Everyday Enlightenment through Zen Routine

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The talk primarily addresses the psychological and practical aspects of Zen practice, emphasizing the importance of commitment, the challenges of adhering to monastic rules, and the intricate understanding of koans. It highlights how routine tasks and mindfulness in Zen practice can illuminate the path to understanding the essence of Buddha. The discussion also touches upon the necessity of constant self-inquiry and zazen (seated meditation) to clear mental obstructions often referred to as "constipations." A fundamental theme is the transformation of everyday experiences into spiritual insight, using anecdotes and examples from renowned Zen teachers.

Referenced Works:
- "What is Buddha?" by Umong (Koan)
- Discusses the use of everyday objects like a toilet stick as profound answers in Zen practice, challenging intellectual interpretations and emphasizing experiential understanding.

Speakers/Entities Referred to:
- Suzuki Roshi
- Cited for his forgetfulness and relatable human nature, highlighting the importance of practical, human elements in spiritual practice.

  • Umong
  • Referenced for his famous koan "toilet stick," illustrating the value of direct, unorthodox responses in Zen teaching.

  • Dogen

  • Mentioned indirectly when discussing the juxtaposition of enlightenment and practice.

  • Yamada Roshi

  • Referenced in a shared anecdote about performing a teaching skit with Suzuki Roshi, underscoring the transmission of Zen teachings through relatable actions.

Concepts Discussed:
- Monastic Rules in Zen Practice
- The talk explores how rules ensure structure, aiding practitioners in transitioning from intellectual engagement to natural doing.

  • Commitment in Zen Practice
  • Emphasizes how deep commitment reveals hidden aspects of one’s practice and is essential for true engagement in Buddhism.

  • Koans

  • Used as tools to transcend intellectual constraints, urging practitioners to seek personal, experiential answers rather than logical interpretations.

  • Mental Obstructions ("Constipations")

  • Describes how daily practices like zazen help clear mental clutter accumulated from daily life, facilitating spiritual clarity.

  • Everyday Mind

  • The concept of integrating Zen mindfulness into everyday life without mental interference, illustrated through the anecdote of sharing tea.

Anecdotes:
- Suzuki Roshi’s Forgetfulness and Adjustment of Glasses
- Highlights the Zen approach to human errors and the need for practical reminders.

  • Koan of Everyday Objects
  • Umong's koan exemplifies the Zen practice of finding profundity in ordinary items, promoting non-intellectual responses to existential questions.

AI Suggested Title: Everyday Enlightenment through Zen Routine

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Transcript: 

Someone said to me today that they seem to be more, while their practice seems to be getting clearer, they seem to be getting less able to do simple things. And I've mentioned that before, but anyway, I mention it now just because I just, as I was bowing, realized I'd brought the wrong bowing cloth, doesn't, it's a different one than for this kesa, bow kesa. So in a monastic situation, one of the reasons for the rules is, later on in your practice, it's, you need a situation, when you stop trying to figure things out and just do whatever

[01:02]

comes, at first you can get pretty mixed up. And so it's, you have to find, you know, you can't go around bumping into things, so you have to find some, eventually some new way, without making any particular effort comes where you do things, you know. But it's still, it's somewhat different. I remember Suzuki Roshi, he would come to lecture sometimes, and he'd get to the, in front of everybody, and he'd reach up like this to adjust his glasses, and there'd be no glasses there, you know. So he would leave, and he'd go upstairs, and really, he'd come back down, he'd forgotten to get the glasses, and everybody in the audience is waiting.

[02:04]

Finally Oksan tied them to him, these little ropes. He was especially forgetful though, anyway. But there has to be some way to remind you, you know. So, I talked about commitment, and until, of course, commitment means many things, and often you find out you have some kind of commitment that you don't know you've made, but actually you've made. And it's also a process, you make some kind of commitment, and a few years later you find

[03:18]

out that it wasn't what's required at all. So you have to renew, some turning around occurs, you feel your whole insides are turning around to make a commitment that you didn't realize was even there to be made. But until you make a commitment, it's pretty difficult to practice Buddhism, because as long as you're taking from Buddhism what you need only, there's no problem, you know. You take what's convenient for you, what makes sense, and what's useful, and so you don't ever have any problem, so you don't ever have any koans. But if you at some point say, okay, you know, I'm a Buddhist, then you wonder, you know,

[04:23]

eventually you wake up to, what is this thing I've committed myself to? And at that point, a koan you don't need to be given is, what is Buddha? We have Buddhas of various kinds in front of us, and we talk about Buddhism all the time, and we bow to Buddha. But what is Buddha? So if you don't, if you can't respond to that with some satisfaction, then you ask yourself that. Until you can, it may take several years, or it may never be possible to feel what is

[05:29]

Buddha. Someone asked Umong, what is Buddha, and he said a famous koan. He said a toilet stick, or something, I've seen various ways it's translated, toilet paper, or toilet stick, or something to scratch yourself with after using the toilet. But, and many times people say, intellectual people say, this is just a nonsense response.

