Oh. You know, Zen is actually pretty boring and I don't know why we study it. I mean, I really don't. I'm not just being funny. Maybe Sazen is being ready for reality.

[01:11]

but we get tired of being ready all the time. We want to get to the picture show, but we're always getting ready, you know. Suzuki Roshi talked, I don't know, some time ago. A number of people have asked us about television recently and somebody said that Suzuki Roshi had talked about a movie screen, so I looked up the lecture And he says, Zen is like, when you go to the movies and it's very interesting, you know, lots of things on the screen. But then afterwards, if you just sat in the theater, there's the screen. And, you know, Zen is like just sitting in the theater after the movie show is over, you know. So you begin to notice the screen is there. And you can look around, you can see the old worn seats, you know, and the chandelier, and the audience is gone, you know. And when you do zazen all your life, it's sort of like that. You're sitting there in this old empty theater, and there's just this empty screen.

[02:40]

Actually, various things happen on the screen, but our practice is to notice the screen, not to get fooled by all the images on it. So, anyway, recently a lot of, I talked a little bit about this at Tassajara, a lot of television companies, actually television countries, have come and asked us to be on television. German television came and Japanese television and American television, a network, all wanted to do a program on Zen Center, maybe interviews, you know, things like that. And I don't know what to say when they ask. One thing, they're very insistent, what's wrong with you, they say. It's a great privilege to be on television. And I don't know, I don't want to explain my practice to myself, let alone explain it to a television camera, so I always say no. But one man was very insistent and he said, well, if you ever have an idea for a way to film Zen Center, please, or Zen, please call me up.

[04:12]

So, the other day I thought we could take an empty picture frame, nothing in it at all, just a picture frame, you know, and we could hold it up in front of the camera, and the camera could come in on it, you know, and nothing would be in the picture frame at all, just a picture frame. And maybe when the camera got right to the edge of the frame, you'd have to maybe turn off the television station completely. You couldn't just, you know, have a blank screen. You'd have to turn the whole station off. If you could, you'd have to knock the set over. I haven't suggested it to the station yet. They might agree, actually. They're very strange. They have so many hours to fill that they want to gobble everything. Anyway, Zen practice is like the picture frame. Our Zazen is like a picture frame. We just sit there, you know, like being a picture frame.

[05:38]

if your posture is such and such, your picture frame is more clear or something like that. But still, there's nothing in the picture frame. And no matter how often, you know, I say or somebody says, Suzuki Roshi says, Zen books say, that there's nothing in the picture frame. Still, actually, you believe there's something in the picture frame. And you think if you practice long enough, there'll be some wonderful experience in that picture frame. So, the difficult, the practice of Zen is really how to have the energy to look at the picture frame and see that it's empty. Because mostly we want to, we don't really want to look at our life, don't really want to look at, you know, particularly an empty picture frame.

[06:52]

So some other teaching which is more exciting, you know, it really may be better for you, you know. It will keep you more interested and it's just as beneficial probably as doing zazen. I mean, I myself would like to consider that alternative, but the reason I can't is that now that I know Zen, all the other alternatives, maybe they're more interesting, but there aren't any other alternatives to this practice. This is, in my experience, the simplest, most complete practice, and the most boring. we have in us, you know, a tremendous amount of energy. I mean, if you just looked at your molecules, your molecules are a tremendous amount of energy, and you have a tremendous ability to be present, but generally we can't arouse our energy, you know. So, we practice

[08:37]

First of all, noticing ourselves, noticing what we are physically and centering ourselves so that, you know, I carry this stick sort of like that, you know, or when we walk in Chashu, it's like that. Or when you pick up a teacup, you know, it's like that. These are actually kind of not just picking up a teacup, a coffee cup you pick up like But when we practice, we center ourselves with the teacup. So first, you know, you have to center yourself, which doesn't mean you're looking for some, you know, waiting to be centered, or you're looking for some magical center. You just start, you know, noticing how you are physically. And if, as you begin to feel more centered, feel us center, you know, as we rock back and forth in zazen. It's like when we're doing zazen, we don't try to, actually we're not trying to, like a carpenter makes a beam, a specific shape, you know, we're not trying to carve ourselves into a specific shape, the way a carpenter does.

