It seems like the only thing I really want to talk about is that I'm sitting in Sessionen with nobody in here, not trying to do anything about these things. Shikantaza means to give up illusion and gain enlightenment. You see, to give up illusion and gain enlightenment. And the illusion that there's something outside of our own experience, our own illusion. Something outside, and by which to evaluate it, compare it, try to improve it, want to change it, feel dissatisfied.

[01:16]

In these terms, enlightenment is at hand, available to each of us. Just by finding some place in our body to stay with the experience, the feeling, the sensation, the breath, the awareness, without going outside of that. When we can do that, when we've all had that experience, that very refreshing experience for some period of time, just being in our body, in our experience. I've been trying to do this for a few months. I've seen buoyant quality, up to that time. There's energy and enlightenment for us because we know we're alive. We're not undermining our life.

[02:31]

We're pulling the plug on it, letting go of it, the energy out of it, and by ascribing it to ourselves, by criticizing it, by considering it. And last summer, one of our guests here asked me if I would read the manuscript of the forthcoming book and write a little blurb or something about it. And how it might be used as part of the book's emotion. I like this woman and I like her work. She's been writing about addiction, polyphenic pain, for a number of years.

[03:34]

And I agreed to do this. And I learned that I was going to be traveling to Japan and I realized I'd better complete this assignment. So the first thing I did that weekend was to spend with this manuscript, which is about the organization of addicts, the addictive organization. The most recent book, When Society Becomes an Addict, talks about addiction at the socio-cultural level. And then this new one is about the organization as addictive substance, as process, addictive processes. It's really interesting. You know, it sounds like her life. But I found that when I came to write to her about it, I didn't feel right about using my name or the name of Tess Hunter on the jacket or the inside pages of the book.

[04:52]

Somehow I didn't get back to her. And then I was caught with, well, I really like this person and I want her to like me, and I say no. And how can I say no? I know she'd take that as a criticism and I'd fall in love. And then, of course, I realized I was caught in the kind of thinking that characterizes Cody Henderson, that she's been writing about for several years and treating people for years. And if I couldn't tell her how I felt and what I honestly could or couldn't do, then I wasn't respecting her, trusting her. So that was really helpful. I thought I'd just say no because I wrote her a nice letter and I thanked her for the book in which I appreciated it. And I found it relevant to Zen Center processes and to my own processes. But I didn't find it, didn't feel right enough to kind of endorse the book.

[05:55]

And when I returned from Japan, there was a nice letter which I opened. She was a little sorry that I wasn't able to do that, but she appreciated it. And she hoped to offer her service to it maybe someday. Because the question I asked her was, do you think process can become an addiction? Because her antidote to Cody Henderson and addictive behavior is living in process. And I think process is where it's at too. But at Zen Center we are so much always in process that I thought, let's get away from this too. And can this be an addiction and can this be a substitute for something else?

[06:58]

So she wrote back and she didn't think that process in itself was addiction, that there was something like an addictive process. And sometimes when she was in the area perhaps she could take a look at what we were doing. And I was pleased that I think her perspective might be helpful to us. I know we love to talk and we spend a lot of time talking to each other. And sometimes it feels like it's a substitute for knowing ourselves. Or maybe experiencing our own truth or our own reality. We frequently leave a meeting and check with somebody, what did you think of yesterday? Like we're not really sure what our take on the meeting was until two or three other people said, yeah, I thought it was great. It's her premise, and it's validated by other researchers in her field, that 96 to 98 or 99% of American culture society are addicts.

[08:23]

Characterized by addiction. And not just by addiction to alcoholism, or drugs, or sex, or food. But addicted also to relationships. And to what she called processes like the work of the body. And she characterizes the society by behaviors which we all recognize. And it's pretty dysfunctional. It's not just inside ourselves, in our own families, in our own close relationships. But it's pretty suspended for the entire society. And I think it's helpful just to look at it in this way. It validates what we're all experiencing.

[09:28]

That dysfunctional reality of government, political leaders, all the way down to the family. The behaviors that she talks about are behaviors of denial, depression, control, frozen feelings, lying. Externally reckless, always finding something outside to validate. Polarizing experience. Dependency and fear. Many others. These are some of it. While I was getting ready to go on the trip, I was using a word processor for the first time.

