Could you come in with central? It's like I keep craning my neck back and forth here. I promise not to shout so you don't give me a kiss. It takes me longer and longer to get settled so that you can get smaller and smaller. She's soon to just wheel me in and out. Well, it may remind you that lectures are

[01:11]

He sits odds into them, not necessarily for their content. Okay. One desires pleasures and fears a hard life. These are sentiments one entertains before leading the so-called pleasurable or hard life. After one is in it, one tries to think of the envy and the fear and find that they are gone. Then where are the pleasurable and unpleasurable moments after they are passed? He seemed to be like a sound, a shadow, a breeze, or a dream. Even these four things are somehow more tangible. Besides, how is one ever going to find happiness by countering one illusion with another illusion? I wish I could express this deep truth to you, but I cannot. Su Tung Po, August 5th, 1088. So as the fourth day of Sashin, it's a lot easier to go forward than to go back.

[02:30]

And yet, it's not quite clear what's happening. Or it's clear, but it's not so easy to articulate. Or it's easy to say and impossible to do. One wants a pleasurable life or a good sashim, which means less pain. We're going to advertise sashims, less pain, less feeling. But sometime around now, often realize that it's not about pain or pleasure. It's about showing up for whatever is in front of you. I was thinking yesterday, what do we pay when we pay attention?

[03:50]

We pay in time, in presence. we're in a hurry, we don't pay attention. Time is an interesting thing. In a certain sense, time is always the subject of Sashin. We're always thinking, three more sittings left. But it's always the same amount of sitting. It's always the next breath. No matter how you count. You can count to 10, or you can count to three. It's still a breath. By the way, I recommend counting to three.

[04:54]

If you count to 10, you might think you're accomplishing something. And if you count to three, you get a one in three chance of being right. So time, we often think of time as a separate variable. But time is instrictly tied to every event. That thing I read was written in 1088. It was written at a certain time. The thought of enlightenment has many names, but they all refer to one in the same mind.

[06:20]

Madarjuna said, the mind that fully sees into the uncertain world of birth and death is called the thought of enlightenment. The mind that fully sees into the uncertain world of birth and death is called the thought of enlightenment? Yikes! Some of you come to me and are not, are having a difficult time. And you wish you weren't. And of course there's always an element of me that wants to fix something. Down boy. Rather than to learn from where you are. When you see the uncertain mind of birth and death, you think that there's something wrong.

[07:22]

There's nothing wrong. The suffering you feel is the suffering you feel. The times that I've been in the most pain or most unpleasant circumstances are the circumstances that I've learned the most from. Now, if you asked me would I like to do it again, I'd say no. But I wouldn't have learned what I've learned without the difficult times. We don't learn so much about the things that we do well. The only thing we may learn is how our head swells. The uncertain world of birth and death is the thought of enlightenment.

[08:37]

That's a quote from Dogen, quoting Nagarja. I'm quoting Dogen. who's quoting Nagarjuna, who's not quoting anyone but himself. Saint Master Tao of Mangye said, it is not that there is no practice and no realization, it is just that they cannot be defiled. There's practice and realization that you can't grab onto it. You can't make a chain from it.

[09:42]

A chain of McDonald's or a chain of understanding. There's practice and there's realization, but it has to happen over and over again. It doesn't even have to happen over and over again. It does. You know, you may know people who have had actually genuine enlightenment experiences. And they tell you about it over and over again. The experience was fine. The installing of it is a. Touchstone. Yes. Yes. But I don't want to frighten people away. I don't.

[10:49]

Okay. It's worse. It's worse. It's better. Hello? One, two? Three. Okay. Three. I'm all so unruly proud of you. Not that there is not practice in realization, except it cannot be defiled. We may try to defile it, but there's just practice in realization. It doesn't need to be propped up. You don't need to be propped up. You don't need to say, so-and-so said I have this understanding.

