I'd like to talk about the three treasures, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Actually, mostly I want to talk about Sangha. I think this is a very difficult point for us. Can you hear me okay in the back? More difficult than you realize. There are several stages and from our usual point of view there are several stages in

[01:31]

understanding, even intellectually, sangha. And most of us get only to the first or second, and our view is different than it used to be, so we think we've understood it. But usually it's, you're still haven't explored it, its full implications. When you, of course, meditate, you find many people in your meditation. You find something you call yourself, something you identify with, and all mixed up with that you find other people. I don't think any of you meditate, any of you are so egocentric that your meditation is entirely on you. I'm sure there are other people who come in, many other people. Now, it's very clear in Buddhism that the three subversions are your ego.

[02:58]

and society and things. So our practice is to identify ego with Buddha or realize Buddha. And our practice with things is to realize Dharma. to identify with dharma, to realize our identification with things. And sangha is to realize our identity with others. This is the main thrust of Buddhism, these three. And there isn't Buddhism without all three. Now, whether you're... If we take the four types, four forms of Buddhism I've mentioned, four ways of existence – the street saint and the cave and the teacher and disciples and the anonymous person in society – those four are not chosen because of some intrinsic

[04:37]

nature of your own. They're a matter of strategy. From Buddha's point of view, there's no intrinsic nature. So whether your practice is as a street saint, or just in the street with people, or in a monastery with disciples, or in some occupation where you're not identified as a Buddhist, or in the mountains somewhere by yourself. It's a matter of strategy which you choose. Of course, you'd say, practically speaking, that someone who's inclined to be reclusive will be the cave person, and someone who's inclined to sympathy with others will be in the street.

[05:52]

My guess is, I'm pretty sure about this, that most of the time this person in the street is actually, his nature is rather reclusive. And the person in the cave is rather gregarious. And this kind of antidote is necessary. that our strength often comes, opens up when we do something we're not suited to doing. If you're too suited, it doesn't work very well. For instance, a person who's too suited to being a priest He just changes his identity as an individual in society to identity as a priest. And it takes heavy equipment to shake that person loose from believing now they've found the path.

[07:15]

A person completely unsuited to being a priest makes the best priest, most accessible to others. So in the West, the most famous mountain hermit is in Buddhism is Milarepa. But it's clear it's a strategy for Milarepa. Every poem he writes, he writes all these poems, you know, or sings all these songs. He's not just singing to the wind, you know. Usually there's some patron or donor or supporter or deluded being or demon, or someone's there for whom he's preaching the Dharma. His whole effort is some communication of the Dharma.

[08:43]

So it's not that Marpa and Milarepa are two different people. Marpa and Milarepa are the same person. That's the meaning of lineage. But the strategy for one was a married home life, and the strategy for the other is singular hermitage life. From the point of view of Buddha, this is so. So whatever practice you think you want to do or you think you're best suited for, whatever that may be, in any case, you, if you're practicing Buddhism, must realize sangha. Who are all these people that populate your meditation? You know, I think we all get bored studying sutras and commentaries on sutras and commentaries on commentaries and English translations of all these.

[10:21]

They all say the same thing. But when you recognize them as parallel to your own mind and activity, they're not so boring. I don't think if you actually awaken yourself to studying your own mind and body, you won't be bored. So what this larger identity can be is... You know, it doesn't mean you have to give up your individuality, your identification with Buddha, but to realize one is to realize the other.

[11:50]

So the vow of enlightenment is to save all beings. Actually, you know, it means something like, all beings save all beings, or all beings are all beings. But since we say it, there's some I there, I who does it or realizes it. Now, partly I'm referring to the meeting the other day. We like to keep... Somehow we like to keep... We're interested... We're able to cope with bringing our personal identity into our practice, into doksan.

[13:06]

But we have some... We want the meetings, you know, a business meeting put aside. We don't want... You don't want me to lecture about it in the Zendo, I think. So I don't. But the question of why we're here together is not so simple. The question of why you are here individually is not so simple. You didn't just wander in here by chance. And you may think that, you know. And you may think you can wander back out But it's not so. You didn't just wander in here by chance. Your karma irrevocably brought you here. So now you're here, and you don't want to quite admit it. As I've mentioned before, Upanishads means

[14:33]

The first part, upa, is near to, and the ni part is down, and the sad part is sit. So it means to sit down near to the teaching, some secret session or some... It means very similar to transmission, some sense of that. that we have contradictory... In Buddhism we also say, just where you are, you don't have to be near to anything, just where you are. But there's always some contradiction where there's truth. Just where we are is okay, but at the same time we sit down near to a teacher or we sit near to a sangha. And some of you find your karma has brought you near to, but you still keep your symbolic distance. You're not quite willing, and you say, Well, everywhere is Buddhism, so I don't need to come too near.

