The fifth day of saschina is an interesting day. I always find it an interesting day, unlike the other days which are not interesting. Because oftentimes on the fifth day we've been through four days, our mind is more settled than usual, even if you have lots of thoughts going back and forth, still underneath there's a settleness that, if you're willing to admit, is there. But then the interesting thing, for me anyway, what happens is that all this time, you know, the self and you, the so-called self and you, or better half, I don't know, have been going in the same direction, oftentimes because we think we're going to get something from saschina. So here we are, willing and ready to go into saschina, and we're kind of, maybe a little

[01:07]

bit dreading it, but also, I mean, after all, we have committed ourselves to do this, so we have been wanting to do this for some reason, and oftentimes the reason is because we think that we're going to get better, or we're going to get something. And even if we get a little taste of something, we have a slight suspicion that it may not last and solve our problems ultimately. So around the end of the fourth day and the fifth day we begin to wonder, sitting here in this achy body, maybe we should rethink, maybe it's time to rethink. So this is why it's really interesting to me, because it's the time when we actually

[02:08]

need to recommit. We are more settled, the mind is more stable and focused, and now we can really get to work at nothing. So the only difficulty we may have at getting to work at nothing is this resistance, this just slight struggle that might be coming up, or this undercurrent of, maybe what's happening exactly now is just not quite enough, almost, maybe not bad even, but just not quite

[03:11]

enough. And the reason why it's interesting is because when we have our usual distractions, you know, the dramas, the big thoughts of this, that and the other thing, whatever, we don't really think that that's the self, you know, distracting us from something, we think that's our life. But now when we get settled and we've seen the same old tapes over and over and over again, we can actually take a peek at how the self works.

[04:11]

How we recreate over and over again a sense of separation, how we rebuild over and over again the wall that closes in front of our always open heart. This is what we can watch now, not the distractions, not the gross tapes, but watch more deeply how grasping to these stories, to this resistance, to the judgments, recreates a sense of separation that we cling to, and this is a mistake.

[05:18]

This is the fundamental mistake. And now it can be in clear view. So, you might take a moment sometime today to recommit in the midst of the aching body, if you have one, in the midst of the blabbing mind. Take a moment and recommit and see if you can notice, not the content, but how the grabbing

[06:25]

onto the content works to rebuild a sense of separation, to solidify a sense of separation that is the underpinning for our suffering and the suffering of the world. So, use the forms again, your posture, and whatever helps you to continue developing continuity of present awareness, and see in a relaxed way if you can just notice every

[07:26]

time you recreate a barrier, every time you recreate separation, feel what that feels like, and if you can, renounce it, reconnect with the truth of our existence. Another way of looking at the same thing is to notice change.

[08:29]

We must have, by this time, after four days of sitting, noticed that everything is arising and passing away. Our thoughts, our physical sensations, arise and pass away. Everything is in constant motion. When I was young, I was looking for truth, some kind of truth to hang on to, and I formed it as a question. The question was, is there anything I can depend on?

[09:33]

I think that was the question. Is there anything that is always true? That's what I wanted to know. I really wanted to know if there was anything that I could count on. It didn't look like it in my life. So, I held that question, and one day in junior high, I was 12, and junior high as I was walking across the quad, I went to Van Nuys Junior High, it was a tough school, as I remember. At lunch we used to go to Bob's Big Boy for hamburger. I think it was the original place in the United States that served double, double? I think so. I think it was. Yeah, exactly. Bob's Big Boy. It was delicious, as I remember, but out back, people were smoking pot, and there were gangs

[10:43]

and things like that that I didn't know about. I was told this later by my brother. Anyway, there I was, this pretty innocent 12-year-old, miserable, beyond miserable. I was so miserable. Walking across the quad, there was grass, and I was carrying my little flute, little person, little flute, and on the way to orchestra rehearsal, and then all of a sudden, I really got it. I really understood that the one thing I could really count on to be the same all the time was that everything changes. There was pretty good insight. So sitting here for four days, that should be clear. Everything changes.

