You know, we are now chanting the opening verse only once. I guess we're in a hurry. I forgot. It's nice to see everybody. Nice to see you. Bye, Trish. Is Gary here, too? He is somewhere. Yeah, it's nice to be in this mythical gringo zendo. And wonderful to see everybody on your beautiful faces. Zendos are, by their nature, mythical places. which means that everybody in Zendos is a mythical person, so you are all mythical people.

[01:18]

You are myths to me. Now, I fully realize that you are all regular people with regular lives, as I am. I know that none of you is... Helen of Troy or Achilles or Odysseus. But at the same time, our very ordinariness is a kind of myth. It's a kind of fiction. And in most cases, likely not a very inspiring kind of fiction. Yes, we're ordinary. Everyday people. We're not famous. We're not important. We're not in a newspaper. We're not noble. We're not heroic. Just ordinary.

[02:20]

But what is ordinary? Clearly, we're nothing special. But what is that? Nothing special. We are living everyday lives, but what is? in everyday life. So today I bring up a Zen story about this. This story appears as case number 19 in The Woman Gone. A Zhaozhou asked Nanchuan, what is the way? Nanchuan said, everyday mind is the way. Zha Zha said, how shall I direct myself to it? Nsuan replied, if you direct yourself toward it, you will be going in the wrong direction. Zha Zha said, but if I don't direct myself toward it, how can I know it?

[03:24]

Nsuan said, the way has nothing to do with knowing and not knowing. Knowing is an exaggeration. Not knowing is stupidity. When you enter the way, you see it is as vast and boundless as space. And what does that have to do with yes and no thinking? Zhao Zhao suddenly realized Nanchuan's meaning for himself. This is a pretty famous Zen story, and I know all of you. Zen people have heard this story many times before. Anquan and Zhaozhou are important early Zen masters, and we prize especially Zhaozhou, who was one of Dogen's favorites and one of Suzuki Roshi's favorites. What I think is great about Zhaozhou is that he practiced under his teacher for a really long time, and he didn't start teaching himself until he was quite old, so that made his style of necessity

[04:36]

low-key and quiet because he didn't have that much energy you know he was really old so that that's a nice kind of style i think uh but but in this story uh zhao zhou is young he's nanchuan is his teacher he studied with nanchuan so the story goes for 40 years and and that's why everyday mind is so important for zhao zhou because it was something that he learned from his teacher very early on in this training and he never forgot about it and i just read you the story in my own version but there's lots of different versions of the story vocabulary can be subtly different this way in that way i'm sure you've read it in other other versions and you have your own commentary to it it's a very straightforward and wonderful story so expressive of the of the most important values of our tradition.

[05:37]

So we like this story a lot. And it might be that the most surprising thing in the story is when Nanchuan says, if you direct yourself toward it, you'll be going in the wrong direction. When you first hear that, it could seem a little baffling. I mean, if you don't direct yourself toward it, what are you supposed to do? a little confusing we're all really conditioned to direct ourselves to point ourselves in the direction of what we want and everybody does this we've all been taught to do it it seems perfectly obvious and normal that's how everybody does things you almost could say that that's the definition of being a person wanting something all the time wanting stuff okay we're all spiritual people we don't want stuff that much

[07:01]

or wanting love, wanting to be good, wanting to get it right, wanting to get Zen practice right. Anyway, wanting something, however subtle that something may be, even if it's a silly thing, like my nose is itchy, I want to scratch. I feel a little uncomfortable. I want to just move my posture a little bit. Of course, we direct our activity toward what we want. But as the story is telling us, in Zen practice, it isn't like that. Practice is not something that we don't want. It's just our life. It's just what we do. We might want to get all kinds of things out of it, but in the end, we're not going to get those things.

[08:15]

Instead, we're going to just, little by little by little, shed our wanting. And instead of wanting, we'll just have living. Just living. this being willing to live fully and with appreciation with whatever is here, whether we think we like it or not. That's freedom. That's the best kind of awakening. To be able on any moment to say, aha, this is how it is. This is mythical. This is miraculous. I can't even understand.

[09:20]

I can't even begin to understand the depth and the limit of what this particular moment actually is. And that's something much more interesting and poignant. than what i think with my little limited mind i want so this kind of enlightenment really is very ordinary and very everyday i mean there's almost nothing to it but it's so much more wonderful than the sort of vague and romantic stuff we think we want all the time It even makes you wonder whether it might not be better in general not to get what you want than it is to get what you want.

[10:24]

I am impressed with how busy life is. There's so much to do just to keep going. I know people my age are retired and they say, how did I ever have a job? How did I ever have time to have a job? I'm so busy. It's very busy. Just keeping going, you know, all the cooking and the cleaning and all the maintenance, the caretaking, the self-care, the caring for everybody else, the talking. the listening to the talking, the feeling, and then somehow getting the money to make all of these things possible. It's really busy. People are always busy, and they have always been busy with this and that. And that's why there's so little time to think about it all.

