So
first of all, I would like to wish you all a Happy Prajnaparamita,
Mother of Wisdom Day. What we are gathered here this morning to look
into is this whole issue of confusion.
Moment after moment, thoughts and feeling arise, and they come and
go. There are some thoughts that we feel pleased to welcome when they
arrive. There are other thoughts that we simply do not want to have. And
there is the fact that these thoughts are continually arising moment
after moment after moment and filtering our view of our experience so
that we continually fall into points of view that are very partial, very
biased.
Some of the ways in which this bias arises we can describe as the
three klesas: passion, aggression, and stupidity. So that there are
things that we like and we tend to draw them towards us, thinking that
somehow they will enrich us, somehow we can have something from them.
Somehow, we have some kind of fundamental poverty, some fundamental lack
that this thing, this object, this person, this event will fill.
Finding that this isn't so, we continually grab. There are things that
we feel threaten us, things that bother us, things that irritate us,
that push at us, that impinge on us and so we have aggression. We set up
a boundary, a territory, and then struggle to defend it continually.
But the enemy is not only without, but within. And so the struggle goes
on.
And then there is the klesa of stupidity. Finding that we can only
maintain passion for so long, we can only maintain aggression for so
long, for the most part we lapse into a kind of apathy in which we don't
really see, we don't really hear. Most of the people that you meet you
never look at in the eyes. Most of the people you listen to, you're
spending most of that time waiting for them to shut up so that you can
say something or just waiting for them to shut up and go away. So this
is part of how our confusion manifests.
It also manifests much more deeply, much more subtly as "self and
other", "this and that". It manifests even more subtly as what we
believe to be a body, what we believe to be a mind, what we believe to
be time and space. We have all kinds of beliefs, all kinds of
conceptions, all kinds of points of view that we fall into that do not
match our experience. And so we call this confusion, or we might call it
dukkha; we might call it suffering.
Since there is so much attachment to our confusion, when we begin to
practice and we begin to realize that there is a possibility of clarity,
a possibility of wisdom, we want to release our attachment to confusion
and we want to grab on to clarity. We want to hold on to clarity. But
the whole source and root of confusion is attachment and to become
attached to clarity, to become attached to wisdom, is simply confusion.
It is in directly recognizing confusion as it arises that wisdom also
arises. If we believe that wisdom or clarity is a state without
confusion, at the moment that we are confused then wisdom is completely
separate from us. At that moment being confused, wishing to be clear,
wishing to have wisdom, we try to impose some state upon ourselves that
is not present. And so we enter into conflict, we enter into struggle,
because we are being far too simple-minded. We are being quite idiotic
about the whole matter of practice. Or some moment of clarity arises and
we congratulate ourselves. We start to compare it to our confusion and
say "Oh this is so much better". But this state is not wisdom. This
moment of clarity is perhaps a glimpse of what our experience is like
when we are not hiding from it, when we are not falling into points of
view. But as soon as there is the slightest measure of attachment, of
identification with this state, then we have become confused, because
this state will go, confusion will arise once more.
Now when you sit, you get lost in a thought and then you wake up and
you come back and you might feel frustrated that you have continually
become lost in thought or become localized or contracted around a sound
or a pain in the knee, some sensation which is present. Or you are
following the breath and there is this sense of being somebody who is
following the breath which you sense as a kind of hesitation, which you
sense as something that just is not necessary, some kind of holding and
seeing this you become more and more frustrated because you want to let
go of it, you want to do something that you might have heard of, like
becoming one with the breath, and so the frustration builds. Perhaps at
such a moment, what we can do is drop the image that we have at that
moment of what we should be like and attend to how we are.
Instead of trying to "become one" with the breath, which is simply a
conditional state of concentration in any case rather than a direct
insight into the nature of our experience, and instead of berating
ourselves for having been lost in a thought, perhaps we could recognize
that at the moment that we notice that we are not mindful, mindfulness
is present. Perhaps then we begin to allow ourselves some room, some
space in which whatever is arising for us can arise. If there is enough
space, then whatever arises will go. Quite simply, quite clearly it will
self-liberate rather than our having to do something to liberate
ourselves from it. The thought, the feeling, the conception will
self-liberate.
Attention arises as what we are experiencing moment after moment,
waking, sleeping, dreaming, the characteristic of all of our experiences
is that they are annica, they are impermanent or even sunya - they are
empty. This emptiness is like a blue sky. Whatever arises within the sky
is part of the sky.
