The actual happening of daily life is not so simple. When it occurs between people, it’s more like choosing “like,” or “dislike.” Even if we experience emptiness, trouble will happen. We can accept it and not be controlled by it. You don’t lose yourself because of trouble. In this sense, emptiness is the same as absence of thought. “Thought,” in this place is a little too rigid translation. It means absence of a concept, but not absence of attitude. Attitude mustn’t be absent. “Preconception” is a good word. “Like, dislike,” these reactions come very quickly from habit. “Absence of thought” is not something to be obtained. Instead, you react to the whole figure of the idea to make it empty. On the table, we see a teacup. We pile up ideas, likes and dislikes about this teacup and react to them. When I pick up the teacup, I crystallize my own attachment to it. We can see life as total attachment. At the same time attachment is emptiness. Maybe I can keep this teacup in good shape for ten years, but when something nicer needs me, this attachment doesn’t work. Attachment keeps relationships of people and at the same time it is not attachment or it will become mere suffering. When attachment becomes very, very strong, object and subject have to become one. Only when you make the object free from you can you become one with it. Accepting the existence of partner, husband, friend, wife, materials, thoughts, you can enter into oneness. You don’t need to cut your attachment. Attachment is actually emptiness. It does not reach to oneness. It’s like sending an arrow to the sun. In complete independence there is complete oneness. It doesn’t mean you melt into the object, like an ice cube in water. Keeping the form of an ice cube it can be in the water. That is our existence. We can’t melt and become a teacup, even if we are attached to it. One form of attachment is a strong feeling of wanting to make the object the same as you. Another is wanting to be perfectly possessed by the object. Usually attachment cannot be said to be love. When I see the teacup from this side, I have a one-sided view of it. Attachment is to keep this understanding forever, seeing no other aspect of the object. If I move to see the teacup from another angle, then I have the whole aspect. That is more like love, acceptance of the whole object, not in here (pointing to himself), but there. Accepting it there. You let it be free from your one-sided view. That is called love, and to stick to your one-sided view is attachment. Of course, the view from one side can also be wisdom, if you accept it as part of a complete understanding of everything. Mountain is mountain. Sometimes relations with others are not ideal because expectations are too big. The problem is emotional. It’s expectation minus reality! It’s not that simple, but anger is like that. Maybe your husband walks too fast or is too lazy so you get angry. The larger this separation becomes, the more we have to feel anger, or impatience, sorrow, suffering. Usually anger is pretty good at maintaining this separated condition. Anger between beings in different situations, like man and woman, is mostly based on expectations. One day a good king asked his wife, “Who do you love the most?” The Queen answered, “After all, I love myself best, you are second.” The King was so disappointed! She said, “If you really know I love myself, because of that, I can love others.” It is the same with confidence. One who can really trust himself can be trusted by others. Attitude is very important. “Way mind” can be said to be “right attitude.” I don’t like the idea of “way-seeking mind.” “Seeking” is not the right attitude. Seeking is more like concentration, searching for something among many, many things. The attitude of “seeking” wastes energy. “Way mind” is an attitude of faith. Faith isn’t a state of mind. It is action. In western terminology we say, “faith in action.” A Biblical, religious idea has to have the word, “within” or “in.” Everything is happening “within Him,” so individual faith takes the form of “in.” Buddhism is more practical. Life is faith. Of course, the Buddhist faith is to believe in Buddha nature and, Zen in particular, emphasizes the relationship of you with all. That is practice. If you are angry at your husband, you’d better think, “This is an empty man!” If you realize you are empty too, the anger doesn’t disappear, but is left in the air. This is an intellectual method of getting rid of emotional problems. The first step of attachment is seeing something and deciding it exists. But when you understand, “That thing appeared within me, so I attached to it.” That is the second stage: You attach to your understanding of it to get rid of the attachment to the object. You realize that things appear to us in different ways because of our different conditions as beings. Each of us has the opportunity to live, probably 20 or 50 years more, and the opportunity to respect others for that time. That is one expression of trusting in Buddha Nature. So the whole system