Taking Care of Oneself, Others and Objects of the World

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SF-02752
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One-day sitting - Buddhist practice is just taking care of people, objects, spaces, body and mind.

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the
kimani

i had a young
wonderful week this week i was a concentration on study starting with monday ah
working with the rib and a small class he has
studying a book called the transmission of the light
enlightenment stories of the ancestors
and we happened to be talking about a guard you know
ah the story around his teacher transmitting to him
and then the rest of the week gary mcnabb was in town and i worked with him and rib on
studies related to divert transmission and we were looking at the notes from a lecture
from last year when nagasaki to be and roshi was here
lecturing for the tokyo better hasheem there was a month long session last year and he gave a series of talks so we were looking at those lectures and
ah
i was able to clear my schedule pretty much in lot of people helped with carpool driving and so it was actually able to concentrate for about
for dishes and this material
so out of that steady some
came up some things that i wanted to talk about with you today
and i think the the the main point
is illustrated for me by something that suzuki roshi his wife suzuki sensei or oak son as we used to color oak on is honorable wife what she said once about buddhist practice she said
buddhist practices just taking care of i think she said of people
at that particular time but heard whole life was just a manifestation of taking care of people objects spaces herbal own body and mind
she is to exercise every day and she's
she she eighty it
this year eighty five
she's getting up there in years and cheat
she's to exercise up in the page street but ready to the pastry building striding back and forth along those halls those of you have been there are wings of the building that are pretty long and she would
get a rhythm going swinging your arms and walked back and forth back and forth hit nothing would stop her from getting her daily exercise and she also would you know slap yourself and doctors talk to her knees i remember she would fake her knees for you know getting her up and down
the stairs and oh good nice very intimate close feeling with her body very kind and grateful ah close ness
so
our emphasis was taking care of people take care of object she was a t teacher she is a teacher and just to see her handle objects and do the flowers and
ah you know if you ever gave her gift it would always go on alter first she would never like oh it's this rip open the paper and you know see which brought her it would be placed first unaltered for buddha
or just including
big self it's not just for me that you give it's giving and receiving is all
ah not based on selfishness so she taught this way ah
and also i'm finding i want to wax eloquent me about exam it just in her
she taught me especially in how she cared for herself you'd see or other combing her long hair like mermaids are share this long she still does a dark hair that she'd were up in a ban she'd wash it can can sit out in the courtyard and comb out by the flowers and she looked like
like she was about fifteen or something you know
anyway our with an embarrassed unembarrassed ah
and a feeling of entitlement that this is how you take care of yourself
this is how one takes care of oneself
so was very inspiring and
i am i do feel like what happens often as we forget this very simple thing that the the secret of buddhism or the teaching of buddhism is taking care of
oneself and others which turns out if you take care of yourself you do take care of others and vice versa and all the objects of the world plants animals people's
and what happens often as we begin to get into a way of thinking
about what buddhist practice is that really kind of confused and it has to do with
ah you know endurance tests and looking a certain way just perfect and
ha
what else
a kind of
making oneself toll a certain kind of line toe the line i suppose told this line to
that
it is a confused way of understanding what what we're trying to do or what we're trying to teach
and yet it just happens very naturally i think the way or mind works to kind of fall into
a way of thinking that
pretty much beats up on ourselves
and this to me is
an unusually calls ourselves call ourselves name's about our not it
you know we don't have what it takes and maybe we should just quit while we're behind and ah
ah we're never going to be able to do this and just a certain kind of inner patter that down if it's very hard to break out of unless you actually said out loud to someone and they can
you know reflected back and then you kind of hear it and hear how mean it sounds and
so
so just remembering this simple kind of thing just taking care of things but we
it's often the fact that we don't know how to take care of ourselves or others or people's or plants and based on some idea about how it's supposed to be we kind of barrel on ahead
now nagasaki silicon where she also was saying
ah in these lectures that i was looking at
that it's not a matter understanding
and mine is not a a matter of having some great ability
either having it or not having is not a matter of that it's not a matter of some
great capacity
ah
it has to do with
why i want to look at my not so i say exactly what he said

not a matter of level or ability small or large capacity
it's a matter of doing one's best
now
ah
no one can make that also into a way of beating yourself up but i when i heard that it was very settling somehow because if it is a matter of capacity or ability or a certain kind of level of intelligence that
then if we don't have that kind of intelligence then we're forever outside of understanding buddhist practice or hum
manifesting it so it's it's very it's very harsh it's kind of a harsh
sentence really you know and also the for cancer angie
the universal ammunitions for zazen that we chant the morning there's one section that says so
intelligence or the lack of the intelligence or the lack of it between the sharp and the dull witted there's no distinction intelligence or lack of it is it's not a matter of that
but i do feel i do and i know others do begin to think that i one doesn't have what it takes
so it's a matter of doing one's best

