Good morning. Yesterday, after telling that story about the handless maiden, Olive, Olivia, someone mentioned that the first time they heard that story, it was maybe their first sashin, the shuso told the story. And when they heard that phrase, plunge in, plunge in your stumps, they realized that they were screaming inside, I can't, I can't, but I can't. Which was something that needed attention.

[01:08]

So you may be feeling, I can't, I can't, at this point, or some of you may be feeling that way and others feeling, I can, I think I can, you know, like the little engine that could, but it doesn't really matter what we're thinking, I can't or I can, what really matters is practicing fully and wholeheartedly with whatever is coming up in your mind, with whatever is arising. It's not so important what the content is, as long as you continue to practice. Now, we really do think the content is really, really important, and I don't want to discourage

[02:40]

anyone from looking at content if that's necessary, but do not think, in the Fukanso Zengyi it says, do not think good or bad, true or false, getting caught in good or bad and true and false will be a distraction. There's not much difference in terms of the nature of the content, the true or the false, are both arising in the same way, actually. So our former abbot, Norman Fisher, once said in Sesshin that he realized in his first Sesshin that there was pain and there was not liking the pain, and those were not, those could

[03:46]

be separated out, that wasn't just one thing. Our usual way of thinking is, if I don't like something or if there's pain, get away, change circumstances, but there can be pain and the concept or the thought or the idea, I don't like it, and there doesn't need to be any action taken to get away from. So, I'm not talking about the kind of pain that does need attention, and maybe there's some, there's confusion that arises around that too, I'm not talking about not taking care of yourself when you're ill or need medicine or moving in Sazen if there's something going on that you really feel is not beneficial. But often the pain that we're experiencing is laced with restlessness and irritation

[04:58]

and annoyance and wanting something to feel better. It's not necessarily what's going on is not harmful, not harmful to your body and mind, it's just that we don't like it. So if you can tease those apart, there's the sensation, just the sensation, the strong sensation, burning sensation, throbbing, you know, you can get into studying what it is, pulsing, throbbing, searing, come on, anymore, and I don't like it, and does the I don't like it equal get me out of here or I'm going to get out of here, I'm out of here. Is there another way to relate to what's happening in our life than I'm out of here?

[06:05]

So this is for each one of us to discover, and we often have strategies, okay, if I sit this way for this long and then do this, then that'll be okay for this long, and we get through by our strategies, which is another way that we live our lives, is to have designs, to strategize, to create favorable situation for us to get by. But I feel like in Sashin, at a certain point, strategies will not work. We can't arrange it to suit, and there's a giving up of all strategies and of all designs

[07:17]

and just resting, resting in the moment, whatever it is. That story about Suzuki Roshi about resting, he didn't get tired because doing all that rock work because he rested in each moment, and I feel that that resting is the resting in the nature of mind, resting in the truth of our life, not so much just relaxed, being a relaxed person, although that's part of it, but resting in the nature of mind, moment after moment. I wanted to read something that Dogen says about the body, this emphasis on the body.

[08:20]

Dogen said, in the way, excuse me, is the way attained by means of the mind or by means of the body? This is a question that someone or you might have, I might have. Is it by the mind or the body, or how do we think about this? In the scholastic schools, which is early wisdom Buddhism, they say that body and mind are identical, though they say that the path is attained by way of the body, yet they say it is because of this identity. Therefore the fact that it is truly the attainment of the body is not made clear. Now in our school, Soto Zen, both body and mind attain together. Between them, as long as you use your mind to judge and compare the Buddhist teachings, you will never attain it in 10,000 eons, in 1,000 lifetimes.

