Good morning. Good morning. Not so many people in this endo. A lot of familiar faces, and for me, not yet known faces. And hello out there. Good morning, Hosan. It's so nice to hear your voice. I miss you. I think we're seeing an empty chair, but we're doing our best. So I have a straightaway that I wasn't planning on saying that I want to apologize deeply to all of you because I believe that I am implicated in the power outage.

[01:15]

The new heater was plugged in in the corner to a wall outlet and this morning it was moved to the other side of the room and the available... I'll say this in front of Living Cheese Online. The available outlet was actually an extension cord, which is not a good idea for a ball heater, a heater. And I plugged it in because it was cold and not really registering that I had actually myself before. That was not a good idea, but it wasn't available to me at that moment. And also that same electrical extension cord had the other heater. plugged into it. So between the two of them, I think, that's . And that's not the end of it. Yesterday, I was gonna talk about this later, but I'm gonna just throw this into this category.

[02:22]

Yesterday, while I was cooking, conditions arose that in which the power cord to the rice cooker got melted on the stove before it was put in juice. Fortune wasn't plugged in. It was sat in place and something else was happening on the stove and somebody said to me, oh look, what happened? So anyway, I'm really sorry about that. And as a member of the Building and Grounds Committee, I would recommend that I be kept away from electrical plants. I did contemplate not admitting, but then I thought, how could I give this dog if I didn't?

[03:25]

So I was, you know, this, So she didn't go as planned. We were planning on hearing from Hosan, well, you know, multiple days. And pretty much at the last minute, like only a few days ago, we were confirmed that that couldn't happen. And so, but there wasn't chance for all of us to talk about what the theme was or anything. But remarkably, and I actually wanna talk about this later, but I'm just gonna mention it now. The first two speakers, if you weren't here earlier in the week, started with exactly the same theme and actually had picked this to read from Sojourn. And the theme was, what are we doing here? And part of the initial answer was, we're not trying to fix anything. And you know, between two people, that's kind of a coincidence.

[04:29]

that without consulting with those two people, I had the exact same opening. So I'd like to unpack that a little bit. The redundancy, the apparent redundancy of that. And I would like to actually focus not on what we are not doing, but also what we're doing. I've spent the last many months sort of diving into cultivating the empty field, which is Hong Xiu. And I'd like to read a passage, and if you're not used to his language, it might be a little unpacking, but I'd like to, for your indulgence, I'd like to read it again after comments and see if it sounds different.

[05:33]

to you the second time, and then we can have a discussion about it. So here's Hanshin, and this is from his practice instructions regarding silent elimination. Elimination is his term for zaza. The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Just expand the original path. The practice of true reality is simply to sit serenely in silent illumination.

[06:42]

When you have fathomed this, you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions. The empty, wide-open mind is subtly and correctly illuminating. Here you can rest and come clean. pure and lucid and penetrating. You can immediately return, accord, and respond to deal with events. Vast and far-reaching without boundary, secluded and pure, manifesting light, this spirit of obstruction. Its brightness does not shine out. but can be called empty and inherently radiant. Its brightness, inherently purifying, transcends causal conditions beyond subject and object.

[07:49]

Right in here, right in here, the central pivot turns. The gateway opens. You accord and respond without laboring. and accomplish without hindrance. Around freely, not following conditions, not falling into classifications, facing everything. Let go and attain stability. Stay with that, just as that. Stay with this, just as this. That. and this are mixed together with no discrimination as to their places. An ancient said that non-mind enacts and fulfills the way of non-mind with sitting silently wander into the center of the circle of wonder.

[08:58]

I'm going to say that part again because it's my favorite part. Wander into the center of the circle of wonder. This is how you preach and study. So a little bit, just a few details about Honshu. He lived from 1091 to 1157. He's one of our Chinese ancestors. His name means . And he's known as the collector of the koans for the Book of Serenity. And his teacher, Yuan Wu, is the one who collected the koans for the Blue Cliff Record. So there's a koan study in there with this one. Now, here's even more interesting. He became the abbot of Zingde, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, monastery. on Mount Tiantang, and those of you will know, remember, Mount Tiantang is the place where Dogen went and found his true teacher, Ruizheng.

