Good morning. Good morning. I drove in from Fairfax today, where I live, and on my way I listened to the tape of the last talk I gave here, which was about two weeks ago. It's pretty good. It was, I thought, better, you know, this time than when I actually gave it. So I was thinking maybe I could just bring that in and then I would sit here and talk and then we'd play the tape. That would save me having to do another talk. But I decided, what the heck, I'd do another talk for you. This has been, oh, an interesting couple of weeks for me. You know, you never know quite what's going to happen in your life. And usually, you know, especially once you start practicing meditation, you're really in for it, you know. Because chances are if your life was calm before that,

[01:02]

you know, you'll get more and more agitated the longer you practice. And then people will say to you things like, well, if we didn't know you were already practicing meditation, we suggest you start. Because usually when people start practicing meditation, then right away, you know, we start to notice, gee, I'm thinking a lot. And then after two or three years, then, you know, you're angry a lot and then you're scared a lot and then you're really embarrassed a lot. Anyway, this week, this was the last couple of weeks, it was a week for humiliation for me and a lot of shame. It's just kind of, you know, it's just kind of chemistry. Do you know that Lil' Wells song, isn't it? You know, it must be chemical. Anyway, it's just chemistry, you know, it doesn't have to do with anything. It looks like it has some things to do with something in your life that's going on. But really, it's just, you know, just who you are at the time.

[02:04]

So last week, I got a call from Patti Underman. Patti Underman is a food writer for the San Francisco Examiner Chronicle and she wrote a column in the date book for many years called Dining Out. Apparently, she got sort of ousted in a coup of some sort. But anyway, she called me up and she said she's planning to do a feature story about my cookbook in a few weeks. And so I thought, great. And then she says, now, what recipe should I try? And I said, well, what about the corn sesame breakfast cake? And she said, you know, I looked at that recipe and I think it has a little too much butter. So I looked at the recipe and I realized for the amount of flour the recipe calls for, it has way too much butter. So I started getting nervous. And then I already know that the ginger muffins, like, there's a cup of flour left out of the recipe and there's way too much yogurt. And so the ginger muffin recipe is coming out soon. But I said, don't put that one in the paper. Then I suggested the chocolate walnut cookies and she said,

[03:08]

oh, I think they don't have enough butter. They don't have enough sugar. They have four ounces of unsweetened chocolate and it's only half a cup of sugar. Is that really enough? So the more we talked, the more I realized that I had this serious problem with my book and I don't know what happened. And there's no one to blame, you know. I went back and I checked my computer, you know, and all the mistakes are in my computer. You know, computers are strange, I mean, and they're devious and people don't realize how, I mean, people are starting to realize how human computers are, namely that they're completely unpredictable, temperamental. You know, I had a friend who took their computer and, no, it was a fax machine, you know, to get serviced. And then they called her up a couple hours later and they said, it's working fine. And they said, oh, did you find something wrong? No. And they said, well, sometimes the fax machine just likes to take a day off. So now it's had its break, it's ready to go again.

[04:14]

Anyway. But normally, I mean, I don't know about normally, but there are times in my life where probably I'd find out about all these mistakes in my book and it wouldn't be so bad, but in this case I was just mortified and for about two days I could hardly, you know, I was trying to move and I thought the recipe police will get me. Changed over the years, you see, when I did the Tessera bread book, I wrote that, well, first of all, you know, I wrote it in Suzuki-Oshi English without even knowing I was writing it in Suzuki-Oshi English. I left out all the articles and pronouns because that's the way we all talk to each other. You know, put bread on board and knead with hands. And I didn't realize that until 1985, you know. The book had been out for 15 years and then Shambhala asked me to revise it and I realized

[05:19]

this is all written in this strange English that we all talk to each other in because Japanese people, when they first learn English, they don't use the articles and pronouns, they don't have them. And people said to me, oh, we thought that was your special language. That was your way of talking directly to us. Little did they know, it's just, you know, trying to be a good Zen student and mimicking your teacher, the way he talks. But anyway, in the Tessera bread book, I thought people should not blindly trust cookbooks so there were some recipes in there that didn't work. And I figured that people who use the cookbook should know enough to figure out which recipes are the ones that work and which ones are the ones that are done, just like Patty Annaman did when she looked at my book. But I don't think people understood that, you know, because after a while the recipe doesn't work then they think there's something wrong with me, you know, instead of there's something wrong with the recipe. People blindly trust cookbooks, among other things, you know.

