March 1st, 2000, Serial No. 01110

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we ah those of us the luxor have been asked to introduce ourselves at the beginning of the lectures sometimes you can sit here and hear somebody talk to you and not know who they are so anyhow my name is jeffrey schneider i practice here i am a priest here at
and for my sins i am currently serving as the director of this facility
huh
you can all hear yeah
yeah that okay so what i'd like to do that i'd like to see a show of hands please a people who either are here for their first time our who are here navy for the first few times crises her hands
a great this is particularly good because this lecture is for you the rest of the old timers can fall quietly asleep or slink out as you will
for right well that's always an option i suppose
okay so
i'm going to depart a little bit from our usual format so i offer apologies to anybody who needs them
this afternoon from one thirty on we're going to be doing a meditation workshop for people in recovery and i'm going to be one of the people who are going to who is going to be leading that and as i was thinking about it i was thinking that are actually i asked if i could lecture to
a day for that reason and i was thinking about how
how much for me at least and for many people i know the
twelve steps of recovery programs can illuminate our zen practice and how much
how much similarity mutual clarification mutual illumination there might be so i'm not really going to talk about
recovery programs so much but what i would like to do is to use those twelve steps as a way to talk about sort of basic buddhism buddhism one or one so i'm point he used in a sort of i hope to use in this sort of a trellis
upon which to hang the succulent fruit of the dharma
you may laugh now
so
so let's start shelly
step one we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives to become unmanageable

buddhism as you may know
he's pretty simple
preached was about what he called the four noble truths or maybe what they called the four noble truths after the buddha preached let's hear what he says about the first one
what is the this is the first noble truth okay what is the noble truth of suffering birth is suffering aging is suffering sickness is suffering death is suffering sorrow and lamentation pain grief and despair are suffering association with the loathed is suffering disassociation
dissociation from the loved his suffering not to get what one wants his suffering in short the five aggregates affected by clinging are suffering in other words the whole complex of this body and mind is deeply involved with suffering now the word that the earth due to use to actually was do
ukha which is translated as suffering but can also be understood as incompleteness unsatisfactory enos what have you
okay so admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable is that suffering or what and you know it doesn't have to be alcohol substitute your own favorite addiction you know is that a drug is that a substance is it a person is at an idea isn't an emotion
are you addicted to pleasure are you addicted to suffering are you addicted to being a victim are you addicted to excitement are you addicted to depression are you
are you addicted to the idea of who you are you know we are addicted i am addicted
i am deeply
bound up in creating and defending the boundaries of a self
and if this isn't suffering i don't know what is and if this does not make my life unmanageable
i don't need anything else to help that doesn't quite well thank you so what we're talking about here what would what the buddha dharma is discussing what the buddhist talking about in the first noble truth is some radical flaw that we feel that the basis of our life some some
some lack somehow some missed beat in the rhythm of our lives over and over and over again you know our christian friends would call this perhaps original sin you know something that is is not there something that we are acutely aware of some some deep longing that is perhaps never filled
our that feels as though it will never be filled this is suffering you know
and you know the buddha did not say that there was no pleasure in the world are no joy no happiness
but he did point out that whatever we love will change you know the person we love will change or go away or die
you know that great job you know are you know that really neat car are you know the perfect lover are you know it's all gonna go away it's all gonna go away and people will always and inevitably disappoint us
and we will always inevitably disappoint those we love
maybe not always but inevitably
so our lives in general you know our unmanageable and we compound the unmanaged ability and the suffering by trying to manage them can you hear me when i talked facing this way okay because they don't want to see this to
and we also can pound the suffering of our lives when we tried to manage other people's lives which some of us also like to do
to greater or lesser with greater or lesser on
ah skill and success as i said i'm director here so i know all about the suffering that comes about trying to manage things
step two we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
okay
so there are two things going on that we can talk about in terms of buddhism in this step one is the belief that there is a basic sanity underlying all of this insanity and that we can be returned to it somehow okay so that's what i want to address and that i also think is what the second and third noble truth
address
if we can find them here they are okay
