I don't think I need to tell you every day how deeply grateful I am and joyful I am to be practicing with you. But since I continuously feel it, I should mention it now and then. And one thing I think it might be nice for us to do is to start doing the offering drum. with the Buddha tray. I have to remember how it goes. It's not only nice to do, customary to do, but it's also a lot of fun. We could use a drum about four times the size. So when the Buddha tray is brought in, there's a roll. Do you remember how it goes exactly, either of you? Do you remember? There's three rounds, and it ends when you get to the altar. At the Heiji it was fun, but they would, you know, they, it's so much fun.

[01:06]

Everybody tries to hog it. So they used to give me a new, when I was a new monk, just one round of the three rounds. Because they have a huge drum, you know, as big as these lamps. It's quite a, There should be a little fun in religion. Okay. So yesterday I didn't want to give a narrative to my lecture. You may have noticed that I didn't want to give any conceptual structures. use any conceptual structures, because both the narrative and conceptual structures make the lecture too easy, or create a mind that is the illusion of understanding at least, or creates a different kind of mind, a mind that's not in the proximity of the dharmakaya.

[02:26]

a mind that's maybe neighboring realms, but somewhat distant. So yesterday, really my lecture, though I guess I sounded all right, but really I was going da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- So today I turned on the lights because I was going to try to give you a little more conceptual structure. A little more explanation to see if it helps. So I want to talk about the will body. And I noticed that I used to talk about the will body quite a lot. But I haven't talked about it really, except sort of indirect references, for more than ten years. And I think it must be because the accessibility to it or the sense of it doesn't come through unless we're doing practice period.

[03:36]

So anyway, I find myself wanting to talk about it. And the will body has nothing to do with well, very little to do with willpower or willfulness or being tough. It has to do with intentionality and willingness, willingness and acceptance. And it can be changed into something, you know, kind of macho, but that's a mistake, you know. corruption of the idea. So, I mean, the only words I have are will-body, so I'll use them. And we could say that if, as practice period is an attempt to establish not just mental, physical stabilization, because physical stabilization can be established through your daily practice,

[04:45]

But mental stabilization, which needs a continuity of time. So it's the joining of mental stabilization and physical stabilization is the main focus of practice period. Developing calm abiding. And then the sashin coming out of a practice period is to transform mental stabilization into a will body. Now, I'm trying to give you a conceptual, as you can see, understanding. Now, it surprises me... I'm going to have to talk quite a bit about the toilet during this lecture, I'm sorry. Or I'm glad, I don't know. In any case, it surprises me how many of you have to go to the toilet during the morning session. during kin-hin. Sometimes some of you go to both kin-hins.

[05:48]

I mean, you must have bladder problems or something. It seems to me, I mean, believe me, I don't care how often you go to the toilet. Please go to the toilet as much as you'd like. In fact, if you wait a minute right now, I think I... I don't care. How could I care how much you pee? I'm trying to talk about practice. So maybe it's that you want to have a break or some time of your own. You know, a little time to yourself or something. But isn't all time your own? Who does time belong to? I mean, what is time after all? I think one of the most important things we're taught as children, as infants, is toilet training.

[06:49]

It's a, psychologists know, you know, it's an extremely important event. And it's not important, I would say that what, I would say that what parents are doing when they teach you not to wet your bed at night, or worse, They are teaching you to activate your will body. But they don't know they're doing that. They're educating you, awakening your will body, educating a little bit, but the will body is a kind of excluded knowledge in our society, a kind of secret. Because it holds culture in place. And when people have a nervous breakdown, because sometimes it doesn't, their will body is lost, and they can't hold their world together anymore. Their world collapses.

[07:52]

Now, when Dogen talks about dropping mind and body, he's talking about dropping the kind of deep structures that hold your world together, that hold your images of yourself and your way of thinking, your way of perceiving together. You need a certain safety to do this, but it's really not such a big deal unless you get panicked. So in these little simple things like being able to remain conscious enough, aware enough, during the night, I've talked about this as a distinction between awareness and consciousness, that you don't wet your bed this kind of thing is worth noticing because most of us can go six hours or eight hours or at least four or five hours without having to get up in the middle of the night and go to the toilet so why can't you do it in the morning i mean of course sometimes we have to get up in the middle of the night

[09:06]

And sometimes we have to, I mean, I can imagine, so you're running out in the middle of Zion. But generally, if you intend to say, if you say, I'll go to the toilet after breakfast, just do it. Now, again, I'm not talking about whether I really care how often you go to the toilet during Kenyan or whatever. I'm trying to put us in touch with something familiar that can give you, help you understand what I mean, what practice means by the will body. When Buddhism talks about bodhicitta, citta sometimes is another word for mind and sometimes it means a kind of indestructible mind, and bodhi, enlightened mind, bodhicitta, the image and deep intentional structure to realize enlightenment or to be enlightenment, is actually an expression of the will body.

