We have seen that the subject of the Precepts is not just a personal concern. It is reversal recognition which appears in each individual's life. Recognition, acknowledgement of one's personal or individual fault or mistake or dissatisfaction isn't just a personal thing. Once it occurs, even if that person feels it is personal, it occurs in reality, it is a universal occasion because it is revealed in reality in the universal scene. So what we mean with this word is that it has a personal and a universal nature.
It has been taught from ancient times how to avow; how to observe truth of one's own reality. Tanza jisso is the word we have been taught. That is,
tanza is another word for zazen. Tanza. Za is sitting; tan is straight, not leaning to any direction--sitting straight. Jisso is actual form, actual phenomenal form. So this is the definition of what Sange or repentence is.
When we look into the psychological pattern of our mind-state in repentence, we discover the very unique nature of our recognition: both true nature and illusory nature which caused self-recognition of suffering. It is because something continuously bothers one's life--something should happen and at the same time shouldn't happen--that while we are in a situation we don't notice is our nature is good or bad. The situation feels good, but appears bad always. Even when we insist that it's going to be good, it always turns out bad.
It occurs even when driving your car on the freeway. If you pass another car you feel good. When someone passes your car you feel something. If you don't notice and do not feel one way or the other, you are enjoying driving fully. But once it begins to bother you, your mind becomes like a racer. Racing mind brings us several different kinds of emotions and sensations. We know that playing cards is just a game, but when we get a win, we feel tremendous joy, not only because we have beat others, but because we have gotten a win. If it goes the other way, it is miserable. Even you know you haven't lost anything, you feel you have been completely beaten.
It is the same in daily life. You feel good because others are not successful. If someone is very successful, you come to feel left out, to have failed. It is in man's nature to enjoy the mistakes of others; man is accustomed to being negative.
To see the suffering of others and enjoy is a strange thing to do, but we often unconsciously feel that way. At the same time, in the same person's mind there is a unique true nature. If you see this reality, if you see this happening in both directions in the entire mind and body of you, you have no peace. You may have joy once in a while, but it is rare to have peace in your mind. If there is no sense of racing, we have a complete ability to enjoy, congratulate others' joy, happiness, success, as if we did it. As if we experienced it.
In this other kind of situation even though you are participating directly in whatever happens, and enjoying, still you suffer a painful situation. So this is repentence. When the content of mind is in the state of repentence it is a very important occasion. It is the moment of a turning direction of one's
life. Noticing a small, wrong deed can be one's repentence, but noticing great suffering of all mankind, all living things, is basically the same, and what caused our suffering is realized in that mind.
Blindness, or greed which makes us blind about ourselves and others so that we don't care how the situation is but only wish to fulfill the desire, is another situation. They go on and on. Once we get very angry at some situation, directed at some person, it becomes very hard to resolve because once our minds are fixed in that way it cannot be turned to another way so easily. It is something to do with this instinct of our body and mind, instinct of our lives, and deeper than our common sense or knowledge of how to live, or what is good nature to relate with people. It is deeper; the root is deeper.
Survival of one's life, good or bad, is the second problem. Survival is everyone's instinct, so the desire which refines us to cause good to all people is the same desire which requires your effort to complete fulfillment about what kind of hindrance to go with. Desire carries us on to fulfill it.
We are near the end of the Twentieth Century and on a personal level we have pretty much resolved how to live and how not to be the cause of another fight. Still unresolved is this enormous energy of desire, life, strength of people, and no one can say another war won't happen. Everyone knows if it does, it will be the end.
For centuries and centuries we have been training to live on this earth. Transmission of wisdom from ancestors to new generations is very successful. Now as you notice in these talks, the Precepts are the recognition of Buddha's nature and he was described in human language for human kind. Human language is the revealed nature of the Buddha which is our own true nature. This point is the point which causes the act of repentence. Your eyes start to change, your mind senses something different from just how or what you feel.
Yesterday I spoke that the eye which sees the word of wisdom is called wisdom eye, and the eye which sees the truth within and without is called Dharma eye. And the eye which sees every existences' awakening nature alone, that is Buddha's eye. How we get to the nature of utter truth is the dynamic work and functioning of these kinds of vision.
"All my ancient wrong actions, created out of beginningless greed, anger and ignorance, arising through mind, speech and body, all together, I now fully avow." We admit the many sufferings which have been caused through our
own body, mind, and speech. Repentence doesn't occur just once; repentence returns. Actually, in the deep center of life we are always checking it. If we don't there is no tomorrow, no way to receive tomorrow. Actually, your entire system checks it, and you rest. You go to sleep and even when your consciousness is utterly somewhere else, your body is checking where to be, with whom to be, is choosing a level place to sleep, a level place to sit. If you are tilted, in a short while your body will find the right position. Your body recognizes that the tilted posture is not the right posture. When repentence, self-acknowledgement is completed, all quality of Buddha nature and every Precept is already accomplished in the existence of our avowal.