I'm here and I just hope that this talk will be worthy enough for all you people listening. My name is Mizuno Oshii, Abbot Norman, and my peers in Sangha. There's a theme I've been, I guess, with all my life, and I saw it in Uchiyama Roshi's book, Opening the Hand of Thought. It was just a sentence under the section of the way-seeking mind, and it said, Active Participation in Loss, and somehow that grabbed me.

[01:05]

Usually, the word loss, we want to avoid at all costs, and we're conditioned to gain, be happy, and try to satisfy, like all of our desires. But loss is the opposite of gain, and actually that's where the jewel really is. And active, meaning that we are willing, and we are committed, and we have the courage, that we are actively participating in loss. And this is, loss is like death, it's all those things you don't want to talk about. It's about personal failure, it's about impermanency, it's about suffering, it's about fear, etc.

[02:18]

And all those negative things that we somehow, actually, it brought us here, the loss in life actually brought us here, impermanency brought us here. And in fact, when we have a very permanent life, I don't know how long you can have a permanent life, but there's no need to come here, because things are going in your way. But eventually, whether we are studying Dharma or not studying Dharma, because we have a mind, and because we have a body, we are subject to the undeniable condition of change. What happened to me in the last Tokubetsu Sesshin, after the Sesshin was finished, was

[03:32]

a kind of big lesson for me. When I went to say goodbye to a group of people at Jamesburg, as I stood there, I twisted my ankle, and like a fool, really a fool, I stood on it, and I felt the pain. What I should have done was just sat down, but like a fool, I stood there waving my hand goodbye, goodbye to me. They had to go catch the airport, so I wanted to go off quickly. And then after the car left, I hobbled back to the cabin, and my foot was already just so big.

[04:33]

And you know, you hear about accidents and things happening to other people, but you don't think it's going to happen to you or to me, myself. And I heard of people, like when they, breaking a bone is not so bad, but spraining and ligaments and tendons, now that's worse. And so, I still didn't know that this had happened, so I got a stick, and I walked around with a stick. And at night time, there was a lot of pain, even more pain than sitting exhausted. Felt like at night, you feel like I was being submerged down. The pain was so great. And I remember it took me a long time to just walk around the bed. And so, I had to have some kind of treatment, and then I was that way on crutches for four

[05:42]

months. My leg did not get well. And so, how would I sit? How would I come into the Zendo and offer incense and bow? So, this is not what you want to, you want to look good. You know, the form is good, but my form was with crutches. And as I came in, it creaked, and I could just do so much. Now, how was I going to sit down? I was sitting full lotus before, but now I can't sit full lotus. So, one of the students loaned me a beach chair. And I put the beach chair on my seat, and I was afraid that Sotoshi would come and see the California Zen with a beach chair.

[06:44]

What has this practice become? But so, I had to extend my foot and learn how to sit. Not how I want to sit, but learn exactly how to sit where I was. And that's quite a metaphor. You have to do it without looking good. You have to do it in this loss. And so, actually, it got pretty good. You could actually sit down in the beach chair and sit. And so, therefore, all my opinions and judgments went away about people sitting in chairs or half lotus or Seiza. It opened something new for me. This, just before this sentence caught me, my friend and poetess, Diana de Prima,

[08:06]

there was a poster on a billboard, and it said, The Poetics of Loss. And you know, it's kind of nice that when you glance at things, something, it grabs you. And it's imprinted in you very deeply for a long time, and you don't know why. There's no reason. But somehow, it, what would you say, it matches you exactly where you are. And earlier, when I began Zen, it's a little bit more, it's kind of embarrassing, a little bit more than 30 years ago, 35 years. There was a lot of interest in the 50s martial arts and kendo and swordsmanship.

[09:09]

And I had read some techniques in swordsmanship. But the best way is that when you see your opponent, you come out and you just strike him and go away. No technique. Then I said, That's very interesting. That sounds like Zen. What some Zen people would do, just very direct, very simple, but so very difficult. And the most difficult part of that was at the end of the article was that, and it will be sure to be a mutual slaying. And I didn't like to read that. Because I want to win. I want to gain. I want to be alive. But so much, this is every day within our life. To know how to lose is being alive.

[10:17]

Being very much alive. Accepting things as they are is a loss. Being in the moment is a loss. Being up here is a loss. And I hope being down there is also a loss. So what are you losing? We are losing our self, our self-cleaning, our ideas. We are losing ourselves to the sound of the cricket. The sound and feeling of the zendo. So, this aspiration of loss or suffering brings us to practice. And I thought many years ago that when you start, say for instance you are on a circle, and you start at zero and you move to 90, 180, etc., to 360.

[11:25]

But actually you come back to the same spot. You start at the same spot and when you move in the circle, when you complete the circle, you end up at the same spot. And it doesn't matter if you start here or up here or up here. But it's the circle of life and you come back to the same spot. And we are just a little bit, maybe a little bit different. And I think how we are able to participate in this loss. We will become just a little bit different. And I always love the analogy about a candle. When you see a candle burn, it's the same candle. But is it the same? Because it's burning away. We are burning away.

