Good morning. Well, here we are on the fifth day of our Sashin, our Rahatsush Sashin. Some of us the fifth, some of us the second, and some of us some other number in between. Maybe even the first. reminds me, we're all wearing dark clothes, it reminds me of a program I saw on TV last week about birds. Maybe some of you saw it. It's about emperor penguins. Richard Attenborough had a special on birds living in extreme conditions. And emperor penguins, I think you got the message. They live in the Antarctic, and in the wintertime, they're all dressed in black with a little bit of white.

[01:02]

And the males, for the four winter months, they have a winter practice period. They all huddle together, basically taking care of the eggs that the females have laid, their mates have laid, and then gone off to feed, I guess. And the males stay there, huddled together, taking care of the eggs. And it's wonderful. And I was speculating about when they die, do they become Zen students? Or when the Zen students die, do they become penguins? Maybe a little bit of both. So the rohatsu, I'm told, It means the eighth day and the twelfth month. And traditionally, I guess, most Buddhists come together. Thank you. Most Buddhists come together starting the first of December and sit through the night of the seventh and the morning of the eighth.

[02:09]

Traditionally, Buddha did this after he went through all of his trials and tribulations, decided to just sit. which he did in front of the Bodhi tree and he sat for seven days in the morning of the eighth day. He saw the morning star and he said, Oh, wonderful. Everything's okay. Just the way it is. Don't have to change anything. That's how I paraphrase what he said. He said it much better than I did. So he basically sat the very first Sashin and he did it alone. And we're luckier, I think, because we have everybody else here with us. We're all sitting in cooperation. I was just in the kitchen just a minute ago. And those people are working very hard. Matter of fact, I think some of them still are working very hard for us for our meals. And that's wonderful. And then there are the servers that are working very hard, and the dishwashers, and the administrators.

[03:15]

It's really a wonderful thing. thing to happen. Besides the cooperation, there's also a lot of compassion. We have a lot of compassion for each other. We're not finding fault, especially when we're trying not to move, and compassion for our neighbors, not disturbing them. And then when we do move, or especially when our neighbor moves, we have compassion for that necessary move. and we forgive ourselves and them. We're basically fulfilling our vow, our first vow, to awaken together. That's basically what we're all doing here right now, is we're awakening together. And as I was preparing for this talk last week, I checked out a couple of audio tapes, one of which was a lecture by Maile Scott, which she gave in December 3rd of 97. Kind of glad she's not here, because I'm going to make hash of her story.

[04:15]

But Alan's involved in Sojin, so they can correct me if I'm wrong. She basically started her talk talking about a class that she and Alan were taking from Sojin, basically on how to create, I guess, Chinese characters, Japanese characters, using the Sumi ink and pen brush. very difficult to do. I guess there's a lot of variables that you have to get right before you even start getting anything worth anything. And she was saying it was quite difficult that she and Alan came together in the first hour and not much came out of that in the second hour, maybe a little bit more, but still it was a problem. It took quite a long time and they were beginning to get results after a few hours of this. And then a third person came into the class, brand new, fresh, and they said, oh, well, this person's really good. We're going to have fun. Well, she didn't say that, but I'm thinking they're going to, I was thinking they're thinking we're going to have fun watching this person mess up.

[05:17]

But the person didn't mess up. That person came basically in one hour, came up to speed, basically. And according to Meili, Sojin commented that that was because he had the support of Meili and Alan there who had basically been through the problems. And somehow the student had picked that up and had learned that much faster. And I think that's the story that we have here, that we're basically coming together and we're learning from each other as we sit. And the sum, in this case, is greater than the parts. I know I find that true for me. It's much easier for me to stay here and sit through the pain in my legs, I can sit still with you around. I would never be able to do that if I were sitting at home. So I appreciate that. One of the reasons I'm here at this machine. Um, so this is a, this is good for me.

[06:29]

because one of the things that I really need how to learn is how to detach from the pain. And by being here, I'm basically getting that practice of learning how to have the pain and just be here and not create anything extra. Emperor penguins support each other. I was wondering, why are they doing this? And, of course, one of the ways is that they're very slow and they need to have their eggs on land. And there are no predators around in the wintertime in the Antarctic. So they're kind of safe from predators, but the weather is there. And, of course, that really comes at them. I was watching the TV image and it looked like the penguins were sort of in migration in the sense that the penguins who were on the windward side were sort of moving around to the leeward side. and getting warm. So there's probably this constant flow of penguins, you know, sometimes cold, sometimes warm, and helping each other out.

