This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So welcome everyone to the... Today is a one-day sitting. The second one-day sitting of our practice period that we're holding at City Center right now. practice period where the focus is on the 16 bodhisattva precepts specifically, but also just on the deeper question of how do we live in this world when there's so much that challenges us in our daily lives, in our communities, in our hearts and minds. How do we live? So today, I would like to take up this topic, starting with, just I'm going to start with a very brief line from Suzuki Roshi, and then I'm going to try to unpack it by going back to some early teachings in Buddhism, and kind of make my way up to more contemporary teachings from our ancestors, our recent ancestors.

[01:27]

a line that I'll start with from Suzuki Roshi. He says, how you receive precepts is just practice zazen. Just to be yourself. Then you can observe the precepts. Say it again. How you receive precepts is just practice zazen, just to be yourself. Then you can observe the precepts. So I think oftentimes when people who are new to practice hear this, it's kind of confusing. Oftentimes we come to practice because we have some challenges when we try to just be ourselves. or we have difficulties, we try, or we get caught up in what does that mean?

[02:35]

Who am I? What am I? What's my function? What's my purpose? What do I want? Who should I be? So what is this, what is Suzuki Roshi talking about? And he says, just to be yourself. So, with that as a starting point, I'd like to unpack this, going back to some early Buddhist teachings, the earliest of Buddhist teachings, from the time of the Buddha and his awakening under the Bodhi tree. So, as most of you know, I'm sure, in the story, what did the Buddha wake up to after his long practice of sitting? What did he wake up to? When we say he was enlightened or he had an awakening or he woke up to, you say he woke up to the nature of reality. The nature of reality being the ground from which everything else follows this question of who am I?

[03:46]

How do I be in this world? What's the relationship of all of this to our practice of sitting zazen? You woke up to having a particular view, sometimes called right view or right understanding. It is the first of the Eightfold Path, which is the fourth of the Four Noble Truths. So from these early first turning teachings, views, it is discovered, have a lot to do with whether we are on the path to awakening or liberation, or if we're on a path to continuing the karmic consciousness and suffering that stem from it. So what the view is, or what the understanding is, is crucial to waking up, and to, in the Buddha's case, to waking up to the very nature and fabric of reality.

[04:59]

Right view, sometimes when we talk about that, so in the Four Noble Truths, Starting with the truth of suffering, that there is dissatisfactoriness, unsatisfactoriness that we all experience deeply. That there's a cause to this suffering. That there's the possibility of cessation to the suffering, leading to liberation. And then the fourth, that there is a path that leads to this end of suffering. These four noble truths culminate in this path, the Eightfold Path, which briefly begins with right view or right understanding, then right thought or right intention, followed by right speech, right action, right livelihood.

[06:07]

And here we have what is known as the morality, ethics part of the Eightfold Path. And then right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration being the samadhi part of the three trainings. Right view, right understanding, and right intention are the wisdom parts. of the Eightfold Path. So what is this right view? When we think of right view, oftentimes it brings up the feeling of right versus wrong, true versus false. What is the view of? The early teachings say oftentimes the right view is the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, is to understand those

[07:08]

deeply within our own lives. Also, right view sometimes refers to the three marks of existence, which is kind of a fundamental description of how all things that arise are, with the nature of all things. The three marks of existence, similar to the Four Noble Truths, begin with dukkha, this unsatisfactoriness. We all know this very well, right? It stems from this feeling of, or we experience it as even the smallest ways, like just, oh, if only that hadn't happened. Why did that have to be the way it is? It's just this turning away from things as they are into things as we want them to be, or maybe things that we feel like how they should be. This is the root, you can feel it, the little bit of friction against the flow of what's unfolding to, there's a little kind of like, wait, wait, wait a minute.

