I vow to taste the truth of the Tathāgata's words. Good evening. Good evening. Tonight, again, I'm going to try to pick some points that tie together this Zen teaching from the Third Ancestor, as we meet him in Xin Xin Ming, through Dogen Zenji, as we meet him in Fukun Zazengi, to Suzuki Roshi and to us. This is one way without branches, one straight path without branches. And so I want to just pick up some of the themes that go through. In our tea group, we found, in considering Xin Xin Ming,

[01:10]

that it's hard to get past that first few lines. They're kind of arresting. They kind of catch us. The great way is not difficult. Only don't pick and choose. Only when freed from love and hate will the mind be at ease. And we had some discussion today about, well, you know, I can see freeing the mind from hate, but freeing the mind from love, I mean, gee, you know. So there's our picking and choosing right there, you know, instantly. And so we just have to see what we do. You know, we do prefer the one over the other. So there it is. Or sometimes maybe we prefer one and sometimes we prefer the other.

[02:11]

And let's not pick and choose about that. So this picking and choosing happens. And, you know, there's nothing in Xin Xin Ming that says, it shouldn't happen, or don't do it, or it's bad, or maybe you'll get better and you won't do it anymore. It just says the great way is not difficult when you can give up picking and choosing. And most of us have some personal experience of that, that our composure in our daily life is much more settled when we don't get caught up in strong preferences.

[03:18]

And that doesn't mean that preferences don't arise, but how caught do we get by them? Do we get swept away by them? Can we notice when they arise and just say, oh, I see you. Oh, here's a preference. Sort of a little flag goes up. Here it is. What do you want to do with it? It's mostly about, this practice is mostly about just being present for the arising of things so that we don't get so surprised by them,

[04:26]

so that we don't get so caught up in them before we notice them. It's just training our mind to be where we are and to include all of who we are, not to leave anything out. I want to read a little something about faith. That's what Suzuki Roshi says in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, about his own discovery. He said, I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color,

[05:27]

something which exists before all forms and colors appear. This is a very important point. No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea. You strive for a perfect faith in order to save yourself. But it will take time to attain such a perfect faith. You will be involved in an idealistic practice. In constantly seeking to actualize your ideal, you will have no time for composure. But if you're always prepared for accepting everything we see as something appearing from nothing, knowing that there is some reason why a phenomenal existence

[06:28]

of such and such form and color appears, then at that moment you will have perfect composure. When you have a headache, there is some reason why you have a headache. If you know why you have a headache, you'll feel better. But if you don't know why, you may say, Oh, I have a terrible headache. Maybe it's because of my bad practice. If my meditation or Zen practice were better, I wouldn't have this kind of trouble. If you understand conditions in this way, you will not have perfect faith in yourself or in your practice until you attain perfection. You'll be so busy trying that I'm afraid you'll have no time to attain perfect practice. So you may have to keep your headache all the time. This is rather a silly kind of practice.

[07:32]

This kind of practice will not work. But if you believe in something which exists before you had the headache, and if you know the reason why you have the headache, then you'll feel better naturally. To have a headache will be all right, because you're healthy enough to have a headache. To have a headache will be all right, because you're healthy enough to have a headache. But if your head becomes accustomed to its poor condition, you'll have no pain. That's awful. You'll be coming to the end of your life from your headache. So it's absolutely necessary for everyone to believe in nothing. But I don't mean voidness. There is something,

[08:39]

but that something is something which is always prepared for taking some particular form. And it has some rules or theory or truth in its activity. This is called emptiness. This is called Buddha nature, or Buddha herself. When this existence is personified, we call it Buddha. When we understand it as the ultimate truth, we call it Dharma. And when we accept the truth and act as a part of the Buddha, or according to the theory, we call ourselves Sangha. But even though there are three Buddha forms, it is one existence which has no form or color and is always ready to take form or color. This is not just theory. This is not just the teaching of Buddhism. This is the absolutely necessary understanding of our life.

[09:44]

Without this understanding, our religion will not help us. We will be bound by our religion and we will have more trouble because of it. If you become the victim of Buddhism, I may be very happy, but you will not be so happy. So this kind of understanding is very, very important. Believing in something which is always ready to take form or color, but which has no form or color itself. Believing in what? Just the openness to not give it a name.

