surpass penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely even in a hundred thousand million to remember and accept I found It takes the truth of God and the power of God and the word. Good morning. How's the sound? Good.

[02:43]

Well, so nice to be with you this morning. See so many good friends and some people I haven't met yet. It's special to spend a session together. We have no internet observers. It's just us. having a conversation for seven days together, and mostly observing the conversation in our own minds for seven days. So Rahatsu literally means the eighth day of the 12th month, commemorates the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha. And since we adjust things to fit into our weekly schedules, We will end on December 10th, Saturday, and we will have Buddha's Enlightenment ceremony that morning. It is fitting that we began our sashin with a memorial service for our founder Suzuki Roshi this morning.

[03:54]

His warm-hearted, friendly way, his generous big mind, and his incessant curiosity can be an inspiration to us. for the next seven days. And it'll be wonderful to end with a ceremony celebrating Buddha's enlightenment, where he said, it is wonderful to see Buddha nature in everything and each individual. What he meant was everything is taking Buddha's activity, each thing in its own way. And that refers to each of us taking Buddha's activity. in our own very particular way. The generosity of that insight along with his commitment to a seven-year search, such a wonderful idea to turn 25, be the prince in a palace to take over a kingdom and say, oh, I think I'll go off and do something much more interesting like solve the problem of human suffering.

[05:04]

Only a 25-year-old can be that confident. And he was successful. And after his awakening moment, after seven years of searching, he spent the rest of his 45 years of his life teaching. So a great example of someone's commitment to the way. Reminds me a little bit of that verse by Suedo in the koan that we studied this practice period, Master Ma is unwell or sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. The poem didn't exactly fit in with the koan, but it was just sort of a wonderful sort of reflection. The poem goes, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha, what kind of people were the ancient eppers? For 20 years I have suffered bitterly. How many times have I gone down into the blue dragon's cave for you?

[06:11]

This distress is worth recounting. Clear-eyed, patch-robed monks should not take it lightly. You're all clear-eyed, patch-robed monks for seven days, whatever you were before you arrived here. That's what you are now. And you shouldn't take lightly the tremendous effort that's been put in by a succession of teachers and people for 2,500 years to bring this teaching to us. Sikuroshi seemed to carry that responsibility more lightly, although he could be strict with us if we were so self-involved that we denied our own Buddha nature. As May said so beautifully this morning in the memorial service, one of his favorite comments of mine, he would say to us, sometimes I think you think your problems are more important than the fact that you are alive.

[07:21]

It certainly was the case once when I was so busy bemoaning my fate, being at that time I think I was 26 years old and hadn't realized full enlightenment, which was very discouraging to me. I was so involved with that problem that I couldn't even see him standing in front of me, so he busily, you know, frowned at me and turned around and walked away. Yes, when we get so involved with our own personal problems that we forget we're alive and have an opportunity to interact with another human being in front of us, maybe that might change our dilemma. So I meant to look it up, but I forgot this morning. There's a wonderful letter that Trungpa wrote upon Suzuki Roshi's death. And there were wonderful things in it.

[08:25]

But the one thing I remember, he says Suzuki Roshi burned like the hot tip of an incense. We don't burn incense anymore. It's really kind of a sadness because of... People's, an important thing, people's health concerns. But anyway, they are hot, the hot tip of an incense. He said, but somehow it all seems so accommodating. Somehow it could make any situation work. But there was a kind of energy there. He did carry it lightly. There's the famous story of when he finally acquired, found Tassara, and he got up to Choose Ridge, and he had the car stop, and he danced down the road with such joy.

[09:32]

And that's when I think he made the decision, I will make America my soil. And he did not return to his temple in Japan. But still, he died. I was quite angry with him for that. I mean, I'd been at the lecture where he said, I'm asking Buddha to live 10 more years because of you. In 10 more years, you'll be ready. So you've made me greedy. I always thought I would die young, but now that I'm practicing with you, I want to live 10 more years so that you'll be ready. So I thought, well, he's got Buddha on his side and he wants to do it. Certainly he'll live 10 more years, but unfortunately he died less than a year later. So that was wonderful this morning when Ryan said, maybe it's okay that he leaves something for us to do, something for us to carry on here to make, to plant, fully plant.

