Then the wakeful one All-Pervasive Knowledge asked Manjusri, who was open to Openness, "How should wakeful ones unfold activities of body, speech, and mind without fault? How should they unfold activities of body, speech, and mind that do not harm? How should they unfold blameless activities of body, speech, and mind? How should they unfold invulnerable activities of body, speech, and mind? How should they unfold activities of body, speech, and mind which do not fall back? How should they unfold unshakable activities of body, speech, and mind? How should they unfold excellent activities of body, speech, and mind? How should they unfold unblemished activities of body, speech, and mind? How should they unfold stainless activities of body, speech, and mind? How should they unfold activities of body, speech, and mind that are guided by perfect knowing? 

"How should they unfold arising in the right circumstances, among good people, with complete physical capacities and clear mindfulness, understanding, complete in conduct, fearlessness, and awareness? 

"How should they unfold excellent, foremost, peerless, immeasurable, incalculable, inconceivable, incomparable, unfathomable and inexpressible investigation? 

"How should they unfold the strength of good roots, of aspiration, skillful means, the power of the recognition of context and content; the five strengths: confidence, thoroughness, mindfulness, harmony, and perfect knowing; and the four bases of subtle perception: determination, consciousness, effort, investigation? 

"How should they unfold skill in discerning the elements, aggregates. and sense bases, skill in understanding interdependent emergence, skill in understanding the three conditional realms of desire, form, and nothingness, and skill in understanding the three measures of past, present, and future? 

"How should they thoroughly practise the seven factors of awakening: mindfulness, investigation, exertion, joyfulness, calm, concentration, and equanimity? How should they unfold openness, signlessness, non-obsessiveness? How should they fulfill the perfections: generosity, integrity, flexibility, exertion, practice, and perfect knowing? How should they fulfill kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity? 

"How should they unfold the energy of knowing what is true and what is not, the energy of knowing the consequences of events, the energy of knowing the inclinations of beings, the energy of knowing the various styles of beings, the energy of knowing the capacities of beings, the energy of knowing the destinations of all paths of practice, the energy of knowing the obscurations, deviations, and clarification of all practices and meditative states, the energy of knowing one's own past existences, the energy of knowing future existences, and the energy of knowing the ending of all outflows? 

"How should they always gain the protection, respect, and support of shining sovereigns, dragon sovereigns, sovereigns of the forest spirits, sovereigns of celestial musicians, sovereigns of violent shining beings, sovereigns of bird-like creatures, sovereigns of horse-headed beings, sovereigns of serpentine creatures, sovereigns of humans, and sovereigns of the highest beings? 

"How should they be a reliance and liberator, a refuge and resort, a lamp and a light, an illuminator and a guide, a supreme and universal leader for all sentient beings? 

"How should they become foremost and greatest, excellent and supreme, sublime and most wonderful, highest and unexcelled, incomparable and peerless among all sentient beings?" 

Manjusri said to All-Pervasive Knowledge, "Excellent, child of the Awakened Ones! Your question has arisen from the aspiration to benefit many, to bring peace to many, out of concern for the world, to benefit and gladden celestial and human beings. Child of the Awakened Ones, if wakeful ones use their minds skillfully, they can unfold all supreme qualities, can have unobstructed understanding of all the Teachings of Awakening, can remain on the Path of the Buddhas of the three measures of time without straying from it even while living in the midst of sentient beings, can comprehend the characteristics of all things, cut through all contraction and fulfill all that is expansive. They will be excellent in embodiment like Samantabhadra, they will be able to fulfill all of their vows, will be free in all ways, and will be guides for all sentient beings. How should they use their minds so as to unfold all these supreme wonderous qualities? 

Wakeful ones who are at home should raise the aspiration, 

"May all beings

Realize the nature of 'home' is empty
And release its limitations." 

In serving their parents, 

"May all beings

Serve the Awakened,

Sheltering and nourishing everyone." 

When with spouses and children, 

"May all beings

Be unbiased toward everyone
And always release clinging." 

When attaining their goals, 

"May all beings

Pull out the arrow of craving
And realize utter serenity." 

On festive occasions 

"May all beings
Enjoy Reality,

Realizing amusement is not real." 

If in the rooms of palaces, 

"May all beings

Enter the highest life,

Always free of the stain of craving." 

If putting on adornments, 

"May all beings

Release false embellishments
And come to abide in Reality." 

When ascending a balcony, 

"May all beings

Tower as Reality,

Seeing the panorama of everything." 

When giving something away, 

"May all beings

Be able to release everything
With hearts free of clinging." 

When in gatherings or crowds, 

"May all beings

Release compounded things

And unfold knowing the nature of all knowns." 

If in danger and difficulty, 

"May all beings

Have freedom,

And be always unobstructed." 

When they move past householder's life, 

"May all beings

Have no hindrance in 'leaving home,'
And their hearts be free." 

Entering the monastery,

"May all beings
Display the various standards
Of being without struggle." 

Going to advisors and teachers, 

"May all beings

Skillfully attend to their teachers
And practice the ways of virtue." 

Requesting ordination, 

"May all beings

Reach the phase of 'no turning back,'
And their intelligence be unhindered." 

Shedding the clothing of householders, 

"May all beings

Cultivate roots of expansiveness
Free from the yoke of wrong action." 

When shaving their hair, 

"May all beings

Leave behind self-grasping forever
And enter into no birth and no death." 

Donning monastic robes, 

"May all beings

Have stainless intelligence

And fulfill the Way of the Great Sage." 

When they formally 'leave home,' 

"May all beings

'Leave home' with the Awakened One
And liberate self and other." 

Taking refuge in the Buddha, 

"May all beings

Continue the Lineage of the Buddhas,
Raising the unsurpassable aspiration." 

Taking refuge in the Teachings, 

"May all beings

Enter fully into the Discourses

And their perfect knowing be as deep as the sea." 

Taking refuge in the Harmonious Community, 

"May all beings

Harmonize the multitudes,

So that all become free from obstruction." 

When receiving novice precepts, 

"May all beings

Practice discipline

And not act out of corruption." 

Receiving guidance from an advisor, 

"May all beings

Deport themselves with dignity
And their actions be truthful." 

Receiving instruction from their teacher, 

"May all beings

Enter unborn Knowing
And arrive at liberation." 

Receiving the complete precepts, 

"May all beings

Fulfill the practices of freedom

And master the ultimate Teaching." 

When entering a hall, 

"May all beings

Ascend to the ultimate sanctuary
And rest, at ease and unshakable." 

When setting out a place to sit, 

"May all beings

Unfold the flower of virtues

And understand their own clarity." 

Sitting up straight, 

"May all beings

Be seated on the throne of Awareness,
Their intelligence disentangled." 

Crossing the legs, 

"May all beings

Have strong roots of virtue
And unfold the immovable." 

Practising clarity, 

"May all beings

Settle their minds in clarity
Until nothing is left behind." 

Practicing insight, 

"May all beings

See Reality as it is,

Always free of the struggle of opposing it." 

When uncrossing the legs, 

"May all beings

Observe that all activities and things
Resolve into falling away, vanishing." 

Lowering the feet and resting, 

"May all beings

Unfold freedom of attention
And rest at ease, unstirred." 

Raising the legs, 

"May all beings

Leave the sea of birth and death
And ripen all virtues." 

Putting on lower garments, 

"May all beings

Bear fundamental goodness
And a sense of responsibilty." 

When putting on a belt, 

"May all beings

Gather roots of virtue

And not loosen and lose them." 

Putting on outer garments,

"May all beings
Unfold unexcelled foundations of virtue,
Arriving at the Other Shore of the Teaching." 

Putting on the kesa, 

"May all beings

Come forward

And unfold equanimity." 

Taking a toothstick in hand, 

"May all beings

Realize complete Reality

And enter spontaneous purity." 

When chewing on the toothstick, 

"May all beings

Have the eye-teeth of wisdom,
And bite through all delusion." 

When going to the toilet, 

"May all beings

Release passion, aggression, and stupidity,
And wipe away wrong action." 

Washing up afterward, 

"May all beings

Quickly go

Past the edge of the mundane." 

When washing the body, 

"May all beings

Be pure and harmonious,

Ultimately there are no defilements." 

Washing the hands in water, 

"May all beings

Have pure and clean hands

To receive and hold the Teachings of Awakening." 

Washing the face with water, 

"May all beings

Enter the nature of equanimity
And realize stainlessness." 

Picking up a walking-staff, 

"May all beings

Raise the great work of benefit
And point out the true path." 

Taking up the almsbowl, 

"May all beings

Perfect the vessel of truth

Together with the activities of humans and shining ones." 

Setting out on the road, 

"May all beings

Go where the Buddhas have gone,
The realm of leaning upon nothing." 

When on the road, 

"May all beings

Move in the stainless realm of Reality,
Unobstructed Knowing." 

Seeing an uphill road, 

"May all beings

Always climb above the usual,
Their minds free from wavering." 

Seeing a downhill road, 

"May all beings

Be unassuming in intention

And establish foundations of virtue." 

Seeing a twisting road, 

"May all beings

Abandon false paths

And always clarify narrow views." 

Seeing a straight road, 

"May all beings

Be straightforward in intention,
With no obsequiousness or deceit." 

Seeing a dusty road, 

"May all beings

Shake away the dust of defilement
And unfold purity." 

Seeing a road free of dust, 

"May all beings

Always practise great compassion,

With hearts that refresh and mature all." 

Seeing a dangerous road, 

"May all beings

Abide in the realm of what is true

And escape the distress of wrong actions." 

Seeing a gathering of people, 

"May all beings

Display the profound Teaching,

So that all may gather in harmony." 

Seeing a tall tree, 

"May all beings

Shed the struggle of self-righteousness
And be free of pettiness and aggression." 

Seeing a grove, 

"May all beings

Be worthy of the respect

Of shining beings and of humans." 

Seeing high mountains, 

"May all beings'

Roots of virtue stand forth,

Their summits above all grasping." 

Seeing thorn trees, 

"May all beings

Quickly cut through

The thorns of passion, aggression, and stupidity." 

Seeing trees heavy with leaves,

"May all beings
Form a canopy of light

From changeless liberation." 

Seeing flowers in bloom, 

"May all beings'

Subtle perceptions of wonder
Blossom forth like flowers." 

Seeing trees in bloom, 

"May all beings

Have flower-like features,
And be marked with nobility." 

Seeing fruits, 

"May all beings

Fulfill the consummate Teaching

And realize the Way of Awake Awareness." 

Seeing a vast river, 

"May all beings

Enter the stream of Reality,

Flowing into the ocean of Awake Awareness." 

Seeing a reservoir, 

"May all beings

Wake up right now to

The truth of the seamlessness of the Buddhas." 

Seeing a pond, 

"May all beings

Be eloquent in speech
And skillful in teaching." 

Seeing a well, 

"May all beings

Have the capacity to clarify
And so elucidate all things." 

Seeing a spring, 

"May all beings'

Skillful means increase

And roots of virtue never wither." 

Seeing a bridge, 

"May all beings
Be like a bridge
And bear all across to freedom." 

Seeing flowing water, 

"May all beings

Unfold clear determination

To wash away delusory stains." 

Seeing a garden, 

"May all beings

Clear away the weeds of fixation
From the garden of the senses." 

Seeing a forest of "sorrowless" trees, 

"May all beings

Leave behind greed and lust forever
And not give rise to anxiety and fear." 

Seeing a park, 

"May all beings

Follow the ways of practice

Which move into unfolding as Awake Awareness." 

Seeing people wearing adornments 

"May all beings

Be adorned with the Buddha's
Thirty-two marks of nobility." 

Seeing the unadorned 

"May all beings

Release elaboration
And practice simplicity." 

Seeing people obsessed with pleasure, 

"May all beings

Delight in Reality,

And be unwavering in love for it." 

Seeing those without obsession, 

"May all beings

Not incline towards fixation
On fabricated things." 

Seeing people who are happy, 

"May all beings

Always be serene and joyous,
Gladly offering to the Buddhas." 

Seeing people who suffer, 

"May all beings

Unfold knowing the essence
And expel all anguish." 

Seeing people in good health, 

"May all beings

Enter complete and perfect knowing
And be without illness or afflictions." 

Seeing people who are ill, 

"May all beings

Know the body is empty and open
And release struggle and conflict." 

Seeing people who appear to be attractive, 

"May all beings

Always have unstained confidence
In the Awakened and wakeful ones." 

Seeing people who appear to be unattractive, 

"May all beings

Be free of attachment

To any unwholesome thing." 

Seeing people who are grateful, 

"May all beings

Come to know the richness offered by
The Awakened and wakeful ones." 

Seeing people without gratitude,

"May all beings
Not add to the punishment
Of those who are hurtful." 

Seeing mendicants, 

"May all beings

Be harmonious and serene,
Training themselves thoroughly." 

Seeing aristocrats, 

"May all beings

Always keep to pure activity,
Moving past all contraction." 

Seeing ascetics 

"May all beings

By rigorous practices

Come to the Only Condition." 

Seeing people who are disciplined, 

"May all beings

Keep clear determination in practice

And not wander from the path of Awakening." 

Seeing armoured people, 

"May all beings

Be armoured with integrity,

And move to the state beyond learning." 

Seeing people unarmed, 

"May all beings

Always be free of

Acting out of contraction." 

Seeing people debate, 

"May all beings

Be able to counter
All inverted views." 

Seeing people of right livelihood, 

"May all beings

Succeed in right livelihood

Never needing to do what should not be done." 

Seeing a king, 

"May all beings

Become sovereigns of Reality,

Always displaying the Teaching of Truth." 

Seeing a prince, 

"May all beings

Be born in the truth

And be children of Awakening." 

Seeing the elderly, 

"May all beings

Be able to decisively cut through
And not follow contracted conduct." 

Seeing a high minister, 

"May all beings

Always practise right mindfulness
And all their activities be true." 

Seeing a castle, 

"May all beings

Be strong and firm in body
And tireless in mind." 

Seeing a capital, 

"May all beings

Gather all qualities of virtue

And always be delighted and joyful." 

Seeing someone in a forest, 

"May all beings

Be worthy of the honor and acclaim
Of shining beings and of humans." 

Entering a village to beg for alms, 

"May all beings

Enter the profound realm of Reality,
Without obstructions of attention." 

Coming to someone's door, 

"May all beings

Enter all Gates

Of Awake Awareness." 

Entering a house, 

"May all beings

Enter the vehicle of Awakening as Awareness,
Always equal throughout all times." 

Seeing those who refuse to make offerings, 

"May all beings

Never turn from

The ways of supreme virtue." 

Seeing those who make offerings, 

"May all beings

Forever abandon

The three contracted paths and destinies." 

Seeing the alms-bowl empty, 

"May all beings

Be open of heart

And without afflictions." 

Seeing the alms-bowl full, 

"May all beings
Completely fulfill

All the ways of virtue." 

If treated respectfully, 

"May all beings

Respectfully practise

All the Teachings of the Buddhas." 

If treated disrespectfully, 

"May all beings

Not act in ways

That are constricted." 

Seeing people with modesty,

"May all beings
Act with discretion

And dress appropriately." 

Seeing the shameless, 

"May all beings

Go past shamelessness
And live with care for all." 

Receiving fine food, 

"May all beings

Fulfill their aspirations

And be free from envy and craving." 

Receiving poor food, 

"May all beings
Without fail receive
The taste of practice." 

Receiving soft food, 

"May all beings

Be steeped in compassion,
Their minds becoming gentle." 

Receiving coarse, hard food, 

"May all beings

Be without attachments

And cut through mundane craving." 

When eating, 

"May all beings

Be nourished by joyful practice
And filled with delight in Reality." 

When tasting, 

"May all beings

Taste utter Awake Awareness,

filled with the ambrosia of the deathless." 

When finished eating, 

"May all beings

Accomplish all tasks

And fulfill the Teachings of the Buddhas." 

When presenting the Teachings, 

"May all beings

Attain unobstructed eloquence

And display everywhere the essence of the Teachings." 

When leaving a place, 

"May all beings

Penetrate Awakened experience

And move past the three conditional realms." 

Entering a bath, 

"May all beings

Enter the knowing which knows the nature of all knowns,
Throughout the three measures of time." 

While washing the body, 

"May all beings

Purify body and mind,
Inside and out." 

In the heat of the day, 

"May all beings

Cast away countless afflictions,
Allowing them all to end." 

After the heat when the cool comes, 

"May all beings

Experience completely Reality
And their heat be cooled." 

When reciting the Discourses, 

"May all beings

Be aligned with the Teachings of the Buddhas,
Through unwavering mindfulness." 

If they should meet a Buddha, 

"May all beings

Become All-Pervasive Richness,
Dignified and adorned with all." 

Seeing a memorial site of the Buddha, 

"May all beings

Be as honored as is this shrine,

Receiving the offerings of shining ones and humans." 

Inspired by the sight of the shrine, 

"May all beings

Inspire by the sight of them

All shining beings and humans." 

Bowing their heads before the shrine, 

"May all beings

Move past the perspectives

Of shining beings and humans." 

Circumambulating the shrine, 

"May all beings

Act always without bias

And unfold knowing the nature of all knowns." 

Circling the shrine three times, 

"May all beings

Constantly see the path of Awakening as Awareness
With attention unobscured by recoil." 

Praising the virtues of the Buddhas, 

"May all beings

Fulfill all the virtues

So continuously extolled." 

Praising the marks of the Buddhas, 

"May all beings

Unfold the body of Awake Awareness
And realize formless truth." 

Washing their feet, 

"May all beings

Fulfill the bases of subtle perceptions,
Moving as unobstructedness everywhere." 

When going to sleep at night,

"May all beings
Calm all things

And uncover the stainless mind of clarity." 

Awakening from sleep, 

"May all beings

Realize each thing as it is,
Pervading the ten directions." 

"Child of the Awakened Ones, if wakeful ones use their intelligence in this way, they will unfold all supreme and wonderful qualities, which cannot be shaken away by any shining beings, demons, monks, aristocrats, celestial musicians, violent shining beings, and so on, nor by any who have only a hear-say knowledge of the Teachings or those who self-fabricate enlightened states." 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE
is the only moment that you can practise.

Any practice you've done before this breath is gone forever.
And relying on there being another breath
in which you'll actually get around to practising
is a mistake
because you do not know whether you will have another breath. 

And one day there will not be another breath.
So you may as well take the opportunity of the breath that is breathing you right now
to notice reality;
to wake up from the rapture of fabrications,
of dreams,
of conditioned experiencing,
to the reality of this moment of the whole bodymind breathing,
seeing,
hearing,
tasting,
touching,
feeling,
smelling,
colours,
sounds,
forms,
the myriad of dharmas that arise in each moment,
the myriad of experiences that arise in each moment,
the myriad of knowns that arise in each moment of knowing.

And you are Knowing in itself. 

You are not a knower.
There is no knower.
If you notice a knower
you have noticed a contraction into a sense of self
that is knowing something.

So all you have to do at that point
is practise mindfulness of breath,
feeling the breath moving the bodymind in and out,
sitting up straight
which is a short form for noticing the presencing of the whole bodymind,
opening the eyes,
opening the peripheral vision:
practising the whole bodymind in the whole moment. 

Now we like to think,
each and every one of us has thought these things,
that we are somehow special.
We really don't need to do this practice as much as the guy or gal beside us
because obviously we are vastly superior. 

Recognize that as a contraction into a sense of self with a habitual storyline.
What you may not have noticed is that in the next moment
you just know
and you are convinced that everyone in the Hatto is better at this than you are.
And it is as if those two opposed points of view can exist in the same moment.
And you start to establish a little bit of mindfulness practice.
You start to be able to sit on the zafu for half an hour.
You start to be able to wake up from time to time
and see that the thought you were following was just that,
it was a thought,
so you woke up for a moment to the reality of the moment.
You saw a thought as a thought.
You remembered to feel the breath
or else you allowed yourself to notice the breath
moving the bodymind in and out.

You noticed seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, smelling.
You sat up straight
and for a moment
that movie you were entertaining yourself with dropped away.
And you could actually experience the clarity of this open moment
free of conditioned experiencing,
free of those little clotted bits with their stories that we call self-image. 

Last week and the week before I read to you from the text
"The Practice of Purity: Verses from the Flower Garland Discourse".
This is a translation which the Roshi,
with a small amount of assistance from myself,
did some 15 years ago.
It is a translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra.
That sutra was written some 1600 years ago
but it was written about and for guys and gals,
and then monastics, who were just like you,
and just like you,
and just like you,
who sat down on a cushion to look into what was going on,
who they really were.

And of course because this is difficult
we like to assume that somehow or other it was easy for those old guys
because they were like bigger and better 
than we could ever be.

But we forget that they were people.
They sat their bums down on cushions,
bunches of straw,
or on a rock,
and they were looking into the actual nature of experiencing which can be rough.

And so stories were written about teachers and about students.
The only object of the story was to point out to a student
something that would be useful to them
in helping them cut through the contractions of self-image
that come up in different situations. 

Now as I said, we like to think we're very special.
No one has experienced our angst.

Well in a way that's true.
Just as each breath that we breathe
can only be breathed by us
so each contraction that you feel,
each fluctuation in temperature,
each rush of feeling tone,
can only be felt by you,
however,
all human beings experience in the same way.
The process is the same.
The content might vary and does vary
but the context is the same.

So when feelings come up of being somehow apart,
removed from,
somehow being self with everything else being other,
you've recognized a moment of reality;
that set of sensations is there.

At the moment of recognition,
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
practise basic mindfulness and that will open. 

The Avatamsaka Sutra was put together.
In Book 11 is a story that Manjushri, Wisdom,
was asked a question by a student.
In the "Kigon-gyo, Book Eleven",
Kenju, a Wakeful One, or All Pervasive Knowledge, asks Manjushri,

How should the wakeful ones practise thoroughly unfold activities of body, speech, and mind without fault?

Even 1600 years ago asking
"What can we do to wake up? What can we do to deepen our practice?" 

Manjushri said,
"Good question. You want to practise to benefit all beings."
Well he said it a little bit...
the way it has been translated in The Practice of Purity,
and in other texts, it's a little bit more...
detailed than that.

So out of this question of how people could

unfold excellent, foremost, peerless, immeasurable, incalculable, inconceivable, incomparable, unfathomable and inexpressible investigation

rose these 140 verses. 

Verses are not prayers,
although in some texts,
not published by Great Matter,
they have been referred to as prayers.

Basically in one text it was saying that we are praying that other people will smarten up.
That other people will wake up.
We pray that all beings can wake up.
Well that's not really at all what we are doing here.
It's exactly the opposite. 

You've heard at least one of the verses of the 140 if you've ever been here for closing bells,
that is chanted as well every night during sesshin: 

As we enter into sleep this night,


"May all beings

Calm all things

And uncover the stainless mind of clarity." 

The first verse in "The Practice of Purity" is addressed to Wakeful Ones who are at home. 

Wakeful ones who are at home should raise the aspiration,

"May all beings
Realize the nature of 'home' is empty
And release its limitations." 

As the Roshi has said in the formal student series, "The Anatomy of Awakening",
students are learning to see all of the patterns and
"realms of deep conditioning which human beings call 'home'." 

And when you look into it
you'll find that
each of you most probably have a set of associations that come up with the word 'home'.
You would be quite unique if, in fact, you did not.

A 'home' is not a house.
A 'home' is this moment,
this moment,
displays everything.
It displays the whole universe.
Our set of feeling tones, patterns, associations about 'home'
arise within the moment within which they are arising.

When we believe that our patterns and associations and feeling tones
are definitions of truth
we often find ourselves setting out,
seeking after this fabrication that we have become intoxicated with.

We look for 'home'.
We want to be comfortable.
We want to have a set of associations.
This type of concepts and yearnings often arise for people around holidays.
Around Christmas, for example,
there may be thoughts of reconciliation that will occur,
understandings that will happen that have never happened before
but yet we dream on.

And of course,
economies are driven by these dreams. 

Verses are given and have been given
so that students can give themselves another way of looking at their own experience.
They're not little bits and pieces to be memorized
and then chanted to block what one is actually experiencing
but rather tools that one can use
to look at and open up new understandings. 

Self-image becomes very reactive
because when it hears something that seems different than what it believes
it will often react and perhaps even attack
by saying things about
"the inhuman way" in which the monks may view a student's life
by suggesting to them that their yearnings for 'home'
may be just fabrications,
may be something that never existed ever.

Now this is not talking about abdicating responsibility.
Not at all.
But rather talking about recognizing that in each moment
you have an opportunity to look and see more clearly what is arising for you. 

The text, "The Practice of Purity",
is addressed to monastics in some specific areas.
Monastics are home leavers.
Monastics have recognized that the usual definition of family and home
is too small and it is too isolating
because for 'home' there has to be 'not home'.
There has to be self.
There has to be other.
And practice says there is no self, there is no other.
There is just this moment of experiencing.
There is just the benefit of all beings
and what are you going to do about it?
So verses such as these,
such as The Practice of Purity,
can aid you,
as do all the forms of practice,
in seeing more completely what arises for you in each and every moment. 

Next week we will look into the second verse which is about serving parents. 

You're quite welcome to come forward during daisan
with any questions that you might have
or send an email to me if you do have questions.

The text is available.
You can read it.
See what happens. 

Thank you for listening. 

So it's this moment. 

You're sitting, breathing in and out.
You can feel the posture,

see the seeing,

hear the hearing,
notice thoughts coming and going,
notice sensations coming and going. 

The instruction is really simple: when you notice anything,
anything at all,
any moment of experience,
you practise mindfulness of breath, of body, of mind, 
mindfulness of the whole body in the whole moment. 

Teisho,
Dharma Talks,
interactions with teachers, practice advisors,
exist for only one reason and that is to remind you to practise in this moment. 

Thoughts and feelings arise on their own in response to cues.
In the "Avatamsaka Sutra" and "The Practice of Purity, verses from the Flower Garland Discourse",
which is the "Avatamsaka Sutra",
the question was raised as to how practitioners who had become home leavers,
who had become monastics,
could "unfold the energy of knowing what is true and what is not,
the energy of knowing the consequences of events,
the energy of knowing the inclinations of beings,
the energy of knowing the various styles of beings,
the energy of knowing the capacities of beings,
the energy of knowing the destinations of all paths of practice,
the energy of knowing the obscurations, deviations, and clarification of all practices and meditative states,
the energy of knowing one's own past existences,
the energy of knowing future existences,
and the energy of knowing the ending of all outflows". 

These verses came about as a consequence of practitioners wanting to know some 1600 years ago:
how to practise with this breath,
with each breath in each moment.

Now bear in mind,
these verses were written for people who had established basic mindfulness practice,
who had expressed their intention to practise the Dharma through the taking of vows and so,
as with all of practice,
the more they understood,
the more mature their practice was,
the more deeply they could practise.

However, anyone who has started to practise
can read these verses
and can allow them to throw a slightly different light
on the interactions that we have moment to moment
when we're not sitting on the zafu. 

Last week we looked at: 

Wakeful ones who are at home should raise the aspiration,
"May all beings

Realize the nature of 'home' is empty

And release its limitations." 

The next verse (and watch what happens in your experience,
as you hear certain words and remember to practise when that happens,
to practise with what you have noticed): 

In serving their parents,

"May all beings

Serve the Awakened,

Sheltering and nourishing everyone." 

All manner of pictures, emotions, feelings,
can arise when we think about parents.
It's amazing how we have constructs,
that we've constructed without even knowing about who these people are,
but more importantly, 
how we are, 
what we want from them.

And as we get older,
we start to understand that perhaps we don't know anything about these people,
our parents.
We may know of the role.
We may know of the interaction between ourselves and these people who nurtured us.
We cannot, in most cases, ignore the fact that if it weren't for them,
we wouldn't be here. 

And we don't have to have any certain set of feelings to recognize that.
But we are a feeling based culture and we're always looking around for the "right" set of feelings.
When this was written,
the whole context of families would have been radically different from what we experience.
Most families would live in an extended family situation
with innumerable people perhaps living in a single compound
with birth, old age, sickness, and death, right there, in your face. 

For most of us today it's not like that.
We tend to be, on the whole,
a rather modular society.
So that we have, well, "me" first of all,
then "me" and somebody else,
then "me" and "our" family,
and almost peripheral players in this
would be parents who live out of town, out of country, in totally different circumstances
and we've made up all sorts of different stories about them. 

So how do we practise with this?
Does the fact that we are studying Zen mean that all of a sudden we're going to become 
an incredibly loving and dutiful child?
Not necessarily. 

But what we can do is recognize that the process of being a human being
is the same for every human being who has walked on the face of the earth.
We're born.
Randomly.
A sperm hits an egg and,
bedang, there "you" are nine months later.

Now, there's no lottery where "your" name got picked out as the "special one".
Not at all.
Very, very, random. 

But facts can speak for themselves,
and, on the whole if you're alive,
someone looked after you.

Human babies are notorious for not being able to look after themselves.
The period in which they are apparently unable to look after themselves
seems now to be extending well into the 30's and 40's in some cases,
but yet on the whole
we're playing out roles.

We don't seem to have learned the necessary skills,
communication and otherwise
to interact on any level that is mutually satisfying most of the time
because when we're in a situation,
patterns come up.

And we may find ourselves playing the role
of the dutiful, affectionate daughter
with clenched teeth.
Or we may find ourselves telling ourselves stories
while perhaps one of our parents is going on and on and on
with the same old story. 

So, what to do? 

Well, that choice is up to you.
We can, however, as practitioners studying the Way,
studying reality,
recognize that just as we deal with patterns,
so does everyone else that we interact with.
Every time we come to a general sitting or a formal sitting,
at the end of the sitting we chant The Four Great Vows: 

All beings without number I vow to liberate.
Endless obsessions I vow to release.

Dharma gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.
Limitless Awakening I vow to unfold. 

Those of you who do samu have chanted the samu chant: 

May all beings be happy,
May they be peaceful,
May they be free. 

Neither of these chants are cute little sayings to get you into the mood to work
but rather are statements of intention.
In another translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra
the question of serving the parents was translated like this: 

While serving their parents they should wish that all beings serve the Buddha, protecting and nourishing everyone. 

With that statement we've released individual responsibility
because a "wish" that someone else should do something is not particularly useful
other than it does, perhaps, give one the sense that they're a good person
and if everyone else would shape up everything would be great. 

The way it has been translated here: "May all beings serve the Awakened" 

And in the statement "serve the Awakened"
we're talking about the reality of Awake Awareness,
the reality of being a human being,
the reality of recognizing that all human beings,
all beings really,
are born, live, die, need shelter, need food, need nourishment in other ways,
and we're making the statement, as with the samu chant,
that we will do what we can. 

So when this verse is raised, when practitioners,
and in this case it was written for those who had deepened their practice,
matured it enough, that they took the responsibility for receiving vows to live as monastics,
perhaps even as lay monks rather than fully ordained monastics,
making the statement that their intention
is to live out as best as they possibly can
what is expressed in the vows and the chants that we chant. 

So we can recognize that our parents are people just as we are,
but that we have learned,
the bodymind has learned,
many patterns of reactivity and feeling tone about everything
not just around this particular situation with parents,
around everything.

We're learning to see them for what they are
as they come up
so that we can cut through reactivity that arises
by feeling the breath,
sitting or standing up straight,
opening the eye gaze,
and take whatever action is the most useful in each particular moment.

The choice of what that is, is, of course, up to the individual.
This can cause problems for students as well
because apparently another thing we human beings like is rules.
We like to have solid guidelines that will dictate actions that we should take.

Practice does not provide that.
Practice provides instruction which,
when you follow the instruction,
will show more and more clearly,
the process of perception and cognition
so that when you do make choices for action in any situation,
it is not propelled by conditioned experiencing.
It is not propelled by old patterns,
but rather comes about because of an open intelligence as to what needs to be done in that moment. 

The verse again: 

In serving their parents,

"May all beings
Serve the Awakened
Sheltering and nourishing everyone." 

An aspiration that is raised every time you chant The Four Great vows,
every time you chant the Samu Chant. 

It's funny too, in this culture,
I recently heard someone say,
"Isn't it sad that we really don't grow up until we're orphans."

The person who said this was, as I am, in their sixties. 

So practice can help you grow up and take responsibility for being a real human being.

Thank you for listening. 

Carrying on with "The Practice of Purity" verses: 

When with spouses and children,
"May all beings

Be unbiased toward everyone
And always release clinging." 

In order to make that real, the being unbiased,
it is necessary that we see the ways in which we are biased.

The habits and patterns,
the belief systems,
the unquestioned assumptions that we have accumulated in a lifetime
get in the way.