[09:27]

When you let go of your mind and abandon knowledge and understanding, that is when you attain or realize, you might say, instead of attain. The koans where someone sees form like peach blossoms and illuminates the mind or hears a sound like bamboo, a pebble against bamboo, and awakens to the way are also the realization of the body. Therefore, if you completely abandon the thoughts and views of the mind and simply sit, the path will be found near at hand. Thus the realization of the way is accomplished by means of the body. Therefore it is my feeling and advice that you should concentrate on sitting alone. You might say that this is commentary on Fukanza Zengi, this universal recommendation to sit,

[10:32]

to just sit, and recommending that we abandon thoughts and views of the mind and simply sit. So I wanted to try and talk about the practice of abandoning thoughts and views of the mind and simply sit. Abandoning thoughts and views, or good and bad, or true and false, because abandoning, in this case, is not, or letting go of, is not trying to get rid of or push out, nor is it taking hold and elaborating and getting very involved in that kind of thinking. So what is it that's neither getting totally involved or pushing away? And it's described as letting go, but there's, there is attention to what's going on.

[11:32]

So, the way the mind functions, the natural way that the mind functions is that there's only one object, consciousness has only one object at a time. There's only one object per moment. And as, what we understand as phenomena, like this machine that just started up over here to my left, and a bird over there to my right, and a cough over there in the back, those are shabda, those are sounds, and they are part of the first skanda, the skanda of form. Within form are the organs of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, sight, sound, smell, taste,

[12:51]

and touch, which we chant in the Heart Sutra. Those are all part of the form, the skanda of form. And then there's an eleventh, which is called avishnapti, rupa, or subtle form, which is material but at such a subtle level that we don't notice it except over time. And the example is like wrinkles or lines, smile lines, you know, you smile and smile and smile for fifty years, thirty-five, forty years, and then you notice there's smile, there's these lines in your face. When did those lines appear? So it's very subtly built up, but it's in form, form realm. So these sounds or phenomena, and it could be smellables and tasteables and touchables, visibles, hearables, are all called the field, they're in the field of our, and they're objects,

[14:02]

they're objects of the organs. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body have sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, they come together. And when they, what's called contact, provisionally it's called contact, there is a consciousness that comes up. Eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness. So it's three, it's a kind of three-part event. The organ functions naturally with its object in the field, and when they touch, there's consciousness. And we then, with another skanda, say bird, you know, but that's not part of form, that's not part of form, that's in samnya, together, maker.

[15:06]

That's the second form, perception, that's perception. Where we go back in our file of other sounds we've ever heard, and we go through and we say bird or blue jay, but the way the ear organ works, the ear organ doesn't know the difference between blue jay or owl, or tractor, or cough, or voice, it's just sound. It's the organ, the faculty of hearing, the organ and the sound come together, and there's sound consciousness, and even there it doesn't know blue jay or tractor. But the other skandas that are skandas associated with mind know, call it something,

[16:10]

and there's a concept of bird, blue jay. And then the samskara skanda, or the form, perceptions, feelings, perceptions, impulses, samskara, that's the skanda where it says, I hate blue jays, or why don't they stop coughing, or she's so boring. It's got a lot of commentary about something that's really kind of neutral, you know, blue jay. But samskara skanda is the world that is not neutral. It's got, due to our own past, and experiences, and conditioning, you know, someone hears a blue jay and they say, oh, it reminds me so much of Tassajara, I love that. And someone else says, squawk, squawk, why don't we get rid of those birds, you know. That's worlds, we live in our own worlds.

[17:14]

Each person has their own past, present, and future that is not shared, that is unable to be truly known or shared with another, although we can write poetry, and paint, and dance, and talk, and try to express to another our innermost reality. But the truth is, we alone are the one, this is our world. So we try, you know, these worlds try to talk to worlds, and we get angry because they don't understand, you know, how important it is to have oatmeal for breakfast, or whatever, you know, it's just our whole world. And someone else hates it, you know, so this is, but the taste of oatmeal, the oatmeal, the tasteable, is actually neutral,

[18:23]

but in the other skandhas we have the emotional content that goes along with it. So there is phenomena in the world, or the world of phenomena, but it is delivered to us through consciousness, which is concepts. So the mind, when I say that the mind has only one object per moment, this object is a concept. We actually can't grasp, it's ungraspable to grasp bird sound in some way, other than through concepts, and it's like conception, you know, it's birth, it's birth right there, the conception,