now in this story there are reading about nagarjuna in this transmission of let the light on it talks about his teacher who we chant as copy mara dyer show nogueira junior dai osho copy merits also pronounced copy marla
maybe the japanese there's a trouble with the moloch i guess in sanskrit it's copied mala and in japanese it's copy mata di oh sure so ah
he was the fourteenth ancestor and
he went to visit a governor or minister and the minister one and him to stay but he brought up the fact that the buddha taught
that one practitioners should stay away from not they teach them but should stay away from kind of living the life of high government officials and kings and monarchs
if and when this high minister invited copy mila copy mara
to come and live with him he said no and brought up what the buddha had said about not living in close proximity with high government officials so he said well what about staying in this place in the mountains are kind of retreat and copy mara said that south
it's fine so he set off to this mountain retreat and on the way he encountered this giant python
i guess pythons and i really fat and really thick snakes we can only see them in the movies but it was right there in the mountains there on the road and he seemed totally undisturbed by this and just kept going walking on going towards it in the python and it came and wrap can even sir
circles around him and so what he did was
initiate the python into the buddhist teachings probably gave the python the precepts and the refuges in the three pure precepts in in the python just squirreled away in into on
the mountain vegetation
and can be mad at kept walking walking along and he came to this kind of a cave place and out from there came a man an older man dressed in a white robe and he am
set to cubby motto that
many many years ago he had been a monk
and he had been practicing ah
in a certain way inquired to he loved quietude kind of bliss states
so much so that when a novice a younger monk came and asked him questions about the dharma
this really annoyed him and bothered him you know and he kept very angry at this young novice coming to require a to inquire about the dharma
oh read what he said the sample
old man

ah
so
this is the next page here and here we go
so he told him in former times when i was a monk i very much enjoyed quietude and lived alone in the mountain force
and then this it was a novice monk or used to come and ask for instructions and i feeling it troublesome to reply produce thoughts of anger and and resentment so here's this kind of kid coming up and saying you know how do you doing and he produced these thoughts of anger and resentment and thought
he was just to be bother and when he died he became a python and lived in this cave that he just came out of for thousand years
and now i have a chance to meet you and have
we receive these initiations these initiation teachings and he was very grateful to our cabin mara
so this teaching story i feel are brings up two things one is kind of to pitfalls for a practitioner one is to be associated with
a lot of hoopla and meaning that the high government officials and the royal and one can be very caught up get caught up in that and lose one's way and the other pitfall is on the other sandwiches quietude and being very attached to
you know
bliss states mighty concentration states that are very wonderful and not wanna be bothered you know with
ah
questioners or
anybody who might disturb this quietude
so these are to this story illustrates these two pitfalls these two extremes really one is totally immersed in a very worldly life and the other is a hermit kind of hermit life where you don't want to be bother both of these are problems
so in our
looking at that for how that works in our life i feel like this does come up for people were they
they have a chance to be involved with
high government officials and so forth and it it's not that you don't come and teach i'm not saying that you don't offer dharma to anybody who wants to hear but it's a it's a certain
way of life that can pull you is very tasty it's very seductive
so did just watch for that if you ever have a chance to be involved and be very clear eyed about that and in terms of the quietude side and the bliss side that also is very seductive and i feel like we do have a chance here
here at green gulch and during a one day sitting to work with that kind of thing
and i for example
when when we're sitting
in thousand we come and we bowed or a seat in i recently read in a shinji which is the
the pure
admonitions for temple life it's server loose translation and in the section about
how the monks deport themselves comport themselves in the zendo talks about when you come to your place you bout we come to replace we bowed to r cushion actually what you're doing when i found out recently is that your bowing to it's not get your bow into this cushion although one does feel respect
checked for just having a place to sit and this
this puffy black thing or flat black think that is once place i think we do feel some respect and love for that but dumb ones really bowing to the people whores who are they are sitting off there's nobody sitting there it we bring to mind the other practitioners who said
but if there are people who are sitting there than when you come to bow your bowing to your place but actually to them and so the people on either side bow with you know what sometimes happens is
we don't even notice when that person who sat is coming to sit next to has come and we're just
ah ferrying enjoyably serve
settling in
in a kind of fun enjoyment of quietude you know and then we oh gee i wonder when they got here you know so or sometimes we noticed that they've arrived but we just do we just got settled here and do i have doing you know kind of can get those hands happen
some kind of reticence to just
bow so this to me this reminded me of this python guy who you know he's he's sitting thousand and as gave in somebody comes and whatever it is whatever comes either somebody ask your question how do you hold a commercial or whatever and you're standing there and joshua the service table and you don't
want to be bothered you know it's troublesome this kind of mind
that comes up when or
ah
when we feel like we wanted to stay the way it is you know to have to undo our mudra and make another boudreau for some reason it's a bother or that kind of mind will come up so i'm ah
offering this as a way to look at
throughout the day where there's a chance to let go of a certain state of mind a certain
ah
whatever the state of mind is be it you know really settled in wonderful or being irritated to be ready to let go of that and be ready for the next thing so we have a chance every time you sit down and your neighbour comes ah
how to be ready for the next thing
grasping things is basically delusion so grasping some blissful settled state is also delusion grasping anything his delusion
or when were you know an oreo key when we're or eating and inward and then the server comes by to pick up commercial you know and you hardly have enough time to finish anyway why can't they just pick it up and go on their way and me alone
that kind of mind is very young
well what happened to this guy was he was when he died he was born as a python right there's stories like that being reborn as a fox or python
so
so also in these lectures from knows accuracy was this description of the bind of buddha the mind of a buddha what is it how would one describe it and
so the japanese for it is g he key shot more real shin ji hee key shop more your shin and what that translates as is
this is a description so get ready a description of the mind the buddhist bind k and the first character g means love and it's it's the love that you have for a baby or a child
now if you if you can picture
some child that you know or baby or sabrina some child at green culture and this the love that you have for a child that has no kind of i'm wanting anything back ah or designs upon
that person it's it's very
kind of free flowing love the love we have for a job that's g
and he g he keyshot your shin ji he the he is
a certain kind of our i don't want to get this mixed up worry or concern or compassion also that you have for a child

