Good morning. Today is the fourth day of Rohatsu Sashin. And a couple of days ago, Mel asked me to give a talk. And so it was kind of a spur of the moment. And so it's good that that he spoke yesterday about non-anticipation, practice of non-anticipation, because usually giving a talk is something that generates a certain amount of anxiety, so it's good to stay in the moment and be in sasheen. Today is the fourth day of Rohatsu, as I said, and it's also the second day of Hanukkah, or the first day, actually. And as we know, the Rohatsu commemorates the Buddhist enlightenment, and Hanukkah is the Jewish festival of lights.

[01:07]

And that's just about as much as they have in common, perhaps. All right, yeah, seven days. Yeah, so it's the Sabbath and it's the holiday and it's a festival of samadhi. Samdhi. It's the Sabbath, day of rest. Although this kind of rest of rahatsu, it's also a lot of work. So it's both work and rest at the same time. So it's the practice of non-duality. And Christmas is also the birth of the baby Jesus.

[02:15]

And we're all like the baby Jesus now, sort of traveling to the birth canal, trying to be born. And Sashin is a little bit like that and it brings up all these primal kinds of experiences and both something wonderful and something very profound and something also very disturbing and anxiety producing. And Jesus is called the light of the world. So December seems to be a month of light, a universal theme. And it's also the month of the year where the sun, the physical sun, although it's not one, not two,

[03:26]

is the farthest away from the Earth. So it seems when the... I said nearest? Okay, so it's in the northern hemisphere, then it's furthest away. Right, so it's in the southern hemisphere... I see. I see, okay. So again, it's... Well, the point is still good. I mean, it's the non-duality. Is it closer, is it further away? There's less physical light, so we need to lit up our inner light. It has been revealed So In this holiday, we rest from our usual activities.

[04:59]

So we take this backward step that Mel was talking about. All the expressions, we don't know where they come from, because they come from so many different places. We attribute them to different teachers, and yet they were already in the sutras way back. So it's hard to say who said what. So the backward step, though it says the backward step that turns the light inward. Master's Sonji, is it? Honjo. Says the backward step, you step into the center of the circle where the light hushes forth. But the backward step also means it's a kind of retreat. So we have the word retreat. We go to retreat. We go to sashin. It's a kind of retreat, although retreat also has the other meaning, right? That you're retreating as if it were a war, so to speak, which is and it isn't.

[06:11]

I mean, we can think about it as a kind of battleground, but I'm not sure it's such a useful metaphor anymore for us. although that's the old time metaphor for spirituality, good and evil, you know, Jesus and Satan, and in the Bhagavad Gita also is the struggle of the Atman and so on. I think Mel was saying it's the battleground, but we're really not fighting anything or anybody. So the more we see it as if we're doing some kind of fight, the more difficult it becomes. So it's a kind of retreat, but it's a regression in the service of progression.

[07:16]

It's a going back to go forward. And it's retreating from the world in order to come back to the world fully renewed and restored so that we can give something back to the world and give more than we take. or give more positive things than negative things. And sometimes the balance is not so clear, you know, whether we give more than we take or we contribute more negativity than positivity. Although we may think we are in the service of doing good things, actually a lot of times we do a lot of bad things inadvertently, without realizing it, without noticing it. And So, Zazen gives us a really clear focus to see ourselves and to work with ourselves and with our difficulties and our hindrances and our bad habits.

[08:23]

You know, as they say, bad habits die hard. They're really hard to change. even though we may have many experiences of enlightenment, the bad habits, you know, or the seeds, the karmic seeds are still there. So we get deluded thinking that, you know, because we see ourselves correctly at times, that these other aspects of ourselves are not, don't have the same strength. And then we're surprised when they do, they still do. And so that's like coming to Sashin, and it's hard to say, you know, the bad news is that it doesn't get any easier, and the good news is that it does, and both are true at the same time.

