I don't know if they produce people these days. I'm Lou Richmond. I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me again. I'm Lou Richmond. Hi. A long time ago I used to live here, so this is a very familiar place to me. The bushes are bigger. I was meeting with a small meditation group recently in Southern California, and these are mostly doctors, medical residents, people like that. And after we sat, they asked me some questions, and one of them said,

[01:12]

I understand that in Zen, you really emphasize posture. Posture is very important. And he was, I could see, making a real effort to sit up straight. That was important, all during the meditation. And the last time I was here, somebody asked about posture. So I thought about it. I thought about my own teacher, Suzuki Roshi, and what he did and said about posture. And I've been thinking about it ever since, because the way we do Zen here, it's kind of your first call. The sitting posture. And I've also been doing some writing about the various schools of Buddhism, now that we know much more about the various schools, Tibetan and so forth.

[02:22]

And comparing it to my experience of learning music. I'm a musician, a pianist. And you know, in music, there's two ways to learn music. There's the way I was taught originally, which is more of a Western academic approach. You learn music, then you learn scales, and then you learn exercises, and then you play pieces and so forth. It comes off the page, and for playing Mozart, which I did a lot of when I was young, that's a pretty good way to learn. But there's another way to learn music too, which is much more common if you look at the whole world, and that's to learn by ear. You don't even read music, reading music is extra. You hear the music and then you pick up how to do it, and there are fabulous musicians around the world who learn that way. Jazz musicians, often, particularly in the old days, learned that way.

[03:23]

And it's dangerous to generalize, but on the whole, the Vajrayana, for example, and some other schools of Buddhism, it's more like, at least at the beginning, it seems like learning music from sheet music. You learn to read music, you do scales, you do prostrations and visualizations and mantras and so forth. And our way is a lot more like learning by ear. When you come here, I noticed when I came here, they were doing Zazen instruction in here, just like they did 30 years ago, like I did when I used to give it here. And I'm sure when the people left, how many of you were here for that? We'll find out if I'm right. When it's over, you think, well, there's not really a whole lot to it, is there? That's it? That's Zen? Then you think, oh, well, they're just giving me the elementary instruction. There must be lots, lots more things that these people here who live here know about, but they're not telling me.

[04:32]

Well, actually, both are true. Both are true. But what you're being given in the Zazen instruction is a lot more like learning music by ear. In other words, okay, you sit this way, arrange your body in a certain way, your hands and your eyes, pay attention to the breath and so forth. There's almost nothing there really that you can say, well, this is what it is. Somebody, your friend, asked you after the session today, well, you went to meditation instruction at Zen Center, what did they teach you? And if you said what it was, they would say, uh-huh, yeah, well, you're ready for lunch now. So our first exposure to, and then those of you who sit regularly, how many of you have done one-day sittings or seven-day sittings? Yeah, quite most of you.

[05:39]

Then it becomes a whole other order of magnitude because then you sit there hour after hour, and it's difficult physically to sit like this. Actually, one of the little secrets is it's easier to sit for seven days like this than in some other posture. If staying awake is a priority, you can actually do it in chairs, some people do, and I'll get to that in a minute, but how do you do it? What's really going on here? And so the first, and I remember when I was beginning, it was, you know, I'm the sort of person who wants to do things right. I want to know the correct solution. So I was constantly fiddling, you know, with my body, trying to figure out what was the real posture, what was the right posture. And I think that was my question from the group in Southern California. Well, posture seems to be, it's not like any old way, it's okay when you go to a Zen place, they teach you to sit like this.

[06:45]

So there must be something to it. Well, there is something to it. It's how it really sits, which doesn't tell you much except it tells you something. And that exercise of finding out who you are in your body on a cushion like this is really the first gate of Zen practice. Breathing is included. A sitting breathing being is who you become. What happens in the mind, of course, is a little bit, it's also a posture, but not what we think of as posture usually. We think of posture as, you know, is my back really straight? Or some people, you know, sit in front of mirrors to make sure that they're not leaning or, you know, my chin really in. I mean, there are instructions. These are actually yogic instructions. I was talking earlier to Michael about this.