[10:48]

the seed of Buddhism in America. We're just at the beginning of that project. It's been 51 years since he died, and we're still trying to exactly figure out how to fit this practice into the American culture, American in the largest sense, South America, North America. Anyway, Maybe to return to some of what we talked about last night in terms of what a sesshin about is about, there's two Chinese characters for sesshin. Setsu, which shortens to be in conjunction with shin, means to treat something the way you treat a guest or a student treats a teacher. And the other meaning of setsu is to control or arrange things in order. Shin means, as you know, heart-mind. So Sashin means to have proper functioning of mind, to have proper functioning of mind or touch the heart mind.

[11:56]

And Sukarishi says the purpose of Sashin is to be completely one with our practice. This is an opportunity to focus on Zazen with minimal distractions. So I'm going to talk a little bit about Zazen. It's three components, posture, body, breath, and thinking mind. So the first thing to say about our zazen posture is that the human body has two billion years of evolved intelligence. It is unbelievably complex, and you can trust it. And this zazen posture is the distillation of thousands of years of yogic experimentation with the body. In a sense, our sitting posture is rather precise, but it is not just some set of rules for how to arrange your body.

[13:00]

It is a posture for yogic transformation. It is not just about your physical body, but some deeper, subtler body, the body of your awareness. Your awareness body, we may say, or your Buddha body. And this Buddha body sits in the center of everything. So we say we sit from the inside out. We sit from our Buddha body, our awareness body out. I mean, of course, we try to keep our back straight and our chest open. And we can pay attention to our chin. If it drifts up like this, we're probably daydreaming. And if it dumps down like this, we're probably asleep. And we can pay attention to our thumbs. If they're falling apart, we're probably asleep. And if they're pushing too hard against them in our mudra, we're probably stressed out about something.

[14:02]

But mostly we are sitting from the inside out, finding our noble, upright posture. And this works whether you're sitting in a chair, lying down, standing up, walking kinyin, or sitting on a cushion. And Tsukiroshi would say, don't move. We at first thought, oh, never move your body, which there was some emphasis there. But what he meant was, don't move away from yourself. Don't move away from what you're experiencing. Don't move away from the present moment. awareness you have. So now I'm going to say a few things about breathing. So much involved in breathing. Breath is completely connected to life. We breathe life in and let life go on the exhale. We can only live for a few minutes without breathing. It is an intimate connection to our living self.

[15:08]

I found my breath my most reliable companion that has gotten me through some physically and emotionally demanding places. So I would recommend returning to your breath. Get intimate with your breathing. So I is going to review our basic approach, counting to 10. You can return to this whenever you're sleepy or distracted. It's a great way to start sitting for the first few minutes. There's a great story about Suzuki Roshi in April of 1969. He almost drowned at the Narrows. I mean, for those of you who don't know the Narrows, the Narrows is this beautiful place where the mountain comes close. The sides are narrow where this And there's a nice swimming hole there and you can kind of slide off the rock walls into the swimming hole.

[16:16]

And Suzuki Roshi somehow tumbled down that slide into the deeper water and he couldn't swim. And apparently he got quite kind of anxious. And then finally somebody fished him out. But he said he was quite panicked. He didn't think his practice was strong enough. This is two years before he died, and he was the most amazing person we'd ever met. But anyway, after that incident, he, a few weeks later, gave a lecture at Sakoji and appealed to his students to join him in a rededication to sincere practice. His practice wasn't sincere enough. He wanted to, we needed to get more sincere, which I thought was very inspiring that he The great Zen master Suzuki Rishi kept rededicating himself to his practice. Be more sincere. This endless practice. A practice for many lifetimes.

