When I sit up here in this platform, can you hear over in this side, all right? I feel as, I can't, there's a blind spot over there. This is the fourth day of the sesshin, usually the third and fourth days are the most difficult, but the last three days, though they may be easier, you should settle in on your practice during those three days. Maybe your cushion will feel like your home or something, like you live there. Actually it's very good to sleep during a sesshin where you practice, then you really do feel like it's your home, and it's very interesting to sleep in the same place you

[01:01]

sit, but, I don't know, we used to do that at Bush Street, but now we don't. Some people sat, some people slept anyway, in the zendo. I think after you do a sesshin, even if you've been practicing Buddhism, sitting for many years or reading about Buddhism, after you've done a sesshin you have more of a feeling of being on the inside of Buddhism. Before it's more like being on the outside looking in, and after you've done a sesshin you have some feeling of being more on the inside, looking out maybe. Ideally, when you look out, all you see is the inside.

[02:10]

Everything should be the inside. That's what I meant when I said everything should be familiar, very familiar. Buddhism really is a kind of intimacy, it's how to be intimate with yourself and with everything, or familiar with everything. That's why we emphasize shikantaza and not just concentration, because shikantaza means to be intimate with yourself. If we say concentration alone, you think of one thing and eliminating everything else,

[03:18]

which is concentration of course, but how to be concentrated and include everything is shikantaza. So, in every breath there may be millions of worlds, but you just abide in your breath with complete familiarity, like it's your home. I don't know if you feel that, but when you breathe it's your actual home, your breath. It's not some foreign thing coming in and out or something you're sort of separated from that speeds up and slows down and you control or you watch. You actually live in your breath. So, I think many of you have had the experience of, you start practicing zazen and you can

[04:19]

concentrate, you can count to ten pretty easily, but after one year maybe you can't count past one. So, it looks like it's getting worse, but actually you're including, you're becoming more intimate with yourself, more familiar with all the things that you are. And then how to have that be concentration is shikantaza. We speak of Buddha as being cosmic, knowing everything, having his consciousness, Buddha knows everything, every tiniest thing that's happening he knows.

[05:21]

Of course, that means that to actually know something you are it, to actually know it you are it. So, Buddha is that, those leaves out there, moving, he actually is it. But yet, if we expand our own consciousness to include everything, when you can include everything you can actually concentrate. We have trouble concentrating when we're worried about what we don't include, so we start thinking about this thing we ought to do or that thing or worrying about this or that. But if you include everything, if you are everything, there's no need to worry about that thing over there, you know, that tiger that's going to eat you or whatever. Then you can abide, can concentrate on one thing completely.

[06:28]

So, we become more and more intimate with ourselves and with everything. There's a famous story about a Zen master named Haryo, H-A-R-Y-O, a long O. And I think he lived in the 14th century, I forget what century, anyway, he lived in China. And someone asked him, what is the way? And his famous answer was, a man with his eyes open falls into the well.

[07:53]

Usually, we think just the opposite, that a blind person, you know, may fall into a well. But Haryo said, a man with his eyes open falls into a well. So, There's a famous Brahman who became Nagarjuna's disciple.

[09:13]

I guess he's the 13th disciple after Buddha, according to the lineage we use, and so the 14th patriarch. And he's called Kanadeva, I think means one-eyed. And he got one eye. The story is that he, I guess the story is he was in a temple somewhere in India, and there was a famous Buddha, which the eyes glittered, had some jewel or something in the eyes. And he went and everybody was, I guess, scared of the Buddha or afraid to look at it because its eyes were so bright. And he said, we shouldn't worship you just because you have bright eyes.

[10:15]

And so he went up and he took the eyes out of the Buddha. And then the next, that night, in the morning, the image, the Buddha image came to him and said, now I have only one eye, you must give me one of yours. So Kanadeva took out one of his eyes and gave it to the Buddha. So anyway, he's called one-eyed. And when, he was rather famous as a Brahmin logician and he liked to dispute with people. And when he heard about Nagarjuna, Nagarjuna, the Japanese pronounce it, he asked to see him. And when he got there, Nagarjuna had placed before him a bowl full of water. So Kanadeva took a needle and put the needle in the water.

[11:29]

So Nagarjuna said, you're very alert or you're in our heart or something. And I guess Nagarjuna was saying something like, my wisdom or wisdom is like water and it takes any form. If you put it in a vase, it takes the form of a vase. If you put it in a lake, you know. And Kanadeva's answer was that he wanted to get to the bottom of it. Thank you.

