Oh, my. We've been sitting sesshin here, and I've gotten all involved in sesshin. I guess I forgot about all the rest of the world here. Hi. So we've been gathering together here to sit for five days. Just attending to breath and posture. Just this breath. And just this posture. Settling the self on the self.

[01:02]

Returning home to just this one. And why in the world should we do that? What is this? Undertaking why I'm some people are here. They're taking their vacation To come and sit for five days and while it Someone says to me friend of mine said to me, why do you do this? Why do you go put on special clothes and go over there and torture yourself? And why do you do it? I And my response immediately was, well, because we like to. Well, that's kind of foolish.

[02:11]

It isn't that it's a totally joyful experience. Sometimes it's pretty difficult. Sometimes it's very difficult. Sometimes our legs hurt. Sometimes we can't stand it and we want to run away. So why would anybody do a thing like that? Maybe it's not possible to understand unless you've done it. I don't know. But, you know, essentially what we do is we just come here and we completely stay with ourself with as few distractions as possible for five days. So that one of the things we may notice is that all of the difficulty of being here has to do with

[03:24]

and not being quite comfortable with ourself somehow. And what we want to get away from is not this plain white wall that's in front of us. It's... We want some distraction from just being with all of this rackety noise that we make in our heads, you know, all of these, this continual thoughts and confusion that if we sit still a minute, we notice is going on. So, This practice of zazen is to sit here and let go of all of this continual thinking.

[04:27]

Sufis used to call it monkey mind, you know, the mind just jumps around from branch to branch, chatter, [...] chatter. And if you sort of sit still for a minute, you notice that your mind is going chatter, chatter, chatter. If you believe everything that happens to occur as a thought, it's total confusion. Because all of these thoughts that come up have come into our mind from... I mean, there are voices there from our whole life, you know, from our parents, from our teachers, from our friends, from our employers, from our fellow workers, from our, you know, from our Zen teachers, from everybody telling us what we ought to do and how we ought to be.

[05:34]

And if somebody, you know, if there happens to be some idea that somebody hasn't told us, we'll pick it up somewhere else and we'll add it. And we just have this cacophony of what you ought to do and how you ought to be and why you're not okay the way you are and how you have to fix it before you'll be all right. And nowhere in those voices is there one which says, you're already perfectly acceptable just as you are. I hear somebody who wants to hear that a little louder back there. You're already perfectly acceptable just as you are. Right? This is, as far as I can tell, the fundamental teaching of Buddhism. The fundamental teaching of Buddhism is that from the beginning, from the beginning, we are Buddha itself.

[06:45]

We are each this particular manifestation of Buddha nature or universal life or whatever you want to call it. I've been reading lately a book which I've gotten very excited about. The people who were here at Sesshin yesterday saw me get really overexcited about it. The reason I'm excited about it is that the author, Uchiyama Roshi, is a very developed Zen teacher who majored in college in Western philosophy. and who, as abbot of Antaiji Monastery, has had many Westerners, Siddhasen, with him. And so he has written a book which is directed to Westerners

[07:51]

which is as free as possible of Buddhist technical language and which tries to speak to those of us whose whole sort of mental training has been in the Western tradition. And he's very articulate. And... And I like it a lot, and I recommend it, and I hope it's still in print. It's certainly in the library. It's called Approach to Zen by Koshio Uchiyama Roshi. And if I could, I would read the whole thing to the Sesshin while you're sitting here, but I can't because you just all go to sleep. Reading it yourself will wake you up, but having somebody else read it to you will probably put you to sleep. It's all about waking up, waking up to the true self, waking up to the life of the self which is just the self.

[08:58]

But he tells a story in here about, you know, he says, well, you know, suppose you just pay attention to the self which is only the self and you don't, you don't try to you know, you sort of withdraw your attention from this self which is defined by not other, you know. When we say what am I, it's sort of what... it's the I which is not other, or other is defined by the other which is not I. And, you know, it's kind of an interdependent definition of what is I, or what am I. Suppose you withdraw yourself from that definition, isn't that just withdrawing from the world and being sort of self-centered and not caring about the rest of the world and so forth?

[10:11]

And he tells a story about these pumpkins out behind this Zen temple. And they were sitting there in the field looking at each other, and they got in an argument. And they started getting into a terrible row. And the Zen priest came out and said, what's the matter with you guys? Stop that. What are you doing fighting out here? I want you all to start sitting Zazen right now. Just sit there and be quiet. So they all started sitting, so I was in these pumpkins. And the noise died down. And after a while he says, now I want you to all put your hand on top of your head. And they all felt something up there. And they started following the stem, you know, see where it went. And it all went to the same plant, you know. And they found out that they were all part of the same plant.