We look at a spouse, and perhaps even today,
even in this part of the world,
we see something that belongs to us whose purpose is to make us "happy",
to do our bidding.

And we develop ways that we can cause that to happen.
We forget, we don't see the person,
the other being that is perhaps in front of our very eyes at that moment,
instead we see a stranger.

Often this makes people very uncomfortable.
Somehow the spouse has let them down. 

A large percentage of murders are committed by spouses.
Interestingly enough, I just read this today:
there are fewer common law spouses who are murdered than legally married. 

So we become habituated to situations
and when self-image does not get what it wants,
it acts out in a variety of ways.

Sometimes it takes people two, three, four, or more, marriages,
attempts at acquiring spouses that will make them "happy",
before self-image realizes that it doesn't exist,
before there is a recognition that we're not the centre of the universe.

Everything is not in place to make us "happy".
It seems pretty obvious
but we're not in the habit of looking at our patterns and our beliefs as they come up.

Practice provides us with an opportunity to do that.

We don't need to get forensic and look at something and start to dissect it because that,
especially when you're sitting in formal practice on the zafu,
is following thoughts,
it's engaging in discursiveness. 

When you have noticed that this has happened,
you have noticed a slice of reality which is that that tendency was there,
those thoughts were there.

You've noticed it from the larger space.

For a moment you've woken up.

At that point, practise by feeling the breath in the bodymind,
sitting up straight,
which is, of course,
feeling the posture,
feeling the sensations of the bodymind,
and opening the peripheral vision.

You're practising that moment of clear seeing; seeing what was going on. 

In the formal practice space
you of course do not have the opportunity to act out a lot of those unquestioned assumptions.
Verses such as:

"May all beings
Be unbiased toward everyone
And always release clinging"

give you a reminder that you can
stop,
feel the breath,
open the eye gaze,
no matter where you are,
no matter what you are doing,
you can open to the larger context.

You have more choice.
You do not have to follow the patterns that you have perhaps usually followed.
They are not who you are.
They are something going on within experiencing that you have noticed. 

When you take the time to do this,
you may start to uncover things about the thing you still think of as "yourself"
that perhaps you've never noticed before.

You may favour one child over another.
You may regard yourself as superior to or different from the spouse
and you may have acted that out without knowing that that was what you were doing.

When you remind yourself that the moment of noticing anything
is the only moment that you can practise,
you can make the choice to follow the focusing of attention
or to practise and allow attention to open
so that any choice you make as to an action you will take,
and an action of course can be saying something,
it can be widening the gaze to look at someone and see the whole bodymind,
to actually see that person as a person
rather than an object that is somehow influenced or even owned by you.

You may uncover expectations that you have of how they should be, how they should act.

No problem.

The moment you notice that,
you can practise
because you've noticed something that is true about that moment of experiencing.
You've noticed reality and you will be able to make a better choice. 

The verse also says "be unbiased toward everyone".

Well, when we are seeing how we are biased,
we can take that into account,
practise with it,
open up,
and make a choice that is more beneficial to the others,
more fair.
And the releasing of clinging is what does occur
when our attempts to define ourselves as a personality,
as a self with very specific views about how we are and how the world is,
are opened.

When that's opened
we find that we do not need to be driven,
propelled into action,
by any of our reactivities.
We recognize we are not defined by the roles that somehow or other have become imposed upon us,
most of the time without our being asked.

In fact this is so common,
the passing on of family culture patterns,
the passing on of patterns of the larger culture,
it is so common that, in fact, it is a bit of a joke.

For example, people have been known to say things such as,
"well if you want to know what she's going to be like fifteen years from now,
look at her mother".

That isn't useful because that's putting more layers around this being
that may be standing in front of you,
breathing in and out,
experiencing the process of being a human being,
just as you are. 

We don't need to define ourselves by roles,
and when we practise this moment of experiencing,
and we should happen to see a pattern coming into play,
the only thing to do with that in the Hatto is to

feel the breath,
sit up straight,
and open the eye gaze

and as the facility to do this increases
as our practice matures,
we recognize that,
well,
we can do that everywhere.

Not only that, but we start to see it happen in our time off the cushion. 

Sometimes it can be difficult for us to recognize that we are human beings
and that we are not much different than, perhaps,
someone who is selling their six year old child right now to the sex trade.

We're not much different from someone right now who is beating on their spouse.

Perhaps it's just the luck of the draw,
as it were,
that we are not in those positions.
We may, most likely, never ever be in a position like that
but we can start to develop the capacity to see the smaller reactivities,
the smaller movements of attention,
the ways that by acting as a role to a role
rather than as a human being to a human being,
we diminish ourself and that other human being. 

As I mentioned with the last verse,
we are in a situation now in history where children really don't get a chance to grow up because for various reasons,
including wanting to give their kids what they never had,
wanting to take over the caring, the directing, the giving of commands,
the child is protected, totally,
and never learns to operate fully on its own as a fully grown up human being.

We can start to see the ways that we do that
and how necessary it is for us to practise at the moment of seeing it
and perhaps make a different choice than we may have when we were operating out of reactivity. 

Children can't make parents change what they do.
Parents can open closed patterns, practise, and make the best choice for action when with children.
The choice is up to the individual. 

Practice can give you reminders that you are able to practise, you are able to

feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
allow experiencing to open more fully, and make those better choices. 

Stop using others to prop up self-image's idea of who it is
and how the world is,
and open past that small bundle of concerns that self-image occupies itself with. 

Once again, the verse is a reminder: 

When with spouses and children,
"May all beings
Be unbiased towards everyone
And always release clinging." 

Thank you for listening. 

 EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE... 

...lets you know that you are alive
and you can practise the life that is living as you.

The verse: 

When achieving their goals,
"May all beings
Pull out the arrow of craving
And realize utter serenity." 

Goals? What are we talking about?
It's always good to know.
In some texts, this was translated as lust or desire
which immediately evokes a sexual connotation
but that is not the only area in which self-image craves, and grabs, and clings.
The word "lust" limits and constrains the understanding of the verse as a reminder to practise.
The narrowing of attention into a singular focus is the same
no matter what the subject of the "desires or lusts or goals"
...sex, wealth, respect, being the best at something, things.
So the Roshi and I chose "goals" as the word
to open up the understanding of craving and the things craved. 

Let's expand our understanding to be more inclusive of day-to-day interests and activities.
Some definitions of "goal": 

Merriam Webster: the end towards which effort is directed.


Thesaurus: Goal-the state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behaviour intended to achieve it. (The ends justify the means. That moves it into the theoretical, philosophical, based in language, not in experience. We won't go there now.) 

"An objective or goal is a personal or organizational desired end point in development. It is usually endeavored to be reached in finite time by setting deadlines. 

"On a personal level setting goals is a process that allows people to specify then work towards their own objectives, commonly financial or career." 

A destination, a terminus. 

Since around 1315, it has been a sport term: end of a race, football goal.

Over the years the use of the word "goal" has moved into the "personal".
Over the twenty years I worked with a wide variety of people
to help them move past their perceived blockages in life,
the most common response given when asked to identify their "goals" was "to be happy". 

"Being happy" seems, on first hearing, like a perfectly reasonable goal
but don't be fooled.

Do you know what you are talking about when you are talking about "being happy"?
If you don't know, how would you know when you have attained it?
Take the risk to look into what "happy" means to you.
How do you know when you are "happy"?
Most don't know because "happiness" often is just another story line,
from TV, from the movies, from magazines, views into other people's lives,
and expectations of oneself often built by others. 

"Happiness" is a word, a metaphor, for sensations felt in the bodymind,
sensations of lightness, effervescence, ease, and serenity,
on the whole sensations that are pleasant.
Sensations are present in the bodymind as long as we are alive.
Learn to notice them.
When noticed, if sensations feel good,
practise.
If sensations feel bad, practise.
Over time, you may find yourself choosing to engage more often in activities that feel "good".
But that's up to you. 

Feel the breath.
Right now.
Good.

You're alive. 

You can make a choice to open the tendency to fixate on one thing
in the mistaken belief that once that one thing is attained it will make "everything all right".
When we focus on the product,
that one thing, that goal,
we tend to ignore the process and that gives a feeling of something missing,
of unsatisfactoriness.

That unsatisfactoriness is a fabrication.
Everything is all right.
There is no problem in this moment.
There very seldom is.

The sense of problem,
which seems to guide the lives of many,
is made up of the contractions into a sense of self
that is separate from everything else
and is somehow lacking.

What is lacking is the everything
other than the goal or product
which we have ignored in our haste,
our focus, to get to the goal, attain the thing.
So even after goals are reached,
that sense of craving is still present. 

"Pull out the arrow of craving"
by practising,
feeling the breath,
sitting up straight,
and opening the peripheral vision.

What is described as "the arrow of craving" rips into,
and binds the open space of experiencing
into a congealing,
a bunching,
a contraction into a "self"
which starts to talk about the "problems"
and the craving to end the problems
and the promises that when the "problems" are solved,
the desired goal will be reached
and "everything will be all right".

All of this is of course based in a fabricated future.
Don't be fooled.

Just feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open peripheral vision,
and practise.

Again and again and again. 

Of course it is necessary to identify what one needs to do in the course of a day.
Of course the clearer one can be about what one is doing,
the more the chance of "success",
the more open experiencing,
the more open information available,
and the more elegant, flexible, and effective one's choices can be. 

As the whole bodymind is practised in the whole moment,
the more chance we have
of actually knowing the nuanced sensations of the bodymind.
We might actually start to notice, a
nd be surprised by those moments that we might call "happiness".

Surprise!
That experience of "happiness" is seldom what we thought
or had talked to ourselves about.
"Goals" may change as our understanding changes. 

One drawback of goal setting,
expressed in an essay about the power of the word,
is that "implicit learning may be inhibited". 

When the focus of attention is on the product, the goal,
the process is not noticed.
If our "goal" is to get through the 30 minutes of sitting,
we can be focused on the imagined ringing of the gong
and we don't remember to practise when we notice those as thoughts.

We may "get through the sitting"
but that focus on the imagined end point or product,
and obviously it is imagined as we don't have it yet,
has compromised our ability to practise when noticing the myriad of dharmas,
moments of experiencing. 

The essay on goals also says,
"there can be a focus on an outcome without the openness to exploration, understanding, or growth."
Another way of saying the same thing. 

Any time you notice any focusing of attention, whatsoever,
be it on a colour, a light, a sliver of the floor, a thought,
practise whole bodily mindfulness.
This opens the tendency to propagate closed patterns that have been on automatic.
You won't lose anything except those stories you made up
that confused you about the difference between a thing
and a thought about a thing. 

A cat is a cat.
You can see the cat, hear the cat, smell the cat, touch the cat.
The cat is experienced by all the senses of the bodymind.
The "real cat" really affects more of the senses than the thought of the cat.
Across the board we can say that the thing itself
is "more real" than the thing thought about.
DUH! Of course!

When you see that and have a "duh, of course" moment,
"why didn't I know that before" moment,
and so on, practise.

Feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eyegaze.
Cut off the tendency to want to dissect,
talk about (especially to yourself),
theorize over, try to recreate, and so on. 

Let it go.

Practise now. 

Nothing is ever good enough for self-image.
Self-image gets what it thought it wanted but is not satisfied.

No wonder.
No craving is satisfied by a thought.

At the moment of noticing dissatisfaction, dukkha,
practise the whole bodymind in the whole moment.

Self-image is always missing the whole moment,
missing that which is already present and always has been:
seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, smelling, breathing.

Practise and recognize
again and again
that there is nothing missing. 

Once any sort of comment on experiencing that moment of waking up,
of completion, of satisfaction, of "happiness" starts—
let it go.
It's a thought.
There is nothing to be held onto,
nothing to crave,
no need to crave. 

Feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open peripheral vision.

Practise. 

We accumulate stuff to prop up what we want the world to see,
"Look at me. Look at what I've done".
We don't even take the time to realize that we've never done anything
"all by ourselves".

Phrases such as "self-made" are totally untrue.
Without the long line of people who came before us
and taught us everything we know,
we wouldn't have been able to do what we did. 

Practice provides the opportunity to see our habitual patterns
of craving and chest beating that we engage in to prop up the views of self-image. 

When we identify a goal,
we can be pushed by poverty mind to be "single minded"
as we take actions to move us toward what we have identified as our goal or desire.
We don't notice the process
because we are focused so tightly on the outcome
that any recognition of the moment-to-moment reality of our lives
is obliterated and increases the sense of lack, of wanting, of craving,
to get that thing that will "make everything all right". 

"Everything all right" as a stable and secure and nailed down state is not gonna happen. 

Anzan Hoshin roshi, says in "Doing Not Doing-What Can Be Held?" the current Teisho series that, 

Self-image lives in a world of things—dead things such as stones and desks and cars and houses and clothes and living things some of which become dead things so that they can be consumed and other living things that are other selves. In that world of things the selves scramble against the other selves to own the dead things. To arrange structures out of the things by piling them up into acquisitions that give them some semblance of a feeling of life... 

You may have accumulated things—
papers, diplomas, money, knowledge, possessions—
but they are not who you are.
They are the knowns arising within Knowing
and you are the Knowing,
that moment of waking up to reality,
understanding that awareness is the only condition
and that the intention to do what you can
for the peace, happiness, and freedom of all beings
is expressed and realized. 

When attaining their goals,
"May all beings

Pull out the arrow of craving
And realize utter serenity." 

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE...


is the only moment that you can practise. 

You are alive in that moment.

You are the Knowing of that moment. 

And the instruction is:

when you notice any dharma

any moment of experience whatsoever

practise whole bodily mindfulness.
Feel the breath. 

Still there?

You're alive so you can make a choice
and as you are students sitting in the Hatto,
ostensibly, you're practising. 

You want to learn to practise.
So you feel the breath.
You sit up straight.
You open the eye gaze, over and over again.
There are aids and arts to help you,
to remind you to practise. 

This evening we're looking at "amusement".
That's appropriate. (recorded December 20/07) 

On festive occasions

"May all beings

Enjoy Reality

Realizing amusement is not real." 

Now you might notice self-image reaching out little thoughts about,
"What do you mean? My Nintendo game is real?"

"Does this mean I can't go to the movies anymore?"

"Perhaps I have to give up crossword puzzles." 

Relax. This is not about giving up other than in the sense of releasing.
It's about opening up so that more and more information,
more and more of your actual experiencing of reality is available. 

I guess I'm kind of a bookish type so I like to know what words mean. Amusement: 

.amused, entertained, or pleased

.something, especially a performance or show designed to entertain 

Aha!


.distraction, diversion 

Entertainment: 

Now what does that mean exactly?
Lots of things including our favourite form of entertainment,
probably our favourite form of entertainment
popped to mind and self-image is at its,
"Oh no I can't give that up." 

So once again,
any time you notice any moment of experiencing,
any dharma,
any flash of experience,
practise by feeling the breath,
sitting up straight,
and opening the eye gaze. 

Entertainment comes from the Latin—tenere—to hold.
Entertain means to hold.
Something that grabs your attention and narrows the knowing of experiencing,
focusing on the "entertainment" and ignoring the rest of reality. 

No matter what the entertainment may be,
it is not reality.

The entertainment is arising within awareness and is part of reality.
Each time this is recognized during formal practice, for example,
when you notice that it's really a little puppet show going on seemingly in your head
or a movie or a series of flashcards
but attention had narrowed
and there you were entertaining yourself
with thoughts about this and that,
what you should have said,
what you should have done,
what they should have said,

and so it goes on and on. 

When you notice that narrowing you are,
as it were, popped out of it.
You are no longer held by that fabricated puppet show or movie.
You can see it.
There is a moment of clear seeing.

"Wow! Thoughts!"

Before any more words come up,
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.

Practise the reality of that moment. 

Interestingly, there's not a difference between how you are when you are focused on your own thoughts,
making your own movies,
writing your own books,
on the zafu,
and sitting in a movie theatre watching the film,
sitting at home watching the television.

The mechanism of perception and cognition is the same.
The tendency to focus is the same.
Attention narrows onto that subject,
the thing that is entertaining, amusing or holding us, 
distracting us from reality. 

As soon as you notice it, you've escaped.

So you can practise that moment of openness
and you do it by feeling the breath,
sitting up straight,
opening the eye gaze
and there's a flood of reality at that point.

It's always been going on.
Didn't stop but because we were being amused by our stories on the zafu
or by other people's stories on the sofa,
we were not knowing the totality of reality in that moment.


When we practise that moment we'll have more of that opening occurring.
The tendency to get lost decreases! 

Now sometimes students get a little freaked out
when they can no longer "get lost"
in their favourite films, television programs, books, or other activities.
It seems to have lost its hold on them.
It's often presented as a problem and there can be a sense of losing something,
losing something that had been used as an "escape".
An escape from what?

An escape from the ceaseless
ranting and whining and cajoling and moaning and whingeing and chest beating,
of self-image. 

Self-image,
those contractions that occur with views about how we are and how the world is
has a surprisingly adroit capacity to come up with a story to fit many situations.
So on the one hand we might be saying to ourselves,
"Well yeah, the reason I'm practising is so that I can see that really I have a choice here.
I don't have to follow this movie script I've made up."

But on the other hand self-image is saying,
"Yeah but I don't wanna stop."
"I like it."
It may not be that we have a fondness for it,
but bodymind gets used to the kick. 

You will not lose anything, guaranteed,
except perhaps everything you thought was true,
but you've been warned before. 

Now, when attention becomes fixated on something to distract itself from reality
there has to be a payoff, wouldn't you think? 

Well, in the case of the amusement or entertainment industry,
we may not know the names of the people who get the payoff,
but we sure know the payoff comes out of our pockets.

In the case of our own thoughts, feelings, puppet shows,
there really isn't any payoff other than that sense that we've been here before.
We have a certain set of patterns to deal with it,
whatever it may be,
and if that slips for a moment, well,
for a moment we might not be able to lose ourselves
in the very things that we want to find freedom from. 

So feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.
No matter where you are.
No matter what you're doing.
But this is especially important when you are sitting in the formal practice hall formally practising. 

When the bodymind is entertaining itself with stories,
a choice has been made to be held by and to hold onto that story.
Before we started to practise many of us have expressed that,
well, we really didn't have any choice in certain situations,
because, well, that's just how we are.
That starts to slip as we continue to practise
and perhaps to our embarrassment,
we may find that actually we've kind of bumbled along
without, perhaps, ever really making a real choice. 

We've been pushed and pulled by patterns.
Self-image doesn't want to let go of its beliefs,
these are just generalizations,
but the beliefs that are acquired in the course of a person's lifetime
often come to represent them.

They are that belief.
And people will defend those up to the point of their own death.
History shows that is true over and over and over again. 

The process of perception and cognition is the same for all human beings.
Thoughts are thoughts for all human beings.
Colours, forms, sounds, breathing in and out;
the same.
The content of thoughts obviously will vary
but the process is the same.
The process is the same for all human beings
be it watching movie on a DVD
or in a theatre
or telling stories out loud or to oneself.
Those practising are instructed to practise mindfulness
of body, breath, speech, and mind,
at the moment of noticing anything. 

When you notice that you've been totally focused on the movie
or the discursiveness,
you are now no longer totally focused on the movie or the discursiveness.
You've seen more of reality.
You have seen that that discursiveness or that movie is only part of what's going on.
You were lost, now you're not.
This is self-evident as you can only notice when you notice.
And you practise at that moment of noticing. 

Practising at the moment of noticing fixation on the amusement,
be it a movie or discursiveness,
or the infinite variety of ways that we humans have found
to use our extra time and energy,
practising at the moment of noticing,
brings the richness of that moment of reality out in the open.

It had always been there
but it had seemingly been eclipsed by the fixation on the amusement. 

Amusement is enjoyable.
Amusement in the context of the rest of experiencing is even more enjoyable.
The whole bodymind in the whole moment 
is unbelievably rich
and enhances everything that you choose to do.

There is no call to give up watching films and enjoying other things. 
There is instruction on how to practise when you notice focusing during formal practice:
you feel the breath,
you sit up straight,
you open peripheral vision.
You are practising that moment of noticing reality. 

Psst! [O-sensei whispers] More intelligence is available practising reality. 

The Dharma, the Teachings of Reality
give the instruction to practise mindfulness
over and
over and
over again
using a myriad of forms.

Practising the Dharma is practising Reality.
A moment of reality is also called a dharma. 

"Ho" means "dharma" as in The Three Jewels in Japanese—"Namu ki ho".

So this time of year that reminder to practise reality is everywhere.


"Ho ho ho!"


Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is a sign that you are alive and you have choice.

A choice
to practise
or to propagate thoughts and feelings
and shut down and stain the open expanse of experiencing. 

If in the rooms of palaces,

"May all beings

Enter the highest life,

Always free of the stain of craving." 

Well, we don't, every day, get to see or enter into the rooms of palaces.
You walked up the front walkway into the expanse of Dainen-ji,
not a palace but in this city, in this town,
let us say a modest monastery
which was once a modest merchant mansion in a lumber town.

So when we look at words like "palace"
we have to take into account the culture and the time frame.
In every culture and in every time frame
there have been buildings built that have been bigger and better
than the buildings in which the mass of inhabitants dwelt. 

Someone who had accumulated more stuff than anybody else
could erect an edifice which was, in many cases, very blatantly,
in size and appointments,
to show the wealth and power of the individuals who inhabited that palace. 

So when people entered into the rooms of palaces,
and the ordinary people perhaps got to enter into one room,
the great hall,
they could grovel in front of the lord of the palace or the king of the castle
and feel inferior, feel small, feel overwhelmed, feel awed.
Well, that was what was supposed to happen. 

When contracted we feel smaller than "that which is so much bigger".
We are humbled.
We can be controlled.
We've fallen for the hype
and do what is asked of us by the environment of "the palace". 

That contraction into an image of a self
which has storylines about itself,
feels small, impoverished, lacking.
It wants to satisfy that lack by craving for things
that the other has which it does not have.
We have narrowed attention into our stories
and the reality of the open life,
the luminosity of this moment of being alive,
is stained, covered, hidden, obscured,
but it is still there and it always was. 

The instruction for the practice of mindfulness is
to practise the whole bodymind in the whole moment
whenever any thing,
any knot,
any dharma or moment of experiencing,
is noticed.
When attention is unfolded
through the activity of basic whole bodily mindfulness,
all the information experienced by the senses
with and as the bodymind
is available to Knowing,
which is what you are. 

There's also the palaces of discursiveness;
the way we chat to ourselves
about what it would be like when we are in this dream place
which, of course, has been influenced by all of our experiences,
all of the information we've come across which tells us what we should have
if we want to be respected,
if we want to have power,
if we want to pretend that we are that which we are not.

A mundane example,
or mundane examples, and we've all seen them,
is when people of lesser means try to emulate what they think they have seen in these "palaces"
and what they think it means and then,
wanting to incorporate,
wanting to claim for themselves that perceived status,
objects are acquired.
Now, what often happens is that
rather than objects of beauty or utility,
the things that are acquired have become symbols. 

A chair, ill designed, badly carved,
with picky upholstery, and a shoddy gilding job,
sits proudly covered in plastic in a small living room,
unveiled on holidays.

A copy of a chair seen in a palace where one has actually been,
and seen with one's own eyes,
or something one has seen in a magazine
owned by someone we've never met but may admire,
or seen in a book, or a video,
a copy of that chair (and they are usually bad, bad copies)
has been purchased to make the owner feel better than they feel.
Feel that they have more status.
And hopefully send a message to anyone who comes into that living room
that they are different from what they seem and in an old saying,
"attempt to show a touch of the royal".

Mythologies trying to fill that hole of dissatisfaction. 

Pleasing lines, colour, texture,
even in what may be the tiniest of details,
are perceived by the open bodymind.

When something pleasing is seen
there may a response,
an immediate response,
such as "ah!"
Just without words,
the open experience of the senses
and we can feel open, good, happy for the tiniest moment,
because we have been touched by that experience.
When that "ah!" occurs, we are changed.
Our view is wider.
Open experiencing,
luminosity,
shows us something that the bodymind has resonated with. 

When we notice,
whatever grace or beauty affected us
may be used as a guide to broaden the understanding
of space, art, of design, of history.
When we are contracted into poverty mind,
there are those old stories of resentment,
"How come she has that and I don't? I hate her."
"How come he has so much and I, who am more worthy have nothing?"
"I'll never ever be able to have any of those things those rich ones have, let's kill them."

And on and on.
Not pleasant and not aesthetically pleasing. 

Aesthetics, the science of how things are known through the senses,
was created in 1735.
It means the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values.
Noticing how what is sensed is experienced.
A certain texture of cloth is pleasing.
A certain colour repellent.
The light at a certain time of day soothes and another time of day depresses the system. 

As you are able to practise whole bodily and experience the "rooms of palaces",
be they actual rooms in palaces,
or adobe huts that are the largest in the village,
remnants of past glories,
or simply the largest oldest house in town with its stories,
with the open senses we are able
to see, feel, respond to, be informed by, and learn that experience. 

You can go anywhere.
You can do anything and have it be open and rich and satisfying.
When that feeling of lack comes up,
that resentment,
jealousy,
anger,
whatever it may be,
we are diminished.

Why bother following that? 

At the moment of clear seeing into the reality of this moment

and this moment

and this moment,

and the practising of body, breath, speech, and mind
in this moment
and this moment 

and this moment,

all the senses are open and any choice made,

(and of course the only choice when on the zafu is to
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the peripheral vision:
practise),
any choice made,

in time,

will be made from the richness of that clear seeing

rather than the contraction and poverty mind of self-image

with its whining about never having such nice stuff,
being unlucky,
and so on. 

The stories block open experiencing and they're not much fun. 

Open experiencing informs choices we may regard as mundane.
You may find yourself decluttering your living space,
washing and then one day even ironing your jubon.

Why?
Because you notice differences that the senses perceived and it was nicer.
You may find yourself getting rid of things like horrible patterned carpeting, or wallpaper.
You may find yourself polishing your shoes, placing them carefully.
You may find yourself getting rid of the comb-over and even letting dyed hair fade
as the stories about who you are and how you should be fade and reality is clearly seen. 

When experiencing is unstained,
you can go anywhere, any time, and have fun.
You can see beauty in simple lines that you may never have noticed before.
You have a world opening to you, as Knowing.
Your choices have more information upon which to be based and, really, everything benefits. 

If in the rooms of palaces

"May all beings

Enter the highest life

Always free of the stain of craving." 

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...clearly is the only moment that you can practise. 

The verses from "The Practice of Purity" present reminders to practise
and give examples of the many situations and locations in which we may find ourselves. 

If putting on adornments,
"May all beings

Release false embellishments
And come to abide in Reality." 

Adornments,
a decoration, that which adorns,
from the Latin, ad ornare,
to furnish,
was in original usage referring to furnishing rooms. 

The use of the word has been expanded to include personal use
and means to enhance the appearance of,
especially with beautiful objects;
to enliven or decorate as if with ornaments. 

One example given even uses people as the adornments—
people of fashion who "adorn" the court. 

There's a lot of fun to be had as well
as moments of shock and horror when looking into the topic and history of "adornment".
Gold, for example,
has a long history of use in making ornaments and adornments,
symbols of wealth and power.
The manufacture of those symbols of wealth and power
has been fueled by vast quantities of sweat and blood
from the unfortunates who found the gold through painstaking backbreaking work.
And that doesn't even include all the people who have been killed for their little stashes of gold. 

The same is true for all the ore from which those symbols of wealth and power were created.
Not just the earth but animals and organisms have been exploited and turned into "adornments". 

Coral reefs have been killed and destroyed
so that coral beads could adorn necks and ears and wrists.
Whole species of birds have been decimated if not made extinct,
in the name of fashion.
Birds have been stuffed, whole, to decorate pompadour wigs and hats.
Feathers have been ripped out of a bird's skin to edge a soft evening coat.
Children have been mutilated in the course of the acquiring of diamonds:
The symbol of eternal love.
The love of self-image for its image of a self is,
perhaps, closer to the mark.
We won't get into ivory and pearls and rubies and emeralds and furs and on and on...
Each history appalls. 

An image of ourselves,
of who we are,
is a contraction into a self with a certain established set of patterns.
It is self-describing.
There is no room for a wider view.
The self-descriptions pull tighter and tighter into a solid, locked away, separate self,
which is usually busily describing itself by all the things it is and is not. 

Mostly these tend to be things that are lacking.
This contraction into poverty mind and sense of lack
hurts so the self-described self,
lurking behind the eyes,
gets to looking around for things that could
"fill the emptiness I feel inside of me". 

The objects of craving,
the things it thinks will make it happy, are, in essence,
symbols.
Symbols prop up an image of a self and broadcast messages to the world.
It's always good to know what's being said.
It's always good to know what one is saying to oneself and to the world. 

And today, the beginning of the 21st century, the first decade,
symbols are being presented and consumed faster and faster,
and are more instantly widespread,
than ever before in human history. 

In the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century,
flesh and bone are being manipulated and used as "adornments" for that sense of a self.
The flesh of the bodymind is a symbol.
We won't go into all the piercings, and tats, and implants, and steroids, and blue pills,
because that would just take too much time
so we'll limit ourselves to "adornments" that are actually placed on the bodymind. 

Also, we could regard the phrase "false embellishments"
as another way of pointing to those stances and patterns that we play out:

having to be better than someone at something,

having to have more of anything than someone,
having to be someone worth something through having certain "things":
talent, knowledge, depth of feeling or understanding and on and on and on. 

It is all so tiring.

But it's not a problem.

When you see any pattern for what it is
and whole bodily mindfulness is practised,
the capacity to use the moment to do something other than to act out the pattern
is strengthened and the pattern is weakened. 

Each time you practise mindfulness
you are practising the reality of this moment of clear seeing.
You can raise the intent of the verse when putting on an earring or a belt buckle,
or a pair of glasses.
Take the time
to feel the breath,
stand up straight,
and open the eyes.
The clear seeing of reality of that moment will present more information,
more background on the action you are taking.
Is the adornment functional?
Is it useful in any way?
What is it saying? 

For example, earrings. 
(Psst! If you notice a movement of attention into making this personal,
practise;
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
and open the eyes.) 

I'm not talking about you.
I'm talking about patterns and tendencies. 

A hole through the ear is not useful to the bodymind.
However, it can be used to put things through.
It's a convenient hanging place for signposts.
Things are hung from it.
What is hanging from it?
What's the message? Why?

Now let's talk diamond earrings.
A diamond stud.
The bigger the better.
Why?
Broadcasting, perhaps, class, money, self-worth, a tool for intimidation,
it goes on and on.
Forget about all those missing hands of children in West Africa
where blood diamonds produced chaos. 

People can hang whatever they want from their ears outside the monastery.
Inside, jewelry and embellishments are too distracting
and too helpful for perpetuating patterns
and thus not useful to the practitioner or the practice environment. 

Now, people can embellish their self-image or their ears any way they want.
Notice what you're doing.
Give yourself the chance to look more clearly
and to be more informed about what is happening in the reality of this moment.

At the moment of noticing anything,
practise that moment of clear seeing. 

With practice there'll be more moments of clear seeing. 

If putting on adornments
"May all beings

Release false embellishments
And come to abide in Reality." 

What you put in, and on, the ear is up to you.

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

When ascending a balcony,

"May all beings

Tower as Reality,

Seeing the panorama of everything." 

When this verse was first written,
the architecture would have been different from the architecture with which we are familiar:
different countries, different materials, different construction, different design.
The same is true for the word "Balcony". 

Each of us when hearing the word
come up with our own thought or picture or image of what that balcony would be. 

But to take the word "balcony" literally is too confining.
'Cause that would mean that the verse would be specific to balconies.
Perhaps a variety of them.
Some on which you could go out on,
some you couldn't,
some with railings some without,
some enclosed,
some wooden,
some made out of iron,
and on and on and on.
But, perhaps the word was used in other places, other times
and "balconies" were what provided the most significant place
where people could easily access a wider view of the environment or context.

Today we have elevators and escalators,
some extreme such as the CN tower in Toronto, the Empire State building in New York,
to whisk us quickly to a wider view of the surroundings. 

But then what about airplanes and hot air balloons?
Well, I don't think we need be too specific.
The intent of the verse is when rising up from our usual location on the ground,
we have an opportunity to "Tower as Reality"
and see the panorama of everything.

Ascending to a higher place provides the opportunity
to raise the verse and practise at the moment of noticing anything,
thoughts,
seeing that which is seen,
hearing that which is heard,
breathing and so on,
rather than settling for the poverty of contraction
and withdrawal into some story or state
which is feeding itself by propagating fear of heights,
or fear of confined spaces and so on. 