[07:51]

It may seem as though other schools of Buddhism don't emphasize this posture quite so much, but all the yogic schools do, including Tibetan tradition and everything. This is Buddhist yoga. And as those of you who study actual yoga know, the actual posture and the details of it are pretty important. Not because anybody's watching or it matters whether it's right or wrong, but because when you sit this way, you start to become transformed yogically. So our first effort typically is trying to figure out posture from the outside. This is my body. Here are my legs. Here are my shoulders. You know, exactly how is it supposed to all be arranged?

[08:52]

So really the first process is just to become aware. You start to become aware that you really do have a body. And subtle changes... I mean, you sit for a long time, subtle changes in your posture. For example, if someone here comes in and adjusts your posture, it can seem huge. You know, from the outside it's some little thing, but inside it feels some vast movement going on. Because you become... something is happening to your awareness of the body. Actually, I hope they explain carefully that when somebody does that, and I don't know how often that is done, it's really... it's not correcting your posture. This is very important. Your posture is you, however you are, and it's constantly actually changing as you are changing. So if you're someone who adjusts a person's posture, we have to understand that when you go to that person's place and put your hand on their body,

[10:05]

it needs to be with great respect, because this person's posture is already perfect, however it may be. And you may think, if sitting this way is easy for you, if you're used to studying ballet or happen to be limber or something, you may think, oh, that's great, I have a leg up on Zen practice. I don't have to suffer. But actually, this is true of almost everything in this practice. It's not quite that way. If things are easy at first, they'll be difficult later. If things are... and I'm speaking from experience. If things are difficult now, that's not so bad, they may be easier later. So if it's very hard for you to sit like this, the notion that somehow you've been cursed with a difficult body,

[11:07]

you set that thought aside. This is just you. And if the best you can do is some slumpy posture and you can't sit up straight, well, that's you. If someone adjusts your posture, it's not, okay, your posture before was not so good and now we're making it better. It's just someone else comes into your sphere and touches you. And it's another way to know about the posture you have, that's all. Practically speaking, and speaking as somebody who's done that a lot to people, it doesn't really matter what you do, but people will go back to the way they were sitting when you tended to sit. The real change, the real change comes from inside. In other words, the posture, we may think the posture is something we impose on the body. We do it this way, but actually, and that's okay, we start that way, but actually, the same time we do that, each time on the cushion,

[12:12]

inside, something is coming out. It's kind of like an egg, you know, the hen pecks from the outside, but the chick pecks from the inside. The inside, the inside is why this is yoga and not just some militaristic exercise and sitting up straight. Why I call this a koan is because what makes you think you only have one body? You see, this physical body is not all that we are. This was a bit of an abstraction to me until about three years ago, I fell into a coma for about two weeks, and I had no body to my awareness, no breath, but I was awake. And I was awake the whole time, inside and out.

[13:19]

I can't be my body because I had no body. I can't be my breath because I had no breath. So, to say our physical body is who we are is insufficient. This is like my good friend Lama Surya Das, who I think has spoken here, some of you may have heard him. He was a practitioner of Vipassana style meditation, focusing on the breath. And he met a Tibetan teacher named Kala Rinpoche, most of you have heard about him. And he explained to Kala Rinpoche what his practice was, and he was following the breath. And Kala Rinpoche said, well, what will your practice be when you don't have any breath? And Surya said that changed his life. He became a disciple of Kala Rinpoche, because it's true, what we do when we don't have breath, we don't have body. So, the physical body is only some gross manifestation of who we are.

[14:29]

It's not the only posture that we have. There is an inner posture, and an inner body, too. And this inner body, we can call by various names. Sometimes, for those of you who study Buddhism, we call it Sambhogakaya, or energy body, or bliss body. This body hangs around your physical body. It's kind of more or less in the same place, but it's not your physical body. And this teaches you how to sit. If you sit still, this body starts to awaken, and you become aware of it. And from the inside, posture begins to develop. So, at this point...

