In that particular case, the Buddha got up on the seat and Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, struck the cui chain and said, clearly observe the Dharma king's dharma. The Dharma king's dharma is thus. The world-honored one then got down from the seat and left. So it would be the shortest. The chat that started at the beginning of this lecture was actually the lecture ending chant. So I thought for a moment that maybe I had an out, but I'll do it. I'll do a lecture anyway. So... This evening I would like to go into a little bit the topic of guest concentration and summer concentration.

[01:13]

And guest concentration, you know, can mean being a guest, but it can also mean being a person because of host and guest. And host and guest is a way of describing ultimate and relative truth, in which the host is ultimate truth and the guest is relative truth. So guest practice and guest season practice happens all the time. It's always guest season in the house of relative truth. And we're the guests. Every one of us is a guest. And every one of us is a host, and we all have host nature. And not just have host nature, but we are all host nature, through and through. And as a matter of fact, there's no separation between host and guest in the house of truth.

[02:18]

So that's why I would like to talk about concentration practice that is concentration practice for everybody. and not just for a group of people who lives this place or that place, but human concentration practice, which the Buddha studied and taught to relieve human suffering. So I've been thinking about this for a while, actually for my whole adult life. In particular, lately I've been studying shamatha. I started studying shamatha, which shama means the same and tha means the state of. So it's the state of being of one mind with whatever happens. And I started practicing Zen and yoga in 1971.

[03:20]

And the point was to understand how to be at one. with whatever happened, and how to have that one state relate to how things actually are, or is, depending on which way you look at it. And so I was reading today in Boundless Heart, and this is a book by B. Allen Wallace about the four immeasurables of friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, some of the core practices of the Buddha. And maybe because of the accident, I have trouble reading now. I'm reading at a teenage level. And I haven't been reading many Buddhist books, so these words are striking me in different ways than they usually do.

[04:22]

I have to kind of sound out unless I know the text already and I know this one pretty well, I have to kind of sound out the words so there's time for everything to sink in. I can't speed read. And that's really interesting. It's an interesting practice to actually say the words or hear the words when I read. And he said that shamatha used to be practiced a lot and now is hardly practiced at all. He said, he's talking about all the different kinds of Buddhists and what they practice and saying, in Southeast Asia, they're all practicing Vipassana. In Zen, they're also doing practices aimed at the nature of reality. Samatha is concerned with a separate agenda, namely to bring about attention,

[05:25]

stability, and vividness. So he said, you know, Southeast Asia, they're all practicing Vipassana. Zen, they're all concerned about reality. Basically, no one in this sad age practices shamatha. That's basically what he's saying. But that's kind of interesting because... You know, Ehe Dogenzenji, the founder of our school in Japan, was actually ordained as a Tendai monk when he was a kid. So before he was ever practicing Chan, Chinese Zen, he was practicing Tendai Buddhism. And guess what the definition of the word Zazen is in Tendai? How would you know, right? Let's see, in fact, it's a tendang, but it's shikan. Okay? It's not shikan like shikantaza.

[06:26]

It's shikan like on the, you know, those red six-sided signs that they have at intersections? You're driving along and you see a red six-sided sign. And in Japan, it says shi, which means stop. And kan... means see, which means stopping and seeing, which are the words for shamatha and vipassana. So the word for zazen means the union of shamatha and vipassana. Shamatha, concentration, and vipassana, insight. And so... So we're all practicing shamatha. We're practicing it, but it's rare that we would pull it out and talk about it separately. But in a Zen and yoga retreat, you're practicing shamatha.

[07:31]

And every time we pay attention to our posture and breathing, as Suzuki Roshi said, every time we pay attention to posture and breathing with great pure effort, we're practicing shamatha and vipassana. Shamatha because we're concentrating and vipassana because our experience is waking us up. So, although I believe this book in a lot of ways, that particular quote I do not believe because we are practicing shamatha in Zen. But it's interesting that For most of Buddhist practice, and even before there were Buddhists at all, there were considered to be classical conditions for practicing concentration. Those are monastery, winter Tassajara conditions.

[08:33]

Okay? Monastic conditions mean that it's a perfect environment, with easy access to resources like teachers and sutras, books, and, you know, cushions, roofs, things like that. And that it's quiet, that it's not a poisonous atmosphere, and some places say food from wild animals, you know, so no tigers or lions are going to jump you. And that there's like-minded people practicing with you, but not too many. And that you practice contentment, have few desires, are a master at ethical discipline, and don't have very many agendas.

[09:39]

basically. You have no agenda except concentration. And so, I don't know, about 20 years ago I was reading a book or a lecture by somebody who said that, you know, is that true that these are necessary conditions for concentration? And he didn't think so because if it were, there wouldn't be Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King or... any of the very concentrated people who we know exist in the world. So the teacher said, those must not be necessary conditions. Those must merely be very, very good conditions, lucky conditions. And so it might be interesting to practice concentration under very good conditions that aren't... the perfect conditions that are mentioned as the classical ones.

