When we chant, something that I think it might be useful to know about is something about the breathing that we should practice while chanting. It makes a difference how you breathe, what your breathing is when you chant. The sound of the chanting is different, and as Bhikkhu Roshi said, the point of our chanting is to chant with the body, the whole body, not just with the mouth or the vocal cords or the organs of voice production, but your whole organism participates and vibrates. You should actually feel this vibration, it's not just a description, it's an actual feeling.

[01:10]

And if you use your full breath, that is to say when you chant, you chant using your whole breath down to the very bottom of your breathing, and push your breathing a little bit in that way, not using just the top of your breathing. We talked about at the chanting practice a more inner kind of chanting, but it doesn't just mean to chant soft. The chanting should have power, but its power is not an overt power coming from your chest, but an inner power coming from your stomach. You can produce this power if you exhale fully, and each chanting breath should be long, and

[02:18]

when you inhale it comes deeply. I think that will help to improve the chanting. I found something that Dogen said which expresses what I'd like to talk about. This is the zoo monkey, which most of you know. He said, Although the precepts and the eating regulations should be maintained, you must not make the mistake of establishing them as of primary importance and abasing your practice on them, nor should they be considered a means to enlightenment. Since they suit the conduct of the Zen monk and the style of the true disciple, they are observed. To say that they are good, however, does not make them the most essential teaching.

[03:19]

This does not mean that you should break the precepts and become dissolute, but if you attach to them, your view is wrong and you depart from the way. The precepts and eating regulations are maintained because they follow Buddhist ritual and represent a monastery style. The time I lived in the monasteries in China, they did not seem to play the major role in the daily lives of the monks. To attain the true way, maybe I should comment there that when he says it did not seem to play a major role in the lives of the monks, he's referring to the next sentence here, where he explains that mostly they practice zazen. So the next sentence goes, To attain the true way, you must practice the zazen and koan meditation as handed down by the Buddhists and patriarchs. And he goes on a little further. And then Ejo asks a question. Ejo always asks these very obvious questions.

[04:27]

You'd think he'd know better or something, but actually his questions are very interesting if you look at them more carefully. So Ejo says, Should the regulations established by Boshan Hyakujo be followed in the Zen monastery? In the beginning of these regulations, one reads, to receive the precepts is of primary importance, and so forth. He goes on with his question. And Dogen says, of course you should follow them. They're very important, but the best way to follow them is to practice zazen. The precepts and regulations he's referring to really include the entire corpus of monastic forms

[05:53]

that define a practice like tassajara. So this could be the oryoki. He specifically mentions eating regulations, which means the entire meal ritual. And it means everything we do, actually, wearing robes, gassho, shashu. The way we do service and take care of our life is all oriented around some forms, which really are what tassajara is. Even the form of tassajara itself, being in the mountains and away from the city and a place where it's rather quiet, where there's a good zen,

[07:03]

is included in this idea of a form of practice. So when you come to tassajara, you're really coming to a form and regulation, which you should follow. And he says they're important, but you should not be attached to them, and they are not a means to enlightenment. I don't actually know if he actually says means to enlightenment. This is a translation, and that may be the translator's interpolation. So I don't want to be too concerned with what he means by means to enlightenment, or whether there's a means or so forth. That's not important.

[08:03]

I think what he means is not the most fundamental thing, not the background. There's the forms, but there's also the background or the spirit of the forms. And this is what he's talking about, the spirit of the forms. It is not the forms. The forms, as he says, are a style or a way. And as you know, different places have different ways, different styles somewhat. So, what does it mean to be attached to the forms of practice?

[09:08]

When Tassajara first started, there was a kind of negative attachment maybe to the forms of practice. By that I mean people resisted the forms a lot. Or Yogi and so forth was new, and because it was new, people had an opportunity to fight it and bring out their Alan Watts books and D.T. Suzuki books and prove that it was not necessary. It was not real Zen, it was something old-fashioned. There was quite a lot of that kind of feeling. Many people were angry at various things that we were compelled to do in Tassajara, bowing all the time. Well, service itself in the early days of Zen center was considered by many people to be a total waste of time.

[10:23]

Just some favor we were doing for Suzuki Roshi because he was Japanese and that's what he did, so we'd be nice to him and do service, but really it was not necessary. We were too sophisticated or something. Well, I shouldn't say that. That may be unfair to the people. I think they had some sincere feeling that it was not so important, that really Zazen was important. Actually, Dogen says so. The main thing is to sit. This kind of negative attachment is very natural for us because these forms don't seem so natural to us. Our purpose in coming to practice is quite original feeling.

[11:33]

We're all converts, you know. None of us have grown up as Buddhists accepting the forms as given. So there may be this kind of feeling that our forms are something to live with but not to accept fully. It's something that goes along with being a Tassajara and we do them with some sense of resistance or holding back, separating ourselves from the forms. You know, this is not really my practice. My practice is such and such and because I'm here I have to do these things, but my real practice is, you know, this is how it fits in.