[10:43]

And somebody was helping me learn how to do it. And one afternoon, it was Saturday afternoon, and we were both kind of glad there weren't many people around so we could do our work. And she was coming out of traffic. She had a cold and was feeling sick. And this guy wanted to go to bed, but at the same time was asked to do a job that had to be done by a doctor. And she was caught between two impossible experiences. She was really sick and wanted to go to bed. And yet again, the job had to be done. And she was getting pretty mad at me. And I just said, you know, it hurts to know that you're creating irony for yourself. I'm sure something can be done. I'm sure the job can be extended.

[11:43]

I really need to take care of my body right now. It wasn't that she was sick. She had something muscular. Anyway, we talked about it a little bit, and she realized that she was always casting her life in extremes, which were both impossible and feeling very caught. And... It's not a familiar term. I didn't come up with it. Perfectionism is another one of these characteristics. These grow out of alcoholic... They were originally identified in alcoholic families, I guess. The families of alcoholics are characterized as co-dependents because without their complete cooperation in joining the process,

[12:50]

a person who is on addictive substance can't get away with it. But everybody makes room for his or her reality, joins the reality, and develops it, really makes it blossom. And denying what's going on, not truthfully addressing, is pretty prevalent. And from that, lying, she was describing lying as being a very characteristic and socially acceptable mode or discourse in our society. And a little white lie, which can be characterized as where you're just being kind, or you're understanding what's going on, is really a way of avoiding meeting somebody, avoiding recognizing their dishonesty, avoiding recognizing their own fear.

[13:56]

And she gives multiple examples of this kind of behavior. And it's pretty devastating. There was a meeting of about over a hundred people, 150 people maybe, in San Francisco, at Zanzibar, on addiction meets Buddhism, or something like that. People who were both practicing meditation, practicing Buddhism, and were part of a large-scale program to study meditation. There's been groups that have gone around, that's one of their house, and there have been groups in the Bay Area, and quite a few students at Zanzibar attending such groups. And it's been, the program's been expanded now to kind of Zanzibar-wide. So one Sunday evening when I was there, this 150 or so people came together for the first time, and the dining room was full. It was amazing.

[15:07]

In the process, people were just talking about themselves. Just their lives. Giving examples of growing up in families of alcohol-dependent faith, drug-dependent faith, sexual abuse, child abuse, suicide. Just one story after another. It was devastating. And each person talked about how isolated they felt, and how burdened by their life. And how hard it was for them, trying to take care of a family system they existed in. And what a relief it was, trying to come to our 12-step program. Somehow we found a way to include groups, and to find that many other people shared their life experiences. And it doesn't, it isn't that you have to, I've had an alcoholic family, a drug-dependent family.

[16:17]

Just a depressed family, psychologically dysfunctional family. So when I said the other night that we were all psychologically immature, I really felt, pretty strongly, that in fact this is the work that we are doing at Zen Center. That coming from a kind of culture that we have, that's pretty infantile, that's looking for instant gratification and instant fix. We have taken this wisdom tradition that's coming up, and I think it's not easy for us to know how to work with that. I think we look to it as an instant fix also. And instead of taking it on, let's process slowly our whole life, integrating and understanding.

[17:27]

Somehow we have always felt, I don't know, I've always felt like I could just change myself, or slay the other, I don't know. I don't know whether to try this again or better, or try this therapy, you know, enormous range of therapies that always make me understand a lot more. Let's see. Anyway, I think it's no wonder that there's some confusion in us about how to work with the practice of Shakyamuni Bodhisattva, with the practice of no-brain-idea, with the practice that just goes through. We somehow want to convert that into something that's more familiar.