[15:56]

This is a, maybe, unfair comparison, but it comes into my head, because someone got beat up recently, which I can't remember. We talked about it in the board meeting, I can't remember, but... Many times, homosexuals get beaten up, or their radio is stolen, because someone... they have some sexual encounter And then the person can't admit that what they did was a homosexual encounter. So they steal the radio or something. So they can tell their friends, I stole the radio. And they don't, or I beat someone up. And there's some of that feeling in practicing. you know, to practice, but you don't want to make a complete sacrifice. You want to say, I did it to get something. And these whole borders between identity and strict practice and etc.,

[17:42]

are not clear to us, and usually we fall back on some sense of what feels okay to us, without really letting go of the boundaries. So we're willing to look, though, at ourselves, but not so willing to deal with society? And I don't know the answer here myself. We live in a very fast-changing, complex world, and it's different, I think, You know, Buddhism always treats society as the prevailing society, somewhat corrupt, that you sort of, as much as possible, keep at bay while you lead the best life you can figure out how to lead. But I think that we can say there is an appreciable historical difference in our present society.

[19:14]

the kind of real dangers or events that other historical periods might have are maybe much more often occurring. I think there's some danger here. I think of Thich Nhat Hanh, who is one of... certainly one of the leading Zen Buddhist monks in the world, and his attempt to stop the Vietnam War. And Yamada Mumon Roshi, who you know, has criticized the Japanese government at various times. And there's a Japanese saying, on the other hand, you know, I stopped the war while drinking a cup of tea.

[20:45]

again I don't know if you know there's a physicist named John Wheeler who's quite interesting man and his speculations on the edges of matter of space are The ones I'm familiar with, anyway, are very similar to Buddhism. Very form and emptiness are present in how he discusses our physical universe. But it's much harder to feel the same way when we're talking about capitalism or communism or how should we exist? How should Zen Center exist?

[22:13]

You know, there's... They have a electron microscope that they can put on the point of a needle, and they can run it down your throat and into your lungs and heart and everywhere. And you see these great tunnels and flaps opening and stuff shooting around. various white and red corpuscles and many chemical, much chemical activity and cellular activity. And in our body there is 60,000 miles of blood vessels. It's enough blood vessels to go around the world, I guess, about twice. That's pretty far. And it takes... Some of the blood vessels are so small,

[24:02]

white and red blood cells have to get in single file to go through. And yet it only takes something like two minutes for one cell to make a complete circulation. I don't think it goes all 60,000 miles, but it makes one circulation. Anyway, it's much too complex a system for a doctor to actually understand. The sheer surface must be enormous. So mostly you have to trust your system to take care of itself, because no one can tinker with 60,000 miles of blood vessels. Mostly you're up for grabs, you know. And we're not conscious of all this, although you can be conscious.

[25:26]

Now, I'm using here... I'm going to use here a biological metaphor for society, because I can't think of any other way to get some sense across to you about society. We tend to think It's one of our many agreements or early vows. We tend to think that this complexity ends at the surface of our skin. Your skin is, by the way, your largest organ and weighs eight pounds, I believe. Excuse all the information. Anyway, we think the complexity ends here, and from then on, things are about as minute as bus tokens. We don't work with... we don't experience things in their actual minuteness. Again, I'm talking about consciousness as topic. Because your consciousness is always being defined or limited by a topic, you experience the world in extremely gross terms.

[27:02]

But you'll begin to get an intimation of the minuteness that exists in the sangha, that exists in the society of beings, equally with your 60,000 miles of blood vessels. you practice. And the more your practice begins to come together, the more you will find unusual coincidences, magical occurrences, you'll say. I don't mean it's fixed, but it's a far more minute complex event than you usually realize. I could give you hundreds of examples of extraordinary or unusual or unlikely coincidences. I'll just give you one simple one that occurred recently. I mentioned it in the Sashim Taza at San Francisco. I told you, I believe, about who Barton Stone is, didn't I tell you? The young man who – not so young now – who walked to Moscow

[28:30]

I didn't tell you that. I think Barton got... I recently told Paul about Zen Center or Tassar, isn't that right? Barton and Paul, I believe, were carpenters together in Berkeley, is that right? Anyway, when I first started sitting, I thought I told you about this, but I'll tell you anyway, again, if so. When I first started sitting, we knew that somebody named Barton Stone used to sit at Zen Center. He'd started, I don't know, before me, one year or something. And we heard he was walking to Moscow, this is 1961, from San Francisco in a peace march. So we'd hear about him in newspapers occasionally. And they made it to Moscow. On the way, passing through Kansas, a girl came out.

