This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. This morning, it's been a while since I've given a talk at Green Gulch. And... So what I've chosen to talk about is something that we can all relate to, I hope. I'm sure. I'm going to comment on a talk of my teacher, our old teacher, Suzuki Roshi. And we named this talk The Zen of Going to the Restroom.

[01:08]

We have many zins of this and that, but this is the best one. This is called The Zen of Relief. You know, the second noble truth is there is a way to end suffering. And it's called letting go or giving up. So he talks about many things here. And he starts off by saying, how do you feel right now? And he kind of chuckles. He had a wry sense of humor. He says, I don't know how you feel, but I feel as if I had just come out of the restroom.

[02:11]

As I am pretty old, he was 50, probably 65 or something. I go to the restroom often. Even when I was young, I went to the restroom more often than others. And sometimes I had an advantage because of that. When I went to Eheji Monastery and sat Tangario, I could go to the restroom without a guilty conscience because I had to. I was so happy to go to the restroom. I think that going to the restroom is a good way to look at our practice. Tangario... For those who have been to Tassajara, students who have been to Tassajara during a practice period will know that Tongario is a period of five days. It's the entrance exam to a practice period.

[03:15]

It's the doorway through the transition from the ordinary world into the monastic world. And you sit for five days without getting up. Well, you get up from time to time. You know, you get up to do service and... But you don't... There's no walking meditation. It's all just sitting all day until about nine o'clock at night. From four in the morning to nine o'clock. Without moving, basically. And... but you can go to the bathroom. So, this is what Shizu Guruji is talking about. He said, it was very convenient for me because I could go to the bathroom without feeling guilty. Because when you're sitting there, all kinds of things come to mind. How am I going to get out of this?

[04:17]

Why did I do this? I'll never do this again. Maybe I need to go to the bathroom. I think I do need to go to the bathroom. So now he's going to talk about Zen Master Uman, a very famous Zen master in the Tang Dynasty in China. Zen Master Uman may have been the first to make a connection between our practice and the restroom. What is your practice? What is Buddha? There's a question that someone asked him. What is Buddha? Suzuki Ryoshi says, what is your practice? That's his kind of feeling about this, but it's a kind of koan, famous koan. What is Buddha? Someone asked Master Uman, and he answered, Suzuki Roshi says, toilet paper.

[05:18]

But that's not really, they didn't have toilet paper in the Tang Diamond screen in China. It's called Kanshiketsu, which translates as something like a shit-wiping stick. People used whatever they, you know, I'm sure they had various ways of, since everybody does this at least once a day in the world, people come up with ways of dealing with this. So it's called a shit wiping stick. So that's what he said. And since then, many Zen masters are thinking about it and practicing with this koan. What is Buddha? Wow. I'm glad that I'm Muslim. So, what is that? What does it mean by that? That's a koan, and you can ponder that, which is very good.

[06:25]

What did he mean by that? So, Suzuki Roshi, here's his commentary, actually. He says, in our everyday life, we eat many things, good and bad, fancy and simple. We're always eating. Matter of fact, Master Buddha Gosha says all the time we are continuously eating. We're eating with our eyes. We're eating with our nose. We're eating with our ears. We're eating with our mouth. We're eating with our with our touch food we're continually eating food for all these senses and we keep accumulating food but we don't know how to stay non-attached to what we eat so we create attachment through seeing through smelling through taste through touch and so forth and uh

[07:35]

So we're continually inundated with this kind of weightiness. And so we have sometimes mental constipation, emotional constipation. How do we free ourselves from this problem? Maybe we don't want to. One time she said, it's okay as long as you like it. But when you don't like it, then you have a problem. And when you like it too much and don't like it too much, that's the biggest problem. So in the everyday life, we eat many things, good and bad, fancy and simple, tasty and not so tasty. And later, we need to go to the restroom. Similarly, after filling our mind, we practice Zazen. Otherwise, our thinking will eventually become...

