us tucked in with the clouds coming over us. For most of us, our third day. Some of us first, but for most of us, the third day. Alan and I are in a little class that Sojin is leading. in how to write letters with a brush and ink. And we've been at it for some time now. And like all of these endeavors, you think, well, now I'm going to learn something new. And who knows? I might be good at it. And so you begin and it's a mess.

[01:04]

You hold it, sort of the brush, sort of like a pencil and the ink and the water have to be mixed in exactly the right combination and it can't be too light and it can't be too dark. And what comes out is, I really did kind of remember being back in the first grade and seeing all the beautiful cursive letters posted around the wall. making my effort and looking up and thinking, oh dear. So, and, little by little, we get better at it. And the other day, somebody new came into our group. He'd never done this before. And it was a mess at the beginning, but by the end of the hour and a half, his writing looked really quite good. And one of us noticed and said, you know, for the first time, you're really doing pretty well.

[02:07]

And Mel said, well, the way it is, you know, if one person is sitting Zazen by themselves, they're kind of wobbly and shaky, and it takes time to firm up. But if one person is sitting Zazen in the midst of many people sitting Zazen, There's something that goes on that steadies the effort. So, that's what we're all doing for one another here. We're sitting together in this total dynamic working. So, Jim talked about Zenki yesterday, the Dogon fascicle. Zen meaning, in this instance, total. and ki meaning activity. So we're all sitting together in this remarkably different, difficult and formless occupation of settling ourselves on ourselves.

[03:21]

I had a gear erosion set. Settling small self on big self and all of us occupied with us and all of us feeding in to one another's effort. And it feels very good and very strong. So I want to talk today about the three concentration factors on the Eightfold Noble Path. the three concentration factors, effort, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. These are our allies. These qualities are our allies in this Seshin endeavor.

[04:21]

These three qualities can't really be taken apart. They're three aspects of one another. and we cultivate them and allow them in turn to cultivate us. So this activity is making our best effort and then just stopping. and just waiting and being attentive and seeing what comes. I'd like to start by reading a little piece by Harry Roberts from an old wind bell. Harry Roberts was a member, although he wasn't a Native American by blood,

[05:27]

He was a very close member of the Yurok tribe and lived as a Native American and passed on the life and passed on the stories and the path and lived at Green Gulch at the end of his life and died there. And by chance, the other day I met somebody who knew him and was writing a book about his, his life, and so I remembered this story, which meant a great deal to me. He was starting off on a vision quest. He was going to go for a day and a night and have a vision, kind of a seishin experience, and he starts off. The trail was lonesome. I had only gone a little way up it before I realized what was wrong, and I had to go back and start up the trail again.

[06:33]

I had been thinking selfish thoughts, and that was why I hadn't thought for the trail how it felt. So I started again, and I sang to the trail to tell it that it was not forgotten, and how I would come along and keep it company. I kicked the rocks and sticks from the path and I broke off the branches that were growing over it. And then the trail became bright and cheerful and showed itself to me where it was all overgrown and one could not see it easily. And now the birds would come back to the trail and sit on the bushes to sing to it. The ground birds would come back and scratch the leaves and twigs off it and make it a bright, shiny trail again. And the squirrels would gather there, nuts into neat piles from where they had rolled down the trail. One would walk along a happy, singing trail, and this is the way it should be."

[07:34]

Of course, our Sashink path is not necessarily always a happy, shiny path. And yeah. We need always to be very respectful about what's going on and respectful of the path itself and respectful of the life of the path. Yesterday Sojin was talking about Zenki, birth and death all mixed up in a great ball and the birth part, we know something about the birth part and the death part don't know about the death part, but it's not separate. And so in Seshin, as we settle in, we have some levels where we know in our minds what's going on, and then we have other levels where we don't know what's going on, but we know that there's a lot going on.

[08:48]

We feel it in our bodies and we feel it amongst one another so we know there's a lot going on and we have to respect it and when we respect it, when we make space for it and give attention to what we don't know, then we are rewarded. So this Zenki is total dynamic activity that we have signed up for and signed up to experience everything in the present. We have all of our past stories that we are engaging in, I'm sure, and our future plans that come to us.

[10:02]

that whole ball, and we are bringing it all day by day, period to period, into the present. So the first of these concentration qualities is effort. And Theraboden texts say that effort is taking aim at an object. It's an arousing factor. Some energy arises and takes aim. Of course, we're cultivating Right Effort. And Right Effort is the effort that doesn't make anything extra. Right Effort is the effort that just exactly sees what's there and doesn't make anything else up out of it.