second novel truth what is the noble truth of the origin of suffering it is craving which renews being and is accompanied by relish and lust relishing this and that in other words craving for sensual desires craving for being craving for non-being but whereon does this craving arise and
flourish wherever there is that which seems lovable and gratifying thereon it arises and flourishes
and the third novel truth what is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering now this is the one you want to pay attention to right
it is the remainder list fading and cessation of that same creating the rejecting relinquishing leaving and renouncing of it but whereon is this craving abandoned and made to cease wherever there is that which seems lovable and gratifying thereon it has abandoned and made to cease that it sounds pretty
harsh but i think it's just the buddhist way of telling us without any frills what's really going on you know
any of the whole thing we would never come here and one practice or practice anything if all buddha told us about if all buddhism told us about if all any spiritual practice told us about was suffering
you know the buddha said my teaching is that i show you suffering and i show you the end of suffering
so that's what draws us
so what he's saying here of course is that me know are suffering is
is caused by are clinging you know i talk just a moment ago about how we are least die and i presume everybody else constructs the self
it makes the boundaries very definite and continues to defend that at the risk of everything you know and you know we defended in various ways you know we defended with money we defend it was prestige we defended with love we defend it was control we defended with substances you know whatever you know the boundary of the self cannot
be breached and we are clinging desperately to some notion of who we are and what would happen if we let go that's the third novel truth
so let's talk about the basic sanity that we hope is a underlying all of the unmanaged ability of our lives
so what we say in this step in and in in our practice is that there is a whole as possible and we cannot do it by ourselves and there's a paradox of course here because we must do it by ourselves but only by not doing it ourselves
so we'd like paradoxes and in zen particularly not because they're cute but because they actually express the experience of our lives so what i'm talking about here's what suzuki roshi calls for me
when i say we can't do it by ourselves i got a little ahead of myself there when i say we can't do it by ourselves what i mean is the small self the small mind the mind of like and dislike aversion and desire not the troubled water of our thinking and emotions not the
the not the neurotic self that we have constructed out of fear and we try to preserve at all at all events
okay so this healing and the sanity that were speaking of cannot be grasped by the self which is the construct of memories and fantasies and memory and fantasy if you examine them of course are functionally the same thing
by grass being in manipulating by the self that sorrow and frustration that is the product of causes and conditions which arise in cease
so let's see what
if we can find it
i have a couple of things that i want to read here
yeah i want to talk about but suzuki roshi talks about his big mind the mind that is not the mind that i just described now for those of you who are new and may not know suzuki roshi was done or the the founders and so use the japanese zen teacher who came to american founded these temples
and what i'm going to quote to you from his from his book as an mind beginner's mind
the big mind in what in which we must have confidence is not something which you can experience direct objectively it is something which is always with you always on your side your eyes are on your side for you cannot see your eyes and your eyes cannot see themselves eyes only see things outside objective things
things if you reflect on yourself that self is not your true self anymore
you cannot project yourself as some objective thing to think about the mind which is always on your side is not just your mind it is universal mind always the same not different from another's mind it is then mind it is big big mind the mind is whatever you see your true mind as always
ease with whatever you see although you do not know your own mind it is there at the very moment you see something it is there this is very interesting your mind is always with the things you observe so you see this mind is that the same time everything
his big mind you know the mind of our the mind that liberates us from small mind and that is always avail available to us the you know in other words you know the power greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity
okay
i've got all this stuff here and we're kind of losing track of excuse me
okay
there is
okay so let's go on to step three
which is
made a decision to turn our will than our lives over to the care of god as we understood him
as a friend or as a friend of mine says as we didn't understand him
so let's let's read the fourth noble truth
what is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering it is the eightfold noble path that is to say right view right intention right speech right action right livelihood right effort right mindfulness and right concentration so right here
at the very beginning you know right view and right intention that's where we make our decision made a decision to turn our will in our lives over right
but the decision that we make in terms of are buddhist practice is just that the decision to practice the decision to follow the eightfold path to the cessation of suffering
you know and we have