[08:38]

very unhealthy. It is necessary for us to make our mind clear before we study something. It is like drawing something on white paper. If you do not use clean white paper, you can't draw what you want. So it is necessary to go back to your original state where you have nothing to see and nothing to think about. Then you will understand what you're doing. So he says, Zazen, is when you sit zazen, you come back to the original state. The mind is like, he says white paper, which is usually, that's the term that's used, but you can also say like a clear sky. So there's nothing left over in your mind when you do something. the essence of Zen practice, what we call shikantaza.

[09:43]

Shikantaza means just doing, just being present and arising on this moment. We say the whole universe arises at once on each moment, just as it is, moment after moment. And in order to experience reality, we have to let go of last moment and not worry about next moment in order to be truly present. There was a, you know, the cartoonist, Miss Chast, who has cartoons in the New Yorker, really good ones. And one of my favorites was called the mental baggage claim, where people are getting up.

[10:51]

You already know all about it already. So they're standing at the baggage claim, and this woman says something like, oh, there's... My suitcase of resentments against my sister for being so pretty. And then the other one says, yeah, and there's my suitcase full of anger and hatred toward blah, blah, blah. So we do have our mental baggage. And maybe we'd better just let it keep going around and walk away. So he's talking about zazen is to come back to clear mind. This is what zazen. Zazen is a lot of things. If I say this is what it is, that's true. But every explanation is not what zazen is.

[11:53]

So you have to bear with that. So zazen is coming back to clear mind. It's not like there are no thoughts, because thoughts... are continually bubbling up in our mind, even when we're asleep. So the function of thinking mind is to think whether we want to or not. Thoughts come up uncalled for and called for. So to let the thoughts come and go, it's called sometimes looking at the scenery of your life as you move along. And we become attached to the scenery often. Matter of fact, all the time. So we carry so much attachment around with us. How to actually appear new and fresh at each moment. When we say to be present on each moment, well, of course, we're present on each moment.

[13:00]

But meaning is to arise fresh and new. on this moment without baggage so that we are perfectly free to arise on the next moment knowing exactly what to do. Of course we carry over. We can't help that. Our lives have continuity but our lives are also completely still. what we experience for the most part is the movement of our life one frame into the next but what we miss is the stillness within the movement Zazen is the stillness within the movement to experience total stillness total stillness is like basic reality the blank sheet of paper if you want to write something

[14:05]

you take a blank sheet of paper. If you want to paint a picture, you take a piece of paper. So our lives are projected onto this screen, which is empty. But we don't notice the empty screen, even though it's the most basic part of our life. So we're always scribbling on the screen instead of really writing something wonderful and poetic, meaningful. We just get carried along by our karma. So mostly we're just being pulled along by our karma, doing things we don't want to do, being a victim to our own propensities and attachments. So how do we get out of that? So he says, the more you practice zazen, the more you will be interested in your everyday life.

[15:13]

You will discover that what is necessary and what is not, and what to correct and what to emphasize. So by practice, you will know how to organize your life. So this is to observe your situation accordingly and accurately and to clear your mind accordingly. and begin from your original starting point. This is like going to the restroom. So zazen is like going to the mental restroom, the emotional restroom. Of course, emotion and thought is there, but there's no attachment. So you have the freedom to be totally present. as a fresh new person, moment by moment. People say, well, how do I practice when I'm not on the cushion? Master Dogen called that Ginjo Koan, the Koan of our everyday life.

[16:24]

Moment by moment, we're faced with, what do I do now? And what is the basis for what I'm doing? creativity arises from stillness. At night, everything quiets down. People go to sleep, for the most part. And there's this great stillness which descends. And then in the morning, everybody gets up and starts moving around. And the movement comes out of the stillness. And then that night, it comes back to stillness. So from stillness, activity arises. We need to go to sleep, right? Everybody needs to go to sleep. And that's returning to stillness. So all the time we're returning to stillness. When we practice, stillness is always there within the activity.

