Laya, you take the strength of the darkness with you. Dickie asked me yesterday what I was going to talk about, and I told her I didn't know.

[01:08]

And, uh, I'm kind of, uh, putting around and talking with a lot of people. And that has taken place for me in the last five or six weeks. I'm trying to pick out from them what would be most relevant and helpful to us in the session. And, uh, I was expected to return to Casa Jara after several weeks of intensive study in the city. And I will be okay with some teaching. But the day after I arrived in San Francisco, I was asked if I wanted to go. And, uh, I wasn't sure if he wanted it.

[02:16]

And I knew if I thought about it, I wouldn't be able to make a clear decision, so I just said yes. And, uh, boarded my ticket back there. And, uh, then had a lot of funny thoughts and feelings about it. But basically decided to go because I did not ever think I would go to Japan. And, uh, on my own, I didn't need to be guided. I could go by hand and grab a copy of everything. And I invited Ananda also. And about a week ago, I was sitting on the mountainside behind the Suzuki Retsubo temple. And I was like, you know, in about a week, I'm going to be a scholar. I didn't know why I was here. And, uh, the reality of sitting on the mountainside and looking at some drawings of the orange trees and the tea plants and the sun and the rivers that day, it was the first really clear day we've had since we've been here.

[03:18]

And it really, you know, really, you feel your breath in your life. Uh, completely. I guess with satisfaction, I guess. I don't know. It seemed a little far-fetched from that perspective. I guess one thing I found is that no matter where I have been, how abrupt the transitions have been, I've always been very glad to be there. I've always thought, oh, this is great. I'm really here. I was delighted to be in Japan. It was really exciting and heartful to be on the soil. And to my surprise, when the plane landed in San Francisco, I was so happy to be in San Francisco.

[04:27]

It was a great afternoon. I anticipated, I had not thought that would be the case, but my feelings were great. The happiness was the same in both places. And my happiness at being at the Suzuki Virgin's Temple was completely unexpected. I was deeply, deeply contented. The temple is beautiful. And Greg says it's in much better condition now than when they first visited it. I don't know if it's in good condition, but it's pretty well kept up. The grounds are in good condition. And the family lives on one side, and they have a large Buddha Hall in the center. And the other room is the Zen Do and some small rooms for guests.

[05:30]

And we stay in the guest room. And it's us in every morning in the Zen Do in San Francisco Virgin. And we did service every morning in the Buddha Hall. The three of us left under Ananda. Before Ananda came, he was helping us out. And we kept chanting the bells and what they do in the ocean. And behind the Buddha Hall, going up about two sets of very tall steps for a short Japanese

[06:32]

I was surprised that they were high for me. And now, going up two sets of steps was the Kaisanda, their family's hall. It's behind the Buddha Hall. Very lovely. And some of the cushions that their bells, the makuhi sits on, are very worn and faded. It's pale. And that's what happens to these bright fabrics. And there is the founder and the teacher of the founders. And in some Japanese temples, the teacher of the founder is the central spot of the Kaisanda. So there are these temples. And there are clocks, 34 clocks, all of which were made by the abbots.

[07:36]

And there was a Suzuki-guchi. And his son, who is now the abbot, had been so young. He was born in the temple and had lived his entire life there. And there are words to express the beauty of that continuity. Very subtleness. And salinity. And his son said, when he was born in Japan, he was born and raised in that temple in the Aizu. Everybody knew him. So he was just like all the other priests. He was no special priest, that's all. And he was very kind. And I guess the feeling of context grows for me.

[08:48]

The life, the practice in Japan has a context that I feel we haven't found here in this country. That somehow our practice, we think of it as occurring in a training place or a practice facility. And we haven't figured out yet how to reach that space that we feel outside of things. That's the harder one. You go shopping in town, outside of pastry, you go to the same places. And you're always so glad that that's the way. It's that our life, our practice, doesn't feel supported out there. And I think that's a problem for us. I saw Brother David in the city the day I arrived.

[10:02]

And we talked briefly about Japan. He had some of the same experience I had, but he didn't have the language. But he felt like a good child, too. And he said, on the train, I said I had this great feeling of ease, somehow, that I couldn't explain. I couldn't make sense of why I felt at home or so well in Japan because I couldn't speak the language. My efforts to communicate were pretty frustrating. One thing is that actually he took care of me. An example that he did was being on a train with a friend who was escorting him. And they left their seats to go to the dining car. And he asked, shall I bring my purse and my bag?

