Sesshins are, at least the first ones, are usually pretty difficult, but actually sesshins may be the easiest part of our practice. There are many people who sort of go sesshin hopping and literally go all over the world first to one Seshin, then another Seshin, doing quite a few a year with this group and that group. But they never practice Buddhism, actually. It's some kind of physical exercise or a stimulant or something they get hooked on. And if you talk to them about, if they try actually practicing in a practice situation on a daily basis, they can't do it. They find it boring or uninteresting or interferes with their daily activities or something, you know. And so anyway, saschinas are the easiest part of our practice.

[01:18]

They are a good opportunity to improve our posture, and none of your postures are perfect. But it's pretty good, and if you can work with the posture you have, accepting it, and also simultaneously moving always toward a more open and perfect posture. then that's the way to practice. And it's also a chance to work on our energy, but as many of you know, again, it's fairly easy once you get used to. dasahara or a sesshin to have your energy up in a sesshin and as soon as you're out of the sesshin everything is quite different again and you're not able to bring the clarity you have in a sesshin into your every, your regular activity.

[02:52]

but it does give us a chance to get our energy up. It takes, if Buddhism is to be awake, you know, the one who is awake, it takes a lot of energy to be awake. Actual fact, most of us are asleep most of the time. You can do a hundred things in front of a person and they don't even know maybe three of them and what's happening inside them and around them and they don't know. So until you're awake to yourself you can't even really work with a teacher because the teaching depends on your knowing what's happening with you. such-and-such happens, you know what was happening with yourself at the same time. Most of us are sort of tuned out. And to be awake in that way all the time, even at night, takes some practice with our experience, with our energy.

[04:20]

We've also, during this session, been talking about the vow, and the vow, the Mahayana vow, means that you can't realize yourself unless you accept the work of the world, which means to let everybody into your life and your practice. What we mean by being independent is an independence which allows everyone to depend on you. You can let everyone depend on you and simultaneously be dependent on everyone. That's independence the way we mean it. There's no realization without including everyone in your practice. That's basic to Mahayana Buddhism. So the vow means... Well, there's a... Someone asked me the question yesterday.

[06:05]

what is the vow? It's a very direct, good question. And in a simple sense you can say it's to, you vow to practice in such a way that you'll save all sentient beings with yourself. But actually it's putting it into practice is, that's just words, you know. What we mean by that, putting it into practice, because that's an impossible idea even, really it takes some long association with practice. And as I said, Zen is a kind of thing for specialists and you can't learn Zen on your own. It's not something you can go off by yourself and practice Zazen and ever really know what Zen is.

[07:14]

So in a more specific sense, the vow means you take a vow with someone who's already taken a vow. You can't take the vow just to yourself or in general to other people, but you take the vow with someone who's already taken the vow. and it's some way of getting out of yourself, of making your practice just your own. Somebody asked what doksan is, many things which doksan are, But one thing is it's an opportunity to share our experience, our meditation experience. And if you have some specific experience in zazen, you can talk to whoever functions as your teacher about it in a kind of special way which isn't exactly like talking.

[08:59]

And you should do that, actually. I know Sadhguruji used to get a little angry sometimes when he'd find students didn't know that already and various things had happened to them and they wouldn't have told him. But although we want to avoid... Part of the reason is we want to avoid interpreting our experience ourself. We want to avoid that thing of trying to make sense of our practices. Is this a unique experience? Is this someone else has had? But at the same time we need somebody to check up on our practice. Just like it's very difficult when you're sitting to know often that you're tipped a little or that your chin is forward. It's very hard to tell that yourself. You need someone to go around and every now and then. No matter how long you've been sitting, it's helpful to have someone occasionally come around and straighten your back a little or lean you a little left or right. It's very difficult to tell yourself and it's much more difficult to tell

[10:29]

when you're out of balance in your secret practice. We can be very convinced of things, make very good sense, a kind of proof positive of the way it is, which can really just be a retreat from actually confronting ego problems. So we need some opportunity to know other people. And even, I think, if you're married with your husband or wife, it's pretty difficult to know the other person completely. There's so much that you have to do together. that it's difficult to even know your wife or husband completely. So the teacher-student relationship is an opportunity for two people even, you know, to create a situation for them where they can know each other as completely as possible.