[11:58]

Okay. You know, your mudra has its own energy. It doesn't need the arms or the lap to be rested on. If you're resting your hands on the lap, the hands don't have any energy. Or if you're using a lot of arm strength to hold it up, you're forgetting about your hands. Each thing has its own power, its own power. trying to live. One desires pleasures and fears a hard life.

[13:17]

These are some sentiments one entertains before leading a so-called pleasurable or hard life. After one is in it, it's like a dream. One tries to think of the envy and the fear and finds that they are gone. There are the pleasurable and unpleasurable moments after they are passed. their past. They seem to be like a sound, a shadow, a breeze, or a dream. Even these four things are somehow more tangible. Besides, how is one ever going to find happiness by countering one illusion with another illusion? I guess that's what we do, is we counter one illusion with another illusion, one story with another story, one series of worries for another series of worries.

[14:24]

You know, I think you can learn in Sashin that you have leg pain, and that's terrible. But then if you have back pain, it trumps the leg pain. You forget all about the leg pain. And then if you have tooth pain, Black the law out. Fourth dance machine. Time. Is it time yet? Are we here yet? Yeah?

[15:31]

Okay. So in this way of being, There is no time. Or time is everywhere. Everything is a moment in time. Every moment is a thing. You know, sometimes you can talk about there being two kinds of people, time people and space people. Space people are not extraterrestrials, though. Time people are always concerned about whether they're going to be on time to things. But they don't always notice, they're not always where they are, but they're always on the time on the clock. And space people, they're great to be with, but they're terrible to make a date with.

[16:35]

Because you'll never know when they'll show up. They're so caught up in where they are that they lose track of time. And there are others who are so caught up in time that they lose track of where they are. In Zen practice, Zen training, we have, we even have institutionalized this. Ajito Ajisha takes care of the teacher's time, and the Anitta takes care of the teacher's space. You know, they did research with different forms of meditation to see how they responded to sound.

[17:53]

Any forms of meditation, they would get used to the sound and then tune it out so there wouldn't be a spike in their brainwaves. But Zen teachers, every time the bell rang, they picked up on it. What's great about Sasheen is sometimes things stop. So we've been going for years like this. I was involved in a short sitting in New York. It was a terrible rainstorm and there was

[18:55]

one horn that went off every 20 seconds, and it would stop. And that went on all day. And finally, and being, if Vicki was there, she would have called them up. And we eventually called up the police to come and turn off the horn. But it was something kind of naive about our practice that we just, all right, there it goes. It's like a landmark. Police never came. It continued. I think eventually the battery, after a full day of this, the battery wore down. Eventually, years later, you'll even become nostalgic about this.

[20:06]

Oh, that was a great sashimi. What? It's not that there is no practice or no realization. It's just it can't be defiled. Whatever you learn, whatever you practice is there. It's not a diploma. It could lead you on to the next thing. Su Tung Po was actually a rather interesting fellow. He was advisor to the emperor, a very famous poet.

[21:10]

And there were times when he was in with the emperor, and then there were other times when there was another emperor who he was on the outs with, and he was vanished. I suppose banishment to the countryside is if you're a poet and are used to intellectual conversations and friends like that, you would miss them. But I also wonder if banishment isn't a good idea. Anyhow, he was banished and then just before his death he was brought back and honored. But it's like this entry, pleasant, unpleasant, popular, unpopular. For those of you who have been at Sunset for a long time, there are times when you'll be popular and there are times when you'll be unpopular.

[22:26]

And it's not necessarily that you're wrong when you're unpopular. It's just mysterious. Time. For those of you who are younger, be very aware of the time that you have now. Because the whole culture and country changes. So different 40 years ago than it is now. Of course, every moment is different, but I'm not trying to push that elephant. People's unconscious assumptions change. That's why it's very hard to understand history because we always understand history from the place we are, naturally enough.

[23:36]

And the place we are is not necessarily a great translator of what was. But it's not that there's no practice or history or realization. It's just all are making something of it. I can't even defile it. The mind that sees the inadequacy of birth and death is the thought of enlightenment. Wow. The first hundred times I read that I didn't like it. That's enlightenment? But I think he's right. We want enlightenment to be with neon lights.