[11:18]

They were all living the life of one plant. And they quit fighting. This is sort of like our zazen, you know? When you settle the self on the self, when you settle the self on this universal life which we are manifesting, in our unique way, you discover that we're all living the life of this universal life force. In Buddhism, we call this Buddha nature, doesn't matter. We are all manifestations of this same life force. We're all connected to the same plant, like the pumpkins. But what we see, we see from this perspective, from our point of view with our, you know, visual acuity, you know.

[12:30]

If you and I look, you know, if we both look at this book, we think we're looking at the same book. But I see it from here, and each of you sees it from some different angle. And each with, you know, each with whatever visual acuity you happen to have. So we'll all see something different. And it's that way with life, you know. We never, we never can experience anything in exactly the same way than another person experiences it. Our experience will always be colored by the scenery of our life, colored by our life history and experiences and sensitivity and whatever, you know.

[13:35]

So we will always experience life differently than another being. Our scenery, the scenery of each being is different. The life circumstance of each being is different. So to begin with, we all need to come home to our fundamental being, which we all share. this life force which is expressed in innumerable unique ways through each being. And that we do in this practice by sitting zazen.

[14:41]

There's a whole chapter in here in which he talks about how Nembutsu, you know, the Jodo Shinshu, is exactly approaching the same experience through the recitation of Buddha's name. So it isn't that there's only one way to settle yourself on yourself. and let the flower of your life force bloom and experience the oneness of all being. But this is one way which is very old and which we have received through some good fortune from a lineage of teachers who brought it to us and made it available to us. And so I choose this way because I have, as someone said, some good experience with it.

[15:42]

And I see some examples of people who have chosen this way of returning to their fundamental being over many years, and they inspire me. Wow, you know. If Suzuki Roshi got to be like that for sitting saizen for 50 years, well, it sounds... I'll try it, you know. I may not have 50 years, but I'll try it anyhow. I mean, for as long as I've got. Or others, you know. If some of the beings whom I've met, who've chosen this practice, and whom I see, you know, like, I met Mel when he'd been practicing maybe five years or so. He was pretty nice then. I liked him then. But now, you know, I've seen him when he's been practicing 25 years and I think, boy, you know, I can see some difference.

[16:50]

Or I met Katagiri Roshi when he'd been practicing maybe 20 years. And now I see him, he's been practicing 40 years. And there's a big difference. I mean, he was pretty good at 20 years, you know. I mean, I really was impressed by him when I first met him. But there's still, you know, I feel more confidence after watching him practice for 40 years. So it's no surprise that when I met Suzuki Roshi, who'd been practicing for 50 years when I met him, that I was pretty, he was a pretty neat guy, you know? He'd managed to let go of a lot of old habits that most people I know still carrying around and I was too. And he was clearly able to see me as not separate from himself.

[17:55]

He was very aware of this common stem that we stem from, you know. And it was clear in the way that he met me and talked to me that he didn't see some separation. And it wasn't just me, you know. That was kind of the way he connected with everybody. And that, you know, I didn't understand what it was about him. I just understood, gee, you know, I haven't met many people who meet me like this. And it sure feels nice to have somebody say, you're perfect just as you are, and really mean it, and really come from a place where it felt like he really knew it. It was not something he read in a book. It was not some idea he had. It wasn't that he read somewhere that the Buddha said when he had his great enlightenment experience, oh, I now see that all beings without exception have awakened with me.

[19:04]

That is traditionally how, what, I mean, we don't know what the Buddha said 2,500 years ago, but that's what's written in the sutras. That when he tried to talk about this liberating experience he had under the bow tree, what he said was, I now see that all being, mountains, rivers, birds, flowers, all being without exception have awakened with me. But when Suzuki Roshi would say, you're perfect just as you are, or you're complete, lacking nothing, or we have everything we need, or very many ways in which he would talk about this, he wasn't quoting somebody else's experience, he was quoting something that he understood himself.

[20:15]

So, Uchiyama Roshi calls this living the life of the self which is only the self, self with a capital S, you know, or living the life of universal being and meeting each situation and each person from this life of universal being. So the zazen that we do is to, moment after moment, make this big effort not to go anywhere, not to achieve anything, for no kind of attainment. In the sutra that we chant every morning, the Heart Sutra, it says, no attainment. With nothing to attain, the mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist.