[10:14]

Hangzhou preceded him as abbot, he was there for 30 years, and he found it in disrepair and renovated it, and eventually it housed 1,200 monks. But he died as avid there. His Japanese name, this is a fun fact, is Wanchi Shogaku. Does that sound familiar? Shogaku is the name of this temple, Shogaku-ji. I don't know the exact origins. I think Suzuki Roshi had something to do with it. This is what he was calling on. And when Dogen came to Mount Yantan, It was only 70 years after Honshi had died. Now, dig that. We are exactly or almost very close to 70 years away from when Suzuki Roshi landed in the United States.

[11:17]

And he is a living memory for us because we have people who studied with him, right? So you can feel how fresh the transmission is and Honshu, and Dogen called him an ancient Buddha, although he'd never met him, and Ruijing did also. Just because it might be relevant later, Dogen's words from Ruijing were cast off body and mind. If you ever wondered why we use that phrase so much, that's probably why. So back to what is Hangzhou talking about? And there I even try to address what is emptiness. Uchiyama, I'm going to rely on Uchiyama.

[12:23]

Uchiyama was a contemporary abbot at Antaigi. and the teacher of, is it right, Okimura? Is that right? And he also, before he became a monk, had several degrees in Western philosophy. He was interested in the West, so there is a way in which the same sort of feeling that Suzuki did about a relationship with the West. Ujuyama calls non-mind the universal self. And that zazen is a fresh opportunity to look at what you imagine to be. I should say, who you imagine yourself to be. And how would you do this? How could we do this? I believe it's by softening and letting go of the boundary and everything else.

[13:32]

And that might sound daunting or maybe even frightening, but I want to reassure you that it's not about giving up self or losing self. It's about expanding your understanding of what self is to include even more, to understand that you are greater than you can imagine yourself to be. that you can even understand, that we can understand. That self is simultaneously personal and universal. And that in your own being, in our own being, we are an open field of emptiness. that Hon Chu is talking about cultivating.

[14:36]

So emptiness is not an easy concept to wrestle with. I don't pretend to have wrestled with it completely. I'm going to propose that it might be useful to think about it not as a void, not as anything, but as the absence of classifications and the absence of boundaries or seams and edges, as sometimes what Sages use as a description, the whole of everything, including everything, without boundaries. And Dogen calls this process of realization of the expanded self, Jiyu Zama, translated as the samadhi of the self-free.

[15:50]

It's a little hard to unpack, but I'm thinking that it's the spirit of the self perceiving its true nature. and turning around and putting it to work in the world. So Aki, who was Uchiyama's teacher, called it the self-selfing the self. This is my first rakasu, and on it, Sojun wrote this. Samadhi is the self making the self into the self, and I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out what that is. Now, and you remember this, and say it with me now if you know it, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.

[16:53]

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and mind of others, drop away. There it is. The trace of realization remains and this no trace continues endlessly. So as I've been contemplating this, I think what arises naturally from this silent illumination is prajna, wisdom, which is both a mysterious way of knowing and a way of responding with appropriate action. The automatic reaching for the pillow in the middle of the night.

[17:57]

And I propose that we all have these moments. And part of our practice is realizing that we have these moments when they happen. The night before the first day, I set my alarm to get up early enough to get here by 5.40. And in the middle of the night, I woke up suddenly and said, I set my alarm wrong. Didn't I? Maybe I did. And I looked and I did. I had set my alarm for 540. And I contemplated and it started to go down to some sort of blame and self-discipline. I stopped myself because I've been trying to school myself not to go down that rath hole of blame and just say, thank you.

[19:00]

Thank you and thank you and feel grateful. And so I reset my alarm and I got up in time to be here. I recall Ron calling. Ron, are you there? I can't see. I don't think so. I have to tell him I said this later. Ron, when we were studying the Paramitas, he called Prajna a parental guide. Maybe he had different parents than some of us. But the wisdom of knowing how to respond, the appropriate response. So Jin once called intimacy relationship. So that was interesting. I wrote that down. I'm not sure I understood it at that time.

[20:02]

And before I go into what I think now it means, I want to put a pin in that and do a little sidebar for those who come here after the surgeon's death, which is now almost three years ago. And wanting to acknowledge that you didn't get a chance to know him or meet him. You are no doubt hearing about him, and you're hearing about him, you know, through those of us who knew him. And we all had very distinct and different relationships with him. I once looked around a room and thought, you know, there are as many Sojuns as there are people in this room. And so when we cite Sojun and talk about him, We might be saying as much about ourselves as we are about him, or about the relationship, or something mixed up in all of that.

