The rain always makes me feel more at home. Maybe not a very conventional feeling. There's a roof over our heads and we have the comfort of zazen. It's like home. My house here is not so good. The roof leaks in many places. So you have to roll at night because it starts dripping. And then this way. And adjust the pots. If you don't hear it going tinkle, tink, tink, you know it's hitting the rug. But in the zendo it seems quite dry and comfortable. At the same time, sometimes I feel sorry for you. Maybe it's a way of feeling sorry for myself. Why can't we just practice together? Why can't we just be together? Why do we have to say, ji ho san shi, and do this

[01:35]

Chinese, Japanese, Asian, Tibetan trip, you know. And then yesterday I give a lecture which must be pretty discouraging to many of you I make it sound very simple and there's no way out, no path or avenue or handholds. Maybe the words are understandable but it doesn't make any sense. But when I imagine trying to practice Buddhism without drums or our wooden dry lacquer statue or Asian culture, it also seems impossible to do without it. We're expressive, aesthetic beings and

[03:01]

We seem to have to seal things, to say something. The word say or sign or seal are all the same word meaning to follow. The Dharma is maybe follows, to speak the Dharma follows the great voice of Buddha. So we express something. You know, I remember when I was a child, this is a completely insignificant event, but to me it's interesting because it was so insignificant. When you're a child you cut paper with scissors and knives and things like that. And one day it was a floor like this, we lived in an old farmhouse, and it was a floor like this and I found I could put a piece of paper on the floor and run my finger along it and cut it. just by the crack in the floor. And I was completely overwhelmed by it because it was like using the, instead of using the outside of the knife, it was like using the inside of the knife. Do you understand? Instead of using the knife, I used a space to cut it. And this mysterious power of space, I saved those pieces of paper like they were notes from

[04:38]

God or something for many years. I would take them out when I was older and I'd look and go, why did I save these pieces of paper? But it was this feeling of, it was a feeling of something mysterious to find I could cut with space. And we I don't know if this will make sense, but we notice that our body is different, you know, left side and right side. Left side is more unconscious in most people and right side is more active. And the right, or counterclockwise, is always the same on this planet. As long as you're on the surface of the earth, clockwise is the same. If you're upside down, or inside the earth, it would be in reverse.

[05:38]

On the surface it's always. So this may be your right and my left, but if any of us turned to our right we would make the same circle. And so we tend to keep the unconscious side out, some open, and there are various rules, exoteric and esoteric rules, about how to circumambulate Buddha. whether you keep him on your right or whether you keep him on the left, sometimes on the left, because generally that's the unconscious side. So sometimes we go counterclockwise around Buddha, sometimes clockwise. But it's a kind of absolute clockwise. And I think we feel something like that, like Buddha is a nucleus of an atom or that there's some absolute or something, not just us but in space or in something subtle that we try to express. Oh, I just thought of something.

[07:09]

been meaning to tell you all Sashin is, please eat more. During Sashin it helps you to eat a lot and I forgot to tell you, I should have told you at the beginning. And when I told people at Tassajara this, though it should be clear because we prepare special meals. during Sashin for you, but when I mentioned it at Tassajara, the kitchen ran out of food the next meal. So I almost said it a couple times here, but I noticed the kitchen wasn't here and I thought, they need to be warned. Maybe you won't eat any differently. Anyway, when we don't sleep much, we can get energy from food instead of sleep. And just in general, to maintain the kind of energy this practice needs, it's helpful during Sashin to eat quite a lot. You'll be warmer and have more energy.