[11:33]

Why are we alive here? Why is all of this going on? What is the meaning of it all? What's the point of it all? And that's why we really do need to sit down every now and then and breathe and consider this. And when we do, we will find that there's a lot of meaning in living. because living our everyday lives just the way it is is far more than it seems to be just as nonchalance says in our story it is vast and it is wide and it is so much more than our knowing and our not knowing So, as I said, this is the 19th story in The Woman Gone, and Woman Gone has 48 stories in it, and Master Woman writes a little poem for each of the 48 stories, and here's his poem about this story.

[12:52]

Flowers in spring, moon in autumn, cool breeze in summer, snow in winter, when there are no clouds in your mind. Every season is a good season. So that's what I've been saying. Yes. Oh, you're not hearing? Oh, should I start over again? How's this? Is that better? Yeah, no. No. Oh, you're the sound guy, so you can see there's a picture of what I'm saying there. Sorry. It's bad for the recording, I guess. The recording is good. Well, if they're not complaining, why should we complain, right?

[13:56]

You can't hear anything back there. You do hear back there. So I was talking about the poem I just read of Master Woman. This is a wonderful world we have all been given to live in. It's perfect. And we have actually been made exactly, perfectly to fit this wonderful place. The earth. The earth actually made us, right? One thing led to another. The earth was just going about its business and then here we are. We are expressions. Literally, we are expressions of this earth.

[15:00]

And we literally are made of earth elements. And when the mysterious life that runs through us through our body, is finished with our body, then our body will return to the earth because all of its elements will become earth elements, soil, air, water, plants. I think they say, you know, we come from the earth and we return to the earth and that is a literal fact. And that is why I find it so amazing. that we have come to be so out of balance with the earth that our human activity threatens the earth makes it difficult for the earth to continue in the pattern in which she's been operating for some time it's amazing since we are the earth that we have done that that we are threatening

[16:12]

Ourselves, mostly, and other species. The Earth, of course, will take it all in stride and continue to evolve beautifully. But we will have intervened in a way that doesn't seem so great. So it's scary. The changes that we have brought. Why did we do this? How is it that that happened? Well, I think it's because we really don't know what we are doing. We did not know these last many hundreds of years what we were doing. Nobody wanted to mess up the earth. Nobody set out to do that. We were all just naturally following our desire, following what we want. more comfort, better health, more wealth, more ease of life, more power, more dominance.

[17:23]

Things we wanted, we just pursued. And we got those things to a great extent. But I think we all understand that as a collective, we can't go on this way much longer. But even... Each one of us as an individual, we can't live this way either. Because it's too painful. It's too alienating to live only according to our wanting. We really do have to learn to see things the way they are. Beyond all our wanting and our needing. really appreciate that things are vast and boundless not just what we want the everyday world every day the moment of our lives is vast and boundless as space and we ourselves are mythical vast and boundless as space we really don't need this or that

[18:40]

but we probably do need to sit down in mythical zendos surrounded by mythical bodhisattvas and breathe and find a little peace we can watch our desires come and go desire arising in us is the earth expressing our natural energies through our organism. So it's not that desire is bad or desire is a problem. We don't want to get rid of desire. The energy of desire is the energy of life. The problem is I'm not understanding our desire. I'm not truly appreciating our desire as it is. And instead, turning it into something pernicious and painful because of our attachment and our fear.

[19:49]

Maybe we've lost our way. But that way, it's still inside of us, right at the heart of ourselves. If only we will take the time and look for it. We have to keep all the time Zhaozhou's question. What is the way? Because that question is our deepest and inmost desire. Flowers in spring, moon in autumn, cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. When there are no clouds in your mind every season, is a good season. In a woman's poem, every season has its unique gift. In the human world, our seasons sometimes include war, fear, grief, anguish, pain,

[21:12]

But even that season, difficult as it may be, is also a good season when we are not raging in our mind and when we can appreciate the life we have been given. We can accept the season, whatever it is, and live it with some joy and gratitude because we are alive. And very soon it will be otherwise. Right now, we are alive, and it is very good to be alive. And there's always something to be done with this life, and we are doing it. Yesterday, our Everyday Zen community had a sitting in this room. I know a few of you I recognize were there. It was a nice day to sit all day.

