Good morning. I noticed the last couple of mornings when I came in to talk, this space was left open. So I thought, oh, well, maybe that's a signal I should come this way. The one thing I've noticed in sushims, sometimes forms emerge, not because of anyone's design or any collective design, but just as people's bodies become sensitive about how they relate to each other and how they occupy a space, something happens. So I thought, well, in a way we do this collectively, in a way we do this individually.

[01:22]

Of course we have all our ideas about exactly what the forms are and what it is to do them right and to do them wrong. And that has an energy, you know, that has the purposefulness of it and the intention of following the will of it as an energy and a way to gauge and engage our mindfulness, our attention. And then something else happens right along with it. This is some way beyond our thinking, larger than our thinking, we're also engaging. And as we settle into sashim, that subtler sensibility can assert itself. In case you hadn't figured out, this is the third day.

[02:37]

And the third day, especially in a five-day sashim, the third day always has a certain kind of flavor. The start is far enough away, and the end is far enough away. Whatever clamor brought us here, that we brought with us here from our lives, has started to loosen up, soften up. And whatever awaits us afterwards has also got a little distance to it. And then in that space, in that space created by the more usual urgency of our karmic workings, something can reveal itself.

[03:47]

Sometimes it just appears like a middle aisle. during lecture. Sometimes it's the dynamic tension. In the poem it says, between the light and the spur, the pincer jaws of heaven. You know, we're in this dynamic play between the urgency, the impulses of our karmic agenda. And then this request of the Dharma. Something like, go beyond self.

[04:52]

Don't be caught in self. Open up to greater being. Allow. The abundance of all existence to register. You know, the tension, the play between those two. Between form and emptiness. This is the place of activity that we can start to appreciate as we settle in decision. come to this place. Yesterday I was talking about energy.

[05:57]

There's a way in which when something's released, the inherent, the intrinsic energy comes forth And right along with that, there's the way in which we passionately energize the arising of our life, the world according to me, our fears, our hopes, our sadnesses. They blossom into stories that have a content, a thought, that have a feeling, physical, emotional. And they're energized. And that gives them a kind of momentum, a kind of capacity to engage consciousness.

[07:03]

So the next factor in the path of awakening is it's about this to be engaged. When it's positive, it's joy. When it's in deep meditation, it's something that's usually translated as rapture. And when it has an unpleasant attribute, it's suffering. It's contraction. It's struggling. When consciousness goes into a deep state of absorption with clarity and sadness, this engagement comes forth as something similar to ecstasy.

[08:17]

It says in the sutras, its two main attributes are piti, physical or mental joy, and sukha, physical joy. And then the sutra recommends that you saturate yourself in the joy. It says like the way a spine soaks up water. joy, saturate your being. And this for us as humans is kind of like a deep healing. This is like the antidote to the agitation, the distress, the bitterness. It lingers around. in our world as a consequence of our suffering.

[09:23]

To try to stay in the moment connected to the outer world in a way helps alleviate some of the Preoccupation with the inner distress. You know, yesterday I was describing how this can energize. We give ourselves over. So yesterday I used a Zen trick on you. A little trickery. Like start with a story. It catches your interest. Once upon a time, in a faraway place, a marvelous thing happened.

[10:33]

This is like fly fishing. In fly fishing, you cast a fly, and the fly doesn't go in the water with the fishes. It entices the fish to jump out of the water. This is what a good story does. It entices us to jump back on who we are and take hold of something else. And of course there's also bait fishing. We put something on a coug. We put a weight on it and it goes down into the water. And both of these are the modalities of our practice. One is, especially in the realm of this attribute, rapture, joy, is pause and appreciate.

[11:43]

Pause the intrigue of the karmic flow of thought feeling. Pause it and appreciate What's happening? Appreciate seeing, hearing, anything. Everything. As Dogen Senji says, literally forget yourself. You get so caught up in this story, you forget those important things you shouldn't be worrying about. as we settle into Shashin and there's a growing capacity to direct our attention, to guide our involvement.

[12:47]

Pause and appreciate. And sometimes We give over to the moment and we can experience a shift. Sometimes we can't give over to the moment. It's like it stays monochromatic. It stays two-dimensional. It stays insipid in contrast to the intoxication of our karmic story, so rich and tasty, either sweet or bitter. But either way, to be present for the delight, the joy of giving over, or to be present and notice

[13:59]

inability to give over. So this time in Shishin affords us this capacity. It helps us to enter into this way of being. More in line with our intention, with our commitment, than just the force of habit energy. heals and it soothes. You know, the next factor is tranquility or settling. It also has a quality of something has been soothed. It has a quality of releasing on the exhale like a sigh. Something has been set on, laid to rest.

[15:05]

causing and appreciating. And I want to read a poem that talks some about this. The bug stands for all things, even those things that don't flower. For everything flowers from within of self-blessing Though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow, to put a hand on the brow of the flower and retell it in touch that it is lovely until it flowers again from within of self-blessing. As we open, we open to the ways in which we contract.

[16:31]

As we settle, we settle into our own unsettledness. This is that dynamic tension between the request of greater being and the impulse contracting around some small self. And this pausing and appreciating as we go through each activity, letting things be a little more deliberate, a little more settled, and allowing them in. It creates its own kind of healing. not something we think through, not something that happens for us in a shower of bright ideas, but more in a fear of the heart, more deeper in our workings, the way we leave a space in the middle of the womb.