[08:29]

Anyway, I think we're very lucky to have our Buddhism come from Asia. These cultures, you know, maybe are more developed than ours and at least stabler for longer. to awaken ourselves to something unknown, which is necessary in Buddhism, may be helpful that it comes from a culture that's quite unknown to us. Once I spoke to you some time ago and I told you to imagine everything you see as your stomach. Do you remember? Today I'd like to suggest another practice like that, which is to imagine that everything you hear is the mysterious voice of the dharma. It actually is the mysterious voice of the dharma. So when you hear something, don't be limited by what you hear, don't try to define it

[10:17]

to make it something specific. Hear voices as some countless beings. Hear sounds as something limitless. The word sound itself has many interesting meanings. It seems to come from the same root as sea, ocean, or the sound, an inlet, you know. Anyway, the see and sound. And it means to penetrate, too. Like when a whale or fish dies, we say it sounds. Or when we try to understand someone, we sound them out. If something is complete and perfect, it's sound. So in this practice you hear many sounds and you don't define them, you don't categorize them. There are many, many sounds all the time. So you begin to hear more and more limitless sounds, a sea, maybe a sea of sounds.

[11:47]

You can hear birds, animals, people all crying to each other. You can hear what Dogen called the black rain on the roof. In Buddhism, sound or hearing, just the ordinary ear, reaches everywhere and sound and tongue are one event and the source of many merits, the sutras say. And your tongue takes a wing or can teach when your ear can hear everything in detail without discrimination. And so when you calmly can hear anything, in detail but without defining it, we say you can begin to preach Buddhism or you practice in the presence of the Buddhas. It's an idea like other power versus self-power in Buddhism, that when you make that transition

[13:22]

to hearing without discrimination the sea of sound, you are in the presence of the Buddhas, which then help you. And by hearing this sound, we can begin to teach Buddhism. And we address this sound when we give a taisho or lecture. We are addressing this sound. giving this sound back to this sound, not just to you, not just to particular people, but to that limitless sound of the Dharma. And as I said, say and seal are sign, it's like a kind of ceiling or it also means to say, means to follow, to come second or right after. Sound is also related to the word sane.

[14:42]

So this is rather like the idea of vow. I don't know if you understand what I mean, but to say something, to seal, to give, to speak from that great sound is like what we mean by vow, to seal something. Now some of you understand vow like a kind of dare, you know, I dare myself to become enlightened, or I dare myself to do such and such, and then if you break it you feel depressed I didn't accomplish my dare. But vow is, well there's the vow that we make to accomplish something and then there's the vow of the realization of that vow. If you're trying to sit still, you may decide. If it's possible, when it's possible, you know, I will sit still. I will keep trying to sit still. But there's some other effort, so you have some will or intention there. And there's some other will which is making you restless or move, which you wouldn't have discovered how powerful that effort to do something,

[16:17]

is. If you didn't decide to sit still, you wouldn't know how powerful that will is. So by the will to sit still, you find out the will to move. Eventually, by zazen, you accomplish the freedom to sit still or the freedom to move. If you want to sit still, you can sit still. If you want to move, you can move. If I say so, some of you are so stubborn, as soon as I say the freedom to move, to sit still, you move. Just not to get caught by that statement. Anyway, we are obstinate. But when you have the freedom to sit still or the freedom to move, those two wills are not in fighting anymore, not in conflict anymore. And those two wills join as one energy, like a laser beam or light. So the Paramitas are giving, you know, you give up possession, you give up your karma,

[17:50]

you give up being a Buddhist or having any special attribute. And then you have your conduct, your sense of sealing or expressing this great sound. And you know when you're in accord with it and when you're not in accord with it. and you make use of the times when you're not in accord. And by that you attain energy, which means those two wills have become one. Your intention, you develop intention, you know. And I'm speaking to you about Buddhism and so many things like yesterday and today, before,

[18:57]

Actually, so you can forget about it. I'm not speaking so you can try to understand what I'm talking about. I know what you feel, I think. I know what you are experiencing. And yet, we should forget about it. And what you experience are intimations, too, of your full experience. But if I speak about it, you will understand. Oh, so that's part of Buddhism, oh that's part of practice. If I'm practicing eventually I will understand it, eventually I'll realize it. So I don't have to worry because I've made a vow to continue practicing Buddhism. So then you can forget about enlightenment or some experience or understanding or anything. If you're practicing Buddhism you can have the confidence you will understand, you will it eventually. So when I speak I'm just saying, oh, don't you notice that that's part of Buddhism? You can forget it. And when you're practicing and you notice something, like my example of the paper, that space can cut

