Now, some of you may have misunderstood me yesterday. I don't mind being a garage mechanic at all. Some people felt they maybe should bring something special, you know. It doesn't matter whether you bring your Edsel, you know, or your Lotus. or whether you think you need a psychiatrist and it's only a car repair. What's interesting about Doakson is it can be anything. It's an unusual relationship. Practice is a process, we can say, to familiar, make you more and more familiar with an exact description of the world.

[01:53]

until by some lucky chance you actualize it for yourself. And you can trust, as I've said, the process. You don't have to worry, do I understand it or not? Once you are doing it and you're pretty certain you're going to continue, that is enough. The process will bring you everything. Actually, already you have everything, but you can't recognize it. I'm particularly interested in this group of people right here, and now at Tassajara, you right here, and the people at Tassajara and San Francisco.

[02:59]

because in five years or so you'll be taking care of the new students and there will be new teachers probably and then you'll be the last group of students to know old Zen Center then sinner's practice will become much more thorough and developed, and maybe more difficult. But there's some advantage in being one of the old timers, of going through the transition And I want you to understand that those stories, Zen stories, like I told you yesterday about Rinzai and other teachers, they're not a kind of, you know,

[04:29]

when someone comes up to Rinzai and says, what is, Avalokiteshvara has a thousand eyes, what is the main eye? He's not trying to think up some clever question. He doesn't know what he's doing actually. Or when Wong Po is coming down the corridor of the monastery and Rinzai sees him coming and closes his eyes, you know, he's not thinking about it. He just has some deep feeling to communicate something to Wang Po. And involuntarily he closes his eyes. And Wang Po, you know, expressed some fear when he saw Rinzai's eyes closed and he turned around and rushed back to his room. And Rinzai was so grateful and he went to Wonpo's room and bowed. This is not something they figured out to do. And they didn't intend to pull Rinzai off the seat.

[06:04]

He didn't know what to do, just tried to express what was pulling him. Those monks who went from temple to temple shouting quats, you know, the teachers gave them, didn't give them the time of day, you know, they, you know, shooed such people out. But when the boundaries between two people have gone, there's some elastic taking over, which we can't explain, and it will take various forms. And we find out what to do as one person, almost as one person. great mutual participation in accomplishing this transference. It takes some blindness or giving up or courage. It takes some finality, some experience of finality.

[07:36]

Practice is not this kind of practice, is not some philosophical insight into the scientific or abstract fabric of our cosmos, which in some zapping way you illuminate by your insight. It's much more like a birth. in which you need some care, which you need some attendant, somebody to tend the birth. And there's some parallel, you know? Just as you needed parents for your birth, you need some friend and teacher for your birth. When you give up your finally give up yourself. Even to the extent where you can't, it becomes so that you can't even conceive of yourself anymore. You can't think that kind of thought. It won't stay with you even if you make an effort. Your body

[09:07]

your body and mind won't cope with made-up situations. You can't put the energy into it if the energy is so much a part of the actual event. You don't have usual kind of thoughts. Some whole feeling or, you know, you can call it emotion or feeling or thinking, but it has characteristics of all of these. And it's something that you yourself, of course, have an intimation or direct experience of in your zazen practice, or sometimes by chance, when you forget yourself. But there is this kind of parallel that some tender is needed.

[10:08]

By some tender, I mean humility or finality or the ability to completely trust yourself to someone else and to take a complete chance with someone. Whatever they say is okay. Whatever they say goes. this is some blind, stupid thing to do, some blind, stupid, chancy thing to do. It doesn't have to be with your teacher, you know. It can be some horrible love affair in which you didn't pretend any longer that you weren't destroyed. You acknowledged that you've been destroyed, that some other person completely had the say over you, or about you, or some final, like death, some final crushing effect on you. This is the more unpleasant way to find this kind of thing out. But if you've had that experience, you have some humility.

[11:38]

you're more open to people, to a teacher, to everyone you meet as a teacher. You don't have the idea of status any longer. You realize everybody is your boss. There's no way to think that someone isn't. So it's not just a matter of moral humbleness or equality, some idea of it's good to be equal, but you have come to recognize the power of others, the real power of others. So you're humble like you are when your boss comes with

[12:42]

other people. I don't. You know, it's more like that. You know, that's not exactly right, but it's more like that than some, you know, from on high you've decided to be low. You know lowness because you have no choice. You know ordinariness because you have no choice. Someone gave me a poem yesterday about holding up one I know one quarter. I can't remember all of it but it ends with it all peanut butter sandwiches. That's right the peanut butter Dharma. Zen Center. Kitchen.