When we practise,
whether we do it on the second floor of Dainen-ji, buckled onto our zafu,
or whether we do it rising up in the elevator at the Rideau Centre
or perhaps even sitting in a plane seat flying away to some exotic place,
when we practise,
we are accessing and opening to a wider view. 

We can practise anywhere, anyplace.
Nobody else needs know what we are doing when we notice a contraction,
a dharma,
a moment of experience,
and use it to feel the breath moving the bodymind in and out,
use it to sit up straight and to open the eye gaze
and experience the openness of reality in that moment. 

Poverty mind or stories narrow and seemingly pinch experiencing.
Feeling bad, small, weak, inferior,
or feeling good, strong, superior,
have the same mechanism.
A narrowing of attention into a contraction
and the spinning of explanations or declamations
provides another way for self-image to amuse and distract itself.

When you notice it,
stop it.
No matter where you are.
Stop it.
Look at it.
Practise. 

Feel the breath.
Sit up straight.
Open the eye gaze. 

As you continue to practise mindfulness,
you will see more details more clearly of the process of perception and cognition.
You'll start to see the process of the contraction of self-image into a self,
a "me" which is seemingly apart from everything else,
held by the bonds of fabrication.

Held in place by fantasies. 

As you continue to practise,
there'll be more and more moments of waking up when practising.
Practising reality shows that experiencing is vaster than we could ever imagine.
As the Roshi has said, it is unthinkable.

The more open, the vaster, the more spacious experiencing is seen to be
and the more we can understand,
Reality, as is said in the verse,
"Towers". 

When we are mindful of the open expanse of actual experiencing,
we are seeing the panorama of everything that is arising in that moment
be it on the zafu
or be it what we are seeing from the top of the Empire State building.

There is room for everything.

No matter where you are
or what you are doing
there's no need to check and see if this is a moment to practise.
All moments and whatever is noticed arising are cues to practise.
There's no need to pick and choose.
Picking and choosing is making things complex by allowing thoughts to carry on for too long.

Stop.
Look.

As the panorama of actual experiencing opens everything can be seen,
nothing is hidden,
nothing is being conditioned or affected by conditioning.
At that moment, a being or beings were described as "towering as reality". 

If all beings practised Reality
it seems to me that it would be possible and logical
that the devastating actions we commit,
inadvertently or intentionally
would be changed as the panorama,
that vast network of relationships,
is seen.

But we'll never know. That thought was a fabrication... just a story. 

When a panorama, a context, is seen
more information can be used to inform choices.

When going up to a high place... practise with whatever is noticed. 

"Tower as Reality" ...OK...why not? 

When ascending a balcony,

"May all beings

Tower as Reality,

Seeing the panorama of everything." 

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...you can
...
when giving something away, raise the verse: 

"May all beings

Be able to release everything
With hearts free of clinging." 

The reality is everything is given.

Our life.

Our breath.

Given for, as the Roshi has said,
"for no reason at all." 

Now, giving is enjoyable.
Giving can make us feel "good".
Perhaps we start to like that "feeling",
perhaps we start to identify ourselves as a "giver",
and without noticing it, maybe,
we start to expect something in return. 

As we start to notice this,
and as we practise at the moment of noticing,
we might start to see that we are
clinging to, counting on, expecting, enjoying, identifying with,
that good feeling,
or that expectation of something in return.
We might start to notice that giving can turn into barter. 

Now the verse, 

When giving something away,
"May all beings

Be able to release everything
With hearts free of clinging.'" 

...reminds us we are learning, with practice,
to "...release everything with hearts free of clinging". 

That "clinging" describes the unquestioned patterns that are woven into an image of a self,
a description which we may not see
or may be loathe to release
which has placed value on almost everything.

The "clinging" may be to the thing we are giving away,
or to the idea we have of how the receiver should receive it,
and the sense that something is now owed to self-image by the receiver. 

You all know what I mean.
It's the stuff of drama and comedy.

"Drinks and dinner and later I'll get..."
[students laugh]

"I'll pretend to enjoy whatever they're enjoying even if I hate it
and maybe I'll end up with a spouse..."
[laughter]
right up to gigantic corporate donations that are tax write-offs. 

Barter. The content may vary and some of it can be interesting,
but what we are interested in, here and now,
is the fact of the patterns;
the movement of attention into the content
so that it defines what course of action we chose to take. 

Of course, the first choice of action for a practitioner
is to practise basic mindfulness when noticing anything
rather than allowing that "clinging" to propagate. 

"Hearts free of clinging." 

"Hearts"?

The organ ticking in the chest?

Is that what is being talked about? 

No one knows, exactly, 
to what extent the cells of the bodymind are affected by movements of attention
but it can be experienced.
Self-image, a pattern that defines how it is and how the world is,
presences,
and contraction is apparent,
but we are used to unquestioningly calling that "me"
without seeing how attention narrows
and that most of whatever else is going on seemingly vanishes.
An interaction has occurred,
something has been given,
something has been received,
reactivity may have surfaced,
and usual patterns may have played themselves out. 

We give things.
We give gifts of objects.
We do samu.
We give the gift of offering up our time and energy to support the practice.
Self-image likes to think that the object or the activity of bodymind is being given freely
and we may get the feeling that we "are a good person",
and that we "are really practising".
Then one day,
we may notice that when what is given is received
and the other doesn't respond the way we think they should
all of a sudden there's someone,
"me",
feeling angry, offended, slighted, unacknowledged, vindictive, vengeful,
all sorts of states.
We've become it.
The state has taken over and is defining who we are.
No problem. 

What to do?

You guessed it.
All at once:
Practise.
Practise at the moment of noticing anything. 

Now, it's easier to do this in the monastery.
The monastery itself is gift, a reminder,
which gives us not just a zafu and zabuton in the practice hall,
(that we might be secretly be regarding as "mine")
but the gifts of ikebana, sho, plates, teisho, dharma talks, robes, food, forms. 

"Shin" means heart, mind, essence,
that which is not the actual flesh and bone and marrow,
shin the calligraphy of which is just outside the door to the Zendo,
to the right,
as you're facing the Zendo door,
"shin" means heart, mind, essence,
that which is not the actual flesh and bone and marrow,
"shin" allows us to see contraction and it is affected by it.
The contraction is felt in the flesh, the bone, and the marrow,
and "I",
the body and the mind, bodymind, contracts and suffers. 

But in that contraction and suffering 
there can be a strong sense of "me",
how I am,
self-image wanting to define that moment.
The forms offer up in many different ways tools for practising in that moment. 

Now sometimes students speak of an increasing sense of "aloneness",
separation from the usual world as they start to practise.
Now, we are alone.
We may all breathe in the same air as each other
and breathe it out
but we are alone.
We may affect each other and everything else
with what we do
but we are alone. 

Knowing, that which knows, and can make choices,
knows all of the dharmas
as the chance to know all the experiences arising within experiencing
and makes the choice to practise.
Now perhaps it is that sense of knowing
and wanting to know more about this
is what brings us to practise,
disguised as a bodymind with a name and number
and lots of other definitions.
As we practise, we start to see the definitions for what they are,
movements of attention towards,
focusing on
one aspect of experiencing to the exclusion of the rest. 

No problem.
That's not what you are.

Just see it.

Practise mindfulness
by feeling the breath,
sitting or standing up straight,
opening peripheral vision.

When you do that,
there is an opening that occurs that is vaster than what you had been experiencing.

The pattern is not being fed.

It may still be there
but it is not a problem
because it is balanced out with all the other moments of knowing,
all the other dharmas.

It is not being fed.
Over time it ceases to "have a life of its own"
and you start to see that you are most certainly not those patterns.

The information is still available,
information that comes up when we see a pattern is still there and it can inform choices. 

The first choice for a practitioner, of course, is to practise...
basic mindfulness.
Use the forms with as much care and detail as possible
and see what happens. 

The next time you give something or are given something,
you'll be sure to notice more details arising around the activity of giving and receiving.

No matter what content you may notice there is no problem.
You are not those thoughts.
You are not those patterns.
They're just something going on.

And there's a knowing of them.

There's no need to follow them.
There's no need to do anything about or with them.

Just feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
and enjoy the gift of the life that is living as you
(as well as, perhaps, any chocolates, or books, or...)
[students laugh] 

Start to notice, "with a heart free of clinging"
the true endlessness of giving and receiving.

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is the moment you can practise. 

When in gatherings or crowds

"May all beings

Release compounded things

And unfold the nature of knowing all knowns." 

Well, here we are.
Are we a gathering?
Are we a crowd?
Is this what we are talking about?

We are a Sangha,
a community of practitioners,
sitting, practising zazen.
Practising, as Knowing, basic mindfulness,
and as a result of practising basic mindfulness,
each thing that is known is released.

You are learning to look into the process of perception and cognition. 

That's what each one of you, as individuals, is here to do. 

However, as with all the verses in "The Practice of Purity",
the reminder is also very useful for when you are not sitting with Sangha.
It is meant to be useful for when you are actually with others in gatherings or crowds
where the purpose is other than to teach you how to practise. 

Now, unless we've been packed in cotton wool for all of our lives
we surely have picked up on that the history of gatherings and crowds is,
on the whole,
not a pretty one.
We've all heard tales of "crowd mentality" and
"mob madness" from many times,
many places,
in so many ways,
with so many excuses along the line of,
"well...everyone else was doing it..."
It plays out over and over again. 

The verse refers to the release of "compounded things".
Compounded things refers to that contraction and intensity
felt when a myriad of dharma,
moments of experience
get lumped together in a density that blocks
and seemingly obliterates the rest of what is actually going on.

As the focusing and narrowing becomes more pronounced,
the state becomes more intense.
Many such states in many gatherings and crowds have produced terrible acts.
That's not good. 

Compounded things, that sense of a me with all of its
"I must do",

"...I should do..."

and "what will people think if I don't..."
and on and on has even, probably,
seduced some of us into staying at gatherings and parties that were really dull and boring. 

It may have encouraged us to engage in activities
that we may not have under ordinary circumstances.
It is a good idea to look into what's really going on.
And we may even save ourselves the agony of sitting through
terrible, terrible, concerts and plays because,
"what will this line of people sitting between us and the escape route think?"
[students laugh.] 

Feeling into the whole bodymind, in the whole moment
shows immediately that any thoughts and feelings
are only part of what is going on.

They're only part of your life,
a very small part.
The tendency to focus on and confuse that small part
with the whole thing
can produce a tide of individuals,
moving in the same direction,
with a singular goal. 

The Roshi has said many times,
and as you have observed,
our first intention is to help,
to make things better.
If you've seen someone slip on the street
you've felt your own movement to respond
and you've seen others do the same.
The first response is easily,
and it would seem increasingly,
overridden by social and cultural pattern,
"Well, I didn't want to get involved",
"I might get sued".
"It's not my business..." and so on. 

Another thing easily observed is that we do what others do.
That's easily demonstrated:
just go and stand in a public place looking up intently.
[students laugh] 

See what happens. 

Little observable bits of how we are affected by
seeing,
hearing,
touching,
tasting,
thinking,
feeling,
and smelling,
the senses,
have been studied and the conclusions,
simple minded as they may be,
have been used,
and are being used to elicit desired effects.

The desired result can vary from getting us to buy something,
to vote for something,
or to blow up something.

The something we might buy can be a nice, plastic and metal machine,
that will save us the time of slicing or something,
or it can be a belief. 

The knowns may be different
but the process of knowing is the same.
It only "makes sense",
that being the case,
to look more deeply into the process.
The process I'm talking about is the process of perception and cognition.
And this is what you're doing right now.
When you notice a thought,
when you notice a feeling,
when you notice an itch,
when you notice the sound of my voice,
when you notice anything,
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.
You've practised that moment of knowing. 

When a dharma is known,
by Knowing,
that moment is practised,
as you just did,
and the "compounded thing",
whatever was known,
is released
and the process of practice unfolds more and more clearly
the nature of knowing all knowns. 

We affect each other in many ways
most of which we never notice...
until we start to practise.
Looking more deeply into what is going on with your life
in this moment
is wonderful.
It's wonderful to be truly able to experience what's really going on with the bodymind
in whatever context it may find itself. 

It's really interesting to see cause and effect in more detail
as it is being experienced.
It's also important to remember that what is being talked about is experiencing
which can only be experienced by the individual,
by you, by you, by you...

It is difficult to talk about,
"Its meaning is not in words but it answers sincere questioning"
and the sincere questioning is asked by the whole bodymind in the whole moment.
All the words used to talk about experiencing are pointers to you,
for you,
to encourage and prod and nag you into looking into your own experiencing. 

If the verse were
"stay away from crowds and gatherings"
that would be a red flag pointing to an intention
to control what you do,
an intention of controlling your behaviour. 

Now that's not the case.


Let me remind you of the verse: 

When in gatherings or crowds

"May all beings

Release compounded things

And unfold the nature of knowing all knowns." 

The verse is a reminder to you,
that you can practise reality wherever you are.
You are knowing colours and forms and sounds and movements of attention.
You can know them more and more clearly.
You can unfold the nature of knowing all knowns
by over and over and over again

feeling the breath,
sitting or standing up straight,
opening the eye gaze.

You can do that anywhere.
You don't need a special outfit.
You can release compounded things
and you can make whatever choice you want to make. 

[Sotto voce:] A piece of advice,
mundane though it may be:
finding yourself in a gathering or a crowd,
check out where the washrooms are
and the location of the nearest exit and make sure you can get to it... 

Thank you for listening. 

If in danger and difficulty,
"May all beings

Have freedom,

And be always unobstructed." 

Pretty well an all-purpose verse. Appropriate on many occasions and even moment to moment. 

What kind of danger or difficulty is being talked about?
Whatever is going on, for any being, for you.
There's no danger or difficulty for which the verse is not to be used. 

Remember the original verse was written
and ended up in Chapter 11 in the Avatamsaka sutra,
and it was written sometime during the first and second century C.E. (A.D.),
it is thought to have originated in India,
and most likely was written by different people.
A product of Buddhism and in an Indian setting,
it contains the symbols, mythologies, figures and stories standard to Buddhism,
used in other contexts as well,
although based in Indian culture there is such a wealth of information,
the Sutra is regarded as a compendium of Buddhist teachings. 

Yet it is fresh today. 

Were dangers and difficulties different 2000 or so years ago?
Yes and no.

In a mundane way,
everything was very different.
Climate, technology, design, and on and on. 

You are unlikely to be trapped in a dusty side street
with a dusty steer whose horns loom large silhouetted against the sun.
Probably a danger or a difficulty 2000 years ago
and it could be a danger in some parts of the planet today.
Not here. 

If I were a little slow in crossing an icy slushy street
and slipped as a bus is moving towards me,
I would consider myself in danger or difficulty.
If I froze, obstructed by a stream of limitations,
I wouldn't be as likely to get out of the way as I might
if free from conditioned experiencing.
A good time to practise. 

Icy streets and motorized traffic would not have been a danger or difficulty 2000 years ago.
It is now, here. Contexts change.
The situations bodyminds find themselves in are different for each,
but the process of experiencing,
the process of being a human bodymind,
is the same for all humans.

The process of being born,
seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, smelling, breathing, thinking,
is the same.
It always has been.
Those people are us, we are them. 

Today, more than any other time in history,
we have knowledge of the terrible things that happen in every moment,
there is danger and difficulty all the time,
further away from or closer to us
and often traceable to choices each and every one has made.

Species are becoming extinct.
Some young birds have been found with stomachs full of our discarded plastic.
The hormones injected into farmed animals are producing who knows what effects on other species,
us, for example.
It would be really easy to go on about the horrors we've heard about
but we don't need to do that.
What we need to do
is recognize that in this moment,
we can practise and make a better choice
than following an old unquestioned pattern
which obstructs and conditions experiencing. 

When experiencing is unobstructed,
the seeing,
hearing,
tasting,
touching,
feeling,
smelling,
breathing,
are unobstructed
and the colours,
forms,
sounds,
of this moment stand forth free and vivid. 

The instructions for basic mindfulness are the same here, now, and then:

when anything is noticed,
anything,
feel the breath,
sit or stand up straight,
open the gaze.
Open to the vastness of this moment free of obstruction. 

The verse: 

When in danger and difficulty
"May all beings

Have freedom,

And be always unobstructed." 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all beings had freedom right now?
Who wouldn't want that? 

"And be always unobstructed."
Who wouldn't want that? 

Right now? 

Here's what you do right now.

Feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.

Practise the whole bodymind in the whole moment.

Each time you notice a contraction,
and practise basic mindfulness
the "obstruction"
or "covering"
or "curtain",
the contraction
is opened
instead of contracting further and obstructing further. 

Freedom.


Wonderful. Nice. Available right now.

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

Is a moment you can practise.

Every breath you take could be the last one. 

The Great Matter is birth and death
Life slips past and time is gone,
Right now, wake up! wake up!

Do not waste time. 

The verse: 

When they move past householder's life,
"May all beings

Have no hindrance in 'leaving home',
And their hearts be free." 

Early on in the series,
it was mentioned that these verses were most likely written originally for monastics
but they can be useful and informative for lay practitioners.
After all, we all go up in "high places", elevators, stairs, escalators.
We all go to the bathroom.
We all have family and friends, acquaintances, and people we interact with.
We all see water and use it.
We all may put on adornments or see people putting on adornments.
We see people who are in good health and ill health.
We see or are in gatherings of people. 

The verses are speaking of the stuff of everyday life.
This particular verse is specific to monastics. 

When they move past householder's life,
"May all beings

Have no hindrance in 'leaving home',
And their hearts be free." 

In this lineage,
monks are those who have "left home" to practise intensively for the liberation of all beings.
That intention is expressed daily, moment-to-moment,
and in different ways with different verses and chants
all stating that this is rooted in the Four Great Vows
and is being done so that all beings are happy, peaceful, and free. 

The first disciples of Gautama Siddhartha had to leave home
if they wanted to practise and study with him.
There was a realization, an understanding,
that when people would pop in to get their little bit of teaching
and then pop out and go home,
they'd pick up and reinforce a lot of their usual patterns
and the Way would not be as completely open as quickly
as it could be when the teacher could keep his eye on them. 

Giving up the life of a householder
and vowing to practise with anything that comes up
is essential to the training of a monk.
Monks have recognized that our usual definition of family is far too small.

All beings are family. 

Not just referring to a physical structure or location,
the word "home"
can also refer to the bundle
of convictions
and beliefs
and states
that define who we think we are and what we do.

To paraphrase the Roshi,
we are used to hunkering down in the nest of self-image
with its unquestioned assumptions and its usual circle of petty concerns.

That little nest can be a prison.
The prison of self-image narrows and pinches
and the bodymind experiences the painful effects of contraction
and the choices fueled by contraction. 

We live in a world defined by states
and the fictionalized accounts of the reasons for those states.
We dream and imagine what life would be like
if there were freedom from the constant nattering of self-image.
There's a yearning to move beyond and we seek it out. 

And one day you entered through the front door of, in the old days, Daijozan,
in the more recent old days, Zazen-ji, or,
as this evening, Dainen-ji.

You are seeking and asking to be taught to practise. 

Some who enter the gates of practice have taken monastic vows
and now some are teachers,
some are practice advisors continuing to study and practise,
moment-to-moment, 24/7. 

Now, if thoughts come up in reaction to this such as,
"Yeah, yeah, that's what I want to do..."

Or on the other end of the spectrum,
"Not in a million years!"

Just recognize that that thought is there.
You've recognized something about experiencing in this moment.
You've noticed thoughts as thoughts, feelings as feelings,
and you can
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
and feel the breath.

You can practise basic mindfulness in this moment. 

Associate and general students are learning to practise
and are seeing the process of perception and cognition more and more clearly.
Students are learning to see states
as those knotted nests of conditioned experiencing
rather than as something we might call a "personality". 

In Sanskrit,
these obstructions, defilements, poisons,
were named klesa
and in your study you might come across references to
"the burning flames of passion, aggression, and ignorance".

The three klesas. 

Indeed we've experienced the strength of states,
haven't we?
When, through the practice of basic mindfulness,
basic patterns have been opened
and the burning flames are somewhat quenched,
you may find that you have more energy.

As the energy that was locked into maintaining these contractions,
be they falling into the category of passion, aggression, or ignorance,
opens,
there is more energy to do what needs to be done.
There's more energy available
and more and more, it will be dedicated to the liberation of all beings. 

This recognition has led,
and will continue to lead students to receive monastic vows,
to become "home leavers".
Becoming home leavers in this lineage
means that each monk has walked away from the life of a householder
and all that entails.
They have dealt and are dealing with situations that arise
just like anyone else.
Rather than the romantic "running away from the world",
which of course is impossible,
there is in fact a more inclusive embrace which includes more beings. 

Each monk has vowed to practise and teach for the liberation of all beings
beyond convenience.
All resources are dedicated to that end.
This makes for long days
and there are interactions with many beings.
You can see how impossible it would be
to engage in and sustain any socially defined relationship.
So much time is required for maintaining established social relationships
that the time for practice would be severely diminished.

Each monk has faced many situations,
many hindrances,
and is vowing to continually practise with whatever arises. 

Vows have been received.
Vows are taken seriously.
The vows which you've heard if you've ever been at a sitting when Fusatsu,
the renewal of vows,
is celebrated,
provide ways of seeing more clearly into moments of experiencing
and to practise
rather than feed into the creation of hindrances
through the playing out of old patterns. 

When they move past householder's life,
"May all beings

Have no hindrance in 'leaving home',
And their hearts be free." 

And let their hearts be free. 

Basically we're stating a wish or an intention
for those moving past householder's life
that the shin, heart, mind, essence,
be free from the bonds of conditioned experiencing,
and that there be no hindrance. 

Now that can apply to all students
looking at and seeing more and more clearly
those comfortable little nests.

May all beings be happy, may they be peaceful, may they be free.


That's nice.


Oh! A suggestion. You may wish to go on the website and read through "The Eightfold Path". It's a lot of fun.

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

Is the only moment you can practise.


So feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.

Practise this moment. 

Entering the monastery,
"May all beings

Display the various standards
Of being without struggle." 

"Being without struggle?"
"But this is tough."
"What do they mean, 'Being without struggle'?"
"Various standards?"
"What do they mean, 'Various standards'?"


So let's look at this from who, what, where, and when? 

Who?
You and all beings.

What?
Embodying practice.

Where?
Here.


When?
Now. 

"May all beings display the various standards of being without struggle." 

What's being talked about, and pointed to,
is how you are right now and a wish,
an expressed intention,
that practice will mature and open
so that no matter what the situation,
there will be just the display of reality moment-to-moment,
free from struggle. 

How is this done?
It is done moment-to-moment,
using the forms, the standards, of the monastery
to practise moment-to-moment,
while you are in the monastery.
The only reason the monastery is here at all
is so that you can learn to practise. 

You are starting to recognize the ways in which
you cause a sense of a self to struggle
by taking part of your experience
and feeding attention into it
so that it comes foreground,
obscuring vast amounts of reality and, often,
defining what you do. 

Reactivity comes up in many situations.
It comes up during teisho and Dharma Talks.
This is what Anzan roshi had to say in teisho 5:
"Sun and Moon, Hands and Eyes" in the series
"Five Fingers, Ten Directions: Commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji's text 'Jippo'". 

...But when something is said about this luminosity it can be as if weeds fill the Hatto, the Dharma Hall, as students become entangled in thinking about luminosity, telling themselves stories about luminosity, instead of opening into what recognition might have stirred within them... 

You can expect to have thoughts fly up like hornets
in response to something that may be heard or experienced.
It's not that it's "wrong". 

It is what is going on.
See it as such.
Recognize there is no need to follow
or act out any of these thoughts and feelings in any way.
Use the forms of deportment of the bodymind
to deepen your ability to see more clearly the process of perception and cognition.

Each time you notice anything,
practise basic mindfulness. 

This is simple but it isn't "easy".
We are used to taking our self-descriptions very seriously. 

We don't need to take our self-descriptions seriously at all.

All of practice points to the many ways we do take things very seriously.
And when you notice anything, no matter what the content,
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the peripheral vision. 

Open to this moment.

Practise the whole bodymind in the whole moment. 

Notice how you are right now.

Feel the breath,

sit up straight,

and open the peripheral vision. 

You know what you noticed.

You just proved it.

You're not any of those thoughts.

You're not any of those feelings.

You're not any of those reactivities.

If you were, you would not be able to know them. 

There was a flurry of thoughts fueled by patterns.

So you feel the breath.

So you sit up straight.

So you open the eye gaze. 

The only moment you can practise the life that is living as you,
the skin, meat, bone, and marrow

of the whole bodymind in the whole moment,

is
now. 

There will be many more moments of reactivity that are known, increasingly,
to be just that:
reactivity.

Reactivity is not who you are.

The word "reactivity" is being used to describe a process that can be known.
We are used to defining ourselves by our reactivities.
We like this. We don't like that.
We feel good about this. We don't feel good about that.
We feel good about this person. We don't feel good about that person.
And on and on and on.

And we are just now learning to see those things for what they are
rather than as descriptions of a self, personality.
What do we do in situations where reactivities occur and old patterns start to run their stories? 

Well, you can take it seriously
as something that can define how you are
and let it define who you are.
You can follow the pattern, feeding attention into it,
and then try to hide it by glossing over the fact that it is there and pretend that it is not happening.
You can "dissociate" from it.
You can become the thing that makes the decision to keep or hide or develop a strategy.

But all of that requires struggle.
That's what you've already done over and over and over again in your lifetime and it doesn't work.

Time to try something else. After all that's what brought you here. 

The forms provide the tools you need for cutting through that sense of "struggle". 

The forms afford endless opportunities for feeling more completely,
and becoming more intimate with the bodymind.

When you raise the arms,
align body and breath,
feel the feet on the floor,
and come to gassho,
the capacity to know,
to feel more completely
the skin, meat, bone, and marrow,
develops.
Bodymind is learning. 

In the course of our lifetimes we have been "looked at"
and we've looked at others
and we have learned to define ourselves by what we think is seen of us
and what we see of others.
We develop mannerisms,
ways of carrying the bodymind,
that we hope will make us seem more
girly, womanly, manly, boyish, young, or older,
and on and on and on. 

Well, as you've probably figured out by now,
those roles don't "play" in the monastery. 

The forms give us a means of paying more attention to the whole bodymind in the moment,
to notice more completely what is going on.

The practice, the instruction to practise
tells us to practise anytime we notice anything at all about experiencing.

The forms provide the optimum opportunity for seeing what's going on
in that process of perception and cognition
that is occurring wrapped around the breath;
your life,
the bodymind,
the skin, meat, bones, and marrow,
of and in this moment. 

You are asked to leave the more obvious adornments,
jewelry, cosmetics, clothing with labels and cartoons on it,
at the door.

Now, people have many reactivities, many thoughts about why this is so
and why it should or should not be so.

It must be so
in order that the more obvious and coarse ways adopted to prop up a sense of "self"
can be "left at the door".
You can then use the forms for practising with the whole bodymind
to see the more subtle "adornments" of habits and patterns. 

You can ask any question you want to ask.
As you are asking practice advisors or a teacher to answer a question for you,
there is a form for the interaction
which gives you the best possible chance of seeing more of the reality of the situation.

Next week's verse speaks explicitly of the interaction between students, teachers, and practice advisors,
so there's more to come.
Stay tuned. 

Briefly, in any situation when interacting with a monastic, your senior,
practise the whole bodymind: 
stand up straight,
even if you have been sitting down,
hold the hands in shashu,
feel the breath,
feel the skin,
meat,
bone,
and marrow,
see the patterns of reactivity that come up
and practise basic mindfulness. 

Now if you have a tendency to want to be
charming, social, to comment on the weather,
to engage in meaningless chit chat just because you feel uncomfortable,
by using the form of feeling into the space of the moment with the whole bodymind,
you can afford yourself the chance to actually practise
rather than to act out the tendency to want to fill what may be uncomfortable space
with the detritus of usual social interaction.

Wait to follow the lead of the monastic.
You don't have to do anything.
The more fully attention is open,
the more completely the bodymind can rest calmly, eventually, in the form. 

I'm not talking about any state of "calm" or "bliss" or "serenity".
In fact, sometimes the simple act of standing in shashu
when facing a senior or a teacher
can produce reactivities that are strong and that can be uncomfortable, really uncomfortable.

Sometimes we might feel totally exposed.
Sometimes we might want to just slide away from the interaction
without having anything uncovered.

That's not a problem.
That's what people have been doing since the beginning of people.

Practice gives us the way and the means for seeing these habitual patterns and reactivities. 

Now, there may be things like dryness of the mouth,
the eyes dilating like those of a deer frozen in headlights.
There might be squeezing or pinching in the muscles.
The heartbeat might go up.
We might perspire.
And on and on and on.

I don't want to give you ideas [wave of laughter from students]
but I do want to let you know that any and all of that stuff
has been happening to human beings since the beginning of practice.
That's the kind of stuff you will notice more and more clearly.
It will have less and less tendency to come foreground
as you learn to practise mindfulness at the moment of noticing.

As soon as you notice a label or a story or anything coming up about what's going on,
you feel the breath,
you stand up straight,
you open the peripheral vision.

You actually practise the whole bodymind. 

And there might be, from time-to-time,
gentle, kindly, grandmotherly pointing to what you are doing by the senior,
the practice advisor,
or the teacher.
This in itself may be uncomfortable and may produce another flurry of reactivities.

They are not the problem.

The problem is believing that they are who you are
and that you must defend these strategies and stances.

All you need to do is see them.
They are what is being pointed to by all the instruction.

And then
you feel the breath,
you sit or stand up straight,
you open the eye gaze.

You practise the whole bodymind in the whole moment. 

Be without struggle. 

Entering the monastery,

"May all beings

Display the various standards,
Of being without struggle." 

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is the opportunity to practise presenting itself
no matter where you are no matter what you are doing.
You're learning to notice that opportunity. 

Going to advisors and teachers,
"May all beings

Skillfully attend to their teachers
And practise the ways of virtue." 

"Skillfully attending" to the teachers means,
at this stage of your practice,
that you,
by using the forms,
give yourself the best possible chance to receive and practise the teachings.

Remember that the transmission of the teachings of reality
is not just or only in what is "said" during any exchange. 

The meaning of "skillfully attending" changes
as our understanding and ability to practise matures.
Formal students are starting to understand "sendaba",
the wordless understanding of what is needed and called for moment-to-moment
by the Dharma through the Lineage and the Teachers.
Monks have vowed to practise sendaba. 

You are learning to skillfully attend to your own experiencing
and to apply the instructions for mindfulness practice anytime you notice anything.

Through attending, knowing, and practising,
you are maturing practice.
The forms are tools to help you see into experiencing more clearly.
The forms use the whole bodymind.
The more completely you are able to practise the forms,
the more your understanding will deepen. 

As an associate or general student
most of the face-to-face "attending to the teacher" will occur during Daisan or practice interviews.
Put effort into practising the forms. 

When you are going to see teachers and advisors,
there are a number of forms to be used.
All of the forms are there to help you
see and practise with the thoughts and feelings that
"the dreaded" or "the anticipated" Daisan or practice interview has stirred. 

The forms include,
taking care of the zafu and zabuton when it is time for you to leave the Hatto,
bowing at the door,
walking down the hallway or stairs with hands in shashu,
ringing the densho,
replacing the striker,
and upon hearing the gong,
the response to your strike on the densho requesting entry,
opening the door,
bowing,
and walking to the seat in front of the teacher or practice advisor,
and then, taking your seat on the zafu.

There are myriads of moments of experience to be known and practised.
But many are missed. 

Sometimes we are so obsessed with our particular pattern of
"scripting", or "anxiety", or "fear" or "anticipation",
that major actions, say, ringing the densho, are overlooked.

This isn't a problem. 

After your name is announced for Daisan,
there may be a strong tendency to prepare yourself,
to come up with something to say that self-image believes will
"satisfy" or "impress" the teacher or the practice advisor.
We're used to doing that.
In fact when we look at our previous experiences with learning almost anything
we can recognize that we've been trained
to try and come up with answers that will get us "the gold star"
[snickers from students].

Keep things simple and recognize that attention is narrowing into thoughts.

Practise at that moment of recognition. 

Self-image has many vague and muddled and confused ideas
about what a "good" Zen student should be like.
We will try and arrange ourselves so as to present a close approximation of what that fabricated ideal should be.

(This is really quite silly when looked at logically:
if self-image, the very process that causes us to seek out practice,
knew what it was talking about when it was talking about practice,
then it wouldn't be there.) 

