to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Yes, Wendy was hooking this up for me. My mind flashed onto an IV. He's hooking me up to an IV. So, about this time, down in Santa Cruz, Blanche is getting ready to do service. And a couple of weeks ago, Paul came down and joined our sitting in Santa Cruz, so tonight I'm here meeting with you.

[01:04]

And it's been quite a while. I guess it's been, what, one year? A year ago, and several years, many, many years since I lived in the building. And came to lecture regularly in this hall. So, no experience with the gray light. Blue-gray light overhead. Some of you may know that we've been doing some

[02:06]

remodeling and fundraising down in Santa Cruz. And one of the ways we hope to raise the money to pay for the construction work is to have a workshop in a few months on a psychologist's therapy, psychology therapy, and Buddhism. And in preparation for such a workshop, I invited two therapists who've been sitting with me now for two or three, four years, to tell me what their experience of practice was, how it helped them as therapists. And I would never have imagined, I could not have imagined what they said, what they actually said. One woman said that what she has learned from

[03:12]

her Buddhist practice, from her sitting for about four years now, as she has learned to sit with the terror, she has learned to sit through her own terror, sitting facing the wall and watching whatever comes up and sitting through it, and she has also learned to sit with the terror of working with people, sitting with people who are deeply troubled, some of whom, even suicidal. A certain proportion of her population practices with suicidal clients, and I was quite startled. And she said, oh no, these are high-functioning people. They have good jobs. They can pay to see me. I'm fairly high-priced. And yet underneath the high function and the

[04:14]

capacity to be productive in society, deep despair, deep despair. So when she was talking about sitting with the terror, it wasn't just the terror of her own energy, her own feelings, her own perceptions and impulses coming up, but not knowing how to be with people who were sitting in their own terror and feeling the capacity through her own sitting to sit with her clients as they were describing their circumstances and continuously

[05:17]

complaining to her that they weren't getting better, that she wasn't helping them, to be able to sit with that and not know how to help, to deeply not know how to help, and to be able to sit through that not knowing. And we talked about how can someone, how can a therapist or a Buddhist teacher, how can one really help someone, and we agreed on this definition of being willing to witness someone's life. It was very little probably we could do for each other except to witness, and that was a tremendous blessing to be able and willing to sit with someone or be with

[06:20]

someone or hold still with someone going through their own deep demons and terror. And the other person said she had learned from her practice that when people come and talk to her about their lives, what they're doing is giving her a story, they're presenting a story, and she's learned that her mind makes up a story from the story people tell her, and that was interesting to watch her own mind grabbing and tying it up in a certain way. So I thought oh boy we really have a wonderful program here, this is going to be easy, this is just ordinary Buddhist practice, paying attention to yourself, watching closely,

[07:20]

sitting quietly. I had one time, we did a program like this a year or two ago in Monterey, and worried about a therapy, a therapist description of the personality versus Buddhist description, how we were going to get these two together and how technical the program was going to get to be. But as we actually did the program in the Monterey area, turned out that those who attended, who were therapists, mostly wanted to learn how to do zazen. They weren't so much interested in learning a new description of the personality, but just how to learn to meditate and sit in their own lives and with their own lives and quiet their own mind. So we come, maybe afraid to look, we come

[08:27]

to practice, maybe afraid to look into our lives. There's this whole big black place we don't want to look into. We'll look at this side and then there's all this other stuff we kind of walk around the edges of. And yet we come looking for some relief from our lives, looking for some change, some help. And here's a quote that I found. In a 1965 issue of the Windmill, down in Santa Cruz, they've got a collection going back to 65. I thought that was pretty good. So here's something that was picked up from Suzuki Roshi then. This is what it looked like in 1965. This is probably Richard Baker's, Baker Roshi's edited notes, because I think at that time he

[09:28]

was editing Suzuki Roshi's talks. Someone, Suzuki Roshi says, someone may ask us how this kind of practice will benefit our everyday life. The answer may be no benefit. As Bodhidharma said, no merit. But we mean by merit, merit and no merit. Beneficial and not beneficial. Mahayana Buddhists emphasize saving of others and the saving of ourselves. To save others is to save ourselves. It does not mean to save others after we save ourselves or to save others before we save ourselves. Our way is to save

[10:31]

others is to save ourselves. And then he made a little jump here. To hear a sound is for the sound to arise. It is one activity. We practice this kind of practice because for us there is no other way to appease our inmost desire. Until we attain this way of life, our inmost desire will not be appeased. We practice this kind of practice because for us there is no other way to appease our inmost desire. Interesting choice of words. Appease. Until we attain this way of life, our inmost desire will