[22:18]

And I, and I gave a talk yesterday also, and I said Zen and Buddhism are forms of mysticism. I was talking about mysticism, meaning, mysticism meaning spiritual practice that is experiential. I quoted Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen in China, who said that Sin is direct pointing to the heart without reliance on scripture. And in Buddhism, scripture is not the word of Buddha to be obeyed. It's suggestions about how to practice, how to realize for yourself, with your own body and mind, the truth of this life. And that truth can't be encompassed in a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter or even in an old book. can't say what that truth is but we can touch it we can be touched by it and so we can be transformed by it and we're lucky that we have such a simple method to affect this transformation just to sit down and breathe pay attention and be alive in this unrepeatable moment

[23:45]

i was telling some stories about some pretty extreme and weird mystics yesterday very strange stories which i won't repeat today but but i was saying that you know in zen this is the thing that's so great about our tradition the mysticism in zen is very low-key it's just every day right everyday experience everyday mind And Suzuki Roshi embodied that and taught that. That's what's so wonderful about his teaching. He stuck to teaching that. And so did my own teacher. So I want to close by reading a fairly lengthy passage from his recently posthumously published book, Seeing One Thing Through. Because he also commented on this story. And I'll read you. His comment. And he, as you'll see, he's talking very off the cuff.

[24:55]

He says, I had all this worked out yesterday. When I give a talk, I don't write it out or anything. I just think about it. And then during the day, things fall into place. And I have really happy thoughts and so forth. I had that. But then, when I woke up this morning, I thought, what am I going to talk about? That's not what it's talking about. But actually, it is. And I'll tell you what it is. I'm going to use a koan as my basis. In case 19, nonsense, ordinary mind is the way. And here he's using the Japanese pronunciation of these Chinese names. He says Nan Sen and Joshu instead of Nan Chuan and Zhajo, but it's the same people. There is a way of karma and there is the way of dharma.

[26:05]

The way of karma is our ordinary dualistic life. The way of dharma is pursuing the way of liberation, which is sometimes called enlightenment i like that word but i don't like the way it's expressed for me enlightenment means light implying that someone who was on the path of liberation is expressing light and there are many ways of expressing this when we speak of thou in the dharma in buddhism we think of liberation or enlightenment as being a vehicle for light Joshu asked Nan Chuan, what is the way? This is what you ask your teacher one way or another. What is the way? This is a setup, you know, this particular koan. I mean, who goes around asking that? Nan Chuan replied, ordinary mind is the way, everyday mind is the way.

[27:08]

We usually think of the transcendent mind as something like supernatural, powers. But when we come to the Dharma, when we come to Buddhism, when we come to practice, we come for various reasons. Some people come to practice because they want to alleviate their suffering. Some come to practice because they want to get their head straightened out. Some come to practice in order to improve their sex drive. I actually never heard of that. Maybe. I guess he had. I guess people candidly said, I'm here to improve my sex drive. People come for greatest reasons, but it doesn't matter what reason you have when you come. It doesn't make any difference because people usually don't come for the right reasons. But after we practice for a while, we should understand what the right reasons are. Notice he doesn't tell you what the right reasons are.

[28:14]

He was like that. He wouldn't say. The Dharma has open arms. Anyone can come. We don't necessarily know why, but actually it's enlightenment that brings us to practice. So seeking enlightenment is backwards in a sense. But it's enlightenment that is seeking us. Master Dogen says enlightenment and practice are one. One moment of practice is one moment of enlightenment. Two moments of practice are two moments of enlightenment. And practice is the most important thing. When Suzuki Roshi came to America from Japan, there were a number of other teachers who came around at the same time, and they were always trying for their students to have Kensho, this big opening, a moment of realization or enlightenment. But Suzuki Roshi didn't buy that. He said... The main thing is how you practice. He emphasized practice instead of enlightenment. People have felt that he wasn't interested in enlightenment.

[29:18]

It's not that. But the important thing for him was practice. So while many of the other teachers were emphasizing enlightenment, he was emphasizing practice. If you practice, enlightenment is there. But you start worrying about enlightenment, you tend to neglect what's in front of you. Let's say it's a hot day and you really want an ice cream cone. Your thought goes to the ice cream cone and you find your way to the ice cream store and you get your ice cream cone. But you don't think so much about how you get to the store. You don't think about every step that takes you to the store. So in a sense, you're going after the prize. And until you get the prize, Your present activity is in the background, and your idea of the prize is in the foreground. Your effort to get to the store is because you want the prize. But then you get the prize, and it's over.

[30:23]

This reminds me of one of my most profound spiritual experiences in my entire life. was when I was a little boy, maybe four or five years old. And I did go to the store, and I did get an ice cream cone. And the ice cream cone fell off of the cone. That was it. I was devastated. You would think that the store owner would say, don't worry, I'll give you another cone. I think nowadays if that happened, The person would give you another cone, or mommy and daddy would say, here's more money. Get another cone. Somehow that didn't happen. The cone was gone, and I learned that you could have the ice cream cone, and then it could be gone. And there would be nothing you could do about that. Anyway, that has nothing to do with it.