[17:30]

And zazen itself is great, called great dynamic activity, within stillness. So stillness and activity are two aspects of the same thing. Stillness is dynamic activity as stillness. Sometimes you say, I can hear this fantastic stillness when I'm in the woods someplace because it's so quiet. you can feel the dynamism of quietness. And in our activity, it's like the cyclone. The center of the cyclone is perfectly still, and yet the activity around it is dynamic. This is like, you say, when you spin a top.

[18:34]

top you spin on the floor and it's going around but you don't see it going around because it's so still but if you were to touch it it goes spinning across the floor and that dynamic stillness is a perfect example of zazen and how stillness is the basic activity of the basis of activity. So our culture is based on the idea of gaining or accumulating something. This is part of our problem. We have developed a culture of accumulation. Sometimes I think if you have a table anywhere, and you leave it alone for a day, an empty table, pretty soon there'll be something on it.

[19:42]

Maybe more than one thing on it. The other day I cleared my desk for the first time in about five years. And you could actually see the desk. So science, for instance, is the accumulation of knowledge. That's not an accurate. description, but it's a description for his purposes. Science, for instance, is the accumulation of knowledge. I don't know that a modern scientist is greater than a scientist in the 16th century. The difference is that we have accumulated our scientific knowledge. So that's a good point, and at the same time, dangerous. We're in danger of being buried under all of our accumulated knowledge. Did you ever upgrade your computer? It used to be so simple. My bank, when I go to exchange money from one account to another at the bank, I can't do it anymore on the telephone because that simple little way of doing that is no longer there.

[21:02]

So anyway. It's like trying to survive without going to the restroom. We are already swimming in the pond of polluted water and air, and we talk about this pollution, and at the same time, we hardly survive the pollution of our knowledge. It's really true when you think about our atomic energy. Atomic energy is called clean energy. Whoa. On the surface, it looks clean, but underneath, there's no place to put the poop. And then it will kill us. The more we keep producing radioactive material, it's just going to kill us. Remember Jack Benny? A lot of you probably don't, but...

[22:05]

Jack Benny was a comedian in the 30s and he was, you know, had this act of being stingy. You know, he's a stingy guy. And he says, somebody cost a nickel? So one day a robber came up and put a gun in his waist and he said, your money or your life Well, come on, I don't have a lot of time here. Your money or your life? I'm thinking, I'm thinking. I think that's where we are, actually. We'd rather destroy the earth. We'd rather make money than destroy the earth. And we'd rather make money and destroy the earth than not do that. So each one of us knows how to go to the restroom without attaching to the poop in our bodies.

[23:16]

I'm going to say what he didn't say. He's very, you know, Japanese and doesn't want to use these words, but he said there's something in our body, meaning the poop. So when we realize that we already have everything, We will not be attached to anything. So the whole universe belongs to us. Why do we have to own it? American Indians didn't own things. In many places in the world, people don't own things until we enlighten them into owning things. Actually, we have everything. Even without going to the moon, we have the moon. When we try to go to the moon, it means that we think the moon is not ours. In Japan, they used to teach children that the moon is you are the moon.

[24:26]

The moon is not just something up there in the sky, but the moon is actually you. You and the moon are not two different things. They don't do that anymore. So our mind, as Buddha told us, is one with everything. Within our mind, everything exists. If we understand things in this way, then we will understand our activity. To study something is to appreciate something, and to appreciate something is to be non-attached from things. When we become attached to things, everything, I'm sorry, non-attached, unattached to things, then everything will be ours. Our practice is to realize this kind of big mind. In other words, to go beyond each being, including ourselves, and let our self work as it does. I think what he's talking about here is not trying too hard, but letting things work together in an easy way.