[10:25]

So I'm just going to try to give you a feeling of this. Now, it may be, in a way, I'm talking about something like phlogiston. You know, I mentioned phlogiston before, that prior to Lavoisier, people thought there was this medium that... allowed burning tap, or ether, E-T-H-E-R, or sometimes A-E, a medium, a massless, that physicists imagined earlier times, was a massless, infinitely elastic medium that electromagnetic waves traveled on. Or anyway, we have ether, A-E-T-H-E-R, usually spelled, which means the air the Olympians breathed in Greek times. So maybe the air we... I think probably all these ideas of phlogiston and ether and ether are perhaps intuitive intimations of awareness of the will body.

[11:49]

Not meant to be in the physical world, but meant to be in our world. But I... That's a funny distinction, but anyway, I think you know what I mean. Because our mind, our mind in the largest sense is almost an infinitely malleable substance. Now the difference between logiston and ether as a medium for electromagnetic waves is that These two ideas were trying to establish a permanent substrate. And in Buddhism, a basic teaching is there's no permanent substrate, no double moon. There's no ground of being. At best, this is language. Everything is changing. But there are certain combinations and we can structure ourselves a certain way. So I'm trying to find a way to talk to you about a certain structure and maybe it's a

[12:55]

kind of logistin or ether. Maybe I'm a non-permanent one, a non-substrate, but yet something that psychologists, like some of you in the room, will prove not to be true or something. But in any case, what I'm trying to describe is the way a kind of dynamic of interior consciousness That will help you understand how these theories of the Tathagatagarbha and the three natures and so forth have developed in Buddhism over the centuries. And this has been a development. It's the germ, certainly. in Buddhist teaching, but the articulation in particular cultures has been the work of many kind of Max Planck Institute type efforts over much of Asia.

[14:03]

And I actually consider, as you know, us a kind of institute to study being and non-being, consciousness and so forth. which we also transmit divestment, so it looks like religion, but we're really transmitting the heart seal of consciousness and realization. Now, Heidegger, whose language is often very useful, speaks about the lying before us, or the presence of what belongs to the present, or belonging to the presence of the present. I mean, he's talking a kind of evocative, poetic philosophy. But in Buddhism, when we talk about that, in Mahamudra and Dzogchen and Zen particularly, we're talking about Yogacara, we're talking about

[15:11]

this belonging to the presence of the present as a kind of body. Can you feel that? Belonging, finding yourself at each moment belonging in this particular present. Not like, oh, I should be somewhere else, I wish I was somewhere else. Absolutely, this is some borrowed consciousness nonsense. I mean, it's helpful to get things done, do things and so forth. But at a fundamental level, at the highest priority level, you find yourself belonging in the presence, belonging to the presence of this particular present and generating this presence. Belonging in the sense that there's no other place that you are or should be or could be. that there's almost a kind of karmic reason you're here, but that's another level of mind.

[16:17]

But you not only belong in the presence of this presence, as in fact you are, but that belonging is also your child. The child belongs to you, you belong to the child. That kind of feelings. Now that presence of the presence is also a body. And how does that body enter us? That body enters us through, in language I'd say, it's both acceptance and the will body. Now the will body sometimes has dramatic For instance, the house is on fire and you read these stories in the newspaper every now and then. The house is burning down and some guy runs in, you know, some off the street and carries out the refrigerator.

[17:23]

Well, this is the will body kicking in. I mean, it'd be great if, it'd be great for the work leader if we could do it at will. I mean, you could say, well, this morning we don't have many people, but we want to clean out the kitchen and rearrange it. And so, Russell, will you kick in the wheel body and carry out the refrigerator and the stove? Of course, we know that Ralph and Christian could do it themselves without using the wheel body. But I'd need to really kick in the wheel body to do it. There'd be a very big fire or something. Now again, I'm not talking about not peeing for a week, you know, or carrying refrigerators around full of frozen pee or something, I don't know. I'm talking about the experience when you're sitting zazen and suddenly you feel frozen blissfully in your posture.

