This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I feel very fortunate to be beginning a session with you feel the quality of gift, what a gift it is that we can do this together.

[01:19]

And all the Sachin admonitions and forms are designed or created to help us sit day after day together in a harmonious way. And also, you know, the word seshin means to collect, to gather the mind, to gather the heart-mind, or embrace and gather. And so the way the seshin is created and How we support each other will help each of us to gather the mind into one suchness. Gather the heart-mind. Embrace and gather. So when we hear the admonitions of not writing or reading or phone calls and all these things, it sounds like a long list of no, no, no.

[02:32]

I hear them as supports for our tendencies to leak energy through talking, through writing, through reading phone calls. So if we together enter this session fully engaging in the forms, We'll see what happens in terms of gathering the energy. Also, when Hiro read the admonitions last night, I heard that do not have eye contact or physical contact. And, you know, we do have the admonition of eyes cast down. That's a usual form we have in the Zendo. And somehow that term, cast down, always sounds like

[03:38]

we're all depressed or something, you know, downcast, downcast eyes. But I think the cast, you know, casting, casting a line, you know, we often look out and gather information. We're so visually set up, you know, with these, we have a strong visual sense-orientation much less than nose and ears. So to have the eyes cast down, or in the Catholic monastic tradition, I think they call it guarding the eyes, because when we look out about, what happens often is immediately comparative mind, or judgment, or evaluation, or they're not doing it right, or... should be this way. And so this protective quality of just take care of our own practice, just three feet in front of us when we're walking, when we're sitting, this is another way to support gathering and embracing body and mind in one suchness and will really help us with the great

[05:03]

suffering, actually, of comparative thinking, seeing what everybody else is doing. So that's one side of it. Also, the power of eyes, the power of eye-to-eye contact. I think when we were doing the exercise of active listening or reflective listening and people were gazing into each other's eyes, we can... read a lot about what's going on with someone by looking in their eyes. So it may be too much sometimes to have full-on eye contact. So these, as I said, are not things that are deprivations for us, like Sashin being a big deprivation chamber, but these are ways to help us and support us, and we can learn a lot by really staying with the forms of Sesshin.

[06:16]

I was thinking about the term formal constraints, which when I was doing a writing workshop with Sue Boone, a number of them over the years, part of what we did was she would ask the group to write using a formal constraint. Formal constraint would be, for example, only use words of one syllable. And then there'd be some exercise we'd be writing about something or other. But you could only use words of one syllable. Well, what that formal constraint did was instead of using the usual words, vocabulary, which could be kind of tired, a little stale, words we always used to describe that thing that happened, we couldn't because they were more than one syllable. So you had to very creatively find a way to say a word like sister or, you know, the child of my mom, you know, or whatever.

[07:31]

And it made for writing that was very fresh, very unique and kind of eye-opening. Also thinking about poetry when there's formal constraints like haiku, you know, 17 syllables and you have to include the season and, you know, this, as you know, that genre or that way of Poetry is infinitely amazing, the tiny awakening moments that people have been able to write about and catch in this very succinct way. So formal constraints, I feel, help us with our habitual tendencies, routinized thinking. familiar ways of doing things, it shakes us up a little bit or allows us to find a whole new realm.

[08:40]

And I feel that's what the forms, we're talking about forms somewhat, help us with, finding a new and unique and fresh way to engage in our life rather than our usual way. All during Sashin will be practiced in silence. And as this practice period is about right speech, upright and correct, upright and complete speech, here we have a time when you won't be speaking that much, a little bit here and there for functional speech or any dogs on our practice discussion. And I will be talking in, There'll be Q&A. So just a few places here and there throughout the day. However, there is the internal speech which, as we know, kind of bubbles along continuously, we might find.