[09:28]

So we have to continually have this difficulty in sitting in the king of samadhi and always facing this absolute. And it gives us a lot of difficulty. And it's never the way we think it is. It's always a little bit off. not because it is off, but because we are off. So it's always in the same place. But then because it's always in the same place, then we're always correcting to the right or to the left. So we have to have this difficulty so that we can continue illuminating our illumination, or deepening our illumination. Otherwise our illumination becomes kind of superficial.

[10:37]

And Dogen says, it's not like a mirror with reflections or it is like a mirror with reflections. Illumination becomes like a mirror with reflections. So Zazen, Zashin is a great teacher because it keeps helping us get to the bottom of things. And over and over again, and it's endless. I mean, that is the one thing that is for sure, that it's endless. and it's a wonderful thing, and it's also a difficult thing. So, which I didn't mention what the topic of the talk is, I'm not quite sure, you know, but something like kindness, difficulty, and illumination.

[11:52]

So it is like climbing a mountain. That's one metaphor to use. The other one is like, mentioned before, like giving birth. It's like a woman giving birth or a child being born. So it's birth and death. And actually, I think I said my first Sashin in 1980, which is the year that we moved here. And this was giving birth to Daniel, I think it was. Yes. Yeah. Right. Right. I remember you talking about that, you know, about Sashin being like giving birth. You have to open, open, and it hurts, and the only way to get through it is to open, and it goes from one to ten.

[13:06]

The opening goes from one to ten and back to one, and it's just breathing. And then Suzuki Roshi died during Sashi. So we have the metaphor there of birth and death. Both in one, it's a kind of birth. So we're born to ourselves, but there's also a death. Yes? and people said something at the end. Somebody said, I just feel so angry I feel like I want to kill somebody. And then he came around and he said, I too have a feeling I'd like to kill somebody. I'm glad I don't feel that way anymore.

[14:29]

Things change. That's the part about kindness. Words is the restriction. that brings up all this anger and attachment to self. And being in close quarters with each other for so long, and having to work together, and kind of irritating one another, and bumping against each other, people having to do different positions and having to, you know, keep rules and tell people this and that, and people responding the way they respond, the way we respond, and so on and so forth. It's like being in school. Yes, Tamara?

[15:38]

I agree with Ron. I agree with what Ron said in an interesting way. He said that I have a feeling I'd like to kill, and it was more like it's not, you know, one person wanting to kill somebody, That I had a feeling that I wanted to kill? Right. Now that I really felt that way. It was just skillful means, right? I never felt that way. Yeah, well there is that aspect of strife, you know, and I was talking about the backward step and retreating and having to leave your usual activities behind, and that includes leaving your family, which isn't always easy.

[17:13]

And so there's a lot of preparation that goes into, you know, sitting Sashin. I mean, there's a lot of preparation, and then there isn't much. You know, just do it at some point, you know. But everybody's kind of getting ready, and everybody in your family is kind of getting ready. Or sometimes you don't say anything to, you know, you just do it to avoid the people. You give them too much thought, then, oh, you know, why are you doing that again? But, yeah, so that's the home-leaving part. And the problem is, you know, we leave home to come to Sashina. We leave our families behind and they get upset. Sometimes they don't. They're generous and they say, oh, wonderful you're doing that and I get a nice break from you. Why don't you do it more often? That would be nice.

[18:18]

Actually, it hasn't been my experience. My experience is more that people feel abandoned, you know, my children or my partner or my spouse. And so home leaving, But then we go back. So in our practice we leave without leaving, which creates a certain kind of tension because you leave but you don't really. But then it gives us something to work, you know, back and forth between nirvana and samsara. So we have to bring both worlds, both the ordinary relative world into the absolute world, and then bring this world back into the other world, and back and forth.

[19:23]

And there's a kind of dynamic tension in that. In some ways, it's easy if you just cut it off once and for all. you know, and then you'd be done with it and you live a kind of monk life, or you live a monk's life, but then you're not in the day-to-day, involved in the day-to-day affairs of ordinary people and suffering and experiencing what they suffer and experience. So there's virtue both ways. But our way has been more to go back and forth between the two worlds, which creates certain problems and also certain opportunities. And over the years, I must say that BCC has been very compassionate and kind, talking about kindness in terms of allowing people the flexibility, you know, in my case, to be able to do sashin rohatsu every year, but you'd always have some here and there responsibility that I have to attend to, you know, with my kids.