[10:11]

we're trying to, maybe more like a sculptor, looks at a piece of stone or rock or wood and wants to know what form is in the rock or in the stone or in the wood. So we look at our self, wanting to know what form is in us. And the form for wisdom is this posture. It's a very centered posture. So the first step is to be centered and relaxed. If you have some feeling of a center, you can relax.

[11:12]

You don't have to hold yourself anymore, you know, your shoulders can relax. But we don't really take care of ourselves so well. We're very careful usually about what clothes we wear. We're not very careful about what we put inside us, you know, what kind of food we eat. And I don't mean some special diet, but you should notice what you eat and you should notice how it affects you, just as when you put on clothes, you notice how your clothes affect your relationships with other people. So you should, particularly when you first start practicing, you should take some care with your diet, eating, you know, not too much, maybe a little less than you need. and noticing how it affects you. Eventually you'll get so that you do that naturally and you have some natural diet.

[12:17]

The other night Silas talked about Bodhidharma's no name or I don't know. Someone asked Bodhidharma, who are you? And he said, I don't know. So to help us free ourselves even from a name or from beauty or various kinds of ideas about light and dark or up and down, that when you are ready to wear Buddha's robe in your practice, you're given a new name to cut you off from your previous name, a kind of rebirth. But actually, you know, you should be given no And Zazen is sort of no name, when the frame is as empty as we can be, you know, Zazen. But sometimes if you work in the kitchen you're a kitchen person, you know, but when you're in Zazen you're not even taking any activity, just ready for activity.

[15:00]

So how to notice that we hide, you know, because we're always hiding. We hide in our body by holding it, you know, some rigid way, you know. And we hide in what we do, the kind of job we have and the kind of people we know. We tend to choose people to know who maybe have dark areas, you know, and so they don't notice our dark areas, unexamined areas. So though we are attracted to, shall we say, light, you know, we're afraid of it and so we tend to hide in a kind of cave But actually, there's no light or dark, you know, or up or down. The sun and the moon actually shine constantly. It's just that from our point of view, sometimes they're not shining, sometimes they're shining. So, in the sutras, in one place they define joy as

[16:36]

contemplating the lineage or the bodhisattvas or permanence, something that's constant. So, to see, you know, to see the frame, you know, the same if I hold up a I hold up some frame. Something's always in the frame, you know? But you can't actually say, you can't affirm, you can't say something's in the frame, you know? Because if you say something's in the frame, it's like saying there's the movie screen. And if there's a movie screen, then there has to be something behind the movie screen. But what I'm talking about, there's nothing behind it or nothing in front of it. You can't say it is or you can't say it isn't. So, to have the energy to see things as they are means you have to stop letting yourself bully yourself.

[18:03]

So, if you find yourself, say that you have some sureness that you should do zazen, but something always interferes with it, you know, that's just you bullying yourself. So, you have to confront that directly by continuing to put yourself in the situation where you're going to do zazen anyway or you're going to do whatever it is your life is anyway. you know, can't think, there are terrible visions going on all the time, or you can't sleep, or whatever, you keep putting yourself in the situation. And eventually the bully will give up. So, how to have the energy to see that the frame is completely empty? You can talk about it, sometimes Tendai philosophers talked about three I's, the Dharma I and the Wisdom I and the Buddha I. And Dharma I means that you see the real nature of things, you see things as Dharma, which means as empty.