[09:52]

Or we might find it quiets too. So as we practice silence, we might be able to hear our internal speech much louder or notice it, notice as things come up. That might be surprising. It might be painful. An old memory. So today, please take good care of yourselves during this time of silence where things may have a chance to be heard. things that may have been knocking on your inner doors to be heard and haven't been heard because we're too busy and we're chatting. We don't pay attention. But there may be a chance for something to come up, to say something.

[10:58]

As we noticed this morning, all the the sesshin forms are streamlined, you know. All the ceremonial sounds, the whole soundscape is different. That in itself kind of, because we've gotten used to the umpan and the han and the fish at the different bells, big bells in here, the mokugyo, different sounds. And it's, during sesshin, it's completely changed. And when I say streamlined, as simple as we can be, but still, you know, able to start the meal and do service, but very simple. And that's what hopefully all of our lives will be during Sashin, very simplified. Just come to the Zendo, do your work, do your stretching and exercise, back to the Zendo. eating our meals, taking care of your bodies.

[12:09]

That's about it. I wanted to mention a couple things I'd like us to be aware of in our group practice chanting. There's a story about Kadigiri Roshi who was the... third abbot of Zen Center was also the abbot of Minnesota Zen Center. He, for those of you who know Kadigiri Roshi or know of him, Suzuki Roshi invited him to help at San Francisco Zen Center in the 70s or late 60s maybe. And after Suzuki Roshi died, a number of students from Minnesota invited him to come there. And then in the We invited him for a year. He was out here, came back. One of the things he asked us to do, which I would like to ask us to do as well, is he actually said, there's something I would really like you to do.

[13:20]

He kind of prefaced it, and we didn't know what that would be, you know, sit all night or, you know, some kind of harder practice. physically or something. And then he said, what I'd like you to do is at the end of the chant to draw out the ending of the chant. You know, so, mo, ko. So it kind of goes into a wispy ending. And so at all the ends of the chants to have the sound of all of us rather than stop abruptly. And that the kokyo, that sound is dying out. The kokyo comes in right on top. So there's kind of a continuous sound. The chant leader, the kokyo, is introducing the chants.

[14:21]

We come in. We fade out. Kokyo comes in. And it's just one seamless sound. And that's when we do the full moon ceremony tomorrow, it's very similar, this call and response with this chanting. So I'd like to offer that as some of you are doing it, but to more consciously do this fading out when the kokyo comes in. As a kind of being in relationship to the kokyo and one another. and the sound. Also, for the chanting, during sesheen, I think Hiro read chant briskly, so the tempo for the chants is not racing through, but for us all to be, notice the tempo is a little bit brisker than usual.

[15:29]

Same with our meal chants. I know some of you have been trying, which doesn't work usually, to get the temple going, but it ends up with everybody doing something a little differently. But if we all have that in mind, Buddha was born, you know, because the more we know these chants, the tendency is to drag, you know, to have them be more draggy. And I think to have a brisker tempo is energizing, and also this feeling of streamlined, not dwelling too long, but just do our chant all together with alacrity. Is that the word? So those are a couple things to keep in mind. Also, I wanted to mention Mudra, our practice of mudra, and I think in the class, I think I mentioned mudra.

[16:34]

Mudra has gestures, hand gestures, or full body gestures. I think our full prostration is a mudra also, which mudra both expresses our body-mind and evokes something. You see someone else doing mudra, a mudra. it resonates with the person in a certain way. All different mudras. And I was thinking if there was like a time-lapse camera of somebody practicing a day at Tassar, how many different mudras we'd be doing, you know. There's not only our gasho and shashu and cosmic mudra, There's all the mudra, you know, carrying our bowls. There's our feet, you know, standing, not with our feet.

[17:34]

It's not Tadasana. Tadasana is mountain pose in yoga with the feet together and the straight ahead. The pose for standing posture, meditative posture, is a fists width, your own fists width apart. So it's slightly different, but still... grounded mountain feeling, but that width has another kind of strength that's there. So having your feet slightly apart when you're bowing, standing, waiting for service. So that's another mudra of feet. I've been noticing this mudra, the cosmic mudra, and I just wanted to say, and this is something in terms of refreshing our practice to not assume that, oh, I've been doing this mudra for years. I know exactly what it is.