of education is one of teaching respect of human life. In the Lotus Sutra a monk went up to everyone he saw on the street and said to them, “You are the future Buddha so I will never condemn you.” (People got a little upset with his activity!) The future starts from this moment. Even the past becomes the future. The job of historians is to show the past as one road to the future. “Quick enlightenment” is not in the human world. “Gradual enlightenment” is a suitable term from our practice side. The Chinese started to talk about “quick” and “gradual,” and both are the same enlightenment. But you don’t say, “This is half-way enlightenment,” or, “This is half-enlightened, half deluded.” The question, “What is enlightenment?” comes from the sense of practice, but when I am practicing, then the idea of “halfway” and “gradual” disappears. “Enlightenment” should be very, very sudden. The one who experiences it always speaks about “quick” or “gradual,” but never about what enlightenment is, or the feel of enlightenment. The difference between “enlightened” and “not-enlightened” is something we often experience. It’s like the feeling of whether we are able to put our faith in somebody or not. If we don’t have faith in another person, the feeling is completely different. Instead of faith, there is no interest, no concern. It’s a shut-out feeling. Even deeper than this is doubt. Instead of faith, because of no faith, doubt takes its place. It’s an opposite kind of thing. As you know, faith and doubt are not intellectual problems of the brain, they are the whole concern of body and mind. When there is doubt, there is no understanding. Instead, there is fear, insistence upon oneself. You have a negative feeling, “She doesn’t follow the same way that I follow.” Do you think you have enlightenment? This is a very important point. As long as you do zazen you have to know it. Otherwise you don’t do zazen in the right way. You cannot understand what you are doing there. But many beings are dissatisfied with their practice, wanting to go further. Yesterday I had to speak at the Mountain View Buddhist church, during the family service for Buddha’s enlightenment day. The children recited in loud voices, “We are the son and daughter of the Buddha, homage to the Buddha, the sons and daughters of the Buddha.” When one has faith, the idea comes, “My parents are Buddha.” It means that essentially that person is also Buddha. No difference between parent and son, a little cucumber next to a big one. In the so-called “discriminated world” we just see form, even deluded people will see the same form, but they don’t think of it as part of the enlightened world. Enlightened people see the same thing, with the sense of “relating with, going with, living with.” Probably deluded people see and relate with things as they want to see them. Probably awakened people see things as they exist and as things want to be understood. We celebrate a birth. Instinctively we know it is a wonderful thing, even if, waiting for the baby, there are struggles and difficulties. We celebrate life, and sometimes we celebrate people’s deaths, too. I went to a funeral in Japan of a man who died at the right time, age 98, and without suffering. He beautifully died, with many children around him. People didn’t cry at all. Gradual enlightenment and quick enlightenment, do you understand when I say they are the same thing? Two ways to look at it. An example is, if I get a cold, I lie down in bed. It looks weak, like I’m not fighting it, but it’s the same as if I just said, “I won’t let this bother me!” If you are floating in the water, you cannot keep your face in the water all the time, sometimes you have to lift it up. Do we just flow with life naturally, no struggle, or do we put some will, some energy into creating something in this harmonious life? In another example, whether you eat a persimmon all at once, or slowly, the persimmon doesn’t care if you eat it fast or slowly. What is important is keeping your eyes open. One more time I return to the original question of quick enlightenment… “gradual” means never… “quick” means ever. At one period there were arguments, with one school of Zen saying it’s always quick, the other saying it’s only gradual. These distinctions are a side job of our brain, not enlightenment. When we reach to the understanding that delusion always comes before enlightenment, we see reality in everyday life. Can we say that zazen and everyday life are different? The actions are different. Nobody says that sitting is the same as studying, or meditation is the same as eating, but what is important is who is doing it. Can we say that everyday life is the same as enlightenment so we can skip zazen? Does it mean that because I have been enlightened many times, I don’t need to meditate? If we were born beautiful is there no need to wash our face? Or, if I did wash this morning, even if it is not needed, shall I wash again? If we look at it this way, halfway enlightenment is not a misunderstanding. Is a half-moon really half?