[21:24]

And we chant that every morning, but still, When we start to make effort, and sometimes Sazen is a big effort, we think there must be something to attain, you know. There must be some Satori or some Kensho or some enlightenment or something that I don't have now, you know, that I'm going to get for all this effort. But there isn't anything to get that you don't have now. The effort that we make is to be what we already are, is to give up some of our busyness and some of our... reaching for something outside ourself and just to come home to right here, to our fundamental being.

[22:29]

which is never separate from us. And that requires a lot of effort because we have very many habits, you know, mainly habits of thought, mainly habits of mind that we chase about and we're pushed about by. Old thoughts and old emotions that continually catch our attention. So our effort in Zazen is to, as thoughts occur, let them go and return to breath and posture. Breath and posture. Each period we review, we give ourselves Zazen instruction at the beginning of each period. My back should be so, my nose should be so, my ears should be so, my breath should be so.

[23:39]

My eyes should be open, my mouth should be closed, and so forth. We go through Zazen instruction each time. I should be leaning neither to the right nor left, neither forward nor back. Lift up all the way from the cushion, right up through the crown of my head. So that my back is long, right through the back of my neck. What that does, as someone pointed out to me, is brings your, it opens, opens you up here, opens you up here. Feels very exposed. Feels very exposed. That's why we sort of sit facing the wall. We're just exposing ourself to ourself first. That feels safer, just to ourself.

[24:43]

And then sometimes we go and we talk to somebody and we expose ourself to one other person. But after a while, when we sit zazen together, over some years together in a sangha, in a group of people who are all making this effort just to be who we are, little by little we expose ourselves to each other, too. But I think it's very true, when this person mentioned to me, this posture feels very exposed. Right. It reminded me of what I noticed during the Shuso ceremony. Shuso is the head student at Tosohara. And at the end of a practice period, there's a ceremony. Give a couple of prompts here. And you read the instructions for the ceremony and, you know, you go into the ceremony and it says you're supposed to hold the staff over here.

[25:46]

You're supposed to hold the fan over here. And there you are in Zazen posture. And now you don't even have your hands here. That really, my first impression was, Oh, I'm totally exposed. Everybody's going to see everything about me. All of the stuff I don't want anybody to know about. And all that stuff I've been hiding from myself, you know. And it's built right into this ceremony, which is a thousand years old or more, you know. And it's, it's, uh, this practice is very physical, you know. It's very interesting that that that exposing yourself completely to your friends with whom you've been practicing is just part of that ceremony. And if you're fortunate, you know, you don't run away and hide. If you're fortunate, you just allow your friends to see you and question you right directly at who you are.

[26:55]

and allow you to completely expose yourself. Sometimes it happens, and if you're there for a ceremony where it happens, it feels wonderful. I mean, you feel so happy for the person that they were really able to say, here I am. And that's all anybody wants from you in this world. They don't really want you to be all these things that they say they want you to be. They want you to be completely who you are. Completely through this unique form expressing this universal life that we all are part of. That we all express. And that we've all somehow got bottled up in some way. But when we see it in another person, just completely out there, we say, wow, that's wonderful.

[28:04]

My daughter was down at Tosahara when she was 16. In the summer of 1970, I think it was. And Suzuki Roshi was down there. And she wrote a letter home and she said, you know, this morning I was out, I was up early so I went for a little walk through Tassajara and Suzukuro. She was up too and he was out walking in his garden. And you know what he was doing? He was walking in his garden. You know? But just something about the way he was out walking in his garden just really arrested her. There was something about it that was very compelling to her. And another friend of mine, who's now practicing at Green Gulch, went to hear a lecture of Suzuki Roshi once when he was a freshman at Cal or something.

[29:14]

Suzuki Roshi gave a talk over at the Unitarian Church or something early on. And he went on through school and he, you know, went on through graduate school and he practiced as a therapist for a number of years and one day he showed up over at Green Gulch and he said, you know, I just can't get it out of my mind. I just, I just keep thinking of the time I saw Suzuki Roshi. And I just can't get it out of my mind. And he left his job and he came to live at Green Gulch, and he's probably going to be ordained next year by Mel. But he just carried that experience of meeting Suzuki Roshi once with him, and it kept coming back to him. Sort of... But he was, you know, at the time he met him, he was on a direct course to his PhD, and he Did it, went on to every, you know, into his career and all of that and at some point he said, this isn't what I really want.

[30:23]

This isn't, something that I really want is not happening. Suzuki Roshi used to ask us, what is your innermost request? What is your innermost request? Or sometimes he would say, the most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing. So to come home, we just sit, and when thoughts arise, return right to breath and posture. Just this breath. If we notice that our breath is constricted somewhere, then we just attend to that.