You have recognized that you don't know what's really going on with the life that is living as you.

So here you are sitting in the Hatto, the Dharma Hall,
learning to practise Reality as it is
by noticing experiencing more completely
and actually practising mindfulness of the whole bodymind
through feeling the breath,
sitting up straight,
and opening the eye gaze:
practising the whole bodymind in the whole moment. 

The moments of experiencing that you do notice and practise
provide the gateway to noticing the process of perception and cognition more clearly.
You are also learning a new language with which to talk about what you have noticed.
And meanings are shifting. 

When you finally take your seat in front of the teacher or practice advisor
and THE QUESTION,
[students laugh]
"how's your practice?" is asked
even the best laid plans for responding
[more laughter]
as "someone who knows"
become all knotted, and contracted
and our memory may even seem to have been wiped clean.

That's not a problem.
That's just something going on.
Self-image will try and make it a problem.
All you need do is
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
and open peripheral vision. 

Over and over again
you hear the instruction to practise when you notice
ANYTHING at all.
Self-image, those contracted ideas about how you are and how the world is,
seems to have a hard time understanding the word "anything".
It has favourite things that it likes to recognize,
favourite moments to practise,
self-image may make decisions that the light coming in the window,
the sound of the fan or of birds outside,
the feeling of your knee on the zabuton,
are all just too trivial and need not be mentioned as it might make us seem silly.
We want something more profound.
Self-image wants to be profound
and so will gloss over many moments of experiencing
trying to get to the "golden nugget";
the sign of what it has achieved,
what it knows,
how good it is,
and how it will impress the teacher.

None of this is a problem.
It's the stuff of practice. 

The form for Daisan is to take your seat in front of the teacher or advisor,
arrange the bodymind in the posture of zazen,
practise basic mindfulness of the whole bodymind,
and notice what happens.

Anytime you notice anything,
practise basic mindfulness. 

How easy is that?

Well it may not be easy but it's simple. 

Hands may start to move out of the mudra.
If you don't notice this it will be pointed out to you.
It's not that you have done a "bad" thing
but rather that you have noticed some rather major movements of bones, meat, tendon,
only after the major movement is underway
and it has been pointed out to you.
Isn't it amazing that such major movements aren't noticed,
often, by the person moving? 

By maintaining the form, by practising,
you will see more clearly into the details of such habits and patterns.
Eyes are another major indicator of the activity of perception and cognition. 

When you are in front of the teacher or practice advisor
the eye gaze should be kept open to the peripheral vision.
As you do that you'll start to notice strong tendencies for the eyes to dart around
or for the gaze to become strained with the eyes forced open
as if toothpicks were propping up the eyelids
[laughter of recognition].

This will be pointed out to you.
Once again, it is not that this tendency to dart or stare is "wrong".
It is something that goes on with human beings.
You might as well notice it.
By using the form for Daisan or practice interviews,
you will see more clearly into this process as well.

It may be uncomfortable but so what?
You are in a safe place.

Feel the breath,
sit up straight,
and open the peripheral vision.

Actually practise in that moment of noticing. 

Learning anything new can be "uncomfortable".
Recognize that the teacher or practice advisor
is not "judging" you
or trying "to best you"
or "compete" with you.
The monk is rather using every opportunity to show you,
directly,
in this moment,
how to mature your practice.

We're not used to this kind of generosity.
We are used to being looked at, judged, embraced, or discarded;
used in one way or another.

Reality, the Dharma,
and the teaching and teachers of reality
are not using you for anything
nor are they interested in you as a "social" being.
It makes no difference to them whether you are
old, young, rich, poor, straight, gay, male, or female. 

In this lineage,
definitions of male and female,
definitions of sex and gender, 
are not used to discriminate,
as they are in social culture.
This freedom from the bias of socially defined roles and labels
affords an opportunity to see the many ways our sense of who we are
has been shaped by these unquestioned patterns and assumptions. 

Using the forms allows us to see the habits, and patterns, and stances,
that have developed based on these definitions.
Dogen zenji wrote about this in the 13th century. 

If you want to study the Dharma and end contraction and struggle, forget such things as male and female. As long as all delusions have not yet been clarified, then neither men nor women have clarified them. When all delusions are clarified and True Reality is known, then there is no "male" and "female". 

This is from the "Rahai Tokuzui: Bowing and Acquiring the Essence" by Eihei Dogen zenji, translated by Yasuda Joshu Dainen roshi and Anzan Hoshin roshi. 

Today, practice advisors and teachers, in this lineage, are all "monks".
There is no division into "monks" and "nuns".
In Dogen's time social culture was stringently defined by sex and gender
and there are references to nuns and monks.

The word "nuns" is loaded because it reflects a social culture which universally puts a lower value on females, "nuns", than males, "monks". 

The Roshi has spent considerable time addressing questions of gender that come up in language.
In the front of publications it is written that, "the Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi and Great Matter Publications use non-gender specific language in order to clarify and make the teachings accessible to all practitioners." 

And guess what? We mean it.


The "Rahai Tokuzui" goes on to say, 

The five aggregates of form, reactivity, symbolization, patterning, and consciousness, are just the five aggregates, however they might appear; as a woman or a man makes no difference. Women and men can both receive the Dharma. If you are serious about the Buddha Way, you cannot make such distinctions about "male" or "female". This is fundamental to the Way of Awake Awareness. 

You might also noticed a lack of other widely accepted forms of social interaction
such as shaking hands, hugging,
filling up gaps of silence with chit chat,
everybody talking at once,
yelling at each other just to be heard,
and on and on and on. 

The forms provide the ways and the means for seeing clearly
during any interaction
how you are.
And through practising mindfulness when you notice anything,
uncovering who you are. 

Any interaction with a teacher or practice advisor
is based only in your desire to practice
and your demonstrated willingness to use the instructions and the forms
for looking into how you are as completely as you are able. 

Encountering a teacher or practice advisor in the halls of the monastery
or in the monastery grounds
provides opportunity for receiving verbal or non-verbal instruction
outside the formal area of Daisan and practice interviews. 

The basic instruction is the same no matter where you are:
practise,
allow attention to open,
and wait to follow the lead of the monk.

A tendency when we're not actually sitting in the Hatto
or in the room for Daisan
or practice interviews,
is to drop the forms of interaction and lapse into social mode.

By using the forms,
which include functional talking,
you can get to see those patterns based on self-image
and its "me, me, me, me, me, me, me" contractions
into those ideas of an image of a self.
You start to see whatever is coming up
as simply something going on
rather than a definition of who you are.

Practise at the moment of noticing anything. 

Remember, you can ask anything.
The form is simple,
"Gassho Osho" or
"Gassho Ino" or
"Gassho Tando" or
"Gassho Chiden"
and when you have the monk's attention,
when you are standing facing each other,
ask or say whatever you wanted to ask or say.
If you desire to communicate about something,
anything,
it is worthwhile and appropriate
to use that moment fully and completely by attending fully and completely. 

When you encounter monks outside the monastery,
the same instruction holds:
wait for the monk to lead.
If they bow you bow.
If they nod because bowing may cause confusion for others,
non-students, who are in the grocery store, or on the street, wherever you may be,
you nod. 

Now there is nothing stopping you from extending invitations to social events to monks
but don't be surprised if they decline.
After all, the monks have made the choice
to live their lives for the liberation of all beings
rather than to become involved in the secular world. 

If a monk accepts your invitation to attend a function,
recognize that there may be a great deal of uncertainty on your part
as to how you should act,
what you should do,
what will they think of you
and on and on and on.

The usual stuff of self-image that comes up
is no different whether you're going to the movies or going to Daisan.
Use the forms of interaction to see how you are in a different context.
This can be invaluable in maturing practice
and uncovering who you really are.

If you have questions, ask them.
Ask a practice advisor or a teacher.

When you have self-image asking self-image,
when you engage in discursiveness about the question about practice, 
recognize you're asking an idiot the question [louder laughter]. 

Going to advisors and teachers,
"May all beings

Skillfully attend to their teachers
And practise the ways of virtue."

Thank you for listening.

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...open to your life as it really is

...go on 

...take a chance. 

The verses of "The Practice of Purity",
even though they were written a long time ago,
in a different place,
are giving you a tool to look at and practise with
the details of patterns on many different occasions.
The verses provide another way,
a different way,
of looking at our usual day-to-day experience. 

After years of practice some people who started just like you,
practising as associate,
then general,
then formal students,
decide to ask to be ordained as a probationary monk. 

The verse is not a required part of the formal request to be ordained,
but, as with all the verses,
provides different ways of looking at the situation: 

Requesting ordination,

"May all beings

Reach the phase of 'no turning back'
And their intelligence be unhindered." 

One requesting ordination has recognized,
to a greater or lesser degree,
that there is "no turning back",
no possibility of "going back" into the thrall of previously held beliefs.

There has been a recognition
that it simply is not possible to grasp and hold on to anything.
The fact of impermanence has been recognized.
There is the knowledge gained from experience that the "self" is a fiction. 

Before we come to practice,
we define ourselves by who we "think" we are.
We define ourselves by the fictionalizations,
the stories we have created to explain ourselves to ourselves
and to fashion ourselves
to present an appropriate image to others.
We are an image-of-a-self. 

The displays of self-image run the gamut
from believing that the perfect shade of lip gloss or the right sexy deodorant will make us irresistible
and will attract "the one" or maybe just get us some sex,
[student laughter]
to believing that killing those who don't believe as we do will be our gateway to paradise. 

We grasp at things,
mentally and physically,
that we believe will make us "happy" and fulfilled.
The mechanism,
the functioning of the process of contraction
is the same no matter what is being grasped after,
could be happiness,
love,
a nice butt,
the perfect mate,
the perfect family,
the perfect décor in the perfect home,
recognition,
respect,
money,
land... 

Now history and current events show clearly that this grasping doesn't work.

Our personal experience may have shown us that once or twice too.

2600 years ago,
Gautama Siddhartha taught that the narrowing of attention into grasping,
trying to grab that which we believe to be the "thing"
that will make us satisfied and end dhukka,
the sense of unsatisfactoriness that grows and causes suffering,
wasn't necessary.

And guess what?
That still maintains.
That isn't necessary.
The Buddha taught a way to end it.

The Four Noble Truths are the base of understanding what and how you are practising.
They're called "noble" because they're true.
Just the facts.
Just the facts. 

In "Becoming Buddha" from "The Complete Teachings of Reality", Zen Master Anzan Hoshin says: 

These facts are:
first,
that all conditioned existence
gives rise to dhukka or unsatisfactoriness,
suffering, contraction, and confusion.

The second Noble Truth is:
this suffering, this dhukka
is fueled by the mechanism of grasping,
of trying to hold,
to hold on to something when it cannot be held
and by continually misunderstanding the nature of our experience.

The third Noble Truth is that it is possible to end this.
The Buddha himself had experienced the end of this dhukka, this suffering.

And the fourth:
That it is possible for others to experience this by practising. 

We sit.
We practise mindfulness.
We are looking into the nature of our experiencing.
We are understanding the nature of our experience more each time we
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
and open the eye gaze.

Each time we practise the whole bodymind in the whole moment,
the suffering caused by dhukka can be ended.
It can be ended by anyone willing to put their ass on the line or,
more politely,
their buttocks on the zafu. [students laugh] 

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia had this to say about dhukka.: 

Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha repeatedly stated that the only purpose of Buddhism is to seek the cessation of dhukka, by understanding the Four Noble Truths and acting accordingly. The other three Noble Truths explain the source of dhukka, the means of transforming it, and the method of executing its cessation. 

We are often and have often been,
propelled into action based on grasping for things to fill some kind of perceived lack.
You've all experienced that sense of a self
with its fixed points of view that reacts and causes confusion and chaos.

You are learning to see that this isn't who you are.
It is just something going on.
It's a pattern that you do not have to follow.
You can do something else.

You can practise.

You can grind that pattern to dust with that contact between bottom and cushion. 

You know from your own experience
that following any reactivity,
whether it is called embarrassment or perfectionism or anger or anxiety or fear,
is like feeding it
and it gets bigger and stronger,
and impedes the process of perception and cognition.
We get into states and,
when we do that,
we make ourselves more stupid.
Over and over and over again. 

When attention funnels into contraction, 
experiencing is more and more conditioned by the contraction as it gets stronger and stronger. 

Remember: experiencing that is conditioned by contraction causes suffering.

Conditioned,
hindered experiencing,
open experiencing that is obstructed,
causes suffering. 

Suffering is driven by dhukka,
that basic sense of unsatisfactoriness
that causes contraction, grasping, and confusion,
that causes "bad space". 

Contractions, bad space,
can be known
and at the moment of knowing
you practise mindfulness by
feeling the breath,
sitting up straight,
opening the peripheral vision,
practising the whole bodymind in the whole moment. 

Those requesting ordination have recognized
through their own experiencing that the teachings of reality are true.
They've learned that conditioned experiencing
or the conditioned existence need not continue and can, in fact, be ended.
They know through their experiencing that patterns can be practised and worn out. 

Those requesting ordination are manifesting that recognition
by offering their flesh, meat, bone, and marrow,
into practising the teachings of the Lineage,
and, they are vowing to practise, and teach,
beyond convenience
for the freedom of all beings. 

All beings can practise,
all human beings can benefit from practice
so the verse is also an encouragement to others. 

The verse expresses both the intention of the one requesting ordination
and the expression of the heartfelt wish that all beings do just this. 

The verse: 

"May all beings

Reach the phase of 'no turning back'

And may their intelligence be unhindered." 

If beings were "open", free from habits, and patterns, and states,
if experiencing were unconditioned,
and the nested intelligences of the bodymind free to function to full capacity,
it's possible the world would be a much different place. 

How could anyone not want that?

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE...
this one...
right now... 

...is a moment in which you can practise. 

You can feel the clothing you are wearing moving and shifting
with the moving and shifting of the bodymind
caused by the breathing.


You're alive in this moment.

Practise this moment. 

The gatha or verse: 

Shedding the clothing of householders,
"May all beings

Cultivate roots of expansiveness

Free from the yoke of wrong action." 

When people are ordained,
they are literally and metaphorically
"shedding the clothing of householders". 

The clothing of householders,
the clothing worn before receiving vows
is replaced with monk's robes.
Robes are worn on all formal practice occasions.

These practice occasions include ceremonies,
formal sittings,
and interviews with students engaged in the process preliminary to acceptance as a student. 

Those monks who work,
and all of us have had to,
adapt their work attire so as to align with guidelines in the
"Saijo-Shingi, The Deportment of Radiance, the Monastic Precepts of the Northern Mountain Order".
Clothing aligned with the Shingi is a constant reminder of vows and a reminder to continuously practise. 

Each time the moment is practised
the tendency to follow contraction and contracted ways of acting is opened.
Experiencing in that moment is open and expansive.

That's how it is all the time.
It gets hidden when attention focuses in on certain favourite patterns.
This is true for anyone,
public, associate, general, or formal students, or monks.
This is true for any being.
This verse, as the others,
once again encourages anyone to open past contracted states
and cut the tendency to be limited or yoked by the contraction
caused by following usual patterns. 

The guidelines for monastic clothing are simple:
black, in good repair, the right size,
and without externally displayed markings
such as labels, branding, colourful patterns, and designs. 

There are many more details about how to make robes and other clothing,
what to wear and when,
there's history,
useful information on how to care for items,
when and how to wash, spot cleaning, and so on.
This type of detailed instruction for monks means
that there is no need for wasting energy and effort
in having to figure out, on their own, what to wear and how to take care of it. 

The information and methods we have of doing anything at all
when we first start to practise
is not complete and will expand as practice matures.

For example, a student offering samu is given explicit details about the task from a monastic.
The more clearly a monk can explain exactly what the task is,
the best way to do it,
the location of the required materials,
the more the student has a framework which frees them
from having to worry about how to do the task.
They can just do it
and practise whilst doing it. 

Now, if they have a better way,
the monk will be glad to hear it.
We're always looking for a better way to do things. 

The student can do the assignment,
in the assigned way,
and learn to notice more details of perception and cognition as they practise. 

Self-image,
those views of how we are and how the world is,
often bubbles up and enthralls us
even when we are doing simple tasks.
We get lost in thought and forget what we're doing.
Or we may seem to be watching ourselves doing some things.

All of a sudden,
we may notice ourselves acting out the part of a good and mindful student.
We may find ourselves bustling around in a parody of committed activity.
We get so busy being what we think is a good and mindful student
that we forget what we are doing and end up with
dust and woolly bits of stuff blowing in the hallway,
food bits left in the sink trap to rot,
cleaning cloths left on radiators
and on and on and on.

Now this isn't a problem.
As practice matures we become more traceless in our actions.
We start to understand moment-to-moment,
that taking care of what needs to be taken care of is not limited
to taking care of the zafu and zabuton in the Hatto or Zendo. 

In the matter of clothing,
and other patterns we carry with us,
we are asked to leave the usual social indicators of
the "worth",
the "status",
the "value",
the classification of individuals,
at the door of the monastery. 

In 1991, the Roshi quoted a poem I'd written on beginning the Straight Path. 

Backpacking the Straight Path
(instructions for the Zendo) 

Bare bones
Bare flesh
ONLY 

Leave the backpack of self-image:
Parent, child, male, female,
Straight, gay, old, young,

Black, white, older, younger,
At the door with your
Shoes and socks 

Pick it up on the way out
Too heavy? 

Unpack in Suchness
And the load
Lightens. 

Our "Householders clothing",
familiar stuff, everyday things,
jeans, tight skirts, short skirts, shorts, pantyhose, suits,
are uncomfortable for sitting.
Although jeans and so forth may be worn for samu. 

Those of you who are already wearing the kunsu,
the folded cloth lower garment,
which is wrapped around the waist,
know, from experience, and right now,
that it frees the legs in a way that no pair of trousers or pants can.
The feet are covered by the kunsu when sitting.
This is really useful in this northern climate.
[student laughter]
The experience of the expansiveness of the space around the limbs changes your experience of sitting. 

On another note; clothing is a major social indicator in any culture.
We're all familiar with this.
The leaders are supposed to have the best, the most showy, the most expensive, clothing.
We learned to read each other instantly by what we see each other wearing.
People wear labels in huge letters like banners of worth.
When really they've been turned into billboards for the product.
And we don't even get paid for it.
And it seems the bigger the lettering, the more familiar the lettering, the more the item costs.
Go figure. 

We could go on and on
about fashion, clothing, resources, style, detail, merchandising
but that's all content.
All of this can be interesting and fun (to some)
but it isn't the point of the verse. 

I was talking with the Roshi today about gatha or verses and their point.
The Roshi said,
"the point of the various gathas that we chant such as the Gokan-no ge or meal chant,
is not the chant itself but doing the chant.
It is not a matter of telling yourself a Buddhist story about what you are doing.
The words are important as they are instructions to be practised,
but much more important is the practice of doing the chant,
to stop,
to establish mindfulness,
before doing the task or before moving on to the next."

Those who have taken monk's vows have recognized,
to a greater or lesser degree,
that they need not play out any kind of pattern
(nor should they wear them)
and all other students are learning to do or not do just that
through studying and practising mindfulness.

Committing to practise and using the many reminders to practise; 
forms, clothing, chants or gatha,
many interesting and funny things may be discovered,
for example:
millions of people expressing their individuality by wearing the same things.

That makes no sense...
except to merchants. 

You understand that the verse is not just referring to the physical clothing that we wear everyday. 

When pushed and pulled into action
by contraction
and the unquestioned assumptions we hold about reality,
we can do some really stupid and downright hurtful things.
Wrong action and the consequences of wrong action do capture and burden us.
We've all experienced that yoke of wrong action;
again, to a greater or lesser degree.
That something, that contraction, narrows and limits experiencing. 

Who needs that? 

Shedding the clothing of householders,
"May all beings

Cultivate roots of expansiveness
Free from the yoke of wrong action." 

Thank you for listening.

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...lets you know that you're alive

...and, you can make a choice to notice your life
...in the only place it's happening

...which is right NOW

...in this moment. 

As you're sitting there breathing in and out,
feeling the bodymind, little creaks and groans,
feeling the lungs expand,
you can almost feel the hair growing on your head,
on your arms,
cells falling off.
That's life. 

The verse... 

When shaving their hair,

"May all beings

Leave behind self-grasping forever
And enter into no birth and no death." 

As the Roshi has said,
gatha, songs or verses,
remind us first of all to practise.
You heard this last week,
in a quote.

Practise now if you notice any thought about not remembering,
or if you notice anything at all;
feel the breath,
sit up straight, 
open peripheral vision to the whole visual field. 

The point of the various gathas that we chant, such as the Gokan-no ge or meal chant, is not the chant itself but doing the chant. It is not a matter or telling yourself a Buddhist story about what you are doing. The words are important as they are instructions to be practised, but much more important is the practice of doing the chant, to stop, to establish mindfulness before doing the task or before moving on to the next. 

The reminder is to
feel the breath,
feel the body,
open to the visual field,
and allow whatever is noticed;
the breath,
colours, forms, sounds, tastes,
fabric on the body,
the knees on the zabuton,
whatever little clots of contraction
that have started as part of a pattern of self-identification, self-image,
to open completely. 

The verses of "The Practice of Purity" are reminders
of the possibility of practice in any situation
and they provide an opportunity to explore perspectives
and to expand our usual understanding of various aspects of our experiencing. 

When a person is ordained a monk in the Northern Mountain Order,
the head is shaved except for the shura,
a patch at the nape of the neck.
During Shukke Tokudo the person will kneel in front of the Roshi.
The Roshi holds the shura and asks three times, "Shall I cut the shura?"
three times the monk replies "yes."

The Roshi asks, "Shall I cut it?"
Yes.
"Shall I cut it?"
YES.

And interestingly enough, the last "yes" has always been stronger than the first two. 

Now sometimes the Roshi has responded to the person being ordained and said,
"Are you shura?"
[students laugh]
In asking permission to cut the shura, three times,
the Abbot is asking, as the voice of the Lineage of Teachers,
"Are you making this choice freely?"
"Do you understand what you are doing?"
"Are you committed to follow through?"
The question is asked in front of the assembled Sangha of monks, and students. 

It's a bald and very public declaration of the intention of the person to practise and study without fail,
beyond convenience. 

When the shura is cut,
the cut hair is put in a bowl of water and is shown to every person in the Hatto.
Heads bend and look down to the little hairs floating on the water in the black bowl.
Everyone sees the commitment. 

Now we could say the scraping away of the hair is something like
the cutting through and wearing out of patterns of contraction.
The shaving is done with a razor
(we all know the sharper the blade the better). 

The cutting through and wearing away of the patterns of contractions
is done with the practice of zazen,
with bowing practice,
chanting practice,
oryoki practice,
samu practice,
and the diligent use of all the forms of practice.
The sharper, the more diligent one's efforts can be...
the better. 

The bald head,
gleaming in the lights of the Hatto,
the removal of the hair,
shows the recognition,
to a greater or lesser degree,
that there is no solid and permanent self,
and, most of all,
that bald head reminds the person who is sporting it,
and others, to practise. 

Now, in a way
we can say the monk is shaving away thousands of years of hair as a statement of self-image,
as a universal social identifier.
Hair has been, and still is,
a pan-cultural sign of
status, power, worth, beauty, and gender.
But that is not why we are doing it.
That's not why we are shaving our heads.
It's a good reminder to practise.
It's a good reminder, every day when shaving,
at least once,
of what the monk is doing. 

The hair will always grow back if the shaving is stopped.
And patterns can come back,
or can become more firmly entrenched,
if they're not practised. 

Hair has been cut, braided, grown to extreme lengths,
had patterns cut into it,
been waxed, coated in earth, grease, and dung.
It has been shaven off as punishment.
And this I believe is a really big bonus,
and may be behind a lot of shaven heads in the past;
the shaven head provides no place for lice to live.
[student laughter]
This is very useful.
And I'm sure makes for a more comfortable situation.

Now putting all romanticism aside,
in the early monasteries which sometimes housed over three thousand people,
it would be crazy of us to think that parasites would be of no small consideration. 

Today, globally,
the care of hair costs over nine billion dollars a year.
Four billion of that is for dye,
for hair colourants.
I know in the past I've surely paid out at least
one hundred thousand dollars on hair care products.
[student laughter] 

The export of human hair from China and India last year
generated somewhere around one hundred and fifty-four million dollars.
Now that's what is known.
But we do know that people are very clever about finding ways around official routes in the name of profit.
The money generated could be twice that. 

Human hair is used for wigs, extensions, and brushes.
It's used to make hairnets,
to hold hair in place.
It finds its way into the linings of jackets and is often woven into fabric.
Hair, a pan-cultural social signifier, is big business.
And hand in hand with that,
the exploitation of beings to supply demand is big business. 

A monk could be said to be shaving away social signifiers.
But they're really only shaving as part of receiving ordination
and living day-to-day, 24/7, as a monk.
The Shingi, the rules of deportment
say that hair can be grown to as long as 1/4 or even 1/3 of an inch.
Special circumstances requiring longer hair can be discussed with the Abbot.
The growth of moustaches and beards must be approved by the Abbot.
Men should be clean-shaven when entering the Hatto in the morning. 

The shaven head is very practical.
With the early hours and busy days
there would be many, many, bad hair days.
[student laughter]
A quick swipe of the razor and you're good to go. 

This is the verse that the monks chant before shaving. 

Now, as we are being shaved,

May we leave behind self-grasping forever
And enter into no birth and no death. 

This verse is "closer to the bone"
as the monk is expressing their intention to practise as completely as possible
so as to wear out the contractions of self-image completely. 

The verse is slightly different from the translation we chose in "The Practice of Purity"; 

When shaving their hair,

"May all beings

Leave behind self-grasping forever
And enter into no birth and no death." 

Here the intention and the wish
is that all beings be free from the suffering
of the contraction into a self that is other to everything else.
The verse is spoken on behalf of, and is extended to, all beings.

(It's not an invitation for everyone to shave their heads.) 

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

...could be the last one

...and rest assured that one day,
you don't know how,
you don't know where,
you don't know when,
you too will die.
That's reality. 

Recognizing the reality of birth and death,
recognizing that no one gets out alive,
can and does help anyone make better choices about what to do moment-to-moment.
Of course,
the first choice for students is to practise.
Everything in the monastery
including the bald, black robed monks,
is here to remind you to do just that. 

You're learning to practise mindfulness of body, breath, speech, and mind,
what Anzan Hoshin roshi has referred to as the Four Gates of Zen practice. 

Those who have recognized the reality of birth and death
and have dedicated body, breath, speech, and mind 
to practise
have committed themselves by receiving ordination as monks. 

At the beginning of formal sittings,
after incense has been lit on the Butsudan,
the han, the big wooden block hanging on the west wall of the Hatto,
is struck three times. 

The calligraphy on the block of wood says "Great Matter"
and each strike resonates through the bodymind as a reminder that,
as it says in the Great Matter gatha,

The Great Matter is birth and death,
Life slips past and time is gone.
Right now. Wake up. Wake up.
Do not waste time.

A reminder of reality. 

Now, like everyone else,
before the monks hear those three strikes,
they have woken up from sleep,
gotten out of bed,
and have gotten dressed.
They, as countless other monks,
over a couple of thousand years,
don or put on monk's robes. 

For all formal practice situations,
as was mentioned in a previous Dharma Talk,
monks wear robes.
The robes we wear,
the monks of the Northern Mountain Order,
are a version of monastic clothing that has evolved over a couple of thousand years
and has traveled,
and been informed by various cultures,
Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and the West. 

Many rupa or statues from India, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan,
including rupa in the monastery,
can be seen to be wearing a lower garment,
which is the same as the kunsu students, and monks are wearing right now.
When something works for practice why change it?
Monastic clothing isn't trendy. 

Here's the verse from "The Practice of Purity": 

Donning monastic robes

"May all beings

Have stainless intelligence

And fulfill the Way of the Great Sage" 

As the robes are put on the body
the verse reminds us of what we are doing:
fulfilling the Way of the Great Sage,
Gautama Siddhartha,
the Buddha,
the one who woke up,
the big really big original "wise one". 

This reminds us of the Lineage
and reminds us that we are doing something that has been done by countless others
over the last, roughly, 2600 years. 

No matter how early it is,
no matter how warm or cold we are,
when we are reminded to practise it has to be recognized that,
obviously,
others have experienced the process of being a human being
just as we are experiencing in that moment.

The process of being a human being is the same for all humans.
If the very real people who practised and became the Lineage of Teachers could do it,
we can do it. 

Any reminder to practise is useful.
Putting on clothing, in this verse,
specifically monastic robes,
reminds us of our vows,
our commitment,
and what we are doing. 

Over time there's not even the thinking of oneself as,
or the reminding that one is,
a monk.
There is just the caring for the bodymind,
the eating and drinking,
the getting dressed for whatever is scheduled, t
he sitting,
in short the doing of what needs to be done.

All the choices and activities of the bodymind
are firmly rooted in the teachings of Reality, the Dharma.
That's what fulfilling the way,
the way of reality, means.
And we can do it just as did the Great Sage, the Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha. 

The Buddha practised, woke up,
and dedicated himself to teaching.
I suppose we could say he's the first monk in this lineage.
All his first students were monks, "home leavers". 

And they did leave home
and they did wander the countryside,
as mendicants, beggars existing on food that was given to them.
When that rag tag group started to become noticed
the king asked them to wear something that would identify them as being monks rather than just a band of bandits or thugs. 

These first robes were made of fabric patched together and dyed,
most likely with dyes from plants,
to give some sort of cohesive appearance to the various fabrics.
Some of the "found" materials were rags found around corpses in charnel grounds. 

The Buddha and his band of monks wandered in their patched together robes,
teaching those who asked how to end the suffering of conditioned experiencing.
There are a number of teisho and Dharma Talks on the Four Noble Truths and the Four Great Vows,
which, if read and listened to,
will prove invaluable to your practice.
I encourage you to listen to and read them.
I won't explore those essential teaching on practice right now. 

But right now you can
feel the breath,
you can sit up straight,
and you can open any visual focusing.

Go ahead.
Take a chance.
You're breathing in and out.
You're alive. 

The verse goes on to wish that all beings may have stainless intelligence;
that all beings may experience the open intelligence of the bodymind,
unstained or free from conditioned experiencing,
unobstructed by the knots and gnarls
caused by the unquestioned assumptions, habits, and patterns of how things are,
that cause beings to suffer.
Contractions condition experiencing
and at the very least
make us less intelligent than we really are
and at the worst have made we humans very destructive on a large scale
which we live with and hear about every day. 

Who couldn't benefit from stainless intelligence? 

When the Buddha and the Sangha of monks were wandering in warmer climates than this,
the cloth made from discarded rags was wrapped around the waist
and one end went over the shoulder.
As monasticism was affected by the prevailing cultural patterns of the time
the monks were, at first, all male
and the fact that one shoulder and part of the chest was bare wasn't a problem.
When the Sangha included women,
the necessary coverage would have been adapted from the way of dressing
that was contemporary to that time. 

If you look at the rupa in the monastery,
statues and some of the drawings,
you can see quite clearly that the lower garment, the kunsu,
folded and wrapped,
is much the same now as it was then. Scarcely a new idea, and, as I said, certainly not a "trend". 

Adaptations of robes continued as monks traveled into Tibet, China, Japan,
and eventually, the West, to right here, right now.
People knew who the monks were from how they looked.
As monasticism wasn't the type of thing that everyone did
the monks stood out as different from the rest of the contemporary culture.

This continues. 

Current cultures, or cultures that are current,
always think of themselves as contemporary,
up to date,
and that would have been no different long ago.

Monks have been regarded as anachronistic, out of date, out of style,
and perhaps just weird. 

It is weird and funny that all those "contemporary" cultures and their indicators,
their hair styles,
their clothing,
have risen and fallen
and will continue to do so and yet,
regardless of location on the globe,
monks still look like monks. 

Interestingly, just as the word "Zen" pops up frequently
in literature, design, and merchandising,
all of which have nothing whatsoever to do with Zen practice as we understand it,
so monastic robes have been inspiration for haute couture and fashion.

In the 1950's it was the cowls of Christian monks,
in the 80's and the 90's, the influence of the East crept in,
and at the turn of the 21st century Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese, influences were strong on the runway.

This of course has nothing to do with our understanding and realization of practice and monasticism.
But it's fun to know. 

The wearing out,
and the eventual absence of the contractions of pattern and habit,
by the process of practice,
allows the full and stainless intelligence of the bodymind to be open
and free of the fabrications of self-image,
which corrupt experiencing. 

Practice provides the method.