[07:38]

And that's wonderful. One difference, however, between they and us is that, in a sense, it's their nature to do this. They really don't have any choice. If they don't do this, their whole species dies out. And since their species didn't die out, they've been successful doing this. But we really do have a choice. We don't have to be here if we don't want to. We're all volunteers, which is something I've always appreciated. I try to keep in mind all the time that each one of us is here because they really want to be. And I like that. So why are we here? Why did we volunteer to be here? That's an interesting question. We're not masochists, who get pleasure, at least I don't think we're masochists, who get pleasure out of the pain. Probably not, because masochists would probably be gone by now.

[08:39]

Buddha, of course, had a reason, and you all are, I'm sure, very familiar with it. I'll briefly review it. He sat his first Sashin, as I understand it, to understand the problem of birth and death and of suffering. And he struggled for a while. I think he spent, I'm not quite sure of the numbers, six years practicing all sorts of aesthetic practices of denial and whatnot. I guess it was quite emaciated. We have a statue, a little sculpture of an emaciated person. It's really a wonder, I don't know where it went, but it used to be around before we redid the community room near our office. It's a wonderful sculpture of this skin and bones guy. And he, according to the story, he ate a little bit. He decided, you know, this is not working. So he ate a little bit and he said, I'm going to sit here under the Bodhi tree until I understand.

[09:53]

And so that's why we have our Sashin, our seven days Sashin. And, you know, based on the Monday morning talks that I hear, quite often I hear the same issue, this birth and death and suffering. And so I suspect that's why, I know that's why I'm here. Actually, when I think about it, I've been here so long that the original, it's hard to remember the original reasons, but I'm kind of here because I don't have any other place to go. When I think about going somewhere else, which I do, and I say, well, what would it be like there? And then I say, oh, I don't want to do that. So here I am. I can't stay away. So maybe some of you have that same problem.

[10:57]

You don't have a big enough imagination to be in the other place. Here I am. But also suffering, and birth and death, and the Eightfold Path, and learning how to deal with our thoughts, and learning how to get along with our wives and husbands, and all the rest of the people. This is a wonderful test tube that we've got here. Laboratory. So, in a sense, we're all Little Buddhas. I know some of you saw that movie, Little Buddha. It's a wonderful movie. I really liked it. But I think we have it easier than Buddha did, you know, because we are... we have each other. We have Sojin, and we have the ancestors who we can go back and refer to for support and understanding.

[11:59]

Because that's one of the reasons we have to admire the original Buddha so much, is because maybe he didn't have as much of that as we do. So we really have it soft. True. So, I'd like to talk about some of the ancestors that we do have. and starting out with a 20th century ancestor, Philip Kaplu, who I don't know if he's still alive or not, but he's still alive, right? Yeah, Kaplu? Florida. He retired. I don't know how he could do that. I'm sorry to hear these not well, but he was basically my first book teacher, if you will. The first book on Zen that I picked up that I really grabbed a hold of was his Three Pillars of Zen.

[13:04]

Anyway, I'd like to read a little bit out of this. Page 58 of Zen Dons in the West. Roshi. Although erroneous thinking and laziness, or through erroneous thinking and laziness, we have allowed our minds to be taken over by all manner of useless thoughts. All day long, idle thoughts fly in and out like bees in a hive. The worst ones, however, are the permanent squatters, the fixed concepts. I love that. Permanent squatters. The fixed concepts. These become entrenched in the mind, helping the ego to solidify its position of dominance. The fixed concepts are like stubborn stains. Because of them, our minds have become an Aegean stable of opinions. Now, Aegean stable, that goes back, I guess, to Greek mythology. Big stable. I guess it had 6,000 or 3,000 oxen and a huge number of horses, and it wasn't cleaned out for 30 years. So there was a lot of manure.

[14:08]

And that's what Kapalu is saying our mind is like. And, of course, it was one of the labors of Hercules to clean this out. Okay. Because of them, our mind has become an Aegean stable of opinions and notions of right and wrong, and how things ought to be, as well as desires, prejudices, resentments, growing out of greed, hate, and wrong thinking. It took Hercules, with his superhuman strength, to clean out the Aegean stables of their 30 years of accumulated manure. So only a strong, concentrated exertion can get rid of the mind of a lifetime of mental garbage. So that's what we're doing here, to my mind. were get rid of the, rid the mind of a lifetime of mental garbage. He's being a little easy, I think, on us here. Actually, I went to a mythology book, an encyclopedia, and looked this up.