[19:29]

you see the distinction, you see the world as it is. And the wisdom eye means that you see nothing at all, you just see the emptiness of things. You see that actually when the movie is over there's just the screen. But once you know the screen is there, that you yourself are the screen, then whether the movie's on or not on is the same. So the third eye, the Buddha eye, maybe your left eye is wisdom eye and your right eye is dharma eye and maybe everything is Buddha eye. So Buddha eye means to see that it's neither there nor not there. that there's no behind the screen or in front of the screen. Not just to see, but to be

[20:44]

Silas also talked about The famous koan about somebody comes in and says to the teacher, or some monk comes in and the teacher says, where have you been? Or maybe it means, what have you attained? And the monk says, I just had my breakfast. which means maybe I have something. So, the teacher says, have you washed your dishes? Or you should wash your dishes or your bowl should be empty. Of course, actually the meaning is just you should wash your dishes, not some special double meaning.

[22:38]

Because that's where our practice is, you know. But then, somebody asked a very interesting question. Why do we use chopsticks? And of course, what Silas said is right. If you have an empty bowl, you know, it doesn't make any difference. whether we're using chopsticks or forks. So why Buddhism can be here is because the bowl is empty. But Suzuki Roshi used chopsticks, you know, and we use chopsticks, you know. And at present, the way the bowls are, it would be pretty hard, impossible if we used regular eating bowls to use forks. It wouldn't work, you know. But it really isn't very important that we use chopsticks, because the bowl is empty. Any questions? Yeah? You said Zen is boring. And then you talked about, for instance, you said about realizing the screen is empty, so that makes it boring, but a little later you talked about if we examine ourselves and the dark parts of ourselves and the things in life that we're afraid to face,

[24:48]

We resist this. Well, wouldn't it be true that the more one would realize the emptiness of the screen, the more one would become aware of the screen, the more he would be willing to work creatively with the images on the screen. For example, becoming more aware of his unexamined areas and the dark areas everywhere, so that In this sense, Zen would become more creative and exciting. Well, first of all, it's rather a dangerous idea to try to work creatively with what happens on the screen. Wisdom-I means that there's nothing on the screen, actually. You just notice what's on the screen. And if your interest is making it more exciting or

[25:50]

more creative, you just will be caught in that, you'll become a movie maker. But even so, you know, the what you say is a kind of carrot, you know, you know all those cartoons of somebody sitting on a turtle or a donkey with a carrot, you know, so you make it go. It's sort of what makes our practice go is that hope. that at the end we're going to be more creative or more friendly with people. And maybe that's so, a little bit, but the actual experience, you say, when we realize that there's more, but actually when you do zazen for a long, long time, you don't realize very much. Mostly you're just sitting there in that darned empty theater. Eventually you realize that sitting in that empty theater is reality. Then there's some confidence in your practice. So the real reason we do zazen is because it's the best expression of our nature. It's the most perfect frame for our reality.

[27:17]

But for much of our practice we don't do it because zaz in itself is so interesting or satisfying, but just we find nothing, no other alternative has any real satisfaction. There are of course some There are many times in Zen practice where there's some wonderful, kind of indescribable satisfaction. Buddhism says that being a human being is better than being a god, which is true, but that

[28:32]

You can't aim at that experience, and if you have that kind of experience, you have to let it go immediately, just as if you shut the television station off and smash the set, you know, because you should be empty of any kind of experience. If you cling to some good experience, it very quickly turns rather sour. In fact, we find if you examine in what way we bully ourselves, we mostly bully ourselves just when we're beginning to feel actually good. Just when you begin to think you can do something or you can accomplish something or you feel, ah, this is the Christmas of my life, you know. So when you're ready in this way, It doesn't matter whether you're doing zazen or not doing zazen. If you have the opportunity, you do zazen. But if some situation, when you stop practicing for yourself and just practice as much so, the best way to know yourself is to let others know you.