we make a decision to turn ourselves over to big mind as it were to practice or to at to whatever we want to call it we decide and this decision to practice is oddly enough beyond the realm of choice and preference
so we we we make this
we make this step of faith you know it didn't have to be a leap of faith okay five percent sincerity is enough
that's quoting i'm yes a tiny roshi said hood is michael michaels look any have somebody some some famous than guy five percents and thirty have enough
okay and you know this decision to turn our will in our lives over this decision to make the decision to practice is the dropping away of the body and mind dogan zingy the founder of the school in japan who lived in the thirteenth century talks about dropping away body and mind
we turn ourselves over this is the bodhisattva way the bodhisattva vow and we turn ourselves over to this booty stuff about to save all beings at the end of the lecture when we chant will say the bodhisattva vows and you'll hear what they are exactly but we turn ourselves over to this basic sanity and to our own inmates legacy of ny
containment
and for those of you who don't know about bodhisattvas
i will read to you about them
about us this particular are quote is from the book a mind of club the mind of clover by robert akin roshi who's a wonderful wonderful zen teacher who has been teaching for many years and now lives in hawaii
hey bodhisattva that's us okay bodhisattva is a compound sanskrit word that means enlightenment being there are three implications of this term a being who is enlightened that's our basic sanity by the way i been who is on the path of enlightenment that's turning it over and a who was on and one who enter
lightens other beings will talk about that later the whole of my yard and metaphysics is encapsulated in this triple archetypal out here of loki tissue vara is the buddha from the beginning and is also on the path to realize in the effect of loki tissue or by the way is the bodhisattva who symbolizes compassion her
name means the one who hears the cries of the world
avalokiteshvara of hello kitty jabara is the buddha from the beginning is also on the path to realize in the effect moreover this self realization is not separate from the way of saving others for you and me this means that saving others as saving ourselves and saving ourselves as realizing what has always been true as the
cause of buddha we exemplify these three meanings
learning to practice to accept the role of the bodhisattva is the nature of buddhist practice of loki tissue vara is not just to figure on the altar he or she is sitting on your chair as you read this when you accept your merciful and compassionate tasks and a modest spirit you walk the path of the buddha
so that's a little bit about the bodhisattva
and
i'd also just like to quote briefly suzuki roshi on the the way of the bodhisattva also from send my beginner's mind the bodhisattvas ways called the single minded way or one railroad track thousands of miles long the railroad track is always the same if it were to become wider or narrower it would be disastrous
wherever you go the railroad track is always the same this is the bodhisattvas way even if the sun which arise from the west the bodhisattva has only one way her way is in each moment to express his true nature and sincerity
so what they're both saying is
that when we practice when we take this bodhisattva vow
we turn ourselves over to something that is greater than ourselves something that has actually beyond our personalities
and isn't that a relief
step four
made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
at the beginning of oh and that the full moon on every month we have a ceremony here called the bodhisattva ceremony and what we do there and it's this is a sore version of the oldest ceremony and buddhism when the monks and nuns were all living out in you know the indian wilderness they would come together once a month
i think it's more than muslim but at least once a month to written take to recite their vows and to do repentance for any brat vows that they had transgressed know so we do this we do this to every month and we begin by saying all my ancient with
to com r from the getting loose scree aid and illusion born through body and my and ah you know fully know
wow
so we are you know we tell ourselves you know we admit that we have been ah
less perfect and we would ideally like to be
so buddhism or the practice of buddhism is also often talked about as comprising three basic elements
the element of precepts or morality sheila
the morale of meditation and of wisdom okay and the precepts are what we talk about
when we use a bodhisattva ceremony okay and the precepts that me see what he can roshi has to say about them because he's pretty good
well maybe we don't know what a commercial has to say about him i thought ah yes the sixteen built bodhisattva precepts to are archetypes skillful means for use in guiding our engagement with the world they are not commandments engraved in stone but expressions of inspiration written in something more fluid than water row
relative and absolute or together blended comments on the precepts by bodhi dharma and dogan you your studied as collins but our everyday life is a great multifaceted co on that we resolve that every moment and yet never completely resolve
so the basis for
our morality or ethics are are basis for moving gracefully through the world of the precepts
and i'll just read them to you
i take refuge in buddha i take refuge in dharma dharma institution i take refuge in sanga song as the community of those who practice together i vowed to refrain from all evil i vowed to make every effort to live in enlightenment i vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings i found out