[31:30]

Can I allow it to be a little more open? If we feel exposed and we feel some fearful response, just attend to that. What am I feeling now? What is this physical sensation? If we feel frustrated and anger arises, attend just to that. Bring our attention, not to the thoughts that come up, all kinds of thoughts will come up, but bring our attention to what is the Actual, what are the actual physical sensations? Right now, what's happening right now? If we think about it, it's always past, this caused it, or future, I'm gonna do this about it. Right now, what are the physical sensations that are this emotion?

[32:38]

What's happening to breath? What's happening to heart rate? What's happening to posture? Is there tension somewhere? Is there heat somewhere? Is there cold somewhere? You say, what's it like? Attend to it. Take care of it. Be one with it. The big koans that Suzuki Roshi gave to me, were this one, you're perfect just as you are. that did not make any sense to me, because I did not feel perfect. I had, there were all kinds of ways that I knew, there were all kinds of things that I knew that were wrong about me. I mean, as a matter of fact, when I started to practice, everything was wrong about me, you know.

[33:41]

My whole rather positive self-image that I had had up until recently had just been smashed on the floor, And I had this very negative idea about myself. And so when he said, you're perfect just as you are, in my mind I said, you know, he doesn't know me. That was the first thing I said. And then the second thing I said, because he kept saying it, in many contexts, it began to sink into me that that I was included in all of these people that he was saying are perfect just as you are, that actually he meant everybody. And even though the Buddha had said all being without exception are Buddha nature, I hadn't found the first and only exception, you know, that somehow I was included in that statement. You'd be surprised how many people come to me and tell me they found the one exception, right?

[34:45]

So, in my thinking process, I couldn't make any sense out of it. But there was something in me that heard it and kept coming back to hear some more about it, you know? It kept coming up with this question of, well, you know, although in my cognitive process it's a bunch of bullshit in somewhere else. It's very interesting. And I need to understand it. How it can be that somebody that's as messed up as I am is also, at the same time, perfect and complete as I am. So that was one koan. one question for me to practice with, to try to figure out. And I couldn't.

[35:49]

There's no way to figure it out between the ears. There's no way to think my way through this. But I had to kind of feel my way into it. But another one was, at a certain point when I went to see him and found out that, you know, because I had found out that every time I tried to take care of somebody, there was always some kind of hook in it, you know. I wanted them to take care of me, too, or I wanted, I encouraged them to be dependent on me because then they wouldn't leave me, I wouldn't get left alone, I'd never be alone that way, you know. Or something, there was always, it just wasn't, it wasn't clean, you know, there was always some, something stuck to it. And no matter how conscious I was of that tendency of mine, it kept happening again, and I finally, kind of in desperation, I went to see him about the latest case, and he said,

[36:58]

to me and this was, you know, he was kind of awesome to me and I was kind of, you know, impressed by him and we're sitting very close like my knees are here and his knees are here, right? And he said, it's all right for you to take care of her, but first you have to take care of yourself. Do you understand? And I said, yes. And then I got out of there I said, no, no, taking care of yourself, that selfish, that's just what I was talking to him about, you know, and Zen is about no self and, you know, and as I got up in here again and I just couldn't get it, but I noticed something had said yes. I mean, without a moment's hesitation, I had said yes. So something apparently understood and it was not up here. So that was my second koan. What is it to take care of yourself? What is the self you have to first take care of?

[38:00]

You know? And how do you take care of it? And all that stuff, you know. All these questions around taking care of yourself. How is that not selfish? How has that got to do with taking care of all beings? You know, we have this vow to awaken with all being, or sometimes we say to save all being. What's I got, I mean, that was very attractive to me, the saving all being fit right in with my big mama complex of taking care of everything, you know? But it's not like that, you know? It's more like, oh, I now see that all being without exception awakens with me. So taking care of this being and taking care of all being is not different because this being is a manifestation of universal being. This is just this aspect of universal being that I have to take care of this time around.

[39:07]

You know? This is the one I can actually take care of. And taking care of it is taking care of universal being. It's allowing universal being to be in the world. And that taking care of is intimately involved with sitting down and attending to each breath, each collapse of posture, each emotion that comes up, each tension that I notice, taking care of this being as exactly as I can and finding out this connection with all being that's right here.

[40:13]

Then taking that from this seat into all of the scenery of my life, taking it into every interaction, and seeing all being right there. All being then is not some idea that I'm going to save someday. All being is what meets me in each moment. Can I meet it directly from this self, which is only the self? living the life of the Self. There's... How am I doing over there with time? Oh, all right. Excuse me, I... By this time in Session, I'm so... It tastes so good I can't stop talking about it.