[24:38]

But it may be just a whisper. Oh, did you take me in this way? I forgot. Usually I use the incense as a monitor of how long I've been talking. But some of you are a little allergic to it and I forgot to turn it upside down. It's okay, Carol. So even our ideas of what kindness is.

[25:47]

Kindness, of course, doesn't have to be sweet. It could also be a shout or a correction. The background has to be kindness to understand it as that. that make sense? I'll just say one packet more. We have very simplistic ideas of kindness and they're not wrong. But sometimes we can be kind where our true intention is to benefit others and to help them in which we might shout or something or we might But the background shouldn't be this. The background should be this. And then the foreground, this may make sense.

[27:04]

Because it's not like there's no teaching. It just, it can't be defiled. Someone was, I was reminiscing about, Now, when I was meal board coordinator here, I learned from the person who was meal board coordinator before, who was a very manipulative person, and he could get anybody to do anything once. Then he had no stock. So I learned to say, oh, you don't want to do that? Well, how about this? How about this? After the fifth time, they would... they would pick something. It's not about getting someone to do something. It's about pointing to the cooperative nature of what we do.

[28:08]

So if you're popular or unpopular, it's all stuff. One desires pleasures and fears a hard life. It makes sense. However, fearing a hard life is not something, there are worse things to fear, like complacency. You know, if you have a choice between two things, it's often better to do the harder thing. I don't, and I know some of your personal histories are masochistic, and I'm not asking you to follow through with that, but all of everything else is equal. It's often better to do the hard thing. Why fear it? They'll test your muscles. These are sentiments One entertains before leading a so-called pleasurable or hard life.

[29:28]

Sentiments one entertains. Don't we entertain sentiments all the time? We're maybe not as present as we could be because we're entertaining sentiments. Oh, come in, have some tea. Oh, you think that's beautiful? Oh, maybe I should worry about that. After one is in it, one tries to think of the envy and the fear and finds that they are gone. When you look back, you either idealize it or demonize it or just say, oh, that was an interesting history. I wonder what that was like then. Where are the pleasurable and unpleasurable moments after they are passed?

[30:34]

Where? They're gone. All that blood and sweat, they seem to be like a sound, a shadow, a breeze, or a dream. Philip Whalen once wrote a poem which is, All of me that there is makes a shadow. Thought it was wonderful when Vicki had a singing in three-part harmony. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

[31:41]

Life is but a dream. Even these four things, sound, shadow, breeze, or dream, are somehow more tangible. Besides, how is one ever going to find happiness by countering one illusion with another illusion? Michael said that. That's an illusion. I wish I could express the truth to you, but I cannot.

[32:45]

Make me try. And if I did, it's because of your, you intuited what I meant. So the fourth day, sometimes one could get some dramatic experiences like I'm the worst person on earth or I'm the best I understand nobody understands anything but me these are kind of exaggerations which you're in a kind of ambivalent mode and you break out and you break out to something that's could be just another illusion so be kind to yourself And don't necessarily believe what you're thinking. Note it and say, well, it could be.

[33:49]

This is a time to be kind. It's not that there's no practice in realization. It just cannot be defiled. Whatever you want to make of things, they have their own grounding. I just like to say that I'm very impressed with how you're practicing and trying to understand this complex, crazy world. Listening to the deep.

[34:59]

And we've got some more work to do. Now, it is easier going forward than going back now, so kind of longer distance. But just be present. Just be the fourth day, the whole fourth day. Don't miss out by trying to leap to the fifth or go back to the third or compare them all with each other. This is a new day. Anything might happen. Anything. And I'd like to thank those of you who have been helping me with my unpleasurable moments.

[36:06]

This is truly a good-hearted group. But don't go for any shortcuts. You don't want to eliminate the few years you have. Don't counter one illusion with another illusion. Just wake up. Thank you all.

[37:05]

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