[29:46]

and saw them and maybe there was a meeting in the town or anyway but she joined the march and liked it so much she continued with them across the United States and in West Germany Barton and this girl Marty got married. So then one day I was doing Zazen in San Francisco at the old temple And Graham Petchy, my friend, who I've mentioned, was one cushion up, and there was a space in between. And someone sat down between us who didn't move. And we couldn't believe that, because only Japanese people couldn't move. Or Suzuki Roshi. Caucasians or Western people wiggled all the time. At least we did. And here was this man who sat without moving. So Graham and I met in the hall afterwards. And we said, must be the guy who walked to Moscow. And it was. So he stayed for some time, but he was at that time one of the leaders of the anti-Vietnam War.

[31:08]

movement, and he was often arrested or... he had... it has a kind of Ivanhoe quality. He would be always out at the head of the march. And his wife, Marty, more or less hatched two babies on the cushions of some sort. Anyway, she came there living, living at... They're living at Green Gulch now. And he's working on the... They're both working on the Wheelwright Center. She always wanted to work with him as a carpenter, and for the first time she's doing it. So they're working together on the Wheelwright Center. And they were walking down, living in the hiker's hut. They were walking down the fields, and they ran into Steve Stuckey. who said, oh, my babysitter who left on the peace march. And Steve Stuckey, you know who he is, he does the fields at Nassau. He was, Marty was his babysitter in Kansas. So they were in Kansas, these two Buddhists were living, who were going to come to Zen

[32:37]

Anyway, they were quite surprised to see him. Anyway, that kind of coincidence, which is statistically quite unlikely, happens all the time. And the more you're doing what brings you together, the more this kind of event happens. But whether it happens or not, visibly to you, there is a... our society is very minutely interrelated.

[33:44]

And sangha is how we realize this minuteness. But it also means the practical necessities, you know. You can't just think you want to do some craft or some writing or something. You have to actually do it, you know. you also have to eat and etc. And we have to somehow take care of how we live together. And what I didn't make clear, I think, the other night so much, is that what we... I think what we find ourselves doing this year is creating or trying to, as the opportunities are actually pressed on us, we're not looking for them, the facilities for the community. We have the facilities for practice.

[35:19]

as a practice place, we're quite complete. But since we're living together, we need some facilities to live together, for families and individuals, and to work. So, what we're doing is trying to take the energy we produce, or occurs, comes to us, and turn it into things we can use, like we were saying, the difference between an automobile for pleasure or an automobile for a paper route, we're trying to produce, have facilities which we can use, like our capital or our resources. How this occurs, at what level this occurs, is the same level of this minuteness of the coincidence of Steve Stuckey and Marty Stone. How we take care of this side, without getting confused by it,

[36:52]

takes a pretty finely tuned practice. So it is a big question for us. Just because there are many things reinforcing it, it doesn't mean it's definite. going to last or fixed. That we'll continue as a practice place is, I think, unquestioned. But how we'll continue as a community is an open question. So there's rather is a very real question before us. You know, why are we together? Why are we staying together? Even people who move out or decide they don't want to do zazen, they move across the street in San Francisco often. They don't go very far.

[38:22]

What is it? Why are we deciding to stay together? What does it mean? And why are you as an individual deciding to practice? What does it mean? Buddhism is not so interested in other relationships than you and the Buddha and you and Sangha. Not so interested in marriage and other kinds of social relations. In fact, one thing I think we find out by practice is that you cannot realize yourself in another person. So the ephemeral dream of American society, of the individual and his enema, or mate, or something, is from a Buddhist point of view not possible. You may live very pleasantly with someone for many years, many decades, but there's always some gap.

[39:52]

So when you realise everything is make-do, you're much better off. So second marriages often work better, because the person realises it's just make-do, you know. It's not going to be perfect. Your existence in this world is just make-do. In the sense that it's not make-do is Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. But first is to realize it's make do. So this is where the vow comes in. First, maybe awareness. Okay? In Japan, and I think the Orient as a whole, art is not so much concerned with talent. Did I talk about this here? Anyway, it's not so concerned with talent. It's much more concerned with concentration, how you prepare your mind and how you work.