[08:20]

That's that friction that is the heart of dissatisfaction. Another of the marks of existence is anicca, or impermanence, that nothing is permanent That is the nature of all things that are conditioned to change. And then the third, anatta, or non-self, that nothing exists independently from everything else as a permanent, abiding, fixed entity. Something that we, you know, whether we consciously believe that we exist as a separate self. we certainly act as though we believe that. So non-self, basically that everything is only existent in complete dependence and interconnected relationship with everything else.

[09:21]

So the right view could be this idea, this sometimes described as having a deep understanding of the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the three marks of existence. And then the first teaching of the Buddha, which is the, when he, after his awakening, and when he decided he needed to try to teach what he saw, what he wrote to. His first, his first Dharma talk. was on the 12-fold chain of dependent arising, which is basically a formulation of causation, causality, and conditionality. Pratitya Samuppada. Fundamentally, that all dharmas or all phenomena arise only in dependence upon other dharmas or other phenomena.

[10:28]

Nothing arises out of nothing. Everything is conditioned. The 12-fold chain describes a chain of causation that begins the first link of this 12-fold chain. It's called ignorance. Ignorance meaning like the opposite of right view, an ignorant view. From ignorance, which is sometimes called in Zen, it's called the fundamental affliction. It's the root cause, the root source of all of our suffering, all of the ways we get in the way of ourselves. So this chain of causation, starting with this fundamental affliction of ignorance, This ignorance about who we are and what we are.

[11:34]

I'll say more about that in a moment. But stemming from ignorance comes action or intentional action, karma. Consciousness follows then name and form or mental and physical objects. The six senses arise from that. then contact, touching these six objects, the six senses that correspond to what we see as objects in the world, leading to sensation, followed by craving, followed by clinging, giving rise to becoming or existence, then birth, and finally old age, sickness, illness, and death. and looking back around to ignorance. So this 12-fold chain is a description of how all things, when they start with ignorance, lead through these 12 links.

[12:45]

Now some of the implications of the Four Noble Truths, the Three Marks of Existence, and the 12-fold chain of dependent arising, on the question of precepts or the question, really taking a step back, the question of ethics or ethical living, morality, how we live in this world. Oftentimes when we, if we don't grow up in this, with this awareness or this understanding or this view that this is the nature of reality, we might start with an assumption that I am me, that's mine, not yours, that I need to protect what's mine, I need to protect myself, I need to figure out my relationship with you, that I'm permanent, that there's a meanness that abides through all of my life and maybe continues on endlessly, that this is permanent and fixed.

[13:55]

But when we have, in this early teaching, when we have right view, which is an understanding, a deep non-intellectual but felt sense understanding of the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Twelvefold Chain, and the Three Marks of Existence, we don't, the starting point is not sort of what we, what is sometimes our usual starting point of I'm me, I'm a fixed and permanent self that acts with an individual, independent moral agent. But when we start with this basic understanding that what we talk about as self, what we say when we say the word self is not this fixed, permanent, everlasting, inherently existent thing, but is actually ever-changing. completely conditioned on everything that's happening all at once, that allows, when we open ourselves to this view, called right view, there can be a reorientation, complete turning, transformation of our view of reality.

[15:15]

So sometimes reality, you can hear it described as the way things really are. Suzuki Roshi sometimes used the phrase, things as it is. This is in contrast to things as I want them to be, or things as they, even more sticky, things as they should be. You can feel just those phrases from things as they are, things as it is, to things the way they should be. Like, feel it in your body. Can you feel the difference between those? Things as it is, just like, this is what's happening. Whatever descriptor that we come up is always going to be partial, but things as it is includes everything. Whereas things as they ought to be

[16:20]

I don't know if you have this experience, but when I let those words swirl around in my body and mind, I can feel the difference between them. One being open to, well, what is this thing as it is? It's vast, it's huge, it's boundless, includes everything in comparison to things as they should be or things as I want them to be. Like in my body, I can feel that tightening. I can feel everything kind of go . Attention builds. This little taste is what dukkha is, this unsatisfactoriness. We all know this very well. It's like just that feeling of saying, no, not this. Another description of right view in early Buddhism, kind of digging a little bit deeper into this fundamental affliction of ignorance, in the Saba Saba Sutta, the Buddha describes the sticking points.