[15:14]

And it took Hercules, can you imagine how long it took him? It took him one day to do this. So it didn't take him very long. And when I read that, I said, yeah, Dogen's right. you know, we're already there, there's nothing to clean out. So, I like that analogy, that idea of, you know, we are here, we're working hard, and that's why. And another, actually not quite ancestor, I also got a second tape out of one of Sojin's lectures, Again, in 97, and I roughly transcribed it, and I wanted to read some of the business here. You're not an ancestor yet, but you're a supporter. The title of this is, Sashin is Great Patience Letting Go of Pain. And this is a great lecture. I recommend it to all of you. I'm only going to do a little bit of it here. Sashin is the practice of great patience. The word root of patience is the same as passion, suffering, or painfulness.

[16:18]

Patient is the ability to endure, to endure the pain of our life. Pain and suffering are not the same. Pain is feeling and suffering is an attitude. Buddha says there's a way out of suffering. If you know how to deal with the painfulness of your life without trying to get rid of it, then you can be free from suffering. If you try to get rid of the painfulness of life, you just end up in more suffering. We sit Zazen in order to prove this. You've got to laugh on that, too. I like that. We sit Zazen in order to prove this. That's why we're here. When I first started sitting and I had a lot of pain, I thought that all I needed to do was to sit for a while and things would stretch out and then I would have no more pain. And then I tried to find the right combination of Zafus and support cushions.

[17:21]

Then I discovered that even though the pain left one part of the body, it came to another part of the body. And as Sojin says, there's always a problem, no matter what, and that's really what happens with the pain. So, great patience. Let's see, continue on. In Zazen, we say over and over again, don't try to get rid of anything, don't judge. The most wonderful thing about Zazen is garbage. Garbage is a most vital, potent, fertilizing substance for transformation. If you ever make compost, you know this. Garbage really stinks. The process of composting makes it very sweet. We are composting machines. So this great patience is just to be able to sit and let this process happen. If you try to rush it, it does not work. If you wait for the bell, you get impatient. The process does not work anymore. It's no longer Zazen. You can get a little impatient, but you should recognize this as impatience and let go of it.

[18:31]

This, of course, will always happen. Some of you may have heard my talk a couple of Saturdays ago where I talked about getting angry at the timekeeper for not ringing the bell. I said, yeah, that's it. Right there. He goes on, there will be a point where you will have to make a decision where you will have to realize and relate to your painfulness. I read that wrong. Where you will have to relate to your painfulness. And I guess I was also thinking this is close to what I was trying to say. that same Saturday in the idea of softening the hara, just sort of letting that hara relax in tension, and let that tension out of the hara, sort of let the tension out of the entire body. Sojin has told us that many times, just let go of that tension. Okay.

[19:31]

Now, the next ancestor that I have does go back a way. This is Zen Master Dogen, Enlightenment Unfolds. And this is a passage that when Mel gave a class several years ago using moon in a dewdrop, I ran across it, loved it, so I wanted to use it. And It does relate a little bit to the lecture yesterday. I'm reading out of the Enlightenment Unfolds, the business of a fascicle, I guess it's called, of actualizing the fundamental point, or also I think the Ginjo Koan. Meiyu, Zen master Baochei, was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach.

[20:44]

Why then do you fan yourself? He said, Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent, Meiyu replied, you do not understand the meaning of it reaching everywhere. What is the meaning of it reaching everywhere? asked the monk again. Mayu just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply." I love that. I love the allusion to the wind and fanning and whatnot. And I was calling Dogan a weatherman. He's a pretty good weatherman, lefty-sided, forecasting a wind that's permanent and everywhere. But you don't feel it. It doesn't blow. Right? Because it needs an agent. Somebody to... It takes a Zen student, a fanner, to make it blow. And I think that's wonderful.