[20:26]

Actually, my finger cut, but my feeling was space cut. When you notice something like that, when you notice in your sasana as someone expressed to me, feeling they want inside but the door is shut, some expression like that. But when you have that feeling, when you've noticed that there's something you experience as inside and outside, You already have attained it. You can forget about it. Noticing it is already attainment. So you can forget about it and go on to something else. You didn't actually do anything to have that perception anyway. It just came. So this you begin to notice, you know, very similar to that is that when you think something it's possible. This is when your intention and will begin to be one activity. So you notice something and it means you will achieve it. And when you think something it means it's possible. And this thinking

[21:53]

which is also satisfaction. When you feel something, it's satisfying. I don't know if you notice in Sashim sometimes you have some undetermined joy or happiness, some undifferentiated or undetermined happiness that just comes. You know, if you are depressed, terribly depressed, And for one or two or three years, maybe you only have ten minutes of relief, or two or three minutes of relief, you know, some glimmer of feeling easy. But if you have that feeling, it means it's possible to reverse it, that you can have two or three years of that relief and only a few minutes of that depression or closed-in suffering feeling. That confidence is hard to come by, but that's true. So eventually, that you have this undetermined happiness, we don't have to say, where did it come from? How did I get it? How can I hang on to it? It will go away if you try that immediately.

[23:18]

But you have some moment of joy. And this is that kind of, when I spoke about warmth to give you some feeling, as I've pointed out before, thinking and thanking are the same root. And actually we find in our practice that gratitude, you know, we used to feel it was rather schmaltzy to talk about sincerity or gratitude. But if you practice, you feel sometimes some unreasonable gratitude for the ground, the being there. And when you just think something or notice something, you feel some gratitude. This is close to vowing again, to sealing, to just recognition, to thankfulness. So you begin to have the power, you know, and sometimes it's called in Buddhism a superpower, but you notice it in small degree, that to think something is to create something. Because now, as Suzuki Roshi said, with your desires, it's more than harmony, you know, you're in accord, some deep sounding

[24:50]

And we achieve this kind of understanding by practices like hearing everything from some countless, numberless, limitless place, as it actually is. without orienting ourselves. It means your practice can be much quicker, just much more trusting, just what you notice. Some confidence that what you notice you will realize. Don't be impatient.

[26:25]

hear that wide sound give up possession of some particular body. This sound, sometimes then we say, the vow, your vow moves freely among all beings. Hearing, you know, knowing that great, vast sound, how limitless it is, you now know that when we speak, you know, the Dharma, it penetrates that entire sea of sounds.

[27:39]

In this kind of way you can do sashin. Various things happen and you just barely notice. All the time, you know, trying to be calm in the midst of restlessness and painful of zazen. It's much harder, it's not so easy, it's fairly easy to not discriminate pain, much harder to not discriminate other things. So painful zazen is a very useful way to to find out detachment and non-discrimination. And maybe to find out what's sokure, detached but not separate. You're not separate from your pain, but you can be detached, but you can't say you're separate from it. That kind of intimate feeling is

[29:47]

real detachment. So we practice with our strange forms, you know, drum and bell, announcing the Dharma. We announce the Dharma with the Dharma drum, if we had one, or the cog gong. I think we should adopt from Tibetan Buddhism those wonderful horns, blah, you know, that His Holiness Karmapa used. They're wonderful. Aren't they wonderful? Blah. Do you have some question, something we should talk about? Yes. Okay.