[18:31]

And you never want to move again. Of course, after a while you feel different. These things go in a kind of pulse. But sometimes, don't you know, you just feel, whoa, I hope the bell never rings or if it's rung, I don't want to get up. To hell with service. That's the will body has kicked in. And it's not about effort. It's not about training. It's not about how much you sat. I mean, there's some relationship, but really, It's not about whether you feel pain or don't feel pain. It's you've moved into another level. Now, in this koan, this is what is being emphasized when shvamsa, you know, as we said, the kesa represents, in the usual way it's understood, represents...

[19:34]

continuity, kind of ecological Buddhist continuity with the past and with the present and with each other. So yesterday's commotion and the trees and the Buddha, they're all connected. So he says, where did In a simple sense, this dialogue between Xiaotang and Xuanzhi. This koan also has a kind of quality of short and kind of hard to get into. So this dialogue, this discussion between Xuanzhi says, where did yesterday's commotion go? Xiaotang says, in a sense, everything connected.

[20:35]

But he says it in a kind of, actually quite profound way, in his corner of his vestment. And these two men are, two persons are, not dummies, and they're also playing around. They're beating the Dharma drum. And Xuanzhi says, oh no, not that connection. Some other connection or I mean the shift in levels now Maybe the simple example is like changing a radio station Now we're not talking about yesterday's radio or the guitar yesterday in the radio today or something But we're talking about the radio right now. In fact, this room right now is full of television stations. I It's full of many popular songs right in this room. And all you'd need is a radio. You could hear your favorite, perhaps, if you were lucky. Or there's, I mean, at least four or five soap operas.

[21:41]

There's people crying and shouting and so forth. Right? You know. I don't know where. Somewhere. That's a shift in levels. That's a no connection. We have no connection with that. But yet we can shift levels. So without getting into the three nature theory, which I've talked about before, it's also a shift from the relative body and the imagined body to the consummated body. Now again, these kind of divisions, some other teaching may create in this infinitely malleable, almost infinitely malleable mind, may create another kind of deep structure. All I can teach you is the structure that Buddhism discovers and activates. Now, most of us have only two.

[22:52]

I mean, we generally have two choices, like a computer, on and off. Do or don't do, et cetera. And I remember this little kid who up in the Sierras, I can't remember his name now. He's grown up now. Went out one day and he was swinging. He was about two or so. I just told you this boy, he was swinging when he was singing. Every day I do, every day I don't, every day I do. That's pretty much like our life. We do or we don't. So one of our two choices is this moment and its interconnection, its interdependence. Those are two choices. You can notice the interdependence or not. And the shift between the imagined nature and the conventional nature and the relative nature is the shift between thinking things are permanent and so forth, and recognizing finally habitually, because of your practice, recognizing the interdependence and lack of permanence of everything.

[24:04]

Now the shift from these two ways of looking at it and emptiness is a shift in another direction, but we can make that shift too. We can't make it from the imagined nature, else we get hit on the head or something, but we can make it from the relative nature. The other dependent body, we call it sometimes, to the absolute or to emptiness. So here we have a way of looking at the world as divided or undivided. And non-dual perception means a way of perceiving that finds the world undivided. And ordinary perception that finds the world is divided. This is basic Buddhism, is these distinctions. Basic Mahayana Buddhism. Now you realize that in your body is the teaching of particular schools and particular lineages.

[25:19]

I talked last night about going down into your body, down into the floor, down into the earth, and also seeing that there's no down and up, no such distinctions. Daito Kokushi, the person for whom Daitokuji is named after, said, coming or going, night and day, just continuously face, strive to face the incomprehensible. He also said, don't clear the mind of thoughts. Go to the source of thought. Now it's not just rhetoric that he said, coming or going, night and day. Because here we have toilet training.

