So yesterday in the Dharma talk, the tantal brought up this wonderful, powerful image of being lost. Quoting Dante, you know, I awoke in the middle of my life in the dark woods and find that I was lost. in a way, our practice is about being lost and staying lost. How to get lost and then stay there. Sort of gives you meaning to that phrase, you know, get lost. Don't know.

[01:11]

beginner's mind. How amazing and wonderful that the karma of our life creates here, creates something somewhere and someone to be there. And all sorts of attitudes and impressions and understandings of what here is. Recently someone came to see me and Douglas said and with great authority said they expressed an understanding that this is it. And of course I said, no it isn't. If you remember in the class where I read out those lists of ways to respond to questions and answers, that was there.

[02:31]

Whatever is asserted as here, take it away. Not to say on other occasions you can't say exactly right. Because that's true too. So getting lost points at something. You know, it points at something about being available for the moment, not just a moment of reinforcing, reactivating your stories about what is and how it ought to be and what you've learned for it to be and who you are. Something more innocent. Something more now. Something more original. If all the assumptions and definitions are set aside

[03:41]

And I hope you don't mind me sharing this, but we'll see. And I was thinking about Jordan, you know, because he, you know, it seems to me There's two ways we can get to this place. Sometimes life just comes along and whatever the heck you're holding on to takes it away from you. You're holding on to that. Here it goes. And then, of course, practice is asking us to engage in a process where we willingly let go. And there's a way when we enter Shashin, it offers us a support to let it go that we're sort of willing to engage.

[04:56]

So that's the kindness of Shashin, you know, it'll take sort of willing and work with it. You know, in those moments, we are sort of not willing to just keep sitting there. Tishine says, well, stay there anyway. We're going to ring the bell when we've decided to ring the bell. Just sit there and see what it's like to not be sort of willing. But Jordan had shared with me that he'd gone to see the doctor and expecting the doctor to say, oh, that's nothing. be totally and completely reassured. But instead the doctor said, I don't know what the heck that is. I'm going to order a whole ton of tests. Wait a minute, you're ordering a whole ton of tests about me?

[06:03]

This blood test, that test, this test. I have a student who has a practice of going out by herself into the desert. This is the process of being available for now. And then in a studious or methodical way, you could say, It's about being settled enough that we don't react or resist that kind of way in which something's being taken away from us. That we turn more towards the opportunity, the opportunity for openness.

[07:08]

The opportunity for, well, that's not being grasped as reality, then what happens? And so Zaza, the process of practice is about being available for getting lost and discovering what it's like to be lost. Sometimes, you know, as we're shifted out of our usual way of being, our usual patterns, our usual ways of reassuring, comforting, establishing ourself, there is distress. Or there is things come up that we're not quite sure what to do with.

[08:13]

And the challenge for us is to not try to struggle back to our habituated way of being. The challenge for us is can we tolerate, can we investigate this state? So in the intensive, for those of you who haven't been there, We've been exploring the foundations of mindfulness. Mindfulness of body breath, mindfulness of feeling, and mindfulness of mental disposition. And the idea is that as you study them, you're taking apart the way we're usually It's like we're taking away something that stops us from being lost.

[09:36]

And then we're also studying what's the foundation for being lost? What kind of stability can there be that doesn't trigger our usual difficulties? our usual way of holding on or separating, or our usual psychological issues. When there's some stability, this sense of letting everything go, it's like a relief. Sometimes as we settle into our sitting, we start to see, we start to feel the nuance, the flavor of our own way of struggling. As we replay an old story that we've replayed, either that exact story or variations on the feet, many times.

[10:52]

And to get a hint of the request, let it go. Those things did happen, and you had these responses. Let go. Be simpler. Non-think. A curious line in the Fukunza Zengi. Think, not thinking. How do you think, not thinking, non-thinking? Let something Come to rest. Something be simple. Don't keep stewing up. Don't keep thinking up your usual ways of thinking up the issues and the challenges and the fears and the yearnings of your life. How do we do that?

[12:01]

How do I do that? How do you do that? Given the context of who you are, the body that you live in, the patterns of thought and feeling that constitute you, how in the middle of that do you get lost? Do you let something pause? How do you get in touch of some urgency just has a hard time letting itself pause. Sashin is this amazing gift of an opportunity to look at that. In the seven factors of awakening, this is the second factor. Dharma Vikaya.

[13:02]

It's called, translated as investigation. And then the other day I was talking about, well, in the Zen school, we call it, what is Buddha? And then I read off this list of strange and wonderful Zen answers. What is Buddha? This very mind. This very mind displays all the karmic patterns Not all the karmic patterns, but it displays the nature of karmic patterns and how they come into being and how they grasp and how they create and reify existence. Saddle down right in the middle. This very mind is Buddha. This very mind reveals getting lost. This very mind reveals liberation. How to be... Suffering can actually be interrupted at various places in the cycle of suffering and re-suffering that would otherwise continue.

[14:10]

So there's so much more that I could talk about. What is Buddha? What does your dream say? What answers are you cooking up? your head. What is Buddha? Go away. Don't shit here. What is Buddha? Don't know. So part of my thinking in reading that whole list is that our exploration, our investigation is to not get at the answer. You know, the answer isn't a certain phrase, a certain idea. It's more like something starts to open.

[15:12]

Something starts to relax, release, allow. It's more like investigating a process. So as we enter Shashin, we have this marvelous opportunity to explore carefully. This letting things fall away. Not to push them away, not to suppress them. to discover how to entrust our one precious life to here and now and what's happening here and now in a way that we don't need to keep re-establishing the world according to me.