worry concern compassion the same that you have for a child so if you see
a child who you know has difficulty or
is heading for trouble or you just very naturally arises out of you some concern or warrior watch out for them are some compassion for them
so that's a he so we have g this love for chow he the compassion worry concern very naturally g hickey and the key is joy joyful mind
also in relationship to a child the joy that you have when you see a happy child or when you see if you have your own children when you see them happy this wonderful vicarious join a picture those of you who know sabrina live it to be pictured watching sabrina laughing or smiling and joy
that you have just to see her crack up the way she does
that spontaneous joy that you feel
is this
element
that's the key t he key shot in the shop
is a means giving but a kind of giving that's
i just throwing everything away just giving everything
to someone
holding nothing back us and maybe you can think of some time when you just one wanting give something to somebody everything
a move means no more yo mean measure we always measure so it's like without measure are beyond measure limitless
and the shin is the mind or heart mind so the description of buddhist mind is
loving concern
and joyfully
giving away
without limit mind that kind of mind

and when i heard this on it had very little to do with the certain kind of mine nets you know exacting am
keno
ha
a kind of tight and narrow and
irritated him it just it it had a very different feeling than that this and i i also vote because of the a definitions used that it wasn't something so far beyond my ken are so out there so beyond anything i
could ever even conceive of it actually
you know i can call up the love i have for a child or joy at seeing a happy child
this is something that's that i feel we're that everyone can be close to this is not something way out there reserved for some being on the tenth stage of the idea you know we we know this by walking into the diner i'm seeing sabrina
laughing away know we feel that
kind of joy
so cultivating this kind of mind is i feel also oak son was talking about this taking care of things this kind of mine is some the teaching of buddhism
not to go back to this story of cubby marry after he met this python man he said are there any more
sages you know in the forest hearings are so that the mantle down up the mountain peace there is someone whose dwelling with the naga has the novice or these kind of serpent beings and you might go and you know question him
so he goes along little further and he comes to
know gardena
who
was their dwelling in the forest on this is really before a gardener was a buddhist practitioner he had a lot of different
what shall i say practices and accomplishments in lot of different fields in fact a lot of different lineages other than buddhist lineages look to the garage is one of their ancestors
so he comes upon the garage now
and
ah
nick it came out and greeted the buddhist master saying the deep mountains are lonely and desolate a place where nagas dwell why have you a great sage a supremely honorable one bench your steps here
and copy melissa i'm not the supremely honorable one i have come to visit the wise man so he took a kind of very young
kind of even minded kind of humble
stand in relationship to this person that he came to visit nick arjuna and the garden of thought silently this is the interesting part of the story he thought to himself has this teacher attained certainty and clearly illuminated the i of enlightenment is he a great sage continuing the true way so he's the kind of size
zing him up who are wonder is this guy really kind of tops and has he you know if are going to test bunion what's going on here and kind of a little bit jockeying for position whose he in her mind relationship and who's this guy
and copy but he thought this to himself he didn't see it in copy mala said even though you are speaking in your heart i already know it in my mind just take care of renunciation of worldly ties why worry about whether i'm a sage or not
so he kind of file
i feel he kind of file
what is this i'm wondering who i am and gauging you know in the falklands are saying it says when you step into the xander you should leave behind the gauging of all thoughts and views you know this kind of comparative you know how do i measure up according to that person this person this comparative
gauging and having designs just leave it outside the door and just come in to the zendo and sit without this kind of mine and here's the guardian kind of trying to size him up engage is the true sage racing know
well as a and it reflects upon the pie pan man who you know the novice comes as with these questions of of a beginner
that was
you know irritating and troublesome so
to drop that kind of mine and just somebody rise with the question you meet them you know and and if what's appropriate is to be silent or appropriate is to send them on their way or whatever you do the appropriate thing i'm not saying you have to answer every single question
and or relate to every single person a certain way but to meet them
if you're gauging gee i wonder if they're really attain some were that's not exactly meeting them that's kind of trying to get a little foothold anna and a position whereby you can you know
i don't know what have a
have the one of upmanship may be here
so meeting someone there's no necessarily there's not a formula for meeting but
if you're before the meeting trying to size them up you've already miss them by you know
a million miles
so cubby mother
got it you know however he gotta he he said i hear you speaking in your heart you know but sometimes you can be with someone in it really feel with their
say are you can catch something so i'm not saying that he was omniscient or could read minds or anything but he had some intuition about nick arjuna and said don't worry about whether i'm a sage and not just rena renounce the world just be a renunciate and that after that nygaard you know
repented and became a renunciate and copy malo ordained him and the community of novice
also received the buddhist precepts so all these serpents you see the precepts along with the guardian and non a gardener became you know sometimes called the second buddha and he became a great great teacher
so
for me this teaching story you know so we have a number of things in this story one is to not be seduced by the things of the world
the other is to not be seduced by quietude and and then the third is this point or about a in which is
just drop your designs on and just meet people and track don't try to
mediate between just meet
ah
so
later on
one of the guardian is main teachings was
about and what he said that the definition of buddha nature now i just gave this g he key shamu your shin and the gardener later this is after well his main teaching was
to realize buddha nature
you must first get rid of selfish pride
so in order to realize ji ki he
gee he key shamu mario shin you have to get rid of selfish pride and i think nick arjuna had this kind of pride when he met with copy marla
i'm trying to
figure out if this guy was you know the right stuff or not
so later that's what he taught this is how are you
understand buddha nature understand buddhist mind is by dropping self pry getting rid of your own self pride