[31:28]

He did say, though, when we get the prize, it's over. Even if you eat the ice cream cone, you're in the same boat that I was in, right? So then you have to get the prize again. Or some other prize, right? There's no end to that. And this is ordinary life where we're always working to get what we want. Or to avoid what we don't want. But there's something... unsatisfying about doing this over and over and over again. We're all running around in circles and we don't even know it. So, Joshua asked Nanshan, what is the way? And Nanshan said, ordinary mind is the way. And Joshua said, shall I try to seek after it? Shall I go for it? Shall I go for this thing? Shall I go for that ice cream cone? And Nanshan said, if you try for it, you will be separated from it. I like to use the word stumble past you stumble past the enlightenment that is right there under your feet Suzuki Roshi says that usually when we want something something spiritual maybe we go after that and we go that way to find it but actually if you want to find it you have to go this way which means not going anywhere you just sit down and then when you take a step that step is the way

[32:56]

And then you take another step. So, as we know, the way is in the walking, not in the goal. Although you can't say what is right and what is wrong. You have to find yourself in each step. And that is what Nansen is saying to Joshu. You have to find your way in each step. The way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is a kind of delusion. Not knowing is a kind of confusion. That's the translation he uses. And he says, I don't know about these terms, but knowing is a kind of elusive thing because you think you know something. But do you really? Suzuki Roshi didn't like to explain too much. Back in the 1960s and 70s, we had about four or five Japanese teachers, and in the Japanese practice, you don't say much to the students.

[34:05]

The students have to observe the teacher. It's a kind of apprenticeship. You observe the teacher, and you observe how things are done. You can ask questions, but usually things are not explained so much, and there's a kind of intuitive understanding that emerges in that situation. As Americans, and I'm not criticizing, he says, We want to know everything before we do anything. But in our Japanese practice, you just do it, and then you find out what it is. I like to describe it as the teacher pushes you into the ocean, and then you start swimming. You find out through your own effort. It's not that wanting to know is wrong, but needing to know before you do something is not always the way. When I see the development of our practice without the Japanese teachers, I see it not as progress, but as change. It's a cultural change, and it's inevitable.

[35:08]

Now everything must be described in advance. I have such resistance when they say, describe your program. People need to know exactly what's going to happen and what they're going to do. Otherwise, why would they buy your program? Right? Because So then it's baloney. Every single description of every single program you've ever read is such baloney. It's unbelievable. So I learned how to write the baloney. I write the baloney, blah, blah, blah. It's unbelievable. It's the opposite of what he's talking about here. Nobody knows what's going to happen. Nobody knows what's going to happen. But no, no, everything must be explained. It should be clearer. Then Nonsense says, the way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing.

[36:12]

It's beyond knowing or not knowing. When you really reach the true way, beyond doubt, you will find it is as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong? And with these words... Joshua came to a sudden realization. Ah, a happy ending. So this is a very interesting kind of story. What is the way? Ordinary mind is the way. So what is ordinary? And what is mind? We get up in the morning, we brush our teeth, then we do various ordinary things. We eat our breakfast, we read the paper, we sit zazen. Even zazen becomes ordinary in that way. So what is ordinary and what is sacred? Sacred is here, and ordinary is over there. Any Zen student knows that ordinary and sacred are one. That's what we're taught. Holy and ordinary are one. We tend to split between ordinary and holy.

[37:14]

We have to split between them unless we become awakened. Enlightenment means there's no split between ordinary and holy. taking out the garbage. These are holy acts, holy activities. This is enlightened activity. So what creates the split between ordinary and holy? Well, it's the ego. The ego is the curtain between ordinary and holy. So if we take the ego out, it all comes together. It's like there's water on two sides of the dam, And if you take out the dam, it all flows together. It's not two things. It's not one thing. It's one thing and it's two things. When we're doing our ordinary activity, we don't say, oh, this is holy stuff. You don't say that. Because as soon as you say it, it's not.

[38:18]

You can be it, but you can't See it. So this is a very important aspect of our practice. Show me your enlightenment. If you say, well, I'll show you my enlightenment. As soon as you say that, there's no enlightenment. Because there's nothing there. If you have enlightened activity, you're being a vehicle for light. But as soon as you try to see it, it's gone. You can only be it. And you can't see it. But you can see it in others. If you see the light in everyone, that's enlightened activity. Realization is to be able to see the light in everyone. But you don't look in the mirror. As soon as you look in the mirror,

[39:22]

your ego jumps in. Have you noticed that? As soon as you want something, it's gone. So it has to be not wanting, but simply paying attention. So that is our dear teacher's commentary. on that story. So thank you very much for being a myth in my life. I appreciate that you have illuminated my life this morning with your light. You startle me. You really do. Thank you.

[40:15]

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