Usually, when I have to say something, I have some general idea about, or feeling about what to say, but it's pretty difficult for me to know how to say it. I can't really express what I feel. I know people come to me and they tell me about, say, how they're working with their daily life, and I understand it quite clearly. And then someone else comes and they are in a very similar situation and they can't practice at all, they can't make any sense of their daily life. And maybe just ten minutes before, I heard a person who is working very well with it,

[01:08]

but I can't make the same suggestion, you know. I can't say, well, so-and-so has very good sense of what to do and they do such-and-such. It doesn't cross over. You either know how to work with your life or you don't, it seems. And how you find out how to work with your life is some mystery, maybe, I don't know. A lot of you don't know how thoroughly everything you are is part of your practice. And no matter what fault or difficulty you have or tendency you have, just the other

[02:22]

side of it or the same, exact same feeling understood or accepted in a little different way is enlightenment, even, you know. Yesterday, I talked about the three stages or ways of practice, which most of us don't go through. One is individual practice, when you're practicing to work out some problem you have. Most of us start practicing because we have some difficulty which we can't make sense of or work through. And then, the second kind of practice is group practice.

[03:28]

That's very important. It's very important, for instance, in the Zenda, when we practice together, your practice will be as good as the best person and as bad as the worst person, and you accept that, you know. Maybe your zazen will be better at home, but we're not interested in your zazen being better, we're interested in your zazen including more. So at first, practice, maybe the first two stages of practice, don't really have much to do with anything, but increasing your ability to include more. Rather like yoga, not only stretches your body, but it also tells you something about the space you occupy. You can reach to here or here or there or something like that. So our practice tells us something about the space, the kind of space we occupy. And so when we start practicing with a group, the beginning part of it, you find you're

[04:53]

stuck in one aspect of the group. Eric Byrne, who wrote Games People Play, had a rather interesting idea that from childhood, some of us were either born in or stuck in, as if we were born in the kitchen or the living room or the Zendo, and all your life you feel at home in some activity. And I don't know if Eric Byrne's right, but there's some kind of truth in that. And a lot of us are stuck in the kitchen, or the living room, or the Zendo. Some people come alive in the kitchen, they know just what to do with a carrot, and they notice everything in the kitchen, but you put them in the office and it doesn't mean anything to them. Somebody else may know exactly how the ceremonies go, exactly how everything should be. Their consciousness is very alive in the Zendo, or in the Dharma hall, but if they go into

[05:56]

the kitchen or the office, they don't know anything, you know, they don't feel any contact, they can't respond, they see the same piece of paper, but it's not the same as a candle maybe or a carrot. So, although you, of course, retain some ability to, some preference or talent in one area or another, after you've practiced with a group quite a long time, it doesn't really make any difference whether you're working in the office or in the kitchen or in the Zendo, that our practice is to participate in our society in some way. I think in, I don't know what, in the past anyway, religion, the purpose of religion,

[06:57]

one of the purposes of religion was, it helped people individually with their problems. And it also helped society with its problems, it gave some suggestion to society about how it should be organized and how it should handle and think about money, etc., you know. And it looked like, in recent times, that psychologists and sociologists had taken that job away from religion, so religion doesn't have much to do in America, doesn't have much to do with the way society is anymore. But that, strangely enough, seems to be changing the farm we may be getting. There's quite a pressure on us to use the farm as a place where not only people can work with some of their individual problems, but also where society can get some idea from

[08:05]

us, believe it or not, about how they should be organized or how they should think about money, etc. I mean, I don't have any idea of it, whether it's important or not, but it's certainly a new kind of interest. Anyway, the third ... so anyway, the second group practice, more and more in group practice is, at some point in there, you are willing to be ordained. I mean, not necessarily, but you may be willing to be ordained. And to be ordained means that you're willing to let other people define you.