[06:30]

But these days I thought I would make a cookbook that's actually usable and has recipes that work and you can trust it, you can trust me. And now these recipes aren't working and I'm feeling terrible mortification. But it's just because I got over a bit of failure recently and some of the recipes didn't work, so then the next thing after fear sometimes is either shame or sadness, right? And then you go through a period where it's pretty nice and then you start over again. Suzuki Roshi said it's going up the mountain, down the mountain, up the mountain, you know, sometimes you're going up, sometimes you're going down, you're in the valley, you're at the top, and life goes on. You don't sort of stay in one place, do you? Anyway. So it's been a great week. And then, you know, the Highway Patrol stopped me a day or two later and... Yeah, they said, we heard your cookbook isn't exactly what it could be.

[07:37]

Yeah. And then I was at my Acura dealership and I bought a new car. I was telling Paul, before the talk, you know, my old car, I had this nice old Honda, I was ten years old, and I had gotten back from North Carolina, I had the flu, I was jet-lagged, I thought I should go into the city with Patty. My companion said to me, why don't you just stay home today? I said, no, I have to go to town. So I got on the Volgograd Bridge and I just could not pay attention. And my mind was all over the place. And then, so the next thing I knew, I smashed into the back of a blazer. And it was just, and I had braked just enough so that it just barely hit the blazer, but the bumper of the blazer conveniently goes right into all the headlights on the old Honda, takes out the front end, $3,800 worth. So they, you know, so it was what they call a total. But the old Honda, it had these little rust spots and there was water dripping into the car and there was mildew in the car. And I'm thinking, well, it would be good to take care of this

[08:39]

and I'll get some of this special sanding stuff and I'll put on silicone and I'll fix this up. Well, the universe seems to have other plans and something took over, you know, and arranged for me to have this accident. And it was kind of like a message from the universe. Maybe you could just go ahead and get another car. But anyway, I went back to my Acura dealership and I had my first service. And so then after the service, I went to give one of the salespeople a copy of my book. And then they said, and I was standing in the door to her office and she looked up at me and I said, may I give you, may I give you this? And I neglected to say, I'm one of your happy, satisfied customers and this is my book and may I give you a copy of my book? I just said, may I give you this? And she said, no. And I said, I was really stunned. And then I said, and I started to say, could I?

[09:42]

And she said, no. So then I went on standing there with my mouth kind of drooping open and she finally got it together to say, obviously making a serious effort to contain herself. She said, is there something else? And I said, well yeah, maybe I could leave a copy of my book for Kevin. Can I leave this for Kevin? She said, you mean Kevin Moran, our salesman? And I said, yes, that's the one. She said, yes, you can leave it on his desk. So I'm out there at his desk and a minute later this woman is out there. We apologized. We are so sorry. We realize now that you're actually a customer of ours. Oh well. So you see, even after all these years I've been practicing Zen

[10:49]

and I thought by now I would have tremendous kind of spiritual authority so that people, when they met me, they would be properly deferential and gracious and kind and accepting and polite. Oh yes, of course, thank you very much. We'd love to receive whatever you have to offer. Oh well. So that's that. Now that I've got you warmed up, you know. I had this other talk planned, but I wanted to talk to you about way-seeking mind. Way-seeking mind is very traditional in Zen. It's often said one is encouraged to arouse way-seeking mind. And it's said for people who come into the practice place, if you have way-seeking mind, then you can enter.

[11:51]

Otherwise, why bother? And if it turns out that you don't have way-seeking mind, you may be asked to leave. I think Dogen says something like this. But way-seeking mind is often associated with letting go of fame and profit. But you know, the way I think about it more recently is this is also letting go of performance. The way-seeking mind, you know, Zen took this word from Taoism. It's the Tao, the eternal way, the way which can't be spoken of. And then Zen took this language and said, that's what we're doing too, you know, we're seeking the way. So this way, way-seeking mind is to find your way, to find the eternal way or the way to real happiness in your life

[12:57]

or the way to put an end to suffering, the way to benefit all beings. This is different than the way to be successful, although you might end up being successful, or the way to please other people or the way to measure up. So quite often we get involved with performance and how well we're doing. Then as long as you're involved in performance, of course you can get humiliated by various things that happen. And you try to make amends. Yes. This kind of idea of way-seeking mind, so to find your way is different than to do something which will be acceptable.