[12:32]

There's freedom there. We are burning away. We are burning away with our exhalation and renewed with our inhalation. Every moment. Change, change, change. And I thought to say something about Zazen, how this parallels with our Zazen practice. We say to have a good seed takes ten years. You think about how long it takes a fruit tree to bloom or to bear fruit. So ten years is not a very long time. And we shouldn't take it just literally ten years.

[13:34]

Some time. It could be ten years, it could be ten years. Or it could be actually ten years. But it takes some time. In China, you know Sekito Kisen, the stone head ancestor, he sat on a very large stone. And on the stone is carved in source of the ancestors. It's our ancestor and also the ancestor is us.

[14:34]

It's our source. It's our intimate self sitting upright. So when we are sitting, this practice of sitting, actually do you know what you are doing when we are practicing? You are practicing the active participation of loss. Because we have fear, we have denial, we have resistance, we have sleepiness, we have exhaustion, we have pain. We have the whole spectrum of loss. So in a way I find this very interesting because it's a kind of conditioning. There is no gain here.

[15:36]

You know Suzuki Roshi used to mention gaining self. But in this kind of situation there is not much gain because you are participating with loss. So we are actively, not passively, even though we are sitting on the cushion quietly, we are actively, energetically participating in how things as they are. This is what they mean by things as they are. With pain, with noise changing to sound, with sound changing back to noise, with the awareness on your lower back, with some sleepiness. We are actively participating in this.

[16:42]

And when you do this, little by little we say that you will not become bothered by these conditions. Even the crickets decide to stop. You will not be bothered by these conditions. It's kind of interesting, reconditioning ourselves to, or conditioning ourselves to re-enter into our own unconditional world. And this sentence, the active participation in loss, comes from Uchiyama Roshi's teacher, Kurosawaki Roshi. When he said gain is delusion and loss is enlightenment.

[17:53]

That's where it's at, in loss. And also, like the first noble truth, Buddha said life is suffering. And it really has, when I first read it, a kind of negative connotation. But it's about participating with loss, actively participating with suffering. Actively accepting the inevitability of change, which is an undeniable condition of our very own lives. Things are not fixed, but are constantly changing from one moment to one moment to one moment.

[19:01]

There's a Zen saying, you can never step into a river the same spot twice. I love that. And we try it, you know, and we do it. We step in the same spot twice, because we've created that. But actually the whole river is moved by the whole environment of the river and the shore. It's moving by it, but we have created that we are actually stepping in the same place twice. Oh, I forgot to add, this is very important, active participation, loss, and the inevitability of change.

[20:13]

And the wonderful possibility for the celebration that freedom is rediscovered within this very condition of loss. I have a story about a statue that we received, and it's a Kanzeon. There's 11 faces, and counting the main face, it's called 11-face Kanzeon Bosatsu. And she's the mother of all the Buddhas, and she's his birth, she's the mother of his birth to mercy and compassion.

[21:23]

If you go to Lumbini, this is nearly 2600 years now, there's a temple that was built for Buddha's mother, and where Buddha was born, the King Ushaka placed a pillar there, and it's still standing. And it's quite, I was very impressed with it, because in our country here, there are not many buildings built for mothers. And when you go to places or shrines like that, the best thing to do is just sit down and be quiet, and return to the loss, or return to the silence.

[22:35]

Silence is loss also. Return there, just for a few minutes. So it keeps these monuments alive. Not just the monuments, but it keeps us alive. So a little, maybe, background about this statue. It belonged to the home community in Prescott, Arizona. Mr. Lee Lozovic. And Maezumi Roshi had done some calligraphy for this statue in Meijuku Kanagyo, that was in the room, in their temple.

[23:39]

So, when we had the invitation to receive the statue, there was a little dispute in the community, because like, how much money would it cost, how big was it, and all these, how would we transport it, how much does it weigh, all these. All these things. And so, I didn't have any idea. I didn't have any money, and I didn't know how large it was. Anyway, someone sent me a picture of the statue. And when I saw the statue, I said, oh, I'm in trouble. It looks beautiful. So somehow, that statue, the home community decided to transport it all the way from Arizona, Prescott to Sonoma Mountain.

[24:47]

And the little girl in the community, she was two years old, sent a card with the statue. Her father gave it to me. It was put into an envelope, and with a crayon, she addressed it. And then, when you open it, there was a picture of an umbrella with some rain, and then she signed it. Like the effort of a two-year-old. And it rained all the way from Arizona to California. And so, it arrived December the 7th. And we oiled in the evening, so we oiled it, we washed it and oiled it, and we erected it on December the 8th. It just turned out it was December the 8th, Buddhist Enlightenment Day.

[25:50]

And also, on the plaque, it said it was dedicated on December the 8th, 1959. Almost marks the time of Suzuki Roshi coming to America. And it turned out that we didn't have to spend any money. It fit into the zendo. It's 14 feet, and we didn't have to redo the floor. And the part I'm getting to is that on her head, there's a crown. And the first face is the regular face. And it's like when we look in the mirror. It's our face, and it's not our face.