[09:08]

You're open to other people defining your life. So, it really doesn't make so much difference about exactly what all the precepts are. If you're willing to be available for the precepts, then it doesn't make so much difference what they are. So, often, Suzuki Roshi, in the early years, would give you all the precepts in Japanese and you'd say, �What are these things I'm saying yes to?� �Never mind�, he says, �You'll do them. You won't know it, but you'll be doing it.� So you have to be ... this openness is important. And I guess, what I was talking about yesterday was what in Japanese is called, I think, �Daishi

[10:11]

Ichiban,� which means �Great Death.� And I've never used a Japanese word in a talk before. And, supposedly, at that point, what's called �Daikatsu,� �Great Life,� begins. And this means to be open to letting dharmas define you, instead of you using dharmas, you know, the dharmas use you. So the vow is where the third stage begins. And, as Suzuki Roshi says, the more difficult to understand ...

[11:17]

I feel it's pretty hard for you to understand the vow, but our practice here is actually a continuation of a vow. More than anything else, what Zen Center is, is a continuation of a vow. And the responsibility of the priests in Zen Center is to continue that vow. And the vow, it's not a matter of ritual. The ritual we do is actually rather irrelevant, because it can be anything. The ritual is really just mostly to give you something to do, something to do which doesn't have any point, and to give you a situation in which you have different habits, maybe habits based on non-discrimination or non-action or something.

[12:56]

So that we can shift the rituals around, and it's not so important, you know, exactly how we bow, etc. But there's something more fundamental in the vow, which is not expressible exactly. I don't know exactly how to ... and it's not written down, but it certainly exists. And different traditions have a slightly different vow they continue. And the vow is, I guess, I could say, it has something to do with the order in which you place things, the value with which you assign to things. So the strength of Zen Center has a great deal to do with the value with which we assign to things, you know, what if we were going to change the practice, what would we eliminate

[14:03]

if we were in a conflict over Zen Center and marriage, you know, how would we solve the problem? If there's a conflict between people, on what basis do we solve the problem? What kind of ... I think a simple form of this, a first sense of this came, one of the strengths of Tassajara was that somehow Suzuki Roshi didn't, without it ever saying, somehow pettiness wasn't allowed. And there were certain assumptions that problems had solutions and you just went ahead. Anyway, I can't, right now anyway, I can't be more clear about what I mean, but the bones of Zen Center, the bones of our tradition are a vow we continue.

[15:04]

Maybe we're the flesh and the fruits and we're working on that now, how to give some expression to the vow here. Of course the vow also continues in the ... it means the bodhisattva's way, that we include other people in our practice. The vow means that we're, in our particular tradition, that we're a dharmakaya practice perhaps rather than sambhogakaya practice, that we practice with as little form as possible. Zen is, despite what everybody says, a kind of asceticism, because part of its vow is

[16:10]

to aim directly at Buddha, not at some other stage, or directly at being a bodhisattva, not to try this and this and this. So until you can clear away the brambles in yourself and make this kind of vow, there's a kind of ascetic practice, because it doesn't make much sense, it's kind of boring and your legs hurt and nobody gives you much candy or many clues. So it's rather hard actually, you either get the whole thing or you don't get anything, and no one's going to give you much, because to give you a little would be to maybe hinder your chances. So that's all part of our vow.

[17:13]

And with our vow also goes something called bodhicitta, or I think that's how you pronounce it, or the mind which wants to be Buddha, the desire for enlightenment or the thought of enlightenment, and it also has a physical definition as seeds or semen, and it's also a recognizable physical experience. But generally we just say, the thought of enlightenment. But this thought of enlightenment comes from the vow, so when you're filled with the thought

[18:19]

of enlightenment, I don't know quite what to say, you know, it doesn't make sense to say that, but then there's nothing in you except this, that's what makes it in practice maybe not asceticism. So it's the third stage in which you practice as Buddha, which I'm talking about. And, this is too clear a way of saying it, but if you have a little compassion you know,

[19:28]

you could increase that compassion, to have great compassion, maha karuna, great compassion. If you could continue that compassion completely, bigger and bigger and bigger, then you'd be Avalokiteshvara, you'd have eleven heads and one thousand arms. No one could see them of course, but it would be amazing to look around a sasheen and see someone sitting there with eleven heads. But actually that's true, you know, little ones. So, when you have this sense of allowing yourself to be filled like a vessel with compassion, then you're Avalokiteshvara, even if you're only one finger of his one thousand arms,