[10:47]

Just the feeling of there is something from which everything arises, moment by moment, including this form that I identify with. Arising moment by moment from nothing. And how do we come to have confidence in this source from which everything is continually arising? This source without form or color from which everything arises. And this is our practice, as I said.

[12:05]

Dogen Zenji says, You should cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. This original face is that something without form or color from which all form and color arises, from which every particular phenomenon arises. So Dogen Zenji says,

[13:16]

If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. And then he teaches us how to sit zazen. This zazen is practicing suchness. We practice just being as we are, completely settling on just this as it is, and letting our life flow moment after moment, arising and passing away in each moment. From this suchness. In the Xin Xin Ming,

[14:20]

the Third Ancestor says, Cut off talking and thinking, and there is nowhere you cannot penetrate Return to the root and attain the principle. Pursue illumination and you lose it. One moment of reversing the light is greater than the previous emptiness. The previous emptiness is transformed. It was all a product of deluded views. No need to seek the real. Just extinguish your views. This having no views or extinguishing views

[15:37]

is returning to this nothing, this something with no form and color. Just being ready for whatever arises. Being open to whatever is. Not having fixed ideas. But you know, since we do have fixed ideas and we do have preferences, what shall we do? Right? Well, then we give up picking and choosing about having preferences. We just recognize, oh,

[16:41]

when a preference arises, we say, oh, a preference has arisen. Well, you know, in the Buddha's enlightenment story, Mara is sort of told in the story as some separate entity. But Mara is only a a representation or personification of the Buddha's own vexations, the Buddha's own desires and aggressive thoughts and fears. And he struggles with them during the night before his awakening. And the question came up in our discussion section,

[17:46]

so, but after the Buddha's enlightenment, did did these desires and fears and aggressive feelings, did they arise again in the mind of the Buddha after his enlightenment? And I had some discussion about this with, with Gil, who, as you know, is a, in addition to being a Zen teacher and a Vipassana teacher, is also a scholar and is studying down at Stanford. And I, and he said, well, this has been the source of lots of theological argument in Buddhism. But in the sutras following, or the suttas following the Buddha's enlightenment, Mara is mentioned on numerous occasions and the Buddha

[18:50]

says, I see you, Mara. So so our afflictive emotions do arise. And what I understand from this is that our practice is to notice them when they arise and accept them. That's, that's who we are too. And if we notice them, and don't try to kind of push them out of sight and pretend they're not there, then we, we don't get pushed around by them. If we notice them, we have a choice about how to respond. If we have an idealistic practice that says, oh no, I must be perfect and never again

[19:53]

have an aggressive thought, never again have a loud desire to enter my mind, we'll just be spending the entire time struggling to subdue the thoughts that, that we know arise in our mind. Or pretending that they don't and having them kind of leak out some other way. So Suzuki Roshi is suggesting don't get caught in this idealistic idea of becoming perfect in some way, but actually accept all of who you are. But if you're paying attention to all of who you are and accepting all of who you are, you don't have to be swept away.

[20:54]

By emotions which arise. You can acknowledge them. You can see them. And if you're not aware of these emotions, how in the world can you accept anyone else who has these emotions? How in the world is it possible to be compassionate? If you think you're perfect and you don't have any, what are you going to do? You're going to say, well, what's wrong with you? You know, I'm, you know, I haven't felt that way for years. I remember way back in Lot 9 I felt like that, but, you know, I haven't felt like that in a long time. Well, I mean, how can you be compassionate in that kind of way? It's because you understand about the afflictive emotions. Because you know them yourself that you can have compassion for those who are caught up in them. So,

[21:57]

if we have some idea that we're going to become saints, then we're always going to be measuring ourselves against this sainthood that we imagine there. We're never going to be good enough. And we're going to be expecting other people to be saints. We're going to be looking at the people who've been practicing longer and saying, well, weren't you a saint yet? It's going to be kind of disappointing. But I don't think this practice is about becoming a saint. I think this practice is about becoming human. Fully and completely. Who you are. Suzuki Roshi said once, a human being practicing true human nature is what our practice is. Oh, I took my marker out of here, didn't I?