As you come to the monastery to practise zazen,
to start to learn to notice
thoughts, feelings, sensations,
please,
use everything
including,
the sight of the bald, black robed monks,
to remind you
to feel the whole bodymind in the moment. 

The verse again: 

Donning monastic robes

"May all beings

Have stainless intelligence

And fulfill the Way of the Great Sage." 

Why not?


Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is the oxygen that is vital and totally necessary for your life 

...be interested now 

...'cause it doesn't last... 

Practise when there is a noticing of anything at all,
that sense of "me" or "I" that's noticing something,
that sense of contraction into a self
that believes that it is apart and separate and that anything else is "other". 

Feel the breath.
Sit up straight. 
Open the peripheral vision. 

The verse: 

When they formally 'leave home',
"May all beings

'Leave home' with the Awakened One
And liberate self and other." 

The verse states what the "home leaver",
and all others who leave home to practise as monks,
will do to the best of their ever-increasing ability.
The verse reminds them of what they are doing and expresses the wish that all beings "leave home"
by following the example of the Buddha
and following the instructions passed down through the Lineage. 

Now, so as not to exclude anyone in the Hatto right now:
associate students, general students, formal students,
can remember that, in an earlier talk,
"home" was not only describing the physical building and the inhabitants
but was also being used to talk about all the patterns we've accumulated,
that we feel comfortable with, and wrap around ourselves,
to create a sense of "self"
with stories about who we are and how the world is. 

The contraction into a "self", that nesting into the familiar,
and the result that everything else is regarded as "other"
tears the fabric of reality and it causes problems on many levels.

The problems are not just things that "we" experience,
that "we" alone experience,
as that is impossible.
Whether we like it or not,
how we are affects everything else.
Practising mindfulness gives us the way
to open around that sense of "self" and "other"
and thus open to reality. 

The liberation of the contraction into a "self"
is simultaneously the release of that which seems separate from us,
which we regard as "other".
That sense of "self" is a fabrication.
"Other" is a fabrication which we make up and it is often cartoon-like. 

The contraction into a self creates what has been referred to as
a barrier, an obstruction, an obscuration, a wall. 

Recently, a general student mentioned in Daisan that at one moment,
the moment of practising mindfulness,
everything was open,
there was a sense of ease and lightness,
a recognition that there was no problem. 

As soon as attention started to move to a "self"
that was an experiencer of that sense of lightness,
all of sudden,
attention narrowed into a sense of "me",
a sense of a "self",
and there was a "wall" between that student and the teacher.
The student was surprised at how apparent,
how palpable, that was, "I can feel it!" 

A reminder to practise in that moment opened the perceived wall,
and it became a "gate" into reality:
the reality that as well as that sense of a self that was separate in that moment
there was also
seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, smelling, thinking,
and that there was room for everything
and there was no need to focus attention on any one thing. 

Now, students often express or exhibit impatience with practice.
Self-image wants everything all at once.
Very seldom is it clear what that "everything" is. 

So we need to be reminded that we're learning to do something
and we need reminders of what we are doing
so we can keep on doing it:
Practising.
That's why verses such as those in "The Practice of Purity" can be very handy. 

The last two lines of the verse; 

'Leave home' with the Awakened One
And liberate self and other. 

When you come to practise
you are given instructions on how to practise
and these instructions have spanned 2600 years.
They were first spoken of by Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha, the Awakened One,
and maybe somewhere around 200 years later,
people started to write them down.

But whether one is practising as an associate, a general, a formal student, or as a monk,
the basic instructions are the same. 

Why?


Because the process of perception and cognition is the same for all human beings. 

When contraction happens,
it is as if a wall, a barrier has come into being.
That wall or barrier seems to separate the "self", the "me",
from everything else. 

Following the instructions of the lineage of Awakened Ones
opens attention to the context within which the wall or barrier is happening,
the whole bodymind,
and when this is done,
the "barrier" is a "gate" and it opens. 

A moment of experience is called a "dharma" in Sanskrit.
A moment of experience,
something that is known,
a dharma, with a little "d".
If it has a big "D" then it is talking about Reality and the Teachings of Reality. 

When mindfulness is practised and attention opened,
the moment of experience,
the dharma, can be seen to be,
in reality, a gate,
an entrance into further opening. 

Now there's lots of instruction that has been written down,
there are lots of teisho, and Dharma Talks, and chants
that point to the fact of the Dharma and the Dharma gates. 

The third of the Buddha's Four Great Vows also reminds us of what we are doing.
It tells us what the situation is and what to do. 

The Third Great Vow:


Dharma gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.

And those of you who have come to general sittings will remember that this is chanted,
the Four Great Vows are chanted at the end of the sitting. 

Dharma gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate.

Dharma gates;
experiences arising within experiencing,
arising within awareness,
are beyond measure.
That's a fact. 

We are reminding ourselves that as moments of experience are "beyond measure",
they can't be measured or counted.
We'll need to penetrate them.
We'll need to enter through that dharma gate
by practising basic mindfulness over and over and over again. 

The gate,
the dharma we've noticed,
is only one of many, many experiences in any moment of experiencing. 

The dharma, the dharma gate,
has space around,
lots of space to each side, up and down, and behind.
The gate, which may have been perceived as a barrier,
opens when you practise,
when you feel the whole bodymind in the whole moment by
feeling the breath,
sitting up straight,
and opening to the full gaze. 

Now, remember the student who noticed the "wall" that had come up?
Well, the student practised and
that wall, that barrier, that gate,
opened,
but, really quickly,
a thought came up again,
there was a congealing into as self. 

What to do? What should any student do in that moment?

Recognize you're learning to practise and that rather than a problem of you
"being a poor student",
"being stupid", or
"critical",
there is just another dharma gate to be practised, to be penetrated.

Use it.
Do not let it use you. 

If you allow attention to go into those thoughts about,
oh you know,
the favourite ones about being stupid,
not being as good as everyone else,
being better that everybody else but nobody really recognizes it... 

[students laugh loudly in recognition]


Don't be fooled by the content.


Ignore it.


At just that moment of recognition
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze. 

You're practising because you want to learn how to practise.
Practice means to do something over and over again.
And the over and over and over again
[students giggle]
of it means you acquire increasing facility with the activity.
That requires moment-to-moment effort
and we need to learn that. 

Now discipline,
rather than being something that has whips and chains associated with it,
simply means the willingness to learn.
So we make ourselves available
through the discipline of coming to practise
and putting our butt down on the zafu. 

A reminder that the dictionary definition of practice is
"To repeat (an activity) as a way of improving one's skill in that activity." 

The verse again: 

When they formally 'leave home',
"May all beings

'Leave home' with the Awakened One
And liberate self and other." 

Practising, learning how to open,
learning how to penetrate dharma gates,
is what the Buddha taught.

"Buddha" means one who has woken up to reality,
an Awakened One.

Everybody's "Buddha". 

But sometimes,
a lot of the time,
nearly all the time,
when you're not practising,
you don't know it.
That's why you have to practise. 

You believe there is a barrier dividing and obstructing
and you believe the stories of why the barrier is there.
You have a choice to open attention and open the "gate". 

Contraction into self and other limits and causes problems.
In many ways.
It enslaves us.
It kills.
Again, there's no need to go into case and point
because we all have examples that are easily available;
both things that we have experienced individually
and things that are going on in "the world".
None of it is necessary.
These contractions into an image of a self cause suffering for all beings. 

So?

Stop it. 

Those who have formally left home
have vowed to practise and penetrate dharma gates
until there is no more "self" and "other",
until there is the liberation of "self" and "other". 

They wake up and just as did the first Awakened One,
Lineage Ancestor Gautama Siddhartha,
they vow to practise and teach until all beings are liberated. 

Thank you for listening.

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is the only opportunity
to practise your understanding with the whole bodymind. 

The verse today is the first of three looking at the Three Jewels, the root precepts.
The root precepts, the Precepts of the Three Jewels,
are the most essential, the most vital, the heart,
of the other thirteen Bodhisattva precepts.

At the heart of the first precept is the recognition that you are Buddha,
you are awake, (not all the time because you're learning)
and that "Awareness is the only condition". 

The verse: 

Taking refuge in the Buddha,

"May all beings

Continue the Lineage of the Buddhas,
Raising the unsurpassable aspiration." 

A person "taking refuge in the Buddha"
is declaring in the verse the recognition
that all beings have the capacity to practise, wake up,
to continue the Lineage,
and is encouraging, wishing that all may do so. 

When receiving the Three Jewels,
the intention,
the aspiration to continue the Lineage of the Buddhas
and liberate all beings is vowed,
out loud,
in a formal ceremony between the teacher and a formal student. 

The Three Jewels are also chanted at the beginning of formal sittings and general sittings.
It's always good to know what you are chanting
and it is essential to establishing and nurturing practice. 

Right now,
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.

What is taking "refuge"? 

"Taking refuge" in the Three Jewels of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha,
as the Roshi says in, "Cutting the Cat Into One: Zen Teachings on the Practice of the Bodhisattva Precepts"
really means that

all refuges have been taken away and one vows to stand exposed to experience as it is. In 'taking refuge' we find our stability, our resting place, in the fact that there is no point in consoling and indulging ourselves with hope and fear. 

What are precepts?


Precepts, as the Roshi says in "Cutting the Cat" are
"the basis and ground of healthy practice... they are also the Path itself". 

He goes on to say,

Dogen zenji translated the precepts, literally and culturally, he did so with the attention to the root of the precepts, to Buddhanature itself.

The verse refers to one who is receiving the Precepts of the Three Jewels. 

Chanting the Three Jewels does not mean one has formally received the transmission of the precepts.
It means chanting the Three Jewels with the Sangha,
the harmonious community. 

Those interested in their life, as it really is,
use the form of chanting and the words they are chanting
to look further into what they are actually doing.
There are thousands of texts and teisho and Dharma Talks addressing the basic questions of practice.
There are the opportunities of Daisan
and practice interviews
and informal interaction
to ask questions and have them answered. 

You will receive answers
and be pointed in the direction of more answers
covering continents over a couple of thousand years
through the experience of other human beings,
people just like you. 

But just as only you can feel your breath,
only you can practise,
and only you can ask your questions.
It really is all up to you. 

With questioning and answering and increasing understanding,
students may make the decision to practise as general students,
then probationary formal students,
and formal students.

As a formal student they may ask to receive or
"take refuge" in,
the Precepts of the Three Jewels. 

At the time when a formal student does receive the Precepts from a representative of the Lineage,
a Teacher, the student receives a Dharma name.
The Dharma name reflects one's basic nature
and is a reminder of the aspiration, the intention, of what you are doing,
and also of the basic tendency or habitual pattern that can "trip you up".

A two-sided coin if ever there was one. 

Let me remind you that we're talking about what the Precepts mean here and now in this Lineage.
They may have meant and may mean different things to different people
depending on place and time and the understanding of individuals.
There is no one answer or description that will cover all places, all times, all people. 

There are ample opportunities to ask questions
during Daisan
or practice interviews
or by email
or even a letter (remember those?). 

Again, we're talking about what taking refuge in the Three Jewels means here and now at Dainen-ji.
You may come across "taking refuge" in other material but,
although it perhaps sounds similar,
it is not specific to this Lineage. 

Anzan Hoshin roshi has set in place a very clear approach to practice. 

Anyone who attends a general or formal sitting where there are opening chants has chanted,
or at least listened to, and resonated with The Three Jewels: 

Awareness is the only condition.

All that is arises as the display of Awareness.
This is the seamless expanse of all that is.

If you have attended on a Wednesday when Fusatsu,
the renewal of vows has been celebrated,
you have chanted the Three Jewels in Pali, in Japanese, and in English. 

The Pali: 

Buddham saranam gacchami.
Dharmam saranam gacchami.
Sangham saranam gacchami. 

The Japanese: 

Namu kie Butsu.
Namu kie Ho.
Namu kie So.

and the English, in this Lineage: 

Awareness is the Only Condition.

All that is arises as the Display of Awareness.
This is the Seamless Expanse of all that is. 

You may have heard or in the course of your study come across another English version: 

This is Buddha.
This is Dharma.
This is Sangha. 

This translation has been expanded upon and made clearer by the Roshi. 

The Roshi's statement that,

when Dogen zenji translated the precepts, literally and culturally, he did so with attention to the root of the precepts, to Buddhanature itself

helps us see more deeply into why he translated the Three Jewels as he did
and why we chant the first as "Awareness is the Only Condition." 

Awareness is the word chosen to translate "Daiku" or "Great space".
Awareness, Buddhanature itself,
is always Great Space.
Most of the time we don't see or know it as such
because it seems to be clogged,
conditioned by the convincing contractions of an image of self, self-image.
Although it may seem that the great space of open experiencing has been lost,
it has not,
it is not.

Awareness, that Great Space only seems to have disappeared
as it is obscured by the density of the filters of contraction. 

The moment you notice any dharma,
any moment of experiencing,
the instruction is to practise mindfulness.

The moment you notice mindfulness was covered over,
you are mindful.
You are practising that moment of mindfulness.
When we practise anything,
dancing, singing, cooking, carpentry, playing the guitar, we get better at it.
The same is true for the practice of mindfulness.
Practice is called practice because as you do it over and over again
you become more skilled,
more adept,
you get better at it. 

Our Lineage gives the Three Jewels only to formal students.
Why?
When a student is accepted as a formal student
their understanding is that of a formal student.
Although that understanding is still fledgling and will deepen and mature,
a formal student is practising moment-to-moment with an understanding
that Awareness, Great Space,
is the only condition and is always available.
They are practising rooted in that understanding. 

Practice is a process of understanding with the whole bodymind.

Understanding is demonstrated, moment-to-moment, by each student.

From "Cutting the Cat", 

Precepts are basically ways to simplify our interaction with thoughts, emotions, and situations, in order to evoke a mind which can respond cleanly, and clearly, free from indulgences and obsessive self-service. 

To realize that which we already are,
Awareness itself,
to wake up completely,
to complete the Path,
to continue the lineage,
and to liberate all beings is "the unsurpassable aspiration". 

You can understand now the wisdom of the process of becoming ready to receive the Three Jewels,
the first of the Bodhisattva precepts. 

When asking to receive the Three Jewels,
a formal student is asking to have their understanding made manifest
and their commitment made formally,
out loud,
between themselves and their teacher as a representative of the Lineage. 

Again from "Cutting the Cat", 

The precepts are not a status symbol or an achievement. They come in a time in a person's practice which is optimal for that person. Just because someone has only received Refuge, or has not even taken that, means nothing. Bow to that person as someone who has given you a chance to see your pride and expose your self-imagery. 

Receiving the Precepts, chanting the Precepts, is profound but it is not "heavy":

Suchness,
things as they are,
reality does lighten your life moment to moment. 

The student receiving the Three Jewels needs to know what they are being entrusted with.
Awareness is the only condition.
As Awareness itself
the student is taking responsibility for this recognition
and vowing that they will do their very best to open whatever comes up. 

The next verse looks at the second of the Precepts of the Three Jewels
and expands on how that will be done.
The third looks at who will provide guidance and support. 

Thank you for listening.

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...lets you know you're alive
and is your only chance to practise the Dharma;
The Teachings of Reality.

All the past breaths are gone
and none of us know if we're going to have another one.
With this breath you can make a choice.
You can choose between contraction and the open space of reality. 

What ARE you going to do? 

The verse from "The Practice of Purity",
which can be said informally after receiving the Three Jewels,
addresses the second precept: 

The verse: 

Taking refuge in the Teachings,

"May all beings

Enter fully into the Discourses

And their perfect knowing be as deep as the sea." 

"Taking refuge in the Teachings",
the second of the Precepts of the Three Jewels,
was translated by the Roshi as,

All that is arises as the display of Awareness.

The second precept expands on the first,

Awareness is the Only Condition.

You are Buddha.

You are awake
but most of the time you don't know this
because it is clouded with habitual patterning and contraction
and congealing into a sense of a self.
The reality of the open space of experiencing is obstructed
and often seems to have disappeared.
But it is not gone.

How to uncover this reality? 

Well, I'm glad you asked. 

The Teachings of Reality,
the Dharma,
give you the tools and instruction necessary for you to realize
that you are Awareness in itself
and that this was and is always the case.
You just don't know it all the time.
Practising the fact of the open space of experiencing
opens the congealing caused by the feeding of attention into habitual patterns
which create density and the sense of a self, an image of a self,
which stands apart and propagates the belief
that it is separate from everything else. 

This is a fiction. 

A formal student receiving the Precepts of the Three Jewels
is stating their understanding that reality is vast, open space, daiku, Awareness.
They are vowing,
out loud to the teacher,
that they will exert every effort to realize,
to make real,
this understanding in every moment. 

As understanding is not present all the time,
the student is vowing to practise with any obscuration, obstructions, Dharma gates.
They are vowing to practise with whatever arises within Awareness.

All that is arises as the display of Awareness.

The student is expressing their recognition,
however rudimentary and partial it may be,
that all moments of experience,
all dharmas,
are arising within Awareness.

The second precept, sometimes expressed as

This is Dharma

and translated by the Roshi as

All that is arises as the display of Awareness

also points to the wealth of material and resources on the Teachings of Reality, 
the Dharma,
that are available to guide them to realize their understanding fully and completely. 

This fact of experiencing,
the fact that

All that is arises as the display of Awareness

is the base of practice
and it isn't necessary for a person to have formally taken the precepts for this to be a useful reminder.

Any time you chant it or hear it or read it or have a thought arising about it,
you are presented with the chance to practise this fact,
this reality,
this moment of mindfulness. 

Taking refuge in the Teachings of Reality is recognizing
that there is no "safe"
as self-image would have us believe.
There is birth, old age, sickness, and death.
That's reality.
Nobody gets out alive.
Reality is unpredictable and there is no place to hide nor is hiding necessary.
There is nothing to hide from.
There's simply the display of Awareness presenting itself as experiences. 

Taking refuge is also recognizing that the Dharma, the Teachings of Reality,
give you the means to extinguish the burning flames of passion, aggression, and stupidity,
sort of like a fire extinguisher for the three klesa. 

The Teachings of Reality, the Dharma,
show us over and over and over again
that this is true
and provides us with the tools and instruction
that we need to open around anything that comes up. 

By using these tools and instruction
and through practice and study of shastra, sutras, suttas, teisho, Dharma Talks,
students can "enter fully into the Discourses",
enter fully with the whole bodymind in the whole moment. 

The Teachings point to,
through the experience of many other human beings just like you,
the pitfalls,
the habitual patterns and tendencies of your own experiencing.

This process of pointing and recognition,
however momentary,
starts the instant you make contact with the Teachings.

What is always being pointed to is your own experiencing in this moment.
You just need to be open to see what is being shown. 

The forms of teaching are not just zazen.
Zazen is the base practice.
But we can't always be sitting.
We walk. We talk. We move around. We do things.
The other forms, all making it possible for you to
stop and look
more and more clearly into your experiencing,
include bowing, kinhin, chanting, dokusan, daisan, practice interviews, oryoki, samu.

The Teachings are presented in many other ways;
the written word, the spoken word, the sho, the zenga, the ikebana. 

Everything is here for you. 

All the forms, all the presentations of the Dharma,
point to your experiencing in the moment.
Self-image is not used to this kind of generosity.
Often when instruction is given to show how you can see more clearly
through the use of the forms,
there is a flurry of reactivity.
There is a tendency to regard instruction as criticism
and self-image will try its damndest to defend itself and its position.

Fortunately, this is not who you are.
This like anything else is something arising within your experiencing. 

You just have to see it. 

That moment of seeing is a moment of mindfulness.
You "top it up" by
feeling the breath,
sitting up straight,
opening the eye gaze,
by practising and deepening that moment of clear seeing,
that moment of seeing a display of Awareness,
(and sometimes, believe me, that display can be like fireworks.
It may not be comfortable
but I can't recall anyone ever saying to me that I would be comfortable all the time.
Take a risk.) 

The moment of clear seeing, of insight, is a moment of mindfulness.
When you practise that moment, you are building upon, and stabilizing, mindfulness.
You are learning what the Teachings of Reality are
and you are learning how to use the Teachings
with the whole bodymind. 

There are many moments of reactivity when one enters into practice and many things seem to be the cause of it.

For example, during teisho with a lot of "strange" sounding "foreign" names,
there can often be a flurry of comments,
to oneself,
comments exchanged between self-image and self-image,
and questions, around the idea of,
"Oh, what possible use could these foreign guys and gals be?"
"Why do we have to listen to this? It's just boring."
"How come there aren't many women in the Lineage?"

Blah blah blah.
You name it, we've heard it. [student laughter]. 

Now, of course, it's simple.
These discourses present the history of the Dharma.
They are the records of practice from other places, other times.

Entering fully into these discourses can mean seeing the reactivity as reactivity
rather than as an expression of who you are,
rather than the expression from a self. 

Now, you may have noticed we don't have "exams"
although each moment can be examined,
so whether you remember the names or not will not give you a better or a worse mark
because there are no marks.

All you need to do is sit there,
do nothing,
except see,
except breathe,
except sit up straight,
except open the eye gaze,
which the bodymind wants to do anyway.
It "likes" it. 

Now, reactivities are neither right or wrong,
they're neither good nor bad.
They are not who you are.
They're simply something going on.
And you can use them;
you should use them as a cue to practise. 

Some one or some thing in the Teachings,
in the discourses presented, may interest you
There may be a flash of something, of curiosity,
a flash of, "I want to know more about that!"

When you recognize a moment of interest
you can research whatever caused that moment of interest.
A treasure house of resources is available to you. 

Here's the snag.
You have to do it.
No one else can do it for you. 

The Lineage, the teachers, the practice advisors, can only point.
Only you can do the "footwork". 

There's zazen.
There's the monastery.
There is the Dharma: The Teachings of Reality. 

The forms are tools to help you see "how you are". 

The question, "How's your practice?"
is asking you what you are noticing about experiencing in that moment. 

The reality of the moment is that your life,
your patterns, your tendencies arise
as well as
seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, smelling, breathing in and out.
This is true for all beings. 

Patterns come up during daisan and can be seen.
The teacher sees them first
and that pattern is then pointed out
so that you can see it for what it is.
Now, the aspect of daisan and practice interviews is covered in another verse.
Stay tuned. 

Interesting things can happen during daisan and practice interviews.
We can be constantly surprised
at how patterns and orientations that we did not know about
come up.
Really interesting. 

From "Cutting the Cat" by the Roshi, 

...receiving the Three Jewels, the student is expressing and recognizing his or her own nature as a Buddha, as an Awakened one; recognizing that, in this waking up, there is a freshness, a sense of possibility. If one can see this nature exactly as it is, then, this possibility would be complete in itself and unfold itself in actualizing Buddhanature as one's life. But since there is a gap between the possibility and the way that we tend to live our usual moments, there is a need for the Dharma, the teaching and practice which exposes this gap completely to us and allows us to transform it into spaciousness, into further Awakening. In order to expose our little charade of self-image fully we have to recognize that there are others who have been through this and can guide us, who will practice alongside us, who will feed us, who will fight with us, who give birth to us, who bury us, who fill the ten directions. 

The verse: 

Taking refuge in the Teachings,

"May all beings

Enter fully into the Discourses

And their perfect knowing be as deep as the sea." 

In the next verse we'll look at the third precept,
"Taking refuge in the harmonious community",
the Sangha.

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is the breath of all beings.

The verse, 

Taking refuge in the Harmonious Community,
"May all beings

Harmonize the multitudes,

So that all become free from obstruction." 

This verse is about the third precept of the Three Jewels,
"Taking refuge in the Harmonious Community". 

You've all come across or will come across this expressed as,
in the Pali, "Buddham saranam gacchami",
in Japanese, "Namu kie So",
in English, "This is Sangha",
and, as we chant it in the Three Jewels every morning, every evening,
"This is the Seamless Expanse of all that is". 

"May all beings

Harmonize the multitudes,

So that all become free from obstruction." 

Now let's look at a typical human-centric misunderstanding that could,
if unexamined,
get in the way of your understanding. 

Hearing "harmonize the multitudes"
we may have thought of "the multitudes"
as those hordes of people
with all the restlessness and turmoil going on for others,
and for yourselves,
so that right now,
if we don't clarify it,
you may hear only impossibility or an idealistic,
yet probably, realistically, doomed, dream. 

Once again, and it can't be said too often,
as with all the teachings,
this verse is pointing to how you are,
right now.
Anzan roshi says about the third precept of the Three Jewels that, 

This is sangha

is the proclamation of the willingness to recognize the inherent harmony of each moment.
Not just to try and bring about harmony amongst fellow practitioners,
or amongst all people,
or even amongst all beings, all trees, all grasses, all fields, all skies, all clouds;
but to uncover the inherent harmony within all of our thoughts,
all of our feelings,
in all of the sounds that arise within us,
moment after moment.

To uncover complete harmony. 

After all, the open space of Awake Awareness,
has, self-evidently,
room for everything.
Everything is already present.
Any chopping up into this and that is a fiction.
The Dharma uncovers that fiction and shows you how to uncover it further. 

Having recognized the first precept of "Awareness is the Only Condition"
and that this is Buddha or waking up,
and having recognized that "All that is arises as the display of Awareness"
and that this is Dharma, the Teachings of Reality,
we can look at "This is the seamless expanse of all that is"
and see that this is Sangha, the Harmonious Community. 

The Dharma,
"All that is arises as the display of Awareness"
points to how we can uncover that fact of the Harmonious Community,
of Sangha,
moment after moment. 

"Sangha" basically means community.
As the word traveled through time and across distance
meeting different cultures and understandings
what the word describes changes and can be different in different contexts. 

Originally, the word referred only to male, ordained, monks.
Over time, in the Mahayana tradition,
this expanded to include nuns and then eventually lay men and women.
In Ch'an, "Chinese Zen", there was a recognition of,
and, an inclusion of, mountains and rivers.

Dogen zenji recognized that everything arose within Awareness and that nothing was excluded,

This the seamless expanse of all that is

because

All that is arises as the display of Awareness.

This is Dharma.
This is reality.
This is Sangha. 

In "Cutting the Cat Into One" the Roshi says, 

...so that we can actually apply it to our situation, then "Sangha" or the community of harmony, means the community of beings that compose this moment of experiencing: the colours and forms and sights and sounds and thoughts; the five skandhas of form, feeling, perception, formation and consciousness that arise and describe and create our world. "This is the seamless expanse of all that is." The colours are the way they are, blue is blue and red is red, and when you stand up you're a bit taller than when you are sitting down. These are just the basic facts which we can always find and there's a natural sense of sanity to them. Reality itself makes a certain sense which we can begin to contact more and more; and when we contact this basic and common sense, we find that there is more sanity in how we live and how we do what we do. Our sense of what our situation is becomes based upon the situation itself, rather than our views of it. 

The more that we drop our views of what is going on,
the more that we begin to see clearly.
The more that we allow the possibility of "not knowing" anything at all...
the more comprehensive our knowing tends to be,
simply because it doesn't become locked within patterns.
We're not living from the past.
We're not living from our image of who and what we are.
As we experience more and more who and what we really are,
as we experience this Sangha,
once more this leads back to "This is Buddha"
and to deepening our appreciation of and our ability to actualize being Buddha. 

The verse: 

Taking refuge in the Harmonious Community,
"May all beings

Harmonize the multitudes,

So that all become free from obstruction."

The Three Jewels, 

Awareness is the only condition.

All that is arises as the display of Awareness.
This is the seamless expanse of all that is.

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...this breath, can be used to look clearly into the life that is living as you.

The verse; 

When receiving novice precepts,
"May all beings

Practise discipline

And not act out of corruption." 

This verse was written a long time ago
for a person who was deepening their commitment to practice,
receiving the Bodhisattva precepts and entering into monastic training as a novice. 

A novice, in this case,
would be somewhat similar to a postulant in the Northern Mountain Order,
someone sticking a toe into the water of monastic training,
checking it out to see if it suits them.
And the monastic order is checking out the person,
to see if they are suitable. 

When the verse was written,
some 1600 years ago in India,
the situation of the person becoming a novice,
was in many ways different from our situation
but in many ways quite the same. 

Today, in other places,
and other monastic orders,
there are still similarities and differences. 

Taking monk's vows can vary from a rite of passage,
to necessary training for taking over the family temple,
or as a preparation for the rigours of business.
We see photographs of kids as monks,
monks and teachers married,
and with hair,
"weekend" monks.
There are lots of variations. 

If you're interested in finding out more about the historical and present day Bodhisattva Precepts,
your research will uncover lots of material. 

So, rather than providing descriptions of different understandings
which wouldn't be useful to you right here, right now,
other than perhaps as a sleep aid, 
[student laughter] 
here's a quote from "Cutting the Cat" by the Roshi, 

A mind of vow is so fundamental to our practice that it has become part of the formal context of our training. When people receive the Bodhisattva Precepts from their teacher, they formally acknowledge and vow to themselves that they will, to their utmost, take responsibility for being Buddha. They vow to themselves and to their teacher. Lay persons can receive a total of sixteen Precepts. For lay monks, postulants, and monks there are many more. 

Now, something pertinent to now,
something each of you can use to deepen your understanding of what you are doing,
of practice. 

From the verse; 

"May all beings

Practise discipline

And not act out of corruption." 

Words affect us,
at a cognitive, intellectual, and a biochemical level.
They affect the whole bodymind. 

"Discipline" can bring up all sorts of stuff;
perhaps a shudder, a frisson, a hint of something unpleasant.
This, of course, all depends upon your previous encounters with the word;
a ruler on the palm of the hands,
standing in the corner,
standing in the cold at military attention,
a regimen of cold showers or being grounded
(and a lot of really unsavoury, unsavoury stuff...) 

What we're talking about with "discipline" is
"the willingness to learn".
Here are a couple of dictionary definitions of discipline: 

Activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training 

The treatment suited to a disciple or learner; education; development of the faculties by instruction and exercise; training, whether physical, mental, or moral." 

So, can we agree?


Discipline—the willingness to learn. 

The verse expresses a wish that all beings find in themselves the willingness to learn
to see the patterns of contraction that can corrupt, or change for the worse,
their actions:
The wish that all beings can learn to practise mindfulness
and their actions be uncorrupted. 

Seeing anything arising within experiencing is a moment of clear seeing.
Seeing you are not mindful is a moment of mindfulness.
Seeing that you are nodding off or focusing on a fantasy is a moment of mindfulness.
Practise the instant of seeing that moment of mindfulness
so that mindfulness will be present more often
and the tendency to follow useless or damaging patterns will wear out. 

You are learning to do this. 

Learning is a process.
Practice is a process.
Life is a process.

A process takes time.
Learning takes time. 

The biochemistry,
the interactive chemical processes in living human beings
take time to adjust and re-form, to change.
The process takes as long as it takes.
You may have noticed there is no meter on the zafu [student laughter]. 

The last lines of the verse again; 

"May all beings

Practise discipline

And not act out of "corruption." 

One of the meanings, a basic meaning, of "corruption" is: 

the act of changing, or being changed, for the worse; a departure from what is pure, simple, or correct. The act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle; the state of being corrupted or debased; loss of purity or integrity, depravity, wickedness, impurity, bribery 

other meanings;

moral perversion,
corrupt or dishonest proceedings,
bribery,
debasement or alteration, as of language or a text,
putrefactive decay,
rottenness,
any corrupting influence or agency.

It is always interesting to look into what the words we use, read, and hear,
actually mean.
It's a lot of fun. 

Here's a little story the Roshi passed on to me for the Shuso Hossen dharma talk I gave on December 12, 1991,
when, after postulancy, and two years of training as a novice,
the Roshi acknowledged that I was a full monk.
(December 12, 1991 was also the 12th anniversary of the death of our grandfather in Dharma, the Roshi's teacher, Yasuda Joshu Dainen Hakukaze roshi.) 

The story;


A rice farmer looked out over the flooded fields where his family had just planted a new crop of rice seedlings. He began to speculate on just how much this crop would bring in. As his fantasies grew he became more and more excited. His rice plants would be tall and heavy with grain. Everyone in the village would whisper with awe that he was the favourite of heaven. He'd go to town and buy a huge barrel of sake, clean white sake, not that home-brewed village stuff, and invite the whole village to celebrate his fortune. He could barely wait for the harvest. In agitation he raced out into the water, reached down and began to tug at the tops of the seedlings to encourage them to grow. When harvest time came, the rice stalks were small and stunted because they had been so badly pinched and the fields yielded only a few bushels of grain and those came from the seedlings he had missed in his haste. 

The act of planting rice,
allowing it to grow,
and harvesting the crop is simple and straight forward.
It's a lot of work and it takes the time it takes before the crop can be harvested.
The farmer allowed his fantasies of fame and fortune to fuel his actions.
He was changed for the worse. 