[29:53]

So, we're always, as I said to someone once, making just one step closer toward being friendly with ourselves, toward being friendly with each other, toward being open to just whatever. If there's nothing in the frame, being open to that. So we want some identity, actually, with our teacher, with Buddha. So the second, if the first step in practice is knowing what you are, you know, knowing your energy, being centered, finding a little bit toward being centered anyway. There's not some thing, now I'm centered and then before I wasn't, just, you know. The second step is being able to put aside your preferences. Now, you know, to be a disciple, you have to be able to put aside your preferences. Actually, there's quite a lot of difference between you and other people and you and your teacher and you and Buddha. So, you may never agree with your teacher, there may never be complete agreement, but

[31:25]

But you have to be able to say, well, for this year or this ten years or this five years or some period, I'll put aside my personal preferences about how much zazen I want or whether I like this person or that person. I'll just put aside my personal preferences. Maybe I'll keep them, you know. Later I will disagree or something, but now I put aside my preferences. So if some food is brought to us, we eat it, you know. Likewise, if we offer food to Buddha, He doesn't eat it, but anyway. We offer it to him, just like we'd offer it to ourselves, you know. And as someone said during Silas's lecture, you offer flowers just as if Buddha could smell them. So we treat Buddha exactly like ourselves, putting aside our preferences, you know. So then there's like in the Santo Kai, two arrows can meet, you know. It doesn't mean there's complete agreement, you know, it just means that the lineage, you know, backbone to backbone to backbone can meet. Because you put aside your personal preferences to see what's in the frame, not what you want to be in the frame.

[32:50]

So the ability to be free from your wanting anything is pretty difficult, but at least to practice Buddhism you have to be able to put your personal preferences aside and say, for now I won't care whether I like or dislike that, I'll just do this. I ask myself the same question. You know, Zen is supposed to be so, you know, liberated and freedom and et cetera, and I noticed the other day I hadn't been out in the sun for about three months. I have no time to go anywhere or do anything.

[34:07]

Well, no one's going to give the secret away, you know. You know, it's maybe not freedom in your usual idea of what freedom is. But if you practice long enough, you begin to notice pretty soon you don't. You know, you feel pretty good all the time, you know. You feel some I remember one person who's here now who started sitting long before I did, you know, gave me some encouragement because at one point they said, you know, I do Sazen because I feel, I can't remember the words exactly, but I get some things begin to have some, you know, just obvious meaning or some satisfaction Anyway, we have some experience like that. But first you have to ... it's not so easy, you know. If you want a movie picture, you know, it's pretty easy to go to the movies and feel good. If that's one's idea of freedom, then you have to take some teaching, which is like going to a movie. But to actually be friendly with yourself, you know, completely friendly with yourself, open with yourself,

[35:40]

step by step you have to notice, I'm not so friendly to myself. And if you're not friendly with yourself, no one can be friendly with you. So, when you see that there's no that, are that, there's just no front or back or up or down, no screen or behind the screen. There's a wonderful freedom, but still you have the ordinary, you still get hungry and you still have various kinds of problems, but there's a different feeling about it. But if you think I'm talking about something other than you are right now, you know, that's wrong. There was some other question. Over here. Okay. You mean like bowing? Or eating?

[37:05]

Well, you could do zazen all day long, you know, for the rest of your life, but that would be just a form of hiding, you know. Actually, we have legs, so sometimes we walk, and we can think about things, and sometimes we think about things. There'd be no meaning to practice, to zazen practice, if it was something you did always. Things are changing, you know. Sometimes you do zazen, sometimes you do something else. Sometimes you go to the movies, you know. So the bigger question of why are we alive, you know, is we have to take some activity, you know. Once you see that we have to do something, you know, I have to, I have hands, right? So I can always fold them here, but that's not really in the nature of hands to always be there, you know. Maybe there is a, when I first started doing saschins, I'd heard of a lama in Tibet who'd been sitting zazen for so many years he couldn't unfold his legs, and they would carry him from one place to the next.

[38:37]

And at that time I thought it was not a bad idea if I could have had an operation and have all the nerves removed from about here down. I used to talk about having this operation, you know. But actually we take some activity, you know. And we don't always, you know, try to say exactly what we should do. I only want to do this activity, you know. Maybe I only like this kind of diet or this kind of doctor or this kind of situation, you know. Sometimes we eat one kind of food, sometimes we eat another kind of food. Anyway, we take some activity. So the reason You know, I'm talking to you, so there's some energy coming, and not all of the energy goes into my speaking. So I have my hands here, and when I stop speaking, there's my hands, so I can just rest them. But Zen teachers are very nice, they give you something to play with, you know? So while I'm talking, I can play with this, you know?