[17:48]

He calls them inappropriate or improper questions to be asking. So from this sutta, he says, He's describing how somebody is asking the wrong questions, basically. This is how he attends unwisely. Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what? What did I become in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what? What shall I become in the future? Or else she is inwardly perplexed about the present thus. Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this being come from? Where will it go? And then one of six views arises.

[18:51]

I'm not going to go through all six, but I'll pick a couple. The view self-exists for me. arises in her as true and established, or the view no self exists for me arises in her as true and established. It is this self of mine that speaks and feels and experiences here and there the result of good and bad actions. But this self of mine is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and it will endure as long as eternity. This speculative view, bhikkhus, is called the thicket of views, the wilderness of views, the contortion of views, the vacillation of views, the fetter of views. Fettered by the fetter of views, the untaught ordinary person is not freed from birth, aging, and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair.

[19:57]

He is not free from suffering, I say. So all this in contrast to what the Buddha is saying is a right view or correct understanding, the understanding that leads to the liberation from our grasping, clinging selfing, in contrast to this right view is this thicket, this thicket of views, which is the fundamental affliction, the base affliction of ignorance. That is this belief in a permanent, sometimes you might think of it as an ego self, a small self that is ultimately separated from everything. else, that this small sense of self causes dukkha.

[21:00]

Now, just to back up a little bit, dukkha, this suffering of the first noble truth, and as one of the three marks of existence, this dukkha is not referring to pure physical pain, or even aging, sickness, illness, death, It's not even referring to grief or sadness that we may feel, that we do feel, at the loss of something that we cherish and value. The loss of a loved one or for just problems that we see in the world that affect us or affect the ones that we love. Dukkha, the end of suffering does not mean that you don't have sorrow, that you don't feel grief, that you don't feel pain. But there's something that we add to that when we have this belief in a fixed, this small self.

[22:09]

We add some kind of, the Buddha is saying, an unnecessary layer, a thingness that we can grasp that's grounded in this affliction of ignorance, that there's this independent sense, the sense of me-ness. You can feel it in the, you know, you caught yourself thinking or saying something like, why me? Or that didn't just happen. I'll never survive without you. It's all my fault. It's all your fault. All of these have this, at the root, this sense of this small self. So this ignorance about what the nature of suffering is or what suffering is, where it comes from, that it comes from this sense, this small self, this sense of self, from our ignorance about the conditions that give rise to that sense of self,

[23:21]

that ignorance keeps us from the remaining, from the Eightfold Path, that there is a way that leads to the cessation of suffering. When we get stuck in just the first noble truth, we can get stuck there and not proceed down to the Eightfold Path. However, Once we become aware of all of this, of all the above, the early teachings stress that we can end our ignorance by going through this path. There's this path that will lead to the end of our ignorance, to an awakening to the way things really are, to the nature of reality, that nothing is fixed and abiding with permanence. that all things are changing, that when we grasp we suffer, that there is no self in the way that we kind of psychologically maintain this selfness.

[24:38]

So ignorance being this kind of first cause of all our deepest problems. And when we understand that, when we open ourselves to that teaching, That is the start, the beginning of our practice. In many analogies of the Buddha, he's described as the doctor, right? The doctor that prescribes the medicine that leads to the lifting of disease. The disease being this affliction of ignorance. Yeah. This is all early teachings. Another way of looking at right view, I've been throwing out these terms like small self. I've said small sense of self a number of times in this talk. What is it? If it's not the small sense of self, then maybe there's a big self, a big sense of self.