[11:45]

If we look closely into that truth, look deeper into that truth, we know a couple of things. One is that the view of ourself as separate and solid can't be true, because we are changing also. And if we look at how everything changes, it's clear that everything is totally connected. We can't remove anything from this web of interconnection. You know, the machine is not working right now, and I am almost teary-eyed about it,

[12:58]

because I went to them and I asked them if they could, between a certain amount of time, not work the machine, and I think they maybe did. And it may start again, you know, but we have some time of quiet. And it's in that way that the heart bursts with gratitude, in the way that we're supported all the time by life. It would have been okay too if they kept going. So, what we do when we feel separate is we buy into this idea that I'm alone, and it's very painful, but if we can understand our interconnectedness, we have a chance of asking

[14:04]

for help, for comfort, for support, to be able to give something. The last talk that Kathagiri Roshi, my teacher, gave at Hokyo-ji, which was his monastery in Minnesota, was on a Dogon fascicle called Flowers in the Sky. And when I read this one sentence, I hear it in his voice. It's about the interconnectedness of everything, it's a very short sentence, it says, quote, [...] one flower opens with five petals, forming

[15:10]

a fruit which ripens of its own accord. He had trouble saying Rs, so I hear the Rs kind of funny. One flower opens with five petals forming a fruit which ripens of its own accord. What is the flower? What is the petal? Is there a petal without the flower? Is there a flower without the petals? Where does one end and the other one begin? Where does my life as an individual end and somebody else's life begin? Where does the tree's exhaling carbon dioxide end and my breathing that breath in?

[16:13]

Where does that begin? My exhaling oxygen. I don't exhale oxygen? It exhales carbon dioxide? No. The tree... Who told me carbon dioxide? You get the idea though, huh? Isn't that great? And here's another great thing. I was going to talk about flowers fall, I mean, you know, flowers in the sky. And today, for the first day, I had flowers here on the little stand. It's all connected. We just have to notice. If one is not a Buddha or a Zen adept, one does not know when a flower blooms the world

[17:28]

comes into being. A flower blooms is in front three by three and back three by three. In order to fulfill this number of members, all things are assembled and made grandiose. Invoking this principle, one can know the measure of spring and autumn. But it's not that there are flowers and fruits in spring and autumn. Being-time always has flowers and fruit. Flowers and fruit together preserve time and season. Time and season together preserve flowers and fruit. For this, you know, I was going to interpret it for you, but I don't have to. I'm sure you understand. For this reason, the hundred plants all have flowers and fruits. All trees have flowers and fruits.

[18:29]

Gold, silver, copper, iron, coral, and jewel trees all have flowers and fruits. Earth, water, fire, air, and space, trees, all have flowers and fruits. Human trees have flowers. Human flowers have flowers. Even withered trees have flowers. When a flower blooms, there is spring. When a flower blooms, there is spring.

[19:49]

You know, I think that's kind of basically all I want to say, really. I wanted to say, to ask you to just track yourself, track the small self, to just pay attention to pain, to your pain. Because in tracking our own pain and being open to it, understanding that, you know, because everything changes, all of this pain is dependently co-arisen. It's not my pain. But as I'm open to my pain, understanding all of this is changing, independently co-arisen or interconnected, I can then know another person's pain, because it's one life that we're leading. So during saschin, it's a really good time to pay attention to how it is that we create

[21:00]

and believe in this separation, because it's when we feel separate that we allow ourselves to reify our own self. And this is just simply a mistaken view. The truth of our existence is that we share one life, and that when I see another person in pain, I understand that person's pain because I understand my own pain. Okay? And when we are able to settle and be able to watch clearly the self and how it's working, Okay, we are, many words pass through my mind, one of them is awestruck.

[22:07]

Because if you really see how yourself is working to recreate you in these habit ways of pain, and when you see that it's dependently co-arisen, you understand that it's working kind of by itself, and it wants to maintain its sense of separation, and it doesn't care if you're unhappy. Once you really see that, you won't any longer be entertained by any of the thoughts that keep you separate. Okay? Now another consistent experience that we have during satsang is not just that everything changes, but there is something there always that doesn't change.

