I always feel this kind of sitting practice is like the root of a tree, or the foundation of a building, it's very invisible. Nothing very splendid happens, even if we expect in the beginning that something has to happen because I have to change my messy life situation! This is the last chance! But against my expectation, what it is is tremendous pain. If we concentrate on smoothing practice, we cannot get it. It is very hard to breathe, our breath gets stuck somewhere in our chest or throat. If we do push it hard, many times our head begins to feel dizziness. Counting breathing doesn't succeed. You always come to five, to seven, and you are wandering off the track, and each time you are very ashamed about it, and come back to one. One to ten you go, and finally you feel you made it! And next one doesn't come. To do such a simple thing is very hard.
I think what Buddha said was true, that life is nothing but suffering. Happiness doesn't come so often. To make somebody really happy is so rare and so hard. We say, "I don't have time to make others happy." As I said, to find a little time of day to be by ourselves, a quiet place, a quiet time, is very hard. If you shorten your sleeping time, you may have some time to sit early in the morning, or late at night, or maybe in the middle of the night. As you know, real study cannot be through this kind of lecture. Real study has to be done as a pounding-time by yourself. Like squeezing juice, drips of juice. A little bit comes out.
A real, personal level of understanding, confirming that your intuition is really true, is very rare. There is lots of information, tv, magazines, second hand, third hand, copied information, but those make your mind just busy. We have to have some way to really organize everything and find where we are, and what that information was actually telling us.
This is a very interesting time for each of us to gather together and have lots of struggle with languages and thoughts and actual practice, understanding little by little until finally your own transparent wisdom is formed in the center, and it begins to crystalize your knowledge from the center. My feeling is that it is again about time to recover our natural nature and begin feeling every kind of race and nation as our brothers and sisters. Not just friends from a distance, but basic brotherhood, because even if we have a tremendous vertical theory of how human beings were formed on this earth, we need to know what is the meaning or purpose of life appearing on this earth.
Especially there is not much strength to trust others, to find identity in others. It has been caused by a sort of hot state, in which elements move very fast and bump into each other without staying together. So we slip, bump into each other and make energy, and separate quickly. And again bump into each other. So it makes us, as you notice, very impatient. Probably if men stay together more than one hour they will begin to argue. Instead of getting more and more familiar, they get bored, or one says it's time to go. Especially when it's just talk, you get exhausted. We have very fast meetings, and move to different spaces. Meeting is supposed to be very creative, always, but in a very speedy time we just find agreement and go on, and we forget what we have agreed.
Right attitude is always symbolized in your mind as language. If I ask, "What's the most important thing for you?" each person will say, "I think this is most important." That is what attitude is, the purpose of your present life. It is not like saying, "Because my teacher said so and so, so I'm going with it." It's not like that.
Sometimes I feel I am a Buddhist. Most of the time I don't think about it. Buddha and Buddhist are a little bit different, though. If you can believe that whatever appears to you is Buddha, and you can trust it with your whole life, you are Buddhist. When someone appears not a Buddhist, we immediately say, "That's not Buddhist!" We manifest ourselves as a certain form and put a label on it, and we say, "Look at us, how nice it is!" But the point is to be able to observe, or see, or listen to teaching in the phenomena where we are. It is a living situation, so reading manuscripts of all different kinds is to reflect our understanding. There is no new teaching in the ultimate sense. It is always simply confirming.
You can study so that you confirm your intuition and insight with written words, but you study better by observing other people, and listening to them, because each person is full of understanding, without knowing about it, and they are very humble, they are all called students. That's who we are. So the student makes a teacher out of the student, because teaching is there if we are willing to listen to it. And a tremendous secret is that the one who is supposed to teach comes close to you. That's why we came here. We don't know why! I am sorry, but it is all a natural thing. With your sense of fondness for people you like, you may feel that it is your karmic habitual pattern you are following, but it isn't so, there is a more intuitive sense guiding you to what you choose. It's not just choice, it is decided before you choose. So when you see your life partner, look at that partner very closely and ask where they came from. You always feel such people are the greatest gift to you.
We have a very fancy name for our Sangha. Haiku Zendo is very fancy. Bodhi is very fancy. Many people misunderstnd it. Like Samyaksambodhi 'That must be it! I'm going to get it!' Bodhi is that, too, but as I told you, bodhicitta is the mind which observes the transient reality and makes some certain one person or society uplifted by your effort, makes them happy by your effort before you become happy. Making that happy, you receive happiness. Mother's milk is like that. Bodhi goes from one to another, one way, it has no expectation of returning, and doing that, there is full satisfaction in it. And that mind which is gone to others hasn't lost in this way. You give that, and you think your giving mind is going with material, but as soon as it goes, here it is. Wisdom is like that. It never ends. It becomes much more powerful and better than before each time.
To save all sentient beings means to give whatever you can give. One person contains all sentient beings, so you can just give that which others don't have, which you have. Giving birth to a new baby is saving all sentient beings. Listening to teaching, even just a single word, is saving all sentient beings. Our greedy mind wants to become like an Imperial Savior, and become famous and build a big tomb, or something. That's not saving sentient beings.