[21:07]

It's sort of the same way we figure out or we have our own relationship with Suzuki if we've never met him. We hear about him, but then we read him. And what I would recommend to the people who didn't know Sojun is just listen to his talks. so many online available that you can have your own relationship with Sojan, so not to feel left out. So Sojan about Prajna, the intimacy and relationship that is, I think he's talking about a relationship that is created by tapping into the universal self, the ground that exists under us all, that we have our roots in. And that's why I think when Susan and Ross and I came up with the same opening, that it was more than an accident.

[22:12]

I think we are swimming in the same sea, ocean, together. Sojin's deep understanding that we are all interconnected, that our interconnectedness is manifested through these kinds of apparent synchronicities. Here's Uchiyama again. To think that universal self is apart from personal self is just a limited comparison of the brain. Just a variant of self versus other. Universal self or all-inclusive self is free of comparison and includes the personal self.

[23:13]

Self is not some fixed concept regarding who you are. It is the all-inclusive self you personally wake up to. So between Soja and Uchiyama, Dogen and Hatshu, what we find is this continual emphasis on the wholeness and non-separation. And that nothing is external to this luminous sense of mind. But what does this look like in the day-to-day? I have kitchen practice as kind of an immediate referent. When my day came, I was feeling pretty confident of it, but on the day itself, I found myself uncharacteristically and very anxious.

[24:22]

Not the kind of worried anxious, but the kind of flashing And I felt it viscerally in my body and the only thing I could do really was to acknowledge it to my crew because I have a belief that if you are carrying around that kind of energy that you should own it so people know what's in the room. And then we went to work. And for those of you who haven't worked in the kitchen, I'm worried about that. There's quite a lot of focus on getting things done on time. And I hadn't realized this, but Susan reminded me of this later, that we were when we learned how to do this. And this was the first time of my doing this on this schedule. And there's an hour less prep time in the kitchen as a result. But I hadn't...

[25:24]

I mean, I vaguely probably thought of it, but I really hadn't dwelt on it. I don't know if it's the first thing to say, but I'll say it anyway. In Zen, when the bell rings, the food is ready. In Vipassana, the food is ready when the bell rings. No, the other way around. The bell rings when the... So that's one part. Also, one is monitoring how the little batch that you did at home for two or three people translates when you times it times five or seven, and you have this big pot that takes a long time to cook in the way that it did at home. And the seasoning is, I mean, there's a lot of mystery about all of that, making that work. And then even though we have this idea that you do one thing at a time and focus on one thing at a time, when you're cooking three meals, and then morning before breakfast, you're cooking six meals or prepping for six meals because you're trying to get some stuff done for lunch too.

[26:39]

So there are multiple things happening. And if you've noticed the kitchen, it's laid out so that the prep is here, the cooking is there, and the washing is there. And the harmonizing of the crew is trying to just keep out of each other's way. You know, reaching for a bowl around somebody's legs and all that kind of stuff. And it becomes a dance. It becomes a harmony. For me, I have these flashing catastrophes. I realized just in time that I had not set the timer for the second side baking of the tofu. And I looked and it was fine. And I was like, oh my God. That kind of a moment. And then there was the rice cooker and the same. And then there was sauce that I prepared for the tofu just didn't taste right.

[27:44]

And I tried fixing it numerous ways. I'd go away from it and come back, and I finally actually, because the marinade seemed to do all right, but it had the same quality of, oh my God, you, oh, thank you. There's probably a couple more in there, but you get the drift. Somebody told me that Anne Lamott's prayer, Anne Lamott is a local writer, prayer, and I would call it a mantra, is help. Thank you. And wow. Help. Thank you. And wow. Circle of wonder. And since this enactment of all of it, silent illumination and moving into action, harmonizing and touching the ground under it all. You know, and

[28:44]

One of the loveliest moments in cooking is when you do the service. And the dishwasher, I mean the servers join the cooks all and chant the Heart Sutra. And when we did it, it was so strong. The chanting was so strong and so permeated. It just changed the energy in the room and in me. I have to say that's been true. This whole sushine, the chanting has been wonderful. And I was, it allowed me to let go of the suffering that I created for myself, the activity of my ego, which was, you know, is it going to be done on time? Will it be good? Will there be enough? Will there be too much? Yada, yada, yada, yada. Letting that go and handing it over.