[25:45]

Suzuki Hiroshi sometimes described this as big mind versus small mind. The small self is one that is rooted in this fundamental ignorance of me-ness, I, me, mine. But right view is also described as non-view, which is kind of tricky, right? What's that? Right view as non-view. Not right view is not view, but right view is not holding or grasping to views, beliefs, judgments. So non-view as right view means or alludes to this not having this fixedness of a view.

[26:49]

Can we exist in such a way? Can we be in the world tending to our day-to-day affairs without having a view? Is it possible? One of the most famous Zen stories is the story of Bodhidharma who left India for China And after making it to China, he had an audience with the emperor, Emperor Wu, who had heard of Bodhidharma and asked him, like, you know, tell me about all the great things that you've done, you understand. And Bodhidharma kind of, you know, he, in the story, he doesn't really give the emperor what he's asking for. Finally, the emperor gets kind of frustrated and he says, well, who is it standing here before me? What was Bodhidharma's answer? Did he say, well, I'm the guy who came from India and I have this view?

[27:53]

No. Bodhidharma's answer when Emperor Wu asked him, who is it that stands before me? Bodhidharma said, don't know. This is non-view. This is right view is non-view. Suzuki Roshi said, spoke of beginner's mind. The beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. The beginner's mind is the mind, the don't know mind. This is in contrast to how we often try to take care of our lives We think, we believe that we need to figure it out, we need to have the correct view, we need to know what's what, what's true.

[28:54]

And so we think hard, we deliberate, we strategize, trying to get to the right view, the right thing to do. What should I do? Should I stay? Should I go? How do I know? We don't feel so comfortable with the don't know, with the not knowing. There's a koan in our literature, which I'll mention briefly, just to say the brief exchange in this koan. Koan between Dijong and Fayan. Dijong asked Fayan, where are you going? Fayan said, I'm going around on pilgrimage. Dijong said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage? Fayan said, I don't know. Dijong replied, not knowing is most intimate.

[30:01]

So Dijong isn't asking Fayan like in a casual way, like, hey, what are you up to this weekend? What concerts are you going to go see? They're asking this, like, where are you going? In that way, it's a different question. Like, where are you going? It's like, what's the purpose? What is the heart of your practice? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we live the way we live? Why is life so difficult? Why is it that we're always longing for things to be other than they are? That we're never satisfied, or if we are, it's so fleeting. So, this brings us back to Suzuki Roshi, talking about zazen.

[31:14]

question of don't know, this don't know mind, this right view as non-view, how do we bring this into our daily life? How do we bring it into our meditation? We're here sitting, a one-day sitting, and having the opportunity to settle the self on the self, to let go, to take the backward step, to not attend to all the things that normally pull on our attention. Oh, I need to pay this bill. I need to get back to that person. Oh, my emails are so backed up. When we sit zazen, when we sit on our cushion, or when we just take a moment and take a breath and settle into our bodies, that's not knowing right there. When we open ourselves, like when we know something, are we open?

[32:20]

Usually when we know something, it's something that is, again, something that we can grasp and we can kind of regurgitate. We can speak it. But the not knowing is the turning to openness, which is a different way completely different orientation to knowing, to fixing our view. When we can open to this, as we do when we sit zazen, when we sit zazen, we let go and open ourselves to the vastness of our experience. We ask ourselves the question, what is this? We don't come in with zazen with like, oh, I know what's happening. I'm breathing. This is a breath. This is enough breath. You know, um, We might, but when we sit long enough, we open ourselves to a deeper, more mysterious level of looking, just being able to look inside.

[33:32]

We let go of trying to figure it out and to grasp it and to come away with something that we can then hold onto, maybe give to somebody else, and we open our hand this question what is this when we do this we can take this don't know just the phrase not knowing is most intimate what is meant by intimacy just taking the phrase not knowing don't know imagine if that was the first thing that you you kind of unwrapped and looked at throughout every experience in one's lifetime. Right? You can discover some news, horrible news, joyful news. Instead of the reactivity of all of the karmic consciousness just churning, what if we took a deep breath and didn't know?