[21:46]

I think here the nature of the wind is talking about big mind or realization or baby Buddha nature. So it goes everywhere, and it's there. It's present. It's also permanent, which is kind of interesting, because we don't, I think the Buddhist philosophy that I've read so far, we don't allow for much to be permanent. But you're saying that it's permanent. So that's fascinating. And something which I think I still need to understand. But let me talk some more about the wind. The, um, the wind blows and it's, uh, let's see, the wind blows, but it's still, it's still, um, and it still gets wind and it needs an actor, which I said before.

[22:49]

And, uh, I can imagine it being out there at hurricane force. say, five or six 200-mile-an-hour winds of Hurricane Andrew coming through. But it's still, again, there's nothing there until we sit down on our cushion and start sitting Zazen. And then this wind of Dogen's practice realization comes rushing in. Because it doesn't really move us. It doesn't do anything at all. It's just there. So we have a 200 mile an hour wind that's just there. The silence of emptiness and big mind. I don't know if I've been able to describe that, but it's a wonderful image of it being there. What it's doing, of course, it's blowing in the seeds of realization and where they can lay on the

[23:55]

compost, this well-composted mind coming in. And, of course, what comes up reminds me of a koan about Buddha. Buddha climbs onto the seat, his seat to give a lecture, and holds up a flower, a flower of transmission, and it's passed on. And I was thinking, yeah, out of this compost and this seed that's in us that's been blown in, or was there always, up comes this flower, sort of pushing its way through all of the thoughts and all of the prejudices and opinions. pushing up and springing forth. That's basically our flower of transmission that our Buddha mind is passing on or giving us.

[25:02]

And I think that's what we're doing here today. That's my image of what it is that's going on. And that's about all I have to say. Are there any questions? Mark? For me? The pain is still there and the self is still there for me, yes. And for me it's a continual lesson every time I sit. A continual lesson in first wrestling with the pain, recognizing that I'm wrestling with the pain, letting go of the pain, than wrestling with the pain and realizing I'm wrestling with the pain and letting go of it.

[26:09]

It just goes on and on. What about the state of not moving? Not moving. Well, not moving is a driver for me to endure the pain See, one of the options of managing the pain would be to move. If that's not an option for me, I have to find another option. And that option is this training, if you will, of Recognizing how much I'm identifying with the pain how much the pain I become obsessed with pain as opposed to just letting it go It's it's a actually it's incredibly interesting experience to sit there Gritting my teeth, you know tense all over and then say wait a minute Richard Relax, you know sit up straight breathe soften

[27:18]

Just do the process, do the rules as it were. Do the Zazen posture and breathe and let it go. And that's basically what's happening to me a lot during what, now you know, what I'm doing over there. A lot of the time that's what I'm doing. It'd be wonderful if I didn't have to do that. something else would come up then, right? Do you think Zazen is good for something? Good for something? Yes and no. I do. Otherwise I wouldn't be here. It's a dirty little secret for me. I don't tell anybody. But I come here because I like to sit Zazen. And I enjoy, I said this earlier, I enjoy who I meet when I sit size in.

[28:23]

And I guess that person or that thing that I meet is Big Mind. And for me, getting acquainted with Big Mind is one of the most valuable things that I can do with myself. Because then I can use Big Mind to normalize my relationships and my life and my viewpoint and whatnot. Sorry, I... That was the yes. The no? I'd rather be skiing. Yesterday it was a nice cold storm, laid down a lot of snow. That's right. When I ski, I sit zazen, I count my breaths as I'm going up on the lift. So... What happens on the way down?

[29:26]

Big mind. Nothing. It's all gone. You talked about the nature of the wind being permanent. What is the meaning of it reaching everywhere? Well, over there, I sit and sometimes I experience it being everywhere. It's there waiting for me. I think that's, for me, that's it. When I'm ready for it, it's there and ready for me. This is a shoe sock question. Oh, you're not coming? Oh, I'm sorry. That's, for me, that's kind of a selfish attitude. I understand you're going to be saying that it's always kind of waiting for you.

[30:30]

Right. It's always available. Right. And yeah, but there's more to it than that. I mean, because it's more, it's stronger than that. It's not like, not only is it there when I'm ready for it, but it's also reaching out and grabbing me and pulling me at 500 miles an hour to it. I think that as well. I did understand you also to say, though, that the sitting on the cushion is like the fanning, that the wind penetrates everywhere when we participate. The feeling I had when you were telling me the story about the learning calligraphy, and when I think of the Buddha, those six years before he had his seven-days machine,

[31:34]

There is some sense of preparation of bringing yourself. An image that comes to me is the oar work that you do to get the boat out into the middle of the stream. And then the stream takes you. And the stream is always there. But it feels like you can have many tries. When you're doing calligraphy, you can make that magic circle, that infinity circle. and make it many, many times before one comes right, before something happens. But that those other tries are also important. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely. I think so. Because since all we have is the present, and we're here, this is the only place we've got. There's really no... There's always memories and expectations, but right here is it. So every time we're trying, we're doing it. Is there something about trying and not trying?

