Zen is also, Zen Buddhism and Zen is also a religion. Now, it's not a religion in the sense that it's based on a belief in a god, but it's a religion in that it definitely is based on faith. It's also a religion in that it's based on vision. And it's also a religion in that it's based on discovering our common identity with each other and with the world. So it's not a philosophy which you can figure things out and change it and so forth. It has a philosophical aspect. But if you started having faith in a philosophical position, then that faith in that philosophical position we could call perhaps a religion.

[01:04]

At least it begins to occupy a similar space in individuals and in a society as what we call in the West a religion. And although the space occupied by Buddhism in Asian societies is different than the West, still there's similarities. And it begins to cause and it causes or results in a similar kind of person or similar kind of feeling. So a so-called devout Buddhist might be a very similar person emotionally, psychologically to a devout practicing Christian or Muslim or Jew. Now faith, I mean, We say, Molly brought up this question of doubt, and practice, Zen practice, particularly emphasizes doubt, not corrosive doubt that undermines things, but a kind of fundamental existential doubt.

[02:15]

What is it? And to ask that question so that the immediate situation tells you, not something you've known or thought about. So on the one hand we have this what is it state of mind. What? What? We also know that, you know, this world is beyond our ability to do too much about. And yet it is our world. And if anything's going to be done about it, we have to do something about it. So it's a kind of leap to have this faith. Even in your projects, whatever your project is to make your apartment look better or to save a park. Hint.

[03:15]

this area or something like that, that project is, you understand it as a way in which you enter into the whole of being. Now there's a Hindu, one of the Hindu ideas of this three minds of waking, dreaming and deep non-dreaming sleep is that deep non-dreaming sleep is a state of bliss. It's when you're most connected with the world, when you're not thinking, and when you're most whole, blissfully whole. Because bliss is an experience of unity. We call it non-referential joy or bliss. It doesn't refer to anything. It just occurs. Feelings of gratitude, so forth. And the Hindu idea, or pre-Buddhist idea anyway, is that we cannot live without this experience of bliss.

[04:19]

And that when people don't sleep, or when you take sleeping pills, which don't really let you sleep, you get kind of sick because you're not having that reoccurring daily experience of bliss. Now the idea is that as we forget most of our dreams, only a small portion of them can we begin to remember, every morning when we wake up we forget the bliss. But yet we need it and you can see when it's not there. Now Buddhism doesn't quite share this or at least emphasize this formulation, but something like that's implied because when you meditate and sometimes when you sleep, when you wake You know, meditation is often more satisfying than sleeping. Because sleeping is often rather, you know, you wake up feeling, you know. Seldom do we wake up saying, I've slept like a baby.

[05:26]

But more often you can wake up, wake up, no, get up from zazen, sometimes for me, wake up, and feel that you've sat like a, slept like a baby. You can have that feeling. And in fact, your skin may feel like a baby's skin. A little soft and... And when you let, as I said, let your mind, let the three minds of daily consciousness sink like water into the sand of the body and the world, there's a rising of bliss in you, some kind of good feeling. And I noticed that when I first started to practice in the first years, I had this experience, but I understood it horizontally and not vertically. Now you might ask, what does that mean? I mean that I understood it sort of like in the midst of all my other thinking and it was just, well, for a few moments during satsang I felt that was a kind of nice feeling but no big deal, it didn't solve the problems of the world and now I feel lousy again and so forth.

[06:37]

It was just one unit in a long continuum of stuff. I didn't see that it had a vertical dimension deep down into myself. And I didn't see that when it occurred, it was like a fissure opening up into a deeper being. I just passed over it like that. But once I learned to notice it and not sort of say, oh, it's nice to feel good and go on to something else, I found I slipped down into a much deeper place. And there's an acupuncture-like or homeopathic-like quality to practice. You don't have to practice much in relationship to all your bad habits. 20 years of them, 30 years of them, 40 years of them, really 40 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, unbelievably can change your life.

