Satsang with Mooji Satsang with Mooji Anastabha's penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kaphas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to trace the truth of the Jathagata's words.

[01:03]

Good evening. At the practice period tea this evening, the Tanto Jordan was mentioning how to preserve the vigor or intensity of the practice period. And saying, you know, that one way to do that is to just follow the schedule. What a revolution. it set me thinking about myself. I mean, where else to start than yourself? And I was thinking my attendance at noon service has been not very frequent.

[02:13]

And I could conjure up all sorts of reasons as to why. but also just to realize that that sustains and maintains my practice and vitalizes it and maintains and sustains the practice of others. And then, of course, going to noon service is thoroughly useless. I mean, you know, in the middle of your busy day when there's all these things you want to get done and should get done and people expect you to get done, you know, with the aid of Microsoft Outlook, you know, and all of such wonderful devices to keep us on track. How could we possibly take time out of that to go to noon service?

[03:19]

I mean, what really would it accomplish? In some ways, that's part of its virtue, you know, that it accomplishes nothing. You know, we just stop and return to something so fundamental that it supports our whole life and accomplishes nothing. Nothing within the context of our agendas, you know. So last week I was talking about Buddha's teaching of two truths, you know, the relative and the absolute. So in the absolute, noon service supports our whole life. These little details of our schedule, our daily schedule, our weekly schedule, of just turning up for them and making a big deal with them, being completely present for them.

[04:26]

doing them with the best effort and engagement that we can muster up, it supports our whole life. It supports all life. And then within the context of our daily schedule, today I was having a meeting, a very important meeting, as all meetings are, And then I heard the dencho start, and I thought, hmm. If I wrapped this up, I could get to noon service, but then there was more to talk about, and I didn't get to noon service. So in the relative world, there's important things that have to be done. And then to make it all the more interesting is what we want to do and what we don't want to do, important or not.

[05:34]

And then those two dance together, you know, needs and desires, responsibilities and preferences. So this statement that we keep being, keeps being set in front of us, follow the schedule. It's like cut through. Cut through needs and desires. Cut through preferences. And meet what's there. And of course, this is a con. This doesn't have a simple answer. It's constantly... presenting itself and asking to be revealed in whatever the situation of the moment is. So the schedule activates our life by asking us to

[06:57]

come back to something fundamental. And then we come back to something fundamental and we rediscover practice. You come out of noon service and it's like, oh yeah, right, here I am in this world. And now I get to go to eat lunch. How great is that? The bell rings for the end of Zazen and you get to stand up. Is that good or what? And then do the next thing. And usually it has a little bit more spark, a little bit more juice to it. So the first three sentences of the Genjo Kahn read something like this.

[07:59]

This is Shohako Okamura's translation. When all dharmas are Buddha Dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, life and death, Buddhas and living beings. When all dharmas are not self, in parenthesis he has the word fixed self. When all dharmas are not self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddhas, no living beings, no births, and no perishing. Since the Buddha way by nature goes beyond abundance and deficiency, there is arising and perishing, delusion and realization, living beings and Buddhas. So I spoke before on Manala dharmas and Buddha dharmas, so we've all got that. Let me repeat myself a little bit.

[09:09]

We could say there's understanding, getting the meaning that's presented, and then there's integrating that into our life and that provides an insight and then there is going beyond you know going beyond that wonderful idea or thought or concept that it of that insight and that's me what is going beyond any kind of separation or conceptual way of engaging it. So we can read this first sentence. When all dharmas are Buddha dharmas, there is delusion and realization, practice life and death, Buddhas and living beings.

[10:18]

So when is a conditional phrase? And this whole sentence can be read as being about the conditional world. We start to see the conditioned nature of existence. We start to see the conditioned nature of self. So this evening at the tea, I offered up the question, What does practice ask of you? Because our more ingrained, habitual way of being is to assert the self. Is to assert the self in the service of what we want and what we don't want. Or what we want to have and what we want to get away from. And then we take practice and it just becomes more fodder for that engagement.

[11:21]

And then what practice asks of me is like the first turning of the Dharma Leel. It's like this shift. Can I listen to something? Can I hear something? Can I connect to something that shifts me out of the mantra of me? mind and what I want, what I don't want. And even if we can just start with that idea, that understanding, and start to explore the request of it, something will start to shift. And then we can hear that request.

[12:25]

And then it's that request that draws us a little deeper. Well, obviously, if that's the request to practice, there's an invitation to engage it, to do it, to be it. It's like another turning of the Dharma wheel. more thoroughly disengaging from the world according to me and the agendas and motivations and activities of that. And then last time I talked, I also suggested the notion of holding that engagement with benevolence, discipline and patience. So how do we engage what practice asks of me with benevolence, discipline, and patience?