[15:33]

And look at what we mean by the word posture. Even in English, posture has many meanings. You know, what's my posture in this negotiation? In business, that's a common thing to say. What's your negotiating posture? Or, posture really means your attitude, how you come to a situation, who you are, what you bring to it. And that kind of posture doesn't depend on sitting like this with your back straight and your shoulders aching. It's much more subtle than that, and also much more important. Now we're beginning to get to what we mean by posture in a Buddhist sense. This posture is pretty universal. It's taught by various spiritual schools, you know, Hindu yoga and so forth. But when we speak of posture in a Buddhist sense, we're talking really about mudra.

[16:34]

Most of you probably know this term. We use it to refer to the way that our hands are. Mudra. Mudra means... Well, it's hard to explain what it means. This is a mudra. And, you know, you see Buddha statues in various kinds of mudras. You can hold books on mudras. There are ways of how you put the body in sacred positions. This physical posture is a mudra. It's the mudra of the Buddha. And who you are in the world is a mudra. How you behave is a mudra. This building has a mudra. Not unimportant for those of you who live here, because I'll come back to that. This building has a mudra. This neighborhood has a mudra. For example, right down the street is the Zen hospice where people come to die.

[17:41]

That's part of the mudra here, whether you know it or not. Our country has a mudra. We can read about it in the papers today. It's a kind of belligerent mudra right now, but that's a mudra. Something that should concern us a great deal. We're part of that mudra. The country's mudra is the sum total of all of us here. One of the things that I noticed coming to the building, and this is by no means a criticism, it's just facts, is how the door is locked. It's been locked for 32 years, ever since I used to live here. There's a good reason for it. It's an inner-city neighborhood. It's a residential place. You can't watch the door 24 hours a day. But it's the first experience of coming to this building is that the door is locked. I don't come here much anymore, so when I do come, I come more like a guest, more like any one of you.

[18:45]

You come to the door, you shake the knob, it's locked. You sort of knock, you peer in. Have any of you gone through this? Eventually somebody comes, they check you out. If you look sort of Zen-like, they let you in. Well, this is okay. I'm not at all being critical, but this is two things, this building. It's kind of complicated. It's a temple, and it's also a residential practice place. So, as a residential practice place, we lock our doors in cities. This is the way life is, so it's reasonable the door should be locked. But as a temple, a temple needs to have an open door. Even in New York, in St. Patrick's, if any of you have been there, which is probably the most prominent temple or church in America, if you go up those stone steps to this great Gothic edifice,

[19:46]

and you pull on those huge wooden doors, it's open. Some little hallway in the front is open because a temple or a church is where people go when they need something. So the architecture reflects that. There is a place that can be sealed off, and there's usually a priest or somebody in attendance. Maybe it isn't open 24 hours a day, and these days, I'm sure there are guards all around, heavy security. It's a terrorist target. But anyway, and also if you go to New York, go up and down Fifth Avenue, the churches there, they let the homeless people sleep outside in that little vestibule and some things, and it's all arranged with the police. So it creates little homes for people who don't have a home. They go to a church. Of course, where else would they go? They go to a church. This is a mudra of a building. A building has a mudra. You have a mudra in your life when you live your life,

[20:49]

when you relate to people, your face, your expression, how you hold yourself. This is all posture. This is all posture in its largest sense. When I was a young Zen student, some parts of Buddhism came very quickly to me. But now, 30 years later, I can report to you that it doesn't matter. The other parts come slowly. And it doesn't matter what parts come quick to you and what parts come slow to you. At the end, it's always slow. It takes a long time to be a Buddha. You know, this man asked me, Zen posture is very important. I have to say, really, you know,

[21:51]

awakening is very important. That's what Zen is about. This is the awakening school. Buddha. The word Buddha means awakening. It's just a common word in Sanskrit. It means awaken. So, suppose you're sick or you're disabled or your spine is crooked or you have arthritis or you're in great pain. I talked to a man last week, a Zen student. He has a mysterious condition in his back that no one can solve. He's in great pain. Drugs don't work very well for it. The only posture he can take is he can lie flat on his back or he can walk and sit. So, if you go to the Zendo and see him there, he's lying flat on his back in the back. And someone might say,

[22:53]

well, you know, his posture isn't so good. He can't even sit up. I talked to him for about an hour on the phone. So impressive. So impressive. This man is enduring things that I'm not sure I could endure with my ease of posture and so forth. His posture is quite wonderful. And there's a man I visit who lives elsewhere in the Zen Center community. He has a neurological disease and he can't sit very well. His voice is slurred. His memory is not so good. But I went there recently at Green Gulch. And I went to the dining room and there was a railing that hadn't been there before. I used to live there, so I'm very familiar. It was a beautiful, wooden, Japanese-style railing.