[29:48]

And there comes a... It's almost like one of those moments where you hear it for the first time with nothing to attain. Bodhisattva depends on Prajna, Paramita. And I went, yes. Right. And it comes when you don't expect it. It can't make it. It just, you have to just... Accept it when it happens, and take it in, and say, thank you. One of my other favorite moments is when you hand off the Buddha tray, and if you haven't, the Buddha tray has got these little tiny, Buddha's not very hungry, there's little tiny bowls, and the cook has put each of the little dishes in the bowls and prepared the Buddha tray, and after the service, The cook holds it and the server bows and the server, the Buddha tray and the cook bows and in that moment I feel like I've done my best and it's your show now.

[31:04]

It's your baby, you go and off it goes. All of the food goes and the servers are in charge. It's like you're offering You're offering your effort and you hand it to this next group who offers and takes their effort and offers it and puts the Buddha triad. And then kind of magically it just while we're eating and then it kind of magically disappears. It gets back to the kitchen after we're done. So, I don't know what time it is, what time is it? Oh, good, okay. So... I'm gonna read. Oh, I'm sure I can. No, it's all right.

[32:11]

The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning. You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. That seems like, but I think it's a promise and an encouragement because of the word apparent. Apparent habits, we think we're stuck, we think we are at least solid, but he's saying, Then in all of these different ways, some of these habits are going to be kind of hard. Some of them can be brushed away. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Just expand and eliminate the original truth. The practice of true reality is really in silent illumination.

[33:13]

When you have fathomed this, you cannot be turned around by external causes and conditions. The empty, wide open mind is subtly and correctly illuminating. Here you can rest and become clean, pure and lucid. Bright and penetrating, you can immediately return a chord and respond to deal with events. Vast and far reaching without boundary, secluded and pure, manifesting light, this spirit is without obstruction. Its brightness does not shine out, called empty and inherently radiant. Its brightness, inherently purifying, transcends causal conditions beyond subject and object.

[34:23]

Right in here, the central pivot turns. Gateway opens. You record and respond without laboring and accomplish without hindrance. Everywhere, turn around freely, not following conditions, not falling into classification. Facing everything, let go, and attain stability. I think that sentence is worth a whole other talk, actually, because the facing everything is a very big challenge. very big challenge and there's a range of ways to face and so I'm not trying to impact that today but I just want to footnote it that way stay with that just as that stay with this just as this this and that are mixed together with no discrimination as to their places

[35:39]

And ancient, and in this case, ancient is capitalized, so you might imagine who he's talking about. Ancient said that non-mind enacts and fulfills the way of non-mind. With thoughts clear, sitting silently, wander into the center of the circle of wonder. I want to emphasize wonder. Because if you haven't experienced Zazen as a circle of wonder, it's okay. It's not a prescription. What he's saying is that it's not like you're going somewhere. The word wander implies that you happened into it, that if it happens, you happened into it. Now, Sojin used to say, enlightenment is an accident, and sitting zazen makes you accident-prone.

[36:50]

That feeling. This is how you must penetrate and study. So here's my own mantra. in response to what we're doing here. We are here to practice just being. We're here to give up and get somewhere. This is a practice for me. And I encourage you to rest. Rest in yourself. Rest in your stills center.

[37:54]

Rest in your own inner wisdom. Please let me know what you're thinking. Can you repeat it? Which one? My mantra. My own mantra is to just be. Which turns out really difficult. It's part of not fixing anything. But it also means that I need to give up the idea that I have to do something in order to be worthy.

[39:11]

That worthiness is already there. Just be. That's my mantra. And the second one is give up trying to get somewhere, which is probably . Colleen. So I may not know all your names, and for the sake of people online and other people in the room, would you say your name before you say something? Thank you. I loved what you said about anxiety. I feel like I've seen you do this on your anxiety. And what I'm wondering is, what do you do when it's not coming from you? It's coming from somebody else, but you feel it. What's the helpful move there?