[32:38]

I mean, if you do the Nine Trials, you do the practice, but if you're trying to make a perfect figure, that won't happen. Well, you know, I've heard people say that. I'm not convinced that if you don't try, you can't do it, if that's what it means. If you try, it will get in your way. The ego gets in the way. I've never done calligraphy, so I don't know. It's a lot easier. if the ego isn't there for the things that I've done, where it's not there. Like skiing is a good example of that. If I go down not thinking about how to turn, I just turn. It's really great. So I suspect the same is true for the calligraphy, just doing it. But when I'm skiing, of course, it's all fun. I'm not practicing skiing and then skiing. I'm just skiing. And I do take lessons, but the lessons themselves are interesting. You've got the instructor there. You've got the interaction with the other students. It's all fascinating stuff.

[33:39]

So it's keen, too. So I guess that the drawing is all there. Helen? Well, I want to clarify something about that story. And I've been trying to think how to clarify it. because I was really not very good with it. And also, the only reason that we were doing it, or I speak for myself, the only reason I was doing it was because my teacher asked me to do it. And through all our You know, so that I think

[35:13]

I've always heard it. The effort to realize is the realization. Contradiction for me is how useful it was for Mel to tell me, once upon a time, when I quoted another story, Jow Jow and his teacher. If you try to approach it, you'll miss it. So what's a body to do? Don't try so hard. Yeah, I think that it all sounds great.

[37:03]

And that's why we're here. I mean, I'm making an effort, but the effort I'm making is no effort. It certainly is painful, and sometimes I get very grumpy because it hurts, and I'm tired. But in the main, it's, I'm just here. Like I said, I can't imagine where else I would be. So I think your question really is, where's the effort, if I'm hearing you? Because we are making an effort. Aren't we really kind of going against what we're hearing the teacher say, which is, you don't need to make an effort? Yeah, except he's not really saying you don't need to make an effort. He's sitting there pumping the fan, so he's making an effort. But the effort is sweet.

[38:09]

Maybe that's the difference. There's no effort in the effort. And if you don't do it right, you get a bad back. It's just like Zazen. I guess the other problem with cement is that you may think you're doing it effortlessly, but at the end of the day, no matter how effortlessly you've done it, you're pretty tired. I, upon occasion, would come in and start doing walks at Sheen on the third day at Sheen.

[39:21]

And, um, it's like coming in just on the third day at Sheen. And, you know, those days left, but you've got to get through that, sort of, when people move around you. Why don't we all do that? But Rebecca, I know that you would come on the first day so that the other people who are coming on the third day would have you. I don't think it's fancy, I just love the illusion.

[40:59]

Yeah, it's not fancy at all, just fan. Absolutely. You know, there's, I can tell there's only one thing to be said, and all these people write all these books saying the same thing, and they all have a nice way to say it. That's my take on all of this. How do you meet Big Mind? How do I meet Big Mind? I don't. Big Mind's always here. But I said, when I sit, I like who I meet. Well, when I first started sitting, there was an awful lot of trash in my mind, and there still is, of course, the garbage that we've heard two teachers tell us that's there. And it was pretty thick and pretty heavy. Actually, very quickly, I remember, it's kind of another testament to my belief in Dogen's practice of realization,

[42:14]

Very early after I had learned how to sit zazen, I was sitting at home on a kitchen stool after just having had an interesting conversation with my big sister. And, you know, big sisters are brutal people. So I was sitting there counting my breaths and obsessing about this discussion with my sister, and suddenly it just stopped being a problem. And I said, gee, wow. I don't know if that's Big Mind, but it certainly was a wonderful thing. So, it didn't, there's not, the layers of garbage are very thick, but Big Mind can penetrate it very quickly. I guess it's what can happen. Please stop saying your questions for. That's good training.

[43:16]

Thank you.

[43:41]

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