[11:07]

That's very difficult. You know, a Seshin song that I sing to myself sometimes is just nothing extra. Nothing extra. You know, you sit all this time and often it seems dull and it can seem Boring. It can seem boring if you're not really focused and if there's some kind of anxiety that's twinkling around under the surface. So anyway, there are all kinds of reasons why we do want to make something extra out of what we have and do, including our goals for sitting. and our judgments. Whatever is just this arrow that goes off into the air, not looking for anything, just opening, nothing extra.

[12:18]

And there are different qualities of energy, of effort, as a kind of mental effort. The Buddha was said to have made four great efforts, the four great efforts of Buddha. It's a nice kind of tidy Theravadan list that to cultivate the good states that arise if you feel peaceful and mindful and open-hearted tuned into your body and so on, without the extra of saying, wow, I'm doing it, you just cultivate that. And then there is the second effort of not entertaining what is not useful.

[13:23]

And they seem pretty obvious, but how often do our wandering thoughts go off? So after some periods of sitting, it usually becomes rather clear what's not useful. And you can just not do it. Particularly if there's some kind of obsessive energy-coiled being that just wants to come back and back and back. The effort is to not let it and not push it out, but find what energy is beneath it and feel it without the thinking of it, without the thinking that drives the rut deeper, the groove deeper and deeper, but how to extract the feeling energy below the repetitive thinking and sit with that.

[14:33]

And then there's the effort to cultivate good states not yet arisen. that is if you know that you have the good allies of acceptance and mindfulness and so on you just see and goodwill and positive energy you just see if you can maintain those and that helps it's a little, it's a karmic setup which will help more of the same arise. And then the fourth, not encouraging unwholesome states not yet arisen to arise. So, that's the effort of, it's a kind of mindful effort.

[15:41]

Lots of mindful efforts. Noting your thoughts is a mindful effort. And counting your breaths is a mindful effort. So, effort can go in a lot of these mindful, useful ways that people have found. And then there's an effort that's just kind of like a pig effort, just grunting effort. Just come back. Back. Like a deep pig grunt. And that's very helpful. It's really nothing extra there. And as Sashin progresses, and as we sit more, This is quality of awakened effort or effortless effort, that effort is not so sporadic, but it's like just a deep kind of baseline.

[16:59]

It's there. Just do it, just do it, just do it. it does not, there's not so much fighting against it. I find when I'm away from Sashin that I want to get back because there is this comfort of deep seated effort and when my butt hits the cushion I can just feel that deep seated effort and place. comfortable even though it's sort of uncomfortable also. But there's a rootedness in it. It's wonderful. And so this nothing extra effort leads right into mindfulness, the second quality.

[18:02]

And mindfulness, too, has a lot of different aspects. In part, it's just bare attention, noticing with nothing extra. It's our Buddha nature root that we always can do this, that we're always ready to notice what's going on. We always do notice what's going on and then we make stuff of it, but that basic beingness, being present, we all have that mindfulness. And so mindfulness has a wonderful quality of bringing everything towards the center. Now if anger arises and I'm not mindful, then that anger will find an object and prey upon the object and move out.

[19:17]

If I'm mindful, I'm aware of the anger and I feel it in the present and I accept it in the present. So mindfulness has this quality also of acceptance, that everything that comes, like it or not, one can accept it. Maureen Stewart said, whatever happens, don't make a move to avoid it. It's this kind of deep mindfulness effort, accepting mindfulness effort. And there are the four foundations. Somebody was saying the other day, well, if I'm mindful, then it's I am watching my breath, and there's something that is separating about that.

[20:32]

But the instructions always are in the mindfulness teaching to notice the breath in the breath. Breath, noticing breath. And body, noticing body. And feeling, noticing the feeling in the feeling. And noticing the contents of mind in the contents of mind. So it's just this bare noticing quality. And mindfulness too deepens in our Sesshin experience. You come to Sesshin and first of all, my mind at least is pretty active. All the thoughts that I had about how many days am I going to sit. and what has to happen in order for me to sit those days, all the arrangements and all that stuff and maybe apprehension and the feelings around session.

[21:39]

So you come in and your kind of mind predominates and there's some presence there, there's some body presence there but it's mostly mind and then day one and day two which for most of us probably are the big work days, just working and working and working and using that mindfulness muscle, the effort and the mindfulness muscle again and again and again and again, but strengthening the muscle so that now by day three, it's not, the picture isn't this big mental and this smaller base, but the body base begins to assert itself, and there's a kind of natural body mindfulness that just happens.