[25:32]

If we try to direct things too much, it becomes unnatural. How we allow things to work together is very important. It's like when you make a stew or a soup with a lot of ingredients, it's good to let them interact with each other on their own. for a while, you know, to mature, actually. We are very much afraid of death. But when we are mature enough, we understand that death is something that should happen to us. If you die when you are young, that's a terrible thing. But if I die, being an old man, not so old though, he's only about

[26:38]

something. If I die, it's not such a terrible thing, either for me or for you, because I am mature enough to die. I understand that my life pretty well, and what it is to live one day, and what it is to live one year, and what it is to live 60 or 100 years. So anyway, when you become mature and experienced having eaten many things in this life, I think you will be happy. just die as you are happy to go to the restroom. That's kind of interesting. It happens like that. So often old people really feel that they're, you know, have done it. They've eaten their fill of the world and that's enough. I haven't got there yet. An old person is 80 or 90 doesn't have many problems.

[27:40]

Physically, old people may suffer, but that suffering is not always a big thing, as big a thing as you may think. So he talks about all this. So there's some limit to our capacity to endure physical suffering, and mentally there's a limit to our capacity, but we think it's limitless. We have limitless suffering because we have limitless desires. That kind of desire, as Buddha says, creates our problems. We are accumulating our problems one after another with limitless desire, and so we have bottomless fear. Fear. So much of our society is driven by fear. People who need to have a lot of power, have a lot of fear. People who need to accumulate a lot of wealth must have a lot of fear.

[28:45]

Why would you need all that if you didn't think it was going to keep you from being fearful? You know, Abhisattva Roshi once gave a talk about money. He said, money is not good or bad, but it's like the blood that runs through your veins. It's like the blood that runs through society keeps society going. It's good. We decided to use it in this way. But when it's not reaching everywhere, it's like money is to society, like blood is to your body. And when it's not reaching everywhere, then the body gets sick. When it's not equally distributed, the body becomes unhealthy. And when the wealth is not distributed, the society becomes unhealthy. There's this imbalance. And all societies have always suffered from this since time immemorial and will continue to suffer from this.

[29:54]

But still, we should understand it. And even though it's impossible to change, we have to change it anyway. So we always do the impossible things. This is called foolish wise men filling up the well with snow. You just keep filling it up. I don't have to explain that. So actually, we know how to clear up our mind and we will not have as many, if we know how to clear up our mind, we won't have as many problems. Just as we go to the restroom every day, we practice zazen every day in the same way. In monastic life, the best practice is to clean the restroom. You know, during ango, our practice period, there's what we call the shuso. And the shuso is the head monk who shares the abbot's seat during that period.

[31:00]

And the job, the daily job of the Shuso is to clean the toilets. At Tatsahara now they do the compost, maybe as well as cleaning the toilets, the public toilets. So that's considered the highest job, the highest, for the person who is in this position to clean the toilets. So wherever you go and whichever monastery you go to, you will always find a special person cleaning the restroom. We do not clean our restroom just because it's dirty. Whether it's clean or not, we clean the restroom until we can do it without any idea of clean or dirty. So we don't make those judgments. You know, in Asian society, it's said, The right hand is for eating and the left hand is for wiping.

[32:01]

We don't usually pay attention to that, but it's an interesting kind of thing. In a sense, that's clean and dirty, right? But what's clean and what's dirty? It's just a judgment that we make. So to not avoid something that we think is dirty. And not to just clean just because we think something's dirty. We do something just because it's our practice, which is to withhold judgment about good and bad and clean it dirty. So when this is so, it is actually our zazen practice. To extend this practice to everyday life may seem difficult, but actually it's quite simple. Our laziness makes it difficult, that's all. So that is why we put emphasis on endurance to continue our practice.

[33:05]

There should not be any cessation of practice. Practice should go on and on moment after moment. So some students who practice Zazim very hard are liable to ignore their everyday life. Excuse me. If someone attains enlightenment, they may say, I have attained enlightenment under a great Zen master, and so whatever I do is okay. I have complete freedom from good and bad, and so forth. Only those who do not have an enlightenment experience stick to the idea of good and bad. So someone may say that, because I got enlightened, I don't have to, why should I do anything? But speaking in this way is to ignore everyday life. They do not take care of their life, and they do not know how to organize their life or know what kind of rhythm they should have. To know the rhythm of our lives is to understand what we are doing. It is necessary to see our activity with a clear mind through Zazen experience.