[11:03]

And the friend said, oh no, if you have your bag, you're really upset that you're sitting in a compartment. He said, my passport's in there. He just blew it. Because there was a whole community right there. And everybody was taking care of the bag. He left his bag and went and had something to eat to bring back. And of course, he's not there. And the feeling of trapping yourself all the time. It was a lifestyle. Once, I did try to use the women's public bath. A couple of women thought I didn't belong there because of my hair. I was wearing black slacks and my wife's wearing pink.

[12:03]

They began spouting all sorts of stuff to me in Japanese. And I suspected what they were saying was that I didn't belong there. And I said, no, this is not my home. That's my anatomy. Let me proceed with taking my bag home. But the whole feeling was very soft. I think it's that quality of people in the bathroom. Let me feel at home. There's an action that I was shooting. There's something left. I was reading the Lotus Sutra before I left. In there, I don't know if I read it or if I wrote it after I read it. Give up your own karmic life.

[13:09]

And take on the karma of Buddha's child. I liked the way that sounded. It worked out for my body. Take on the karma of Buddha's child. And you will feel the peace, Buddhahood, Zen meditation, beautiful temples, and the gold flower arrangements. It's enormous. Incense, gold, and all the crops and the tall flowers. You feel like there's some point to it.

[14:13]

It's elaborate. It represents a lot of wealth. But it's there, I think, because when we respond to it, our heart responds to that. There's something that's beyond the mundane that reaches our deep aspirations. And it is that deep heart aspiration that I experience, because it's chanting. It's a beautiful chanting. It's beautiful. I'm in awe of that. And then, at the same time, it's just beautiful. It's your karma. I think what I've written with in my life, and I hope that all of us have, is not a question of which is real

[15:15]

or which is astronomical, because they're both there, and they're both, it's like being on a seesaw. Both sides come up. How to work with this, how to not get caught by one side or the other. To trust. How to trust both sides. To trust being Buddha's child. And to trust in the Buddha and the Buddha himself. Because they're not different. They're not different. I think of them as different. Maybe they're different. Maybe they're the same. But it's one person. It's one not-self. Some of you who are here in the spring remember Peter and Jane coming down with Kano-sensei. We went to see them. And you may remember Kano-sensei

[16:19]

as the disciple of D.T. Suzuki. And he was very happy to see us. And we stayed four hours with him. And we launched into a lecture in the driveway. And Peter, he wasn't feeling well, and he started to faint, and I think I fell asleep. And I came back into it. He was talking about just... He was talking about Amida Buddha. He was talking about the great compassion of heart. And he was talking about throwing away our teeny power, our idea of self-power, our idea that by our effort we can do something. And... Let me try this again.

[17:20]

The thought that you can achieve enlightenment is a false idea. There is something beyond one's own power, beyond one's own self. Throw away your own effort. Throw away yourself. This is the same as throwing away body and mind. At the time of throwing away body and mind, other power is working. You can call that other power Amida Buddha. The power of Amida Buddha is unlimited. Personal power is worthless. And you realize... I think the word I wrote down was tariki. When you exhaust duty. But when we talk about this,

[18:25]

you realize you can't just throw it away. You have to completely work it through. Whatever our efforts are, we have to completely exhaust them in the doing of it. There's no way you can make up your mind to throw away yourself. You intend to throw it away, but you end up with nothing. We can't do it with that intention. But we can be consciously aware of it, simply noticing. Like Thay was talking about this earlier, throwing away what's happening. Not being stuck in it. Not obstructing ourselves. Obstructing ourselves and not obstructing ourselves. When you're in a foreign culture,

[19:27]

you see usually how you obstruct yourself. Because everything is so unfamiliar. Things are dramatized. Small successes and small failures are dramatized. You can see the power of your consciousness. How you can... How you can turn a situation or deal with it, coagulate it, but because of some habitual response, it's not... You can't let go. I think I very much feel that I can't help my life so much anymore. I think that some of the deepest things,

[20:27]

the strongest things that happen, I can't talk about. I'm not motivated enough to be comfortable. But I'm sitting with a feeling that I can't... I can't help my life so much anymore. And I want to make that transition to being Buddha's child and living my life in that way. And I think maybe all of you do too. And that's why you're here. Tano-sensei said something interesting about the precepts. He said, when you follow the precepts by literally following them,

[21:29]

even though your mind wants to do something, but you don't let yourself do it, that's not following the precepts. He said, the precepts to follow are the precepts of the mind, the heart. Most of the precepts to concentrate on, the way to follow them is to give up the desire in the mind or whatever. So, Sashin is our form and our opportunity to practice this life, this life of Buddha.