[06:38]

It's to defy spiritual, usual ideas of what spiritual is. But it's usually intellectuals who can't make intellectual sense of something who say that koans are nonsense. And if you practice Buddhism for a long time, they don't, they're not nonsense, they're not intellectual, and they're not something you can find an answer to exactly. But if you've asked yourself, what is Buddha, over and over and over again, what is Buddha? Can't hear in the back? Okay. I never know with the machines on or not, so I never know how loud to talk.

[07:41]

Okay. Oh, you have an earplug in your ear, I see. I see. My God. Wun Wun wouldn't let anybody take notes in his lectures, I know. Somebody, supposedly the story is, he wore a paper robe, one of his disciples, and he wrote surreptitiously. Can you turn the machine down just a bit? Anyway, if you've asked yourself that kind of question, what is Buddha, what is Buddha, what is Buddha, looking at your teacher talking about Buddhism for a long time, you know,

[08:48]

and seeing the Buddhas on the altars, what is Buddha, [...] what is this thing I'm, what am I a Buddhist for, what is Buddha? Then, of course, you've spent many, many, many hours sitting on the toilet saying, what is Buddha, what is Buddha, what is Buddha, you know. So then when Wun Wun says, it's a toilet stick, you know, you have a different feeling for it than an intellectual who says, oh, this has no meaning. So, on the one hand, such an answer suggests something about the way we ask ourselves questions, you know, what is Buddha, what is Buddha, what is Buddha. And everything begins to be penetrated with Buddha. Wun Wun must have spent quite a lot of time asking himself what is Buddha on the toilet

[09:56]

because one of his other answers is the flowering bush outside the toilet, emptiness. So, maybe we're all constipated, is the problem, and mostly we're constipated with ideas. And so, just as we go to the toilet every day, we maybe should do zazen every day. Because, you know, we accumulate, unless you're leading a very simple life,

[11:10]

you accumulate sort of residue of what you do all the time. And the more you live a religious life in the city or in some active place where you're involved with people all the time, the more you accumulate. And a session or zazen helps free you of that accumulation. Mostly, each of us is constipated by some assumption that we can't see about what life is like.

[12:28]

And sometimes we feel pretty good because our particular constipation is in fashion. And everybody congratulates us on what we're constipated with. And if you're lucky, your constipation will be in fashion throughout your life. But if you're not so lucky, it will go out of fashion and no one will want what you're constipated with. And some of us just feel lousy. It's possible to say we're already enlightened or to even say enlightenment exists, means that it's possible for each one of us to be completely free. And if you're not, it means that you are constipated in some way.

[13:31]

So you can either try to get rid of that constipation or accept that constipation or whatever. But you should know you're constipated. It may be all right to be constipated, but you should know you're constipated. So some of you have pretty, feel you have quite unsatisfactory lives. And yet you don't know how to make, how to find out what it is that's constipating you. And eventually even zazen, if you view zazen as a something you do as a physical exercise,

[14:38]

then zazen won't help you because eventually you can get so you can do zazen. Pretty well, physically. Zazen is only a physical expression of our attempt to stay with something, to stay with ourself. When we talk about in Buddhism everyday mind, we don't mean usual,

[16:21]

deluded mind. You know, like there's some story about, I can't, there's a wonderful story that Suzuki Roshi and Yamada Roshi acted out once about a lady nun. And they put pillows on their hats, heads for hats. And they did this whole, acted out this story. I can't remember exactly, but it was similar to the story where someone brings a cup of tea. And says something like, only a man of great spiritual attainment should drink this tea. So no one drank the tea. But all that happens is their thinking was interfering with their drinking the tea.

[17:27]

If you just want to drink tea, you can drink tea. So how can we have that everyday mind, ordinary mind, which there's no interference by our thinking? Now can we, you and I, practice outside this sasheen, tomorrow and the next day, with this kind of everyday mind? Okay. It's... It's very difficult to talk about Buddhism in the way Suzuki Roshi was able to talk about it with words of feeling.

[18:42]

Partly he could say things, being Japanese and translating from Japanese, things that's difficult, that are difficult for us to say. I know even if I say, I can remember saying to someone that our practice should be sincere. And I got really a funny treatment because sincere is, you know, you can't say that to people, sincere. And Suzuki Roshi always ended a sasheen talking about the way all Japanese people talk about how grateful he felt. And how, you know, how do I say I feel grateful for practicing with you? Or how do we, how do we talk about something so obvious as we have to take our life seriously? You have to be committed to... I don't know what to say, but so many of you are leading your life as if you were standing beside it.