so
many of the practices or i should say all of the practices
that are offered in a practice placer monastery or
have to do with dropping self pride and we don't like it you know
a lot of things we don't like
oftentimes having to follow the schedule or be a certain place at a certain time on the one hand sometimes it feels marvelous and limitless freedom within those forums and at other times we rail against it rail against it and
but all of these practices point you know especially when we're railing towards our self pride and our attachment and grasping after the way we want things to be
so in order to have this
you can be filled with
this description of buddhist this loving ah
our concern and limitless giving
and joy
we self pride will get in the way of that you know it will it will block us
now if you study self pride
you can enter right there
so when i say getting rid of self pride i don't mean you try to kind of put it in a garbage disposal or something you bring it forth and steady it whenever it comes up you know when you don't want to put your hands up and gosh show for the person next to you you've studied there
right there and and you can drop it there too but it's it's not from trying to trying to get rid of i don't want to make that
be confused
make that confusing
so you meet whatever comes up and if it's self pride you meet that and that that's what nagarajan did when it was pointed out he met it and you know received ordination right then and there
and then taught how about was in the way but you have to meet at first you can't kind of skip it
go around
so i feel about one day sitting that this is this it's you know sometimes we we feel about it that this wonderful data to sit quietly and
kind of cool out you know and i think sometimes one day sittings are like that but not always you know there's irritation there is troublesome people there's food you don't like there is a lot of forms that are discombobulating and so
there's all that too but it's this chance you know you have a chance for that's all you need to do is to meet that aspect of your life and whatever it is whatever be it
loving joy that comes up or irritation to study it very thoroughly
so we have a whole day to do this without any other concern really you know besides washing pots and and serving food pretty much
that's all we need to do now that i have a
i don't have a watch on how we doing for time
ten of eleven okay i want to tell a story about this is an italian folk tale that illustrates
it reminds me of this pipe and man who are dropped
who am i got so angry because he was annoyed
by this troublesome novice this is a story called lose your temper and lose your money and it doubt it has to i'll tell an abbreviated version of a bit it's these three sons receive their father's inheritance and they divided in three and three bags of money in the father died and the first one wanted to set
often the oldest kind of make some more money and make his fortune so he met up with them
i think it was a priest in a a a church catholic priest lots of these a time for it does have priests in there and he said yeah you can come work for me be a field hand but listen what would you like to do a little wager if i've got some money to and if you about this if you lose your
your money and if i lose my temper all forfeit mine is it a deal and the guess it will yeah that's a pretty good deal chirac you know i'm pretty mild mannered guy so he said okay so you work in the fields they had dinner that night and the servant he was serving them and you said so you go out in the fields and you don't have to come on the way and for breakfast and lunch will bring the food out you so
won't disturb you so he said that's fine so you went out to the feeling he's home and kind of like we do early on wednesday mornings hauling away on and then it kind of got to be dinner will watch kind of get it because it's took place a long time ago
time for breakfast you know and where are they you know is that servant and well i kept calling and a cat in the sense was risen and use hungry and nobody came with his breakfast well all right so i guess you know i can wait until lunch and dinner time came lunchtime and a servant in show up nobody came you know well by
this time it was hot he'd been working all day where was his lunch you know already