[14:01]

For instance, I mean, I noticed very early on as a cook at Tassajara, 30 years ago now, even oatmeal is a problem, because I had the idea I could actually cook in a way that everyone would be happy. It was just a matter of figuring out how to do that. Everyone would be pleased, grateful. Well, if the oatmeal was too thin, several people would come in, these big guys. We are working very hard. We need a serious breakfast, a hearty breakfast when the oatmeal is that thin. It's so easy. We have nothing to chew. We have just this soup for breakfast. We have lots of work. This will never do. Please make the oatmeal thicker. Then if the oatmeal is too thick, thicker, then people come in and say, you know, the oatmeal is so thick, you have to chew it. There's a different group of people come in.

[15:06]

And then I made the mistake one time of putting raisins in the oatmeal, and in those days there were a lot of macrobiotics at Tassajara, so they would come in. They were the most agitated, you know. Why are you trying to poison us? It's so funny. Putting those raisins in the oatmeal. I just thought, you know, some people might be happy, they might be pleased, but then there were the people who were convinced that sugar was a, even in the form of a raisin, was poisonous. They were going to get too much in. It turns out now, I found out many years later, that actually the macrobiotics mixed up yin and yang anyway compared to traditional Chinese Taoism. They just switched them around, and then they made up all this elaborate philosophical explanation for why their yin and yang is backwards from everybody else's. But anyway. So what does it mean?

[16:15]

If your performance, in that case, there's no way to perform, there's no way to perform so that everybody says, oh, thank you very much. We appreciate you being you and what you're doing. So what will you do then? How will you, what way, how will you find your way? What will your way be? What kind of effort will you make as long as you can't? Since you can't, there's nothing you can do which will be, you know, which everyone will appreciate. One of the famous Zen conversations about this, you know, is it Segito and Yaku-san? Oh, Yaku-san and, anyway, one of them said, whatever you say, whatever you do, it's of no avail. And the disciple said, yeah, not to say and not to do, that's also of no avail. And the teacher said, you can't even insert a needle. And the disciple said, it's like planting flowers on a rock.

[17:18]

This kind of no avail is, I mean, there are various no avails, but, you know, there's no way to behave, there's no way to do or not to do where everybody will say congratulations. Your performance was wonderful. You've measured up finally. You've done good. Some people will like what you did and other people won't. So, at some point, in finding our way, you know, Zen teachers suggest, well, just do each thing with sincerity or practice wholeheartedly. Sincerity means, you know, sincerity is, one idea about sincerity is the S-I-N is like sans in French, S-A-N-S, without, and ser is wax, without the wax. And in the old days, you know, you could, in Rome times,

[18:23]

people would sometimes clip a little bit off the money, off the coin, and then you fill it in with wax and color it, and then it looks like the coin is good. Or if you're doing sculpture, you can cover in the blemishes with wax. So, you cover up all the little defects with wax. So, to be sincere is to be without wax. The defects show and the blemishes are revealed. You're not perfect anymore. So, finding the way, actually, is, you know, to become unmasked, to have some wax removed. So, of course, in Vipassana practice, they say, how come self-knowledge is always bad news? Anyway, it's because the wax has come off, and then here you are. And everybody can see and you can see. And actually, to see the lines, you know, is actually quite beautiful, and it's what is the character of something. It's the character of you, it's the character of things,

[19:24]

is that they have lines and cracks. One of the strange things about plastic, you know, is that it doesn't age. It doesn't age beautifully, it doesn't develop cracks. It doesn't. We can have, develop, you know... Anyway, we develop cracks. Anyway, the way-seeking mind is sometimes also known, of course, as leaving home, to seek the way you have to leave home. And home, in this case, is a mental state as well as not just a physical place. Home is where we like to hang out in our mind, the kind of mind we like to create and the mind we come back to. The mind we say, oh, this one's me, and I'd better try to keep it so I can go on being me, only it's kind of uncomfortable, so maybe I could change just a little bit here, but not too much,

