We are in the middle of, or not the middle, the second day of, beginning of Sesshin. And yesterday I spoke about, in a pretty simple way – can you hear me in the back? Okay. In a pretty simple way about relaxation, putting several of you to sleep. It's good you can sleep in Zazen, it means you don't have too many worries on your mind, but still, anyway, I won't say any more. I can't express in words what I mean by relaxation.

[01:11]

Yesterday I spoke about your hands and your breathing, and your volume of air that you begin to be able to maintain your presence with. Now, your chest, or your volume of air, is as expressive as your hands, your gesturing or your face, although most of us are much less aware of it, and we go around with a rather stale chest, in which very little of the air changes. By presence, I say present

[02:21]

with your volume of air, with your breathing, but actually, again, I can't express exactly. If I say anything, the best it is, is a door. To say, be present, does not describe what we mean in Zen as our fundamental existence, but anything you describe can only be the door. So, from a dualistic way of viewing things, if I say to be present, it's this edge of not having any observer at all. You may have a dream in which you're conscious while you're sleeping, you're conscious

[03:39]

you're sleeping, and in addition to being conscious that you're sleeping, you're conscious that you're dreaming. And in the dream you may be seeing a movie, and in the dream you know you're seeing a movie, and the movie may be a real movie that you know you're going to see, but you haven't seen yet, and yet you're watching it in your dream, quite vividly about some historical period. And then you may switch to being in the movie, anyway, this kind of dream occurs to us. And sometimes we get caught by one of the views or another, although we may sense them

[04:52]

all simultaneously, too. And if you listen carefully to various teachers or people who speak about things, philosophers or religious teachers, any kind, usually they predominate or emphasize one point of view, one kind of observer over another. The purpose of Zen practice is to not have any observer, or to have all observers equally present, so you're not biased by one or another. Usually, particularly if you feel strongly anger or desire or something, you have a faint memory of the viewpoint which is not angry, and you try to switch over to it, but you

[05:54]

can't. But if your practice is quite thorough, it's easy, you don't get caught by any point of view. And in many and many points of view, the nature of our consciousness is many and many points of view. The many-faceted nature of our consciousness becomes more and more present, and it's great simplicity when you are no longer fooled by it. So, this

[07:00]

is kind of consciousness, I can't call it consciousness. Maybe, relaxation again. And I mentioned yesterday, too, in this session we will try to find, emphasize our understanding

[08:14]

from the point of view of suffering. And if I say this, many of you actually will find some suffering arising in the session, some psychological terror or anxiety, or what you fear most, and we don't want to emphasize that too much, but do not entirely escape from it, to let it come up, you know, as much as we can handle it, and face it with the attitude that there's no relief from it. If you can take the attitude, this ancient instruction, that there's no relief from your most intimate and insecure place.

[09:35]

This is a kind of relaxation, to allow your many facets to come out. Yesterday I also spoke about shadow. Suzuki Roshi used to say, we didn't have enough shadow, and I was trying to give you some feeling for what he meant. And having just returned from Japan, I was thinking about the many restaurants in Kyoto.

[10:39]

Everywhere you go, there are many, [...] many restaurants. And you can never quite fathom all the restaurants, there are too many. It's as if you had some... I don't know if Ernie's is a good restaurant or not, but if Ernie's is a good restaurant and has an excellent French chef, shall we say, if San Francisco had one thousand such French chefs, and many of them specializing in just, say, potatoes, ten years learning how to cook potatoes only. And such a person didn't need to have a restaurant which was known as San Francisco's famous restaurant, but was quite content to cook such excellent food in a little corner restaurant

[11:43]

with three stools. Three people or four people or ten people only could come. This kind of feeling is part of what Suzuki Roshi meant by shadow. That you don't have to have your life reflected on every facet. You don't have to so simplify life that it's possible to reflect on every facet. You find life so many-faceted, your own mind so many-faceted, that you long ago have given up trying to be on every facet. You're so relieved that everyone is taking care of their many lives, so you can live