[22:44]

Body begins to sing out, like the birds on Harry Roberts' trail, and the movement of the bushes, and so on. that as the mind quiets, there's a lot more to be aware of that's in a different mode. So that's a kind of deepening mindfulness. So also, mindfulness has the quality, it doesn't have to be Mindfulness is said to be the one quality which you cannot have too much of. You can never be too aware of what's going on. Since, fortunately, only one thing can happen at a time, otherwise you might go kind of crazy, but since only one thing can happen at a time, you never need to have too much, you can never have too much mindfulness.

[23:56]

I took, once I took a long Abhidharma course from Ussala Nanda, very detailed, very abstruse. And one thing he kept saying over and over, which seemed perfectly obvious, was that only one thought moment can happen at a time. And after I'd heard that four or five times and thought, well, this is pretty obvious, it suddenly, I heard it. I heard it. and I realized how often I don't want one thing to happen at a time you know, you skid from one to six quickly and that's when you're not mindful so mindfulness being this appreciation of the one thing happening at a time that you never can have too much of which draws to the center and leads into concentration.

[25:05]

The unification of mind, the one-mindedness that we come to. And that's really a wonderful thing. That's why I We probably all have somewhat different reasons for coming, sitting, a long Sashin, a seven-day Sashin. But the experience of concentration that a seven-day Sashin offers is unusual. When I first sat my first Sashin, it was of course intensely difficult. but I did feel as if it was one of the most unusual adventures I'd ever taken and it's wonderful that that is available to us. So this concentration of being moving into the one body-mind of not feeling

[26:21]

So much separation is very exciting and encouraging, and sort of different. You know, that after a while, one's great ally in all this is the body, because no matter how the mind is dancing around, body's always there. And body has a great deal to say if one listens. The right side of the back is saying a little bit different from what the left side is saying, and the energy in the forehead is not exactly the energy in the lower belly. You know, you just begin And the body then begins to assert itself and hold.

[27:37]

And that is a very protective habit that can spread how the body holds mind present. And the body asserts all these energies and feelings and sensations and directives that we can't put into words. But And because we can't put them into words, it's a wide spread and it's a wide acceptance. So we begin with a rather narrow acceptance of what we like and don't like.

[28:40]

And then we sit with quite a lot of what we don't like. The pain, the restlessness, the difficult internal experiences, and little by little as we accept them we find more space find more space in our bodies find more space in the restfulness of our mind and find more space to relate to one another with less judgments and more friendliness I should have said of mindfulness, of course, one of its, just about its major quality is the lack of criticism and judgment and greed and all of that. So we sit with this greater acceptance and greater space and even as there is pain in the body the pain

[29:50]

generates energy. It's a sort of an odd thing. You think, well, I'm in pain, I'm going to get very tired. But if you are really staying with the pain, if you're being exactly, if you're making an effort to accept the pain with no judgment, just being exactly there, something happens and there's more energy, there's more space in the picture. So I would like to end by reading another Native American poem that actually Shannon Hickey quoted here one day and it again is on the subject of total dynamic working and paying attention and knowing exactly

[31:26]

moment by moment where we are. And it is called Lost. It's advice that a Native American elder gave to young people who were just coming into adulthood in the tribe. Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here. And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again saying, here. No two branches are the same to the rim. No two trees are the same to the raven.

[32:31]

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. My sister was here recently and she is the abbess in an Anglican Benedictine convent in England. It's a contemplative convent and they don't leave it and they don't have outside work. So they say the offices, they read Psalms seven times in the 24 hours and every day is the same as every other day. Each one of them has a vacation for five days a week in which they stay in a little house in the middle of the convent and they don't do any of the convent work but they do say the offices and that's the vacation but otherwise it's the same day for

[33:49]

year after year, so she's been there for 37 years. 37 years of one day, just like the next day. And it's the second time she's visited, and it really is wonderful to see how our lives are not as entirely different as one might think. and that even in a very busy lay life, it is possible to keep this session one day just like the next day. That's not true. The days vary a great deal. But there's a way of keeping this Sesshin rootedness going.

[34:55]

I remember after I'd sat a certain number of Sesshins, the obvious occurred to me that there's not that much difference between being out of Sesshin and being in Sesshin. insofar as the sense of the path is really bright and the effort and the mindfulness and the concentration are really going. So my sister and I sat together quite a lot since I was in together and it felt very old and familiar. as things do with your siblings. Although we certainly didn't do anything like that when we were children, but still, it seemed old and familiar. And for her, her effort is just continually, all the time, all the time, returning to the presence of God, the presence.