[23:53]

And I asked somebody who did that, because it was quite beautiful. And they said, oh, this man did it. You know, I practically burst into tears. I knew what it had cost him and how he had had to. He was a fun carpenter but to do that work must have taken him such a long time. And I thought, coming here today, this man's posture is very, very good. You know? And it didn't come easily either. So I always felt a little ashamed almost. You know, I don't know if my posture is that good. And it has nothing to do with crossing your legs or anything like that. You understand what I mean? It's posture in a deeper sense. Most of you probably,

[25:14]

through being here in other ways, are familiar with the fact that there are two predominant schools of Zen now, although there used to be many more. One is called Rinzai, the other is called Sojo. This is the Sojo lineage here. And the usual stereotype is, oh, the Rinzai, they do koans and they emphasize attaining enlightenment. And the Sojo school is more, you know, no attainment, no special experience. Well, these stereotypes are exactly that. They don't mean much. And in fact, they're not at all correct. Although I used to think that for a long time. That's what each of them says about the other. One of the things in Buddhism, I'll give you a little secret. You have to work through the propaganda. Many of the sutras are kind of propaganda, actually. You need somebody to explain to you what's the propaganda and what's the actual teaching. Some of you know the term Hinayana.

[26:17]

It means the small vehicle. It's an enormous put-down that they invented. The other schools invented, oh, the Hinayana, the small vehicle. You see this all the time in the texts. So anyway, it might be just as accurate to say that we're the southern school here. Because there's no curriculum. Remember, I told you it's like playing right here. Rinzai is a little bit more like sheet music. Easy pieces and then harder pieces. Here, they just put you in front of the piano and say, sit this way, follow your breath, play the piano. Go ahead, play the piano. I don't know how to play the piano. I need to be taught. Put your fingers on the keys

[27:18]

and push down. Well, that's not playing the piano. Well, just try it. This is more like our way. It's very sudden, you know. Immediately you have to play the piano. Immediately you have to confront the highest, the highest wisdom that Buddhism has to offer, which is already expressed in our body and mind. But if we think, oh well, fine, I don't really have to do anything special. I'll just sit here. That's not right either. The koan is a posture. The world is full of koans. It just depends on whether your posture is adapted to notice it. Koan is a problem.

[28:21]

You can't put your arms around. So, the very first moment we come to the cushion, we are confronted with the koan of who we are, of what we're actually doing. And some people are more attuned or more comfortable learning by ear than others. This is okay. This is why there's vast tens of thousands of pages of scriptures and instructions on Buddhism because we're all different and we all have different learning styles. Some of us are a little dyslexic spiritually. That's okay. Dyslexic people have to learn in a different way. Some people don't learn through words at all. They learn much more physically. Tsukuroshi himself was actually more of a physical teacher. The best way to learn from him was just to be with him. And this is very beautiful, very powerful,

[29:23]

but it's also quite fragile because now he's not here. This is why the role of a teacher in Zen is so important because the instructions only carry you so far and then the living teacher provides the wordless instruction by example. So this is actually supposed to be a lecture about posture. It really is, actually. I'm always staying on the topic, but it may not seem obvious. Whether you move or don't move, whether you have pain or no pain, whether you get up and leave or stay,

[30:25]

it's all contained within the mudra that's you. There's no judgment here. Everybody's okay to begin with. We have to start from that point. If it's judgmental, if there's some right or wrong in it, if there's some better or worse, then it's not exactly Buddhism. It's something else. It's some kind of skill. And we're not here to learn a skill. In fact, we're here to unlearn our skills. Skills are good for practical things, but upstairs, there's a wooden board that hit, you heard it just before I came down, called the Han. And on the Han, every Zen Han, it says birth and death is a great matter, is the great matter. This is what we're up to here. It's not a matter of skill. It's a matter of taking that to heart. And when we take that to heart,