[07:42]

Most of us don't have the chutzpah or confidence or faith to actually do it 20 minutes a day or five days a week or seven days a week or something. But if you can create the habit of doing it, and it's more difficult to create than flossing. If you can create the habit of sitting, even for a little bit, these small fissures begin to have a profound effect on you. Yes? You're thinking too much. Yeah, I understand what you're thinking, but you're still thinking too much. Don't worry about it.

[08:51]

See, if I was a real Zen teacher now, I'd go, what? So this faith, you know... If you're going to live in truth, you have to live in trust. And if you're going to live in trust, you have to trust yourself. If you can't trust yourself, you've got... You're just going to get sick. You've got to live in a way or have a life where you don't feel too good about it. So... I mean, even in Greek, equally in Greek, early Greek culture and in Buddhist culture, to know thyself means to take care of thyself.

[10:05]

You cannot know yourself until you can take care of yourself because there's no one there to know. So your first, each of our, I feel, each of our first obligation is to take care of yourself. And not in terms of how well you do in the world, though that's important, but how well you feel moment by moment. Everything flows from that. It may not please your friends or your parents or... Your spouse, I don't know. They may feel you're being indulgent and not responsible. But eventually, you know, it'll work out, I think. So at the same time as you have this doubt, what is it? What kind of life is this? What's here? What's not here?

[11:08]

At the same time, you have the faith that whatever it is, or whatever this life you're born into is, it will only flow, appear, through faith. through faith in yourself, through trust in yourself, and in Zen practice, through faith in the practice. Because the practice is a way to study and integrate the self and the big self. Now I'd like to end with a some looking together with you at what the three refuges mean, to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Let's take Sangha first.

[12:13]

Sangha Sangha means S-A-N-G-H-A. In Boulder, I'm surprised there's not a Sangha Avenue. Sangha means those people you practice with. It also means those people who practice anywhere. It also means all persons when you know each of us, all of us, through our common identity. I like Uchiyama Roshi's little image of a bunch of squashes in a vegetable plot.

[13:16]

And he imagines the squashes arguing with each other and forgetting that they're all connected by a stem. And sometimes we say our left hand doesn't know what our right hand is doing, and yet, you know. And we, on some level, are as connected with each other as my left and right hand are. And if that's not, if you can't imagine that is true, please try to imagine it or have some faith in that. And when we are worried about the environment, and as I've said, when you turn off the electricity in order to save the environment, to burn less coal, to dam fewer rivers, you are acting through, in a Buddhist sense, sangha.

[14:17]

Because when you move that switch, you're recognizing your relationship to everyone. So every time you turn the light off, it's not only actually conserving electricity, but you're also recognizing, entering into an awareness of the unity of being. Do you understand? So we have that capacity and the environmental movement has helped us in this to imagine the unity of being. The entirety of being. So you can have that electric switch in yourself and you can just turn on that switch in yourself every now and then to remind yourself of this unity of being. Now this is a kind of vision. You envision this unity of being. And when you see, you get in the habit of when you look at someone, you see that person as an instance of being.

[15:28]

That each person you see is the whole of being, being manifested. Now this is the story of the baby Buddha who appears and says, I alone am the world-honored one. But if you have your own baby, even your own grandchild, you can see that everything in the cosmos went to produce that baby. That baby is an instance of the whole being manifested. And you can see it in a baby, but it's true of each of you. And we tend to get sloughed into some kind of sloppy, wretched state of mind where we diminish everyone around us. It's one of the stupidest things human beings do. It's called ignorance. Not evil, ignorance. Philip Whelan says in his book,

[16:37]

canoeing up Carbarga Creek, I have peopled the world with stupid inferior beings. How could I have made such a mistake? So practice is to recognize that, yes, maybe we have a choice whether we're happy or not, but most of the world does not. can you take on as a vision, as a possibility, this view of the whole of being manifesting before you all the time, in each, again, in each person you meet, each person you think of, in your past, your present, and your future.

[17:49]

If you can have that envisioning, That's to take refuge in Sangha. And it's a vision based on seeing how wretched this world is, how often we're in exile from each other, and we exile each others from ourself, and how we're in exile from ourself, and to just say, we can't live this way. I don't want to live this way. as you take the wisdom of knowing, at least intellectually, that in fact we humans and all life forms and the physical world itself are deeply interdependent and interpenetrating. So that's to take refuge in Sangha. To take refuge in dharma, I mean, there's an expression like the pure body of reality, or everything is one bright jewel.