[36:08]

And yesterday talking about Zenki, Sogen said, well this total dynamic working is about as close as we come to a deity. There are no goods and bads assigned to it. It's just this total dynamic working. And just the allowing of it and the making oneself available to be used by it. So, when she left, we just looked at each, we hugged, and then we just looked at one another and bowed and felt very well settled and very well agreed upon So, thank you.

[37:14]

There's about five minutes if people have reflections or questions. Susan. Could you say something more about how only one thing can happen at a time? Because it seems to me that infinite numbers of things are all happening at the same time. Is it more one thought can happen? Oh, well, total dynamic working, from the point of view of total dynamic working, everything is happening at the same time. From the point of view of sentient beings and the Abhidharmic system, we are limited to one thought moment at a time. In a way it's a simple position to be in, but it's an enticing one.

[38:17]

It's easy to slip out of. Does that answer your question? Is that what you were asking? Only one thought can happen inside you all the time. That's right, that's right. But everybody else might be having a different thought at the same time. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And so I find it susceptible to panic, but the panic is that everything's happening at the same time, but it's not. Charlie? Could you say a little bit more about Maureen Stewart's advice about non-avoidance? Yeah, whatever comes to you, don't make a move to avoid it. Well, on the one hand, you know, don't be stupid. If a car is speeding at you, you step aside.

[39:24]

But we, well, I put a lot of energy into trying to avoid things. You know, if I notice my thoughts, a great deal of them how I'm going to get enough sleep, how I'm going to get the right food, you know, all these self-preservation thoughts and this endless preoccupation with being well and comfortable as well as having one's desires satisfied and blah, [...] blah. So, you know, one wants to design the world from that point of view and it's pretty radical to just say, I'm going to sit and I'm not going to move and I'm going to accept whatever pain comes. And so in life, just giving yourself the space to accept instead of immediately jump into an arrangement is quite a big thing for me.

[40:38]

On cultivating good states that have arisen, that sounds like a good side of clinging and trying to cause to arise good states which have not yet arisen sounds kind of like a good side of grasping. Well, you see, this is the Theravadan, the Theravadan teaching has a different slant and I was recently at a wonderful weekend of Theravadan teaching on dependent origination and the teacher who's the director of studies at the Barry Center, at one point some question like that came up and he stuck his chin out and said Buddhism is dualistic. So there's this one aspect in which, you know, we do have to set our intention and we do have to notice how we're doing and make some correction.

[41:54]

And so a lot of the Theravadan teaching is, what's the kind of knot making? This is what you can, here's the map, here's the Dharma map, and here's how you can situate yourself, and here's how you can promote wholesomeness. And then the Mahayana tends to say, well, now isn't that a little bit self-centered? And don't we really just want to let go and be in the presence? And I think that those two paths come to the same place and that the trap in the Theravadan teaching is attachment to the path and attachment to some kind of spiritual attainment and the trap in our school is, you know, just do it, do what?

[43:00]

Huh? So I find it useful to use both sides. And it's extra, you know. If you're clinging, if you want a wholesome state of mind and you notice it and you congratulate it yourself or you desire it, you always pay a price. It's not, you know, if you're greedy, you always pay for it. One more question. Paul? I've done some vipassana meditation, where when emotions come up, they aren't stuffed, which is what I just did when I was touched by some emotional upsurge. And at the same time, you were saying, let go and feel. experience.

[44:10]

The mental. But there still was a sense or it is a sense of maintaining quiet and that form which at times when I did the Vipassana meditation I was very appreciative of the ability to let it go as part of the meditation and let other people do the same thing. Yeah, yeah. I think that's fine. I think we should stop. I hope it's not a good weighty question. I think it's better, rather than to have it culturally determined, for each person to determine what is appropriate.

[45:23]

And if you need to cry, you need to laugh, you make decisions about that. Because it can get a little shut down. That's kind of the tendency, I think. Yeah, I've been in other places where other things happen. Well, I just thought it was part of the form that we're trying to, you know, stay still without moving. That's what I would... It's a good question. Yeah, and an important... Alan's point is important, too. In fact, we are trying to stay still without moving, but that doesn't... mean that everything else can't go on, does it? Oh well, you know, you see Theravada and Spirit Rock, it's a very different sitting scene.

[46:29]

But eventually, you know, we all get as uncomfortable as we need to be. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[46:38]

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