finally it was evening time he still worked and finally the costs saw the server coming oh and she came with a bottle of wine and this pot of soup oh i'm so sorry and blah blah blah i just didn't have time and data so he tries to take the lid off the soup and it's stuck it stuck like cement and it won't come off me and it
the rules the soup thing and then it tries to open a bottle of wine and that's also stuck in there like with glue and he can't take off and he just loses it totally and screams and brings the comes marching back in a yells at the priest and how dare you a man's gotta work in a man needs food
like that man he said in looks like guy you lost your bed and he stormed out of then left his bag of money in the servant and the priest just laughed until they cried it was just the funniest thing
to them he his money so the the old some oldest son came back and told his story in his brother said all i'm going to try my luck so he heard the whole story but he went out there and the same exact thing happened he was waiting for the food and waiting when they finally came with the pot it was stuck and he just
ah he just and he lost all his money to within the youngest several let me try my
i haven't he said i'm going to get back all your money i'm going to get his money and get yours back to so he shows up and signs on as this field hand and that night at dinner he pocketed as much brand cheese and stuff that he could they didn't notice and then he went out to work made income for breakfast and that was all right with him he had a swell
munchies with them and then he went to a note a farmer near by and got something to drink and
and they didn't show up at lunchtime and my he got a i have more food and he still hadn't got some more from this farmer and when they finally showed up he said oh thank you thank you oh that's right don't worry about me it's okay rhythm late and took his home and he carefully pry it off the lid of the soup and eight the soup and then he took the bottle and smash the
top off and drink his wine and perfectly happy though servant came back to the priest answer oh this guy told the story they didn't know what to do
and the story goes that which i i won't go into but he ends up having the priest lose his temper big time and got all his money and all his
the money from selling all his pigs and he sold all his sheep and he he did all sorts of things and finally the priest lost his temper
so anyway we can enchanted david talks about if you lose your temper your bodhisattva vow the vow to save all beings and realize the boot away and so forth you know
working with your desires all that is lost in an instant if you
you know get angry like this so getting angry is pretty serious business and especially if you get angry at another bodhisattva that's
very difficult so it just like this guy
became a python for thousand years because he got angry at this person who is seeking the dharma and you know we have this precept
ah
a disciple of the buddha is not possessive of anything and used we used to say is not possessive of anything even the truth maybe even the dharma so you don't keep the dharma close and you know
not you are free you know someone asked for dharma you are freely give you freely try to answer the questions or meet them giving dharma through body speech and mind magpi some action to meet them so anger
ah especially when someone's asking for instruction or about the buddha's way
it is very difficult
for the one who was withholding
so i think the last thing i wanted to say is it's something that just came upon this and wanted to pass it onto in the the lunch chant when we say
there's a separate chant done by using the head student or the know or that person who is leading the chance which is this food of three virtues and six tastes we offer to buddha dharma sangha and all life in every world so i just came upon what those three virtues were to say to anyone ever come upon that before i've always wondered what the
was three virtues are and according to their nirvana sutra the three virtues of this food is that it's soft
pure and made according to dharma
so
just wanted to get you a little preview for your lunch chant
also the sixth tastes are
bitter sour sweet spicy the bitter sour sweet spicy mild yeah
and salty yeah so mild as a waiver to change it now so we have soft pure and made according to derm of food that's come from our or