[11:33]

not be appeased. So we come hoping to find some relief from our suffering and the teaching is, I was here in 67, Suzuki Roshi said, you know, no attainment. Do not practice to receive something, to get something. Practicing to get something means you want to go out of your own life to reach outside. Just pay attention to that. To get something means to leave this mind and body and to reach outside. It's abandoning your own being and wanting to find something else. I was talking to a woman who sits, has

[12:34]

been sitting with me for eight years in Monterey and she, we've been looking at this book Endless Vow by, it's a biography of Sowa Nakagawa Roshi. I think you have it here in your library or bookstore. It's a wonderful book. Has anybody here read it or looked at it? You have. I'm enjoying it very much. It's very readable and he's, he was born in what, 07, died in 84 and his lineage is the Rinzai lineage, but his practice, but he came to this country and was practicing and was a figure, a kind of a

[13:34]

legendary person on the American scene as I was getting into practice and there were many stories circulating about him and one reason I'm grateful for this book is that it actually gives documentation by his Dharma heir and successor and by his students of some of the stories so that one can have maybe second-hand information from someone who had first-hand information and one of the things that this student who said to me the other day was that she was grateful for this book because it reminded her that even a person as spiritually developed as Sowa Nakagawa Roshi was described as a deeply

[14:35]

troubled person. It's a very gifted, very charismatic person who was very charming to Westerners and off-putting to Japanese because he was so unconventional and he challenged their ideas of how to do things, how to maintain the form, how to be an abbot, how to respect the tradition the monastic tradition, the Soto or Rinzai tradition, Rinzai I guess, Ryutakuji and Myoshinji. He had an accident, he fell out of a tree, a piece of bamboo penetrated his skull into his brain and he was in pain the entire

[15:37]

rest of his life which sounded like it was about 10 or 15 years and during that time he became quite depressed. So for the student reading about this gifted teacher who made such a mark on the American scene and he writes beautiful haiku and had a very deep unswerving commitment to being a monk practicing the Buddha way, transmitting Buddhism to this country. I heard her read how many difficulties he had reminded her no gaining idea. She said so even though she's heard me say this for eight years regularly still the mind grasps at the notion that if I practice long enough something will change, I

[16:40]

won't be so troubled, I won't be so unhappy, things won't be so difficult. Some of the stuff of my life, something will shift. Yeah, I think something shifts in the direction of sitting with the terror which is very different from trying to avoid the terror, very different. You look into the mirror and you allow the mirror to look back at you. Does anybody here really look deeply into a mirror? Can you stand it? Have you noticed when you try to look into a mirror, there are parts that you won't look at, you can't look at. And I suddenly realized I was this gray-haired

[17:40]

woman walking through this department store. It was quite a shock because that wasn't the image I had of myself. Oh, but also our shape, you know, lines on our face, the way the clothes hang on us, the way the face looks, it's hard to look directly into a mirror. And yet the practice of no gaining idea, no merit, no benefit, is the practice of learning to look into the mirror of your mind until the mind that's looking at itself, the mind that takes the backward step, as Dogen says in Fukan Zazengi, becomes transparent to itself. Practice is to observe intimately feelings, perceptions,

[18:42]

impulses, consciousness, until our feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness, become transparent. Bodhidharma put it this way, allow all mental conditions to become completely transparent, whether they appear internal or external. Do not grasp mind with mind. Let it go, let it come and go, whatever you see in the mirror, let the wrinkles go, let the blemishes go, let the rashes go, let the pimples go, let the tension go. Mind will then appear as a smooth wall. And I'm enjoying quoting Bodhidharma because he was the first Zen patriarch.

[19:45]

Bodhidharma defined Zen practice as the founder of the Zen school. And you all know the story, he sat, looked at a wall and our tradition, the Zen tradition, has no methods. In case you think that there must be some methods and you search for methods, other practices, techniques, and I think it's very beneficial to try other, to try methods. At the same time, fundamentally the Zen school has no method, it's just sitting, watching. But I think that when we start, this is a confusing instruction for many of us and it's very helpful to help to direct an individual's practice, what to pay attention to, how to watch the breath,

[20:46]

even where to find the breath, how to watch the posture, returning to posture. It's nice to learn that we have no method because then all methods are available to us. Someone, Roshi, went, he, as I said, he was born in 07 and he died in 84, almost, he was almost 77. He hung out with Western minds in books rather than hung out with people around him. They were not so interesting to him as, say, Western philosophers. And the loss of his father