[20:31]

you're participating in the activity of Avalokiteshvara, so you're Avalokiteshvara. And likewise with Manjushri, wisdom. So these various Buddhas are various ways of, are forms, are our practice, and all of them come from this bodhicitta. You know, I have a tendency to, when I know I have to give a talk, I have some feeling about what I should probably say, but I think, well, I should do something more than just

[21:43]

talk, you know, so I open a book, but I just open, you know, I pick up, I say, that looks like, I open it, and it always seems to open to exactly what I need. And I also took lectures, notes of Suzuki Roshi's lectures for some years before we started taping lectures, and I have all those booklets, you know, and every now and then I take one out, it's nice to see the flow of Suzuki Roshi's thinking, and I open it. And yesterday I opened one of them, and it was, and I had been thinking about the stages of our practice and thinking about our sesshin, you know, as it goes, and I opened it and it said the three stages, so that's what I was thinking about Roshi, so I talked about

[22:47]

it. But anyway, today I actually looked at the lecture, and the lecture is rather interesting, and if you don't mind, I'll read you a little of what Roshi said. I've never done that before, I don't know. I thought at one time that I would give these, give Roshi's lectures as a sort of combination of what Roshi said and what I wanted to say, but I've never done that, but I have them here anyway. When I took these notes, we were all terribly worried at the time that Roshi was going to leave, and there was, every minute there was some possibility that literally next week he might go, or certainly in the fall. And so everything he said was rather precious to me, and I didn't know, I doubted if he'd

[23:50]

let me go to Japan with him. The possibilities weren't conceivable, you know, so all I did was I thought, well at least if he goes I'll take in these lecture notes. So I took them, and I've never looked at them much until this last year, and then I've only looked a little, but anyway, sometime I'd like to go through them all. Anyway, this is in the middle of a lecture, and it says, I'm starting in the middle, he says, he's saying, but we must not forget to arrange our physical and mental condition as a whole. He was talking about, we don't try to solve a problem specifically, but we try to arrange ourself so the problem can be solved more easily, like you don't, we don't practice in Zen anyway, our tradition, we don't practice medicine. If you have a sick stomach, you go to the doctor and you let the doctor give you medicine,

[24:51]

but by arranging your whole mental and physical situation, you're much more likely to have your stomach cured. If you just try to cure your stomach without arranging your mental and physical situation, your stomach won't be cured. So Zen doesn't emphasize getting curing power, say, but rather arranging your whole mental and physical situation, and the best way to do that is to do Zazen, and that's what he said. And then he says, for instance, when you go to Japan, he was going to say, in Japan, and now he's talking about, he's leading up to talking about group practice. In Japan, I used to go out with my classmates, for instance, like on a Mount Tamalpais. If a little boy goes ahead of the big ones, the big ones find themselves quite dark and sleepy, and he meant slow, you know, because the little ones go so slow, so the big ones are back down. But if the ... dark and sleepy.

[25:57]

If the big one goes first, the little ones find it hard to follow, he says. He said, this is a kind of disease, this kind of problem is a kind of disease. So by the practice of going as a group, you will find out your condition. If you don't go where ... if you don't go ... if you don't do that, I think, or if you don't go with them, you don't practice as a group, you may think you are all right, but if you go with people, you will find out what is wrong with you. Sometimes it is necessary to go to a doctor, but if you try to go with them, you may recover by yourself. So practice is quite important for a family, or something, I couldn't ... to practice like this at work or home, though not called Zazen, the idea is the same.

[27:00]

So we find ourselves as a member of society or of your family. This is the second stage of practice. The first stage is practice as an individual, as a special remedy, and the second is practice as a society, or a member of a group, but we don't think that is perfect. And I have, strangely enough, a little asterisk here. This by the way was February 10th, 1963, I have a little asterisk here, it says, this lecture good for Peter Schneider. Sorry. Yeah, I never showed it to you all these years. In about those times, Peter practiced with Zen Center for a couple of years, a year, one year, and then he went off somewhere and tried to abandon us.