[40:13]

Well, I think for me, that other people's anxiety is not a problem if they own it. If they say, I'm anxious about this, then that's easy, right? When someone doesn't own it, then the way it often gets expressed is, I'm anxious and the reason I'm anxious is because you're doing something. or that there's something wrong in what's going on in the universe and we have to change it. And then the issue is what is arising for that person and what is actually going on and figuring out how to sort that. And what is actually a response in terms of the person. And that... That really depends on how way you know the person, you know, what you can do about it.

[41:26]

If you had something in mind about it, that's an obvious, which is you've got to talk about it. What are you anxious about? Why are you anxious? Is there something I'm doing? What is the source? You know, you can unpack it. And in people in Saga, we can do that with each other too. Thank you for your talk. Thanks, Mary. I wonder, it says in the reading to accord and respond. This is sort of two-step, shouldn't that according? Maybe you could talk about that in that moment, like, oh crap, maybe I ruined the tofu.

[42:31]

In that moment, what does that look like before you saw it? Thank you for picking up on that, because I have pondered that word as well, and particularly even just before when I was reading my The way that I read it, the way I experience it, is that there is a step in there of acceptance, accord, being in accordance with something, is being in harmony with it or being willing to go with what is. There is a moment in the kitchen where you say to yourself, many cooks before me have ruined a meal. or have ruined a dish and have served burned rice or whatever. I mean, things happen, and so go with it.

[43:31]

Go with the sauce into the compost, you know. It is that... Actually, for me, the act is often more a matter of letting go of my resistance. It seems like maybe it's those habits that begin the first two lines, right? It's those sort of things that seem rock solid that needs to dissolve before the core. Right, I didn't read one of the passages, but what he says is, let go of your ingrained ideas. This is the other way. So your expectation, it's supposed to be like this, it's supposed to have sauce on it. a mark.

[44:42]

I've never experienced silence in this room, but sometimes I can remember to listen. This is not the silence of the absence of sound. Maybe the word stillness would work as well. I mean, one of the reasons I like Hansha is because as I was reading it, I realized where Sojin got my name, which is difficult for me to understand. The second name, Dharma name, is Stable Centaur. also could be still center.

[45:47]

And I imagine it is the pivot is a word that Hanshi uses too, in a gyroscope. It's that place that is still while there's movement around it. There's lots of noise around here. But there's stillness. This is Karen. What is just being and how do you practice that? Thinking about all the things you do and, you know, it must take a certain amount of drive and consent. So how do you practice just being? I do a lot of things.

[46:53]

That's true. And there's a lot of things I enjoy doing. And there's a difference between enjoying doing something and being driven to do it because you think you ought to think it'll make somebody happy or you think whatever you think, it'll justify your existence. So when I say it's an edge that I'm working, I return, I notice when I feel driven by my activity versus when it's flowing or where I'm enjoying it. And I notice, since I've been taking this as a kind of mantra, I've been noticing that I need time when I am just sitting.

[48:01]

Not only in Zazen, but with a cup of tea in the backyard, just staring at trees, just open space and no schedule. Darlene Cohen. used to recommend that you take a whole day of nothing scheduled. It was a bridge too far for me at the time. But I understand how in the world we live in, it's so busy that you have to come back. You get busy and you have to come back. I have to return. to unplanned, unstructured, just being. I guess I'm wondering, being includes doing and action. Yeah, yeah.

[49:05]

So you could be cooking for sashim, all the moving parts. Absolutely, right, right. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, this is Sue. Thank you for the talk. It's amazing. And when you first started talking about the electricity and your responsibility, I was wondering if Libby's online, if she has some words. Libby, did you hear that? Would you like to unmute yourself?

[50:05]

You know, I did. Could you repeat it for me? That was Sue Osher asking if you had anything to say about the electricity problem. As you said, my dear, stuff happens. Thank you. I will tell one story on myself about that. My father was an electrical engineer. And forever, and he died when I was 11, so I don't have a lot of memory. But as an adult, I loved standing about 12 feet back from the wall and yanking that sucker out of the wall. And I learned from my brother that my father was adamant about going up to the plug and pulling it out.

[51:15]

And I realized that in some way I had osmosisly brought that into myself, you know, that, you know, go up to the wall a bit. And so I defiantly was going, you know. And one time at work, I was doing that with one of those heavy equipment things, which has a big plug on it like this, and I yanked it, and I just watched as the thing clocked me. And I went, that's why you don't do that. So I'm a hard learner in this, all of you. I guess we should stop.

[51:53]

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