[31:26]

our posture becomes a Buddhist posture right away. We sit facing the wall, but in the back of that whole exercise is the notion that birth and death is the great matter. There was a time when we weren't here. Now we're here. There's a time when we won't be here again. This is the whole thing. This is the whole point. So, sometimes when your legs hurt a lot, you feel like you want to move. So move. Other times, your legs hurt a lot, and you feel, you know, before when this happened, I moved, but now I'm just going to try not moving. So don't move. It's important to do both, actually. You know, it's important to break the rules, sometimes.

[32:29]

Because if you don't break the rules, or at least bend around the edges of whatever they tell you, you won't know what it is. The whole point of, you know, we now know many, many different Buddhist cultures, not just the Japanese, which is that you see with the Thai mass, this is more the Japanese style. And Japanese culture is very formal. It has a very formal style. Let's put it that way. Everything is very precise, like tea ceremonies. And this is important. There needs to be some structure for our posture. But one thing that, if you don't live in Japan, you don't realize is that that's only half the life, only half the Buddhist life. If you go to a Buddhist temple, the doors, people can walk in any time of the day or night, because it's a temple. Or if there's a door, it's always open, day or night, midnight, two in the morning. It's a temple. There might be children there.

[33:32]

You might go to a meditation retreat, and while you're going to the retreat, you have to step over the tricycles, you know. There is an inner penetration of ordinary life and spiritual life that we're still working out here, because this has to be refashioned for our life. You know, we're Americans. We're probably one of the least formal societies on the planet, and also very individualistic, so we're very used to doing things our own way. So to have everybody do something the same way strikes us immediately as too conformist, you know. So, the point of, you know, the vows that we do and all of that, the forms, is not that you should do them or there's some right way to do them, but that it's like a mirror that helps us see what our posture is. Without that, it's very hard to see who we are, you know. Very hard to see who we are.

[34:33]

You know, if you live alone, it's very hard to know who you are with people, because you're never with people. But if you live with someone and you leave the dishes in the sink, it's different. You get some feedback. Why are the dishes in the sink? What kind of a slob are you? Well, then you know. It's the same kind of thing. But if you live by yourself, nobody calls you on it, so you never confront what this is all about. Maybe there's a good reason the dishes are in the sink. Maybe you had a heart attack right after you ate. There could be a good reason. But, you know, unless you... So in the same way, we come here and it's not like you have to do things right. It's more, this is just a place to be where we can be completely ourselves and it's okay. You know, the fundamental posture of the Dharma is we accept you completely. Because already, at the very beginning, you have the nature

[35:35]

of a completely awakened person. Completely awakened. You don't even say person. A completely awakened being. You're in a complete awakening. You don't even say being. You're already there. And yet we're here to discover that, to deepen that. Once at Tassagora, I... I discovered in my chagrin this story has made its way into a book. It's in the Sangokai, what's it called? Branching Streams book. I didn't know I was in it. At the end of a lecture, you know, I was irritated being very individualistic and very kind of a proud person. I didn't like all this, you know, valued a lot. Particularly people I didn't like. You know, I felt, well, there should be some...

[36:36]

I should express, you know, I'm an American. I should express how I feel. If I don't like them, well, I'm not going to bow. Actually, part of what brought it up for me at Suzukuro, she said when he was young he felt the same way. All this bowing kind of gets on your nerves. And so I asked him with great sincerity, really, I said, you know, suppose you bow like that how is your bowing then? He said, perfect. Well, I've been living with that response for 30 years. And maybe I'm beginning to understand. I told you before that if you're quick at the beginning it gets difficult later. If it's difficult at the beginning, if you have a terrible time sitting, if it's painful from the first moment, be grateful. Because there will be a day in your life, maybe not so long from now, when you will have some suffering,