[12:56]

and die just in your corner neighborhood. And your situation may extend, but you're not worried about it. On the one hand, we have Mumon Roshi, Yamada Mumon Roshi in Kyoto, who is very, very famous and known as one of the best calligraphers in Japan. And he always has several months of things stacked around him to have his calligraphy put on. If he's going to write on a scroll, even put his name on the outside of the box of a scroll that he wrote, you may have to wait two months or six months or a year before he can do it,

[14:02]

because every day they bring him stacks, and he does some next day stacks, he does some. Anyway, Mumon Roshi is quite famous. And at the same time, Suzuki Roshi lived in the mountain temple, and no one knew him, almost no one knew him. And it's exactly the same. His situation brought him here, but he had no intention of teaching in some special way, or being known in Japan or America. There's a Blue Cliff Records story, number 11, Huang Po, who was a very famous teacher.

[15:21]

Actually, Dogen said he was better than Baso. Everyone thinks Baso is the best, so to say better than Baso means Dogen's way of saying Huang Po was quite good. The same as the Sixth Patriarch and Bodhidharma, Dogen said. And no one called him arrogant. This is one danger of being a good teacher like Huang Po. Suzuki Roshi always liked Joshi too, for the same reason. And on Suzuki Roshi's 65th birthday, he regretted that his practice, he said, his study had

[16:23]

not been sincere enough. He said, I thought I was sincere, but it wasn't enough. As you get old, you feel that way, he said. He said, now I'm 65, and I wish I could do the practice of Joshi, who was enlightened when he was about 18, stayed with his teacher and practiced as an ordinary monk until he was in his 60s. I don't know exactly, 60 or 65. And when he was that old, he started a new practice, Suzuki Roshi said, of going and visiting many teachers, but just as ordinary monk, coming and visiting. And Suzuki Roshi said he wished he could do this kind of practice.

[17:26]

But by contrast, it seems, Obaku, or Huang Po, in Blue Cliff Records No. 11, addresses the group of people coming to his teisho, saying, you wine suckers, it means the dregs of the wine, I don't know grape wine or sake wine, in fact, in monasteries they serve you the dregs of sake wine, the rice, on cold sashi nights, and it tastes wonderful, incredible aroma and very hot. Anyway, he says, you wine suckers, or something like that, meaning you don't wait until the wine is finished, you're at the grapes or the rice as soon as possible, and getting

[18:38]

what you can from it, some intoxication. So he says, you wine suckers, going from teacher to teacher, journeying about, what do you think you're doing? What about this day? Don't you know in all of the Tang Dynasty there is no teacher of Zen? And some monk said, what, whatever he called him, Huang Po San, there are many monasteries and many sanghas and many people studying Zen all over China, what are they doing?

[19:41]

And Huang Po said, I didn't say there was no Zen, I only said there was no teacher of Zen. Anyway, in various ways I'd like to discuss this story during sesshin. Suzuki Roshi wanted to do Joshu's practice of visiting a teacher, and Huang Po calls the people in his audience, wine suckers, because they are visiting many teachers. We study Zen from various points of view. One point of view is we study the teaching of Buddhism in general, emphasizing emptiness.

[20:51]

This is our beginner's practice. In Zen this is the beginner's practice. In Suzuki Roshi's way this is how we begin practice, with posture and counting our breathing and various ways to find out the awakening of our mind and body and studying Buddhism in general, Tathagata Buddhism. Emphasizing emptiness. And next we emphasize our lineage, our teachers. And Buddha is not in the category of a god or some unattainable being for us.