[19:55]

As if it weren't quite your life and you're waiting for someone to help you or something to come and do it for you. It's true in Buddhism, you can't really see what Buddhism is until you're committed to it and stuck with it. And then you say, what is this? And you can't do your life until you're stuck with your life. And anyway, an awful lot of us don't want to be stuck with our life. We want some other, some kind of other, some big other to be there. I mean, almost anything will give us relief. You know, we look at everything for interpretation of what we're doing. Tea leaves or, or whatever.

[21:00]

Anyway, do you, is there any questions we should talk about? Yeah. It's okay. Paul, when you were talking about being constipated, you said, it's something you constipate to get rid of. Then later you said, maybe you found something to stick with, stick with yourself. So when you're constipated, where do you stick with yourself? I understand what you say. Of course, your karma is your karma and your constipation is you.

[22:29]

But even though your turd is also you, you don't want to keep it in you forever. We share it. So here we're all sharing our practice together, sitting in the zendo for five days. And actually, in this case, it's a wonderful thing to share. It's just the opposite of, we don't have to flush it away at all. I don't, you can't. But our mind, you know, wants to have things like this and that. So if I say, you know, I mean, it's the same problem as Dogen had.

[23:46]

If we're already enlightened, why should we practice? Anyway, that's more a problem of our head, which wants to separate things. And an actual problem. You had your hand raised by force. More confident. Hmm. I know, I know you, you know, I think you should be more confident. It's, but that's true for each of us.

[24:55]

But how, I don't know how. It basically, it's, you know, you have to believe that you're already enlightened. Or you have to believe that our practice is possible. If you don't believe that, it's pretty difficult to practice. And if you don't, you know, I don't know, you can think this through, you know. You exist and you're stuck with yourself, you might as well. You know, it doesn't do any good to put a downer on what you're doing. But how actually we're confident. Hmm.

[26:01]

Hmm. Now, I can't answer, but if you accept to say, be confident, you know. And you can say that to yourself and that doesn't maybe help much. But, sometimes zazen helps. Because no matter what happens, you find something is there which continues. In relationship to the ordinary problem, you know. I don't know, you know. Nothing can hurt you. Even if a tiger comes to, to eat you. There's no problem. How to have that kind of confidence, I just, I don't know how to explain.

[27:05]

But it actually exists. It has to do with, with what you compare yourself to. Usually, our lack of confidence is because we have some idea, some big idea about the way things are, that we constantly compare ourselves to. And Buddhism, as you know, talks about various types of people and practices for each type. And that means, you know, each of us has a different way we tend to delude ourselves, fool ourselves. To have real confidence, complete confidence, is the same as being enlightened. So, it's not easy.

[28:07]

There's no way to, to, you know, there's no map, but, you know, the more you, if you can see things as they are, you'll be confident. And if, it's only when we see things in some mixed-up way, with various kinds of expectations, that we aren't confident. You said, You find books full of

[29:17]

I've been reading for the past hour. You've been reading for the past hour? I read an hour before I came here. Oh, you're not in the Sesshin. Are you in the Sesshin? I was wondering where you were reading if you were in the Sesshin. Well, you know,

[30:23]

there's no answer, you know. Today I feel particularly there's no answer. It's too, too complicated to try to answer. If you practice, you know, and if you see how the shit accumulates, then you can do something to, to identify with it. The other side, I mean, you know, one way is to do zazen and to try to stop accumulating, doing things which hang us up. That's simple enough, you know, getting on to that, noticing when you do things that hang you up. But the,

[31:32]

the thing itself which hangs us up, which causes us to do things to hang it up, to hang ourselves up, is another kind of karma, another kind of problem. That usually, that's what you want to accept. That's what you want to enter into. And that often, the other side of that very thing which looks like the problem is often the solution to the problem or actually your enlightenment. So we want to, I don't mean that we want to get rid of things, you know, and be pure. But we need some kind of practice to stop the accumulation. An assessing gives you some sense. But you have to continue your practice. How to continue your practice? It's very, see, it's easy to talk

[32:34]

about, in assessing while we're practicing together. How to continue, or if we're not in assessing, we can talk about some way of looking at Buddhism which will give you some help. But how to continue this sense of practice from this assessing into your usual day? There's not much more I can say except that you have to have a commitment to your practice. And with a commitment to your practice you have to be able to ask yourself questions like, what is Buddha? What is Buddha? What is, you know, whatever it is,

[33:36]

you present it to yourself over and over again. And again, I don't exactly how you do that. You see, it's, you know, actually practice at this level requires a great deal of personal contact. Unmon's famous for his one-word answers which I'm not very good at. Somebody asked him a similar question, you know, and his one-word answer was intimacy. Intimacy. Intimacy with yourself and with your teacher. This session

[34:47]

had a, each session is a little different. And this session had some kind of clarity which anyway, had some kind of clarity. I felt it in your sitting and in many of you specifically and in the way the serving went and some attention to how we did things. Now the session is almost over and the last periods of a session are always

[35:48]

pretty important to not ease off on, to continue without any lessening of effort right through to the end. Thank you.

[36:15]

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