[18:35]

It may have slipped into some habitual shape, and sometimes I notice people's thumbs have collapsed completely, or the mudra has gotten very small because the hands have slid closer together. So the kaspic mudra is kind of a big round shape with the fingers of the left hand right at the palm, not going into the palm very much, maybe a tiny bit depending on the length of your fingers. And then the baby fingers, two inches below your belly, not way down in front. not held up, resting on your belly, and the thumbs end up being right about even with your navel. And there's a lot of consciousness there in that mudra as it's placed.

[19:39]

And there's a warmth there right at your belly with your hands right there. And you can also imagine your breath going right through the mudra. to your lower belly. So please be aware of that, and it might mean you notice many times during your zasa that it's collapsed and to come back, or the thumbs have fallen away, or it's become a flame. That's another thing that happens is pushing on it so that it looks like a flame. And that could be because of thinking or... Maybe even anger or pain. Lots of things where the mudra will reflect what's going on in our body's body-mind. So I'd like us to pay attention to all the mudras. That's one.

[20:40]

And we'll be sitting a lot. So each time we sit, to be aware of that. I'd like to say something about our posture, our practice of working with our posture. In doing posture suggestions over the years, I've realized that no one can really change another person's posture by suggesting, or even by bringing someone's attention to a spot. It can be helpful right there in the moment, kind of wake us up to some area that we're holding or tense or some leaning.

[21:42]

And what I've found is that it's not so lasting. It doesn't really last. And the next day or the next period or the next moment, we go back to what we're used to, our kind of familiar, habitual, even if it's not that healthy, even if it's leaning or straining, or off-kilter in some way, or tip back or tip too much forward. So I want to mention that as a way for us to realize that each of us has to find our posture from the inside out as an inner reality, as an inner consciousness of what's going on. If we think of a kind of image of how we're sitting from the outside in or how it's supposed to look, some kind of idealized, and try to reach that by pushing ourselves into a shape from the outside,

[23:04]

treating our body as a kind of object that we're trying to get into the right shape it's it can be damaging I think over time and also hard on the body and it's I think it's not the dharma I speak of or the zazen I speak of is you know joyful ease, anraku, which it says in Fugan Zazen, I think to push our self into a shape from the outside is not conducive to repose and bliss, joyful ease, truly the comfortable way, which is what Zazen is called, the comfortable way. So it has to be each of us from the inside, from an inner exploration, really, of our posture.

[24:13]

And one way of talking about Zaza in itself is the whole body-mind as an inquiry or as an exploration, rather than we know how it's supposed to be, we're going to do it, you know, no matter what. So this might be a shift, you know. I think in Phucan Sazengi, all the posture points are mentioned, and there's things Dogen didn't say. You know, this is universal admonitions for anybody, but there's, you know, more subtle things I think we can be aware of from the inside, this inner going into the body and feeling and experiencing. what's happening while we're sitting. I'll tell you a personal story about me, which is for years and years and years, I overarched the back, thinking that that was, looked really right.

[25:22]

You know, that was upright, really upright. And not only that, people would comment, you know, oh, your posture's so upright or something. So in some ways, I think we can sometimes acknowledge something as what looks to us like upright posture that's actually overdoing it, really. I think upright posture looks like calliope, really. Have you seen calliope sit? I was hoping I could bring her to the Zendo. I'll do it when she's back to see her sit. Because babies, and I would say all babies really, unless there's some problem or something, find center. They're not interested in straining and looking good. Aren't I sitting upright? She finds total balance with her sit bones and her spine.