[21:59]

In Zen, Buddha, our ancestors reached to Buddha. Buddhism is in your own hand, and Buddha reaches to us. In this stage we emphasize our koans too, finding out by student's own ability to bring our koan to conclusion. This is warm hand to warm hand practice. And another kind of practice, a more essential kind of practice, is all viewpoints at once,

[23:11]

is emphasizing our descendants rather than emphasizing our teachers, is emphasizing our contemporaries. Our realization is expressed in our students, our practice is done with our students, our practice is done with our contemporaries. Our contemporaries express our realization. This is essentially Suzuki Roshi's way of practice. In this way there is nothing that can be taught to you, there is no instruction that

[24:14]

can be given to you, though we share a sense of clues in the beginning. You have a feeling, some relief, you're onto something, you can't express it, you can't imagine it, but you feel something, some vein opening. And you then look at your teacher or your fellows practicing with you and find they already know it too. So you can't imagine it, you can't think it, but you can find some clue of it in your friend.

[25:16]

So in this way, with relief, you can face anything. You can recognize even the most unimaginable suffering. Suffering usually is that which we reject, that which we don't want to be ours. You recognize it as your own, indefinitely, forever. And your sense of an indestructible space, which we are always on various occasions embodying,

[27:10]

strikes you at peculiar moments, crossing, driving through an intersection, talking with someone, sensing suddenly your own posture, finding all views simultaneous and no observer, all dissolving, no observer. Finding the ability to emotionally open, as occasionally we may do in a movie or a book, so difficult to do on every occasion with each person. To be so vulnerable you must be able to face your greatest suffering without any certainty.

[28:36]

So we are always searching for relief. So seishin is to bring us back to this opportunity. Back to this chance to stop our treading water. Thank you.

[29:56]

It's so instructive for us to be here. Just together. As Suzuki Roshi said, to hear the deep, true human voice or Buddha voice from each person, you must be able to listen. Thank you.

[31:40]

Is there anything you'd like to talk about? I suppose when you talk about seishin, some people might say it's psychological terror. You're right. It's not in front of us. It's not in front of us. It's not in front of us.

[33:08]

It's not in front of us. I didn't mean to say you shouldn't confront it. I know the depth of some people's anxiety. And they are practicing, so they are getting stronger, and I have confidence they will

[34:13]

be able to face it completely. But if I am not careful in what I say, someone who isn't ready gets too upset. If they're not practicing, and if I have the time to spend with them, it's okay. But we can build such things too, force them on us. And I think for our practice, if it comes up, you face it.

[35:14]

At some point you may want to make it as big as possible. But I think a seishin like this, where not everybody is so experienced, and some people stay away from zazen and seishin because it's too much for them. Some of these people do primal therapy too, but they can't do seishins. There may be people who can do seishins who can't do primal therapy.

[36:19]

I'm not making some value. But emphasizing some difficult experience, or facing some dragon, western dragon, is not the purpose of santa practice, but rather to be free of any point of view. So we're not trying to wash out some bad experience or some hang-up.

[37:26]

That's a particular emphasis which zazen doesn't do. If it comes up, we face it, that's all. Something else? No. Sometimes I think about zazen I can't think of now, but I think I will probably do it when I start the next day. But sometimes if you get something big enough that you're going to have community care and stuff, then you have to go back to more community care and stuff. And sometimes you have to be really good at community care. Is that something that you can make an actual conscious choice about? Do I do zazen or not do zazen? I'm going to end up with some method of either staying with something or retreating from

[38:39]

something. Again, zen psychology doesn't have the idea of some buried event that we have to get out. So, it may be so, but to our way of practicing it's relatively unimportant. Are you answering my question? Just be patient. I think you answered my question. So, it's more useful to be able to go back and forth between familiar and unfamiliar territory than to completely face unfamiliar territory. If you can go back and forth between familiar and unfamiliar territory, then eventually all territory can be available to you. And usually I don't like to see you suffer too much, you or anyone.