[23:14]

I didn't get this when I was a kid. There is something always there that doesn't change. There are actually two things that are there that doesn't change, always there. When we are coming from a place of self, we're using concepts and basically a divided consciousness. But when we rest in the space of awareness and don't push away or grab onto conceptual

[24:17]

reality, dualistic conceptual reality, what we find there is a stable, silent, vast, Suzuki Roshi calls it big mind. It's an awareness somehow or another that comes out of existence. It's not my personal awareness, it's not your personal awareness necessarily. It just is. It is what we are fundamentally under all of the distractions of content. And we are this clear, seeing, silent, still, sky-like, it's often called sky-like awareness, sky-mind.

[25:30]

That's there all the time and it's so close to us that we miss it because we always interpret the dualistic consciousness as me. And the other thing that's there all the time that we also miss out of fear is that our heart is open all the time. So the other night I suggested some words and I think that when we sit so much we have a chance sometimes to do this kind of compassion practices. We can devote, if you feel like it, maybe one period a day or even the first like ten

[26:36]

minutes when you're trying to just settle the mind at the beginning of any period. Compassion practices are actually concentration practices. They help settle and stabilize the mind. So at the beginning of a meditation period it's good to do that, if you feel like it. You can do a few verses of metta or a little bit of tonglen to touch that place in you that does exist, that is our capacity, that is our true nature, that is not a feeling but is an attitude born out of an understanding of our connectedness with everything. So even the intention to send goodwill, happiness, lack of suffering, physical well-being, equanimity,

[27:38]

ease, joy, peace, that intention itself comes from the core of our being. And it helps us loosen the grasping that we do around this creating of barriers between self and our own experience, let alone self and other. I brought another thing I've dug in. And Zen, what Zen recommends, of course, is this wholehearted devotion to whatever the activity is that you're doing. So Dogen calls that suchness.

[28:40]

So I'm reading from Imyo, which is such, his fascicle. If you want to attain such a thing, you must be such a person. Then, since you are such a person, why trouble with such a thing? Once hearing the chimes hung in a chamber ring when blown by the wind, a student asked Kyeshatta, quote, Would you say the wind is ringing or are the chimes ringing? Kyeshatta said, It is not the wind ringing or the chimes ringing. It is my mind ringing. And what is the mind?

[29:42]

Kyeshatta said, Both are silent. His teacher said, Good, good. Wisdom is not learned in people. It doesn't arise of itself. Wisdom is communicated to wisdom. Wisdom seeks wisdom. Wisdom is not imbued with thought. Wisdom is not devoid of thought. Wisdom is not, I would say, you could just put the word awareness in there. Wisdom is not mindful. Wisdom is not mindless. How much less has it to do with great or small? How much less is it a question of delusion or enlightenment? And the last one. When he had been pounding rice day and night for a mere eight months, one night when it

[30:50]

was very late, Daimon himself stole into the millery and asked, Is the rice polished yet? He said, It's polished but not sifted. Daimon struck the mortar thrice with his staff, whereupon the sixth patriarch sifted the rice in the sieve three times, responding to. This is called the moment of the meshing of the path of teacher and apprentice. Though one doesn't know oneself and others do not understand, the transmission of the teaching in the robe is indeed the precise time of being such. And another question.

[31:51]

I've heard that in the South they directly point to the human mind, see its nature and attain Buddhahood. I really do not understand this and hope you will be so compassionate as to give me some indication of it. In reply to Yakasan's question, Sekito said, It cannot be grasped as such. It cannot be grasped as not such. As such or not such, it cannot be grasped at all. So, what about you? These people are talking about the mind that is our birthright, that doesn't have to be built or acquired or developed or anything like that. We have it already. The question is, do we have the commitment, the stamina, the courage, the will, the patience,

[33:05]

the kindness to ourselves to study the barriers that we create and believe are me? To study them and then let them go. It says over and over in the literature, We all are Buddha nature. We all have already the mind of awakening. We all have already the heart that has the capacity to love everything

[34:15]

without excluding nothing. We just have some work to do. Find the self clearly. See it clearly. Renounce all the barriers, all the sense of separation. This is the committed life of a Buddhist. Dogen asks, what about you? Suzuki Roshi said, the most difficult part of practice is just to keep going.

[36:33]

So, on the fifth day, we have a good chance to help each other with this work. We can recommit together to developing a continuity of presence with some tenderness for ourselves and each other. Trying to let our life, the life that is there already, have a place to live.

[37:19]

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