[31:14]

You've been reading Hermann Hesse. Pablo is. I know, I'm kidding. So instead of the Tibetan horns we should get electric saxophone. Were you worried that the electric saxophone was not the voice of the diamond? That I can't account for. By the way, you were speaking about small zendos yesterday. There will be, of course, many small zendos. In five years, I would guess, there will be several hundred small zendos in America. At least, new ones, not the ones that exist now. But how you keep a small zendo small

[32:39]

You know, how do you keep Suzuki Roshi under wraps? I don't know. She says, Berkeley Zendo has no telephone listing. Suzuki Roshi did that too. There was no listing for Zen Center or anything for quite a few years. And people beat the streets looking for some kind of Zen. And I don't, I remember Paul Alexander every morning would go out and walk up and down the streets until one day he noticed that old faded sign saying Zen Soto Mission. And he went up and he found these strange Caucasians sitting on those old benches from Sokochi put together to make boats. They were put together, you know, seat to seat with the sides. They looked like they had oars on each side. And people, I could have said it so, it's all right, and people climb up on them, climbed up into them and sat. It's wonderful. We should, just while those benches still exist, put them together and take a picture of some of us sitting in them. But it didn't last too long, a few years. Yeah?

[34:10]

Your house? Oh, and you made your house of them? Oh, I'll come up there and do a service. We have two, of course, in the Buddha Hall in San Francisco. I made an effort to get more of them. But we didn't manage, yeah. Question from audience... No, it's almost identical. We do the same thing. walking around in the fog, just not looking, you know, not defined. That's various forms of that practice that exist in Buddhism. Let me say that I came up again yesterday talking to someone, in the Zen do we don't look around, you know, that's Rev's job.

[35:39]

And he doesn't look around much. We sell red. You sit facing out. And you do all the looking around for us. And we don't have to. So, actually in the zendo, we don't look around. We don't watch the servers. We don't look anybody in the eye. Just, you don't look. It's one of the best ways to stop our comparing mind. Most of us don't even know what thinking is except comparative thinking. The very nature of most of our thinking is comparative thinking. We're always comparing something. So if you can stop that looking around, it's one way to help you to stop comparing, to stop comparative thinking. And at first it will be rather dull, blank feeling, until you become awakened, another kind of mental activity, which maybe we could say is much more basic but hidden by our comparative way of thinking.

[37:03]

It's the same practice I'm speaking about as hearing in detail the sounds without discrimination. Same as not focusing your eyes. Yes? I've been thinking about cross-cutting and cross-cutting a lot lately, since 1684, because I'm a candidate. And I always stand between kind of cross-cutting, so I tend to do everything kind of cross-cutting. And it seems like that's, um, less entertaining. I mean, I mean, I'm here, but I was pretty interested in doing the same thing. And I'm not sure if No, I don't think so. If you want to, you can try it for a while. It's a little discombobulating. But I don't think you're Alice. I don't think you're through the looking glass.

[38:26]

that you're not a mirror image. Maybe you do it not the opposite of what you see. You do it differently, but I don't think it's so important. There'll be some differences. Aren't you a little more... Isn't your right hand still more functional than most people's left hand? Anyway, I don't think it's... You can experiment, you know, with writing with your left hand or right hand, or doing such things. It's interesting to try it, but I don't think so important. We can have a left-handers lid. We could have a left-handed lib movement. You're discriminated against. You can't get scissors. Well, I guess that, yeah, but it also has to do with the way that the blade doesn't go. There's a lot of things like that that make it seem like a left-handed person is

[39:53]

Particularly if you're sewing. Yeah. Well, actually it gives you the experience of how many assumptions are in our world. Everything done for right-handed people. How arbitrary it is. Anyway, you notice many more things like that because you're left-handed. We were talking about forms, and you said that forms represent the expression of the unknown. Well, things like the Asian forms, the expression of the unknown, that the Asians gave the unknown, gave it some expression.

[40:57]

adopt these forms, and we repeat them over and over, but they don't necessarily come from our greater expression of the unknown. Like, for example, electric effects on light. So, isn't there a danger of these forms, through repetition, for us, so that rather than becoming something where we are able to perceive something new, we can just use them automatically and maintain a stale state of mind? Yes, that's true. And the point is to develop that stale state of mind. you know, to repeat and repeat. We repeat in Buddhism, and until you make it fresh. So, I don't think this... I mean, I worried about that problem for many years, and I don't think it's so important to Asian or Western.