[26:28]

Strive to face the incomprehensible. Because you don't just strive to face the incomprehensible. This is also the proximity of the Dharmakaya. Incomprehensible means can't be understood. Not graspable. Not graspable together, actually. Vishnana, along that line, means to know the parts together. So, vijnana also means to be able to take apart consciousness and put it together, or reassemble it. So the basic practice, another basic practice of vijnana is to realize the separate parts of consciousness and reassemble them. So this face the incomprehensible is to face the proximity

[27:37]

of the Dharmakaya, who are to face the proximity of the undivided, divided world. But really we can not do much more than have faith. And there's a certain kind of faith emphasized in Zen and the Mahamudra Dzogchen, which have a lot of similarities. A kind of devotion or faith in non-duality or in uncontrived awareness or something like that. So Daito Kokushi expresses it to his, exhorting his apprentices, night and day, coming and going, Strive only to face the incomprehensible.

[28:42]

That requires faith to do this. So I'm trying to give you some basis for this faith or some confidence in it by giving you this sort of sense of Well, awareness and consciousness. Now, I would say that awareness, which I define as undivided consciousness, and consciousness is divided awareness, if you like, although it's best to think of them as quite different liquids that are simultaneously present, like two radio stations, and you can tune in one or the other, but you can't have both at once. Or they're both there, like the television stations are here in this room right now, but you need a special tuner to act on it. You don't have to tune it in, but we do have television screens now.

[29:46]

You can watch your favorite football game in two different countries once on the screen. So there's actually, as you get more skillful, you can do something like that. You can have these... seemingly exclusive kinds of minds present at the same time and not just presence in the background and foreground. So we have something here that's hard to notice. It's no connection because one is hidden in the other. Now we don't, again, do much with the will body as part of our culture, except to teach toilet training and a few other things. Whatever the reason is, but also it's the will body which is also manifested as the seventh vijnana, which is the deep intentional structures, non-conscious intentional structures,

[30:59]

which are the editor and the bridge from the alaya-vijnana to ordinary consciousness. You see, this is a rather thought-out system in Buddhism of how we function. And it may not be the way everyone, it isn't the way everyone functions, but it's the way you can function, it's the way Buddhism has developed as a very fruitful way of functioning. So I would say that the dream mind is actually when awareness and consciousness overlap. And the dreams occur in the overlap. And so dreams are mixed up in this overlap with stuff from the Alaya Vijnana flowing in and stuff from your day flowing in and flowing in in these different in the overlap of these two somewhat different mediums.

[32:01]

And it's also the mind which can get premonitions of future events and things like that. It's a very receptive mind. Now we could say that the intentional structure or something of... Now when you read one word If a Martian appeared here and you showed him a sentence, taught him English, he wouldn't understand anything. Even between cultures, there's a tremendous amount of background meaning that goes into understanding one sentence that's not in the words. Now that background meaning in Buddhism we understand to be held in the seventh vijnana and to be held in the will body. that holds our world together. Now, if you want to shift levels, you've got to drop body and mind, which means to drop the images of the body, which are usually an image of our body seen from outside, not seen from inside.

[33:14]

I've given the example many times of your arm falling asleep and you finally poke it and then your whole arm reappears because the image is awakened, not the arm, when you find one spot. So we have an image of our body mostly seen from outside, as Japan is the land of the rising sun, only seen from China. From here it should be called the land of the setting sun. So the Japanese are not seeing the country from their own point of view, they're seeing it from an outsider's point of view. We often think of ourselves that way. I am the fading so-and-so, or I am the bright so-and-so. But in this practice you come to a kind of what I sometimes call radical aloneness.

[34:20]

And I don't really mean radical so much as non-comparable aloneness. And aloneness, because you cannot anymore make any comparisons, which means you're entirely seen, feel yourself from inside. So you don't feel, you feel almost ecstatically alone, but completely connected. I'm sorry these words are opposite, but that's the best I can describe the feeling. which is also the feeling of awareness permeating you or the will-body taking you. Now, one of the reasons we are quite strict in Sashin about not talking during Sashin and following the schedule exactly, just being on your cushion, alive or dead, in whatever posture, is that as soon as you talk,

[35:21]

You move out of any possibility of activating, kicking in the will body. Now we do it and you can talk some and as you get more skilled you can go back and forth, but still the sense of practice is to create the conditions where perhaps you really touch this will body, willingness acceptance body, which is a kind of non-dual mind body, non-dual body. but which intention affects, bodhicitta affects. This is also part of the Buddha's concept of healing, because realizing this body is what heals us. Maybe I can go into that more tomorrow. So in Buddhist teaching about healing, you first establish mental stabilization, then you do this, and you take some medicines, but the medicine is to help you establish mental... Medicine doesn't have much to do with your illness.