[22:00]

when he was quite young may have had a lot to do with his decision to renounce worldly life. Another factor may have been that he often felt unable to communicate with people in the usual ways. He was more comfortable in the company of Goethe, Dante, Schopenhauer, Beethoven, Mozart, and Basho than he was with his fellow students. For him, those authors were vibrantly alive. They were speaking to him directly. In Soen Roshi's first published work, he wrote that he thought he was searching for something worthwhile to which to dedicate his life. Unless I found a

[23:02]

truly worthy thing to do with my life, whatever I did would be meaningless, so I thought. But I could not find it in the everyday world at that time. I was deeply disappointed, frustrated, and depressed. One day in the library, I was reading Schopenhauer, and one page shocked me. My mind ceased searching. It became lucid and tranquil. Here's what he read by Schopenhauer. In the real world, it is impossible to attain true happiness, final and eternal contentment. These are visionary flowers, mere fantasies, flowers in the air. In truth, they can never be

[24:04]

actualized. Listen to these words. It's interesting. In truth, they can never be actualized. In fact, they must not be actualized. Because if such ideals were to be actualized, the search for the real meaning of our existence would cease. If that happened, it would be the spiritual end of our being, and life would seem too foolish to live. You have to read it slowly to hear why he's really saying it. Our desires, our ideas of what we want and what would be a perfect life, what would give us final and eternal contentment. Anybody here have an idea

[25:04]

of what would give you final and eternal contentment? Anybody got an idea? Winning the lottery. These are mere fantasies, visionary flowers in the air. They can never be actualized. Now I think you can maybe get rid of your work with your back pain. I don't think one is stuck. It can be modified maybe by working with it, understanding it. About the lottery, I'm not sure. And world peace seems even more. But here he says, in fact, they

[26:09]

must not be actualized. Because if such ideals were to be actualized, the search for the real meaning of our existence would cease. The real meaning of our existence must be in the search or in the struggle between what we are and what we think we should be in the endless eternal oscillation. This parallel life we think we should be living. Anybody here have a parallel life they should be living or they are living? Sometimes it's hard to know if you're living your parallel life or your actual life. It's very interesting. Because if that happened it would be

[27:10]

the spiritual end of our being and life would seem too foolish to live. So when I read this quote at Tassajara we got into a really complicated conversation about not realizing your bliss or something, you're not having dreams, something like that. Any questions about this? Seems to me kind of self-evident. Yes? And there's a wonderful haiku in here. In

[28:22]

the midst of something winter, invincible summer arose or something. Of course it's a one-page I didn't bring down. But even in the midst of his troubles, his endless headaches, having bamboo penetrate his skull, there was some deep capability to follow his path. I think that was his happiness. Even though he was depressed maybe, he acted funny, he drank too much. It's hard to know what happiness is, isn't it? It's hard to describe it. We have an idea of what happiness is. Would you say that again?

[29:33]

If you say that happiness exists and you're looking for it, then that's not necessarily happiness. Well, happiness doesn't exist out there someplace. You know, happiness is a word which expresses an idea, an energy of feeling joy. Joy is one of the seven factors of enlightenment, joy and rapture. So there's energy that arises when certain conditions arise in the body and mind. We can call that joy, happiness, satisfaction. Search for happiness isn't separate. Yeah, searching, I think the search is the I think that's what our teaching is

[30:37]

about, that the practice is really fundamentally getting up every morning and facing your life, being able to get up every morning and coming back again and again to your life, to that which is maybe impenetrable. Maybe you don't understand how to work with it, maybe you want to run away, maybe it's not fun or maybe it's a lot of fun, maybe it seems desirable, maybe it's scary. Practice is just coming back to it without any expectation of attainment or result. I think the most important thing about practice is letting go of expecting any result. Somebody at Tassajara had a question about a difficult job related situation. He had to have a conference

[31:39]

with one of his employees and he didn't know how to do it successfully, effectively, skillfully because he was really mad at this guy and this guy, he wanted this guy to do things right. And we thought about it together and what I felt, anything, and he knew that some heavy directive coming from a vertical relationship would not work. It would just reinforce the inequity in the relationship and the dependency and the feeling of being, you know, praised or blamed. I feel like anything that's that difficult to do where we really do not know how to engage with something in our life, my guiding principle is one, to

