He said, “You live in my house and you always create trouble. Now, I love my mustache, I cannot shave it.”
I said, “It is up to you. But this is what makes your face look so sad. Get some false mustache. Glue it on whenever you want a mustache, but this mustache won’t do.” He certainly had a mustache, drooping all over the face.
But everybody is having different kinds of faces, and it has become almost an autonomous process; they don’t have to change. Just you see a man walking with his wife and you know with whom he is walking. You don’t have to inquire, “Are you married?” And look at him with his girlfriend and again you don’t have to inquire. Just their faces, with so much freedom, joy – momentary, but even a momentary phenomenon makes them happy, changes their faces.
A seeker, according to Dogen, has to remember his integrity. In every situation, his practice and his expression should be identical.
To express the way all day is to practice the way all day.
To express the way all day…. I have told you you are all buddhas. Reluctantly, you accept it. Deep down, you know who you are. Somebody is a doctor, somebody is an attorney, somebody is a rickshaw walla. “A buddha pulling a rickshaw? My God, this has never happened.”
But because I am saying it, and you love me, and you trust me, you say, “Okay.” Right now, at least inside Buddha Hall anyway, you will not be allowed to bring your rickshaw or your rented bicycle. What is the harm in being a buddha? But once out of the hall you start having second thoughts, “Where am I going? I am a buddha? Then what am I doing smoking a cigarette?” Now just think – a buddha smoking a cigarette? Inconceivable.
If you want to know your essential self you have to express it all the way, all the day, in every smallest expression. It does not matter – even if you are pulling a rickshaw, you can pull the rickshaw with deep compassion, with love, with respect for the passenger, with care about other people in the traffic.
I am making buddhahood simple and at the same time very complicated. It is very easy to sit under a bodhi tree in the lotus posture and declare to the world, “I am a buddha.” The real thing is when you are sitting by the side of your wife, constantly afraid, “One never knows when she will start nagging.”
When I was telling you the story yesterday about “Nag, nag, nag,” Miyah Farookh was pulling Zareen’s sari, with each nag reminding her, “Just know what you have been doing all your life.”