[39:51]

So, I say, learn to come back to a little more familiar territory and get your bearings and then strike out again. But sometimes we face it. I remember, I've told you before, that I decided once to encourage all dark areas, all darkness to come up. And I kept asking myself this to happen over and over again. Every dark area come up. Something else? Yes. From a slightly different point of view, it seems like encouraging some dark areas to

[41:05]

come up is... I'm thinking of some of the lines from the past five years as a researcher where there's a suggestion that there's normally fundamentally no qualification between some bad experience and some good experience. And the suggestion is just to understand kind of the more fundamental, maybe, dark qualities to gain from them. So, would that be an alternative attitude? Yes. But as long as you have fear of something, your practice, that kind of practice doesn't work either. So, the important thing, maybe, from the point of view you're talking about, is to get rid

[42:08]

of your fear. So, if there's something you're afraid of, some dark area or some going crazy or some sickness. Tsukuyoshi's teacher, you know, told him that he was going to get a terrible bone disease, that he was going to distort his face and, you know, crush his brain and etc. It was such a disease, I guess. And he believed his teacher, and every day he'd look in the mirror and check, until he resigned himself to it. Maybe Roshi was a little vain, or he was a rather attractive young man. So, once you have no fear, there's no dark areas anymore.

[43:18]

But if you have fear, there are so many things you can't do, actually. One fear covers everything. So, as you know, in the Prajnaparamita literature, it starts out, the earliest thing is, you know, in the face of such and such and such and such. There's no trembling, no fear. Yes? It is, um, sometimes isn't it easier to face it than to be aware of it? Once more, please. If you are afraid of something, and you don't want to do it, isn't it sort of a good idea to indulge in indulgence of feelings about that fear, to be able to face it?

[44:25]

I don't think so. Could you hear what she said? She said, if I don't repeat it correctly, would you correct me, please? That if you have some fear, isn't it good to indulge in that fear, or feelings about it, so that you can face it more completely? Is that what you mean? I don't think so. Maybe that's one... In many years of practicing, you experiment with everything, so you will try that, you know. But on the whole, we have some fear, you know, because we like it. So if you indulge yourself, it's like just an excuse. Usually you're not really trying to face your fear, but trying to make it stronger, under the guise of facing it. So, I think if you're practicing, and you're alert, the ordinary situations that you face

[45:30]

are enough. If in each moment you just face it, that's enough. And when your fear is there, you just face it, but you don't necessarily force it to come up. Though if you know you have some area that you constantly avoid, then I think all of us have the feeling, someday I'd like to face that. That someday, if you sincerely want to face it someday, and you feel that through and through, that someday will come pretty soon. But you don't have to, you know, bring it up. If you don't bring it up and you're practicing, and you don't know how to get to it, your teacher may do it to you. But that's another subject. Yes? I was thinking about relaxation yesterday.

[46:34]

Something that's come up with me where I'll feel it when I'm sitting down in front of the lines at the beginning of the period, and I'll feel a tension that starts creeping in. And it's a question of whether if I keep trying to return to the relaxed state, which means every two seconds, interrupting the state of consciousness, to return to a relaxed state, or to maybe see where the tension goes, to sort of let the tension completely creep in towards some state. Can you hear in the back, okay? He said, when tension is creeping in, should you try to relax? I'm simplifying. Should you try to relax, or just relax and let it creep in?

[47:40]

I'd do the latter. Sometimes you may shake yourself, particularly if you're involved in tightening yourself up. But not to mind too much what happens is relaxation, even if it's tension. To keep disturbing yourself with getting rid of tension is relaxation. I don't have any word for relaxation, but what I was speaking about yesterday is how this posture, while this posture is quite straight, we, to practice as an, you should be completely relaxed through and through. We sit this way because it requires very little musculature to support ourselves, because it's

[48:49]

the one position we can relax most completely. So, not to have some mental posture, which makes our body rigid and puts us to sleep. But each part, each facet, doing its own zazen. I think I've spoken enough about this no teaching story for today. How to stop trying to locate your life.

[50:07]

Namaste.

[50:08]

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