If you were listening to our chanting just now, you may have heard us coming together as one. Whether we think so or not, sitting together like this the last few days brings us together. It's nice. It's nice. So, how are we doing?

[01:06]

Does it matter? Some of us are still being lived by our old habitual karma. And that's okay. As a matter of fact, that's what my talk is about, so.

[02:21]

It really is okay if we are, you know, being lived by our old habitual karma, but some of us are a little bit more lived by it right now than others, and that is okay. And some of us are a little less involved with that and are a little bit more present, and that's okay. I feel like I'm in a duet. Me, and then them, and then me, and then them.

[03:41]

I was listening to the radio the other day, sometime in the past, and there's some wonderful things happening in music right now, in jazz. What I want to say is that we've put in a lot of effort these past few days, so please, there's a tendency now to kind of slack off a little bit. Just be careful, don't do that. If you are, what, just getting a little bit tired of the event, you know, it's not new

[04:47]

anymore, you kind of know what's going on in your own mind, and if you want a little bit of distraction, or not, there's a tendency at this stage to loosen up a little bit, but be careful. I'm talking now, it's my turn. It was a yellow truck. Anyway, it's going to be a strange talk. What was I saying? Oh, thank you. Don't... Be careful, because we've built a certain momentum. I hate to talk this way, but we've built a certain momentum of mindfulness. No matter what your state of mind, it doesn't matter.

[05:50]

You've still been building this kind of mindfulness, and now is the time to kind of solidify the foundation. See if you can develop, continue this continuity now. Don't look around the Zen Do, don't break your silence, keep as much into yourself as you can, and try to develop this continuity. You've been gathering the mind, gathering the mind, it's getting gathered, whether you think so or not, it's getting gathered, so now you want to settle and have some continuity, develop some continuity. Anyway, if it's too easy for you, and for some people they're having an okay time, if it's too easy, pick something, make it a little bit more difficult so that you have to be present. Do your orioke with the opposite hand, or, you know, brush your teeth with the opposite

[06:54]

hand, or give yourself a practice, do the forms more meticulously. Pay much more attention to the forms. It's all there to bring you present. That's what I wanted to say first. So I guess for the next little bit of time I'm going to tell you the same thing, but in a different way. Thoreau said in Walden Pond, no, he didn't say it in Walden Pond, he said it while he was at Walden Pond.

[07:55]

He said, I was interrupted from my reading by the sound of a train. I looked up and saw a carload of torn sails, and I could read the sails as though it was written in a book, their history of the storms they had weathered and been torn through. So, for a few days now, we've been looking at this apparent self, watching and studying, gathering information about our history, all the storms, the wounds, the stories, written for us to see on our very own familiar, somewhat beaten up sails, that have actually helped

[09:04]

us weather the storms of our life to this point. It's all written there. In that sail, in that cloth, some parts are strong and we should acknowledge it. Some parts are weak and we should acknowledge that too. Some parts are torn through. Some parts are sewn together. Some parts are fresh and clean, and we don't know where it's taking us. But we must study it thoroughly. And when I say study it, I don't mean analyzing it.

[10:05]

I mean simply watching. And that's how we study. In order to do that, we have to be awake, present. And a little bit, it helps to be a little bit tender, because the closer we get to the thoughts that we actually, truly are identified with as me, the closer we get there, the more careful we have to be. So the other day, on Wednesday, I wanted to tell you a story about Nanyue and polishing the tile, and I wanted to wait until Sashin, so I'm going to tell it today. Nanyue was a disciple of our sixth ancestor.

[11:13]

His name was Daikun Eno in Chinese, and it was said that he was a big, the image anyway, is of an ox, big strong man, and he had two great disciples, they say, and each one was a horn of the ox, like that, strong. And one of them was Seigen, we recite his name every morning, Soto person. And the other one was Nanyue, Rinzai lineage. So anyway, Daikun Eno, Nanyue, Matsu. Matsu was a disciple of Nanyue, also a great, great master. I never met him myself, but who knows, in a past life, maybe. This is the story.

[12:23]

So Matsu was sitting, Sazen, and Nanyue came by and said to him, and I have to read it exactly, he said, what is your intention in doing Sazen? And Matsu said, you may know this already, he said, my intention in sitting Sazen is to become a Buddha. And Nanyue walked over and picked up a tile, it may have been that they were redoing the dining room in their monastery, and there were tiles laying around. So he picked one up and he started polishing it. And his disciple said, excuse me, Master Teacher, what are you doing? And Nanyue said, I have to get this right, I am polishing a tile to make a mirror, the

[13:36]

mirror being Buddha, or enlightenment, or awakened mind. And so Matsu said, of course, how can you make a Buddha, I mean, how could you make a mirror from polishing a tile? And then Nanyue said, well, how can you make a Buddha from sitting Sazen? This is a dangerous story to tell you at this time. It just occurs to me. Maybe we should stop now. Anyway, this story usually is interpreted that Matsu was attached to form and that he really didn't understand emptiness. He didn't really, he was so goal-oriented and attached to sitting Sazen that he was

[14:43]

missing the point. That's the usual way of reading the story. But Dogen has a different way of presenting it. In front of the story, Dogen writes, and I want to get this right, he writes these characters, intimately receiving the mind seal. And what he does with the first question is, instead of making it a question, like, what are you doing, sitting Sazen? Or, what is your intention, sitting Sazen? He turns it over to say, let me get this right, Jay.