[41:38]

Calligraphy is the most simple or clear example of this. The calligrapher is not someone who has tremendous facility at drawing, but a person who has tremendous ability to concentrate. More than just attentiveness, you know. As you know, even here we know how difficult talent, if you draw so well that you can do these extraordinary billboards where people paint, you know, someone like a photograph of smoking a Salem or something, that's tremendously skillful, those people. But you wouldn't want to put it in your living room, you know. Maybe someone like Cezanne, who supposedly couldn't draw, It's like a lousy priest makes a good priest. A lousy drawer might make a good draftsman, might make a good artist. You need some limits. If someone, in fact, if someone very intelligent comes to practice Buddhism, and I'm rather wary, you know, they probably can't practice. They should go do something else.

[43:07]

But if the person is crazy too, then they have some chance, because they'll know some limits. If you don't know any limits, you can't find anything out. We know everything. It's just a matter of getting rid of our limits. So concentration, you know, is in your driving a car or calligraphy or whatever, you'll see the difference between just doing it and having your attention or awareness there. And the ability to put your awareness there is one form of the vow. So we all...

[44:27]

Again, I may not have named it so, but you all have noticed that human beings have a tremendous capacity to make vows. You have made thousands of vows. I am a big eater. And you're still force-feeding yourself to remind yourself that when you were a child, someone said, my, isn't so-and-so a big eater? I'm just joking, but Not completely. You have many rules or orders you've received when you were young at various times. You are such and such a kind of person. And even though those vows you made are completely outmoded now, you still stick to them. And in your zazen, you will find they come up all the time. some idea, I am this kind of person, I should be doing this. It's just a vow you made at one time, that's all. So Buddhism doesn't want to add anything to you, if anything, to take a little bit away, but just to find out what you want to do and then vow to do it.

[45:50]

As I've said before, you know, if your parents or uncle or some person that you know, at the end of their life they led a certain kind of life, full of, I want to do this or I didn't do that or I'm always meant to do this, but instead I worked for such and such a company. But if they just vowed to do the life they did, it would have been a different kind of life. as different as the line on the paper when your awareness is there or when you just are doing it. The awareness is your vow. To look at your life from its finish line and say, I should have vowed to do it, is again, we could say, the viewpoint of Buddha. Buddha would say, you are living this life already. Why don't you vow to do the life you're already living? Instead of having your head filled with other lives, you're going to do, sometime. If you vow to do the life you're living now, it will lead to whatever life you should do. It's sure, you know, as anything.

[47:13]

So, Sangha is the same. You vow, you say, these are the people I'm living with. Maybe not the first six months or a year, but at some point you say, my God, I'm living with these people day after day, you know, longer than I knew my parents almost. What am I doing here? So at that point you take some responsibility. for this life, this Buddhist life you're leading. This deepening is very subtle. It's not just some idea of practice from a book or from your egocentric needs. It shouldn't be too strict and it shouldn't be too easy.

[48:22]

There should be ordinariness and relaxation in it. And this vow has enormous power. I can't tell you how much. Change, it can change the whole world. And your intention your vow or your intention that you develop and can be one with and can hold on each moment, like your awareness on each moment, penetrates to Kansas, penetrates to every part of the planet, every other person. And when you do something no one else has thought of doing, everyone knows it very quickly. So we actually, society has made many vows or agreements. We have many agreements that we are fighting against all the time. Like one agreement is you don't know anything

[50:06]

and you need education, you need to learn something. And you don't. You know everything. Education actually is a process of uncovering. Mostly you're uncovering what you already know. You may find some way to describe it or give it names, but you know it, because you are everything. You're not just an observer thrown in here. Your 66,000 miles and your consciousness, not defined by topic, include everything, but we have many agreements with ourself and with society about what we are and what's possible. To break those agreements, to start now is the vow. And it begins with vowing to be one with our make-do life. This is my make-do life. Where is some other life? This is the life I vow to be one with.

[51:30]

The very nature of our mind is vow. So this power you can put to your use. But it only works when you have one deep goal which includes everything. when you recognize Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, your inner intention, your innermost requests, as Yukiroshi used to say. And you start this by studying your own mind and activity.

[53:18]

without any ideas about what you should be or what it should be, just what it is.

[53:27]

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