[28:03]

We hauled him back in. Or he came back anyway. So anyway. The third stage is practice as a person and as a Buddha. We extend the idea of person to the person who includes everything, or cosmic idea of self. Here there is no personal or social practice. So if you practice Zazen, personal practice with right understanding, on one hand it is personal practice, on the other hand it is practice as a group or whole universe. This is the third stage of our practice. In first and second stage, it is possible to understand by reasoning. It is simple because it is what you are doing in everyday life. But third one is not so easy to understand. Why it is so difficult is, the third stage, why it is so difficult is, the third stage,

[29:08]

if you want to practice, in the third stage some decision or confidence is wanted. This decision, by that he means like the vow. If you don't make up your mind, the third stage is impossible. The third stage is as difficult as to make your mind kill yourself. You should forget yourself. You should give up yourself. It doesn't mean if you give up yourself you will be saved, but if you don't you will be killed. That is the third stage. So, first of all, you must have strong confidence, as strong confidence as not to mind yourself at all. Dogen says, even if you live quite long without having real life, it is useless. So it is, even if you live quite long without having real life, it is useless.

[30:10]

So it is much better to die on your cushion, to die on my cushion, just now. That is the third practice, to die on your cushion. Whether the practice is, and then he changed, he'd start sentences and then he couldn't figure out how to say it in English, so he'd stop. Whether the practice is, helps our disease or not, we will do it. Whether it helps our disease or not, we will do it. That is the third one. Even if we lose our legs, we have to sit. We don't mind even if we sit on our cushion. That is the third one. Why third one is best one? To explain is not so difficult, but to accept it is pretty hard. There is, as you know, granting and grasping way of understanding practice. By that he means partly, this is Buddha, this is Buddha's granting way,

[31:13]

his, well, negative and positive ways. And this is not Buddha, this is not Buddha's negative way. Granting way is to acknowledge first principle on everything. First principle means the absolute or emptiness. Grasping way is not to acknowledge the attributes of each existence, not Buddha. Whether it is red or white, that is Buddha nature. We don't mind red or white being called, I can't read it, it looks like jelly or silly or something. That is great way to acknowledge Buddha nature on red flower is something. Hmm? Maybe so. To ask oneself, to acknowledge oneself as a part of society, as just you yourself, is not so easy. But when you want to make decision, it is pretty hard.

[32:15]

Anyway, it is pretty hard to save yourself. So for a man as short-tempered as I am, it is much better for me to kill myself on the cushion. And that is pretty easy for me. It is easier to kill himself on the cushion than to be as short-tempered as he is, he means. And it is pretty easy if I make a strong decision. If you make a strong decision, you can do it. If you are concerned about granting or grasping or practice as a whole, as an individual, you have to worry and worry and there will be no time to practice it sincerely. And after all, you will lose yourself. If you shut your eyes, you can't see anything and there is no trouble. But you yourself are here and alive and you will take care of yourself. That you is not self.

[33:20]

I am Buddha. A tiny piece of something or a tiny Buddha may be Buddha. Something like that. Buddha takes care of Buddha. That is the third. Buddha takes care of Buddha. Then he says, for a person who practices the third practice, granting way, grasping way, group way and individual way are all alright. It is a special remedy and it is a remedy for your activity as a whole.

[34:21]

Think no thinking. Think no thinking thinking is the third practice. Usually why we suffer is not because of the mental and physical defects but because of the fear caused by the mental and physical defects. So if you give up everything, you can cut off 99% of the suffering because 99% of the suffering is caused by yourself. There is no remedy for this suffering. The only remedy for this kind of suffering is the practice of the third stage. If you can cut off 99% of the self, there is a limit in physical suffering but there is no limit in mental suffering. For a... For a bird, there is almost nothing to worry about.

[35:23]

They have no motor cars or airplanes and they are quite happy and they have no money to speak of and no food to eat. It's wonderful. And no food to eat but they never die for want of food or money. We will be quite safe without money or benevolence of culture. So I think we should acknowledge this fact why we are suffering. What is cause of suffering and what is the way to be free from the suffering? If you watch, see Eight Holy Path, you will see what Buddha had in his mind when he set up the Eightfold Path. Thank you.

[36:26]

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