[12:40]

You have some hidden cave where you hide your real practice. The practice that you produce with your body is just some following. It's not informed with your full, maybe your complete commitment. This is okay, you know, this is not something to criticize, but it's something to notice anyway. When you have some question about what we do, it might be useful to notice it. If you don't want to do it that way, what way will you do it?

[13:56]

If you don't want to eat or Yoki style or if you don't want to chant in Japanese, in what way will you do it? What will you substitute for that way which we have? And on what authority will you follow it? The ways that we follow are the legacy of generations of practitioners. And if you don't accept it fully, at least you should know what you are not accepting. Or on what basis you are not accepting. This is Suzuki Roshi. I think you know this passage pretty well.

[15:24]

I think we naturally need some way of life as a group and as Zen students in America, and as Hyakujo established our way of monastic life in China, I think we must establish an American way of Zen life. But you have to be careful in the rules and way you establish. If it is too strict, you will fail. If it is too loose, the rules will not work. Our way should be strict enough to have authority and authority everyone should obey. The rules should be possible to observe. This is how Zen tradition was built up, decided little by little, created by us in our practice. We cannot force anything. But once the rules have been decided, we should obey them completely until they are changed. It is not a matter of good or bad. You just do it without question. That way your mind is free. The part I really was interested in there is that Zen tradition was built up little by little.

[16:38]

You know, that little by little is rather interesting because we ourselves are doing that now after some years of Tassajara and Zen Zen. So the source of our ways is not yours or mine or anyone's, but is built up little by little out of... It is like our chanting. No one person creates the chanting. And the chanting that everyone creates is completely different sound from the chanting that any one person can create. That sound is...

[17:44]

You can't make that sound yourself. There is no way you yourself can produce that sound. And yet it is very natural. All we have to do is open our mouths and the sound is there quite naturally. There is no problem or difficulty in creating it. When we did the Diamond Sutra a few days ago, we opened our mouths and produced a sound. And it is a sound that I had never heard before in my life of everyone reading something different. And yet we knew all could do it immediately. And it was there. That is the way that I think we should create our forms of practice.

[18:48]

No one person creates them, but everyone should follow them. Even though it may not suit completely your particular temperament. So this is negative attachment to form. And... not being completely willing to accept the forms of practice. And I am not so sure, really, if many of us now are so involved in this kind of feeling, because our forms are pretty well established and we come here with some preparation.

[19:52]

But the kind of attachment that maybe Dogen was talking about is maybe what you might say is positive attachment. Clinging to form. Clinging to the forms in some positive way that the forms are what our practice is. If you deviate from the form you feel that your practice is weakened thereby. Or if you go to San Francisco you feel that you can't practice as well because you can't follow the forms of practice that we have at Tatsahara. So you feel that the practice you are able to do at San Francisco is inferior in some way to this practice. Or you judge your practice elsewhere by the standards of Tatsahara practice. Or you judge others on the basis of their ability or inability to skillfully follow the forms.

[21:06]

This kind of feeling is... Or if the forms change you are upset. This kind of feeling is also a pretty natural feeling. Maybe both kinds of feeling come from the same kind of source, which is too much involvement with the self. What the self can know or do. There is an expression in Zen called a mouth like a bent carrying pole.

[22:48]

Do you know this expression? I think it's more in Rinzai. Can you hear? Mouth like a bent carrying pole. Like this. You know a carrying pole in the Orient, they have these long poles and they kind of bend in a nice curve. They kind of bend down. The heavier the weight the more they bend. They had a phrase to describe monks who had that kind of expression. They were really strict monks. They probably never smiled, just tucked with their mouth. And... It's...

[23:52]

I remember the first time I came across the phrase I realized it was an exact description of my mouth. So... I stopped. I made a real effort to... It wasn't so easy to smile, you know, for a while. Like I... Like I... Like Bekaroshi, you know, with his wisdom teeth, like dental work. It's not so hard now, but at that time it was... I'm remembering how funny it was. Excuse me. No, don't get me started again.

[25:05]

It's the first time I've heard it, it's wonderful, it's wonderful. Well, anyway. You know, this is an expression of some artificial strictness which you impose on top of the strictness that's already there. As Roshi said, our practice is already pretty... You know, what we do is enough. Before you add to it, you should find out if your practice is perfect with what we have. Yes. If form could...

[26:09]

If forms of practice are the practice, then this stone Buddha is practicing perfectly, better than you. You know. Because it always succeeds in perfect posture. So it's absurd to think that because you can do things pretty well or you follow the precepts quite strictly or rigidly or you're quite careful to follow or never to spill soup or always to arrange your rows properly or something that this makes you a good student. It doesn't make you anything, you know, per se. It just makes you someone who's doing those things. And that's all. And particularly if it gives rise to some criticism

[27:12]

to those who you feel are not so skillful with our forms, this without question makes your practice impure. Not too long ago I happened to be standing by when I heard someone criticize someone else.