[26:52]

Just like Tozan Ryokai, in his Enlightenment poem, when he crossed the stream, he looked in the water. But actually, it is our face, before we think it's our face. So, I'm not sure if this face is counted at all. But on the crown, the first three faces also look similar to this face, which is kind of calm and peaceful. And as the different heads move around the crown, they become more and more horrible. Just ghastly, just helplessness and pain and fear. From four to nine.

[27:59]

So, the first three are the peaceful, seemingly faces. And that's the one we look in the mirror, and we see the front view. But it's difficult for us to see the side, and even more difficult to see the back. And that's where all these faces are appearing. And I just, I don't know if this is the order or not, but number four, we could say, is anger and hate. That's a standard one. And this is with the background of everyday practice. We practice every day. You really practice every day. Trying to put what we learn into practice. If we're angry, we're aware we're angry.

[29:03]

You may be angry for a whole year or two, but know you're angry. So, as it moves, five, anxiety, frustration, confusion. Six, you could say isolation, rejection. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And until you get to seven, eight, and nine. And these are the real important ones. Ones that we will all face in our lives. Despair, devastation, helplessness, hopelessness. Sorry, I'm not bringing you the good news. But this is true. So, because we're lucky enough to have a practice, we don't have to commit suicide.

[30:14]

Despair was like in the Beat Generation. We wore black, we looked undernourished and famished. That was the ideal. But, at the same time, there was a tinge of rebellion. And also retaliation. Despair against something, society, authority. This is despair. Then comes devastation. So, it's getting closer to something very wonderful. It doesn't feel good. Your energy is low. You're not looking good. But sometimes when people are also in these phases, they look pretty good.

[31:18]

In spite of how they're feeling. There is churning. There is movement. And finally, hopelessness. This is the worst one, probably. Because this is the bottom. We've finally gotten down to the bottom. There's just no more hope. There's also no need to commit suicide. There's no ground. There's no choice. And you know the value of practice, finally. It's not a matter of choice. But you know which way to go. Through this hopelessness.

[32:20]

And also, there's no promise. And this is true, too. There's no promise. But we know there's this work to be done. And Tenryu, this morning, told a story of the monk hanging by the roots. And I had heard it a little bit different. That actually, because we're so encumbered and filled with delusion, we don't know if we're hanging vertically or horizontally. And so finally he let go, and he found out he was horizontal. He was just laid in his bed, you know. We have so much delusion and confusion. We think we're vertical and we're going to drop really far down. It feels that way. And we are convinced.

[33:39]

Ego's job is to convince us that way. That we are actually hanging. But if we do let go, oh how wonderful. I can rest. It's a beautiful rest. I was horizontal all this time, and I didn't know it. When I was in the southwest just a few weeks ago, there was lots of snow. And this hopelessness was like a tip of early spring emerging within the snow. That's the feeling. And there was a southern Colorado. I was in a little, little town called Gardner. And there's also the Sangre de Cristo Mountains,

[34:46]

Crestum, and the valley is like three times the state of Connecticut. The mountains are 14,000 feet. And they're very sharp. And my idea was that those are the mountains. That's the stuff. But what I found out was that there was a mountain called Greenhorn. And it was very round. It has its presence in a different way. It wasn't sharp, but round. And this mountain, they told me, had been under the ocean three times. That's a long time. And these other mountains, they were young mountains. So in the process of active participation loss,

[35:48]

we were worn down by time. We were worn down by weather. We were not even saved. We were also worn down by the sun, the moon, the stars. Just like Greenhorn. Yeah. So, we stay with the wonder of practice. Real practice, good practice. And finally, you realize there's no choice. That's the gift, maybe. There's actually no choice. Always go straight. And with the help of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha,

[36:56]

you go through and realize and see what has always been there, and what has always been with you. Everything is doing it. Night dies into day. Day dies into night, over and over and over again. Exhaling is intimate with loss, our exhalation. Inhaling, we become, I become, renewed. Thank you.

[38:02]

Thank you. Maybe if you have some questions or comments, come along. Thank you. Does anybody have any comments or questions? Yes.

[39:03]

Yeah, I don't think we have to bring it up. It's going on all the time, just to be aware. Like, there's a downside and there's an upside. And if we have the downside, we don't have the upside. If we have the upside, we don't have the downside. So, loss, not in the sense we become paralyzed by it. You know, for instance, like in Zen students, when we practiced, in the early days, I'd become, I was a young man, 25, I started practice, and I began walking slower, and I became like an old man. And we were young, we were young people, and we should be dancing and jumping around. But we were becoming like zombies. And because of this identity, with this, life is suffering.

[40:26]

But also, that's the downside, there's also, and there's this willingness, and discovery, and curiosity, and there's the blue sky within this. So just to become aware, basically. Of course, basically aware of what's going on, how you're feeling, when you're feeling bad, when you're feeling good, when you're feeling jealous, when you're feeling guilty. Awareness. Okay? Okay.

[41:31]

Okay. Okay.

[41:48]

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