[20:26]

because I don't want to end up being someone else. And besides, where would I be if I wasn't home? Uh-oh. Anyway, leaving home means you will end up in some places that you're unfamiliar with, and you won't know what to do there. And the first tendency we have is try to get back home, try to get back to me. In Zen this is called setting up a nester den. The nester den in Zen we set up is a nice calm place. We know what a Zen person should be like. It's calm and buoyant, energetic, resourceful, all kinds of good things. So we try to stay in that place, and we keep ending up in other places. Oh well. It's called leaving home, and there's not much help for it. But we're actually encouraged in Zen to leave home, go someplace,

[21:29]

to be willing to be someplace we're unfamiliar with. Sometimes I wonder, you know, when I was in Austria several years ago, I visited the Hundertwasser Museum, and the Hundertwasser was an artist, and he also designed some low-cost housing, and he did things like some of the floors in his buildings, they have little mounds in them, they go up and down. He said, you know, if you just walk on flat floors, on level floors, your feet will go dead. They will start to lose their inherent intelligence. So of course I make my floors go up and down. Then your feet don't lose their intelligence. And then he'll go to conventions of architects and say, you're all a lot of fascists, making people live in straight lines. You're worse than Nazis. But we're trying in our life, of course,

[22:31]

to make all the lines nice and straight and the floors level, and a nice place, nice person, good Zen student, spiritual, everything else. And we forget to have bumps and blemishes, that it actually makes our life what it is and is part of our sincerity. Anyway, at one point Hundertwasser was invited to be the visiting professor at a university in Germany. So he showed up, the first day of class he said, some of you have talent and there's nothing I can teach you. Some of you have no talent, you may as well go home. Sometimes I wonder when I give a talk, you know, some of you have a way-seeking mind, and then I can't tell you anything, your way-seeking mind will carry you along just fine. If you have no way-seeking mind, I don't think I can help you with that either. So I have not much to talk about, actually, from that point of view,

[23:33]

except to, in case you are wondering whether you have a way-seeking mind or not, maybe my talk will help you notice, yes, I do have a way-seeking mind. I am interested in removing some wax or being sincere or various things. Anyway, then Hundertwasser got out a pen or brush and he started drawing a line around the baseboard of the room. And after a couple of hours he went along and then when they passed the radiator, the line went along the bottom of the radiator and then by the bottom of the door and then the line continued. And after a couple of hours he gave, he turned it over to someone else and then the students in the class could use whatever material they wanted to continue the line. So he gradually made a spiral up the walls of the room and it was going 24 hours a day. So after two or three days, you know, the administration heard about it. What is Hundertwasser up to? So then the dean of the university came and he happened to come right while they were drawing the line

[24:36]

across the back of the door, so they had the door of the room closed. The dean pounded on the door, let me in. And Hundertwasser yelled out, the ruler of the line is at the door. There's no admittance right now, you'll have to wait. So he was livid. They got about half way up the room. It was a room maybe, maybe half as big as this, maybe, you know, it's a pretty good size room, maybe two thirds as big as this. So they were just drawing a line around. And then the university decided just to paint it all over. Hundertwasser said they were so stupid. They could have had this room, you know, the Hundertwasser room, charged admission, made money for the college. But it's interesting to me sometimes, sometimes it's very hard to be willing to go someplace you haven't been, to be someplace you haven't been and find out how to,

[25:36]

what's going on in that area. I did a cooking class, a baking class in North Carolina last year. I had gone to do this session and I stayed to do it. I did a baking class, I forget, before or after. So about twelve people came and I had six batches of bread, so two people could work on each batch of bread. They mixed up the initial mix and I had some of them already sitting there and some of them had been mixed up at the time. And then when I went to show people how to knead, there were these two fellows who were already busy kneading and they weren't doing it the way I was about to show people. But I think they wanted to impress people that they already knew how to knead. I didn't know what to say. Did you, is there some reason why you came to my class? I don't have a lot of experience being a teacher. Since then people give me various suggestions, pieces of advice.