[28:13]

Necessity. It served no function. It was just some comparison or something that someone noticed, you know. But the person criticized got quite angry because it was clearly unfounded or it wasn't appropriate to say so. And... If you read certain books about Zen it sounds like the monks spent their time shouting at one another a lot. Maybe they did, I don't know. This may be, again, some style. If they did so, even if they did so,

[29:22]

the motivation should always be some deep compassion and desire to... It should come out of your desire to help people, to help someone, always. And even then, if it's not your position to do so, you probably should often not do so. Let someone whose position it is to say so do it. You know, our rank... not rank, but our positions at Tassajar is also a very important form which we have. This is a form of practice which is very important. The Tenzo is in charge of the kitchen. If the Tenzo is in charge of the kitchen,

[30:26]

you should not go into the kitchen and say anything. There's a story in which even the abbot was criticized by the Tenzo for it. Saying something in the kitchen. Maybe Roshi told the story, or someone told the story. The Tenzo said, Get out! And the abbot left. He understood. Not that you should imitate. That was just some story. Just the shell of the form, or the practice, is just a shell. Just an empty shell. What's inside is what counts.

[31:26]

And even if someone can't do anything, if their shell is not so good-looking, what's inside is what counts. What's inside? If there is some sincere practitioner inside, excuse me for saying so, but how dare you criticize such a person, even if they can't do anything? There are stories in Buddhism which express this, which are very beautiful stories, which we see some beauty in. Like the story of the 16th Arhat, who was so stupid that he couldn't understand even one word of the sutra, but Buddha gave him the job of sweeping. And he swept his way to arhatship. He became an arhat just by sweeping.

[32:34]

It was all he could do, but he did it for many years, faithfully following Buddha's way. It's like... Maybe an egg or something that has a shell and something good inside, which is growing. From outside you can't tell whether an egg is just its shell or shell and body of the egg, until you examine it. You have to examine it more closely from inside,

[33:38]

so that from outside the shell looks the same, so a stone Buddha looks the same as a living Buddha or you. But if you examine it closely, a stone Buddha is dead material and you are alive and growing. And even though your form is not perfect or your posture is not perfect, you can actually grow into something. A stone Buddha is just a representation of that. It may look as though the shell restrains the egg

[34:55]

and confines the egg and limits the possibility of the egg and destroys the spontaneity. You feel as though you haven't much spontaneity here, because our forms are rather strict and you can't express yourself, you think. But without the shell, the egg dies, it just cannot develop, because the shell nurtures that space in which the egg can grow and become something. So this vessel of your practice,

[36:02]

which is called our forms of practice, like the shell of the egg, is the vessel of your practice, gives you space to grow and fill out that space completely. I was talking to a sculptor who was teaching kids how to work with clay and he said that his first exercise he gave them was to do an egg. And they said, Oh, sure, man, we'll do an egg in ten minutes. And they started to work and I thought it was very shrewd of him to do that. He may have learned that trick in sculpture school, but an egg is very, very hard, very hard. It's one of the hardest shapes to do.

[37:04]

And because we know what an egg looks like, you can see the unsatisfactory quality of your production. It looks pretty much like an egg, but there's... An egg is very beautiful because it's rather beyond our ability to reproduce its form so easily. It's not a form that comes out of our surface effort at all. Maybe a kind of form which comes out of our surface effort would be a box or something. In our society, our technological society, we prefer forms like that, boxes and squares and things, but forms that we can understand with our conceptual mind

[38:06]

and which can be measured and replicated exactly. But a form like an egg is so beautiful because it's almost beyond our capacity to understand how it was created. In the same way that our forms of practice have some deep aesthetic satisfactoriness because no one surface mind figured it out. No one scientific genius created these forms. These forms are alive like an egg. And... grew like an egg by evolution.

[39:08]

The many generations of patriarchs and practitioners. And it's just a big... wound for us to give birth to ourselves in and there's no need to worry about whether we can do it or whether they're good enough or anything. Even though we say, even though we say shila or conduct, shila paramita, this is the formal technical term

[40:13]

for precepts and regulations, shila. Maybe I've begun to wonder or think that maybe it's actually dana, giving, is the actual point. In a form with shila like we have at Tassajara we can give something to each other which is not a square box with sharp corners but is something beautiful in which we can grow without... attachment to self. Not a means either, because even when you become a bird

[41:27]

you still live in the same shell as everyone else following strictly the... rules of conduct appropriate for a Buddhist practitioner. So... when you stand in shashu shashu... it's not a way to hem you in but a way to... as Rex was talking about yesterday, a way to let you stand freely as though holding on to a big pillar.