There have been some strong winds gusting down the streets, over the
buildings, messing up your hair, making you drop your bag of groceries,
then there was blue sky and now there are clouds, a gray sky; but all of
these are sky. The clouds that are arising within the sky are the sky.
They are hot and cold fronts mixing and moisture, the very moisture that
makes the sky blue, gathers together and forms clouds. Clouds are not
separate from the sky. Clouds are what the sky is doing. Whatever arises
within awareness cannot actually obstruct awareness. It is simply how
awareness is presenting itself in that moment.
Our awareness is always a Great Space or Daiku. Whatever arises in
your life arises as your life. The people that you meet, the things that
you do, arise within your experience. They are not outside of you. You
might believe that your skin forms a kind of boundary between you and
the world, but the skin is in fact simply another way of knowing the
world. Do you feel the clothes on your back and on your legs? Do you
feel the temperature of the room? This is what the skin does. It knows.
It is aware and alive.
The more closely that we look into our experience, the more that
"inside" and "outside" make no sense whatsoever. If inside and outside
really define nothing, then we have no territory to defend. There is
nothing that we need to conquer. There is nothing that we need to avoid.
There is nothing that we need to be attached to. Whatever is arising
within our life is arising as our life and this, of course, includes
confusion. This, of course, includes our tendency to distance ourselves.
It includes the boundaries that we set up. All of these boundaries,
these thoughts, these experiences, these colours, these forms are the
Activity of this Space.
Sometimes we can become so overcome by the Activity that we have no
recognition of Space. Sometimes we can try to hold on to Space and treat
it as if it were separate from the Activity, in which case we are
attached to emptiness. We have some conception, some idea that has
festered in our mind concerning our practice. Or perhaps we simply space
out, perhaps we simply want to avoid experiences. But whatever is
presenting itself the Activity of this Great Space, and both this
Activity and Space arise within our knowing of them, so Knowing,
Activity and Space are inseparable and they are how our lives present
themselves.
Confusion is when we hold on to space and avoid activity or hold onto
activity and avoid space. But whatever arises presents itself within
Awareness and points directly to the fact that one is aware. Whatever
one is aware of is not what Awareness in itself is. This Awareness, this
Knowing, this Space, this Activity, the essence, the Heart of our
experience, presents itself as experiences and yet it itself is not an
experience, not a state. It, itself, can never become bound or defined.
It can never be lost. It can never be found. Because it presents itself
everywhere and is always unconditionally free; because it is no time, no
place. It has no body, it has no mind, because it arises as all bodies,
as all minds, as all times, as all places and yet it never moves.
Just as reflections arise within a mirror, the mirror is always
standing free of what it's reflecting and yet intimate with each
reflection. Each reflection arises on its very face. "So Awareness
always stands unconditionally free as the heart of all experiences, as
the heart of all worlds." This Awareness itself can never truly become confused because confusion arises within it.
Mindfulness is beginning to attend to our experience as it is rather
than as we believe it to be. It means taking our beliefs and asking
ourselves if they are true or not. Finding out whether they are true or
not by examining them in the bright light of our direct experience of
this moment of seeing and hearing, of touching and tasting, smelling,
thinking and feeling. It is seeing the arising, dwelling and decaying of
all of our experiences, penetrating into the impermanence and emptiness
and openness and transparency of this activity of experiencing.
Mindfulness is zazen; it is kinhin; but it is also sleeping, dreaming.
All of our experiences must be penetrated so that we can realize all of
these experiences to be the activity of this great space and activity
and space to be simply Knowing. We can only do such a thing when we are
completely open to our experiences. If we wish to avoid confusion, then
certainly there is no room for such a deep inquiry, for such a thorough
and penetrating questioning.
When confusion arises, at some point you know that you are confused.
You become angry and at some point - usually very, very soon as the
shoulders rise, as the belly clenches, as the sphincter tightens, as the
chin moves forward, as the thoughts begin to push and the vision
narrows - there is some recognition that there is anger present, that
you are angry. And if you look at this moment of recognition, you
realize that it itself is not angry, but we have everything all geared
up. We are all ready to be angry now. We are convinced of the anger and
so we follow it through.
But what would happen if we followed that simple moment of
recognition, the moment that arises - without any judgment, without any
blame, without any identification - but simply see clearly. This
recognition is present in each state. When you start to argue with
somebody, very soon you wish to stop it. Why don't you? You are afraid
and all of a sudden you look at the fear and then you fall back into it.
What if we simply stayed with that moment of recognition? You wake up
from a thought and there is a recognition of your present situation.