to kill i vow not to take what is not given i vow not to misuse sexuality i vowed to refrain from false speech i vowed to refrain from intoxicants i vow not to slander i vow not to praise self at the expense of others i vow not to be avaricious
i vow not to harbor ill will i vow not to abuse the three treasures
so every known again you know we have to look at the stuff and see how are on how our vows are coming along and this is what we do in the photo south the ceremony every month and this is what we do in the fourth step in and tory
so
i want to issue a they out here because without the basis of morality without the basis of the precepts
meditation practice is actually quite dangerous
an enormous power comes out of this practice and if it's not
in our morality and compassion
monsters are created
so it's very messy necessary to see ourselves through and through
step five admitted to god to ourselves into another human being the and it's the exact nature of our wrongs so in our practice in buddhism what we would is very very important to us to have a good spiritual friend you know somebody that we can talk to somebody who can see us thoroughly through and through
ah somebody with whom we can be completely honest and to whom we can be completely transparent you know we cannot do alone because we cannot know ourselves by ourselves you know
in twelve step programs this is often called this person is called the sponsor in our practice here at zen teacher or practice leader a good spiritual friends and you know there's a there's a very famous than same which is if you meet that boot on the road kill him
so it's also important that are good spiritual friend or teacher
we must understand that this is only a man or woman like ourself who is simply willing to be a mirror for us and will always eventually disappoint us in some way or another and it's very hard work to learn how to use a teacher it's training a teacher is very hard work
it really is teachers only get trained by the people who are willing to take the time and train them how to do it and they're going to make a lot of mistakes for which they must be forgiven
just try it yourself so this whole this whole thing about the precepts and looking at our faults and taking in and source these are not the can fetch confessions of a miserable wretch okay but it's about exploring together the truth of our life and it's about clearing the pathway so that
we are better able to serve and be of service and to be a bodhisattva you know in this process of working with the good spiritual friend is painful scary joyous and ultimately liberating
a monk asked the great zen teacher young men
how is it when the tree withers in the leafs fall young men replied body exposed in the golden wind
when we have seen through and through all the games and masks and lies and secrets and they've all fallen away we stand exposed body exposed body and mind exposed in the golden wind
step six we were entirely ready to have god remove all these defects of character step seven humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings
so this is a very interesting step viewed from a buddhist perspective it's one that people often these two step further are ones that people often have a lot of problem with but the way i like to approach it is to think of it
as an invitation to examine the nature of the self okay now the buddha said there are three marks of conditioned existence okay one of them is we talked about this earlier right duca are unsatisfactory nasser that all of our experiences involved with suffering the second one
is transitory enos everything changes constantly
and the third one is a little bit harder to grasp it's called no self
so what he meant by that i think is that
there is no nugget of unchanging awesomeness okay it all changes you know the body changes constantly the mind changes constantly you know we may think that we are defined by various things and frequently we find ourselves defined by our problems are character defects are fears and
our cravings
in our memories which let's face it are mostly made up anyway
right
so what this what this this not self is telling us what these steps are telling us is the change is possible change is possible and we don't need to be caught by some idea of our saw some fixed idea of ourself and we can do this because we
live in the bathtub because we live the life beyond our character defects when we live in the in the bodhisattva vow we look beyond greed hate and delusion
and we're not instantly freed from greed hate and delusion but were not caught by it now in buddhism we talk about the three poisons which are great hate and delusion and sometimes we say that that each person is here she comes into the world has a predominant character defect if you will or predominant
defining
position vis-a-vis the world so agreed type is somebody who always wants more of you know i need more i need more i need more i need more you know i i want some of that and or doesn't that look good and i bet that's tasty you know and this is one way of sure up the the illusory self right you know you put a lot of things around that you know ice cream cones and new cars and grow
friends and boyfriends and houses and jobs and and then there's the the hate type of which i am a fabulous new sampler and this this type is the person who doesn't want anything to get close enough to puncture that barrier of the self you go wait not having any email thank you very much i can do it alone go
by okay and the poor delusion type
he or she does not know what the hell they want but they're really confused and you know they don't know sometimes a little this looks good and sometimes but i don't want their but maybe i want that artistic i should hear that