[26:28]

She can't sit in any other way except for Perfectly upright and relaxed. So it's beautiful. You know, it's shoulders totally relaxed. The shoulder blades are like melting down her back. There's no like, oh, I better release the shoulders, you know. I'm so tense. It's just totally balanced. It's so beautiful. Anyway, we'll bring her. if it's okay with her parents. So that back in relation to the sick bones and gravity is what babies find and what we all found. And then later, not too much later, probably by about five years old, we're trying to please somebody without

[27:30]

we look or or maybe rebel against somebody and slouching or or maybe somebody said something to us so we contract and go in protect our heart this happens pretty young pretty young but babies so can we become like babies on our cushions and i know we have years of habitual ways of carrying tension and holding the body and working with the body. But from the inside out, so to go... And this is, you know, these are just words that hopefully they're falling on fertile ground, you know. What is my experience from the inside? And one place to start or to look is the sit bones. Because the sit bones... are directly in relationship with gravity.

[28:32]

And if we're leaning forward on the sit bones, one thing we can notice is if they're very pointy, then we're leaning forward or back on the sit bones, then they're really flat, the sitting bones. So it's in between pointy and flat. And when we find it, it's in relation to gravity, you know. Do we feel pressure in the front of our body, in the back of our body, in the sides, in Fukaza Zangi, neither leaning forward nor backward, nor to the right, nor to the left? It can't be just a conceptual thought, I don't want to lean, or I'm not leaning. It has to be really going into our bodies with full awareness and consciousness to the subtlety of balance and muscles and tension. And this line of gravity comes, it's right in front of the spine.

[29:41]

If you were to draw the spine, the center of gravity is not the spine itself, but right in front of the spine. This is from Alexander Technique. So even imagining a kind of line of gravity that comes down to the sit bones in front of the spine and find that from the inside, even though I'm telling you a picture. Now, the story I was going to tell about me was this overarching, and what goes along with the overarching is actually not being able to breathe. I mean, I... breathe but it had a strain along with it and the diaphragm this muscle really has a ligament that is attached to the spine and if you overarch the spine or curl under it will be difficult to breathe

[30:57]

allow yourself to breathe fully breathe and I realize now and after becoming aware of this the kind of feeling like I couldn't like my breath was high you know kind of up and strained and I couldn't get it I thought I was trying to get it down, but I couldn't feel a full body breath, full body breathing. I wasn't allowing my body to breathe the way it was meant to breathe in this fullness. The breath pervading the body. So these are things I'm bringing because we have nine days together with... Many periods of Sasa, and I don't know, we can't count them. And night sitting, for those of you who want to sit after the last period of night, so to each time we take our place to some people skip the rocking body right and left, this will all help us to come to center rather than assuming.

[32:24]

but from the inside out. And to, the word is not to, you know, make yourself breathe, you know, weigh strongly or pressing down in order to, that actually, you can do it, but I don't recommend it. Instead, to turn it into allowing breath, allowing ourselves to breathe, and to allow breath to breathe, allow the universe to breathe through us, really, and just find how we can just be there without straining and tension and trying to do something. allow gravity to do its work.

[33:27]

One image from a yoga teacher is to have our shoulder blades, put our shoulder blades in our back pockets. So this allowed everything to release. But that's just words, you know. And may those words allow you to explore that in maybe a new way, with a kind of ease. And, you know, of course there's difficult sensations, pain, in the body but I think everything that I've said can also be thought of when working with tenseness in different parts of the body and also strong sensations and pain exploring relaxing allowing I think these are all the words that to associate with zazang rather than

[34:56]

forcing or making ourselves and to watch over ourselves with love and care. keeping in mind, taking good care of ourselves for the sake of everyone. That word Nen, you know, the Nen of Nenju, reminding, remembering. Also, in the Enmei Juku Kanon Gyo, Nen Nenju Shin Ki, Nen Nen Furishin, this is, it's remembering, that my thoughts are remembering over and over and kind of keeping watch over with our mind.