What if we were to stay with that? What if we were to renew that rather
than falling into thinking about thinking? What if we were to allow our
confusion to trigger wisdom, to allow our confusion to be an invitation
to wisdom, if we were to allow confusion to transform itself into
wisdom?
Perhaps we could have a discussion. Is there anything that anyone
would like to ask or to say, any comments or questions? Have we all
understood?
[Student]: No. How is it that we know things? We know lots of things.
I know my phone number. I know it's sunny outside. I know how to move
my fingers.
[Roshi]: Yes. Well, we know all kinds of things in many different
ways. We have memory. We have thoughts. We have feelings. Everything
that we experience is a kind of knowing. In practice we are not so much
concerned with categorizing these different kinds of knowing as we are
to recognize what the Knowing in Itself is. The Knowing is not knowledge
- knowing your phone number, knowing your name. As I was mentioning in
the beginning of my workshop yesterday, I have these here. This is...
what is this?
[Student]: Beads.
[Roshi]: Right. So they are beads. The Japanese name for this is
juzu. The Sanskrit is mala. We might think that it is a rosary or we
might think that they are beads that are used in mindfulness practice. I
might tell you that these are Tibetan beads. I might say that these are
150 years old. Some of that might be true. Some of it might not. You
don't really know but that is information about this in any case.
Now the information of course is not what this is. This is this
[clear sound as Roshi moves the beads across the lectern]. We are also
seeing it. We can describe it. We can smell it and we can taste it. We
can hear it. There are all kinds of things that we can know about this
but what is it and what is it that knows it ? This is the concern within
practice.
So. We do have such things as the Abhidhamma, which is a
categorization of different states that arise, because in order for us
to penetrate into what Knowing in Itself is, we have to know where we
are going. You know, we have to know how to open the door, go down the
hallway, so on and so forth. So, while we might have different names for
different states and many subtle states that is not particularly what
we are concerned with. We are concerned with recognizing first of all,
all of our experience to be arising within Knowing, that the body itself
is a way of knowing, that thinking is a way of knowing, seeing is a way
of knowing. Our world is Knowing Itself, through this experiencing and
so on, so that we start to realize that Knowing is not just one
particular way of knowing about things.
Everything we experience is a way of knowing about things, even
dreaming, even sleeping, and as we were mentioning, many other subtle
states too. But in our practice of Zen, we really don't give a shit
about any of those things. What we want to know is what is it that is
experiencing it? What is it that is dreaming? We don't want to analyze
dreams and interpret dreams and so on and so forth. There is room for
that. That can be a worthwhile thing to do - scientific modes of knowing
about things, questioning into things, finding out how things work.
That is certainly worth doing but that is not what we do within
practice. This is something else entirely.
What we want to know is what Knowing in Itself is, what knows what it
is that we are experiencing moment after moment, after moment, after
moment. We find that things like logic are not sufficient because it is
always too partial. Like we can say, "Michael has red hair. Michael is a
man. Anzan roshi is a man. Therefore Anzan roshi has red hair", and you
know that is not true. The other thing is that we could say "Michael
has red hair. Michael is a man". Define your terms. What is a man? Who
is Michael? Really?
You know, logic tends to break down if we start to look at the whole
context of what it is being referring to. Now logic is a very useful
thing. It is a tool. But it is a very small way of knowing about
anything. Poetry is a way of knowing about things and it is a very small
way of knowing about things too.
In order to know what our experience is, we have to experience it. So
first of all, we have to see how we become confused about our
experience and clarify it, because that clarification of confusion is
the deepening of wisdom and we use wisdom to penetrate into what it is
that Knows.
So: we talk about mindfulness.
First of all, mindfulness is bringing ourselves back to this moment,
finding out what our experience really is. So there is this sense of
effort, bringing ourselves back. When that is more spontaneous - that is
to say you don't have to bring yourself back, you are simply here - and
when a thought arises you spontaneously recognize it as a thought, and
we can call that just simply attention. It is not mere attention - that
is to say the attention that gets lost in a thought or that identifies
with this or that - it's just bare attention. When this is continuous,
actually more radical ways of knowing things start to come into play
more and more.