i was this it i'll just tell you a little anecdote i was working once at tassajara in the summer as a guest as a cook and there were three three of us who are responsible for cooking for the guess we were so perfect i was wandering around cursing and banging things most of the summer my friend jonathan was shoving just about everything you could find in his mouth and and poor brian was looking at is both of us
and sort of wandering around with his eyes on the ceiling totally befuddled it really taught me that these things i mean know they will happen but the good news okay the good news is that through practice through a produce enough about through practice the these principles and all of our affairs on the three poisons are transformed
what a concept and the greed the greedy type you know who wants more and more and more becomes attached to goodness and to virtue and to the dharma and give me more practice kidney more opportunities to be of use give me
you know give me more of this give me more if your wonderful presence
let me be with you and the hate type is also transformed and what hate transforms into his penetrating wisdom the ability to see through all the crap especially our own you know and that's that's very useful to
and the the
the illusion type the delusion type yeah this person when transformed by practice is no longer caught not caught by intellectual or emotional constructions but but moves through the world through her life with great freedom because the realization has come that it's all a story
so step eight made a list of all persons we had harmed became willing to make amends to them all step nine make direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others and step ten continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
promptly admitted it
so these three steps for me or about sanga now song as i said earlier is one of the three treasures okay you get your buddha dharma which is the teaching and saga which is the community of those who practice together and what's really interesting to me is that in buddhism you know we've put saga right up there
air with buddha it's not like this you know it's like buddha dharma sangha all three of them together so the saga is just as important as buddha and dharma you can't i mean you can't separate them out but just as important
so that's really really
a good thing to hear you know you are just as important as buddha
so these three steps for me talk about the harmony of the saga
and also about letting go of everything which prevents us from seeing each other as buddha
let let go of getting rid of the it's obstructions
that stand in the way of the sunlight of the spirit
so it allows us to see when we are in harmony with each other we not only get to see each other as buddha we get to see ourselves as buddha you know the teacher mirrors you back and your friend mirrors you back and when you can see boot in your friend you can your friend will mirror back buddha to you
so once again this is not you know correcting these but our shortcomings etc etc etc
is not the the work of a of a desperate wretch
but it's the work of a bodhisattva who clears the channel so that a so that she may truly be a bodhisattva
okay step eleven sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understood him praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out
i'm going to talk about meditation wrong
then means meditation i think most of you know or now you all know
and many of you i think came for her sauce and instruction meditation instruction today and so you know then is that school of buddhism which has thousand meditation as its primary
activity you know you know we do i mean we chant and you know we do rituals and stuff like that but zazen meditation is the main thing so having said that you all know about that i won't talk about thousand or but prayer the prayer something you don't hear a lot about in buddhism or list and said so like to talk a little bit about that
and the kind of what i think of his prayer in our practice here is actually an outgrowth of our vow and you know the word devotion comes from the word vow our vice verse anyhow there they're the same route okay and so the devotional practices that we use here
you know i used to think we're just kind of like you know
frosting on the cake or something that now we had to do because it came from japan and you know we hadn't gotten rid of them yet the one we really got it together or we do as thousand
but you know it's not true
you know bowing chanting working mindfully
you know the chance we say before meals you know bowing before we use the toilet going through a day mindfully whether we're here are out there using you know the
one of the practice that i i do as a montreux practice you know offering incense these are all prayers okay and this prayer to this is not the kind of prayer that presumes one person here and some super person up they're getting it and you know granting or not you know this is about
this is this is an empty prayer okay a prayer which just totally expresses that which is with no no need for anything but itself it's a very hard practice actually and you know what comes out of prayer compassion gratitude and compassion come forth from
prayer
and generosity and sometimes we practice specific generosity and gratitude practices you know a long time ago was really lucky i was able to hear the dalai lama speak and he said something which like really blew me away he said wisdom comes forth from
compassion see i always thought it was the other way around right you know i do all this intense practice when i get enlightened and then i'd be compassionate because then i'd be able to put up with you you know