[18:46]

When I first came to Shakyamuni Bodhisattva, I was reminded that I couldn't believe the teaching. I was asked to investigate my experience in such detail, in such minute detail, leaving little traces of experience, of sensation, of thought. It was overwhelming, I couldn't do it. There was too much trouble sitting, a lot of difficulty just being able to hold this practice. And so for many years, I wasn't able to do the practice of investigating my breath. But somehow I tuned it out. It was just enough to try to still complete my backstroke, and I can remember Padagiri Roshi just saying, the first session I sat with him just to complete my backstroke,

[19:48]

and that kind of instruction made the most sense. Wonderful. Krishnamurti, I think it was, said that all of us are afraid. That characterizes each of us is fear, and what we are afraid of basically is each other. We're all afraid of each other. When you think of that, you realize that only a country which doesn't respect the child

[20:51]

or have a way to teach the child to respect itself, its own experience, its own truth, can develop a society of people who are afraid, not trusting themselves and not trusting each other. I think that's why we're here. There's something about Suzuki Roshi's teaching, Suzuki Roshi's person, that made us feel whole again. In a practice like Sashi, we can see our whole life encapsulated in these three things. Just as during Tantra, you meet yourself very clearly.

[21:55]

At one of the temples in the Nyoshinji complex, there's a garden. It's a rectangular garden, narrow and long, and it consists exclusively of gravel, white gravel, raked, just raked, in one direction, in the lines of the river. Somebody was escorting us around and told us that that garden represented our original formless nature, our original self. If you take that seriously, you clearly have to take it into your life. That's what the rest of the teachings are. Before birth and death,

[23:01]

before we take form, or beyond form. I feel like we have to make some real effort to know our life in this formless way, to find the real truth of our connection with each other and with the other. It's beyond a conceptual instruction. To create a concept, somebody said, is to leave reality behind. To formulate something is to abandon the experience. So what I want to encourage us to do is to find some place in our body,

[24:08]

our breath, our posture, some sensation, where we can turn ourselves over and really penetrate beyond the activity of the mind. In the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Buddha says, meditate on the body, in the body. Meditate on the feelings, in the feelings. To meditate on the body, in the body, is to penetrate thoroughly, deeply, to experience sensation, everything that's arising. Just be with it. Allow yourself to drop into it. Pain is wonderful.

[25:16]

You can do this when there's pain. Use the pain. Use the fear. Use resistance. Investigate resistance. Resentment. Investigate resentment. Get into the body. Where is it in the body? Where is it in the breath? In the breath.

[26:28]

This is the Shogogenzo Sumongphu. It's a translation of Gyogen's lectures to Ejo, his disciple Ejo. It's taken down by Ejo. And this is a translation that was brought to us right after a group from the Soto Shrine. One day, Gyogen instructed, I'm just going to read a few sentences from here. If you wish to learn the Buddha Dharma, do not hold on to the conditioned mind of the past, present, and future. Do not hold on to the conditioned mind of the past, present, and future.

[27:43]

I truly understood that we must gradually reform previous thoughts and views and not hold firmly to them. In one of the classics, it is said, good advice sounds harsh to the ear. This means that useful advice always offends our ears. Even though it may be contrary to our liking, if we force ourselves to follow and carry it out, there should be benefit in the long run. This is very familiar to all of us. The supreme way is not difficult. Just refuse to make preferences. Only when you cast aside the mind of discrimination

[28:44]

will you be able to accept it immediately. To cast aside discriminating mind is to depart from the ego. To cast aside discriminating mind is to depart from the ego. One last section. First he's talking about people who are just practicing to please other people. Having abandoned their parents, wives, and children, and no longer coveting offerings and patrons, they join the communities of practitioners to practice the law. However, when no one is around, they waste their time neglecting to do what they should be doing.

[29:46]

They are better than lay people, but they still cannot cast away their ego, or their desire for pain and profit. There are also those who are not concerned with what their teacher thinks, or whether the shiso or other fellow practitioners are watching. They always bear in mind that practicing the Buddha way is not for the sake of others, but only for themselves. Such people desire to become Buddhas, or Patriarchs, to quote Vaidehi. And they truly practice village work. They really seem to be people of the way, compared to the people mentioned above. However, since they are still practicing, trying to improve themselves, they have not become free from their ego. They want to be admired by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, desire to attain Buddhahood and complete wholeness.

[30:56]

This is because they still cannot throw away their desire for pain and profit. Just cast body and mind into the Buddha Dharma, and practice without desire, either to realize the way, or to attain the Dharma. Then you can be called an undefiled practitioner. Thank you. I feel that my own life depends on being able to practice,

[32:03]

without trying to attain the wish, without trying to understand the Buddha Dharma, without trying to do anything, just to understand and gain an experience. It feels like a life-threatening situation for me. I hope it is the same for you.

[32:29]

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