[42:37]

This is the fifteenth practice period. At Tassajara... Linda and I counted wrong the first time. We said sixteenth but it's actually fifteenth. But either way it's quite a few practice periods. And... ... When I first came I didn't think that was so much but now I think it's quite wonderful that that is the case. And I'm very happy to be here.

[44:30]

In some way I can't really describe. That's all I have to say. I've talked maybe too long so I don't know if there's time for you to ask anything but if you want to, I'll try to say something. Yeah? You mean referring to our instruction to stand that way slightly? Did you all hear his question? Your question is, what do I think? Well, I think Rex is a wonderful person. And I wouldn't... I wouldn't hesitate to say anything about it

[45:41]

except to just take it at face value as that's what he said. I think what he said was... He wasn't being too rigorous about what he said and I think the feeling of what he said is our feeling, really, I think. He was demonstrating something, giving us some very quick way to get a feeling for balance. You know what I mean? He said something, stand this way and then, oh, stand this way. You feel the difference kind of thing. So it was kind of a demonstration, I think. And I think essentially he was corroborating our way out of his own experience. Well, in my own experience I've been standing with this angular stance for some time

[46:45]

and I've always noticed that I've had some problem like when we did this angular standing Shashamudva my toes always come up. I feel very unstable when I bow over. I feel more comfortable with a parallel stance or slightly angled out, but mostly parallel. But I don't know if this is a point of practice or not. How you do it, do you feel it's better for your own practice at the risk of differing a little bit or should you just continue the way you're taught? What we really say is your toes should be in line here with your nipples or something.

[47:50]

This kind of feeling. I don't know if you were doing that before but maybe you were too much this way and bringing it in this way is more actually correct. So maybe it's not a question of parallel and toed out but just becoming more sensitive. The real meaning of the point I think is to stand in a way which is appropriate to your body and mind. Everyone's way of standing is a little different. So I think if you feel more balanced the way you're standing now that's probably more correct. You may not be aware of how slight a change... It may just be a very slight change but because it has quite an effect you may feel as though your feet have moved in some miles.

[48:52]

It's really just a very small distance. Yes? I've heard this sort of before but generally in your talk you emphasize forms as being more expedient means than not. I don't know if it's possible to understand them intellectually as being anything but expedient or anything but totally not means. You're down in a direction which is what they are. Could you sort of reiterate that? You think that what I said today...

[49:57]

My question is are forms purely expedient means? Expedient means for what? Enlightenment or improving yourself. You think that in my talk I emphasized that side more maybe? No reason to grow defining the animal. Yes. If they were expedient means does that feel okay to you? Or do you have some difficulties with that? What happens to my life right now? That I need expedient means

[51:01]

to take me away from it? Or take expedient means to someplace? That's, I guess, my question. Well, but aren't our forms all rooted in right now? Aren't our forms all rooted in right now? I think that's... Well, they're rooted in right now and they're also not rooted in right now. We have forms that we have to follow. I mean, that is sort of a statement from now into the future. We have to follow those rules in the present and in the future. We will have to follow them. That's sort of it. Yeah, but strictly speaking

[52:06]

there is no rule which we follow in the future. Right. You know, there's only the rule that we follow right now. If a situation comes up, situations may come up where there's no established pattern. You should be free from... You should be able to respond no matter what happens. If you make a mistake somewhere you should know what to do. This comes up with the Doans particularly because what they do is pretty strictly regulated and sometimes a situation comes up where there's an unprecedented change.

[53:09]

But this is also true in our daily life too. Sometimes you're faced with a situation that there's no precedent for it. Well, let's take the case where there is a precedent. We do have a specific rule. Why do we have these rules? Are these rules... Can you give me some specific example maybe? Anything. Let's say, why do we do anything? Why do we do service? Why do we get up at five? We don't get up at five just for the virtue of getting up at five. We don't walk in particular ways. It's the... Because we don't have to do that. We adopt something extraordinary

[54:14]

and then try and make it ordinary. Well... Well, I don't think there's actually any convincing answer to your question that I know of. But one purpose that seems to be fulfilled for you is that it gives you an opportunity to question. And that's important in itself. There should be some questioning in Buddhism. So that's kind of nice. You know, I had a lot of questions before. Well, maybe this gives you a chance to focus

[55:18]

the questioning energy. You know. With a magnifying glass you can burn a piece of paper. You know. Yeah. That's right. I mean, I'm not just joking. I think that's true. Yeah. Is... I don't know if will is the right word here, but is will more important here than conviction? I hope you don't mean conviction

[56:21]

as... You know, a sentence comes afterwards. Three years. You've been sentenced to three years at Tassajara. Yeah. Which is more important for you? Without conviction, that some particular part of our practice is...

[57:12]

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