[26:38]

Somebody said, you could just stop talking and look at them and wait. Anyway, they spent the whole time kneading their breads and it wasn't like they didn't like me. They came up after the class and said how pleased and delighted they were to meet me and I've been such an inspiration to them for years and it's so wonderful to be here with you. We're just not interested in what you have to show us, that's all. But this is an example where we stay in the realm of our competence and what we're good at or think we're good at rather than actually studying something and finding out something and finding our way. And to find your way inevitably is going to mean you might be awkward for a while or clumsy and you might not know exactly what to do. So Suzuki Roshi called this feeling your way along in the dark.

[27:39]

Not knowing what to do, you proceed rather carefully. Okay. So I want to mention... Well, I want to tell you one brief story and then I want to mention several factors about finding your way that are useful perhaps. I want to mention this story when we were working on the Green Scope book or when I worked with Jebba. We said things like cook the onions until they're translucent, season to taste with vinegar. And we said our book was really well edited, we worked on it a long time, we worked with an editor for a long time and still it came back with many little pink press apply labels sticking out of the manuscript. And where it said cook the onions until they're translucent, it said how long? So we put about two to four minutes. And then season to taste with vinegar, how much?

[28:41]

So then we added season to taste with vinegar, beginning with a quarter teaspoon. And then finally... I mean, we thought we would tell people how to cook by looking at the food rather than the clock, rather than the measuring spoon. That you could learn in your own experience how to cook. You could learn by looking at the food. You could learn by tasting with your mouth. That would be like finding your way rather than doing what you're told. This much. Because you can't figure it out, can you? We'll tell you. So it'll come out the way it should. And then all the rest of our life ends up like that too, right? Because we end up with the strangest recipes. But we got them. Anyway, it got to the pasta section and it said cook the vegetables until they're as tender as you like. And the editor said, how long? How do we know? Anyway, that was very frustrating at that point. Establish a standardized chew.

[29:44]

If your standardized chew bites through it, that's tender enough. I mean, it's so silly at some point. And then they tried to change the syntax, you know, because the you construction some people don't like. Some copy editors don't like the you construction. So it says, cook the vegetables until they're suitably tender. But the point was, they're as tender as you like. So we changed it back. So finding their way is not about measuring up to some standards. If you're involved in performance in your life, in being a success or performing, performing for yourself, performing for others, performing for some hidden audience, then you have, invariably, there's some standards. Do you measure up to them? In finding your way, you'll have to let go of the standards and just find your way. So the factors I want to mention are interest, investigation,

[30:52]

trust, and a couple more. But I'll start with those. First of all, trust in Buddhism means, or competence, is you go someplace you haven't been, you dive in to the depth of your experience. It's faith is said to be, this is called faith often in Buddhism, faith is like the water is muddy, there's various kinds of water in our life. The water can be colored, muddy, boiling, frothing, bubbling, it's used as analogies for sensual desire, anger, self-interpreting of the water is scuzzy, slimy. Anyway, what faith does is dives into it. When you dive into it, then it becomes clear. So the clarity that's lacking in our life is when we don't dive into our experience, we stay in our nest or den, the place we're comfortable with, the place we know,

[31:56]

instead of diving in, and then it remains the way it is. And to dive in, to have enough confidence or trust means to dive into the experience and know it for what it is. So this is important, clearly. And then investigation. Investigation means, you know, what's going on here? How do things happen? What should I do? And investigation is also noticing what works, what doesn't work. You know, what's to my advantage, what's to my disadvantage, what really makes me happy, what makes me unhappy? What happens when I get angry? And so investigation is a quality of finding out what's going on. And a third factor, this is somewhat similar to interest,

[33:01]

but interest is to take an interest in your life, in what's going on. You know, if people come up to me and, you know, it's very hard to talk to that woman in the accurate place, what am I going to tell her? But if somebody comes up and takes an interest in me, then I start talking, I say, this is going on, that's going on, and I get energetic and something happens. So what about your own body and mind? If you're taking an interest in it, you will find out a lot of information from your body, from your mind. If you're not taking an interest in your experience, if you're trying to tell your body and mind, just to be quiet, don't bother me, you won't get any information. It's that simple. So it helps to ask for information, ask your own being for information, ask others for information. I recently came back from Tushara and I gave someone a ride