[22:36]

Which we talked about. I guess you've been talking about emptiness and impermanence and interdependence if you've been studying the Heart Sutra. Because I learned that you have been studying the Heart Sutra, and I listened to Thich Nhat Hanh's tape of his lecture on the Heart Sutra at the Green Belch months ago. How many people here have heard of Thich Nhat Hanh? Thich Nhat Hanh? It was quite wonderful. He said it was. And he started by describing emptiness as

[23:42]

empty of self, empty of all nature, empty of separate self. And he held up a piece of paper, I guess, and he said, can you see the cloud in this paper? Can you see the sun in this sheet of paper? Can you see the water? Can you see the soil? Can you see the rain? And quoting Vannegarjuna, to be empty is to be full of everything because we have no separate self. Because there is no substance separate from everything. We are open to everything. Everything can enter us.

[24:45]

Everything can create us. And everything, a piece of paper, is composed of everything that is not. And we are composed of everything we are not. We are composed of a... The Buddha is composed of a non-Buddha element like us. And we are composed of non... of sentient being elements like him. And both sentient beings and Buddha are empty. And the one who bows and the one who receives the bow are both empty. He was talking for about two hours, going through the Heart Sutra, and he explained something

[25:46]

that I had not understood this way before. And I don't know if Nell has run over this material about neither born, neither produced nor destroyed. But he explained it. I never understood this business of unborn. Because, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, when we are born, we think of being born arising from nothing into something. And when we die, we go from something into nothing. But actually, he says, nothing is created out of... Things are created out of nothing. Everything is created out of something. And the example of the self. We are born, but before we are born,

[26:48]

we already exist. Half in our mother and half in our father. Before they are born, we exist half in our grandfather and half in our grandfather. And going back to their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, we can say, we can see that we have always existed. We have always been there in one form or another. It's a beginningless time. So the notion of birth and death is a word, it's a concept. He said, look at this hand. If I had died in the past, would my hand still be here? And he said the Prajnaparamita, the Heart Sutra,

[28:01]

used to liberate us from fear. It's about fear, about the constraints, the constructs, categories of the mind. And it transcends the world. This piece of paper, he said there's a right side and a left side. You can't take the right side apart and create another right side and create another left side. You can keep tearing it and keep doing it. Just be careful. Ah, that's it. Getting back, trying to come back to Sashimi.

[29:26]

We practice not to become enlightened, but to realize our true life, our real life. The kind of life that Thay was talking about yesterday. I was very grateful for your observations that you made about your own experience. It's that kind of observation that we can use Sashimi for. I feel it's important in our practice, no matter how many concepts and how many ideas and how many texts we've read about the mind-to-mind practice for realization, to make this sitting, make this cross-legged sitting, whether it matches anybody else's discretion. And that's, I keep flopping out thinking,

[30:33]

well I'm not doing it, it doesn't sound like what it's supposed to be, I'm not getting it, I'm not understanding it. But inside, it's there. You're getting it, you're understanding it, even if the mind can't grasp it or recognize it. Sitting at the Utsu-ren, just breath, just... Soft breath. Soft breath. And realizing the importance of pulling in the chin. One thing I discovered recently is, the kind of breath, the kind of calmer breath, or just the kind of breath, helps a lot to pull in the chin.

[31:35]

For years, people have been pulling in the chin, but I haven't been able to do it. The extent, and I know that this is hard for many of us, the extent of which we can't do it, really affects something, the more it matches well, the more it allows the abdomen to take in the breath. I can't find that place for the chin. It affects the neck, it affects the shoulders. If our real life is now, in this moment, the kind of observation that I was talking about

[32:37]

is what makes our life real. I couldn't imagine myself taking out a knife and cutting off the head of a snake. But I could imagine myself getting a bucket of water and drowning. Whatever our response to the situation, whatever situation arises, that's our response, that's our meeting that moment. And to find our breath is to find the real life, the emptiness, the impermanence, and the interdependence. I think we find those in Sushumna.

[33:38]

I think Sushumna is to help us make effort and exhaust our effort and find our true strength and true power. And because we do it together, to support each other's intention, to sit here with calm mind, to take refuge in fear, to take refuge in pain, to take refuge in discouragement, to take refuge in confusion, whatever arises to come home to, to take refuge in our own real, actual experience.

[34:47]

When I have tried to correlate my thought processes with my feelings, I've found that my thoughts are related to my feelings. If my body feels bad, there's some negative thoughts happening. So this kind of investigation of whatever we find is very fruitful for us and helpful for everybody. Does anybody have anything they want to add? Thank you.

[36:06]

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