[36:30]

It has to do with strengthening your mental stabilization, and then you'll take care of the illness. It's quite a different concept than our idea of medicine. So the world is medicine. Everything is medicine. You are medicine. So again, Shui Pan Sepo hides the jewel in his chest and its shine increases on every encounter. My eyebrows are getting long, so I should stop. Thank you. Our tradition equally betrays every being and place with the true merit of the sway to jove in secundo.

[37:41]

Thank you. And by its name, it will be called Pogonolos, where it made its ascents across the world. Ah, and by it, it will not be known to those who see it. Nō wa iakuse ma Owa i no wa i o kotogatashi Wa rei wa ma ken no jiji Sokoto yatari

[39:50]

negawa kuwa nyorai no shichin jutsu nyo geshi tate matsuran and unsurpassed and tracing and perfect Dharma. It is rarely left with even a hundred thousand million couples having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I follow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Do you think tomorrow will be sunny and warm?

[41:06]

And then the day after? We don't know. Springtime in the Rockies. Yesterday's talk was pretty complex. And today I'd like to be much simpler. And that's very much like Buddhism. It's very extremely simple and simultaneously quite complex. And simplicity and complexity are actually just two sides of the same thing. But we certainly enter practice most directly, all the even magical stories, you know, where Shantideva attains, you know, floats above his cushion and all, which I've never been able to do, from simply reciting the secret name of Manjushri all night long.

[42:15]

Some direct, simple practice. you need each of you to find what is a simple practice for you. And this question of healing has come up a number of times now. And I really am not prepared to talk about it with real accuracy, at least when I would find accuracy, because I think the... Such a big subject, and the metaphors are different, as I've said. But clearly the root of the word medicine and meditation is the same root. And in the Pali Canon it talks often about there are four things necessary for life. Robes, lodging, food, and medicine.

[43:21]

these four things are necessary. But as usual in Buddhism, when they state something so simply, medicine actually means meditation and in the end it means not finding yourself separate from others. Even I mean, we call what, to cure something, is a French word for priest, isn't it? Cure. Yeah. And it means to make whole, to actually to prepare a medicine which makes whole. So a cure and a doctor and a sage also means to make whole. to complete a circle, as in consolidate.

[44:23]

But here, when the Buddha saw, you know, the Buddha's life is turned around, the historical Buddha, his father, the story is his father protected him. from seeing New York City and Paris, Berlin. And one day he went out. He said he was quite curious. So his charioteer, I mean, most of us don't have a charioteer to go out. Let's go out. Bring the chariot out. Anyway, his charioteer, who seems to have been some kind of angelic bodhisattva, took good care of him. And in Mahayana practice there is a sense of guidance. I hesitate to say it because we go too far in the West. Our blanket, our teddy bear, our guardian angel, all the forms that angelic presence takes for us.

[45:34]

But there is a sense of guidance not only from the lineage but from particular bodhisattvas and from the subtlety of knowing what lies before us. Because as I've said, the present that lies before us is an immense presence of paths that always starts from here. And it's your own subtlety that allows you to take this medicine or this path. Now I'm not speaking about medicine here in contrast to Western medicine or which is, you know, one of the great achievements of this planet is what Western medicine has come to and Western science and so forth.

[46:41]

But I'm just trying to express the Buddhist idea because they have Medicine Buddhas and so forth, and they have one Medicine Buddha is called the Buddha of great light and sound and moon jewel seeing. Sounds good. Put it above your door. Dr. Moon Jewel. Of course, they probably have several of those in San Francisco, I suppose. Munich, too, probably has a few. So the Buddha went out with his charioteer, and the first thing he saw was a sick person.

[47:51]

And what's important here for Buddhism is that he recognized himself. This is our condition. And I suppose the most fundamental similarity between Jesus and Buddha is they both died. They are both persons who could die. They're not immortal. They're not Taoist sages living forever. So whether you're a Christian or a Buddhist, you're both studying within a system in which we die. So the sense of wholeness in Buddhism is quite simple.