[20:44]

And this year was a little bit easier because this Saturday, Sunday sort of helped because I had custody on Saturday, but not on Sunday. And then I have custody on Sunday, but not on Saturday. So it kind of worked out. And my youngest son is 15 at this point. So he's also older. So, and then from work, I get continuing education for coming to Sashin. I've been there for a long time. So, yeah, it's continuing it. And if you think about it, Sashin is like continuing education. It's not something that you do once and for all. It's something that you keep doing. every time over and over again.

[21:49]

So there are both degrees, and there aren't degrees, in the Buddhadharma, and in Sashin, and in education. It's continuing education. You may get a degree, but, you know, really no degree. You have to keep always studying, continuing the investigation. And the same is with Sashin, you know, and every time, like I was saying before, every time is different. You know, you think it's good to come without any expectations of how it's going to be this time around or whether it's going to be easier or harder. Because it's never quite the way we think it's going to be. And in some ways it gets easier, in some ways it gets harder. You know, if we dread it, and sometimes we dread it, you know, oh, Sashita's coming, I'm going to do it, but you know, here comes the torture again.

[22:59]

Or you could say, oh, here comes the light again. So it's both, you know, light and torture. It's a torch. Carrying the torch. Don't get burned. I don't know you spell it. So. In the beginning, this Sashi, the first day when I came, you open up and you have this wonderful experience and then you feel encouraged and motivated and you see, well, this is why I'm doing this and so on and so forth.

[24:06]

And this time around, this one is going to be the easy one. Maybe finally this one's going to be the easy one. And then pretty soon, as soon as you think that, you know, it gets hard. It gets difficult. So that's how we get attached to enlightenment experience. And so that's why we have to keep doing it over and over again. And then it gets difficult, so there's all these peaks and valleys. And then it gets difficult, and then we get discouraged. Oh, this is why I don't like this, you know, and I keep doing it every year. And so it is like giving birth too, because if women remembered what they went through when giving birth, they would never do it again. we always forget and we come back.

[25:10]

And so then it's a little bit like, you know, like straightening of a board of wood. You know, board of wood is never quite straight. And it's almost impossible to straighten out a piece of wood. And our bodies are like that. We sit up straight, and yet it's like trying to sit up straight a piece of wood that doesn't quite stretch enough as we would like to. And yet that's the mystery of it and the wonder of it, that it's sort of an impossible practice. And yet that very impossibility is what makes it real. somehow the wood gives and our bodies and minds stretch and we can do what we thought otherwise we couldn't.

[26:25]

And just when you think everybody, everything is lost and gone, you know, everything is recovered and restored, So we go to these peaks and valleys, you know, where we get encouraged and discouraged. So it's important to have this steadiness and to know that that's what's going to happen. And that that's powerful, of course, so it's part of the practice. And that the valleys are just as important as the peaks. And the difficulty is what really helped us. Then we start calculating, how long does the pain take to start? Does it start 25 minutes into the period, 30 minutes into the period? It's great for the first 20 minutes, but then the torture begins, you know.

[27:38]

And the worst thing is, you know, you're getting to the peak of the rahatsu is when the pain starts right away, you know. And then at that point, you know that you're stuck, you know that you're not going to get through it this way. So you have to let go of the calculation and really, you know, focus on the sitting really still and breathing and opening up. And then somehow, you know, miraculously, we all managed to get through. You know, and this difficulty is what gives us the teaching of no-self.

[28:47]

So it's not just an abstract idea, because when we have these enlightenment experiences or experiences of illumination, then a self is born, but then we get attached to that self. You know, and then it creates a hindrance. then it's like a mirror with reflections. So the difficulty helps us let it go. And that's when we practice or we realize no self. And then we can, our self can continue to be reborn and be changing all the time. So you think one person is one way, you know, and then, but they can be a different way. And we are all in the process of flux and transformation, so we change. And over the years I think we all change. We're all the same, the same folks, you know, but at the same time we're all different.