[13:54]

Your breath recognizes this. When you'll discover, someday, or maybe you have and haven't been quite able to acknowledge it, your breath becomes completely calm. And if you try to examine the associations or context of that, you'll notice that it comes when you feel you're breathing another person, when you no longer have some separate feeling, but you're breathing Buddha or breathing some divinity, breathing each other. On your center, you know, you are in intimate contact with everyone. The same kind of feeling is the sound practice. Avalokiteshvara is called a regarder of the cries of the world. And if you can

[15:47]

hopefully you have some pain in your Sashin and you can have that chance at least to get very accustomed or able to sustain yourself through pain. Of course the pain of Sashin is of not much consequence but because you willingly go through it it's of great consequence. It's not killing you, usually. If you can't sustain it, it may kill you. There's an irreversible aspect to this practice. Once you're in it, it's hard to get out. I don't like to tell you that too much. But without being able to sustain that pain, or anger, or hatred, or whatever form it takes, you can't hear the cries of the world.

[17:20]

There are many things you can't hear because you can't sustain them. So this sound practice is very deep and your ear becomes more and more acute. And on one thing, again, finally you can hear everything. on one sentence of the sutra you can understand the whole sutra, on one look at a person you can understand, realize the whole person by this common breath. So your friend and your teacher your experience of finality with someone is necessary. If you don't have that, this practice is rather dangerous. But any craft or art, poetry, painting, any attempt to do something

[18:46]

with all of you, that puts all of you, engages all of you, without some apprenticeship is rather dangerous. Without some permission or period of birthing or tending, if you just decide Usually you lose your strength. You can't make such a decision by yourself because our strength is such an infusion of strength actually from others. Other writers, other Buddhists, our lineage. So maybe the lineage is a line of midwives who are infusing us.

[19:50]

with their strength, till we recognize the person between all of us or among all of us, who we call, which we call Buddha. And our activity, is bodhisattva activity. Like this, you know, we practice Buddhism. It sounds to someone not doing a sesshin or to someone not practicing Buddhism, it may sound rather mysterious, but I think you see that it's not so mysterious, it's rather an extension of our experience. How can I put it? It's the best we can do at explaining our experience. When we actually see the extension of our activity,

[21:19]

and we try to explain it, you start sounding like the Bodhi or the Lotus Sutra or something. The non-extinction, the space-like non-extinction of form. This is some statement from a sutra, but by your zazen you'll find out the space like non-extinction of form. One thing I don't talk about much is hara in Zen Center, because it's too emphasized in Japan as a kind of cult of strength, and it's about as meaningful as weightlifting, maybe a little better than weightlifting. It's a better place to have

[22:50]

muscles than in your arms, but it's not muscle, but some strength here. And if you try to put your strength there too much and you're not relaxed, you'll just have a stomachache. But we must relax here first. First you have to relax throughout your body. then you can let go of your holding in your chest and here and after you let go of your holding you'll find you can infuse this area with strength and it tends to drain your mental content of their energy or not energy, more like I don't know, aggressive feeling or... Overreaching feeling becomes more... your experience becomes more accurate. Your expression becomes more accurate.

[24:27]

So you can notice how you may let go here. And letting go is not something exactly we can consciously do, because consciously relaxing is within the framework of the conscious or unconscious holding. It has to come about by itself. It just comes down. one day. But putting our energy there can be conscious after we have let go. Not so often, but sometimes. This effort allows us to experience people and things more directly. If only because in a practical way we are more in direct rhythm with them, not some mental thing which can go in so many directions.

[25:50]

And this parallel I've been talking about, of your birth with your physical birth, is also a parallel with society. If you have some idea, some fixed idea about society as being out there, government or something out there separate from you, already made up, you know, already you know, controlled by somebody in the past or some big historical beast, you know, lumbering according to the laws of economics or something like that, you know, that there's no control over it, or some conspiracy. Anyway, something out there foreign to you, it's already a mistake, if you have that feeling, like living in a made-up bed, you know. You can't experience people directly because society is us, you know. And as our voice, you know, our voice can, you know, we chant.

[27:30]

Jodo Shinshu, Nagasaki Sensei is coming here and teaching about Jodo Shinshu and that sound, si, I've been talking about goes both ways. You know, Avalokiteshvara can hear everything and you if you say, Namo Amida Butsu, if you call the name of Amida Buddha or Avalokiteshvara He can hear, we can hear. So you also can call to someone. Any sound, your footstep, you know, the duck, the tree,

[28:33]

has equal value in that sea and your own voice can enter that. And we have that kind of, when we have that kind of feeling about people, about our society, you can have that breathing again with people. completely calm breathing, where you know that society is our breathing. As long as you think there's something out there fixed, finished, dead, unapproachable, unreachable, dangerous, you can't be completely calm. The moment you give up those ideas about it, Even if you don't have other ideas about it, some positive ideas. You know, these degrees of ideas are associated with our physical body too and heat and such things. So we hit the Han and on the back it says life and death is a serious problem. And

[30:04]

Today the aspect of that I'm emphasizing is finality, experiencing finality or humility. Humility is an expression of recognizing finality and your own encumbered or free penetration with everything. So that death or finality is how we breathe life, you know, with each other. How we come to Zazen on each hit of the hand. So a friend, as you were speaking about, a spiritual friend, is someone with whom you share a vision, and that vision must also be very ordinary, very commonplace and accurate in regard to the world, or it becomes some power, some not-so-good power.