[34:05]

and he said he'd had a very difficult time at Tushara practicing meditation and I said, what was the problem? Well, I had a lot of thoughts. And what was the problem with that? Well, there were a lot of thoughts. I don't know what his problem was with a lot of thoughts. I tried to suggest that maybe it wasn't a problem to have a lot of thoughts. Anyway, we went on and I asked him after a while, where are you going? He said, well, I want to go to Green Gulch. I said, well, I'm going to San Francisco. Oh. It's not like he'd thought to ask me where I was going or where I could take him. And then it turned out, I said, now, is Green Gulch expecting you? And he said, but they were expecting me a week ago. And then I said, so have you called them since?

[35:07]

He said, yeah, I called them and I arranged to come yesterday. Do they know that you're coming today? I don't know. I hadn't thought to call them. So there were a lot of things he hadn't thought of. I think he hadn't appreciated his thinking. You know, we're not trying to just stop our thinking and sin because it's better not to have thoughts than to have thoughts. I mean, the point is, for that moment or two, now and again, you could stop thinking long enough to have an experience which is fresh and which is not in accord with your thinking and might be something that doesn't fit your thinking and then that will tend to adjust your thinking and your thinking will be a little more accurate than it would be otherwise. And it's not like you'd never think again. The Sixth Patriarch said it really well. He said, when I say not to think, I mean, when you have a thought, think nothing of it.

[36:09]

That's it. If you're involved in performance and you're trying to assess what kind of a Zen student you are and then you say, well, I'm thinking too much. I guess I'm not a very good student. The point isn't how much you're thinking. The point is which of your thinking is important and useful to act on and which is the thinking that you don't need to worry about or do anything about and let it mind its own business and go its own way in its own time. What to do with which thoughts? This is called investigation. This is taking an interest. Otherwise, you try to, as Zen students, we try not to think and then pretty soon, you know, your life doesn't work very well. How can you do that? And feelings are the same way, I can tell you. If you try not to have your feelings, how are you going to make decisions? Where do decisions come from?

[37:14]

I can tell you a lot about decisions, but I'm not going to go into all my stories about decisions right now. If you try to make a decision based on what's going to be good for you and what's going to be a better decision for you to do and what will make your life come out better and you get along better and everything's going to work, which of the decisions is right? You can never make a decision. There's no way to assess that finally. You can't do one thing and then see what happens and then go back and do the other thing and say, which one was better for you? There's no way to do that. So decisions come down to what do you feel like doing? That's a decision. It's what you feel like doing. So if you're trying not to have your feelings, how will you know what you feel like doing? So I encourage people to take an interest. It doesn't mean... In meditation, what that means is you can have your thoughts and feelings give you all the information they want

[38:18]

and they can help you practice meditation. Okay, so then I want to mention also... I want to mention smiling. Smiling is not something that's indigenous to Japanese Zen Buddhism. We practiced... I practiced very seriously for many years. And then about 1983, Thich Nhat Hanh showed up. He's Vietnamese. And he started teaching us to practice smiling. And, you know, the Zen students would say, but suppose I don't feel like smiling. Wouldn't that be insincere? And what about if I'm angry? Should I smile anyway? And so he would be very patient. He'd say, if you don't feel like smiling,

[39:19]

then you can have a slight smile for somebody who doesn't feel like smiling. And if you're angry, you can have a slight smile for someone who's angry. And you can mix hot and cold water. You know, they're two faucets. They come out through the same tap. You can have some little smiling going on with the anger, and it's okay. It'll mix. And the smiling is not intended to cut off anger. But it's very interesting about smiling. You know, this is the place, the corner of your jaws, where judgments, a lot of judgments accumulate. How are you doing? Oh, I'm not a very good student. And then it goes right to here. I'm thinking way too much. Boy, those other people over there are sure wriggling a lot. I wish they'd sit still. Anyway, all these judgments go right to the corner of your jaw. So I'll tell you, there is no good reason to smile. There's no good reason.