[36:05]

So this loving feeling, keeping watch over our bodies, body and mind, will also, I think, contribute to allowing and relaxation with a firm effort. I will be continuing to talk about speech even though we're mostly silent and also I'll be talking about silence and other ways of expression besides speech that we will all be involved in. How we move and bow and walk and get up onto our cushion and all this is expression, full expression.

[37:07]

Our speech and our language, our spoken language, within our speech is a kind of built-in contradictoriness. And the Buddha, when the Buddha was sitting under the Bodhi tree, after he had taken nourishment, you all know the story of Buddha's enlightenment, but he had left his five companions in the way, who were doing ascetic practices, and he felt that wasn't right. It was just weakening him. Then he was fed rice pudding by Sujata and gained strength and then settled himself and sat. And during Rohatsu's session, we'll talk more about the Buddha's enlightenment. However, after... the Buddha woke up to the utmost right and perfect enlightenment.

[38:14]

As you may know in the story, he decided not to teach. What he understood, the Dharma that he awakened to or rediscovered, because the seven Buddhas before Buddha had also discovered this, he felt it was profound and subtle. fathomless, inconceivable. I can't share it. Nobody will understand. I can't with words. Words don't reach it. I was thinking of our noon chant, you know, self-receiving and self-employing samadhi, where it says the unremitting, unthinkable, unnameable Buddha Dharma. Those are the words that Dogen used to try and allude to or describe something that is indescribable. It can't be described it. The Buddha felt that too.

[39:19]

It's like the Dharma he awakened to. Dharma, you know, is both the truth that the Buddha awakened to and the teaching about that truth is called Dharma. Buddha Dharma. So we use Dharma in lots of different ways, but he awoke to that truth, Dharma, and that he taught dharma, you know. But the Buddha felt, language, I can't, I know, I'm not going to teach. And that was, and it wasn't out of selfishness or by any means, it was just, nobody will understand, you know. So, as you know in the story, and the Lotus Sutra has another kind of take on this, but all these words as I'm speaking, and the grammar itself, which has subject and object, and all the discriminations, all the ways we are, you know, the discriminations, discursive thinking, the concepts, all of that is built into our language, is what language is, and it doesn't reach...

[40:37]

the full reality, the inconceivable, fathomless reality of our existence, which the Buddha awakened to. So it's beyond the truth. This reality is beyond our thinking and discriminating. So he decided not to, but Indra, the god of heaven, in the Brahma, Indra Brahma, made a request, please speak, please teach. And one of the stories, I think there's different renditions of this, was that Indra said that the Khan Romon or the Gate of Ambrosia, the Gate of Sweet Dew, there are those who will be able to understand, who will respond. I thought that was interesting in this commentary that Indra used gate of sweet dew to say there are people who can step through that gate of sweet dew, that gate of compassion, if you teach.

[41:51]

And so the Buddha did relent, or I don't know if relent is the right word, but decided he would teach. But it was several weeks before he set out to find his companions to teach to them what he had understood. So right from the get-go, in the teaching stories of how the Buddha woke up and began to teach, right embedded in that story is the reality that or the tension between language and speech and trying to teach and the inability to reach the inconceivable utmost right, anuttara samyaksambhori, the utmost right and perfect enlightenment.

[42:55]

You can't say it. You can't reach it with words. It's beyond words. And the word in Japanese for religion is shu, which refers to the truth of reality, source, foundation, root, and kyo, which means the teaching about that reality. That's religion. That's what's translated as religion. But the truth is subtle truth. and profound and fathomous and beyond our ability to reach it with words. So there we are, all of us. And so that's about the Dharma, you know. But I would say it's about our own daily interactions and relations and teacher-student relations. You know, it's words, myths, you know, even with our greatest cares.