[34:07]

So this is just kind of a way of talking about continuous practice. For a Zen student, we must have continuous practice, not just sitting on the cushion, not just... Enlightenment is not such a big deal. If it was such a big deal, you know, we just accept enlightenment, just like everything else. Why is it so special? Actually, there's nothing that special. Because we think it's special, Everything else looks unspecial. And what's really important is daily practice, moment by moment. That's what's really important. How you actually do something is what he's talking about.

[35:10]

And to know the rhythm. The rhythm, you know, we're kind of creatures of habit. So we create one kind of rhythm or another in our lives, even though our life is maybe chaotic, that's just a different kind of rhythm. But to create a rhythm so that we can practice is what he's talking about. So he said, I came to America because in Japan I had too many problems. I don't think that's really true, but... But I'm not sure, but perhaps that's why I came to America. When I was in Japan, I didn't practice Zazen as I do here. Now I have very different problems than I had in Japan. And even though I'm practicing Zazen with you, my mind is like a garbage can. Even though I am in America, which is called the free country, my mind is like a garbage can.

[36:13]

I am a Japanese, and I have many Japanese friends here, so I have the problems most Japanese have. And in addition, to other problems that I have because of you guys. That's my agenda. Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here. But when I know what I'm doing clearly without any overestimation or underestimation, very honestly and truly, I do not have much burden on my mind. You know, when you know what you're doing without overestimating or underestimating, that's called humility. That's my definition of humility. Not thinking too much of yourself and not thinking too little of yourself, but knowing right where you are in each moment, knowing where you are, who you are, and how you are, without fooling yourself. So Shishu's Zazen practice essentially has been a great help.

[37:14]

If I hadn't been practicing Zazen, I wouldn't have survived in the way I did. I started my practice when I was quite young, but even more, I started my practice in this true sense after I came to San Francisco. Because Buddhism had been practicing Zen in Japan for 700 years, 750 years. There's a way of doing things, and you get stuck into a certain kind of rut. But when he came to America, everything was totally different, and he had to wake up to what was here. And that's what he appreciated. And he always appreciated being here and practicing with these naive children called American Zen students. Well, not just naive children, no matter how old we were. And that's what he really liked.

[38:15]

because we didn't have any baggage. We didn't have any Buddhist baggage. We didn't have any Zen baggage. So he could allow the Zen that was within us to come forward. He never tried to stuff anything down us, but always tried to nurture the practice that was within us to fruition. So he says, you may have a pretty difficult time with me. I know that. What I'm doing is challenging for you. But this effort to understand things from another angle is not possible without communicating with people who are brought up in a different cultural background. To understand things just from a self-centered personal or national viewpoint is our weakness.

[39:18]

Japanese weakness is to see things from a national viewpoint. It's a big problem for us and them. When our culture comes to this point, the only way to make it healthy is to participate in the cultural activities of various human beings. In other words, blend with people and let go of your stuff. Then you will understand yourself better as I understand myself and Zazen better since I came to San Francisco. When you understand yourself better and others better, you can just be yourself. Just to be a good American is to be a good Japanese, and just to be a good Japanese is to be a good American. Because we stick to Japanese or American way, our mind becomes like a waste paper basket. If you notice this point, you will understand how important it is to practice Azen. Fortunately or unfortunately, even though you don't like it, we need to go to the restroom the stinky restroom. I'm sorry, but I think we have to go to the restroom as long as we live.

[40:21]

If I were younger, I would sing a Japanese folk song right now about the restroom. But when I think about the cultural difficulties of the Mideast, like somebody's got to give up. Somebody's got to go to the restroom because it really stinks over there. And here. Okay. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving. by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[41:25]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:29]

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