[19:24]

like the zygote, you know, is, I'm talking about the zygote, as yoked together or unified, it's the fertilized by the gametes, I hope I'm remembering all this, the female and male sex cells come together, and there's a zygote, a fertilized, there's conception right there, and this is what happens, there's these conceptions over and over and over. This is how the mind functions naturally, and when we pay attention and turn the light in, turn the light back to illuminate, like it says in the Fukanza Zenki, turn the light inward, shine back, the light, eko hensho, to look at the concepts, rather than looking out at phenomena or bird or voice

[20:27]

or these tastes and touchables, to actually realize these are concepts, they are delivered to us as concepts, and to rest there, to rest in the nature of mind that deals with concepts, the concepts come up with phenomena, always. We wouldn't know, it's not that there isn't something that might be going on outside of what I'm talking about, but we don't know anything about it. We only know in this conceptual way. Now, there's more about that, but I want to just stay here for a little bit. So while we're sitting, let's say we have this strong sensation, body sensation, and to allow the attention to...

[21:40]

Manasikara is attention. Sometimes we think of mind as just one big giant sort of blob, where there's body and mind, but in the Abhidharma there's careful delineations of different ways that different parts of the mind, you might say, work. One part which is associated with all minds, meaning wholesome or unwholesome, it doesn't matter, is a quality or a Dharma called Manasikara, which is attention. So the attention, if you bring the attention, which means turning the light inward, to the awareness of the concept, because that is the way the mind works, that's the way it functions naturally, there is a resting and a calmness and a tranquility in that practice,

[22:42]

because that's really the way the mind is functioning. So there's a deep resting and letting go of involvements and adding and subtracting good or bad or true or false, there's just resting in the attention to what's arising, the concept. And this is sometimes called Samatha, or tranquil abiding. So Bodhidharma taught that, he said, cease involvement in the external, or cease external involvement, and internally cease coughing or sighing in the mind. With the mind like a wall, we enter the way.

[23:49]

So the mind like a wall is this mind that, it's not like a wall, unfeeling and cold and cut off from everybody, I think of it as this kind of beautiful wall that you come upon in some old village, that's all mossy and, you know, it's dry wall, you could tell human beings fitted together, and it just stands there with the rain and the snow and the children climbing on it, and it just receives, it doesn't mind the rain and it doesn't mind the snow and it doesn't mind the squirrels and the children, and it's just like that. So the mind like a wall, that kind of feeling, that's completely willing for whatever is going to come up to come up. With the mind like a wall, we enter the way. Okay. So the abomination or the teaching is to cease the external involvement,

[24:56]

which is the mind not turning the light inward, but turning the light outward, and elaborating and adding to and hoping and wishing and fearing and running and hiding, without even knowing that we're doing that. I think to have hoping and fearing arising and relating to them as concepts of mind, there's really no problem. So it's very easy to go too far and say, well, you're trying to get rid of emotions, she's teaching about a dead way of living that's not true to my full expression of life. But I'm talking about where the attention is, not getting rid of, but how we place our attention on whatever's arising. And if we're not paying attention

[25:58]

and we're doing the elaborate, ceaseless involving ourselves and storytelling and greed, hate and delusion sort of operating freely like the rabbit I was talking about yesterday, the hoitsu, the rabbit haphazardly leaping around, there will be confusion, bewilderment and panic and it will be very hard, it can be very hard to find what resting in the moment is. And then internally, the teaching is, internally let go of coughing or sighing. Coughing or sighing is, to me, is a kind of complaining and poor me and I never, I always get the short end of the stick

[27:02]

and like that, that's a kind of coughing and sighing. And that's a kind of self-indulgence. Also, this hoitsu, fu hoitsu is no self-indulgence, but it's no rabbit jumping around. So we can indulge ourselves in lots of different ways. But a wall, this garden wall, is not self-indulgent, it just sits, it just sits and with the mind like a wall, we can enter the way. So I feel like this is maybe what Suzuki, when he said, I rest in every moment, my feeling was, as he's working in the garden, this may be completely my projection, right? This is how I understand it. He's not thinking,

[28:03]

gee, this is going to be a really good Zen garden and it's going to be better than those ones that are really famous in Japan and people will come from miles around to see the first Zen garden in America and I was the abbot of the Tassajara. I just have a feeling he wasn't thinking that way. I may be wrong, but while he's working on the garden, I think there's no gap between sensation of rock on skin and sunlight and heat or moving and sweat and it's just resting there, turning the light in. Manasikara, the attention is on the way the mind sees or relates to concepts. The vijnana or consciousness relates to concepts with just awareness. It's just aware of concepts.