For example, when you get lost in a thought, you wake up and you come
back to the breath... And then there is a sound. Attention moves to the
sound, so you are attending to one thing and then to another thing and
then to another thing. There is a succession of things that you are
attending to and it is shifting. What is in these shifts? What are you
aware of in between those things? When that begins to become clear to
you, then this is attentiveness. When you can use that kind of mind to
penetrate more thoroughly into your experience and that is more
continuous, then we can call this "prajna", or "radical insight" or
"wisdom". None of these things are states, trying to produce a
particular state or trying to gather information about anything. It is
simply attending more and more fully to our experience so that through
this attention, though this attending, we can actually inquire into what
attention in itself is, what Awareness in Itself is.
So is there anything else that anyone would like to talk about this
morning? (By the way this juzu isn't 150 years old either. I just
thought I would mention that.)
[Student]: Perhaps, Roshi, you can define for us what wisdom is. I
think a lot of people have a lot of different ideas what wisdom is.
[Roshi]: Yes.
Well, usually we do think that wisdom means knowing something about something. This is knowledge, this is not wisdom.
We say the whole point of practice is Waking Up, it is wisdom. So if
we believe that wisdom is a kind of knowledge, then we think that
through penetrating some deep structure of mind, getting to some
underlying strata of mind, you get fundamental information about the
universe, you get the "Master Plan", you know, you get the little moral
at the end of the story before you get to the end of the story so you
have it all figured out, you know.
But information is only a description. Wisdom is not gathering
information as we are mentioning. It is mindfulness developing into
attention and then attentiveness and then radical insight. This term
"radical insight" is a way of translating the term prajna. "Pra" means
higher; "Jna" means "knowing". So it is a higher knowing, a knowing
which has a very open vantage which can see everything clearly. It can
see all of the details but fixates on none of them because it sees the
details arising in their context. This is what we mean by wisdom. It is
knowing what the body is, what the mind is, what experience is, where
dreams come from, where they go, how it is that we see a wall, and what
the wall is.
[Student]: At certain moments in my life I have had an intense
intuitive feeling about something and at that point I have rejected it,
subconsciously, I guess, denied it. Do you have any advice on how to
detect when that happens and not allow it to happen?
[Roshi]: Well, again I think that is a matter of paying attention to what is going on.
First of all, we have attachments to certain ways of knowing about
things because they usually work out for us - you know - that if we can
name things and so on and so forth, keep them orderly and managed in a
certain way, then that usually means that because we have managed things
in a certain way, things are manageable for us. We can get up, we can
go to work, and so on and so forth. But most of what we are knowing is
in fact happening in what we could call an intuitive manner.
You walk into a restaurant and you pretty well know whether or not
you are going to like it or not just at the moment of walking in. You
know you don't really have to think about it or even look at the menu
really. You sort of walk in, you get some sort of taste, some sort of
flavour of what is going on. So the thing is that our first impression
is often correct unless it is partial.
Now what can happen is, you see somebody and your first impression is
based on some conditioning, some past pattern. They move in a
particular way. They have a certain kind of voice, certain kind of smell
and it reminds you of something in your past that you really liked. You
had a lot of comfort from this particular kind of person or you loathed
this kind of person because of something that they did to you. So that
kind of first impression is always a narrowing. We always notice that
our attention contracts when something of that nature happens. When we
fall into that kind of first impression, everything narrows, becomes
locked and frozen for a moment and then we start to think and figure it
all out and we go "Well I don't like this person". The words actually
come up.
In terms of that, what we are looking at is what we call the five skandhas - form, feeling, perception, formation, consciousness
- which can be a way of talking about bodymind. Or it can be a way of
talking about how our experience presents itself in that there is
usually a first contact with something, it's "THAT"
(subject/object/form). There is something there. Feeling, you start to
try to figure it out and this is where we can have a moment of intuition
and then perception: something starts to become clearer to us, the
details start to become clear. Formation: this is where the patterning
and conditioning is going to come in and then consciousness, where we
think about it.
Now to use a kind of example of how this functions - and this is an
example I often use because almost everyone has had something of this
nature happen to them - you go upstairs, you walk into a room, you look
and "Aghh", there is somebody there! You freeze and then you realize
that it is a mirror. So what happens is you go into the room and there
is freezing. Space itself freezes because there was something you didn't
expect to be there and it is literally as if space crystallizes and
freezes.
The space around the body becomes very hard and the body tenses and
there is a moment of just almost blankness, which is sort of like taking
a photograph of something. Click. Trying to hold on to it so that then
you can figure what is in the photograph. There is this form. And then
feeling. What is it? There is something there. You don't quite know what
it is yet. there's just "Aghh"! There is something there.
And then perception - you start to go, "Oh it's about this tall, it's this, that, it has certain colours".