[11:53]

When you can enter into another person completely, you can enter into yourself completely. And when you can be alone, in the way I was talking about, then the whole world is transparent. You... People are... Everything is included in you. There's no... You don't look at a person and wonder, going on with them. You look at them, you know completely what's going on with them. Some marvelous kind of feeling of intimacy or sharing. Yesterday I mentioned that the vow I don't think has to be associated with being, with priestcraft. And I mentioned the sort of cloth trip one gets into though when one's a priest, you know. So this kind of thing interests me because I never would have, I mean I could read sutras for the rest of my lifetime and

[13:31]

I would never realize that the way most sutras begin with, so-and-so bared his shoulder, that in actual fact, if you really practice Buddhism with a community or in a practice situation, or you define yourself as a member of a community by a vow, that you spend more of your time straight baring your shoulder than you do reading sutras. I mean, you can read all the sutras you want and it just says, well, he buried his shoulder and then, oh, sorry, putra such and such, you know. But our actual practice is a lot of times this cloth trip, you know, and it seems to be pretty universal. I brought another piece of cloth to illustrate it a little bit. This is the Kesa of Milarepa's sect. And it's worn exactly the same way as ours, our Kesa. It's called, believe it or not, in Tibetan, it's called a Zen. And it's worn in the same way it goes across a shoulder like this. And then around here.

[14:56]

and up like this. It's a style of Kesa which actually might work better with our, if we wore Western style clothes. Anyway, I think it's pretty nice. I'm ready to switch. Anyway. What's interesting about a piece of cloth like this is that you've got to fiddle with it constantly. I mean, we have the idea that our clothes should be invisible, sort of. We put them on and they keep us warm, but the idea is it doesn't interfere with us. You know, we put a sweater on and once we've got it on, we shouldn't notice it's on our pant. Everything's designed to be convenient. But this is designed not to be convenient at all. In fact, it's not warm or anything, you know. And when you lecture, you're supposed to keep it out and do ceremonies, just keep it out like this, over your hand like that. And when you do walking around, you put it way up like that. And when you bow, you have to do your bow, start it out, and then you do all the stuff you have to do, right?

[16:26]

and then you put it down and you swing it around and put it up on your head and bring your hands around and then you go down and do the prostration and then you put it back and you put it down and then you put it back up. Right? So, that makes nine bows rather more complicated than our nine bows. The Japanese at least tie theirs up, you know. So, also, the practice in this sect is when you first come in the door and say, I want to practice Buddhism with you, you know, they say, okay, here's your robe and do a hundred thousand prostrations. I mean, you can, again, you can read all the sutras in the world and you wouldn't know that, you know, what if you went to college, you went to Harvard or Berkeley or someplace and you came and you said, I'm ready to be a student," and they said, here's a piece of cloth, bow for the next four years. Well, but that's really what practice is, you know? I mean, if you join Milarepa's sect, they say bow for four years. It takes a long time to do a hundred thousand prostrations. And then there's a whole lot of other hundred thousand things you've got to do before they'll start teaching you. So anyway, that's

[17:54]

that kind of situation that is the real practice situation, you know, not some insight you have or some reading of sutras or a few sashins, but putting yourself in some piece of cloth like this and bowing a hundred thousand times is Buddhist practice. The cloth, it's interesting, you can, the cloth makes you take care of your space in a way that doesn't happen in any other way. So it's actually somewhat similar in Zen. When you come to practice Buddhism, actually we give you something to do, like zazen and sesshins and work around the building and things like that, for a long time. I mean, if you're serious about practicing Buddhism,

[19:36]

Generally, there's not much that you do other than sashins and zazen with very little instruction for several years. And you should end up to be about as confused as you would after a hundred thousand prostrations with this cloth. So you don't know which way is up and what to do next and why you've been doing it or anything. You end up to be pretty soggy, you know. not sure about anything. And when you're in that kind of state then It would be wonderful if we had a really, if Suzuki Roshi was still with us, or we had a really good teacher. And if I could find one who could continue Suzuki Roshi's way, we'd invite him to come here. But I don't know of anyone who can continue Suzuki Roshi's

[21:18]

way some other good teacher from Japan or someplace. But I think if we practice together, that together we can continue Suzuki Roshi's that there's among us the wisdom necessary to do it. And so I'm asking actually for your help to find out together, we continue to practice together, how Buddhism and Zen can be here in the West. I think while the vow we continue will be the practice of Suzuki Roshi, but for many things, many of the solutions to problems we find, we can practice, we can draw on all of Buddhism

[22:49]

So, Suzuki Roshi left us a situation which emphasizes the group and a kind of group definition by function and by seniority or elders and an individual, so a kind of combined situation of students and teacher and a way a group is organized according to Buddhist tradition, Zen tradition. Using that, within this, I think we can find some way to continue practice if we practice together. Are there any questions? Anything we should talk about?

[24:17]

Can you suggest a smooth entry back into the world? Smooth entry back into the world? Maybe go in backwards. With your eyes shut. Like you were reaching for your pillow. It's pretty hard. I think you're doing it actually. Yeah? We're doing it already. You couldn't hear what he said? He asked how we can continue the vow in the West and in the world. You know, I don't have a big box of answers back here.