[29:05]

Actually, the full functioning of consciousness doesn't relate to concepts with more concepts. It's just fully aware. It's aware of the concepts and awareness is not the same as making more concepts up about that which you are aware of. And there's a resting there because that is how the mind actually functions. So if we can be in alignment with the way our mind actually functions, there is rest, resting in the mind. So we have these days in front of us to practice this way, to practice studying our self this way

[30:07]

hour after hour, but not just during sitting, but during washing dishes time and serving and our orioke practice. You know, this one time I was doing orioke, practicing orioke, and as I was doing it I was thinking, I love teaching orioke. I really want to teach more orioke and really have disciples who really love orioke as well. And I will put emphasis on this. And then I dropped my spirit water little bowl into the spirit water bucket. I was horrified. The server was horrified. And then I had to fish it out. And I wasn't the first one in the row. I wasn't sitting in this seat. I was in another seat.

[31:08]

So there it was sort of in the bucket. That was one of the most awakening moments. Where was I? Where was I? I was involving myself in externals. I was the hands on the third bowl and turning it and bowing. I was completely somewhere else, self-indulging. And it's right there that we have a chance to wake up. It was wonderful. It was great for me. I don't know what it was for the server. She was really... We talked about it afterwards a little bit. But it was to actually to be brought back

[32:10]

and see how far I can get lost. It was wonderful. And orioke practice, that's to me what it's about. Sometimes I feel that there's the beginning of orioke and the end of orioke. But I feel there's certain... For me, the beginning of the orioke is when we bring the bowls and set them in front of us. And the last thing we do is after the last chant and we pick up the bowls and set them back. But somehow I feel what happens often is we're out the door, setting the bowls back there, putting them back in our place. We don't remember that, or think about it, or do we? Anyway, this is something I want to bring our attention to. To me, the ending of orioke is setting the bowls behind us

[33:11]

or to the side. And can we be there completely for that last form, that last form of setting the bowls down? And if so, how do they hit the wood? Do they make a sound? The orioke bowls are Buddha's head. The bowls themselves are symbolic of Buddha's head. If you were actually taking care of the head of the Buddha, it's kind of a graphic thought, but anyway, how would you set it down? And how would you put it before you? So before we open the bowls, there's the practice of orioke. And after we put the bowls, maybe it's like that hammer striking emptiness in its exquisite peel we hear everywhere. Are we right with our bowls then?

[34:13]

Sometimes I feel if we're hungry, especially in our salivating already, we just want to open them and get food. So can we stay with and rest in each moment? And I'm talking about concepts, actually. What we think of as body and all these tastes and sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touchables, as I said, we only understand them through concepts or through consciousness, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind consciousness. So what we're dealing with, we think, oh, these are bowls out there in the world, but our experience of bowls can only be through consciousness. The feeling on our hand is a concept. Now... We believe that it's a body out there in the world,

[35:24]

and whether there is a body somehow, some way, we can't really get at. We can't get at it. We can't grasp it. How the body is in actuality is ungraspable, although I have a note that says, always available, always ungraspable. It's a note from a class from Red. Always available and forever ungraspable, or always ungraspable. We can't get hold of it in the way we kid ourselves that we can. So our own body as well, not just the orioke bowls, and if you do an analyzation in terms of interdependency with your own body

[36:24]

or with the Buddha bowls you see, there are no bowls there, meaning the bowls are made up of non-bowl elements. Our body is made up of non-body elements. And thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh's book, The Heart of Understanding, where he talks about the Heart Sutra, through his very clear description, I finally felt I had an intellectual grasp of emptiness, or what we're talking about when we say interdependent. I finally felt I intellectually could... I had a conception, finally. Before that it was just... It was overwhelming to hear about emptiness, but to have a conception was at least something to study, that I could study finally. So the orioke bowls, just briefly, are the claws, let's say,