[10:43]

Because by the time of the Buddhists who were seriously interested in jhana, concentration meditative states, they had started to really elaborate on this list. And not only did it have to be a good environment that had resources, but it couldn't be large It couldn't be new. It couldn't be dilapidated. There couldn't be traffic. There couldn't be a pond where people would come. There couldn't be leaves or crops that people would pick for food, flowers, fruit. Couldn't be famous. Couldn't be near a city where you could run into men if you were female or women if you were male. Couldn't have timber, anyone hostile, a port, a border. a frontier, or basically anything wrong with it at all. And so that starts to be very rarefied, you know, hard for people to practice.

[11:50]

So I read a little bit more in this book, and B. Allen Wallace said something very interesting. He actually teaches in Southern California, and I highly recommend his books. They're great. He's a very accomplished Tibetan practitioner, as well as a scholar, and he writes with an exactness and an intention to modern society that I find really refreshing. So he said, if you really want to achieve shamatha, there is a time-tested prescription. Radically simplify your life, etc., etc., etc., practice in the classical way. But there's another approach that is not so well proven but could be very interesting. A Tibetan lama recently said that in principle, it's possible to attain shamatha even while leading an active life.

[12:55]

But it has to be a very unusual active life. If leading an active life means that your mind is scattered among your activities, turbulent and anxious, moving compulsively to past and future, then shamatha is not possible. But if you could engage in action with calm and with the presence of mind to simply do what needs to be done, it is possible to achieve shamatha in an active way of life. So I thought that was really interesting. Okay? So what would you need to do to do that? You'd need to set aside some period of time every day to practice concentration. And you would have to rein yourself in in certain ways so that you didn't veer off into the things that made you compulsive or set you off in various ways too much outside the range of your

[14:08]

And so, it seems that both B. Allen Wallace and this teacher, Mama Lodro, not the one who died in 1975, I think the one who, no, the one who died in 1975 is the one who gave that talk about shamatha having to be... possible under less than ideal conditions. So they believe that it's possible, and I believe that it's possible to practice shamatha at home. And we have a beautiful practice here at Tassajara during the summer, which is a bridge. Just enough activity to show what it would be like to practice shamatha in a place that has tasks. but not so much activity, electricity, traffic, and so on, competing agendas, that you would necessarily lose sight of what you're doing.

[15:19]

So this summer practice is a bridge. So what creates that container? This is a very important example in the world, this summer practice, because there is an agenda of... having a guest season, inviting people, having many teachers come and go. It's not the winter monastic practice where it's the same 45 to 70 people day after day. So what is the container? And first of all, there is a natural geographical container because of the mountains and the road. That's really helpful. We know who comes in mostly and who goes out. There's a natural container because this ecosystem will only support a certain number of people before it begins to degrade. So we can't invite 400 guests.

[16:23]

We can only invite 90 or 100 guests, at most 120 in this valley. very natural limit to what can go on here. And then we have also an intentional limit, a limit that we decide to keep. And those are called the pure standards, the guidelines of conduct for summer Zen training. So for guests, that's a kind of invisible set of rules that underlies the summer practice here. For the residents, I hope they're not invisible. I hope you know what they are. And they're actually an incredibly kind practice because they set boundaries that are different from our usual point of view. So I'll just take one for example. There's a whole lot of these, and I highly recommend that if you're a guest here, that someday you ask to see these.

[17:30]

because you'll understand this environment and what goes on here and what an unusual place this is in a whole different way, because you'll understand the social contract that keeps it alive. But here's an example. I can just read randomly, but here's one. I'll read two. Embracing and sustaining the practice of bowing. Stop and bow in gasho with palms joined when passing other practitioners except in the courtyard, the bathhouse, on the zendo walkway or other enclosed spaces. So stop and bow. The gasho for people who haven't practiced it. You put your hands like this and you bow. when you see a practitioner.

[18:30]

And you don't bow when you see somebody who you think it might be uncomfortable. That exchange might be uncomfortable. But you do bow when it's someone who you're in the enclosed community with. Or someone you recognize sometimes from past years. And so, what is this bow? You know, when you bow and someone bows back, and you're acknowledging, you're opening the possibility of Buddha meeting Buddha. You're bowing to Buddha. And you're also bowing, like right now I'm bowing to Kokyo, and Kokyo's bowing to me. Okay? So you're also bowing to each other. And sometimes Buddha's bowing to Shosan, or Shosan's bowing to Buddha.

[19:39]

So it happens all possible ways. So isn't that amazing? One sentence of type could open that up as a practice. And in usual life in the city, if somebody bowed to you, Well, you might think they were nuts, but if they were Suzuki Roshi, Suzuki Roshi's talent was looking at anybody and seeing Buddha. So if you're Suzuki Roshi and you bow to somebody, the impact on that person is suddenly they're seen as Buddha. And maybe they've never been seen as Buddha before. So you do this practice of bowing for a while, understanding what it is and what it means, and pretty soon you're seeing Buddha wherever you go. Isn't that something? Try doing it when you're mad. Or when you have to be somewhere.