[34:37]

Not knowing. Susie Grishy also had the phrase, um, that alludes to this feeling of opening that space, just momentarily even. Not always so. And you see this peppered throughout koans, Hakuin's, is that so? When he was accused of fathering a child in the village and the parents came and this is your baby, is that so? very different from when we come from this fixed sense of self and needing to protect the sense of self where it's, that's not my child, how dare you accuse me? This is all so familiar to us. To take that backward step. This is intimacy. When we talk about intimacy in Zen, this is the not knowing.

[35:40]

where we can allow thoughts and our feelings to arise. We can appreciate them. Maybe we don't appreciate them. Maybe we think, oh, I don't want to be gone. Get out of my head. But we can take that backward step and allow that, even that, oh, look, there's a judgment. How does that feel? How does that rattle around in my body-mind to have that judgment? Normally we don't give ourselves the space to just sit with it. It's very intimate to sit with our experience without trying to push it away or hold onto it or fix it in place or put it in our pocket for later. These are things we're always trying to manipulate or grasp or fix things into place. But this practice is rooted in the invitation to let go of all that, even if you just let go of it for the five minutes that you sit down or the one day that you keep coming back to your cushion to let it all go and just turn inward and ask the question, what is this?

[37:06]

What is this? You can't ask that question if you come in with knowing It is the don't know mind that allows us to turn to what is, to this is what's happening, this is what it is, things as it is. When we're in that place, we don't need, there's not the need to divide the world into good and bad, right and wrong, pleasant or unpleasant even, desirable, undesirable. We feel it in our body as a relaxation, as a softening. When we feel tension, that's like a sign right there that we're grasping, that grasping is happening. Now, oftentimes, you know, I just want to be very careful because when we feel the tension, we feel the grasping, the last thing that's beneficial is to then grasp on that. Get even tighter. Oh, no, I'm doing the wrong thing. I'm grasping. Oh, grasping. Right? But maybe we just need to do that for a while until we...

[38:08]

exhaust ourselves, and then we can relax. So this question of how to live. Cohen Franz, I found in a little short article that he did in Lions War, he said, Right view is that moment of discovery, of staying where we are, of opening our eyes when everything in our body is saying to keep them shut. Right view, like so much of this practice, is a kind of allowing. It's saying yes. Mark Lesser says, the practice of right view means going beyond ideas to the heart of things, to the heart of your life and to the heart of your work.

[39:22]

It is paying attention to what is most important at this moment. It is asking and being aware of the question, what does this moment ask of me? which is the heart of our precepts. When we sit in zazen, we accept everything. We accept ourselves just as we are good, bad, beyond good and bad. It's only there when you're able to start from there when you're able to accept that this is it, all of it, you don't need to subtract anything or add anything, only when we get to this zazen where we accept this is it, only then can we develop this trust in ourself, in our ability to wake up to reality, to wake up to just this, to our experience,

[40:36]

not the ideas of our experience, but to our experience. Not to what we can say about our experience, not to trying to come up with the exact, correct, right description of our experience, but the experiencing itself, this intimacy of our experience. In a comment to this koan of Dijong and Fayan, Chizhu says, in walking, in sitting, just hold to the moment before thought arises. Look into it and you'll see not seeing. The moment before thought arises, look into it and you'll see not seeing and then, this is very important, and then Put it to one side.

[41:39]

When you direct your effort like this, rest does not interfere with meditation, study. Meditation, study does not interfere with rest. So putting it aside, I said this is really important because when you look into it, this moment before the thought forms, You might be very tempted to make it into a thing, right? The thing that we either know or don't know. So putting it to one side is, whatever you think you have, whatever understanding, can we let go of that and return to not knowing? To the question, to the really genuine question, what is this? How do I, what does this moment ask of me? What is an appropriate response? In terms of the self, Katagiri Roshi says, you know, there's small self, big self, he says temporarily we say big mind, big self, or small self, but they are provisional beings appearing and disappearing, the second mark of existence.