bless you
but so what he was saying was that it's not that way at all
you know compassion comes first and if you think about it it makes sense right because unless we have compassion for something unless we're willing to drop our barriers towards someone or something you know we can never know it thoroughly we can never know it thoroughly we can never know ourselves thoroughly unless we have compassion unless we're willing to be with and suffer
her with you know
so in the heart sutra which is one of the chance that we do here every day you know avalokiteshvara remember of a dish for one who hears the cries of the world the compassionate one
the compassionate one there is the one who gets wisdom we say that every day but you know we don't often think about it you know so overlook so the primacy of compassion is something that is very important in this school and we develop that as i said wow
one of the ways we develop that is through this kind of prayer this devotional practice okay
i think
step twelve
having had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to alcoholics into practice these principles in all our affairs
having had a spiritual waking is the result of these steps actually these steps are in themselves a spiritual awakening
in design school as dogan century teachers who founded the school in japan november thirteenth century japanese guy
he talks a lot and we talk in the school about practice enlightenment like one thing okay
it doesn't mean that we practice in order to get enlightened it means we practice out of our innate enlightenment each one of you who is here today is here because you have had some vision however fleeting of enlightenment okay each one of you that's why you're here
and it may be just like that it may be something that you have again and again and it makes you keep coming back for more you may never come back here you may need to find the working out of your vision of enlightenment in some other venue but it's your innate enlightenment which brings you here and this is a very good thing to remember and you know it says having had a spiritual awakened
ing hear the word buddha
is is a word that means the awakened one you know the guy who woke up wake up and smell the coffee that's what he did
and you know so carry this message you know the other day i was sitting in the zendo to amazon and it occurred to me oh step twelve is just the bodhisattva vow to save all beings
it's the body south about save all beings
and i liked that a lot
i'm almost finished
i want to reach you two things
if i can find them
and
yeah which sort of in many ways some up to me via the things that i liked best about both of the spiritual practices i've been talking about today
the first one

is from the book alcoholics anonymous and is one of my favorite passages in the literature of recovery
this is what we call the promises
if we were pains taking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through
we're going to know a new freedom than a new happiness we will not regret the past nor shut the door on no wish to shut the door on it we will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace no matter how far down the scale we have gone we will see how our experience can benefit others that feeling of uselessness in self pity was disappear
we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows self seeking will slip away our whole attitude and outlook upon my will change fear of people and of economic and security will lead us we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us we will suddenly realize the god is doing for us when we
could not do for ourselves or these extravagant promises we think not they are being fulfilled among us sometimes quickly sometimes slowly they will always materialize if we worked for them
and the second thing that i would like to read
in closing
is a m is something that we do here many times a week
it's called the scripture and loving kindness the metre ceuta this is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise who seeks the good and has obtain peace that one be strenuous upright and sincere without pride easily contented and joyous that will not be submerged by the things of the world that one not take
upon oneself the burden of riches that one's senses be controlled that one be wise but not puffed up and let one not desire great possessions even for one's family that one do nothing that the that is mean or that the wise would reprove may all beings be happy may they be joyous and live in safety all living being
things whether weak or strong in high or middle or low realms of existence smaller great visible or invisible near or far border to be born may all beings be happy but no one deceive another nor despise any been in any state let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another even as a mother at
the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things suffusing love over the entire world above below and all around without limit
so let one cultivated infinite goodwill toward the whole world standing or walking sitting or lying down during all ones waking hours let one practice the way with gratitude not holding to fix views endowed with insight freed from sense appetites one which he is the way will be freed from the duality of birth and death
so i feel as though i've talked a very long time i apologize for that
if i have said anything which has
offended are confused to please excuse me
if on the other hand i have said anything that has been at all interesting or helpful please keep it as your own
take which need leave the rest behind
so thank you
me