[43:58]

we, because built into the language, we can't say it all. And, you know, we can't, when we're, you know, the basic, most basic teachings of, you know, form and emptiness, when you're talking about form or the forms even, you can't talk about the emptiness of those very forms. So people will get annoyed, you know. that we're holding to forms. And then you go to emptiness and you can't talk about emptiness anyway because it's beyond speech. So right embedded in this whole discussion of upright and complete speech is incompleteness and knowingness. So what I was saying about the Lotus Sutra, the teaching of the Buddha refraining from teaching right away, the Lotus Sutra just said that it wasn't because Indra asked him, and it was the Buddha's skillful means, so that people really, he held back or waited until Indra came, so that Indra being the god for

[45:33]

Many people of that religious tradition, the fact that Indra asked would bring all those people to the Dharma, some kind of skillful means that's another take on it. So this, and I think I said this before, this kind of humble feeling that we can't actually say it. And sometimes, not only can't we, but the more we try, the further we get. or the more difficult the situation gets, or we keep, what do we say, putting our foot in our mouth? You know, we keep, it gets worse sometimes as we try to say it all, say the round, full reality of our feelings, what we wish, what we care about, you know, we can't get there. And it's painful, and yet we, as the Buddhists, you know, As God Nero said, we have to say something. And the Buddha also, I'll teach.

[46:39]

I will teach. I'll try, you know. And when he met his five companions, he basically taught them the middle way. I have found the middle way between ascetic practices and sensory indulgence. The middle way. And the middle way is, you know, Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path is the middle way. So he did end up teaching, this is the earliest teaching, as, you know, medicine. These teachings for us as medicine to restore our health, you know, to restore us to our birthright. So we've just kind of gone through an extremely difficult few days, and I don't want to be talking in a political way about our elected officials and so forth.

[48:05]

What I do want to mention is the pain and emotional upheaval and turmoil that people have felt. Many, many people have felt, but not all people have felt. Other people have felt elated and hopeful and happy. So we have the full range of emotional upheaval here, you know, from anger to relaxation and joy, you know, happiness, you know, just the full range. And the Buddha, when talking about right speech, said to abandon divisive speech, to abandon divisive speech. And in the Chunda, the silversmith, when

[49:08]

talking about what is unskillful verbal action and what is skillful verbal action. We talked about false speech in the class the other day, and this is what the Buddha talked about for divisive speech. He or she engages in divisive speech. This is unskillful verbal action. And I'll use he and she interchangeably. Or they, I'll use they. What they have heard here, they tell there to break those people apart from these people there. So, divisive speech is, wow. They hear something. We hear something over here. And then we tell it over there. Why do we tell it?

[50:09]

To break people apart, to break these people apart. What they have heard there, they tell here to break these people apart from those there. Thus, breaking apart those who are united and stirring up strife between those who have broken apart. They love factionalism. delight in factionalism, enjoy factionalism, speak things that create factionalism. So that's the description of divisive speech. Purposefully, you know, out of enjoying seeing people fighting, you know, seeing people break into factions against one another, and to not be, to be disunited. That's the joy of this.

[51:11]

They delight and enjoy factualism, dividing people. Now, I just want to say that that description of what divisive speech is doesn't mean necessarily that you don't have your cohort of people you work with, but the purpose is not break people apart. The purpose may be to bring your truth out so that others can see it and maybe persuade or see the truth of what, you know, to bring unity maybe. But you do, you might have a cohort. But that's not in order to break others apart. So in the section on... purifying through verbal action, what it says about divisive speech is abandoning divisive speech.

[52:16]

They abstain from divisive speech. What they have heard here, they do not tell there to break those people apart from these people there. What they have heard there, they do not tell to those here. to break people apart. It's a repetition for memorization, I think. Thus, reconciling those who have broken apart or cementing those who are united, they love concord, delight in concord, enjoy concord, speak things that create concord. So that's the purification of concord. verbal action around divisive speech. So as I was saying that just now, as I heard myself say that, what occurred was civil disobedience and demonstrating and speaking one's truth that is against the strain that I don't think this is saying conform, you know,

[53:34]

go along with in order to have harmony. That's passive, passivity, and also not true to, may not be true to one's own inner reality of what's upright or one's own intentions. However, demonstrating, showing one's truth in any way you can, in order to have concord, in order to unify, in order to find a way to come together around what you believe to be a benefit. I think that's a different... Conformity is different than speaking in order to create concord. And it may take very strong forms, demonstrating of all kinds, engaging in actions of all kinds.