His "corruption" pushed and pulled his actions
and he pushed and pulled the rice ruining most of it. 

Actions propelled by "corruption", changed,
for the worse,
by misunderstandings of the nature of reality, damage on many levels. 

Our states corrupt and,
if followed,
lead inevitably to more or less corrupt individuals,
corrupt relationships,
corrupt businesses.
..corrupt governments
...corrupt nation states... 

Acting out of corruption can even lead to a world situation
where pornography, arms,
and trafficking in human beings are said to be the top three revenue generators...
it's not too difficult to see how this could happen... 

When receiving novice precepts, 
"May all beings

Practise discipline

And not act out of corruption" 

Thank you for listening.

...and a very good moment to you. 

Use the moment. 

Notice what else is going on. 

It's raining this morning.
It's almost a tropical rain.
Big, juicy, fat, raindrops,
and the air is moist,
it's humid. 

Did you notice that when you bowed to begin the sitting round,
that the volume, what you were perceiving of the sound of the raindrops,
changed? 

Now, that type of sound was something that was familiar to the people who wrote and listened to these verses some 1600 years ago. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is the only moment that you can practise. 

Every breath you take is now,
is this moment,
and so it was when the text from which these verses have been translated was put together, in India. 

Then it was called the "Avatamsaka Sutra",
but not, of course, in English.
That is a translation.
But it was composed some 1600 years ago,
in a different language,
in a different part of the world.
This text, sometimes called "The Flower Garland Sutra",
ancient and classical, was of influence to all of East Asian Dharma. 

And it can be useful to each and every practitioner, now,
because it's talking about human beings.

People are people
and the process of being human hasn't changed.
Evolutionary change takes a long, long, time.
The verses, presenting the reality of the interpenetration of all things,
show how everything we do,
however mundane,
affects all beings. 

The verse: 

Receiving guidance from an advisor,
"May all beings

Deport themselves with dignity

And their actions be truthful." 

So if there is a little thought coming in about what truthful means,
or how "truthful" you may or may not have been,
use that as a cue to practise the whole bodymind in this moment.

Feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze
and recognize it takes longer to talk about it
than it does to do it. 

But we will burden ourselves with lots of words
and if they're coming from us to us,
if we're talking to ourselves, i
t can create a massive burden.
That's why we need advisors. 

Receiving guidance from an advisor

Well, it's not so very complicated.
A guide is someone who has been somewhere,
knows the territory,
and can take other people through it.

Often we would like to make ourselves quite distant from a practice advisor,
because, "after all, they're not like us".
"Look at them with their bald heads."
"Look at them with the little patches of stubble that they've missed."
[students laugh]
"Look at them in their black robes."
And sometimes,
without even knowing it,
what we will do is have an idea that they sprang, full blown, this way,
from some alien place that has really nothing to do with us. 

But, they've been there.
They've had their butt on the zafu for many, many, hours more than you have.
They've come across, they've experienced,
they've practised, through myriads of states,
myriads of obstacles,
but the determination was there to continue,
even when self-image might have been saying,
"Run! Get out of here!"
But it is the recognition that
thoughts are thoughts,
feelings are feelings,
and they need not propel us into action.
They need not be the factor that determines the choice we will make. 

So, the practice advisors that you find yourself sitting in front of have made choices,
over and over and over again,
to persevere.

And there is a dignity every time any one pulls themselves up,
feels the breath,
opens the eye gaze,
practises the whole bodymind,
and makes a decision not to follow the whimsical,
or serendipitous, or seductive,
song of self-image.

It isn't necessary. 

So, your name is called.
Here is a clue:
when your name is called for a practice interview
there will be a flurry of activity,
of experiences arising within experiencing,
"Oh no. Not her." [students laught].
"Shi...[O-sensei snaps fingers]
why me? Why me?" 

Now the form for zazen is to sit, legs neatly folded,
hands neatly folded in the mudra,
spine straight.
So rather than following a usual view, a usual reaction,
of say,
putting our hands up to our head while we go,
"Oh no,"
collapsing into a little heap,
we sit up straight.

And before you can talk to yourselves about it,
the bodymind presents itself as open
and you practise that openness in that moment.
Out of the dignity of the form of zazen
you're given the opportunity to notice more of the details. 

And when you leave the Hatto,
to make your way to the designated rendezvous,
you have ample opportunity to practise moments of experience,
or dharmas,
as they present themselves.
You can feel the feet on the floor going over different surfaces.
You can feel the space around.
You can see the changes in the light.
You can "see" innumerable,
(see as in "know"),
innumerable sensations that the bodymind is experiencing. 

Often, however, and I don't think I'm giving away a secret here,
often, we'll be so busy figuring out what we're going to say
that we don't notice the reality of the experience of the bodymind in the moment. 

The use of the forms,
the hands in shashu at the diaphragm,
the eye gaze open,
all aid you in seeing what's really going on in that moment. 

There's no problem if a thought is present.
It's one thing amongst a myriad of knowns.
If you notice it that means for the merest fraction of a second
you have not been totally involved in it.
So there's been this waking up,
this moment of mindfulness,
this moment of recognition of the reality of the moment.

Use it.

Feel the breath.

Feel the whole bodymind.

Allow the bodymind to express its full dignity. 

Now, dignity is an interesting word.

There're all sorts of things,
different definitions that will come up for us,
and some of them are rather... stiff.
Some of them present images, perhaps,
of uniforms, and crowns, and resplendent robes,
and so on, 
but that's not what we're talking about. 
Those are interpretations that peoples of different cultures and languages have made. 

So I spent some time looking up "dignity" and...
it comes from the Latin "dignus"; worthy.
So now there's a choice point,
there's a moment where we can say,
"well, what's 'worthy'?"
And we can pick a way to follow.

So if we take it "outside" of the bodymind,
then we have the self that is looking to be seen,
or may be seen,
in a certain way by others.

But if we look at it from the sense of the bodymind being "worthy" of full expression,
"worthy" of being allowed to function fully and completely and openly
with access to all the intelligences of the bodymind,
unimpeded,
aah,
it can take on another meaning. 

In Farsi "dignity",
another word for "dignity", is "grace".

Now we all know we're not talking about what we're going to say before we eat
but "grace" as in fluidity of movement,
"grace" again as unimpeded by whatever is arising in the moment. 

Also in Farsi; "capacity".

The bodymind has untapped capacity.
What impedes it is contractions into a sense of "self" with story lines.

We've all experienced what it is like to be overcome by a contraction,
to be overcome by self-image,
to have the open experiencing of the bodymind twisted and gnarled.

What we call the state, of course,
will influence our interpretation.

If we take away calling it anything,
if we take away the possibility of interpreting it as anything,
we can just "know" it.

There's this moment of knowing the gnarling that can occur,
that makes us smaller than we actually are, smaller than the bodymind,
and the capacities of the bodymind,
are.

The verse again: 

Receiving guidance from an advisor,
"May all beings

Deport themselves with dignity

And their actions be truthful." 

"Deport" means carrying,
how we "carry" the bodymind.

And when we start to understand that we are not the bodymind,
that we are the Knowing of the bodymind,
we can start to appreciate that we have far more choice than we previously thought. 

We can see the gnarls that come up,
and gnarls don't just have to be so-called "bad" things.
We can get all gnarly when we're very happy
because the contraction can come up and we can get all carried away,
jumping around,
and doing things that are extraneous to the actual experience
of what is happening in the bodymind. 

Because we're learning how to practise,
we simply don't know a lot of these things yet. 

All of the forms,
everything in the monastery,
every word that is said to you by a practice advisor,
or a teacher,
or texts,
are resources for you
to help you see more clearly into each and every moment of experiencing. 

In "Completely It",
from the teisho series "Five Fingers, Ten Directions: Commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji's text 'Jippo'"
there is a quote, by the Roshi, from Dogen zenji, 

To go further, calling someone to come to us is easy but getting them to leave is difficult. 

The Roshi goes on to say, 

It is not so difficult really to bring out the original you; it is much more difficult not to make it into merely another limited reference point and objectify it. The old habits, the old perspectives, our usual dependence upon using verbalized thoughts and the categories of self and other can begin to creep in. 

So, when you have entered the space where the practice interview is being conducted
the form is to use the bodymind as completely and as openly as possible.
To take your seat,
to sit in the posture of zazen,
and to use the dignity of that posture
to help you see more clearly the details of experiencing. 

Self-image has many, many views about the moment the question,
"How's your practice?" is asked. 

Various stances and strategies will come up,
and, if my own experience has any validity whatsoever,
there will be or there may be a tendency to take it personally
when we're told that,
perhaps,
what we were saying or doing was not complete. 

Self-image does tend to view instruction and correction as criticism
but as has been said by the Roshi,
"Practice is too intimate for it to be personal." 

So, the posture,
and maintaining the posture,
will help you see those contractions that come up
into a sense of a self
that wants to personalize what's going on. 

What can you do? 

Well,

You know what to do

and

It does take longer to talk about it
than

To actually do it. 

The verse again: 

Receiving guidance from an advisor,
"May all beings

Deport themselves with dignity

And their actions be truthful." 

Thank you for listening.

Here you are.

You made it.

It is a beautiful day. 

And maybe the touch of the warm, moist breeze on your face
occasioned some little murmurs or even shouts from "mara",
from self-image,
tempting you to do something else rather than place one foot in front of the other
until you arrived at the monastery door. 

You're learning.

With each breath you're learning more.

The verse: 

Receiving instruction from their teacher,
"May all beings

Enter unborn Knowing

And arrive at liberation." 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is the only chance you have
to see clearly into the process of perception and cognition
and through practising precisely at that moment
to enter into the moment as it truly is. 

Every breath you take in daisan,
which means great space,
is a chance to learn more about how you are.
In daisan you are invited to enter into the world
as experienced by the Lineage of Teachers. 

Instruction is often beyond words.
Although words may be used,
instruction may also be given through gesture,
through silence,
through a smile,
through a raised eyebrow. 

As is said in many ways,

Its meaning is not in words but it answers sincere questioning.

That's from the Hokyo Zanmai by Dongshan Liangjie daisho which was written around 850 C.E. 

Another one from the Hokyo Zanmai,

Although beyond description it is no unable to speak. It has words but has no words.

Remember you're learning.


Another quote,

Ultimately, we don't understand our speaking is not yet correct.

But is interesting to see how reliant we are upon words.
Before the words there are many moments of experience that arise.
You're learning to see those and to use those as a point to practise. 

What is always being pointed to is your own experiencing
in that moment
so that you can see,
can know,
experiences arising within experiencing
and practise at the moment of being what you really are,
which is Knowing in itself. 

The usual mind acts based on
patterns,
habits,
unquestioned assumptions about how you are and how the world is.
This, at the very least,
is the cause of limitation and obstruction born out of your misunderstandings. 

Teachers instruct you on how to cut through those understandings,
how to use those misunderstandings rather than be used by them,
how to clarify obstruction. 

You don't need to unquestioningly follow the same old tired habits and patterns.
There is a total field of all possibilities available
but you need to be available to seeing,
to knowing,
that. 

From "Turning the Wheel of the Way" teisho 6 by Ven. Anzan Hoshin, 

The main point however is not to follow a sense of obstruction. You do not need to believe the limiting views of others. You do not need to limit others by your view of them. You do not need to become blocked by your feelings of incapacity and how you define yourself through thoughts. 

Everything is always beyond our definitions and ideas about it.
For example, this life is seen as a matter of being born
but the Buddhas and Awakened Ancestors
know all things to be always Unborn,
always sheer luminosity moving within itself.

Is it born?
Is it Unborn?
If it is unborn then is there old age?
If there is old age, is it still Unborn? 

To help you pay attention and to learn to attend to your own experiencing
and to learn to open past the same old, same old, same old,
you have been given the gift of forms,
ways of deporting the bodymind,
in formal situations,
that will show you more and more clearly "how you are"
and you will be reminded of the instructions for practising mindfulness
as long as you continue to show up.
Just like you did today. 

The forms for deporting the bodymind w
hen sitting, walking, lying down, eating,
have all been carefully considered,
and adapted, by the Roshi and, now,
with the help of the Dharma Teachers.

Although based on traditional forms
they are evolving so that they are contemporary
and they are based, founded, on a simple standard established by the Roshi when he first started teaching:

Does it work? Is it useful? 

Forms are carefully considered and the underlying principle of
"Does it work?" and
"Is it useful?" is always,
"What is the most useful as a tool for students to deepen their understanding and therefore their practice?" 

Forms are informed by context.
There are different forms for associate and general and formal sittings.
The form for entering the room for a practice interview with a practice advisor is not as detailed as when entering the room for daisan with a teacher.
The form for dokusan with the Roshi is even more nuanced. 

There are also forms for interaction by telephone and by email, 
and guidance and instruction is given by telephone and email. 

Ven. Jinmyo Renge sensei wrote this to a student studying at a distance and,
as with everything,
it is very useful to anyone who is a student, 

"The details of the forms are important because they can show you the difference between opening attention and spacing out or folding down. Opening attention is opening to what is, paying attention to what you are actually doing. Through attending to the details of the forms, not adding anything extra, not rushing through them or glossing over the details, old habits stand out more clearly and that gives you the opportunity to practise with them". 

You don't have to 'like' the forms to practise them.
If you feel impatient as you are bowing forward,
bow through the impatience
and do the form thoroughly and completely anyway.
It is as with the posture:
you might be tired,
but there is no need to slump.
You might be bored,
but there is no need to twiddle your thumbs.
To do either of those would be agreeing to allow a state to be more important than your practice
and if you do that,
then you're stuck with the state.
Better to practise with it. 

By practising the details of the forms
you are practising with the movements of attention
that give rise to such things as impatience and boredom
and resentment
and many other kinds of states that are so habitual that usually they go unquestioned.

The forms will not allow us to rush past our experiencing to act out habitual states.
They insist that we pay attention
and through practising them,
we can see more clearly when we are not paying attention
(or are paying attention to meaningless bullshit,
like a state that is so contracted that it doesn't give a fig about anything except being contracted). 

The verse again, just to remind you, 

Receiving instruction from their teacher,
"May all beings

Enter unborn Knowing

And arrive at liberation." 

The use of the forms for deportment of the bodymind,
going to,
entering into the room for daisan,
and sitting in daisan,
give you a "lifesaver",
something to keep you from being swept away by the currents of habitual patterns. 

A quote from the Roshi from "Completely It", from "Five Fingers, Ten Directions: Commentaries on Eihei Dogen zenji's text 'Jippo'", 

Sitting up straight as the ten directions means to sit completely. Practising mindfulness of the breath, of the sensations of the hand does not need someone to do it. Simply be mindful of the breath with the breath, of the hand with the hand. Hearing a sound does not need someone to do it; it only needs the hearing and the sound. 

Use the forms meticulously to see more clearly that you are Knowing,
you are knowing those contractions into a "someone".
Practise at that point.
If "someone" does arise, practise.
Keep doing that until that sense of "someone" no longer arises.
It no longer arises,
those contractions are no longer born,
when it has been worn out by continuous practice.
Use everything to see this.
And to practise. 

When your name is called for daisan use that breath to see "how you are".
Practise at that moment of seeing. 

When you enter the room for daisan use every breath,
use the form 
to see "how you are".
Practise at that moment of seeing. 

When you take your seat use the breath to see "how you are".
Practise at that moment of seeing. 

When you are sitting on the zafu facing the teacher in daisan,
the space between can be said to be a fast flowing river
with no readily available way to cross.
(That of course is a metaphor.)
The teacher is sitting on the other side of that seemingly fast flowing,
perhaps dangerous,
river
only because their teacher showed them how to cross. 

The teacher you are sitting across from has vowed,
has promised,
to repay this generosity,
the generosity of the Lineage,
by using everything they have available
to show others how cross that seemingly
uncrossable, fast flowing, dangerous,
river.
That's the way it works.
That's how it has always been.
That's how you have the Teachings of Reality available to you. 

You see that fast flowing river and you can't see a way across.
Self-image will come up with all sorts of stories to support that view;
"If I were only feeling better I could get across".
"Well, if I were younger, if I'd started earlier, or if I weren't so sleepy, then I'd be able to get across."
"If I didn't have all these terrible situations in my life then I'd be able to do it."
And it goes on and on and on. 

You can see the details of the process of perception and cognition
and you can use every moment of seeing those details to practise,
as long as there is breath. 

At some point you may notice the "rock" that the teacher is pointing to,
raising an eyebrow about,
smiling about,
and you may decide to put your toe in and practise.
And you may find the "rock" just where the teacher said it would be.
And remember, you found it.
It was your experiencing.
Over time any student may safely reach "the other side"
by following the pointing of the Teachings of Reality. 

You might fall in from time to time
but the hand of the Lineage will reach out and grab you
only if your hand is out.
Only if you're open to receiving
and if you keep showing up. 

This is from "Zazen Yojinki: Notes on What To Be Aware of in Zazen" by Keizan Jokin zenji (1268-1325). This was translated by Yasuda Joshu Dainen roshi and Anzan Hoshin roshi. 

This is the practice of the supreme Samadhi which is the knowing of unborn, unobstructed, and spontaneously arising Awareness. It is the door of luminosity which opens out onto the realization of Those Who Come Thus, born through the practice of great ease. This goes beyond the patterns of holy and profane, goes beyond confusion and wisdom. This is the realization of unsurpassed enlightenment as our own nature. 

The verse once again, 

Receiving instruction from their teacher,
"May all beings

Enter unborn Knowing

And arrive at liberation." 

Bon voyage.


Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...that one right now that's slightly moving your shoulders up and down,
expanding the rib cage...

lets you know that you are alive. 

There's a bodymind around the breath. 

There's seeing
and hearing
and tasting
and touching
and feeling
and smelling
and you can make a choice
and another choice
and another choice as long
as that breath continues to move the bodymind in and out. 

The choice is pretty simple:
Will you choose contraction?
Or will you see whatever is going on,
recognize that, 
that seeing is a moment of mindfulness,
is a moment of waking up?

Use that moment.
Practise that moment.
Practise it because
as you practise it
there will be more of it,
there will be more waking up,
there will be more recognition that you are Buddha. 

You are Awake Awareness. You are Awareness in itself. 

That gets obscured and that's what brings us to practice.
We recognize that there's more than social cultures (all of them).
Which are fictions.
That social cultures are fictions.
There may be just a little flash
and we follow it because we start to understand
through the experience of the whole bodymind in the whole moment
that there's more available. 

We enter into practice,
we come across instruction
that self-image of course wants to co-opt.
It will memorize the words.
That's easy.
It will spout back the words.
Well, it thinks that's easy.
And it thinks it's fooling itself. 

And it thinks it's fooling everyone around. 

Sleazy little—blank, blank, blank, blank, blank blank blank.
Self-image is a nasty little thing.
And it's not one thing.
It's all those moments of contraction that come up for each and every one of us.
And they've come up for each and every practitioner for 2600 years.
That's why we can talk about it.

But self-image, again, wants to isolate itself.
It creates this structure, "self",
with everything else being "other".
That's pretty simple
and self-image is not used to keeping things simple.
Because if things are simple it, of course, is exposed. 

And because we've made our sense of "self" into the central thing,
everything else is fringe
so this "self"
is "me me me me me".

All we have to do is see it.
It doesn't mean that in that instant that pattern is going to be wiped out entirely,
will never happen again,
and everything is going to be "blissful".

You know.
That's not going to happen.
Not on the first attempt anyway.
[students laugh loudly and long] 

It's another fiction that we tend to believe in. 

Now here's a little hint.
When these contractions come up if there's an,
"if only I—blank blank blank blank blank—
everything would be great and I'd be happy". 

That's at the root of these fictions. 

So, with every breath you take,
feel it,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.
It could be your last one.
And that's just true.
Nobody in the course of human history has gotten out alive. 

(And it's funny; people are still waiting to hear from beyond.) 

We enter into practice and we have a glimpse,
it could be a big flash,
it could be just a little hint,
it could be anything,
because all of our reasons for coming to practise are suspect,
because they're generated,
on the whole,
by self-image.

And we practise,
we go through different stages,
and in this series of Dharma Talks
we've addressed a lot of aspects of what a student experiences;
they practise,
they become a general student,
they become a formal student, they take precepts. 

The first are the Three Jewels. And the Three Jewels: 

Awareness is the only condition.

(Remember that. Awareness is the only condition.)

All that is arises as the display of Awareness.

This is the seamless expanse of all that is. 

And as has been said over and over again in this series of Dharma Talks
and the Roshi's teachings
and the teachings of every Teacher in the Lineage;
everything, everything,
is contained in those first three precepts. 

The longer we practise,
the more vulnerable we allow ourselves to be,
the more risks we take in exposing thoughts, feelings, and so forth,
the more we are able to practise and the more you understand. 

Today's verse, 

Receiving the complete precepts,
"May all beings

Fulfill the practices of freedom

And master the ultimate Teaching." 

Now, self-image might want to jump on that,
mastering "the ultimate Teaching"
something way far in the future
that it has to scrabble to climb up to,
get on top of,
and claim for itself.

So when any little thoughts like that come up:
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
because you have seen
the functioning of the process of perception and cognition,
the narrowing of attention,
whatever makes it occur,
whatever is the cause,
and whenever it occurs,
no problem.

You've seen it; makusa,
do nothing.
The seeing is enough,
allow the bodymind to practise itself in that moment,
to feel the breath,
to sit up straight,
to open the eye gaze,
and it takes longer to talk about that
than it does to do it.
Save your energy, kids.
[students laugh] 

After the Three Jewels have been received,
the student can ask to move on and to ask to receive the Three Pure Precepts. 

Wrong action does not arise.

There is only the arising of benefit.
There is only the benefit of all beings. 

Now who could deny "the benefit of all beings"? 

Even if we hear it and think it's airy-fairy and impossible.
Well... wouldn't it be nice? 

And as your practice continues,
working with precepts to help you question into your moment to moment experiencing,
you start to understand what these words may mean,
you start to have hints,
but it is not complete.
The next of the precepts,
The Ten Grave Precepts. 

...and at this point a commitment is made that is deeper, fuller, more specific,
and gives you a chance to look at your moment to moment experiencing more clearly. 

And questions may come up.
Self-image will say,
"Oh, I know the answer to that question.
So I'm going to do just whatever the f... I feel like".

All you have to do is see that;
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.
It's another fiction. 

Now you'd think that with all this self-image and its fictions around
that the stories would become more interesting.
Apparently that's just not the case.
Apparently since the beginning of story telling time
they've pretty well been all the same based on,
"gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme" and
"if only...blah blah blah...I'd be happy for the rest of my life."
Commonality. 

And that goes across all the social and cultural distinctions that we human beings have fabricated.

The Ten Grave Precepts 

There is no killing.

There is no stealing.

There is no sexual misconduct.

There is no lying.

There is no trafficking in delusion.

There is no slander.

There is no slander for one's own benefit.
There is no miserliness.

There is no anger.

There is no defilement of the Three Jewels. 

Now all sorts of thoughts might have come up.
All sorts of little contractions with stances and strategies.
No problem. 

There's nothing you can do about any of them right now
because I'm not taking questions at this point.
[students laugh] 

So just see them.
Allow them to remind the bodymind to
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.
Practise that moment of clear seeing.

And remember you can ask any question you want in daisan or a practice interview.
That's how we learn. 

Unlike courtrooms where young lawyers are told
"not to ask questions that you do not know the answer to",
you can ask any question,
especially if you don't know the answer to it.
You might not have the exact words and self-image will say,
"Hmm, well I'd really like to say this better and I know it may sound stupid..."
That's called covering your ass, right? 
[students laugh] 

You do your best.
You bumble along and eventually,
as this practice wastes nothing,
you will see more deeply into your own experiencing 

As students receive precepts
and commit themselves to fulfilling them as best they possibly can
various other practices will be given to individual students.

Now, there is no point in going into this at this moment,
as, with all of practice,
your understanding opens
and as your understanding opens
you are given tools that will help you open your understanding even further. 

When you start as an associate student
you may remember,
or may have noticed,
the forms are kept to a minimum.

Why?
Because students are learning how to practise.
Now if a baby's learning how to eat
they may get a little plastic knife.
To give them a scalpel wouldn't be a good idea.
You have to learn to use the tools
and as facility with using the tools develops,
more tools are available. 

When a person has developed a certain facility,
has expressed a certain dedication,
and sincerity,
a willingness, and a desire,
through their own recognition of the truth of the teachings,
to receive the complete precepts
then they will receive the Forty-eight Supporting Precepts.
And the commitment to working with experiencing is deepened. 

The Supporting Precepts are more detailed.
They give us a stronger, a bigger, magnifying glass
for looking at our own experiencing
and for noticing what's happening,
what the experiences of the bodymind are,
and they will be more and more detailed
because we're no longer committed to the belief in the fictional self.
That has opened through the diligence and sincerity up to this point. 

I vow to respect teachers and students.

I vow to recognize intoxication and to refrain from it.

I vow to recognize the Life that lives as all lives in how I prepare and am nourished by food.
I vow to recognize lust and refrain from arousing it.

I vow to recognize, practise and teach purity.
I vow to to make offerings and request Dharma.

I vow to always listen to explanations of the Sutras and Precepts.
I vow to recognize the All-Embracing Mind and never turn from it.
I vow to always care for the ill.
I vow to never possess weapons.

I vow to never act in support of any nation's military.

I vow to recognize and avoid engaging in uncompassionate dealings that profit from the suffering of others.
I vow to recognize and correct biased or deviant teachings.

I vow to never corrupt the Dharma for personal gain.

I vow to recognize coercion and to refrain from it.
I vow to serve as an instructor only when my understanding is adequate.
I vow to recognize double tongued speech and to refrain from it.
I vow to never fail to liberate beings.

I vow to recognize vengeance and to refrain from revenge.
I vow to recognize and release arrogance and never fail to request Dharma.
I vow to refrain from slighting others and speaking the Dharma in a biased manner.
I vow to unceasingly practise and study the Bodhisattva Teachings.

I vow to refrain from creating discord in the sangha.

I vow to recognize selfishness and to refrain from withholding offerings.

I vow to refrain from accepting discriminatory situations.

I vow to refrain from causing discriminatory situations.

I vow to recognize wrong livelihood and to refrain from it.

I vow to recognize entanglement in secular affairs and to refrain from it.

I vow to always act to protect sacred objects and individuals.
I vow to refrain from harming sentient beings.
I vow to recognize unwholesome involvement in entertainment and refrain from it.

I vow to never sway even momentarily from Bodaishin.

I vow to always make great vows.

I vow to always bring forth strong resolve.

I vow to always practise Fusatsu and retreats and to refrain from dangerous and foolish wanderings.
I vow to observe proper order when sitting with the sangha.
I vow to always cultivate blessings and wisdom.

I vow to confer the Precepts appropriately and without bias.

I vow to never act as an instructor for the sake of profit.

I vow to present the Precepts only where it will be of benefit.

I vow to never deliberately violate the Precepts.
I vow to always make offerings to the Sutras and Precepts.

I vow to always teach beings.

I vow to always preserve the inherent dignity of the Dharma.
I vow to never establish regulations which contradict the Dharma.

I vow to always maintain the Dharma. 

The verse again, 

Receiving the complete precepts,
"May all beings

Fulfill the practices of freedom

And master the ultimate Teaching." 

This is Buddha.

Awareness is the only condition.

Realized practice is the bodying forth of this realization moment to moment. 

With this breath,

with every breath you take,
see it,

be it. 

Have fun.


Thank you for listening. 

The birds are chirping.
There are street sounds.
A car just went by. 

There's the sound of your breath.
There's the sound of my voice. 

There's the wall, white, with the changing colour of shadows in front of you.

There's space to each side.

You can perhaps see, in peripheral vision,
the person sitting next to you and the person sitting next to them. 

There's a sense of knowing the white or black of the jubon or robes the person is wearing.
If you're wearing glasses you might be seeing the edge of the frames.

You can see yourself blink. 

There's the feeling of the clothing on your body.
The feeling of the knees on the zabuton.

The fan wafting air onto your face and scalp. 

There's this knowing of the experiencing of the bodymind.

There's this knowing of the experiences, the dharmas, that arise moment to moment. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...is the opportunity to practise that moment of mindfulness. 

When you've noticed anything
you've noticed a moment of mindfulness.
You practise it.
You take it further by practising the whole bodymind in the whole moment. 

When entering a hall,

"May all beings

Ascend to the ultimate sanctuary
And rest, at ease and unshakeable." 

"Ultimate! Sanctuary!" ...all kinds of things can stirred up by those words.
We might see them as big, far bigger than we are, "
Ultimate sanctuary",
"The Safest Place".
Which, of course, is always somewhere else:
Somewhere other than where you are right now. 

But this is not true.
These are fabrications of self-image
based on previous experience with "ultimate" and "sanctuary". 

Now ... "sanctuary" has, again, all manner of implications;
people seeking sanctuary,
seeking safety from.
"Sanctuary" has multiple meanings.
This is from Wikipedia;
"A sanctuary is the consecrated area of a church or temple
around its tabernacle or altar.
An animal sanctuary is a place where animals live and are protected.
In modern parlance the term is used to mean a place of safety." 

Well, there is no place of safety
where we can hide away from the inevitable reality of our life:
Birth and death.
Now this is not to say that if there is a flood
we cannot move to higher ground.
If someone is chasing after us that we can't run. 

But reality is sanctuary,
in the terms of this practice.
Because the recognition that there is no safe place where we can hide
allows us to notice contractions that come up and say things like,
"Don't tell anybody. Come and find me. This is my secret"
(for we have all sorts of stories about what's going on
and that's a definition of self-image,
the contraction into a sense of self
that has all kinds of stories about how the world is
and how it is).
And as we learned in previous talks all of the precepts
are means for showing us different ways of looking at
our moment-to-moment experience
so that we can actually practise at the moment of noticing
and allow mindfulness to become more completely embodied. 

So, if there is no "ultimate sanctuary" in the way we are used to thinking about it,
a place, a sacred place where nothing can get to us,
what is there?
What are they talking about here?
That we can "ascend to the ultimate sanctuary and rest,
at ease and unshakeable"? 

When every breath you take is grounded with the reality of experience and experiencing
you no longer fall for all the stories
of hope and fear, good and bad,
and you are at ease in this moment
and if action is required
you are capable of very quickly taking the most appropriate action. 

"When entering a hall" is referring to a Dharma Hall, the Hatto.

So this verse, 

When entering a hall,

"May all beings

Ascend to the ultimate sanctuary,
And rest, at ease and unshakeable." 

...is expressing for all beings what would be wonderful if it could happen,
that all beings would practise,
drop all contraction,
have all action fueled by contraction
drop away and be all at ease in this moment
wrapped around the breath. 

[O-sensei whispers:] Word to the wise; don't hold that breath for that to happen.

But... if it did... oh, well...

And "ascending",
sometimes you will hear in Dharma Talks, teisho, traditional writings,
"ascending to the seat",
"ascending the mountain",
"ascending to the mountain seat"
are phrases that are used to talk about a new teacher,
a monastic who has been recognized as a sensei,
a completely transmitted teacher,
ascending to the seat. 

But, we don't need to have anything other than a zafu
and a butt to put on it
to enter into the Dharma Hall
and practise this moment. 

This following piece is a quote from "Water Burns the Stone",
a teisho by Venerable Yasuda Joshu Dainen roshi,
which was given at Hakukaze-ji in 1979. 

For those who may not be familiar with the name,
Yasuda Joshu Dainen roshi was Anzan Hoshin roshi's teacher
and our grandfather in the Lineage. 

One moment of just sitting is one moment of enlightenment." These are the words of the Buddhas and Dharma Ancestors. These are the words of a dead bald man, Dogen Kigen zenji. One instant of true practice is one instant of enlightenment. True practice is true effort. True effort is true non-effort. True non-effort is without mind so it is Mu-shin (no-mind). Mu-shin is right this moment now. This is instantaneous enlightenment: Enlightenment occurs in each instant. Without past, without future, without even "now", seeing clearly is practice. Anzan sensei has a phrase which I like: "It does not matter what is seen, it is the seeing that matters." 

Breathe in, breathe out, okay? If you try to make some "nirvana" your home, you only hide forever in your own in-turned minds, your personal safety. Nirvana has no place, no time. You cannot get to it. It is always HERE (shouts and bangs teisho table with staff). Breathe in, breathe out. If you make struggle your way, you lose your way in a dark forest of tense muscles, tense thoughts. Relax. 