[17:48]

No one thinks it up and deliberately acts through the thinking. It just comes forth. And then the other side of this, you know, the dramatic tension, is that it's when we hold still, we enter more thoroughly, more fully, we make more contact with the way we contract, the way we can sit in Zaza and feel this... swirl of mysterious energy. Making the experience of our own body something dense and difficult. Making the experience of our own mind something opaque.

[18:49]

Something that can have a flurry of energy that doesn't make sense. and swirl in a mysterious way. And this is bait fishing. This is where you go down to the depth that you're already at. You make contact anywhere you can When your mind's swirling all the heck and the very thought of following your breathing seems beyond your ability to just experience in any way you can.

[19:51]

Can you notice anything? Can you make contact with your body? Can you start to breathe into that contracted heaviness? Rather than letting it settle into more heavy darkness, can something about it be contacted and known and experienced? This state holds many gifts. One of the gifts it holds is access to a deeper sense of being. As we open up, we open up to our deeper disquiet.

[20:52]

It maybe has more of a feeling tone than a story. But sometimes when we open to it, we can see how it feeds many stories. Sometimes when it's really active, we can watch ourselves look around. I have this feeling and I'm going to get a story to go with it. Any volunteers? You. I just volunteered you. You're upsetting me. Why are you doing that? We can have an insight into how it runs through our life. How it's a preferred disposition.

[22:01]

Sometimes we just contact it in the body. And it's just an old ache. Maybe a sense of heavy stiffness. Making sitting still feel unpalatable. Maybe making sitting upright. Letting the spine be straight, the shoulders wide. The breath from the belly. Making that very... seem burdensome, unwelcome?

[23:01]

Can we turn towards that as a teaching? In one of the commentaries in the Blue Cliff Records, it says, how many times Do I have to go down to the dragon's cave? To touch that dark difficulty in my being. So these two are a pair. And it's only, that's its own kind of rapture. Maybe we could say it's very much involved with our karmic life. We energize the karmic patterns and we experience the consequence. But still, it's asking us, practice is asking us to make contact with that.

[24:08]

To discover how to know it. Cognitively. How to bring an awareness to it. How to let it speak. Not in words. More in sensibility. So this is in dynamic interplay the other side of rapture and energy, of opening and engaging. We're not in competition. Not to say consciousness should always be bright and open and the body should always be light and energetic. But to realize that the play of our practice, that we settle into unsettledness.

[25:13]

We open to contraction. challenge for us is not to struggle with the heaviness, not to struggle with the contraction, but to let it be its own teacher. You know, the second half of this poem by Galway Canal is it's about a pig It's about a pig and its loveliness. As Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow and told her in words and in touch, blessings of earth on the sow. And the sow began remembering all dying for thick length from the earthen's night

[26:21]

all the way through the fodder and the slops to the spiritual curl of the tail. There was no enemy within. great saving grace without. They're both just dimensions of experience that can come together and illuminate each other. As the poet says, like the pincer jaws of heaven, or as we would say in Zen, the medicine and disease of awakening

[27:23]

when the outcome, they bring them together and they subdue each other, when they involve and inform each other. Our practice is to awaken to the human condition. It's not to transcend it, and it's not to somehow through some powerful means, purify it into a 16-foot golden Buddha. It's to awaken in the middle of the human condition. It is not singular, but collective. As we say in our chant, you know, I vow to avow our karma.

[28:26]

I now fully avow all that timelessly intertwined karma from the propensities of human existence. So in this cradle of sasheen, This moment of respite between beginning and end. Can we allow some deliberate pausing? Pausing and appreciating. Sometimes bright flowers, sometimes stormy seas. sometimes shining simplicity, sometimes opaque complexity.

[29:36]

Sometimes opaque complexity is a wonderful gift in terms of accepting not knowing. Okay, right now I don't know what the hell is going on. And as the poet says, the trees aren't lost, the birds aren't lost, the forest isn't lost. To let the very intensity of our own meaning become the complexity of that undo something.

[30:58]

This is a kind of stopping, a kind of stillness. This is where The energy and the full engagement can allow the tranquility, can allow settling. Actively giving over, pausing and appreciating as it comes and envelops us, not resisting. not struggling against the experience we're having, but turning towards it and feeling it, experiencing it in any way we can. For this time in Sushi,

[32:09]

As we've settled into something and our attention, our awareness is more astute. We can refine our effort in this way. The multitude offerings of opening and the multitude offerings of seeing what has come forth. and created itself with some extraordinary conviction that it has us rather than we have it Shakyamuni Buddha yes accomplished with deep concentrations and great yogic skills and fully gained the knowledge of the non-devil teachings.

[33:23]

And then he struggled deeply with some inner passion, injury. And when he touched something, when that became apparent, then the yogic skills, the deep concentration could be used in this service of awakening. This is his offering to us. So please, as we move forward, going nowhere, to remind yourself, encourage yourself to both open, pause and appreciate and don't resist the karmic formations that arise.

[34:42]

Can you make contact? may be allowed to speak. Can there be a way of involving them, engaging them that moves more towards stillness than agitation? And I would say the trick about that is something about Something close to surrender. But not quite that passive. Something more like being undone by the power of that moment rather than trying to overpower. Facilitated by

[35:53]

walking with the inhale and releasing with the exhale. Thank you.

[36:16]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.48