[40:20]

So as long as you're busy with your judgments, they'll just go right to here, and then you can do your best through your judgments to get yourself on the right track. Now, we like to think that our judgments will improve our performance. You're not doing very well, so then you need to improve your performance so that you will get a better grade next time, whether it's from you or from somebody else, whether you're looking for the approval from yourself or from outside of yourself. So the point of smiling is you just stop that. You can stop your judgments, just cut off all the judgments by smiling. And that smiling, one of the first places it goes is right to the corner of your jaw. And in order to smile, you have to stop judging. When you stop judging, you can smile. Or to smile means you've stopped judging, and that just softens right here. It's really remarkable.

[41:25]

Dogen says something very similar. Now, he doesn't say smile, but he says if thinking, planning, strategizing, judgments, analysis, if they were going to have gotten you somewhere, don't you think you'd be there by now? You've been doing it a long time. So how about just giving it a rest? Anyway, if you have a slight smile, this will help you let go of some of these judgments, and the judgments associated with performance and standards and whether you come up to or don't come up to the standards. And, you know, that is another way of saying what suffering is in our life. If you just try to be perfect, if you just try to have good performance, that is the definition of suffering. If you try never to be wrong, you're always going to be right, and your jaw will tell you.

[42:29]

So I recommend this practice of smiling, but you can also, you know, you don't have to... Anyways, Thich Nhat Hanh says it's a slight smile. You don't have to make a big smile. Slight smiles are very good. Otherwise, people will say, What do you have to smile about? What reason do you... What are you smiling at? Are you making fun of me? I get in trouble like that now and again. What's so funny? Uh-oh. Nothing. Nothing. But this is also associated with... Thich Nhat Hanh, one of his emphasis along with the smile you see is the practice of enjoyment. For many years he emphasized, Please enjoy your breath. When you have... Anytime you want, you can sit and have a cup of tea and enjoy having a cup of tea,

[43:35]

and you can smile lightly, and you don't need to practice for 10 or 20 or 30 years to enjoy a cup of tea or to enjoy your breath. And when I asked him about enjoyment, he said, This is what most people need to hear, and if you practice enjoyment, it includes everything. So enjoyment in that sense is to let your mind resonate with something with your activity and in your activity. You know, it's to let your heart go out to something or let things come to your heart. And when you... Or Dogen says, Let your mind go out and abide in things. Let things return and abide in your mind. This mind is also, of course, heart. Heart mind in Zen, in Japanese, Chinese. So the other factor also which Zen tends to emphasize

[44:40]

is energy or enthusiasm or throw yourself into the activity. When you do something with energy and vitality, it's a way to, you know, go outside of your thinking, to go... to leave your home and your thinking and go out into some activity. When I do Satsang instruction,

[46:07]

I often use a quote from Nanchuan, the Chinese master Nanchuan. He's the one who... Isn't he the one who asked or answered, Every day is a good day? See one of those? Anyway, Nanchuan once said, I tell my students to put themselves in the time before Buddha appeared in the world. Very few of them get my meaning. In one of the comments about the story, someone said, If you want to know the mind of Nanchuan, observe the iris blooming in the spring or the leaves falling in the autumn. I think about this story on the whole pretty simply. The time before Buddha appeared in the world, who's going to teach you meditation? Who's going to tell you what to do? Who's going to tell you

[47:09]

whether what you're doing is right or wrong, good or bad? But most people want to know, Am I doing it right? Tell me how to do it. Zen likes to, you know, we say, each person has Buddha nature, each of you has the capacity to find your way in your life. Each of you has the capacity to find out how to meditate, how to live your life. And because you have this capacity, why would you just try to do what somebody else told you until finally they gave you their approval, that you're doing well what they told you to do? Before Buddha appeared, you'll have to find out for yourself how to meditate. You'll have to find your own way in your own time,

[48:10]

stumbling along in the dark, you know, tripping up. And I'd like to remind you that there's no Buddhist freeway where you just get on and then can go 80 miles an hour without having to stop for anything and how blissful it is with the stereo plane. In Buddhism, you know, to practice meditation is actually to stop at every little town, every little crosswalk, every stop sign. You know, you don't get anywhere. All right. I think I've talked enough today. Well, thanks. And good luck on your happy trails.

[49:11]

Anyway, thank you for your sincere efforts to find your way, to arouse way-seeking mind and to know your own body and mind, and to find your own way in your life.

[49:32]

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