[15:47]

Oh, I can't find it, but what he says is, are you intending what? Are you intending what? So, by saying it that way, Dogen is actually saying that all the activity, Sazen included, is already a mirror, or is already Buddha. You've heard this before. So, sitting Sazen, or not sitting Sazen, to have a better state of mind, or to be free,

[16:57]

or to become a Buddha, or to even clarify the mind, because Sazen is already what? Not this what? This what? We are all already doing this formless, empty thing, but we don't quite believe it. We don't believe it's enough. So, when we sit, we're just watching to see what is it that's arising that has us doubting this.

[18:02]

No matter what the state of mind is, it's still this formless, empty, changing, living, mysterious what? Everything is transmitting this what? Always, all the time. The trucks passing, the trees, Sazen, working in the kitchen, cleaning the bathroom, doing Oreoke, practicing Gassho, it's all what? Already. It's all being transmitted all the time, already.

[19:07]

Can we hear it? Can we see it? We can't see emptiness. Don't bother. Don't bother looking. We see form. That's all we can see. Right? We see form that is the manifestation of emptiness. Did you get that? The ideas we have, the emotions we have, are all the manifestation of this formless, empty, changing, dependently co-risen life that we are all the time.

[20:15]

The very concepts that are actually in some way preventing us from seeing, from accepting, from resting in this life that is our birthright, are themselves completely empty. They change all the time. Have you not noticed? Have you been able to hold on to anything so far, these last few days? Maybe, if you're really stubborn. You know, and it's okay for those of us who are really stubborn, because it's okay to have a practice that is slowly developed and not, you know, hugely dynamic right away.

[21:21]

It's perfectly okay. Okay. So our choice is, I think our only choice is, how we relate to what is arising. Suzuki Roshi said in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, he said, all we need is to have a real belief, a real faith, a real belief, he said, I think, in the original emptiness of our mind. And what's left? I asked this to somebody the other day. I'm not good enough yet to ask the right questions to get the answer that I already am hiding.

[22:22]

It's not a good way to do it in the first place. But anyway, it's another story. I was asking this question and so I said, well, what is left in all of your experience in the nice states of the mind, in the unpleasant states of mind, in the tiredness, in the, you know, stability or whatever you're going through, what is the constant there? Well, one of the constants is that we're alive. But what is that aliveness? That aliveness is awareness. So it doesn't matter, again, what kind of state of mind it is. It matters that we're aware of it. I think I say this over and over again. So the point is not to stick anywhere.

[23:37]

To have a mind, an empty mind, that's not holding to something in it. To have a mind that doesn't dwell anywhere. So our zazen is form, of course. We are sitting there in a body. And the form is empty form. And if we hold to the emptiness, there's no such thing as emptiness. It's just an empty form. So if we make empty into a thing, an emptiness, we're holding to something again. We're making it into a form. So you have to give up. This form, this life, is a gift.

[25:20]

And even if we don't know what it is or where we're going, we have to, because we are alive, we have to find some way to stand up here in the middle of it. We have to. It's difficult. It's not easy to have some integrity with this gift that we've been given. We have, in a way, too many choices. It's ironic, because everything changes. We have these choices. And these choices make it difficult for us. Anyway, so we sit. Like Covincino said, when seeing life like this, a person has to sit down for a minute.

[26:30]

So we sit down. We do zazen. We do zazen with everything. Together we do zazen. We settle the mind. We give up. We settle the mind. And we watch the passing show. In doing that, we manifest emptiness. It's that close. We are just intimate with the activity of living. And doing that, we manifest emptiness. We manifest, strangely enough, awakened mind.

[27:37]

It's already there. All we have to do is wake up. Be there for it. Therefore, doing what is always practice. And practice, our life, is doing what all the time anyway? Okay. So, in a way, we have to let go of sadness or joy. But maybe letting go is even too much. All we have to do is watch.

[28:39]

That's all. All we have to do is be aware. I was talking with a friend the other day, and I was a little bit upset. I was hurt, actually. And out of that hurt, I was angry. And I was really hurt, so I was really angry. And I was listening to myself while I was being angry. This friend knows me, so I felt like it was okay to be angry. They wouldn't be hurt by it. I wasn't angry at them, anyway. But still, there was a lot of energy there. And I was thinking to myself, you know, okay, let go. But then I thought to myself, I'm not ready. I'm not ready to let go yet. I wasn't hurting anybody then. So I had to admit to myself, I'm not ready.

[29:43]

I wasn't ready. But still, if you're aware of that, it's different. There's just a little bit, little bit separation. So if it were really necessary at that moment to let go of it, if my friend actually had said, you know, this is really too much, you have to stop it, you're really hurting somebody. Oh, you don't want to hurt anybody. You'd probably breathe, [...] you know. Okay, okay, calm down, calm down. And be able to let it go. So it just takes this awareness, this little bit, just a crack. Letting go of your doubt or of your whatever it is, of your whatever it is. Just a crack and let the awareness that is already there flower. When we finally really give up and let go,

[30:57]

and we do this all the time, you just have to notice it, it's really a relief. You can change your legs if you need to. I'm almost done. It's really a relief. It's always a relief to let go, always. We're just afraid. We just don't know how exactly sometimes. We don't know who we'll be if we let go of the ideas of who we think we are. But Zazen is this opportunity. It's kind of safe, sort of. Anyway, the questions come up. Who am I? Who are you? What are you doing? What is happening now? Just present, present, present. Our life asks us these questions all the time. And we respond by our behavior as form.

[32:03]

So even though this form is empty, still we polish our behavior. We polish to make a mirror, even though we're already a mirror. We polish to make our behavior concurrent with our faith that we are already empty and that from our heart we vow to live well with all beings, deeply. So we sit, Zazen, as what?

[33:30]

And let it stop there. And settle. Settle in the midst of whatever is happening in the mind, in form or whatever. Settle into a stillness, into a silence, in the middle of the form. Touch this silent place. It's not far away.

[34:31]

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