[16:26]

And as I've been saying over the last couple of weeks, It's not that the urgency of that activity will cease. It's that we don't hold on to it. We don't grasp it. We allow it to flow through. Okay? Or as it says in the Fukanzazengi, we don't give it a whole lot of thinking. We don't then turn into judging it. establishing it as right or wrong. Okay, that's the moment. That's part of what's happening now. These thoughts, these feelings. So what helps to create or maybe what helps to release this innate ability

[17:37]

at what's going on. This is investigation of what is Buddha. Releasing an innate ability to look at and learn from what's going on. And not just live within the world according to me, the feelings, the thoughts that are created by that. So here's what one poet has to say about it. He said, stand still. The trees and the bushes beside you are not lost.

[18:44]

Wherever you are is called here. You must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers. You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. Let it find you. This is shamatha. This is pausing, stopping. So my recommendation would be to, as much as you can, return, return, pause this stream of dialogue, this stream of concerned thinking and feeling that keeps reestablishing the self.

[20:06]

not about suppressing it, not about trying to make it go away, but allowing parts that something can be appreciated. Let in the signs. When I was sitting upstairs, I was thinking of the light of this cloudy gray morning. This diffused light has a certain kind of quality to it. And it seemed to me that even the sun seems a little different when the sky is cloudy. the intensity of the sound on this quiet morning.

[21:14]

With all these things, all these moments of physical experience, they invite us back to something simpler than the world that we constantly keep recreating. Can we accept that invitation? This is the first foundation of mindfulness. Mindfulness, connectedness, openness, availability to the physicality of being. And of course, because there's so much wrapped up in our heads and our thoughts and our feelings, this seems too sparse a place to live. We'll die of starvation if we live in the here and now.

[22:20]

I need the nourishment of my yearnings. I need to keep worrying about what I worry about. How else will it ever be resolved? I need the familiarity of those agitations. It's a scary proposition to be lost. But it's mostly scary in anticipation. It's mostly scary in hesitation. When there's some kind of giving over what seemed, you know, sparse. It has its own richness.

[23:27]

I have a student who has a practice of going out by herself into the desert and camping there, you know, for a period of time. And she says, almost every time she goes, when she first gets there, It seems bleak and desolate. There's nothing happening. And then after about half a day, it's like her senses tune in to what's happening there. And then there's all sorts of things happening. The light's changing. There's all sorts of little critters scurrying around in an usually unseen way. signs. So it's like a shift of consciousness.

[24:36]

And it's not something you can force, it's more something you can allow. And so this attribute, investigation, it's about each time we sit, we're asking, what is Buddha? We're asking, what is it to just not be lost in all my trips? What is it to let now speak and tell me what is, rather than me tell now what is? How does that happen in the finer workings of this body and mind?

[25:44]

How does it get cut off? How does it get invited to come forward? This is investigation. This is what is Buddha. And then what is it to carry whatever degree of connection, settledness, openness? What is it to carry that into whatever activity we're doing? What is it to let it cook? To let it release the tension in between our shoulder blades or in the middle of our chest? Or in our abdomen. What is it to let it hold? It's like looking at a garden from a distance.

[26:59]

Then you look at your wrong life. It's like, hmm, look at that. Look at the way I relate to that. Isn't that kind of amazing? You know? The phrase that just came into my mind was one that I attribute to Donald Rumsfeld. I think it was his phrase. Shock and awe. I'm not sure if we're looking for shock and awe, but marveling at the mysterious workings of a human life that we're always completely in the throes of. And how amazing it is

[28:09]

So much of the time we can be entranced by it, mesmerized by its enchanting story. And what is it to release it with the exhale? To let something, almost like a sigh, Let something fall away. Not as an act of aggression, but as an act of compassion. As an act of generosity to larger being. As an act of invitation with the inhale. Whatever is happening, invite it in completely. fence against it.

[29:11]

No way of turning away from it. Just so be it. Can breathing be that methodical, that deliberate? So be it fully allowing. So be it fully releasing. some extraordinary nurturance that we've been yearning for since the moment we were born. And I'll ask Master Ma, why do you say this very mind is Buddha? To stop the baby crying. How do we get in touch with the workings of human life that we can support it that thoroughly?

[30:34]

What a gift to offer ourselves and to offer others. How can we support all being if this nurturance is completely unknown to us. What an amazing gift to offer others to be able to touch that deep way of addressing the human condition. This is our investigation as we enter Sachin. It's more difficult than saying you have to do it exactly like this and then with unerring persistence reinforcing that determination.

[31:52]

It's not that easy. easily be grasped and turned into a goal and become the new vehicle of all the difficulty that life has been experienced as we're being asked to discover through our investigation what is diligence what what is that continuing effort that continues to open and appreciate rather than struggle and become depleted. Let me end with another poem. This one I read the other day too.

[32:54]

Open your whole self to the sky, to the earth, to the sun, to the moon. To one whole voice, that is you. And know that there is more that you can't see, can't hear, can't know. Except in moments of steadily growing. And in languages that aren't always sound. other circles of motion. To see ourselves and know that we must take the utmost care and kindness in all things. Breathing in, knowing we are made of all this. And breath, knowing that we are truly blessed because we were born and die soon in the circle of motion, like ego rounding out the morning inside of us.

[34:07]

The great challenge of Sashim is to find this intimate, aware connection to this great continuing drama of our human life. And rather than be mesmerized by it, to see it for what it is. this thought and feeling. Maybe then we see it has a connection to the patterns of our own psychology and personality. Maybe we see the thread of its habit that runs through the course of our life.

[35:32]

Maybe we see that it's part of the human condition. Maybe we see that it offers a way to open, a way to release, a way to get lost, a way to be in a mode of discovery rather than a mode of knowing. And to explore. Carefully. Okay. How do I do that? Being the person I am, how do I do that? Thank you.

[36:38]

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