[43:03]

They are just flashing lights, nothing but visitors to us. We cannot keep visitors for long. nor can visitors stay with us for long. Even though we say, would you please stay a little longer? Sometimes they have to leave. This is big mind, small mind, delusion, enlightenment. They are just visitors coming and going. He says, Samadhi, one of the three trainings of Sila, Samadhi and Prajna, Samadhi in Japanese is translated into right acceptance. Another way of talking about right you, or right understanding. Right acceptance is to receive yourself and simultaneously the whole universe. We have to receive the whole universe and use it. You are you, but you are not you.

[44:06]

You are the whole universe. That is why we are beautiful. Shikan, the Shikan in Shikan Taza, what we do here of just sitting. He says, Shikan is translated into wholeheartedness. Shikan is exactly becoming one with the process itself. Literally, the Za of Taza is Zazen, and Ta means to hit. So from moment to moment, we have to hit the bullseye of zazen itself. This is giving over yourself to yourself, the self of the entire functioning universe, as opposed to this small constricted sense of ego self. As he famously said when describing zazen, settle the self onto the self and let the flower

[45:07]

of your life force bloom. He also describes when Dogen, Zenji, the founder of our school in Japan, when Dogen was studying in China, he was asked by a teacher, why was he reading the Buddhist scriptures? Dogen said, I want to learn what the ancestors did in the past. The teacher asked, what for? Dogen answered, because I would like to be free from human suffering. The teacher asked, what for? It's like being with a six-year-old. Why is the sky blue? But why? But why? Dogen replied, I would like to help all sentient beings because people are suffering so much. Again, the teacher said, what for? So Dogen Zenji said, sooner or later, I would like to go back to Japan and help the village people. The teacher said, what for?

[46:08]

At last, Dogen Zenji didn't say anything at all. Because finally there is nothing to say. Nothing to say is not a defeat. Nothing to say means that this constant questioning, constant questioning led him into a corner. He could not say anything. Katagiri says, this is the touching of the core of a human life, so-called death. But we don't say death. It's just keeping silent. That's all. This is from his book, his collection of essays, called Returning to Silence a few weeks ago. Last week, we had a speaker, Jody Green, who also referred to Katagiri's book, Returning to Silence. and another companion book, You Have to Say Something.

[47:14]

So both of these are our practice. Returning to silence because that's where the not knowing is. You have to say something means we do live in this world. We have to answer the question, what is this moment asking of me? We can't stay in the silence. We can return to it over and over, we can start from there, but in the end we have to say something. Katagiri goes on, for what reason do you become happy? Everyone wants to be happy, but it is not the final goal. We cannot always hang onto it or depend on it, because when we die we are inevitably completely unhappy. and completely unhealthy. How can we hold onto a healthy body? When we die, we are completely at the bottom of unhealthiness.

[48:18]

There is no way to escape. Sooner or later, we know, without exception, that we are going to die. This is why life is beautiful. Remember this. If we lived forever, we would never have a chance to let our life force bloom We are fading away from moment to moment, consciously or unconsciously. We know this, but we don't want to see it. We use a lot of toys to forget this fact and just struggle to live. But it is not a fair way to understand human life because we are going to die. We have to see the total picture of human life. This is why oftentimes Death is not seen as an end. Death is understood as no death. And this is not just in this kind of thing that we say to make people feel better just for the sake of saying it.

[49:29]

Oh, this person who is gone. They're not really gone. Their actions will live on, which is true. Not just the direct consequences of actions, but the ripples of the entire universe, the fabric of all of reality, all expressing themselves in ways that are seen and unseen. This is inconceivable, this endless flowing workings of reality. This is big self. We are not separate from this. And of course, when tragedy strikes, those moments, often, we step away from the busyness of our lives. Being on autopilot, we have a moment to step back and touch into this truth that Kadigiri is speaking of.