[13:32]

Benevolence. It's not that something's broken, needs to be fixed, somebody's wrong, somebody needs to be blamed. Discipline. Yeah, there is a request there. There is a request for response. There is a shifting from just flowing with habit energy to intention energy. And patience. Those habits have taken a lifetime to develop. They're not going to disappear overnight. They have their persistence. They have their way of reappearing. and reappearing and reappearing. And then on that theme, I'd like to offer another teaching from the early sutras.

[14:38]

And it's when experience arises, you know, can be momentary or can be an abiding emotion. More attitude. Or some mix of emotion, attitude, and definition of one aspect of reality. To acknowledge it. Just start by acknowledging. Oh, this is disappointment. Then... Making contact. So moving it from the head into a somatic, an emotional, a felt emotional experience, whatever it is to make contact with it.

[15:42]

And then to let that be a felt, a body experience. And then that has its own workings, because life is fundamentally an interactive dynamic. And when we stop separating from it, something happens. Because there's always something happening, but we're usually insisting upon keeping it static with our own fixed ideas about what is. Acknowledging, making contact, engaging, Not transforming as I'm transforming it, but more becoming part of it and the dynamic activity of it does what it does. I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh's formulation of this, which I thought was interesting.

[16:46]

He called it stopping, calming, resting, and healing. has a wonderful benevolence to it. Stopping, calming, resting, and healing. And in a way, before you can acknowledge something, you have to stop energizing the story it spins off. I'm disappointed in you and, you know, you're in whatever you are that creates disappointment. And I'm upset to be disappointed. It hurts and discouraged. To stop something and acknowledge it.

[17:53]

calming, letting something settle enough that it can be more a felt experience than an acted out experience. And then I use the word engaging. He uses the word resting. It's like resting in the middle of that activity, being present for it, not running away from it, not trying to fix it, just being fully present, engaging it. And then it has its own kind of transformative expression. And he uses the word healing. The pain is in the self-centered grasping. And when we let that go and let something come up that's connected to all being, there's a human. So I say all that by way of saying, by way of trying to answer the question, what is it for all dharmas to be Buddha dharmas?

[19:19]

What is it for experiences to be offering a way to awaken? What is it for experiences to be offering a way of going beyond small self? What is it for experiences to be revealing the dharma of what is? When all dharmas are Buddha dharmas. So I offer those as kind of something, a traditional Buddhist teaching. a way of engaging that enables all dharmas to be Buddha dharmas. To engage the conditioned world. And what do you see? What do you experience when you engage the conditioned world? You've experienced the arisings of conditioned existence.

[20:25]

You've experienced birth and death, delusion, enlightenment, Buddhas, sentient beings. And you experience practicing with them. You experience bringing benevolence to them, bringing discipline, bringing patience, bringing application. And then the second sentence says, when all dharmas are not fixed self, there is no delusion or realization, no Buddhas or living beings, no birth, no perishing.

[21:29]

When the 10,000 dharmas are without self, There's no delusion, no enlightenment, no Buddhas, no sentient beings, no life, no death. So without self can be a matter of degree. We can be utterly caught in the notion of the world according to me and completely convinced by it. We can see it there. We can see these arising ideas and not be so convinced by them. Or we can have those sweet and wonderful moments of just being present.

[22:39]

Which we all have. Usually we just immediately put back on the word according to me. Sometimes it's as simple as we can't conceive of what to do if we didn't. But to whatever degree we cannot be obsessed by the world according to me, it offers up the Buddha Dharma. It sheds a light on the path of practice. It turns from the world according to me to What does practice ask of me? It offers that up as a possibility.

[23:46]

And then that possibility ripens and flourishes into being totally present with what is. But it's important that we don't allow it to just exist in the realm of a wonderful abstract idea. In a way, it's probably better to forget the whole thing totally than become enamored with it as some exquisite Zen ideal. You know, the challenge of our life as practitioners is to let the Dharma get some traction in who we are, whatever we're being, whatever we're doing. Can the Dharma have some traction in it and start to reveal the nature of what is? So whether we're just simply loosening up a little bit the world according to me or whether we're dropping it completely.

[24:53]

Better set the goal of loosening it up a little bit than setting up some lofty ideal that we'll get back to later. When my mind is clear and sharp And my emotions are saddled and the sun shining and whatever else is supposed to be the perfect condition for that to happen. And then maybe in the principles of practice, we can say, oh, well, the first one is relative truth. The second one is absolute truth. Maybe. And certainly we can say that, but we can also say the first one is Gangjo Kahn, the first one is saying thoroughly study conditioned existence.