[48:56]

It's to not separate yourself from others. to not find yourself separate from others. Now, it doesn't mean some sort of communist idea. Maybe it's a kind of spiritual communism, but it's not a communist idea that there has to be equality. I mean, society, as far as we know, just doesn't work that way. There's rich and poor and healthy and sick, and there's even a bodhisattva of wealth, Vasudhara. I think it's pronounced Basundhara. who's a great looking bodhisattva. The depictions I've seen, jewels, you know, quite grand. I had to spend a lot of time at Tiffany's or someplace dressing. But there's also bodhisattvas of compassion, of course, and bliss. So the sense is to accept your differences, because each of us is different,

[49:59]

but not identify with the differences. To accept your differences, yet not find yourself different. But one of the great illnesses is how we talk to ourselves about how different we are. I mean, I would say there's three practices in relationship to this. One is to start listening to how you talk to yourself. one of the most amusing things, I mean, you can break out laughing in the middle of Zazen, at how we make excuses to ourselves about our own behavior, which no one but ourselves is listening to. Unless we think the angels are listening in. And you're making, well, I really didn't mean that, and I can explain. Who the hell are you talking to? What kind of madness? But to start listening to how you talk to yourself, secretly, justifying yourself or whatever.

[51:11]

That's the kind, for me, what we do, you know? Much of the time in Zazen, I bet. But what we have to know So what's helpful to know is that it's heard loud and clear by everyone else with their secret ear. They may not always know they're hearing it, but they hear. It's written all over us. Did you say shit? Here's another screenplay. You've got one right here. Yeah. Next practice in this regard is to start talking to yourself differently.

[52:15]

And this really occurs when you find an... What could I call it? An inclusive... commitment. Because again, if we're talking about health, health in Buddhism is closely, the idea of health, of wholeness, is closely, I mean, our life ultimately is formed by intentions. And recognizing, that's the first of the Eightfold Path, recognizing those intentions and really deciding to act on them. To sail on to stop drifting about and start sailing a course. And not with a motor boat and compass and radar, but rather, you know, sailing with the wind and the stars. I'm sorry to sound so poetic, but you know. And the wind and the stars are in you.

[53:20]

So this beginning to talk to yourself. And the Eightfold Path is nothing but a practice of developing your intentions. Testing out the intentions you have in your livelihood, your speech, etc. And actually having those views, as I've said often, that you can intend. And if you can't intend your views with good conscience, with good consciousness, then work at making your views more subtle. And it's not really a matter of getting rid of views, but looking deeper at the source of your views. I mean, in Buddhism, and I think it's right, all the evil of the world is just stupidity. It's just ignorance. So even, you know, the bad parts of yourself aren't, they're just stupid.

[54:31]

They're just ignorant. Anyway, this is the teaching of Buddhism that ignorance is the basis. So you start talking to yourself differently. And the third practice is to stop talking to yourself altogether. So you practice simple attention. When you see things, you just look at them. And you see if you can... The whole apparatus that makes association, connection, and then immediately relates it to you and who you are and blah, blah, blah. You just try to stop it. Primarily by... joining your breath and by bare or simple attention. And without this simple attention you don't find the door to really belong to the present.

[55:39]

I mean, this is a magical show. I mean, on your deathbed You're so, I imagine, at least, I haven't been there too often yet, you imagine just a vase of flowers is quite wonderful. You know, or someone coming in the room, or somebody holding your hand, or something. I mean, the whole world is in this touch. And yet we constantly separate ourselves from the world and from others. And that's the main, in Buddhism, thought to be the main source of illness. There's lodging that separates us from the outside world. There's robes. You know, I don't think we should all sit in the snow naked.

[56:44]

But... It's starving. So we have food and lodging and so forth. But it feels good to be here in the snow, don't you think? To not be so separated from things. So the simple practice is The basic beginning practice is the practice of non-duality, which is a general thing, but that you feel when you look at things, there's an invisible glass wall between you and things. Kind of plastic, some veil or some membrane that separates you. You can't quite feel you're here. Or when you meet people, your first thoughts are comparative. Anyway, this is thought to be the root of illness.

[57:51]

So our practice is very simple. Every person you meet, you see if you can, wherever, if you can not feel separate, recognize, as the Buddha did, this is me. It's not incidental, but the whole Buddha's teaching starts from seeing a sick person, seeing an old person. What was the other one? Lame? Die. Dead person. Seeing a corpse. Dead corpse. Jeez, I forget the big, you know, the main one. But anyway, it starts with the sick person. So medicine becomes to find yourself not different from others and to actually enter this human situation.