Then the fourth skandha begins to come in and you go "Oh, those
details add up to something that looks like a human being" and then you
start to check it out. "Is this person going to threaten me? Is it a
friend? Is it a stranger? What is this person doing here?" And then you
start to realize that it's your reflection and then consciousness: "Oh,
it's a mirror. Oh." You know. So that moment of conditioning, which can
often make us distrustful of intuition is recognizable because it
happens as a contraction. Intuition, what we can call intuition, has a
very open quality.
Now, one problem with an open quality is that we usually don't know
what to do with it because we are used to having certain boundaries
present. So when that open quality happens we try to fill it in some
kind of way; we try to put in some kind of boundaries to it. And so
while we have some first impression, which is very open, very clear, we
put it to the side and then try to start figuring things out.
If we are paying attention to what our experience is like - and this
is the thing, there is no simple trick that we can do - but if we allow
ourselves to attend to what happens when we have a first impression or
we have an intuition and we attend to what happens, not just in terms of
what the thoughts are like but what our experience is like, what our
seeing is like, what our hearing is like, what our posture is like, then
we begin to recognize when certain patterns are being played out.
We start to recognize that say, when anger happens, as I was
mentioning, there are a certain set of factors that gather. When sadness
happens, there are other factors that happen: the posture becomes a
certain way, the breath becomes a certain way.
Something happens to our vision and our eye gaze tends to be placed
in a certain way. On and on and on and we begin to be able to recognize
it in a very immediate manner which will then give us time to allow that
open recognition to be present without covering it over. First of all
we have to have time to do so, which means we have to be there when it
actually happens.
When we sit, moment after moment, we are experiencing what our
experience is and what it's like. We have no opportunity really to play
it out, to sort of get up and act out our various states. Instead we
begin to see how these states act themselves out subtly, perhaps in the
set of the shoulders, perhaps in the lower back starting to cave in,
perhaps in the vision starting to narrow. Perhaps we are watching the
breath but watching it from a kind of a distance, you know, On and on
and on and we begin to see these various states so thoroughly, so
intimately, in such exquisite detail, that we have a lot of time then to
begin to see what it is like when anger comes up, when fear comes up,
when hope comes up, when confusion manifests in any of its myriad forms,
we can be there when it happens and attend to it closely, clearly.
Is that any help at all?
Okay, is there anything anyone else would like to bring up?
[Student]: Can you talk about the Precepts?
[Roshi]: I can, but it is a rather vast topic. In fact, we are in
process of preparing transcripts of some Talks that have been done on
the Precepts. I believe when it is all complete, because there is also
the Kyojukaimon and so on, it will probably be about 300 pages.
So briefly, the Precepts are not any set of moral codes or ethics.
Precepts are "kai", which means something like "aspects" or "facets".
They are aspects or facets of the mind of practice and of wisdom. They
are something that formal students might commit themselves to at certain
points as a way of deepening their practice, of committing themselves
to their practice. And of allowing themselves the opportunity to see
just how wisdom happens and how confusion happens, by consciously
intending the Precepts moment after moment and exposing yourself to them
so you can see that, say, slander is something that you are almost
always doing; you know, you are slandering by not recognizing the truth
of something, by saying only part of something, by being partial about
something, on and on and on. So you begin to use that Precept as a way
of understanding the various motivations and activities of self-image
and attending to them because our experience itself is very vast and
very open.
Any harmful state, any way in which we harm ourselves or others is
based on a contraction. When we become angry, we narrow and we exclude
most of our experience. When we are fearful we do the same kind of
thing. All harmful states are contracted states. In order, as I
mentioned, for there to be a contraction there has to be openness first.
I can't make a fist without having had an open hand. So, while these
harmful states, these ways in which we cause suffering for ourselves and
others, tend to be almost second nature to us. They are not first
nature. Our first nature is wisdom, is clarity, is compassion.
So the precepts are a statement of this. They say: "This is Buddha,
this is Dharma, this is Sangha." They say: "Wrong action does not
arise." It does not say: "Don't do bad things." It says "Wrong action
does not arise. There is only the arising of benefit." In the
recognition that there is Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, wrong action does
not arise. There is no motivation for it. It simply doesn't come up.
[Student]: But it's there?