[26:01]

And then the second one is saying thoroughly study not holding on to anything, any idea, any feeling, Anything. Let it go. First one is saying study it thoroughly. The second one is saying drop it completely. What is it to study it thoroughly? What is it to drop it completely? What is it to explore within the realm of self The things we can loosen up our grasp on quite easily. And what is it to study the things that some part of us says, I have to have it. To feel the intensity of that. Rumi's father, you know Rumi, the famous Persian poet, his father was also a practitioner and a scholar.

[27:15]

And... And he wrote a book which apparently Rumi used as his main resource when he was teaching and practicing. And in that book, his father said that he find these moments of I have to have it. He said he cherished them because they taught him so much. When that arose, I have to have it. The great teacher, he said. My life depends upon this. What is I? Wouldn't it be great to know that? What story do I tell myself? My life depends upon this.

[28:17]

We can also say, that the first sentence has to do with investigative consciousness, and the second sentence has to do with samadhi, concentration. Just being fully present in the moment, beyond comparison, beyond idea, just phenomenal expression, like a flash of lightning. So all these ways of engaging it. We go to noon service and we're just completely present for noon service. Whatever it was that was happening before has disappeared. Whatever is going to happen next has disappeared. We just do this.

[29:20]

Simple, powerful thing of bowing and chanting. And then we walk out of the Buddha hall and the world reappears. But when we're doing noon service, we have no idea if that world will ever reappear again. Or what happened to the world that existed before noon service. All we know is noon service. Each activity becomes completely itself. Each experience becomes completely itself. It's beyond comparison. Is today's known service better than yesterday's known service? What does that mean? Today's is today's exactly the way it is.

[30:21]

It becomes completely itself beyond judgment, beyond comparison, beyond any formulation. And it has no self. And this is the intrinsic nature of every moment. And then the third sentence says, the Buddha way transcends being and non-being. Therefore, there are life and death, delusion and enlightenment sentient beings and Buddhas. Ashokha's translation, since the Buddha way by nature goes beyond abundance and deficiency, There are arising and perishing delusion and realization, living beings and Buddhas.

[31:31]

It's not a matter of saying, well, which is the best way to practice? Dropping everything, going beyond all concepts, or studying them carefully? and seeing the conditioned nature of what arises. You know, practically speaking, as a practice, they're complementary. I mean, when we're nothing but caught up in our stuff, there's a way we don't see it. When we drop it and it re-engages, we see something that we didn't see before when we were just nothing but caught up in it. When we start to see our stuff, when we start to see the conditioned nature of our stuff, it becomes less compelling to grasp it and hold on to it steadfast. We start to sense something beyond it. When we see the attitude, the emotion, the concept we're bringing forth, clearly for what it is,

[32:55]

We sense something beyond it. We sense the no-self beyond the self. So these two ways of practice are complementary. And the third sentence holds them both. It holds their complementary nature. And the transcendence is that there's no grasping to either one. That we see that they are a symbiotic perk. They help to create each other. That they illuminate each other. That this is the nature of our existence. We go to noon service and there's nothing but noon service and then we walk out the door and go to lunch. We're completely doing something.

[34:02]

A great example that always comes to my mind is like working in the kitchen and you're present for cutting the carrots and so there's cutting the carrots and attention to that and there's an awareness that the rice is cooking and the salads are being made and all these things come together. They're not exclusive ways of attending to the moment. So bringing them together helps us have this balance. This balance between becoming too caught up in Oh, look at what's going on for me. Look what I'm thinking and look at what I'm feeling. And then on the other side, well, maybe if I just really try to stay in samadhi, I can somehow avoid being the person that I am.

[35:16]

The middle path between the two extremes. This is what's being held up in the third sentence. that goes beyond or transcends doesn't mean somehow is no longer involved in. It means completely involved in but not struggling with them, not being stuck. So let me stop there by just reading them over again. When all dharmas are Buddha Dharma, there is enlightenment and delusion, practice, life and death, Buddhas and creatures, are Buddhas and sentient beings. When the ten thousand dharmas are without self, there is no delusion, no enlightenment, no Buddhas, no creatures, no life and no death.

[36:21]

When the Buddha way transcends being and non-being, there is life and death, delusion and enlightenment, creatures and Buddhas. Nevertheless, flowers fall with our attachment and weeds spring up with our aversion. Darn it. Thank you. May our intention equally extend to every being and place. With the new man I'll fly away To your man's sake on your own.

[37:28]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. foreign foreign Thank you.

[38:24]

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