[37:26]

are made of threads that are cotton, and the cotton depended on these cotton fields that depended on water and earth and sky and the cotton pickers and the weavers who made the cloth and all those things are in that cotton cloth. And take any one away, and there are no orioke claws. And so we look and we say, these are orioke claws, but there's nothing in the orioke claws that is an orioke cloth. It's all made up of non-orioke cloth elements. And those elements include the entire world, the sun, the moon, the stars, the entire earth, and all the ancestors back to the first people on earth, the first zygote that made those cotton weaver people

[38:27]

and the planters, and it's all there in the orioke claws. So it's like, well, how do you get them made then? How do you even talk about it? You say, you know, please cut the bolt of cosmos to make these orioke claws. So for short, just for short, we call them orioke claws. We call it cotton. We call it bowls. But actually, the secret is, it's the entire universe is there. The entire universe is there, which is partly why we raise them up in the air, and bow, and eat in a noble posture, because we are able to set out Buddha's bowls and receive food and practice the way. And this is the mystery of our life, that we are no different than the entire universe, and we are our own unique orioke cloth.

[39:29]

We are our own unique being with a name. When someone calls our name, we say, Hi, you know. But that's just shorthand, really. So in our practice of orioke, to rest... So if there are orioke bowls out there somewhere in the universe, we don't know about them. We only know what we know through our consciousness, through these eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind consciousness, through the skandhas. That is our... That's the human realm. So there's a koan. It's a long koan, but the end of it is, the teacher is on their deathbed, and he's trying to get his students to understand, and they're saying things that he feels are just... He says, How miserable!

[40:30]

You know, they're not understanding, and he's about to die. So he says, You should experientially understand what my teacher said, which is, Before the eyes, there are no things. The meaning is before the eyes. There are no things before the eyes. It's beyond the reach of eyes and ears. So there is meaning all over the place, concepts. There is mental representation, and we each have our own meaning, our own world. We each are the world-honored one. But that which is before our eyes is beyond the reach of eyes and ears. It's beyond. That's outside of our reach. It's ungraspable. But we can be aware of how we operate,

[41:34]

aware of the functioning of mind, and aware of resting in the nature of mind. And this tranquil abiding, tranquility, serenity, calm, calmness, without the confusion of this involving in externals or coughing and sighing internally, just coursing along, moment after moment, with whatever the ten thousand things come forward to us, uniquely, uniquely, and we can study the way. We can enter and study the way. And there is shamatha, or calm abiding,

[42:40]

is not the end of the story, but it is highly recommended as a necessary ingredient for insight into interdependence. It's very hard to understand emptiness or interdependence with a confused body and mind. So we have these practices that have been passed down through the ages, through all the Buddhas and ancestors. Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we. We, in turn, will be Buddhas and ancestors. So our gratefulness is unending. So this is our mystery, that we are both the entire cosmos, universe,

[43:41]

and we are our unique breeze of reality. It's from another koan, the unique breeze of reality. And these two are not separate. So as we sit, working with our own unique experience, our own... We can't trade it in for another model. The handless maiden, she was abandoned, she was abused, she was treated poorly, she was lied to, you know. And this happens to us. All these things. And we can't trade it in for another model. We really can just rest there and plunge in with whoever we are.

[44:44]

Plunging in, in this case, means turn the light back, plunge in there with whatever is arising, bring your attention to the mind that thinks about bird, the mind that thinks about this pain in my knees. There's a mind, this is a sensation, but it's feeling consciousness. Or touchable, I should say. Feeling, just to distinguish between the skanda of feeling. It's touchable, consciousness of touching. And this is a concept. So think back to the mind that thinks. Think back, turn the light back

[45:50]

and pay attention to whatever is coming up, but not as an external or as an internal, but as... it's like a mystery. And rest there. Thank you very much.

[46:22]

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