[17:16]

He said, it might be better for us to concentrate on a simpler practice. I think this most simple practice is counting the breath. Whatever the problems in Zaza and pain, confusion, sleepiness, frightening or seductive images, the students were to join Suzuki in counting. their exhalations for one to 10 over and over. So one can always use counting. And as I said, maybe at least at the very beginning of a period of zazen. Of course, the other approach to is just to follow our breath. Pay close attention to it as it comes in, as it goes out. This is where she would say you, You let your consciousness fill your whole body, so you're both paying attention to your posture and your breathing, but sometimes it's important you can kind of pay attention to the way your breath is coming into your belly or your hara.

[18:19]

I mean, there are practices where you pay attention to the breath as it comes out of the nose. Anyway, tremendous thing to pay a lot of attention to because breathing is a very mysterious thing. And the only comment I heard about Sigurishi referring to changing your breathing at all is sometimes he would say maybe you could exhale a little bit more fully. I always thought that kind of meant that there's this tendency we have to hold on to life so we don't let it all out. But if you let it all out, it comes in more fully. So we let the breath absolutely be. Go as it wants to go. We just notice it. We are curious about it. A great exploration to be curious about exploring our breath. So the two ways are counting the breath and following the breath.

[19:20]

A good way to attend to the breath. The main point is attending so you become friendly with your breath. Make friends with your breathing. Dogen Zenji said, this was in a comment to Cohen we studied, breathing in or breathing out, after all, what is it? Breathing in or breathing out, after all, what is it? Question mark. What is it? What is this breathing in and breathing out? And Sir Kiroshi's comment on that statement is, No one can tell what it is. No one can tell what it is, this breathing that we're doing, this great mystery of breathing. This was a comment on that wonderful koan case, 51 in the Blue Cliff Record.

[20:22]

Seppo's What Is It? For those who were in class, you can recall that some monks who were interested in meeting Seppo because he was a quite famous person. teacher and he was living in a hermitage at that time, came up to visit him and he jumped out of, opened the door of his hut, jumped out and said, what is it? And they were kind of stunned and said, what is it? And then he slammed the door and went inside. They went away. They wandered on to Gento, who was a fellow student with Seppo of a great teacher and they knew each other well and they went to study with Gento and Gento said something like, Oh, poor Seppo, he didn't know the last word. And so then these monks stayed with Ganto for three months, and at the end of the summer practice period together, they asked him again, well, what did you mean by the last word? And he said, well, I'll tell you what the last word is. This is it. That is the last word in the answer to Seppo's comment.

[21:25]

What is it? And Suzuki Roshi's comment on that, in terms of our breathing is. Now you may not be calm or patient enough to wait for the right answer to what is it. But let us ask ourselves if our activity is either subjective or objective. Let me point this. What do we mean by it? Do you mean breathing itself or the idea of breathing? If you mean the idea of breathing, it will be another matter. If you mean breathing itself on each moment, you have solved the problem already. when you breathe in and out on each moment in calmness with big mind. When you breathe in and out in each moment in calmness with big mind, then you will understand that the right answer to what is it should always be, this is it. Supposed to be raining today.

[22:44]

I guess we're having another one of those rainy seasons where they keep predicting lots of rain and we have days like this in the midst of it. But let's be more, let's be hopeful. We'll get some rain today or tomorrow. So I'm going to say a little bit about our state of mind. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of meditative practices. Those which alter your state of mind and those which don't. Lots of ways to alter your state of mind. You can moderate your breathing and focus on certain mantras, various things. Our zazen practice is on the side of not trying to alter our state of mind. Instead, we are more interested in noticing it as it is. It may become altered, but we don't try to achieve that. If you're trying to alter your state of mind, we call this having a gainy idea, there is an implicit sense the state of mind that you have isn't okay.