[12:45]

So anyway, Hario's answer has this kind of background behind it, about Kanadeva and one eye, etc. So he said, a man with both eyes open falls into a well. Which, partly the meaning is here, if you just knowing yourself isn't enough, you can't practice Buddhism. Buddhism must practice you. So if you just try to find your way with your eyes, you'll fall into a well. So maybe we should shut our eyes and just let our tradition take us.

[14:07]

Suzuki Roshi used to say that practicing Buddhism was like hunting for your pillow in the dark. Of course, a Japanese pillow is quite little. And in the dark, you're reaching around. You don't know where it is, but you're reaching around. So we have to practice Buddhism with our eyes open, but not always. We have to also shut our eyes. Buddhism, it's not easy to... Buddhism can't be understood completely by even practice. So all we can do is continue to practice. You can't, with your eyes open, ever find the well or the pillow or anything.

[15:13]

The only way is to continue to practice. So another famous statement in Buddhism is, the empty sky vanishes and the iron mountain crumbles. The empty sky vanishes and the iron mountain crumbles. Exactly what is meant by that? You can't find out with your eyes open. So you just have to...

[16:18]

The third stage, Suzuki Roshi talked about, you just have to practice with some confidence. Without any aim or purpose, because we can't understand it completely. The other story associated with this group of stories I'm telling you is... Hario's response, quoting about the snow in the silver bowl and the white heron in the moonlight. So a story like this, in Buddhism, at first it looks like we're just talking about

[17:23]

that the snow and the silver bowl are nearly the same color. It's also used by Tozan in his five ranks for the mutual interpenetration of everything. But a story like this includes Kanadeva's one eye and Nagarjuna's water in the bowl he put in front of Kanadeva. So, the way we practice is, first we try...

[18:37]

First we become intimate with ourselves, finding out just what your breathing is, just what your mind is on your breathing. Not just for one week or one year with some kind of insight, but for many years we find out what we're like when we're 20, when our mind is on our breathing, and what we're like when we're 25 and 30, etc. What we're like in the morning and the evening. You become very familiar with yourself and you cease to be scared of yourself. It's one reason we have such difficulty with our relationships with other people. It's because we're not familiar with ourselves

[19:42]

and so we're always trying to force other people to know us. We're always telling people about ourselves and there's no need to. So every time you tell somebody about yourself, forcing yourself on others in the ways we... topics we pick for conversation and how we describe situations which include ourselves as some kind of primary actor, you separate yourself from other people. And when you're completely familiar with yourself, you won't do that. So first we become very familiar with ourselves, very intimate with ourselves. Then you become intimate with your teacher and with your friend. The friends you practice with are very important.

[20:45]

Very important to have one or two or three good friends you practice with. Not that you discuss your practice with, but that you feel some comradeship with. And in very subtle ways each of you will encourage each other. Doing it with another person is... even if the other person is quite separated from you, it's very important. I mean, even if it's... the person's practicing with another Zen group, it's very important. Or even having a different kind of life, not practicing Buddhism. Anyway, we have some intimacy with a friend as we practice and we have some intimacy with a teacher. And the third...

[21:52]

is when... when you are most on the inside, looking at the inside, is when you enter the tradition itself. I mean, you have a mind and body to practice in. And your mind and body have Buddhism. I mean, just as you have some form, you're not, you know, a dog or a cockroach or a tree. If you were a... if you had the form of a dog, you'd be exactly like a dog. You wouldn't be a human being inside a dog, you'd be a dog. When Buddha's a dog, he's completely a dog, you know. When he's a leaf, he's completely a leaf. And when you're you, you're completely you. And the way you're most completely you is when your mind and body practice Buddhism. So when you enter the tradition

[23:13]

or take the Bodhisattva's vow, you shut your eyes. When you start a sesshin, you shut your eyes. Everything will take care of you, you can throw everything away. And you don't have to worry about how you earn a living or... anything. If you do this completely, everything will take care of you. Satsang with Mooji

[25:11]

Do you have any questions? Yeah? Give up making a choice. There's something, you know, we say one and yet two, you know, but what is it that makes everything one? It's not something, but knowing why, how everything is one is to give up making choices.

[26:13]

You'll find some, if you do it, you know, keep over and over again giving up making choices. Choices just follow your nose or just allow your practice to be whatever it is. Some field, some, maybe Buddha field, anyway, some field in which you exist comes, which includes concentrating on your breathing and includes the truck and includes, you know, your work, a kind of concentration like the water in the bowl, which includes everything and takes every form.