[23:12]

Sigh. All right. When you're practicing zazen, you may hear the rain dropping from the roof in the dark. Later, the wonderful mist will be coming through the big trees, and still later, when people start to work, they'll see the beautiful mountains. But some people will be annoyed if they hear the rain when they're lying in their beds in the morning because they do not know that later they will see the beautiful sun rising from the east. If our mind is concentrated on ourselves,

[24:20]

we will have this kind of worry. But if we accept ourselves as the embodiment of the truth, or Buddha nature, we will have no worry. We'll think now it's raining, but we don't know what will happen in the next moment. By the time we get up, it may be a beautiful day or a stormy day. Since we don't know, let's appreciate the sound of the rain now. This kind of attitude is the right attitude. If you understand yourself as a temporal embodiment of the truth, you'll have no difficulty whatsoever. You will appreciate your surroundings, and you will appreciate yourself as a wonderful part of Buddha's great activity, even in the midst of difficulties. This is our way of life. Thank you.

[25:26]

Again and again, we find in this teaching to appreciate yourself as you are, to appreciate fully this being as it is, as the perfect embodiment of the truth, as Buddha mind, as suchness. All these words we use. To appreciate it in all of its complexity, and to not set up some ideal something that leaves out pieces of it, but to embrace it all. If you can have that kind of compassion for yourself,

[26:27]

to embrace all of it, then you can embrace whatever arises around you. If you reject the parts of yourself that you don't like, if you pick and choose and say, this part is okay, but that part's no good, the same will happen to everything around you. This teaching that we are all complete from the beginning is really a hard one to grasp. All of us, I think, got a notion somehow in our upbringing, there must be something wrong with me. I mean, if not,

[27:29]

you know, why would, why would I be hearing this? Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't you ever listen to me? And on and on. And somehow we got the notion that there's something wrong with us. And the teaching of the Buddha is there's nothing wrong with you. We just arise out of this nothing, this something which has no form and color, and we arise like this. In this moment. And we arise like this in this moment. Each moment arising as a result of the causes and conditions of this moment. And whatever it is,

[28:34]

this is our life. This is the life we have. How will we live it? This question comes up for all of us. How will I live this life? What is my inmost request? How do I want to live? What we have to begin by including all of this as it is. Because all of this is our life. So, cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech,

[29:35]

and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay. Practicing suchness, we begin with Sazen because that's a very safe situation. We kind of minimize the distractions and we sit in this very supportive posture in a room full of people who are all making their best effort to practice suchness. But you know, we get up from the cushion

[30:37]

and we walk out of the Zendo and we find ourselves in the world with all kinds of people who may or may not know anything at all about practicing suchness. But you know, there are risings from suchness too. There are rising out of this something which has no form and color in all of these myriad forms and colors that we see. And we get to take our practice into this more difficult situation. We get to make this effort to see Buddha everywhere, in everything we meet.

[31:40]

And then we come back to the Zendo and we try again to settle down. So we move out. It's sort of like breathing out and breathing in. We move out into the world and bump into all of this stuff that kind of rattles our composure. And then we come back to the Zendo and settle down again. And then we move out into the world and we get rattled and we remember, oh yeah, I can breathe. Right. Well, that feels familiar. And we can come back home wherever we are. We don't have to be in the Zendo to come back home to take a breath and remember this nothing, this something without form and color from which we are arising at each moment. And from which each thing

[32:46]

that we meet is arising on each moment. So we sit on the cushion and we get up from the cushion and meet people in the world and we sit back on the cushion and we get up from the cushion just like breathing in and out. We keep returning to, oh yes, I remember. It's just all arising now. It isn't that fixed thing I thought it was. Again and again. That's why we call it practice because it, it never ends. It never ends. We're always

[33:48]

returning and returning and returning. We're always manifesting and returning manifesting always. So is everything. This is having faith. This is the mind of absolute trust. This is the mind that we cultivate moment after moment. This is the mind

[34:50]

mind which accepts everything as it arises because it's all perfect just as it is. Even when we have preferences, even when we lose our composure, even when we lose our focus, just one breath after another returning to the source and returning to the world. Appreciating the opportunity

[35:53]

to see Buddha everywhere, even here. It is never apart from you right where you are. May our intention

[36:58]

intention

[37:00]

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