[23:51]

That you need it to be different. But there is a reason you are in the state you are in. And besides, it is the life you are experiencing right now. So our way in Zazen is to say yes to our life as it is. knowing it will soon pass. So for this sesheen, I'm recommending you say yes to whatever appears as an experiment to see if you can have a deeper and more intimate experience of your life. So just say yes to whatever is coming up and see if you can have a deeper, more intimate relationship to whatever it is, even though you may prefer it. be different than the way it's appearing i've always loved walking in the mountains i was thinking the other day i've always lived near mountains and so i want to share this mountain walking poem with you this is a hang dynasty chinese buddhist poet wang wei he was from 69

[25:09]

699 to 750, sort of the same time as Suedo, who collected the Blue Cliff Record koans. So here's the poem. In my middle years, I became fond of the way. I make my home on the foothills of South Mountain. When the spirit moves me, I go off by myself to see things that I alone must see. I follow the stream to the source. I sit there and watch for the moment when the clouds come up. Or I may meet a woodsman and we laugh and talk and forget about going home. So a beautiful poem about walking in the mountains. It's also a poem about sitting a sesheen in my mind. kind of metaphor for our journey this week and i love the beginning in my middle years i became fond of the way fond of our practice you know not holding on to our practice like a lifeboat or although you can do that or practicing hard to achieve something just kind of fond of our practice a warm-hearted fond feeling for our practice

[26:36]

I make my home on the foothills of South Mountain. That's a nice place to make your home, in the foothills of the mountain. They're so stable, so strong, so alive. You can kind of sit like mountains. Pretend we're a mountain sitting there. A lot of Buddhist names have mountain in them, kind of like mountain. Mountainism may be a metaphor for Zen, Zen sitting. So we think maybe at first when we sit down, beginning of Sashin, we're settling in, retiring to the foothills of the mountain of our practice. And then when the spirit moves me, I go off by myself to see the things that I alone must see.

[27:41]

I follow the stream to the source. When the spirit moves me, I go off by myself. I mean, it is true that we're all sitting here together, and it gives a tremendous power to our sashin because we support each other and we have lots of people helping us. But, and, in the end, You are sitting alone with your own mind and your own body. And what are you going to do? You're going to see the things that you alone must see. See the things that you alone must see in your zazen practice. And then he goes on and he says, I follow this dream to the source. Follow the stream to the source. So when I was 25, I took a summer off from graduate school to hike the national parks of the West.

[28:47]

Three months of going from one national park to the next, drive into the ranger station, get a map, find out where the coolest place was at this time of year, go hike to it. And one of the things I liked doing was, you know, you'd follow a stream up to its source, you know. It was always kind of tricky because, you know, you can't just follow along the stream because sometimes a stream goes down a cliff and you have to walk around or maybe there's a lot of, you know, bushes in the middle of the stream. But anyway, you work your way up to the stream and sometimes the source of the stream is a lake and sometimes the source of the water from the lake is maybe, you know, an ice field or something. And other times the source of a stream is just a meadow with beautiful flowers, you know, a kind of... Source of the water that produces all the beautiful growing things on a mountain. The source of the stream. A mysterious journey to the source. But here in this poem, what are we talking about when we say follow the stream to the source?

[29:51]

What is the source of your thinking? What is the source of who you are? Of everything we think. and feel and perceive. We say the essential mind, the heart of things, mind consciousness, the spirit behind everything. Are we in touch with this profound source of our life that's happening right now in front of us? If you follow the stream of your thinking, you find out it's your consciousness and it's the heart of all sentient beings. It's where the world appears for us. Where does that world appear in our mind from? And this is not theory for us. When we sit in Zazen, we return to the intimacy of that place we come from.

[30:58]

We can just be present in the middle of our life. We can see our life emerging and making the world we live in. I sit there and watch for the moment when the clouds crop up. you sit in the source of your life, you can see thinking come up. The clouds crop up. It's the thinking come up. Rev. Anderson says in his comment on this poem, to be present at this moment is to witness both the inevitability of thought and its illusory nature. This is the birth of compassion when we observe the production of phenomenon and understand their source.

[32:04]

The source of the stream of our experience is completely calm and serene. Still, something will crop up. Being willing to give up our great calm and to become involved again in particular thoughts is compassion. This is the Bodhisattva way to willingly enter the world of confusion and suffering. That was a beautiful statement. I may meet a woodsman and we laugh and talk and forget about going home. At first, this feeling of the poem is an isolated person in search of the truth.