[42:23]

Actually, it may be just a wonderful by-product that we can learn so much about Asia. But one reason Suzuki Roshi felt such an advantage teaching Buddhism in America was because these things were all fresh and new to us and they were stale to Japanese people, that they had gotten so used to Buddhism and to the forms of Buddhism that it no longer had any meaning to them. They took it for granted, and they didn't understand what Buddhism really was. So the fact that we were completely didn't know anything, and we had some idea that Buddhism was something good, which Japanese people, many don't have, he thought. So he said, I'll take advantage of these people who think Buddhism is something good. And he did. Yes. Yeah? I was very glad yesterday that you mentioned Christianity. I was raised in a Catholic tradition. And speaking about that, I came to hate it and very much against it. But this forum here now makes me appreciate Christian monasticism

[43:55]

And I think that a lot of other things that are in our traditions, like this, Zendo has a shaker kind of quality to it. And I really am glad that it reminds me of so many things in my culture that I've been sort of against it. Now, I feel a kind of more unity with a lot of traditions in the Western tradition through this tradition. Yeah, I think so. In fact, a number of people have started practicing Zen, you know, as atheists and ended up Episcopal or Catholic priests. I'm wondering about that flower. Flower? On the altar?

[44:57]

Oh, in the hand, that's this. What is it? There's rather complex historical theories about it. One is that it's a mushroom, you know, the ancestor of, or the Soma, and it's some psychedelic symbol for early religion, which used such symbols. But then some people say, no, it's actually Stephen Dedalus' wand, or some symbol of authority, which which precedes, and to date, any use of mushroom or something like that. And some say it's a backscratcher. Originally it was a backscratcher. And you can reach, because it's convenient, like the whisk, which is the same meaning, it's quite convenient so you can reach anywhere. So it means a symbol of the teaching or dharma because it's quite convenient and you can reach anywhere.

[46:24]

And sometimes it's said to be the backbone, how we sit, the snake of Nagarjuna's bamboo. And sometimes it's a party favor. And sometimes it's quite nice to hold I always wondered why did Suzuki Yoshi have it and I figured he had to do something with his hands because he couldn't talk all the time. Yeah? and then the person next to me does exactly what I don't want to do? Is that something that we're learning at the same time? Yeah, he's doing it for you. It's somewhere in between. It's terrible to drop your chastity, but it's alright to drop your chastity.

[47:56]

And sometimes we should do it. If you're a priest or Buddhist who's never dropped his chopstick in his entire career, maybe it's a little uptight or too careful or something. It's a more compassionate feeling to be a little careless like other people. Actually if you're a little careless you probably won't drop it as much because you're more relaxed. That when you drop it the most is when you're putting it down your knuckle bumps something which Could you tell us how to make use of those bands when you notice that you're not in accord with the precepts? Could you hear? Could I say something about how to notice when you're not in accord with the precepts or you've lost your conduct? How to make use of it.

[49:23]

I guess warmth again, more friendliness. For instance, I think a good example is trembling. If you're friendly with your trembling, if you stay with your trembling, it becomes strength. And if you notice by mid-afternoon you've lost your day, it's too late. But being friendly with that, regaining your composure, next time when it's off, it's some door usually. And if you're friendly with it, it opens. Yeah. Meg? Don't have much to do with what?

[50:51]

There's no answer but Buddha. She said, who is it that made the vow and who is it that will realize the vow? Isn't that what you said? We can't say you. So that's why we have Buddha, so we can give an answer. Otherwise there'd be no answer. You. No. Do you want you and Buddha to be one? Sometimes we say, Buddha and you are one, or as Meg said in the beginning, she has various feelings and inclinations that you identify with and think you're a person, is that what you're saying? But that's not the way things really are, but that's not right, that's the way things really are maybe, and that's Buddha.

[52:45]

But if you say, aren't I and Buddha one, I have to say no. You can't say so. Shakyamuni and Maitreya are his servants. Who is he? As lecture goes on, I find my responses get weaker. Do I have to retire? At this point, I can't feel it. Can I make the effort to get back again? Maybe it's time to stop. I think it is. Thank you. For your friendliness.

[53:56]

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