[29:52]

And it feels the same in some way, practicing together, you know, like meeting old friends again, you know, after all these years. And yet we're all new, we're all different. And there's something fresh and vital about it. And somehow we seem to be able to let go of the stuff that created problems between us. And that's something really wonderful. We would kind of rediscover each other anew. You know, and Dogen said, when we sit in Samadhi, the whole universe becomes enlightened. Which is re-quoting Shakyamuni's saying, something like, when he became enlightened, the whole universe became enlightened.

[31:04]

because the universe is already enlightened. And so we were talking about whether this is enough, Mary brought up this question, this practice is enough to help the world or it's not. And so that statement sort of points to that. But the key point is that even though the whole universe becomes enlightened, it doesn't rise up through consciousness. So that's in the same way where, let me see if I can quote. I have a quote from Yasutani here. Here he says, Although we may have experienced many great enlightenments and innumerable small enlightenments, whatever we assimilate of Buddhahood does not rise up to consciousness.

[32:26]

So this sense of, that's why we don't speak so much about enlightenment experience, because that's like rising up the consciousness and talking about it. And we could all talk, well I had this experience and that experience and so on and so forth. But somehow that gets in the way. It gives rise to self and self and other. So, not rising to consciousness is better because it's sort of working with enlightenment within enlightenment without self-consciousness and that's the way that our samadhi influences the whole world without rising up to consciousness. But then we say, well shouldn't it rise up to consciousness? Precisely, don't we want to raise Consciousness. Consciousness raising. That's kind of a coin.

[33:37]

But, you know, all the movements that are going to change the world, whether it's Western colonialism, trying to enlighten the whole world with the values of Western society, create more problems than it's solved. Some people say, well, no, it did more good than bad. And then the argument goes on whether the conquest of the New World did worse or better. You can argue it both ways. Or Marxism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was a whole mirror that was constructed. There's a kind of mirror building, constructing a mirror of enlightenment to liberate all beings, to liberate the world, and it creates more problems than it solves. Yes? The battery? But it's working. Oh, it's not recording? Okay.

[34:52]

Okay, I think it just means it's a low battery, so we'll just have to... You know, and Marxism created a lot of good things, but created a lot of unintended consequences of trying to go out actively and change the world. And... And then we have fundamentalism now. One of the ideologies of the Iranian revolution is that this is the coming of the hidden iman of Islam. And the way that God wants it in the world is for Islam to conquer the world and rule the world. So again it's this kind of messianic ideology that has a lot of good intentions but creates a lot of problems.

[36:02]

So whenever we come up with some kind of ideology or mirror this is the mirror with reflections that we think is going to help it ends up creating more problems so we have to be very careful. So in that sense you know, it might not be so bad to think of this samadhi that enlightens the whole world without rising to consciousness, and sort of does it superstitiously. Thank you. And then, you know, we leave rahatsu and we go back to our activities, you know, and each one of us, all of us, you know, are doing wonderful things in the world. And so we carry this torch to all the corners of the world that we live and inhabit to brighten it up. But when we sit, when we're going through the difficulty that we're going in Sashin,

[37:12]

That's not just us. That practice with that difficulty is the whole world. It's not just me. And that difficulty going on over there somewhere in Israel or in Iran or Iraq or wherever it may be is not just going on over there. It's also going on over here. And so this is the teaching of interpenetration. So I think that's all I have to say. Anybody want to say anything?

[38:17]

Or shall we just end here? Yes? I'm trying to think of how to make this brief. I really appreciate what you said at the end about the various ideas, how they change the world and the change can go both ways and we don't know. So I think maybe it's human nature that we find something we like and we want to cling to it and we want everyone else to do the same thing or something like that. I mean, I don't think that's what you were saying.

[39:25]

But I find that tendency in myself sometimes. Putting this out as a word. Yeah. So that would be a form of Buddhist fundamentalism. That's right. Or Zen fundamentalism. Yes. Micah. Letting me spin around, you know, but we have to do something. So he did not explain it to me, which is what I think. So I'm looking for an explanation. I get, now I get it.

[40:21]

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