[50:34]

This is why the suffering, Jukka, is not describing, it's not saying that we won't feel pain or feel sorrow. Many of us understand this, that when someone is gone, tragically, maybe violently, we feel it deeply as grief, as sorrow. And that's completely appropriate. And it's not what the Buddha is saying we're going to try to escape. We can feel the grief without that feeling of that tightening that I was describing earlier. We know this. the feeling, the huge difference between feeling something that is spacious and open and not knowing, not needing to pass a judgment, to feel grief as just grief, sorrow as just sorrow.

[51:45]

This is what connects each of us to one another as human beings in this lifetime. It's only when we say, this is good and this is bad, judgment comes, that's when we feel that tightening, that resistance to reality unfolding. When we're open to this, to everything, all of it included the joy, the sorrow, the pain, the pleasure, the celebration, the mourning, we meet one another in these moments in love, in tenderness, sometimes in anger, confusion. Where we get caught is when we think that we can separate these things, when we think that we shouldn't be feeling this.

[52:46]

So I'll end with going back to this this quote from Suzuki Roshi and give you a little bit more of what he says in this talk. This talk that he gave, this quote is from a talk given in 1971 called Real Precepts Are Beyond Words. How you receive precepts is just practice zazen, just to be yourself. Then you can observe the precepts. When you just practice zazen on your black cushion, your practice includes everything. And you practice zazen with Buddha, with all sentient beings. Whether your practice is good or bad, it doesn't matter. If you accept your practice as your own, then that practice includes everything. At that time, you have precepts which include everything as the absolute being includes everything.

[53:55]

We say, you know, something which includes everything is the absolute, but it is actually, it is more than that. It is beyond our understanding. If we lose this point, you will be easily caught by some idea or some experience in, you know, your practice. Getting caught by an idea, that is the opposite of right view. Being caught in an idea. So how we make our effort, complete, honest, full effort, is to just bring our entire being to this moment. All of it. The parts we think are beautiful, the parts we think are ugly, the parts we want, we want to like, you know, bolster, the parts we wish we could just like, you know, carve out of ourselves and throw away. We need to bring all of it to our practice, to our sitting, not to attain something.

[54:56]

We're not here to attain enlightenment or to avoid falling into some punishment. This is one way to keep the precepts. If I don't keep the precepts, then I'll suffer. It could be very mechanical. But Suzuki Rishi is talking about a different way of viewing the precepts. Not that you throw out the the other way of viewing precepts, a conventional understanding, but to open, open ourselves. He says, to study Buddhism includes our study of precepts. Precepts is not just to observe the 10 prohibitory precepts, do not kill, do not steal, you know, that is not, that is precepts, but even though you observe the 10 precepts completely, It is not how you observe our real precepts. It is not the point to observe those precepts one by one, one after another.

[56:03]

The point is how to be yourself. To be oneself is the purpose of our practice. How to be oneself. One's self is the point of practice and how to keep the precepts. Buddha's precepts is not just rules. It is direct explanation of our life and Buddha's teaching and Zazen's practice. That is why it is important for you to receive the precepts. So despite our habitual propensity to cling to this small ego self, how do we open ourselves to this... Just being curious to this... the sense of our original big mind, our original self, as being that moment before thought arises.

[57:04]

Sometimes this is described, original mind is described as pure, untainted. I spoke earlier of the awareness of taints as being one way of an early conception of right view. But as original mind, as pure, untainted, completely free from our dualistic thinking of right and wrong, when we sit zazen, can we take up this inquiry to discover this self, this larger, open, vast, boundless self that's not mine, the self that belongs to all of us, to the entire universe. So I think I've gone on longer than I was intending. So maybe now it's time to return to silence and stillness, to turn the light inward, to inhale and exhale and find ourselves wherever we are.

[58:24]

Thank you very much. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[58:51]

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