[Roshi]: What do you mean? What we mean is you are not producing wrong action
Student: [Inaudible]
[Roshi]: That's right. There is no killing first of all means that
life does not kill. Life never kills. Everything dies but life never
kills. Killing is when we distance ourselves from something. "Killing"
is when we stand apart from something and use it as equipment, use it as
something that we are simply trying to get something "from" or do
something "to" without any recognition of the mutuality of what this
thing, what this person, what this event is. So. Killing means "killing
time", it means not being present. Killing means looking at a spider in
your bathtub and going whump [pantomimes killing the spider] as if it
didn't have right to be there - you know, as if it wasn't doing whatever
it was doing in its own life. So when you see the spider, it means
taking a piece of toilet paper or a piece of paper, sliding it
underneath the spider and putting it outside the window. It also means
that if there are roaches in your house and they are infecting the food
so that you could get sick and you could spread the sickness to many
other people and this sickness could go on and on. Therefore you call an
exterminator and have the roaches killed. Because there is the
recognition that death is part of life. Death is part of how life lives,
but killing is when you create unnecessary death, when you create
suffering.
Now, as we were saying, the motive to kill something is based on
separation, based on "this" and "that", subject and object. If for you
there is no subject or object, if for you there is no this and that, if
for you in your experience there is really nothing that you can call a
body, nothing you can call a mind, nothing that you can call a world
because everything is what we can call Buddha or Awareness in Itself,
then you have no motivation to kill. You can't separate yourself from
anything and so you can't kill anything. You can't distance yourself in
that kind of way.
So we say there is no killing for that kind of mind. So then that
means we have to look at all the ways in which we do kill, all the ways
in which we do produce wrong action. At that point we are saying there
is no killing, perhaps in the sense that - I'd better not because it's
bad, it causes suffering, it causes harm and I can recognize though that
it's bad because it does not accord with the nature of reality. It is a
refusal to recognize mutuality. It is a refusal to recognize the vast
interdependence of everything which is and that everything which is
arising within Awareness and that Awareness is presenting itself as each
and every being, that that which is arising as you is arising as all
beings. A refusal to recognize this is killing.
So we start to recognize that when we kill, kill time, kill whatever,
there is a contraction present. There is an inability to experience our
experience clearly and openly and so we open that. So this is a matter
of working with killing or stealing or anything ofthis nature not from a
purely moral stance or an ethical stance, but working with it directly
within our experience. So having worked with it in that way quite
thoroughly we see all the motivations for killing, say, or stealing or
lying or sexual misconduct or slander or miserliness or anger, so on and
so forth - the ways in which we defile our experience of the Three
Jewels of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha or Space, Activity and Knowing.
Seeing those, and having seen them so thoroughly, we can't convince
ourselves of them anymore. Those motivations simply do not arise for us
anymore. So that is another facet of understanding this Precept 'there
is no killing.'
Then, though, if we penetrate yet further into what Awareness in
Itself is and live as Awareness in Itself, then for us there is no
killing because there is nothing to be killed;there is no one to kill;
there is simply nothing. So how we are going to work with it is going to
depend on the depth of our practice. Whether we formally take the
Precepts or not, the issues that the Precepts speak of are fundamental
issues for everyone who is alive and so certainly for everyone who is
practicing. Receiving the Precepts also means not only committing
oneself to that, but basically committing oneself to being responsible
for one's life and being responsible for manifesting the Dharma.
So in that sense, receiving the precepts is also a matter of entering
into the Lineage of the Transmission of the Teachings. Those people who
have taken the responsibility of making sure that the Dharma is
available for beings who choose it. And so when a lay person takes the
Precepts, this is something like entering the Teacher's household or
family rather than being just a kind of cousin or friend or something of
that nature. You are starting to enter more closely into the Teacher's
Lineage. Taking say, lay monk's vows or monk's vows is perhaps stepping a
little bit closer. This doesn't mean that your practice is necessarily
better than anyone else's, but that you are realizing just how vast, how
deep practice is, and that you want to make sure that you can practice
it and that other beings who wish to practice it, can. You are starting
to take more responsibility for the Dharma being present.
Being a monk doesn't mean that your practice is better that a lay
person's. It is just different because intimately involved in your
practice is the responsibility for Dharma to be present for lay people
to come and practice it. When we talk about entering into the Teacher's
family in that way we are not talking about favorite sons and daughters
or this or that but just, you know, people who sort of have to do the
housework, you know, this kind of thing. So the Precepts are a very
multileveled issue which is why, as I say, when we do have that
publication on it which is called "Cutting the Cat into One", it will
tend to be quite long or it will be published in several sections.
Is there anything else anyone would like to talk about at this time?
May I see the time? All right so if there is nothing else: up against the wall.