[27:20]

But it's like, there's no way exactly to explain, you just have to keep practicing. That's why we shut our eyes, because there's no ... Buddhism is beyond what we can talk about or explain or point out or understand. If you try to understand Buddhism, you'll never understand Buddhism. Yeah? What's the difference between a chicken house and a baby house? It sounds like realization, but it's a form of life. Yeah, that's actually the same, same question actually, in a way.

[28:32]

What was your question? What is the difference between shikantaza and daydreaming? What's the difference between daydreaming and shikantaza? Shikantaza is wonderful, because it's one of those, you know, somebody asked me a question yesterday, an interesting question, and said, zazen is defined as adi-sambhoga, and I said it was aimed at dharmakaya, not sambhogakaya. But this practice is sambhogakaya maybe, but adi just adds, adi is the same as dharmakaya,

[29:37]

so to say adi-sambhogakaya is the same as saying dharmakaya nearly. But these terms are just marvelous ideas. And so actually there's not three bodies of Buddha, you know, there's just one body. But for some reason we use three bodies, you know, we talk about three bodies. And the purpose is, no matter what you do, your mind will try to understand your practice. I mean, your mind will try to think about your practice. And unless you give your mind some other way to think about your practice,

[30:40]

it'll think about it in ways that are entirely egocentric. So our practice is how to remove entangling conceptions from us. Partly we practice, you know, we have some physical experience, but also we have mental formulations which interfere with and entangle us with things and people. And there's no controlling it, actually. So your mind will function no matter what you do. Even if you stop it completely in zazen, when you get up to eat or do something, your mind will take certain forms and transform your experience. So Buddhism has created all kinds of lists and terms and categories which don't have the idea of I in them.

[31:51]

Which if you start to think of your practice in that way, since your mind is going to think about it anyway, we give you some ideas and attitudes to think about it in. And mostly we suggest to your... When I first started talking in the Sesshin, I talked about your eighth consciousness, the storehouse consciousness. Mostly Zen lectures are aimed at the eighth consciousness. Some kind of just like, it doesn't make much sense, but it's like seasoning a stew or something. You know, you put something in and it sort of settles down, maybe it will clear. As it settles, something becomes clearer. Or maybe many years later, the same thing, the three bodies, you suddenly have some different feeling about what it meant.

[32:57]

So, and it will be there when your practice is ready for it. That's quite a difference between having your practice defined for you in some new terms, and when some terms, some ideas like nirmanakaya or something, have been sort of filtered into your activity and thinking processes for many years. Then when your practice is ready to understand what sambhogakaya is, it's a very familiar term. You haven't quite known what it meant, but you know it's very familiar. So, slowly we begin to think about our experience in these sort of more non-dualistic or non-I ways of looking at things.

[33:59]

These conceptions are much easier to be free of than our usual conceptions. So, on the one hand, you can't get, be involved in technical definitions of these terms. There's no technical definition. And lots of them are very fuzzy. Sambhogakaya is a very fuzzy one. And I guess Dr. Konsei says that sambhogakaya is not in early Mahayana. They just have dharmakaya. And dharmakaya and nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya should be left out. It's later commentaries which create it. I don't know exactly when it was sambhogakaya got into use, but it's certainly anybody who practices Buddhism would want such a term, because the gap between nirmanakaya and dharmakaya is quite great, at least intellectually.

[35:05]

So, we put some fuzzy concept in between. And also, if you're going to sculpt Buddhas, you can't really make a representation of dharmakaya, because it's, ideally anyway, it's completely formless. And if you're not representing the historical Shakyamuni Buddha, well, some idealized form. So, sambhogakaya is the body which is created, your reward body created by all the merit, or your practice body created by the bliss of your practice. But anyway, it's a rather fuzzy idea. And shikantaza is also a rather fuzzy idea. Exactly what is shikantaza? And each tradition uses them a little differently. Chino Sensei will use such words one way,

[36:10]

and a scholar will use the words another way. And mostly, I use them the way Suzuki Roshi used them. So, we have some tradition of how we talk about dharmakaya, which will be a little different from some other. But since there's no dharmakaya or nirmanakaya or sambhogakaya, it doesn't make much difference. It's just a way of giving you some suggestion, some pointing which is better than your usual ideas of thinking about things. So, what is shikantaza? And how shikantaza is different from daydreaming is what shikantaza is. In other words, the idea of shikantaza creates a problem for us of how is shikantaza different from daydreaming. If everything I am is Buddha, including my daydreaming, why do I feel uncomfortable when I daydream?

[37:14]

Why do I think daydreaming is not practice? This kind of question is part of shikantaza. So, what's wrong with daydreaming? I don't mean that daydreaming is okay. I don't mean it's not okay. I don't mean it's not okay. Thank you very much.

[37:51]

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