And I said, I think I ought to be free. That's a big thing. You would want to teach anybody how to be free. Just running around, that's just another dodge or trap. I think it could be stuck first in the situation to see that you were always free. You didn't have to go anywhere. Once you get off home base or once you're knocked off the earth or once you lose that contact, then you're on the run.

[34:35]

Then you go around and around on the wheel of misfortune. Big problem. So. And that's about it. I love the image of Maya. That's why, not Maya, but Maya and Buddha. Let me just start with this. You know, took that out of those lectures on the heart sutra, I think in the 80s. He said, in the lecture, the end part, he said, no, we're not, Buddha and Maya are in France. They got a lot of work to do together. You know, Buddha, Maya comes to the Buddha and says, you know, do you know how hard it is? Everybody hates me. Everybody despises me. I'm the great death. You know, Yama was the killer of the great death. Sometimes the opposite devil is translated the one that stands in the path. It makes it difficult to proceed anywhere. So everybody hates me. And the Buddha says, you think you have problems? They burn incense, it's in my face, I bring. All these flowers, these offerings, I'm exhausted.

[35:41]

We got a lot of work to do to get these people free. Let's keep going. Let's keep going. So, let's keep going. Send out for Wednesday night. Thank you.

[36:06]

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