[37:37]

maybe mental suffering, that you cannot escape. You can't get up. You can't move. You can't go away. Someone you love is dying. Your country is going to war and you can't stop it. You may be ill. If you have that situation right on your cushion, good. If you need three cushions just to cross your legs, that's okay. Because the point of awakening is not to come to a state where we don't suffer. It's to come to a state where we know how to suffer. Enlightenment can be something terrible, too. We have this notion from books

[38:39]

that somehow it's this great peak experience or whatever. It's what it is. There are many stories of Buddhist monks who were awakened at some great crisis in their lives. They were suicidal perhaps or they were facing death. Sometimes a terrible thing can be our teacher, too. Somebody recently, a very senior person in our lineage, said to me, we have to remember we can't ever tell whether a person's zazen is good or bad. No one can say. Not even the Buddha can say. This is very, very... It takes a long time to understand this. I'm not sure I understand it very well, but to really understand that you can't say, your teacher can't say,

[39:40]

the Buddha can't say, the universe can't say. It's entirely outside the realm of good and bad completely. Which means that in this realm there is no judgment and we can be very kind to each other. I think maybe one explanation, although explanations really aren't the point about the question I had about this, the vow, is, I may say I have a cold heart. That's maybe what I think. But here I am putting my hands together and bowing to a person. Who's to say my heart is cold or warm? Who's to say how that person experiences it? They may say, oh, there's Lu. God, I thought he hated me. But look, he's bowing to me. How wonderful. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, this guy, is that good or bad? Is that good or bad?

[40:41]

There are these stories you can read about this point, Native American stories. Oops, that was a bad thing to do. Came off the clip. Just a minute, I have to do some body repair. Thanks. I'll pay more attention next time. There are stories like, because, you know, this young boy was ready to go on his first battle or raid or something. Apache or whatever. At the last minute, he broke his leg. So his father thought, oh, how terrible. He broke his leg. He can't gain honor by going out. He'd be very disappointed. But then everybody on the raiding party is killed.

[41:45]

And suddenly the father thinks, what a stroke of luck, he broke his leg. You know, this kind of thing. We can never exactly say what's going on. At the same time, we don't walk through the world with some kind of blissful ignorance. Well, I don't know what's going on. I don't really care. I'm just going to do what I do. We have to be very attentive to our not being sure what's going on. So the point of posture, good posture, really means to be aware that's good posture. So it doesn't really matter whether the door is locked or not locked, as long as we notice that it's locked and the implications of that. And also, work with that, the way we would work with some problem in our posture. Maybe there's some way we could change the architecture of the building so there could be some vestibule which is open and then some other place

[42:46]

which is locked. Maybe we could do like St. Patrick's or other churches. Maybe we just let it be. Maybe we like it that way. But just to notice it. Already it changes the situation. It isn't just a case of a locked door. It's a case of a locked door that somebody's paying attention to. You see the difference? So your posture can be whatever it is, but if you're paying attention to it, it's going to change. When I think back now, it's hard to remember. It's just like thinking back to learning how to ride a bike. It's hard to remember falling off. But I remember fussing so much with how to sit right as though somehow there was a right way. But I was sitting right because I was paying attention to how I was sitting in the exercise of trying to figure it out. So whether it was right or wrong or anything, and that's what we look for.

[43:47]

That's why when you come to Zazen instruction, we don't tell you what to do exactly. But we also don't not tell you what to do. If you sit this way and with the hands like this, particularly, which is a fairly delicate thing to keep in place, it's pretty hard not to pay attention. This is the point. It's pretty hard not to. When you're lying in bed, you may think, well, this is the best Zazen posture. It's much more comfortable. But you won't pay attention very well. Is that some signal for me to stop? Yes? Let's see what time it is. But, you know, if you're in one of those situations where something terrible is happening

[44:48]

to your life, lying in bed becomes terribly painful. You can't stay there. You get up and pace around. You take tranquilizers. It's awful. This way it becomes better at that point, even though it hurts. We don't have much physical pain in our life in America. Most places on the planet, people live with a lot more physical pain, hunger, disease, watching their children die young. It's just a part of life. And Buddhism came out of that kind of world. In fact, the whole story, if it's true, is that a person who lived more like us, that is, Siddhartha the prince, paid attention enough to notice how people lived that weren't like him, and he couldn't bear it. It became very painful for him, so he left.