[32:39]

have no advantage in the situation and to have no idea of what the outcome should be. You can go into any situation having, being willing to give up any advantage that you may have of position, authority, status, power. Meet the person, meet the situation without advantage. Level the relationship, level the field and then not to have any idea of the outcome. And then I feel we can move into our life, anything that comes up we can just meet it. Nothing to lose, nothing to gain, just the capacity to come forward,

[33:42]

to be present. By the way, one of the things that said about him that he had tremendous power of present mind for all of his idiosyncrasy, all of his crazy wisdom, all of the things that Americans thought were charming about him and Japanese looked askance at, didn't know what to do with. You couldn't detract from the fact he had tremendous presence right this moment. So the ability not to rely on something outside of what's arising right now and mostly we rely on our position, our understanding, our idea, our definition of what we expect, how to

[34:45]

meet our life, not to have an advantage. Imagine coming out of this life without an advantage because an advantage means that you're vertical to somebody else, you tower above somebody else instead of having this kind of relationship. This kind of relationship separates us from each other. This kind of relationship connects us and I think that's the deep happiness, that's the deep satisfaction, contentment when we find our collective being. In this being, in our personality, in your

[35:51]

personality, in my personality, we connect with our deep, deeper, truer nature. One of the practices, so in Roshi, in fact what he considered his main practice came from Basui, is that how it's pronounced Paul? B-A-S-S-U-I. Basui. Basui. I wasn't sure. And in this text, Mud and Water is a collection of his teachings, Basui, and so in Roshi's fundamental teaching, which he said was the essence of Zen Buddhism, is who is it that hears? Who hears? Who is

[36:56]

listening? Take the backward step, let the mirror turn back to the listener. Here's a quote from one of his talks. Though you have heard, Manjusri said this to Ananda, though you have heard all the secret teachings of Buddhas, you have yet to eliminate the flow of desires and thus have been mistakenly holding on to all you have heard. Rather than entertaining all you have heard from the many Buddhas, why don't you listen to the listener? And elsewhere, this comes from the Surangama Sutra, turn your function of hearing back toward yourself and

[37:56]

listen to the nature of the listener. This nature will become the supreme way of emptiness. Who is it that preaches the Dharma? Who is it that listens to the Dharma? Who is it that's angry? Who is it that doubts? Who is it that resists? Even who is it that has faith? Turn the light inward. I think our version of this or the version that I work with is who is angry, who doubts, who resists. What is the self? It's a wonderful penetrating

[39:01]

practice. That was Vasui's practice and that was Soen Roshi's practice and that was his fundamental teaching. It's time to quit. I just want to say one last thing about the backward step. In Fukunse Sengi, Dogen talks about taking the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. This backward step feels backward. Dogen in the Mountains and River Sutra talks about walking backward and backward walking. Walking backward is

[40:04]

different from backward walking. If you think about it, backward walking or taking the backward step really is not knowing what you're doing, is going into that part of you that feels dumb, vulnerable, unknown, rejected, despised. That's why it's so hard to look in a mirror, because we only want to see consciousness or the ego wants to see what it wants to see. It doesn't want to see maybe everything that's there. Taking the backward step means to be willing to go through being dumb, clumsy, awkward, vulnerable, not knowing, deeply deeply not knowing, not knowing where your foot will come down, not knowing

[41:05]

what happiness is, how to search for it, where to find it, settling on unhappiness, not knowing what unhappiness is. So this practice of sitting still, facing a wall with no methods ultimately will allow us to sit through the terror, the demons, the uncertainties. There's no timing for it. It happens in its own time. And our practice is simply to be present for it, is to keep getting up in the morning. John Terrence says, the passage to what

[42:12]

is deeply unknown is through what we have turned away from. So we have to turn back, go through what we've turned away from, and that's hard. But since we're all doing it together, we have lots of companionship, and we can trip down this path together. Any questions or comments? When you're talking about taking the backwards step, it reminds me of the teaching of not knowing being most intimate. Yeah. It's a neat way to think of taking the backwards step. And that's part of why it's so hard, because the stuff we've turned away from

[43:14]

is most intimate. It's so intimate that we don't even recognize it. So looking into a mirror is looking at what's always been there, and somehow we've looked through it or around it. It's interesting, this practice is just to see what is. Sort of scrubbing our eyes, scrubbing our mind from its fears and terrors, and blisses too. Blisses. You know, some people are good at just going off into a bliss state when they're unhappy with how things are, and that's not so helpful either. I don't know how many of you have perfected that practice. It isn't a practice I have

[44:17]

perfected yet. Thank you very much. Hell-sha [...]

[44:44]

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