[33:10]

But then it emphasizes this connection to people. Our way here in this temple is practice with people. That is actually Suzuki Roshi's way, practice with people. He says, group practice is the shortcut. the imperturbable mind which is beyond concepts of personal and impersonal our group practice together is the shortcut another shortcut to this source of the imperturbable mind beyond concepts of personal or impersonal I like that idea, our little walk to the source of the mountains, the source of our mind. So of course, David, my co-partner in this practice period, being the well-organized half of this operation, said two weeks before we started the practice period, well, Ed, let's work out all the koans we're gonna talk about at all the different lectures.

[34:22]

So today's koan, is blue cliff record case number 36 chosan's scented herbs and falling flowers which i'm about to begin with with only five minutes left but i'm beginning it and so i'll probably have to you know spend a little time in my second lecture uh referring to it also so but i'll read it to you and make have made a couple of beautiful comments on and I'll leave you with that. So this is the introduction. First of all, I'll say something about Chosan was a disciple of Nansen Fugun and he died in 868. And another disciple of Nansen was Jiaojo, very famous Zen teacher with many koans. So they were co-disciples of Nansen. So Chosan, you know, Quite a good Zen teacher in his own right.

[35:24]

So this is the koan. One day Chosan went for a walk. When he returned to the gate, the gatekeeper said, Sir, where have you been? Chosan said, I have come from strolling about in the hills. See, we're back in those mountains again. The theme I'm working on here. The gatekeeper or the head monk, there's different commentaries put it in different ways, said, where did you go? Chosan said, at first I followed the scent of the herbs, then I wandered by the falling flowers. And the head monk said, very much like a calm spring feeling. And Chosha said, it transcends even the cold autumn dew falling on the lotus. It transcends even the cold autumn dew falling on the lotus.

[36:27]

Suedo's commentary on this was, I'm grateful for that answer. So this is Zigeroshi's commentary on this little koan. Strolling about mountains and waters means in Zen the stage where there are no Buddhas or ancestors to follow and no evil desires to stop. Maybe that's the FedEx delivery man. Who knows? Not only climbing up a mountain or wandering about the waters, but all of Chocha's activities are free from rational prejudices and emotional restrictions. His mental activity is free from any trace of previous activity. His thinking is always clear without shadows of good and evil desires.

[37:33]

So that's Suzuki Roshi's comment of what it means to stroll about following the scent of the herbs and wandering by the falling flowers is to be free from rational prejudices and emotional restrictions. Free from any traces of previous activity. I've run over just, oh, two minutes to thank you very much, kitchen, for cooking us our lunch. That's always the sign that it's time to wrap it up. So this is the last paragraph I'm going to read of Cizik Rishi's commentary on this koan, and I'll make my own comments. in a few days when I give my next lecture.

[38:35]

It is important to have a good memory and to be able to go into every detail of your activities so that effective decisions can be made. Very practical. Yet one's mind cannot respond to the coming of new objects into consciousness if it is full of traces of formal, former thinking. It is useless to remember everything. There is no point in remembering things just so we can cry, be jealous, Or be proud. You'll have a chance during the next seven days to remember many things to cry about, be jealous about, and be proud about. But I think he's saying there's no point in that. The mind, there may be a point. If it's happening, that's what's going on. So pay attention to it. Figure it out. The mind should be spotless so that everything may be observed as it is. The mind is free from the traces of past thinking. It will always be clear without tainted ideas or desires.

[39:38]

Then it will always be calm and natural like the flowers that come out in the springtime or the red leaves that turn in the autumn. Your mind and your nature will have the same pace. All very sweet and kind of a peril pointing to a possible, quiet, calm source. your thinking so thank you very much i look forward to spending the next seven days with you i wish you a concentrated joyful time take care of yourself you're the one who knows the best how to do that and ask for any help if you need it are intention equally extent to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[40:51]

Beings are numberless. I love the safe Thank you.

[41:19]

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