[59:12]

So that whoever, whatever goes on in, as I said this morning, in your, that's his, the inheritance of our ancestors, our culture, or what goes on in the world today. You can't go around, as I say, pick up every piece of paper on the street, and you can't cure everybody. But you can recognize it as what this life is. Not good, not bad, just the way it is. and not feel separate from it and not try to separate yourself from it. So it doesn't mean you like pain or decide to live with homeless folks on the street, but you recognize this as also you.

[60:21]

there but for, as I say, a bit of luck and a few genes, you'd be the same. So it means, in terms of practice, not to seek pain, but not to be afraid of it. to feel quite ready to accept what is there. I remember Sukhya Rishi startled me once, you know. First of all, practicing with Sukhya Rishi was like, you know, I was... I went to college and so forth. I was in the merchant marine and sailed to the Near East and other places like that as a job when I was, I don't know, 19 or 20.

[61:27]

And... And had studied Buddhism and read some Buddhism in college and stuff like that. And... When I came to San Francisco, I had some kind of strange belief that it must be possible in this day and age that Zen teachers still exist. I had some idea of meeting a Zen teacher, Zen master. And so I looked around Chinatown and Japantown and stuff. didn't have any idea what to do, you know. Mostly I saw souvenirs in the shops, you know. And, uh... But when I met Sukershi, someone suggested I go to his lecture.

[62:29]

It was like hearing somebody stepped out of the books, you know. And, uh... somebody very different than anything I'd ever seen before, and yet I felt that there was no separation. I forgot what I was going to say about Sukhya. Hmm? Yeah. Oh, I remember, yeah.

[63:30]

And he was, you know, let's see, when he was young, the samurai life was still more or less present in Japan. People still carried swords. It was like he wasn't so far away from the 19th century when the samurai traditions were still alive. And one day he said suddenly, he was standing in front of us, he said, you know, many people have had their heads cut off by swords, he said. And I was sitting there. You know, you see it in the movies, but it's a pretty violent move. I mean, nowadays in the streets of American cities, it's pretty bad. Worse than swords, but... At least in some parts of the cities.

[64:33]

But anyway, he said, you must be ready for this. It happens to some people. And it can happen to us. And I looked at him and I realized he quite accepted that this happens to some people and could happen to him. And part of our life is so much defined at making sure certain things don't happen to us. Which, you know, is quite natural. But Buddhist practice is to be willing to have what's happened to human beings happen to you. Sickness, death, craziness. If you're crazy, practice for crazy people. If you're sick, practice for sick people. Like that. And the cure is

[65:37]

The basic cure. There's all kinds of medicine needs. There's teachings about how you make this potion, or you make this herbal remedy, or you make this salve, and so forth. Basically, it's to not find yourself different from others. Or not define yourself through your difference from others. I know someone who, quite a wonderful, I guess I've only met him once, I believe, wonderful, generous person who has made an immense fortune, one of the largest fortunes in the United States, on the stock market in the United States. And he's very generous, I guess. I'm told, a person and always trying to help people, but he was in a Buddhist seminar with a friend of mine recently, He's in his 60s, I think. He said, as much as he tries to help all his friends, never once has he not resented the success of his friends.

[66:46]

And for him to say he always helps people, but he always envies other people's success, was a big step for him. He started crying, I was told. And this is also the What's central to practice is the ability to feel shame, the ability to see our patterns, and not to imagine we've had the life we wish we'd had, or we wish to be public, but to actually look at the life we have and have had. Again, this is that practice of the ability to feel shame and the ability to look at the life we've actually had with honesty is the root of being healthy, to being whole. And part of sitting on the cushion is

[68:00]

And Sashen is just entering this condition of painful legs, of being unable to avoid memories, unable to avoid stuff that comes up, kind of vomited up inside us. One day you feel good, one day you feel terrible. One period you feel good, one period you feel terrible. If you keep doing it, eventually it evens out. And somehow, if you don't have the suffering of zazen, much doesn't come up. Somehow the sheer difficulty of sitting is a purifying process. Stuff just is pushed up out of us.

[69:06]

So this is called the fast course. Difficult but fast because it pushes us through lifetimes in a year or two. So if you can do one or two sashins a year for the first couple years of your practice, it's like ten years of karma you go through. And if you can in this process discover what's most essential to you and commit yourself in an inclusive way, I want to achieve this goal. But find a commitment which excludes, which accepts you as you are and which doesn't separate you from others. If you can do this, you'll find, I think, the most basic health and the basis for practicing and discovering your, I will say, your true life.

[70:22]

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