How should we practise? Too much effort is delusion, struggle. Too little is delusion. You can't struggle into enlightenment and you can't just listen to me say that this moment is it and pretend that you are living it. You have to practise fully, with pure samadhi, pure awareness. Seeing, seeing. 

And in each instant is instantaneous enlightenment. In the Soto Way cause and effect is simultaneous. In Rinzai, cause is one thing, effect another. Now, naturally, both of these views are bullshit and gospel truth. What we have to do is practise without end, without goal, without strategy. Strat-e-gy. Each moment of true effort is both enlightenment and the Path to enlightenment. True effort is like water. It flows and fills the hollows, it goes where it needs to. Subtle. Subt-le. You can't hold water back with your bare hands and can't push it forward. It moves freely, clearly. Slowly, water will burn away the rocks of your delusions. Always water is fresh. Quickly, water flows. 

Okay! Enough. If you remember any of this, remember that water burns the stone. 

So there you sit.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.


Is the thing that you think of as you doing that?


No. The bodymind is doing it.


The bodymind is
doing
the seeing,
the hearing,
the tasting,
the touching,
the feeling,
the smelling.


You are the Knowing of that.


It is the Knowing of that which practises.


Each moment of noticing anything is a moment of mindfulness.
At that moment,
practise,
with the whole bodymind. 

When entering a hall,
"May all beings
Ascend to the ultimate sanctuary
And rest, at ease and unshakeable." 

Thank you for listening.

You can't buy it, barter for it, you can't fake it,
but you can,

with EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE,

practise the clarity,
the Awake Awareness,

the Knowing that is who you really are. 

When setting out a place to sit,
"May all beings

Unfold the flower of virtues

And understand their own clarity." 

With every breath you take you can practise mindfulness.
Your heart is still beating.

You're alive.

You don't know whether you're going to have another breath.
So you might as well take a risk.
Feel the one that's moving the bodymind in and out.


Sit up straight and open to the reality of this whole moment with the whole bodymind. 

Now, when you heard the word "virtues" perhaps there was a cascading of thoughts,
which, of course, you did not follow.
Which, of course,
you used to feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
and to practise that moment of mindfulness,
that moment of waking up to reality. 

But there are all sorts of words that we may associate with the word "virtue".
And they come up in all traditions.
I'll leave the looking up of those words,
the looking up of "virtue" and "virtues",
to you
so that you can have that list,
of things, qualities,
that self-image may think it has or does not have. 

If it thinks it "has" them,
it contracts around them and bodies itself forth
in a snappy little way, perhaps,
or in a self-satisfied waddle, or in an overbearing posture of body and mind. 

If it thinks it doesn't "have" them,
well,
it may winge and wheedle and barter,
clasping and rubbing its greedy little grasping little hands,
looking for more of that which it does not have. 

Of course, you all see that contraction when it comes up
and feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.
You practise that moment of awake awareness,
of mindfulness,
rather than falling for the stories. 

The origin of the word "virtue" is Latin.
It comes from "virtus".
In the dictionary I was using,
the word "manliness" was used
but because we do not reside in the gender ghetto
[students laugh]
we will substitute "humanness";
taking full responsibility for being a human being,
and the word "courage",
which was also used. 

"Courage" is an interesting word.
It comes from, again, originally, the Latin "cor",
which means "heart".
Now from what I've and read and experienced of many cultures
"heart" or "courage" is esteemed.
To the point where, sometimes,
certain peoples were known to have eaten the heart of enemies
which they considered to be brave
(but that's a kind of a little National Enquirer factoid to get your attention). 

But, heart, the heart,
has been recognized as being the beating at the centre of our life.

To have courage is to,
in practice,
step past the views of self-image and learn to recognize contraction. 

Now, the list of words of virtues are valued as being good.
Contraction, is, in a sense, value free;
just as the feeling of your thumb against the other thumb is value free.
It's a sensation.
To put value on it means to travel into the area of thoughts about that sensation.
So it's not necessary. 

Contraction comes up and,
because contraction may be something that we've experienced many times,
we may have the recognition or the expectation,
expectation is more correct actually,
the expectation that a certain type of contraction
brings with it a certain type of explanation or story. 

Contraction breeds contraction.

In the Forty-eight Supporting Precepts for monastics there's a precept, which says,

I vow to request Dharma.

That means to request clarification,
from one's teacher,
regardless of the story that one has anticipated.

Asking for clarification, for elucidation,
on contraction, can be scary,
it can produce fear,
because most of us don't realize that the stories that we get busy telling ourselves,
the stories that self-image gets busy telling itself
about how we are and how the world is,
are stories.

Self-image is self-serving. 

Practice helps us see the process of contraction.
It helps us see the process of perception and cognition.
It can take courage to talk about certain contractions which we may have imbued with meaning.

Now, we're not too reticent about the ones that we think are "good".
We can get all contracted,
but happy,
because we think we've realized something.
We're bringing it forth to get the gold star
or to get, "Roshi, Roshi, come down here. This student...."
[students laugh loudly] 

So, we'll kind of... not talk about that part of it.
[students laugh] 

There are other contractions,
other stories,
that are brought up that we may feel "shame" or "guilt" about.
I mean no one really wants to admit that they might have had a thought about,
"hittingapracticeadvisorontheearswiththekaishakuwhentherounddidn'tendwhenitwasattheendofitspatience..."
[students laugh]

We tend not to talk about that
because that makes us believe,
because we think we are our thoughts,
that we are a person who, maybe, almost did that thing.
So that reveals something to us:
A thought is not the same as an action. 

One learns that through taking a risk,
through doing our best to talk about what we noticed going on, contraction can be opened further and we can start to understand that we are actually the Knowing of those things rather than the person who "almost" did that action. 

It can be a slippery slope,
this listening to the stories of self-image.
But anything can be talked about.
We won't get forensic and analyze you because of a thought that you might have had.
We've all had thoughts.
We've all had thought.
We've all had thoughts that maybe weren't...

the nicest. 

We've all had thoughts that have been self-aggrandizing.
But since we've all had varieties of these thoughts,
and they come up for everyone, well,
we can all start to realize that all human beings are pretty much the same
and the act of trying to cover contraction
and story and action
is like putting a stone on a plant.
And when we see the stone rather than removing it
or calling out to some one to help us to do this
we put another rock on it and maybe another one just to be sure,
just to, in truth,
make things more difficult for ourselves. 

It does, in fact, take courage to lift up this rock and say,
"look it's here, it got put here because..."
and then to receive instruction as to how to deal with that next rock,
that next contraction that comes up.
And you will find that the stories you make up are far heavier
and far more damaging
and far more to be feared than the reality that,
a contraction is a contraction,
a thought is a thought it's not an action.
You have free will.
You can do whatever you want.
You can make whatever choices you want
and if you want to practise
then you follow instructions to the best of your ability. 

When all those rocks of contraction are removed,
when we know what to do when we see contraction,
which is to practise whole bodily in the whole moment,
we find that the choices for action that we do make
can be classified according to those great long lists
that every tradition seems to like to make up
of qualities that we should or shouldn't have.

But really it's very simple:
You notice something,
there's a contraction.

Have the heart to do what you know to be true.

Take a risk,
which is really a non-risk,
and those flowers will bloom. 

The verse.

When setting out a place to sit,
"May all beings

Unfold the flower of virtues

And understand their own clarity." 

As you all know clarity comes through your own experiencing.
It's not someone else's experiencing.
All anyone can do is use their own experiencing to point to yours.
That's what teachers do. 

Through the placing of your bodymind on the zafu that you are setting out,
(or that some one else has taken care of for you),
you're learning to see reality as it really is,
where a thought is just a thought,
a thought is different from an action,
a contraction is a contraction,
there is no value on it,
it's just something to be noticed. 

If you're breathing in and out,
if your heart is still beating, 

you have time to 

wake up.


Thank you for listening. 

You showed up again! 

You saw any thoughts or feelings that came up with information, stories, such as:
"...ooh...no! I don't wanna..."

"I'm too tired."

"This is going to be great." 

Whatever the story was,
you saw it for what it was;
a figment,
a fabrication,
words wrapped around a contraction into a sense of self

and

you took appropriate action 

which was to

feel the feet, the hands

feel the bodymind

feel the breath

open the eye gaze

one foot in front of the other
and here you are
demonstrating with... 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...your sincerity in wanting to practise.

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...every breath that is breathing you
gives you the opportunity to notice it,
to sit up straight,
to open the eye gaze,
to practise whole bodily in the moment,
and you can do it faster
[snaps fingers]
than I can talk about or than you can think about it. 

So you may as well give up talking to yourself about it
and thinking about it
and just do it.
Saves a lot of energy.


The verse, 

Sitting up straight,

"May all beings

Be seated on the throne of Awareness,
Their intelligence disentangled." 

Intelligence disentangles itself
or is disentangled from the contractions that bind it
each time you see experiences arising within experiencing for what they are,
experiences arising within experiencing,
rather than as definitions of a self,
images of a self,
a personality,
or who you are. 

Now, of course, there you are sitting up straight,
"seated on the throne of Awareness".
You are Awareness in itself.
You are experiencing in itself.
You are Knowing in itself.
And as Knowing you cannot be a "knower".
There cannot be a self described as a "knower".
You're learning to see that.
And each time you notice anything [O-sensei snaps fingers]
feel whole bodily,
the whole moment.

Traps and cages spring open

Intelligence is freed. 

We do become entangled.
Human beings become entangled in their stories about what's going on.
And, this has been going on for 2600 years
so it's not surprising that in Teisho and Dharma Talks and Sutra self-image will go,
"Ooh, talking about me..."
because self-image wants to make everything personal
and as has been said by the Roshi,
and all the other Teachers in the Lineage,
in many different ways,
"Practice is too intimate to be personal". 

The process of being a human being is the same for all human beings
and that tendency to hold yourself apart from it,
"because..." is, of course, a definition, a display, of self-image.

You're learning to recognize that. 

A long, long, time ago on the other side of the city,
there was a small temple and sittings were held there,
in the Zendo.
And often there might only be one person other than the teacher at the sittings.
Sometimes there'd be a few more. 

Every student gets entangled in the stories of self-image.
That's why they need to be disentangled. 

Well, one day was a sesshin day
which means
sitting walking sitting walking sitting walking sitting walking sitting walking sitting walking sitting
from 4:30 in the morning when we get up
to 9:30 at night when we go to bed. 

This particular student wasn't so young
as many are when they start sitting.
And, of course, the cries and creaks of joints and tendons
offered a lot of places upon which self-image could focus its attention
to the point where "sensation" became the main focus. 

The gong rang from upstairs and it was time for the student to go for dokusan.
The student walked to the door, 
put out the right hand,
turned the doorknob,
bowed...
facing into the hall.

How embarrassing is that?
How can it happen that a reasonable human being
with sensations and senses present
could become so entangled in stories about what was going on
that the obvious, a form which had been practised over and over and over again,
became wiped out,
sense of direction became wiped out?

Now this is to show how intelligence becomes compromised
when we get caught up in the tangles of self-image and its stories. 

Practice show us how this can become disentangled.
And the process is
[O-sensei snaps fingers],
that's it:
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
practise the whole body in the whole moment. 

 Forms help us with this process
of learning to disentangle the intelligence of the bodymind from the stories.
We are told simple things.
For example, when in the Hatto at the beginning of sittings,
students take their cues from the seniors.
Don't move until the senior moves.
But self-image says,
"this doesn't apply to me and I see that I'm supposed to be over there
I'm supposed to close the gap between two seats..."
and it becomes so entangled
in the placing of itself in the so-called "favourable light" defined by self-image
that it steps out when no one else is in the room is moving.

How crazy is that?
How well does it demonstrate how entangled we can become in the stories of self-image.
We're learning to see this. 

You can take every opportunity
to see how this process of entangling occurs.
We do or don't do something.
We execute or don't execute a form and a senior or a teacher says,
"What are you doing?"
Self-image's first instinct
and you've all experienced it in one form or another to a greater or lesser degree,
it's first instinct is to blame somebody else,
"If so and so wouldn't have...then...".
Because, of course, self-image sees itself as perfection
and it is only the confluence of myriad events
that prevent it from shining forth as the paragon of perfection which it sees itself as. 

Now, that's bullshit.
And every student since the beginning of students,
and the beginning of practice,
has come across this in one form or another.
That tendency compromises the dignity of the bodymind,
it compromises the integrity of the bodymind in the whole moment
and makes us appear to be whinging, whining, babies.
That's not intelligent. 

Practice is about growing up.
It is about taking responsibility for being a human being,
for being as Joshu roshi said,
"a real human being."
So you've got it.
Use it. 

Now, as far as "the throne of Awareness",
that certainly might throw self-image a little bit,
because it certainly does like to see itself superior to everything,
sitting up there with its subjects at its feet.
But that is not what is being talked about. 

What is meant, is, that a seat or a "throne",
has implicit in the word a sense of dignity,
a sense of control,
a sense of being the final decision maker,
but, we're talking about your own experience.

So when seated on the throne of Awareness
you are not going to be fooled
by the whinging and whining and weedling stories of self-image.
You will not be ruled by them.
The choice you make, as Awareness in itself,
will be the most intelligent possible in that situation. 

Now, if a thought comes up about "always being right"
recognize that is self-image because "always being right" just doesn't happen.
But doing the best that you possibly can,
making the best possible choice that you can,
free of the entanglement of the stories of self-image,
and the contractions into a sense of self,
will free you from the stupidity of, for example,
bowing into the hall. 

Another translation of this verse was, 

Sitting up straight,

"They should wish that all beings
Sit on the seat of enlightenment
Their minds without attachment." 

So we have "the seat of enlightenment". 

Well, what does that mean, this enlightenment business?
Well, clear seeing in the moment,
being Awareness in itself,
expressing moment to moment in the deportment of the bodymind
the dignity of Awareness,
the dignity of being Knowing in itself. 

"Minds without attachment", well, that raises questions.
And you are certainly free, and encouraged,
to follow up on your own,
what these words,
these expressions of practice may mean.

You never know where you'll end up
when you start to look at and follow the trail of words.

Now I prefer, of course, "intelligence disentangled"
because it's more clear
and that's why the Roshi and I chose that particular phrase to describe open Awareness,
the bodymind free of the entanglements that choke us
and make us act in ways that are smaller than we actually are,
make us make decisions that are not as useful and intelligent as they could be. 

So there you are,
sitting up straight on your zafu
seeing clearly the rise and fall of thoughts and feelings,
of seeing hearing tasting touching feeling smelling
breathing in and out.
And using each moment,
of noticing anything whatsoever,
to practise the whole bodymind in the whole moment,
disentangling intelligence. 

The verse again, 

Sitting up straight,

"May all beings

Be seated on the throne of Awareness,
Their intelligence disentangled." 

Thank you for listening. 

You can feel the heart beating in your chest.

You can feel the bones moving ever so slightly with the breath that expands the lungs.
With the contraction of the lungs that expels the last breath

you can open the eye gaze

you can sit up straight.

You can use every opportunity to practise the reality of the life that is living as you. 

That's why you're here

in spite of the stories that self-image might have about why you're here and why you're doing this practice. 

All of them are suspect.


EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE...
lets you know you're alive in this moment.

The verse: 

Crossing the legs,

"May all beings

Have strong roots of virtue
And unfold the immovable." 

You're sitting there with the legs crossed,
where possible,
and those who are sitting in postures other than a posture where the legs are crossed
may or may not have good reason for doing so right now,
but as time unfolds,
the bodymind unfolds and becomes more flexible.

So in spite of what self-image says you can or cannot do,
or are or are not capable of,
the moment of noticing any of those stories, what do you do?
That's right,
you practise because at the moment of noticing that contraction,
with that or any other story, you've noticed reality.
You've woken up from the glazing over and the dream of self-image,
you've woken up to the magic of reality. 

Now the verse speaks of "strong roots of virtue".
Well, as I'm sure you remember,
we looked at virtue,
the word coming from the Latin: virtus,
which means humanness, courage,
the ability to take the risk of seeing the stories of self-image as stories,
and to,
through practising that moment of noticing contraction or the story,
to allow the contraction to unfold. 

"Why does it take courage" one might ask, to practise, to sit zazen?
Well, as we've all experienced,
when we sit with our eyes open and when I say "eyes open" this means you...
[several students have eyes closed and are dozing]

We might notice that
oh, there might be sensations that we are used to classifying as PAIN!
And our tendency is to want to run away from pain
because we have all kinds of associations with the words,
just as we have all kinds of associations with every other word.

"Crossing the legs" means that we're taking the risk of sitting there
and having sensations present themselves.
When we can cease to put meaning to them and drop them into,
drop the sensations into
"good" or "bad",
"liked" or "not liked",
we can just see an experience and feel sensation as sensation
and use that noticing to practise mindfulness of the whole bodymind in the whole moment
and this allows the bodymind to unfold.

So there's that,
there's the physical reality of the bodymind
in that it's not used to being stretched in this way.
But, over time, over the years,
the bodymind will unfold
and what you thought to be impossible when you first came to practise,
you will find,
through your own experience,
is possible. 

But it does take courage,
you take a risk each time you cross the legs and sit down to "unfold the immovable"
(whatever that might be).
Also, there's a risk in crossing the legs and sitting down in zazen
because we do start to see reality as it is.
And we might find that things,
that words that we had taken on to describe who we are,
perhaps were not right on the money,
but were in fact done to prop up an image of a self. 

Now, some of the words, 
(and I'm sure you all rushed home after last week's Dharma Talk and looked up "virtue"
and came up with all those lists of words that stood prior to "heart, humanness, and courage")
okay, compassion comes up. Nice!

We all want to be described,
or to describe ourselves as being compassionate.
But, we sit in front of that cushion,
or rather we sit on that cushion in front of that wall,
and we start to see that this thing called "compassion"
is something that we don't understand at all.

We start to be able to develop compassion and understanding for ourselves as we sit,
facing moment after moment,
the contractions and stories of self-image.

Sometimes we can be surprised at the thoughts that we have,
fortunately,
we don't put them into action on the zafu,
but rather, the energy is used to practise that moment of insight, clarity, or clear seeing,
to practise mindfulness, which has exposed itself in that moment.

So we may start to see that the idea that we are a compassionate person
is just another little accessory that we've picked up,
that self-image has decided to wear.
When that gets exposed, well,
we might not like it but who cares?
Whether we like it or not, it doesn't matter.
As the contraction and the tendency of self-image to dress itself up with accessories drops away,
we start to understand through our own experience
that the process of being a human being is the same for all human beings,
and through our own experience
we can start to perhaps have more tolerance and understanding for what's going on with others. 

We may notice things like truth, now that seems like a virtue, does it not?
Truth.
And as we sit,
we start to see the many ways in which
a contraction into a sense of self lies to us
and then we might find that our lips are moving and saying,
actually very comedic stories are expressed out loud. 

Let me give you an example,
and it's happened,
I'm sure, to each and every one of us at some point or another.

Something happens,
we do something and information that is not accurate somehow is expressed,
and someone might say to us, or might point it out to us,
"well, actually, it's this".
Self-image swoops in and blatantly lies by saying:
"well, that's what I meant".
Like, go figure.

But we don't see it
until we see it as being a very typical example of a pattern of self-image to cover it's ass,
with the implication that if these external forces,
whatever they might have been,
hadn't interfered,
well then, we would have said what we didn't say,
which, apparently, self-image is saying that we knew
but something came in to interfere, so we didn't know it.

At the very least, it's a waste of energy.
Making a mistake isn't a problem.
Things happen.
But trying to justify in the face of...
well, let's not really get into that, because it's just so silly. 

So, when something happens,
feel the breath,
sit or stand up straight,
open the eye gaze,
and accept the new information that is correct.

So we can go down and it can be a lot of fun to do,
go down and get a list of all these things that are considered "virtues"
and look at how self-image uses them. 

Humility. Hmm? Humility.
Contraction into a sense of self that's humble.
How self-aggrandizing is that?

When you notice that,
feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze
and it all becomes moot.

You don't even need to talk about it
because there's no point in bragging,
there's no point in hiding,
there just is what is in that moment.
And it's a lot more fun
and it takes up a lot less of everybody's time,
so that what needs to be taken care of can be taken care of. 

Oh, and we get into things like sincerity and all the stories about sincerity,
but as we've already talked about,
sincerity is showing up.
Sincerity is doing what one says one will do.

Then we have love exposed as lust, as following the patterns of biochemistry.
And we could go on and on and on and on.
But I won't. 

You're learning to see, as you cross your legs and sit on that zafu,
the process of perception and cognition
and how contraction comes up and how when stories are told,
they entangle intelligence.

Sitting, and at the moment of noticing anything,
practising mindfulness of the whole bodymind in the whole moment,
unfolds, disentangles that intelligence.

We learn to see how contractions arising within and sometimes obscuring awareness,
can be opened so that awareness itself is present.
Open, luminous.

Practise at the moment of noticing anything
unfolds contraction and opens the clarity of awareness.

The clarity of awareness, the "immovable" of the verse, is revealed.

Here's a quote from Anzan roshi, from "Before Thinking", "The Great Matter": 

All states, all experiences and all ways of experiencing are rising and falling. They are all impermanent. And yet, awareness is not coming or going. So, although all Dharmas are impermanent, perhaps we could say that Awareness itself is permanent, that when we discover Awareness itself, we will discover true permanency and we will be able to abide there free of birth and death. 

However, this isn't quite true either. Awareness cannot be permanent because it is not a thing, it is not an entity, it has no substance. It is indescribable, it is the nature of all our experiences. Awareness is inherently unbound by experiences because what we are aware of cannot describe or designate what Awareness in itself is. Although Awareness presents itself to us as everything that we are aware of, there is nowhere that we can lay a hand upon Awareness itself because Awareness itself is the context in which the contents of consciousness are arising. One could say that it occurs on a completely different level, except that within Awareness there are no levels. Whatever levels there might be simply occur there, within it. It is itself simply indescribable, and so it cannot be described as impermanent or as permanent. It can only be recognized as that which is living each and every one of you now. 

Keep on crossing those legs!
Keep a strong heart, and courage.
Keep on unfolding reality as it really is,
before, prior to,
all the stories that self-image makes up in its version of reality. 

The verse: 

Crossing the legs,

"May all beings

Have strong roots of virtue
And unfold the immovable." 

Thank you for listening. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE 

...THIS one
...
is the only one.


All the others are gone and none of us know if we'll have another one.

It only makes sense to feel the bodymind that is wrapped around this moment,
which is the breath. 

Some time ago,
I was giving a workshop in another country
and some dude said: "Uh, what's uh so important about the breath?"

Like, I was gobsmacked. [students and O-sensei laugh]
And we can laugh about it because it's so obvious.
If it isn't there... hey! [more laughter]

So we might as well notice it. 

Now, if you've ever been in extreme circumstances, such as,
from my own experience for example, at the end of someone else's hands
which are wrapped around your throat and are tightening...
well, you notice it. [students laugh]

And again, from my own experience,
you start to feel,
or I start to feel like I'm drowning inside this bodymind
because the heart has gotten big
and the muscle isn't strong enough to work as it should
so the lungs are filling up with fluid.

Congestive heart failure is what they call it,
but it's like what I imagine drowning would be like except you're drowning,
I was drowning,
in my own body fluids. 

Interesting. Interesting, and it can be worked with. 

... so... the breath.
You can feel it right now.
So while you're feeling that breath that is moving the whole bodymind in and out,
you can let go of any thoughts that might come up about doing anything.
The thing you think of as you can't practise.
However, it can be practised because when you notice this thing you think of as you,
coming out with its little label maker that it wants to put on and say:
"There, breath.
There, fingertips.
There, eyelashes."
[students laugh]
"Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling."
You do not let have to let that mythical,
that self-created and fabricated accountant or librarian or whatever you want to call it,
go on with its business.

It's taking up too much energy. 

Let it go. 

Just allow the clarity and sanity of this moment of sitting,
being breathed in and out to be there.

If something extra comes in,
use that [O-sensei snaps fingers]
as a reminder to practise what's actually going on,
the breathing in and out,
the heart beating.

Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, and smelling. 

The verse: 

Practising clarity,

"May all beings

Settle their minds in clarity
Until nothing is left behind." 

And when there's nothing left behind,
there's nothing to do.
It's only when those extras come up,
that knot experiencing,
and start to dictate or label or fabricate or make movies,
that's the moment to practise. 

In "Begin Here: Five Styles of Zen", Anzan roshi has written and spoken,
actually, spoken and written very clearly
about what clarity is and what this practice is.
Yeah, yeah, you may have read it before,
but did you understand it?
Do you remember it?
So, I'm going to use that text,
which is one of my favourites because it is so clear,
to remind you of what you're actually doing here. 

In the lead-up, the Roshi says:

Our practice is about opening to our life as it is. Opening to the moment as it is and allowing this clear seeing to pervade our life.

Now, at a certain point in practice, there will be that viewer,
that seer up behind the eyes going
"yeah, yeah, I can really see clearly what's going on in my life, I see how everybody else is getting in my way."
[laughter]
Or versions... 

Buddha Dharma means waking up to what is evident when we see clearly,
and what is evident when we see clearly is that there is no one up there behind the eyes,
especially when the eyes are open
(it's easier to see clearly when the eyes are open).
There's no one there,
what there is is a fabrication,
a story that attention is being fed into.

So you're learning to see that process clearly. 

The teachings say that you are Buddha,
it's not a matter of becoming Buddha.
It is a matter of realizing for yourself that you are Buddha,
and that there is a fundamental awakened quality at the core of your experience,
which is most probably what brought you to practice in the first place,
that thing that goes,

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, there's something I don't know about this life." 

And of course, what we don't know about this life
is that it can only happen in this [O-sensei snaps fingers]
moment.

So we're learning to see that.

It is a matter of realizing for yourself
that sanity, clarity, wisdom, and compassion
are your basic nature,
that all conditions are inherently unconditioned,
that awareness is all that is ever going on
and is never limited.

Awareness is boundless and always free.

This unconditioned freedom is your own nature
and you can realize this.

Realizing this,
making it real,
is the process of practice.

So any time you notice,
and every time you notice anything else extra coming in,
feel the breath without labeling it.

Sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
and if you're tired,
put a little extra effort in and recognize
seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, smelling, r
ecognize the aliveness of the bodymind in this moment,
the only moment in which it can happen. 

Now, those inconvenient to self-image monks called teachers and practice advisors
will help you with this.

Now sometimes self-image is reluctant to let go of those hands around the throat
because it fails to recognize that they're actually its own hands.
And it can be somewhat embarrassing,
let's say. [laughter]

So everything in the environment of practice,
everything is there to remind you that you can let it go.
There's nothing that you need to do.
There is no you to do it
and you start to understand that,
you may not be able to express it,
you may want to argue with it,
you may want to say:
"Well, like, who's doing it? How is it happening? Could you draw me a picture?"

But, because we're talking about your own experiencing,
and we're talking about it through our own experiencing,
which is that that experiencing has been passed down from teacher to student,
to teacher to student and students turn into teachers,
and they pass it on.

It is about their own experiencing.
It's not about someone else's experiencing
that is worn on a baseball cap or a t-shirt saying,
"The only thing going on is NOW."

No.

It's direct experiencing.
Its meaning is not in words.
Its meaning is in the clear understanding that there is only this moment
and there's no need for anything extra. 

So we'll whip through "The Five Styles of Zen"
and I encourage you to read it or listen to it today,
just go to the website.
Why?
Because your understanding will be clearer.
A little caveat, or a little warning here:
you probably will notice a tendency of self-image
to want to place itself in one of the categories, it'll go,
"Oh yeah, yeah, that's me"
as if we're doing a magazine test.

We want to rank.
So, let it be there, no problem,
use that recognition,
that moment of seeing that that's what's going on
to remind you to
notice the breath,
seeing,
hearing,
tasting,
touching,
feeling,
smelling
and get on with it.

You've practised that moment of clear seeing. 

From the text, by Anzan roshi: Saijojo Zen 

The fifth kind of Zen is saijojo zen which means "Great and Perfect Practice." It is great and perfect practice because it is not based on trying to realize anything. It is based on practising practice. It is based on sitting the sitting. It is based on seeing what you see, hearing what you hear, not looking for Buddha in any way but simply realizing one's own looking to be Buddha. 

Shikan-taza is known by many names and many different forms within the Buddhist Transmission:
in the Tibetan schools it is called Mahamudra, Maha-ati or Chagya-chenpo and Dzog-chenpo;
the Theravadin school calls it Mahavipassana;
within Soto Zen it is shikan-taza,
and in Rinzai Zen as well, one practices shikan-taza after finishing koan study.

Since the saijojo is so simple and straight-forward,
it also seems to be quite subtle.
Therefore, many people seem to have become quite confused
about what shikan-taza really is.
Some even consider just sitting quietly like a good little boy or girl
and watching the breath,
or just "being mindful,"
to be shikan-taza.

Dogen zenji exclaimed that shikan-taza is "just sitting,"
it is "dropping the bodymind."

This does not mean sitting in some state of dissociation from body and mind,
nor does it mean that this dropping bodymind only happens when you sit.
It means that when you experience each experience as it is,
when you penetrate into your True Nature,
when you realize that there is no body or mind, time or space,
then your sitting is "just sitting."

Shikan-taza is a wordless release of all gestures of grasping.
It is like opening a fist or opening the eyes.
It is not the closing away of attention from any state of experience.

"Wordless" does not mean that one artificially induces a state of blankness,
is holding one's tongue,
or has gagged the mind.
It is a questioning so subtle and penetrating
that it occurs before and between, around and within
all thoughts, impressions, sensations and differentiations, whatsoever. 

Experiences and states arise freely as the activity of primordial Awareness itself.
Awareness is effulgent with forms but is always formless.
Nothing that arises, dwells or decays can, in itself,
invite or provoke any confusion, or separation, or identification.

In shikan-taza, all worlds and all beings are always sitting as their own True Natures. 

In Soto Zen, shikan-taza is the root of all practice and so,
although we might have to work our way through these other four orientations to some extent,
some realization of shikan-taza is necessary for us to actually begin practising,
if we are going to practise Soto Zen.

This means having some sense of being Buddha,
even if only on a feeling or intellectual level,
a deep sense that no matter how screwed up you can be,
you are basically sane after all.
No matter how you might find yourself getting caught up in things,
there is still a basic clarity that's available to you. 

Opening further and further to that clarity is the basis of saijojo zen practice.
This practice flowers into simply manifesting that clarity in everything that is arising.
We recognize clarity to be all that is ever, in fact, going on, 
that no matter what point of view we might momentarily take,
that all these are just orientations within a greater view of just seeing.

Kensho (seeing into one's own nature) is, in some ways,
actually where practice begins within Soto Zen.
It is not just having some experience of kensho,
some particular experience of kensho,
but the whole orientation of kensho forms the basis of one's practice. 

Within Soto Zen, when one is practising as a formal student,
there is an interaction between Teacher and student
which is based on the Teacher working to show his or her mind to the student
so that the student can recognize the Original or Primordial Nature of his or her own mind.

When these two minds can meet openly,
then there is Transmission.

This is Buddha meeting Buddha.

This is that which is before, within, behind and all around 
all of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
It is that which is giving rise to your thoughts, feelings, and experiences expressing themselves.

The Teacher is always trying to give some taste,
some flavour of this Original Mind to students,
so that the students can then practise that realization to whatever extent they are able.

Through that, the form of practice that student will engage in becomes clear.

Soto Zen might involve koan practice,
anapanasati and many different forms of practice,
but they are all grounded within shikan-taza.
They are grounded in some way within our realization that we are Buddha. 

The verse, again: 

Practising clarity,

"May all beings

Settle their minds in clarity
Until nothing is left behind." 

Gassho to the Lineage of Teachers.

Gassho to you for doing the practice.

Thank you for listening. 

So.
Here we are.
Sitting,
practising,
wrapped around the breath. 

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE... is this moment. 

Use it to notice the reality of this moment,
the seeing,
the hearing,
the tasting,
the touching,
the feeling,
the smelling,
the thinking,
all of those things that are going on.
All of those things that make up your life in this moment,
wrapped around this breath. 

I've said it before.
And I'll say it again while I still have breath:
one day, there won't be another breath.
One day, you'll be dead,
each and every one of you
and you never know when it's going to happen.
So notice this breath,
that's going on right now.
Do not waste time!
Wake up to the reality of your life the only place it's happening,
which is NOW. 