[19:04]

And there are states of mind when you, particularly in a place like here, when you see the flat irons, they're called. Flat irons are these mountains or a pine tree or the sunlight. And you can see what an extraordinary bright jewel this world is. But again, usually we forget. So to take refuge in Dharma means to see the world through this radiant, bright mind, through this awareness of the absolute interdependence and independence of everything you see. And if you forget it, you remind yourself with some phrase like one bright jewel or the pure body of reality. Because this body of reality is purifying when you see it as pure.

[20:08]

It also means to see the world as a habitat for Buddhas. You may not be able to imagine, a Buddha, it's too big a deal, you know. Who says? It's your own... your own too modest consciousness, too willing to be seemly, we should be able to, and now I'm talking about taking refuge in Buddha, to imagine maximal greatness. As I said earlier, the sense that this consciousness which I presently suffer or enjoy is far less refined than is possible and in his Buddha's consciousness. Now it's very difficult for us. We're taught to be modest and equal and to imagine that maximal greatness is possible.

[21:16]

And to imagine that it's possible that in this Dharma world a Buddha can be here. If you cannot imagine it's possible, no Buddha will appear. You may not be the Buddha, but if you imagine it's possible, you make it possible for others. So this vision of the world as a place that Buddhas could it be is essential to make it possible for Buddhas to be. So you can get on the Buddha train. to imagine this possibility of maximal greatness, to feel, yes, my consciousness is all right, I accept it as it is, but it could be more developed, it could be clearer, it could be more compassionate. And imagining that without feeling put down, because things that are better in us don't necessarily put us down, they can inspire us.

[22:22]

So when you feel inspired by the possibility of Buddha, because even if you can imagine the possibility of Buddha, it means that you're Buddha. It means on some level of continuum that you can imagine this possibility means that some granules, some molecules, some globules of this are in you. And to imagine that draws you toward it. So, and if we get on this train, this Buddha train, you may not be in the front car, you might be in the back car. It doesn't make any difference. It's the same train. And the more of you that get on the train, the cheaper the tickets get. And the easier it is for others to get on the train. So I invite you to get on the Buddha train. and to imagine a world where it's possible that Buddhists exist.

[23:31]

It's exhilarating. You know? I know I'm, you know, not a very good practitioner or a very good teacher, but I like to practice. But I can imagine that it's possible for a Buddha to exist, and it makes me feel very good. I want to be part of such a world. So when you see, when you begin to have the choice of whether you're happy or not and then you can really look at this world in its confusion and ignorance and misery. I think it's incumbent upon each of us to act within this world the way we would like it to be. Not get disillusioned and say, oh shit, there's no hope. No, you yourself be your own little portable Buddha field. If you're your own little portable Buddha field, it will help your practice and it will help others.

[24:38]

You may not be at the point where you can make such a choice, but it's possible. And the more you have faith in yourself and trust in yourself and faith in the practice, and just do it without kind of measuring it with gaining ideas and so forth, It has, as I said, this acupuncture, homeopathic-like effect. So that's to take refuge in Buddha, to take refuge in a world where Buddhas can exist, to envision that at least. And I guarantee you, if you spend the next days imagining Boulder as a place where Buddhas could be, or imagining this world as one bright jewel, or seeing each person as an instance of being, you're going to feel better.

[25:42]

And it's not just some kind of concoction, because you know this is possible. I mean, even if you're a big doubter, you know somewhere it's possible. You don't have to change much. Just allow this vision to inform your life. This is to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Excuse me for sounding so serious. It's unseemly of me. Well, 3.30 almost.

[26:48]

Does anybody have some questions or should we sit for a few minutes and end? Yes. None at all. Don't bother about it. If it happens, great. What is the Zen view on reincarnation? And I said, don't bother about it, and if it happens, it's great. Or it might not be great. I'd just as soon end. I'm also gladly happy to continue. Okay, let's sit for a few minutes and then we'll end.

[27:53]

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