[20:43]

So that's part of the summer practice. So here's another one that's a little bit... different from daily life too. So embracing and sustaining appropriate sexual conduct. Okay? So here's one. Let's see. Oh, six-month rule. Refrain from beginning a new sexual relationship at any time in which either person has not practiced at Tassajara for at least six months, or in which either person is under 18 years of age. And I'll couple it with another one. Be aware of how sexual energy is communicated through speech and non-verbally through touch, eye contact, body language, and attitude. Okay?

[21:46]

So what's so interesting about this is that that container... is unusual in our society. So usually in our society, it's kindness is if someone sees something sexually gorgeous about you, it's kind to respond in kind, or at least with appreciation. That's an unwritten social contract that's reinforced through magazines and through media and through social life. But this guideline says, no, for six months. You're going to be aware of your possible effect on other people and their effect on you without acting on it, and particularly if the other person is less than 18 or hasn't been here for six months. It means you give them space. So there's a social contract here to do something that might feel very uncomfortable

[22:50]

if you come from the mainstream culture if you're with someone who's coming from the mainstream culture there's a boundary there that needs to be negotiated sometimes with an explanation sometimes you have to say something like I remember one time someone approached me and I actually had to say thank you very much I'll be your friend It would actually be improper for me to... I do see you as a sexual being, but it would be very improper, and I can't and don't want to see you as someone who's sexual towards me. So I actually had to say that, and it was like I was sweating. It's hard to say something like that, especially with someone who you care about, what they think about you and who you don't want to disappoint.

[24:02]

But that's actual practice of kindness in this situation. That person was new. I had to, even if they were giving me signals that they wanted me to get involved with them, I had to hold the boundary. to allow them to be here. And I've actually seen people, it's always, quite often, it's the less powerful person in the situation. If the boundary gets violated, no matter what anybody's intentions are, a lot of times it's the woman or the newer student or the person who's more easily upset who ends up having to leave. Okay? So it's actual kindness. to make this great resource possible for people to practice in, to hold that boundary, even if the other person doesn't. Isn't that hard? And these rules are full of stuff like that. And they're not just rules, they're the life of the place.

[25:08]

Because these rules bring a living practice to this time and place that's a beacon for the world that such a thing is possible. It's not that at home you have to say to your husband or wife, sorry, I can't share a bed with you for six months because I'm trying to concentrate. No, please don't do that. It's not that. But the practice of boundaries that you see here, you can directly apply to your life. And so that there are people actually living and breathing this way. Isn't that amazing? And we can come in and imbibe the spirit of this place for four or five days and then breathe out everywhere. So I think this is a miracle, this practice.

[26:10]

So I don't want to go on and on. It's 916, and I want you to be able to go to bed. But I do want to say a couple more things. And that is that please pay attention to some of the other lessons of the monastery. Like if you want to do this kind of practice at home, well, even in the monastery, everyone is a temple of one. A temple of one because one contains everything. And this being is a reflection of everyone and everything. Actually physically caused by everyone and everything. So we can practice bringing our own individual life into balance. Taking care of the basics, like cleaning ourselves as if we were sacred.

[27:16]

Balancing our faith with our understanding or our understanding with faith. Our concentration with energy and creativity. We can... We can... decide what we want to concentrate on, what our subject might be, based on what we need, based on what we understand to be our obstacles. We'll know what we need to do. And we can practice limiting our activity just enough that we can really get a taste of that subject. And that's one of the lessons of summer practice. I think if we didn't have summer practice, we would have to understand how to invent it. Because we need, you know, the winter is like breathing in, and the summer is like breathing out.

[28:20]

In the winter, we gather, and in the summer we give. And if we come for a few days, like I am right now, In the winter I give and in the summer I gather. Or I can't even tell you what's gathering and what's giving because I come here to gather and to give. And the people in the retreat, my co-teacher, assistant, friends who carry on the practice when I'm living someplace else, We unite. We're not separate. So there's a saying, a community for a day abiding forever. So I'd like to close with a case from the Blue Cliff Record about concentration, which I never understood this case was about concentration until today.

[29:32]

I always thought this was a case about letting go of concentration. But today I think it's a case about concentration. Let's see if I can find it. It's called Joshu and the Great Death. Ngo's introduction. I'll just read a sentence of it, or a couple sentences of it. When right and wrong are intermingled, even the holy ones cannot distinguish between them. When positive and negative are interwoven, even the Buddha fails to discern one from the other. So let's just say, another word for this introduction is like, someone asked the Dalai Lama, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, if he had any peers, and his answer was, Everybody.

[30:34]

You know, so that's a case about everybody. So the case is, Joshua asked Tosu, what if a person of the great death comes back to life again? The great death is, it's another name for awakening. The self and the universe. become one. Tosu responded, you can't go by night, you must go by daylight. So summer practice is daylight, not just through the seasons because the days are long this time of year, but also because it seems so obvious and you can't tell that it's awakening. But you can't go by night. You have to go by daylight.

[31:38]

That's our way. That's our practice. So, let's see, it's 921, 52, 53, 54. Is it time for people to go to sleep or can we have one question? What do you think? One question? One question or one comment? to close out this evening or not? Going. Going. Soul to everybody. We go to bed. Okay. Thank you very much for your attention.

[32:29]

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