[45:50]

We don't know if any of that story is true, but it has some great human truth that to go from protection and privilege to a situation where you're totally exposed and nothing is protecting you seems to be the first basic move in the spiritual path to become unprotected and to watch what's going on. So, the last words of any sorts of instruction ought to be pay attention to what happens from now on. Now you have the template, you have the exterior form, and if you sit this way regularly, the inner posture will begin to wake up and a path will open for you, particularly if we do it with other people because they will point to the dirty dishes or whatever it is. There are many things we can wake up to. You have to be careful.

[46:54]

You know, I hang out with musicians still a lot and, you know, you watch them listening to somebody playing and you say, wow, play that back again. You know, you listen to it. That's really cool. How did he do that? They listen, they're really listening. And you pick it up. You pick it up, little by little. I think it's good that in America now there's all these different styles of practice and if you go to some other center and they have a much more curriculum-based way of beginning practice, that's okay, that's not different than this. It may seem there's not much here, but the whole point is you bring, if you can, your whole life to the cushion. And you bring your cushion to your whole life. The last time I was here, somebody asked, well, I leave the zendo and I can't hold on to that feeling. It's very discouraging.

[47:55]

I go out into the world and it all vanishes. You know, if you think that you're going to be as calm out on the street as you are in the zendo, forget it. It's not that way. What you do carry out of the zendo and into the world is this quality of a posture that is awake or aware and that can notice things. And when you come to the cushion, it shouldn't be a case of at last, I'm here at Zen Center, I can forget about all that nonsense and I'm safe in my spiritual life. No good. No good. That's not good either. We have to bring the outside in and the inside out. And if we can get the knack of that, then we can start to play like a musician. Then the music starts to come.

[48:56]

If we get stuck or don't quite know what to do, that's when we can go to a spiritual friend, an elder, and say, well, you know, I don't quite know what I'm doing. One good test is to ask yourself, and I'll leave you with this thought, and the Gurdjieff people used to do this a lot. They used to call it stomp. They would stomp in some posture and then take a look. You can ask yourself, what am I being aware of right now? Am I just going along and not really aware of what I'm doing? What am I doing right now? What is going on? What is going on? I'm fighting with my partner. What is going on? This has tremendous richness to it. And if you bring all of that stuff into your posture, this mudra of life, then the music will start to come.

[50:00]

And even if it doesn't, it's okay. Sometimes, the music not coming is the way the music sounds for a while. So sometimes, you can hear about people saying, oh, I had these fabulous spiritual experiences in the Sesshin, the light encased my body, and I had this wonderful, wonderful thing. And you think, oh, gosh, that's great. I wish I could have an experience like that. I don't have any experiences in the Sesshin. I just sort of sit there and nothing much happens. You know? If you think that one story about your Sesshin is better than the other, it's missing the whole point. You know? Experiences come and go. There are times when we're bored stiff. There are definitely times when we think it's a complete hokum waste of time. That's all part of the music. You know? It's all part of the piece. And also,

[51:02]

you know, feel free to experiment. I think it's a good idea for any serious Buddhist practitioner to check out other schools and other traditions because they may have something important to offer your particular learning style. As Jack Kornfield says, and I think it's a very important lesson, every school of Buddhism has its shadow. You know? Its weak point. And our weak point probably is that we don't give a lot of form or instruction or curriculum to the path. It's more like playing by ear. But, for schools that provide a lot of sheet music, their shadow is the sheet music. The sheet music isn't it. You know, it's just the sheet music. It's not the music. It's just the notes on the page. So, in the end, a good musician needs no note. Suzuki Roshi, while he was alive,

[52:04]

really encouraged us to study academically the Buddhist doctrine. So, for better or worse, I did a lot of that and got quite adept at it. I don't remember much of it now, but I think it still helps me in some way. I've used up my time and I thank you for listening. I guess there will be some kind of discussion period afterwards if you want to talk more. So, thank you.

[52:33]

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