[25:57]

I have confidence that this farm we're getting will give us the form we need to express our activity in the world in maybe a pretty complete way. It's a very beautiful place, as I guess you know, and it'll have three activities. One is a kind of invisible halfway house, and another is the organic farm, which we'll try to find out with help from Japan and the vitalist gardening tradition at Santa Cruz and other organic gardening traditions. how maybe is best or what of several ways are good to grow organic vegetables. And we'll also try to train people to be organic gardeners. Zen Center doesn't just want to produce leaders of meditation centers, but also leaders of people who can do farming and carpentry, etc. So, that's one function.

[27:28]

And the third, maybe one of the most interesting parts, is that we'll leave space open and may even build facilities for people to come who are curious about us or people who come who want to have a place, a quiet place to talk with monks or talk with themselves or whatever. So it'll be a kind of meeting house or a conference place or something at one end of the valley. It's a valley which stretches down to the ocean in the mountains. And so with the city place, and Tassajara is a more and more strict monastic place, and the farm as a place where we meet the world, sort of, I think we have the

[28:30]

physical facilities we need to express almost everything this community wants to do. But actually how we continue our practice and continue Suzuki Roshi's vow will be up to all of us. I mean, as I say, I don't have a box of answers, it'll actually be up to all of us opening ourselves up to each other and sharing in the work. Many of you are pretty easily discouraged. If your practice is a little bad you think of stopping or if you're offended in some way you immediately retreat. That's difficult because actually part of the practice is to make you retreat, to offend you. So actually you're supposed to have problems, you know, something you're very attached to or moved by. Someone should say something to you or a situation should arise or I should do something which makes you

[30:00]

upset maybe about it. I doubt that for six months they'd been angry about something, you know, or something like that. Yes. Why do we have a rule that we can't eat between meals during sesshin? Who says sesshin is the same as everyday life? I said when it's the same, then it doesn't make any difference. You can eat between meals during a sesshin when it's the same. You're trying to catch me again. But when it's the same, you don't care about eating in between meals at all. Yeah?

[31:29]

Specialist doesn't mean special. There are two ways to, well, to use the same example I used before, the difference between being in love and knowing what love is. And sure, it's the same, you know, no matter what you call it, this is a staff. But Zen is a process of knowing ourselves and giving up knowing ourselves. And also later, if you continue practicing and you have to be a teacher, the practice is very concerned with how you are a teacher and survive it. Because one thing, the archetype of being a teacher or a poet or something can destroy you. So there's quite a lot of the practice is how to survive being a teacher or how not to be a teacher maybe. So in that sense, I don't think our activity is special, but it is different from, you know, just like two plants are different. One plant knows its business.

[33:04]

and we should know our business. And there's a way to teach, and the teaching has a lot of technical language in it and requires some study. If you think Zen is just naturalism, that if we just behave naturally, that's Zen, that's not right at all. Zen is meant to open you up to yourself in a way that you can never do naturally. I mean, we have a saying of Pratyekabuddha, which means one who is enlightened by circumstances. I don't think there should be any problem about that because You know, as Dr. Konze always used to say, that he and his wife, hanging out together for ten years or twenty years or however long they've been married, they have a special language that they've created just because they're together. And a particular tradition like Buddhism, I mean, they can have a conversation about something and people who, you know, nobody can understand because they have special words they use that have developed out of their life situation.

[34:34]

And that's certainly true of Zen tradition, that you get a bunch of monks hanging out together for a couple thousand years and you develop ways in which they talk about things which, unless you are initiated into the language, you don't know what it means. You simply don't. What do you mean? It bothers you.

[35:37]

Yeah, I know I can't do that, but I hope if I don't hold on to questions, I can answer them. Well, it may be better for, actually, for you or many of us to practice a long time without this kind of question, but at the point at which you are really trying to throw everything away and you know you can't, Buddhism has certain ways to help you do that. But when you're bothered by a question like that, you know, something like that, it's good to notice it because it means that you have some idea about Buddhism. which may or may not be accurate, I don't know, but we have some idea that stands between us and things, and how to get rid of those ideas is what we're talking about actually, even though there's a lot of ideas about how to get rid of the ideas.

[36:58]

What remains of the past ten years? What remains of your? Do you want anything to remain? I hope nothing remains. It's not a good feeling. Well, it might be if you stay with it for a while. And when you sit It's nearly impossible to be completely still But

[38:56]

we want to be still, inside and out. And there are two periods left in the sesshin, and I'd like you to try to be as still as possible for the last two periods. I know you're tired at the end of the last day, but actually you do have the energy to do it and so please try.

[39:44]

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