[54:36]

But what is the heart of it? Is it coming from hatred, anger, divisiveness, or is it coming from another place? So I hear that as what the Buddha is offering, not that we... just accept in a passive way whatever happens in order to be harmonious or not divisive. It comes back again to where is it flowing from? What state of mind? So, you know, in the realm of our society and culture and political life, an interconnected life. We can't, even though we're here in the mountains with, you know, a nine day silent sitting, we are touched, moved by the events of the world.

[55:47]

This is, we can't, we can't separate ourselves from what's going on in the world. That actually is the reality of our existence. The ten suchnesses, you know, we have our unique form and energy and way of speaking and our language and our background and all that is completely unique and you might say independent in a way. That's on the unique, unrepeatable side of the ten suchnesses. Our form, our energy, our strengths, our... body our own power these are all the first five of the ten suchnesses are our unique way we come into the world and act in the world and then we have the other five which are the causes you know there are causes for how we came into the world and we are conditioned completely we're not in a vacuum

[56:56]

We've been educated. We have families. We've had experiences. All those conditions are affecting us. Even though we're completely unique, we can't somehow pull out of the interconnectedness of our life. So all the causes and conditions, as well as the consequences of our actions, the consequences of our society's actions, and other people's actions in relation to us, affects us, and the effects of our actions, consequences and effects, and all that together, all those things that I've mentioned, both the independent, unique, unrepeatableness of each of us, and the totally interdependent with every other being, person, animal, plant, our country, universe. That's all one reality that cannot be reached with words.

[58:01]

And when we talk about one side, the other side is dark. You know, like, you know, when one side is illuminating, we can't talk about them both together. This is the way our language is. And yet, We need to express as best we can the fullness of reality or existence. So our language with concepts can't grasp it, and yet there's a cohort where the teacher says, say it, say it. He says, I can't say it all. I can't say it all. And the teacher says something like, to think that my Dharma is going to be lost. blind donkey like you. Of course, that student became his Dharma disciple.

[59:03]

And he would say, I can't say it all. I can't say it all. So this is called the Wonders Dharma. This form and emptiness are unique, individual independentness and are completely interconnected, interwoven, interconnectedness. This is inconceivable. This is called wondrous dharma. The wondrous dharma, the Lotus Sutra as the wondrous, subtle teaching around this. So what are we going to say? How are we going to move forward? How are we going to take care of ourselves and others?

[60:05]

And our speech cannot be overlooked. I'm not going to ask for questions. Let's just return to our sitting and sitting for the rest of the day. Just one mention about evening sitting, yas, yas, night, the sitting. When you come in, if you want to, some people may think that's the last thing I want to do is come back to the Zendo. I'm happy. to rest and sleep. And that is perfectly fine, more than fine.

[61:09]

And others of you may want to, not every night, but come and sit in the dark of the Zendo and just one kind of a velvety silence. One admonition that I would like to mention is when you come in to refrain from looking around to see who might be there. Some shape over there, oh, it's also sitting like, hmm. Or, ha, I'm sitting there not. I think it's the same thing with that eyes cast down. There's a tendency, our comparative mind kind of gets activated a little bit sometimes. And if you want to sit, sit. If you don't want to sit, don't sit at night. But one, you know, have it be your own practice coming from your heart, not any other reason, but that you want to return to this cushion.

[62:21]

You do. You don't even know why you do. But you do. Without... any thought about who he is or isn't joining with you. And that, I think, especially at nighttime, will support a kind of groundedness. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving.

[63:26]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.81