[41:25]

I think maybe I've said enough, but I would like to entertain any... Is there anything you'd like to talk about? Are there any questions? Yes. One thing that comes up a lot is when you hear about, well, I'm OK just as I am. Why am I putting myself through all this stuff? And I think a lot of people have fallen into that trap that you don't. I don't think that's early in the morning. Well, you know, Suzuki Roshi said, if you get too cocky, he would just say, well, yeah, but it's always room for improvement. I emphasize this other side, you're right, and I will speak to it, but I emphasize this other side because my observation is that most people, and particularly people who bother to take a beautiful Saturday morning to come sit down and listen to a Zen lecture, somehow don't feel like they're okay just as they are.

[42:43]

You know? They don't see it. This is called seeing it from Buddha's side or seeing it from the side of the absolute. You know? And most of us... that side keeps escaping us. So I tend to... to emphasize it more when I talk. But the other side is really important because, yeah, you can say, oh, well, if I'm perfectly just as I am, well, forget that, you know? My knees hurt, you know, and I'm going to go home and be okay. I'm taking that. I see two people headed for the door right now. If I'm okay just as I am, why do I feel so miserable? And I think it's because we take our All of these myriad thoughts that we have is reality.

[43:46]

Well, I'll be okay. I'll be okay when I've got a good job, you know. I'll be okay if I have just a little nicer house, you know. It's all in this realm of I'll be okay if I have more of the material thing. Or I'll be okay if I just have a really good relationship where somebody really loves me unconditionally. Note there, I don't love myself unconditionally, but I want somebody to do it. I'll be okay if, [...] you know. So there are all of these thoughts and all of these conditions that occur to us and So we need some way to sort out what, you know, what is actually, what is this self that is, you know, that is this expression of the universal self?

[45:08]

that is complete as it is. And that happens, in this instance, to manifest in this form. And that happens, in this instance, to have this particular scenery which are all of the particularities of the conditions of this life. It's that self, which is perfect and complete as it is, that we want to return to, that we want to settle on, that makes us begin investigating things like Zen Buddhism or whatever other investigation one may take up to try to find out what is it

[46:13]

that keeps calling me home. What gave me the notion to go have Zazen instruction? Zazen instruction? And they wear those black robes and a lot of them have shaved heads and they chant the stuff in Japanese. And, you know, it's kind of strange. I mean, I can't tell you how weird I thought the first service was when I went to the old Zendo down on Dwight Way. That was... So I used to go for Zazen and then I would care out of there before service. If you remember the old Dwight Way, Zendo, you had to go kind of up in front of everybody to go down the stairs. So I would try to get up really fast before everybody turned around and get out of there. But I couldn't stay away from the zendo.

[47:19]

But also, you know, they had zazen, and then they had service, and then they had breakfast, and then you could talk to somebody. So I'm very gregarious. I finally started staying through all that stuff so I could say, well, what's going on here? Now I love the service. I love the bowing, which was really weird for me. The bowing is just, just a way of expressing our connection with everything. You know, Buddha bowing to Buddha. It's just our way of appreciating each other. and of appreciating this opportunity to come home, you know? And so, you know, maybe this is a road home that's been developed over the past 700 years in Japan.

[48:30]

And so, as we receive it now, it has an awful lot of Japanese flavor. And, you know, maybe in several generations, It won't have such a Japanese flavor, though I hope it will retain some of its Japanese-ness in order to appreciate that whole 700 years of development in Japan that made it available to us here. You know, when I look at these robes I wear, this one comes from the Indian tradition, you know? which is where Buddhism began. And this one comes from the Chinese tradition, which is where it went next in our lineage. And this one comes from the Japanese tradition, which is where it went next in our lineage. And I won't show you the part that comes from the American tradition, because it's underneath all of that. But this bowing that we do at services and stuff is appreciating all of that lineage, all of that... all of those individual beings who return to their fundamental nature and then try to tell other beings about it and said, please return to your fundamental nature and express your own

[50:00]

vision of fundamental nature, and continue it, you know, through the generations. So I hope it doesn't lose all of the Japanese-ness of the tradition, or the Chinese-ness, or the Indian-ness, or now the Korean-ness and the Tibetan-ness, all of the ways in which Buddhism has flowered in the world, in the various cultures in the world where it has and the Cambodian, you know, all the Southeast Asian traditions where it's flowered. And I just hope that we find a way to bring it into flower here. Thank you.

[50:59]

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