Now, the great matter of birth and death
is something that Gautama Siddhartha struggled with
and we tend to struggle with it today.
Now, "intellectually", self-image will say,
"intellectually, I understand it."
And we buy into that.
But it's funny,
we say that about so many things,
around practice in particular.
"Intellectually", we understand it,
which means we may have recognized that the words came out in English.
[students laugh] 

But you scratch that little "intellectually I understand it"
and there might be lurking underneath little views
that we didn't even know that we had.
Like, "it's not going to happen to me",
"I know this and well, I'm going to really work my ass off in the gym,
I'm really going to work out,
I'm really going to take this bodymind
and make it immortal." 

We don't even know we hold those views. 

I'm not saying we shouldn't have choice in the ways we exercise,
the way we use the bodymind,
'cause I've looked around, you know,
and the bodymind actually hasn't evolved much in 50 000 years.
It is designed for running like fury to catch something to eat,
and there's not much of that going on today.
It's also designed so that it does well with back-breaking labour.
It does well with digging fields and planting stuff, you know,
and it's exhausted,
it lies down, eats, has a little sleep.
But there's not many big fields around here that need tilling by hand.

So here we are, with this vehicle,
this bodymind,
which is not who we are,
but it is wrapped around the breath. 

Just the last word: you will die...
[students giggle] 

...but you're not dead right now.

So feel the breath,
sit up straight,
open the eye gaze,
which is short form for saying
"practise the whole bodymind in this whole moment". 

The verse: 

Practising insight,

"May all beings

See Reality as it is,

Always free of the struggle of opposing it." 

So these verses were written some 1600 years ago
and they were said to and said by real people.
People just like you and me.
But they're dead now.
But we have the verses.

Last week's verse was talking about clarity.
This week, we're talking about insight and again, reality. 

So in the Sanskrit, insight: vipassana.
Shamata is focusing, concentration.
Vipassana is openly sitting and seeing clearly your life as it is,
as it unfolds in this moment. 

Now, even sitting in the Hatto,
you may notice yourself trying to oppose the reality of this moment.
You may find yourself arguing with yourself about whether you should or shouldn't be here.
Whether you did something so horribly bad that you deserve this punishment.
[students laugh]
Forgive me, that's a thought I had,
once upon a time.
[more laughter] 

So. This is a quote from "Before Thinking", page 10,
"Shamata and Vipassana" by Anzan Hoshin roshi.
I encourage you to, as soon as you can after the sitting,
except if you're on retreat,
'cause there's no reading on retreat,
look up "Before Thinking"
and read about shamata and vipassana
because you'll find that you have uncovered even more understanding
through your experience of sitting.

And as mentioned,
the Buddha engaged himself in all types of practices in his search for what was really going on.
This young man who had been wrapped in cotton wool,
protected from reality,
one day decided: "Hmm. There's gotta be more."

And I'm sure you've all read the story,
and if you haven't, you should.
Through the little holes in the cotton wool,
in the moments of clarity between the parties and the courtesans,
he saw someone who was ill,
someone who was old,
someone who was dead
and decided to find out what this birth and death was all about.

So he left the cotton wool behind
and went out looking and engaged in various concentration practices.

They weren't the answer.
They may have induced blissful states.
And he noticed a blissful state can go off the rails when one is presented with something unpleasant,
an aspect of reality.

So the quote begins here: 

Abandoning all of these different exercises, all of these gymnastics of the mind, he simply sat and observed what was going on. This observation, this clear seeing we call vipassana. Insight. Vipassana, the act of developing direct insight. Sitting, looking at, knowing your own experiencing in this moment is seeing into the nature of mind. 

Now I'm going to whip you forward in time about 1600 years from the time of the Buddha...

White Wind Zen Community was fledgling and the Sangha,
which was under five people,
sat at Daijozan.
At that time, the Roshi, then Sensei,
was basically funding the whole operation out of his own pocket
and Saturday, he had to go to work.
So after the sitting, the Sangha,
whether it was two or three or four,
would go walking down to the market with the Roshi
and we'd have breakfast together.

This was early on in my practice,
it was a matter of weeks, as a matter of fact.
I have a memory that it was a day like today,
going into autumn, crisp and clear.
So we went, we ate,
and of course the students were all on their best behavior.
And the meal came to an end
and I remember sitting there,
wondering who was going to say what to whom,
what to do?
I might have even remembered to practise mindfulness,
to feel the breath,
to sit up straight,
to open the eye gaze.

All of a sudden, the Roshi said:
"I'll be going now"
and he got up,
put on his cap,
nodded in a public gassho,
and left. 

I was blown away. 

Like leaves in the wind,
I saw all those times when I had stood up and said:

"Well, gee, this has been really great,
you're all great people
[students laugh]
let's do it again sometime,
whaddaya say?
No no no, I really have to go.
I'd kill myself to stay here with you
and waste some more time."
[students laugh]

We've all done it. [students laugh some more]
The social conditioning,
the patterns that we fall into.

Now a caveat here, I'm not talking about being rude,
I'm talking about seeing the ways we have all lied through our teeth.

First of all to ourselves,
and then to those that we might have been comingling with in various ways.

"No no, it's my fault, it's not you, no..." [O-sensei and students laugh heartily] 

So as I said, I was blown away.
That put the capper on it for me,
I had no escape route.
That was it.
I wanted to learn what was so real in that moment.

Saying what you mean,
meaning what you say,
not embroidering,
not weaving a tapestry of acceptability. 

So, here we sit today,
pursuing the matter further
by putting the bottom down on the zafu
is what we do.

This practice is founded on a little shamatha,
that's what got you here this morning if you had even a tiny, little thought,
or even a whiff of
"I don't want to do this, it's a beautiful day, I'd rather..."
Those thoughts come up, they're not a problem,
they're not who you are.
They're just a hangover from self-image's inebriated view of how things are,
which of course is that it is the centre of the world
and it knows everything.
So this practice is shamatha,
that effort,
that will to step past obstructions,
the ones we create ourselves.
Vipassana,
the clear seeing,
insight,
held together with mindfulness. 

A quote again from "Before Thinking": 

If our practice is founded upon a process of mindfulness and insight, however, then we know that when confusion is present, the only means available to clarify it is to simply watch it, to simply attend to it, to see how it functions, to notice its effect within our entire experience. 

In order to notice, in order to know our experiences,
we need to place ourselves in a situation where there is a framework that will enable us to see clearly.
At this point, we start to understand the necessity of the forms,
basic forms,
forms of deporting the bodymind,
even when it's walking around the monastery,
even when it's eating,
it's still sitting.

So, simple forms:
pay attention,
feet together,
standing up straight,
open eye gaze,
hands in shashu.

That frame enables us to see the machinations of self-image
that wants to fill what it says is empty space with meaningless gesture,
old patterns of verbosity.

Now we may also have ideas that if we're practising,
well, none of this should be going on,
we should feel comfortable all the time.

That simply isn't true
because when we're adjusting the bodymind
so that it is possible for us to see openly what's going on,
there's going to be rushes of remnants of states that come up
and put pressure,
and squeeze us,
and make us feel things like our teeth have grown,
our teeth are huge and our lips are sticking to them
and it's as if someone's holding us by the back of the neck and we can't breathe.

No problem,
none of that's actually going on.

But simply standing, paying open attention does have effects.
What do you do?
Feel the breath,
stand up straight,
or sit up straight,
open the eye gaze.

Practise that moment.

States, patterns, tendencies will wear out. 

All of the forms in use at Dainen-ji
and the forms you use if you are sitting at home,
practising at a distance,
are all there and available
to provide a clear frame to see what's going on in your experience. 

"Before Thinking":
It is to simply notice what our seeing is like,
what the sensations of our body are like. 

We're not used to doing that. We're used to talking about them to ourselves and to anyone around.

Feel the breath,
sit or stand up straight,
open the eye gaze.

Now this may sound perhaps quite distant,
something that we can do in the Hatto,
and if we get really good at doing it in the Hatto,
well, then it's done.

These verses from "The Practice of Purity",
which come from the Flower Garland Sutra,
an old text with valuable information about practice
as practised by people just like us for 1600-some years,
can help us see what's going on right here, right now,
no matter what we're doing.

And, we do things,
we do more things than just sitting.
There's kinhin,
there's oryoki,
there's walking out,
there's what we do for entertainment.
We might like movies,
we might like music,
we might like running marathons. 

Confidentially: tried that, DIDN'T like it.
[students laugh] 

So we recognize,
we have to take care of the bodymind in some way,
give it those little outings where it can stretch,
where it can work the way it was designed to work,
more or less. 

Given there's no barefoot hunting through the grasses,
given there are no large fields to till
and very few large stones to roll out of the way,
well, I decided to take up something that I've always wanted to do: dancing.

So, I was walking down Daly Avenue,
I saw a little poster, bright yellow, it said:
"Beginning Breakdancing".
I tore off the little slip: no telephone number, an email address.
So I emailed, we set it up,
I went to the first lesson,
I was the only person there.
Who was my teacher?
A 26-year-old guy from Slovakia.
Who'd a thought?
But it was wonderful because I was the only student,
which meant of course that I got what I needed and what I was capable of.
So I decided to venture a little further,
when this fellow left town, and I saw "Beginner's Hip Hop". 

So I went to the first class.
Gold mine. 50-year-old, 55-year-old, a couple of others, indeterminate, but you know,
a couple of young people, all ripe.
So we start.
The first class wasn't bad, nobody knew anything.
The second class, I think there was only the 45-year-old left
and there were some younger sprouts there. It was okay.

The next week: young people and a new teacher, 19 years old.
Has a crew that has traveled around to different cities to perform.
The instruction was fast, and then it was faster.
Then I had to skip a week.
And I went back, this week.
More young people.
And, they were shorter than I am,
so I'm three times as old as they are,
I'm about four inches taller than they are,
so obviously I have more to deal with.

And it's not going well.

I'm at the back,
I can't remember stuff.
It's going so fast!

So I see the possibility of uh... disaster.
[students laugh]
And I'm not having a good time.
It does seem self-defeating to engage in something that you want to do,
but you're not having a good time at it. 

So possibilities present themselves.
You can see the whispers of things that could come up
and could sway an intelligent decision about what to do.
You know there's like,
"Okay, the teacher is teaching too fast!"
Hey, but everyone else is getting it,
I can see that with my own eyes.
So self-image,
at the centre of its world can say things like:
"Well that's it, they should change to suit me."
That's not realistic!
That has nothing to do with reality.
I could crawl into my little corner
and bow down my weary old head
and cry the blues about being "just too old" to do this.

But I've done that before,
I did that in the beginning,
with practice.
Confusion would come up and say:
"I'm too old to feel the breath,
to sit up straight [students laugh]
to open the eye gaze". 

Nonsense.
So, I thought,
"Well, you know, I'm not having a good time,
and it's not realistic to think that the teacher is going to kick everybody else out
and just teach me because I'm slower."
I mean, I'm sure I could have arranged that,
but at what cost?
It's just not worth it. 

So, I went to the teacher and I said:
"Simply, this is too fast for me, I'll be in touch".
And I will.
And I left, and found that this particular group has another session on Saturday afternoons which is called Fusion.
I've been to one of these and you know,
it's women who work in offices,
they're in their thirties, their forties, their fifties,
and there's actually a 70-year-old there. 

Hey, reality.
The reality of circumstance and condition does present itself
and it can be adapted to.
I'll have fun, I'll work up a sweat.
The bodymind will get exercise,
the joints get lubricated.
You get to bop and bust a few moves.
[students laugh]

So maybe they're moves of the older kind,
but that's reality.
There's the reality of
seeing and hearing and tasting and touching and feeling and smelling,
there's the reality of colour and forms and sounds,
there's the reality of breathing in and out.
But there's also the reality of our personal condition and circumstances,
and we want to be able to make clear decisions,
clear choices. 

No matter what's going on for you,
no matter what you find yourself involved in,
you can start to understand more and more clearly what it is you want,
what it is you like,
what it is you're good at,
what it is you're going to do.
You can make those choices,
you can take actions based on choices,
unfettered by the clutching hands of self-image around your own neck.
You do that by looking into your experiencing,
facing your experiencing as it is.
And you're learning to do that, facing the wall. 

Bodhidharma called Zen:

a special transmission, outside the words, outside the scriptures, a direct pointing to the mind.

So as much as you can see about what is going on,
the more clarity you will have,
the more what you do will be based upon insight into that process of perception and cognition.

You don't have to oppose,
you don't have to change a bad thought into a good thought,
you don't have to sit there wishing, thinking
that if you were twenty years younger,
you'd really be able to nail this dancing thing.

Just see what's going on,
see it clearly
and make the best possible choice in this moment,
for you. 

I'll read the verse again: 

Practising insight,

"May all beings

See Reality as it is,

Always free of the struggle of opposing it." 

Mos' def'! [laughter]

Thank you for listening. 

I'm glad to see the back of you.
[students laugh] 

Now, if that were said in another context...
[more laughter]
it means something entirely different.
It means: "I'm really glad to see you going".

That's one of the fun surprises of practice,
we start to see our understanding of language,
as well as everything else,
change.

But of course, everything is changing.
And everything is going,
but you,
sitting there,
facing the wall with your legs crossed
have an opportunity to see that truly,
without you,
without your bodymind going anywhere,
you can clearly see that whatever rises falls,
that everything is really gate gate paragate,
going going, always going.
Gone gone, always gone.

Whatever dharmas arise,
must fall,
nothing can be held onto.
And you're realizing this with every breath you take. 

The breath is this moment.
All the ones before are gate gate paragate,
they're gone,
and there's this one.
And, maybe, there'll be another one,
but there are no guarantees
and no one gets out alive. 

Today's verse, from the Avatamsaka sutra, Flower Garland Sutra and the text "The Practice of Purity",
and remember,
people 1600 years ago heard these verses
just as you are hearing the now
as well as seeing the wall in front of you,
as well as feeling the clothing on your body,
feeling the hands,
feeling the feet,
feeling the spine upright,
feeling the rib cage
and the lungs expand
as you pratise the whole bodymind in this whole moment. 

When uncrossing the legs,

"May all beings observe

That all activities and things

Resolve into falling away, vanishing." 

Every moment is a moment in which you can practise.

When you see anything,
when anything is known,
that's when you can feel the whole bodymind in the whole moment,
by feeling the breath,
sitting up straight,
opening the eye gaze.

The forms of practice,
although sometimes self-image may view them as unnecessarily harsh,
or even have other colourful descriptions of the forms,
the forms provide the necessary framework for you so that you can see reality. 

And so there, you have crossed your legs.
If you're sitting in seiza, that is, in a way,
an equivalent of crossing your legs and facing the wall,
but I do encourage people to try and then become better at sitting with crossed legs
because this provides a posture that is more balanced.
But as with everything that the bodymind engages in,
it takes time for muscles and tendons and joints to stretch and open.

So you've been sitting there
and you may have noticed sensations in the knees and hips
and there may be the mutterings of a soloist,
or even a whole choir:
"Please let it be over, let it be over, let it be over,
please ring the gong, ring the gong, ring the gong,
please I can't stand this, can't stand this, oh! Fuck!"
[students laugh]
and then the gong is sounded. 

Now, the tendency of someone who is not familiar with practice
is to take a big sigh and then get busy
[O-sensei makes a rubbing sound]
rub, rub, rubbing the knees as if this does any good at all,
except provide a distraction from what's going on.

So at the end of the sitting round,
when the gong sounds,
it is a moment of change
because you know that you are going to face in the direction of the butsudan,
be on your knees,
take care of your zafu and zabuton
and come to standing for kinhin or to come for Daisan. 

Use the bodymind fully.

Use the form fully.

You may notice yourself collapsing into an old pattern
about how if you were just more flexible,
or if we allowed you to lounge around,
then you'd really be able to practise... 

When you notice anything no matter what content
feel the breath

sit up straight
open the eye gaze.

Practise the whole bodymind.

Take care as you move

and by taking care as you move

I mean to use each moment of noticing

anything

about the bodymind

to allow the bodymind to express itself fully

so that the mutterings of self-image

become only part of the reality of the moment

which is what they are

but we are used to believing that our stories about what's going on
are the most important thing. 

Through showing up at the monastery,
we exhibit by what we have done that we have managed
not to fall for thoughts and feelings,
not to fall for self-image's stories about how,
well, we really deserve to do something else.

Each time you see something as simple as the content of a thought,
you have an opportunity to practise that moment,
and eventually, over time,
you will start to see more clearly the details of that process of perception and cognition.

You will start to see the contraction that comes up that we refer to as self-image,
and remember,
there are many of them,
it is not one thing,
and you, at the moment of recognition,
exert the whole bodymind and experiencing opens. 

Knowns present themselves to you as the knowing of them.
You start to see,
through the simple act of moving the knees,
so that they are on the zabuton,
rather than crossed,
you can recognize that you are no longer sitting with the legs crossed.
That may sound simplistic,
but we tend not to notice things like that
because what we have done in the past,
our habitual patterns
are to never be where we actually are,
even though that's impossible.
We're sitting with the legs crossed and we think:

"Oh, I can hardly wait until I can uncross these legs and stand up,
then everything's going to be great and after I get out of here,
what I'll do is, yeah,
I'll go down to such and such,
or I'll do some deep knee bends and stretches
and everthing'll be great
and I'll be ready for the next time I come for the sitting"
and so on... 

So all of this is going on and we don't notice the details,
we don't notice the simple fact
that the stories we were telling ourselves about how we could not continue sitting past this moment
were totally untrue and have totally fallen away,
as have the sensations that we had honed in on
and used to describe the whole of our experience.
They're all gone.
They're all gone.
This quote is from "Active Recognition: On Work",
given by Anzan Hoshin Roshi in October, 1986
and I encourage you to go to the website and read it. 

We tend to ignore the fine details that compose everything that we do. And only recognize lumps and chunks of them. For example, when we have a task to do, we start the task by thinking about how it will be when it is finished and what we're going to be doing after that. In Zen, we begin a task by noticing the details we are working on at this moment. In the next moment, we're working on another detail and in the next moment, another detail. And, at some point, the task is finished. That means simply that we go on to other details, other moments of seeing, hearing, touching, colours, sounds. The tasks were never really finished, because it was never really there, but it was done completely because each detail was done completely. 

As you sit there,
with legs crossed,
hands in the mudra,
buttocks on the zafu,
I see the back of you,
rising and falling with the breath.

You can sit up straight.
You can feel the breath.
You can feel the whole bodymind in this moment.

That is what you are learning to do,
so when uncrossing the legs on the cue of the gong at the end of the sitting round,
please, take care of each detail,
observe that all activities and things resolve into falling away, vanishing.

This is what you're learning to do.
This is practice.
And practice, of course,
is doing something over and over again
so you get better at it.

It's funny, isn't i?
We tend not to think of that.
We practise the piano,
we may practise our diction,
we may practise basketball,
and somehow, we understand that.
We understand that playing the notes over and over again,
we'll get better at it,
but with Practice practice,
that little part seems to have disappeared,
the fact of doing something over and over and getting better and better at it. 

The verse again: 

When uncrossing the legs,

"May all beings observe

That all activities and things

Resolve into falling away, vanishing." 

And remember, that will happen to you too.
Everything about you will fall away and vanish.
So it is important,
let's say even vital that you notice this breath,
and use it to practise the whole bodymind. 

Thank you for listening.

And a very good moment to you.

Feel the breath,
feel that spine,
feel the lungs expand.

Feel this whole moment with the whole bodymind. 

Here we are,
twentieth century kids,
facing a wall.
Practising, as other kids who grew up did,
in India, China, Japan, North America.

Here we are, doing the same practice.
And we are looking at "The Practice of Purity",
verses which were translated from the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Flower Garland Sutra. 

Today's verse: 

Lowering the feet and resting,
"May all beings

Unfold freedom of attention
And rest at ease, unstirred." 

Each time you notice attention narrowing or narrowed,
is noticing a moment of the reality of your life,
in that moment.

At that moment,
you practise the reality of your life by reminding yourself of
seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, feeling, smelling,
breathing in and out,
the clothes on the body,
colours, light, form.
Everything that the bodymind is experiencing in this moment.

You are the Knowing of this moment
and all of us owe a debt to all of us who are no longer breathing
in Japan, China, India,
but who practised.
Some woke up.
Some carried the transmission,
the vital transmission of your life as it is in this moment
so that we here in the twenty first century can access our life in this moment.

That indeed is a true treasure,
a Dharma treasure,
the treasure of Reality. 

Now, ears might have perked up around the phrase "lowering the feet and resting".
Lowering the feet?
Lowering the feet, what is being talked about?

Well, the Avatamsaka Sutra was written some 1600 years ago
and these verses were written for practitioners.
And of course the text was carried to China and to Japan
and as we know, current or contemporary situations will be reflected in verses.
And the current or contemporary situation may have been
in the twentieth century, the nineteenth century, the eighteenth century, seventeenth century. 

We're sitting in Dainen-ji, in the Hatto.

For a moment, picture a Hatto,
picture a Dharma room that is five times as long and five times as wide as the Hatto.
Of course, there wouldn't be an electric light,
as there is Tiantong-si in Ningbo where Dogen zenji sat and woke up.
It wasn't there when he was there, of course.
It would have been lit by candles.

So the Dharma Hall is lit by natural light, candles or lanterns.
Is there central heating?
No way.
Is it fans that you're feeling?
No way,
it's the wind announcing the coming of winter,
rustling through the Dharma Hall,
biting your little noses and ears.

But they sit on a platform which is raised from the floor two and half feet, maybe.
And as a monastic, practising your life in this temple, this is where you live.
This three foot by six foot space, elevated from the floor
is where you sit, where you eat, where you sleep.
Underneath there's a space for your clothing and your toiletries.
This is your life.

There would be a curtain on one doorway of the hall.
Up, it would mean, and I'm quoting from "The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900 to 1950": "recess". 

Well, we don't have recess.
It might be an indicator that the monks are not sitting in the Dharma Hall at that moment.
When the curtain comes down, there's a sign saying "Meditation under way".
In the middle of this vast hall,
there would be a butsudan,
a platform of waking up which reminds monastics what they are doing there.

In China, in this meditation hall that we're talking about now,
there would be a statue of Bodidharma,
a very important lineage ancestor
who stares at you as you circumabulate in kinhin,
he stares at you from the wall from a zenga by Anzan Hoshin roshi,
right across from the painting of Dogen zenji.

Why Bodidharma?
Because in this Dharma Hall,
Ch'an, Chinese for Zen,
was what was taught
and this is what has been passed on to us as well.
The wordless teaching.
And you've come across references to that in chanting texts,
other texts you may have read,
or from the gaping maw of Dharma teachers as they say over and over again:
"its meaning is not in words",
as students try to come up with a clever turn of phrase. 

Its meaning is not in words,
the opening of attention is not about words,
it is about noticing what happens when you notice experiencing.
It is about you as the Knowing,
knowing reality
and allowing the presencing of the whole bodymind to be known.

The wordless teaching. 

Now, there have been a lot of words written about this wordless teaching,
have there not?
And that's because words are tools,
very important tools,
tools that can point to your experiencing.

Interestingly, in the Dharma Hall that's talked about in the text,
there was a large sign hung outside the meditation hall.
The character for "hall" was written without the usual element meaning "mouth"
and you remember or may remember or may come across phrases such as 
"white moss growing over your mouth", 
"sitting like a withered tree". 

Now, we don't talk in the Hatto when we're sitting zazen.
When we're sitting retreats,
functional talking allows us to see the many impulses of self-image to focus in
and play out its various habits and patterns.

No problem that those things come up,
it's a moment to practise,
it is a moment to allow attention to unfold the freedom that is always present. 

In Tiantong-si, in Ningbo, China, where Dogen sat,
the sitting hall was slightly smaller than the one referenced in the text on Chinese Buddhism.
I remember walking in there,
and of course the first thing I noticed was that light bulb
hanging from a cord in the middle of the hall,
a recent addition.

Under my feet,
I could feel stone steps curve by who knows how many monks coming and going.
The floor,
the stone floor was worn with who knows how many monks
setting one foot in front of the other during kinhin.

The platform was in place on three sides of the room
where those who came for whatever period of time to practise as monastics,
would sit, would sleep, would eat.
So the practitioners would sit
after having lifted the legs up onto the platform
and turned to face the wall.
They would sit just as you are sitting,
noticing reality as moment after moment unfolds,
moment after moment of your life
with the recognition that what has gone on before is gone
and nobody knows what's coming next. 

This has been the case in the 2600 years since people started to practise. 

Self-image would like to distance itself.
It has a very difficult time,
this contraction into a sense of a self that believes it's the centre of the universe,
it has a very difficult time recognizing that thousands and thousands of others
have done just this so that you could sit here in this hall doing just this.

At the end of the practice round,
the gong would be struck
and the practitioners would bow forward,
rotate the knees onto the cushion
and make motions to begin kinhin.
In the case of those practising in the Dharma Halls with platforms,
they would lower their feet and rest for a moment before starting kinhin. 

It is quite amazing, really, for a moment to think of those people,
human beings just like you and I,
mostly nameless except for the teachers,
whose words have come down in texts, in koan...
but for a moment, all those nameless, faceless people,
people we'll never know,
people who did just what you're doing right now... 

The verse again: 

Lowering the feet and resting,
"May all beings

Unfold freedom of attention
And rest at ease, unstirred." 

Thank you for listening.

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE... is known. 

Every breath you take...
lets you know you're alive

and you can practise that moment of aliveness...
by feeling the breath

by sitting up straight

by opening the eye gaze... 

...which is a long way of pointing to

the reality of knowing the whole bodymind in the whole moment
the reality of allowing attention to open
so there is not a continuation of the contraction into a being
that is in one way or another

holding one view or another

trying to situate itself, basically,
in safety. 

Self-image, images of a self which we picked up in many places,
is concerned for itself and holds many points of view in captivity
because it becomes convinced of its point of view.
And we may start to find ourselves drowning and fighting,
captured in the bonds of these views of how we are and how the world is.

What to do about it? 

Well, you all know. So you can do it right now. The verse: 

Raising the legs,

"May all beings

Leave the sea of birth and death
And ripen all virtues." 

Raising the legs,

"May all beings

Leave the sea of birth and death
And ripen all virtues." 

Well, that's all open to interpretation, isn't it?
Yet self-image wants to nail something down.
It wants rules.
That contraction into a sense of self that does not want to make a mistake
fails to realize that mistakes are where we learn.

When there's a sense of a self that knows it all,
it does all manner of things to protect itself.
Crazy, stupid things.
Somehow, and yet,
it holds a belief that these crazy, stupid things are not noticed,
even when they are really in your face. 

First off, in examining this verse,
what's the purpose?
Well, the purpose is to give practitioners something they can use in a variety of situations
to remind themselves of what they're doing.
Bear in mind that was this written down some 1600 years ago
in a different context entirely.
So over the years,
the practice of practising the whole bodymind has
in many instances
shifted and changed.
Now there is no expectation that you would memorize these verses
and bring them up like an automaton in every instance where you may be raising the legs. 

Oh yeah, an aside:
it's referring to YOUR legs,
the legs of the individual practitioner.
Because the physical context has changed,
this may have been referring to,
as we learned a talk or two ago,
it may have been referring to sitting on a platform in a large Chan monastery,
or in monasteries in Japan,
sitting on a raised platform
and then bringing the legs up from the floor.
The legs would be dangling over the edge if you were short.
If you were tall, they would actually be on the floor
but you would raise the legs onto the platform where you would sit.
We may raise the legs with our hands when we're putting them into position for the posture of zazen.
So this can remind us that what we're doing
is learning to practise the whole bodymind in the whole moment. 

Nothing gets in the way of this because everything that is known,
everything that is experienced is used with this practice.

Self-image of course has various views,
contractions come up when, for instance,
the posture is adjusted.

"I was sitting straight already. That monk made me crooked."

It can even be tending toward the aggressive.
We snap back like an elastic band into the posture that we were in before.
Those contractions into a sense of self are interesting
and when attention follows the contraction,
the contraction becomes bigger and bigger
and gestates as it were,
but rather quickly until there is the birth of a being.
A being who may be really ticked off
because the monk came around
and RUINED what they were doing.
Ruined it.

That recognition that what is being offered
is a reminder of the capacity inherent in the bodymind
for expressing itself more fully is lost temporarily. 

And so there are wee stories propagated:
"They really hurt me." [O-sensei laughs]
"They don't know what they're doing."
"He, she, or it is better than this one." 

No problem that thoughts come up.
It's a good thing,
it's a good thing to learn that that being with all its dissatisfactions,
with all its problems
need not be carried.

It's a burden.
The information might be useful, usually it's not,
usually it's a fabrication.
You can always talk about it later.
But when there is this arrival of a being that is held onto,
which of course is impossible because there's no way we can hold onto anything at all,
there's birth and death,
the birth and death of moments of experience.

They come,
they go
and as the Roshi has said in the series "Doing Not-Doing":
makusa, there's nothing need be done about that.

You can do the thing that is faster to do than to talk about,
which is allow the bodymind to be free of the contractions into a sense of self
with its storylines. 

Why is that useful?
Because when we are attached to certain stories about how we are and how the world is,
we limit the capacities of the bodymind in very noticeable ways. 

So, from the verse, "leave the sea of birth and death, and ripen all virtues."

Sounds good.

Don't "understand" it,
let it pass by.

As we know, all words are metaphors for experience and experiencing.
The experience and the experiencing always comes first, always has and always will.

The words are pointers that allow us to look in areas that we may not have investigated before.

So this vast sea of birth and death,
of raindrops,
of the sound of raindrops coming and going,
of breathing in and out, of sitting,
of seeing the wall,
of the eyes narrowing perhaps
and then opening as there's a moment of waking up to this moment,
gives us the opportunity to actually practise the whole bodymind
in the whole moment. 

"Leaving the sea of birth and death"
means that we are learning doing not-doing.

We don't have to try and create an absence of thoughts,
an absence of feelings.
Not at all.

Those things are no more no less than any other dharma,
or moment of experience.
They don't have any more value.
They may be more convincing because we're used to them but take a risk:
allow the whole bodymind to express itself in the whole moment
so that Knowing,
which is what you are,
does not become captured by some crazy story. 

Now, about fifteen years ago,
I was in China and I was learning some bodymind work
with a group of people from all over the world in a hospital in Beijing
and we went on an excursion.
You know, you get on a bus
and then you wait in horrible traffic that seems never to move very quickly.
So finally we reached our destination,
the Great Wall and we went up onto the Great Wall. 

I was standing, I was looking out,
I could see the remnants of terraces where people had farmed in those mountains.
I could see this pathway,
the pathway of the wall going on and on an on.
It was all very rich and interesting
and I heard a voice behind me saying: 

"Would you please get out of the way because you just wouldn't find a Zen monk on the Great Wall of China". 

This was one of the mates from the bus.
So of course, what to do?
Well, I moved, because it is important to remember:
person, place, appropriateness, and amount when you're wanting to discuss things.

So I just got out of the way.
And when we were going back on the bus and subsequently having dinner,
the person, who was a well-educated person who taught at a university in the Midwest, US,
suddenly turned to me and said:
"I feel like a real idiot. I've been thinking about what happened.
I just totally got lost in my idea of what was going on."

She says: "I realized I made a fool of myself by saying
'You wouldn't find a Zen monk on the Great Wall'
and I also realized that what I was doing was not taking pictures from my point of view
of what was actually going on in that moment.
What I was doing was taking pictures
that have already been taken
that I thought was how being on the Great Wall was supposed to look." 

And I'm sure if you search through, you'll find,
without putting any effort into it,
many instances of being in situations where the contraction into a sense of self,
a being,
forgets that there is only this moment, t
here is only this breath
and makes decisions as to what to say and do
and how to respond based on experiencing conditioned by previous experiences.

We don't see people that are actually there,
we see who we think should be there.

It's no wonder that in courts witnesses have to be coached. [O-sensei laughs] 

So, when we follow these beings
that are operating on what they think they've experienced sometime other than now,
we're running a good chance of making ourselves seem to be,
let's say, oh,
I'll quote my mother here: "out of it".
And as far as ripening all virtues, well, that comes up all the time.

I'm not going to give you a list of things considered virutuous,
but hey, we're all here because we want to do the right thing.
We're all here because we've seen things,
we perhaps have done things,
we've heard of things that makes us shake our heads and go
"that's just not right". 

So taking care is the base of this practice.
Taking care of what?
Taking care of THIS moment,
the moment wrapped around the breath and doing what needs to be done.

Sitting in the Hatto.
Hearing the rain.
Seeing the white wall.
What needs to be done
is to allow the whole bodymind to express itself fully in this moment.
That's what you're learning to do. 

The verse again: 

Raising the legs,

"May all beings

Leave the sea of birth and death
And ripen all virtues." 

Thank you for listening.