[31:42]

Two or three people who hang together are incredibly powerful. And that vision that brings those people together, that spiritual strength, shouldn't be accurate. You know, I was just... I've discussed this with Huey Newton and Elaine Brown, recently with Elaine Brown. And the Panthers, of course, are quite well-known throughout the world, and they have maybe 100 people who will stand together. But actually, when you discuss it with maybe 10, or Huey says 9, or 2 or 3, so whatever the

[32:48]

whether it's politics, you know, Nixon and V.B. Roboso, or, you know, poets, or other artists, or Buddhists. Two or three people who share a vision is quite powerful and there's some responsibility there. So much of Buddhism and teaching is about that shared vision. Actually, in Buddhism it's carried to the point where it's a tactile experience with each other. And humility, because we recognize

[33:50]

The power, the need for accuracy and not manipulation or it will crush us. We won't function very well. You can get a few people in Berkeley, you know, radical political situation, where there's a fair amount of mutual reinforcement, and you can get a very far out event happen. So there is need in Buddhism for this mutual reinforcement, not to be just a Buddhist. not to be narrowly confined to a monastic life. Zen is such a direct experience of each other. By awakening our will body, which is active, that there must be much mutual correspondence with everyone in the very ordinary ways.

[35:13]

without any feeling of one's own benefit, doing it for one's benefit. As benefit comes up as a possibility, it must be transferred to others. It says the Bodhisattva is like a fountain of merit which goes to others because he or she has no need of it. But also if you need it, it will destroy you. you must turn over that benefit, or your vision gets out of touch. And this vision, when your body is awakened, it's not just ordinary thinking. We can call it peanut butter sandwich, but we can call it ambrosia, or sweet dew, or various things we can call it.

[36:31]

we can call it things, to stave off it's important, or to enhance it, both are rather dubious. So the recognition of others as the conditions of our birth and others as the mode or expression, only expression of our realization, is an expression of the responsibility of Buddhist practice. Wong Po and Rinzai recognized each other, and they are still recognizing us today. And if you recognize each other many years from now, that recognition continues, that birth continues. Everything is very fertile

[38:27]

in this understanding, in this non-repeatable universe, every event is some fertile event, some impregnation occurs, some new event, as Nagarjuna says. There's no contact here. There's actually just a third is produced something new is produced, as I say, with its own past, present and future. That which is always produced is Buddha. And the more widely we share this vision, allowing others' vision to inform us, to teach us, the more we'll find, by your own experience, everywhere you go, some almost, I can say, benign circumstances.

[39:54]

some beneficial world in which you always find some immediate opportunity to do something without cause. So to awaken this kind of feeling which you know you can't interfere with, you can't do anything about, you can't fake it, you can't produce it, you can't... In your zazen, if you try to grasp some pleasant state, some unexplained joyful feeling, you know it goes away.

[41:03]

So this feeling I'm talking about or this expression I'm talking about is not graspable. So you don't worry about it, but the sense of it, the sense of something mysterious, the sense of the extension of our activity, the conditions of our birth as Oreo says, everything has its own cause of birth. What is the cause of your birth? Why is my hand like Buddha's hand? Why is my leg like a donkey's leg? When you have this feeling, which you know you can't do anything about, that is why It may help you, Bernadette, to come to Zazen, if you have that kind of feeling. Because you can't do anything, but you might go to Zazen, if you have that feeling. So that feeling is awakened more and more by our sound, or by not having some fixed idea. So you look at a tree as an object, but you see the tree as some

[42:34]

simultaneous event with you, and everything you see that way. In the world of your fixed relationships, this reminder is there, and so it's easy, easier anyway, to remember to go to Zazen, to go somewhere where you can let go of your fixed world, just for a few minutes. through that few minutes, you know, maybe the unfixed world will pour, until finally you exist in the unfixed world, now this could lead into some problem here, and you spend your time then, I can't say fixing things, you spend your time, you know, not, you know,

[43:38]

form is there, space-like non-extinction of form. I think I've said too much. Anyway, I want just to give you a feeling or practice in this endless depth. That we open by such a simple practice as zazen. I said yesterday, you know, you find out what you really want to do by zazen. And by zazen you find the strength to make the decision to do it, to try it, and to sustain what happens to you. Anyway, by this simple practice you can find the many worlds of your being.

[45:06]

by, again, just knowing one thing, just doing one thing, just leading your ordinary life and coping very directly with the problems that come up, as if they were solvable. As if they were solvable is important. If you think society is not solvable, or your habits are not solvable, life. But solvable or not, as if they were solvable, you meet them. And if you don't know anything else to do, you just say to yourself, I'll solve it, I'll solve it, I'll solve it. What is it? Show it to me, I'll solve it.

[46:19]

You can do it. You can be Buddha. You can be Bodhisattva. You can do it. That's all there is to it. Please sit if you can and you can the rest of this day with as much pure strength, unthinking

[47:19]

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