[40:01]

And it's quite nice and it's actually my hand, you know, it's just something very nice from my hand. So, the other side of the question though is, why do we do one thing rather than another thing? Why do we bow instead of hiking? Well, you know, everything we do, all Anyway, the reason we do ritual is to give ourselves Buddha's space, some other kind of space that you wouldn't have if you didn't have ritual. And if you do ritual, you begin to find some existence in that which you never would have known. So sometimes we do zazen and sometimes we bow, treating Buddha as ourself. So you have to have something to do. So you want to do something which doesn't catch you. So right livelihood, etc., etc., etc. are how to do things in a way so it doesn't catch you.

[41:26]

So you're not caught. Anyway, if you did zazen all the time, that would be just being caught. If you sit zazen afraid to not move or afraid to move, that's being caught. Actually, when you're doing zazen, you're free to move and free to not move. You have complete freedom. If you have complete freedom, freedom to move or freedom to not move, actually there's no, you can just sit until the bell rings. You're all moving. I think, my God, it must be, I've been talking one or two hours but it's only 40 minutes, 50 minutes. Well, I suppose if I thought, you know, about Western people and Oriental people,

[42:59]

then I would have some problem, you know, or if I thought about teaching or being a student, I'd have some problem, but I don't think about it at all. Well, Suzuki Roshi said I should do this, so I'm here, you know, and I try to, each Saturday I have to say something, so I don't know what to say actually. I have the impression sometimes that some of your students feel that some of your remarks are a little contradictory because of this matter. I was wondering if there was anything in the teaching of your displays that some kind of thing to overcome this aspect. Yeah, I understand your question. I understand your question. And I do think about, sometimes, whether we should use chopsticks or forks. And we have a little different way of thinking, but Japanese people and Chinese people also have a way of thinking, which is also dualistic. It's different, but it's still a problem.

[44:29]

But as long as the bowl is empty, you know, there really isn't any problem. So if somebody asks me a question, you know, or I ask myself a question, and I respond as if there was something in the bowl, then there's a problem. There's actually no problem at all. It's of course the same thing. Anyway, if we didn't do zazen, this kind of teaching would be nearly impossible. Yeah?

[45:35]

As I feel that it's occurring not in material ways so much as in the events That's right. That's all you do. Actually, when you do that, some activity comes. Actually, when you do that, there's some activity. You don't have to start or not start things. Actually, everything really acts in this way.

[46:43]

So, by practicing non-interference or non-action, it's the most profound kind of action. That means that you're free. It also means that's being a stream-enterer or knowing what the way is. When you begin to have that experience, you have some experience of what we mean by the way. by following a way. Each thing appears just right for you. You can get into some kind of delusional thing and say, ah, this is so meaningful because God has put his finger down, you know, and said, but this is a ... people who are practicing Buddhism or practicing anyway tend to get into a There's a tendency to look for meaning in signs, in phenomena. Because this happens, it means that my practice is good, or because this happens, it means I should go to such and such a place. Maybe it's true, but to think it's true is some danger. Actually, it's just there so you do it. You don't go to an astrologist. Yeah, I think I should end, but I'll ask.

[48:11]

I really don't enjoy talking about it. I just want to stay away from it at all times. Yeah, well, maybe the Dharma eye knows that you shouldn't talk to your dad. You have to use some judgment, you know, and to be open to yourself and to others doesn't mean you go and present yourself on a platter, you know, for people. And usually when we talk to our parents we're trying to say, this is me. If you can just be with your father, actually just noticing who he is, without saying anything about yourself, just being as clear as possible about it and careful, just noticing who he is, what your family life is, was, without thinking, oh it was so horrible or I was angry or something, just noticing what it is. then you're actually letting your father know you. I know it doesn't make sense, but it's true. Okay, thank you very much.

[49:32]

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