It's very embarrassing to drop the offering on the floor when you're just about to be altered. But fortunately we can do something about it and get rid of it, rid of our feeling, rid of whatever it is that comes up. So I asked a friend to do nine vows, which was very convenient since she was right there. You know, if you drop your chopstick when you're eating a meal, the server should come and pick up the chopstick and offer it for you. and then give it back to you. So, in some way, someone else is, when we do something, someone else is also involved.

[01:12]

The karma of doing something sometimes involves someone else. I remember there was a woman who spent some time at AHA several years back and When they were eating in the dining room, not in the town, one of the monks did something. I can't remember exactly what it was, but the teacher came over and hit the monk next to him. And then he bowed. Interesting kind of lesson for both of them. Suzuki Roshi used to hit me sometimes for somebody else's mistake. It was really hard for me to deal with that. Anyway, at Tassahara, well you know, at Eheji in Japan, if you

[02:27]

drop your buddha bowl when you're eating. It's a big bowl. The buddha bowl is round on the bottom. It's like buddha's head, you know, and it's, as you say, buddha's head, and it's round on the bottom. And so there's another little, little bowl underneath, little dish underneath. You put the buddha bowl on top of. You see me, you know, balancing all these things. I have a and it's sitting on a little pedestal, you know, this little teeny dish. And that's sitting on this paper tablecloth, which is kind of going like this, which is sitting on my orioke cloth, which is sitting on my tongue here. All you have to do is hit it with your elbow, you know, or your finger, and it goes... And a server comes, you know, and hits it with a pot.

[03:29]

And I think, move it over a little bit. But I haven't dropped it for a long time. Actually, at Eheji, if you drop your bowl, your buddha bowl, they kick you out. I don't know if they really do or not, but that's the rule, that they kick you out if you drop your buddha bowl, if it slides off on the floor. And when we were at Tassajara, my Buddha ball slid out of the floor three times. And Suzuki Roshi would look at me. And we'd go back to his cabin. I was his Jisha. And he'd say, that's the third time. He was very sweet, though, you know. Underneath his grimace was the, he was very sweet. He never did anything to me.

[04:33]

So that kind of carefulness, that strictness, is a very prominent part of Soto Zen practice. And when you're in a situation, practice situation, They're very strict about everything. When Ekai comes over, he'll notice something and say, oh, look, your kimono's torn, or the sewing's coming out. He'll just notice that right away. It's kind of something to remind me. You can get very picky that way, you know. But actually, it's meant to be mindful, not picky. To help you to be careful about everything. And to impress you with the fact that it really means something to be careful about everything.

[05:48]

To try not to make a mistake. And if you make a mistake, to do something about it. Last night we had a Bodhisattva ceremony which is a repentance ceremony. It has two parts. The first part is repentance and the second part is renewing your intentions. So once a month we bring up that renewal and a vow or look at, pay attention to our mistakes. So for us, in Zen practice, repentance means to return or turn around, you know, we say, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion.

[06:59]

I'm born in body, speech, and mind. I'm now fully evolved. In the old Upasata ceremony, the monks bring up all of their transgressions. the transgressions that are against the precepts, where they stain the precepts or break the precepts. So twice a month they say what those are. But our ceremony is more of a short version. We don't go through that. We just acknowledge without saying what our transgressions are what our faults are.

[08:03]

We just acknowledge faults. The actual repentance Zazen is repentance because it's just turning away from doing what's wrong into something right. That's true repentance, not self-flagellation or grief putting yourself into a psychological state where you can't move or putting yourself down, but recognizing what you've done and what you haven't done and making the effort to turn and do what you know is right. That's repentance in Zen. So if you're a good horse You know, you take off at the shadow of the whip, when you see the shadow of the whip through the corner of your eye.

[09:09]

But most of us are the poor horse, you know. We have to be beaten down until we're almost dead before we know, before we can actually start moving. Right? So, to have that awareness, actually. I think it's good for us to have the awareness of what it means to stop doing, stop making mistakes, you know, habitually or otherwise, and turn toward doing things in the way we would really like to do them. But sometimes it's hard to do things the way we like to do them, because we feel that we never can. Sometimes we get in such a hole or such a place that we feel like, that's not possible, you know, to turn or to do things in a different way.

[10:15]

I remember the old phrase, I've been down so long it will back up to me. But if we don't have something to do, some way to get out of our place where we're stuck in our fault, then we can't move and we really have a lot of suffering and it's hard to progress. So part of Sutta Zen practice is repentance and it's very important.

[11:23]

It's unburdening ourself so that we can move on. And then the second part is the vow. when we pay homage to the various Buddhas which represent our nature. Shakyamuni Buddha is our personal self. Each one of us is Shakyamuni Buddha personally. There was a man 2,500 years ago who was Shakyamuni Buddha, but all of us are Shakyamuni Buddha. Same person. So we acknowledge and we pay homage to the Shakyamuni Buddha that is ourself, that is each one of us. And we pay homage to all the Buddhas in limitless time from the past.

[12:37]

And we pay homage to the future Maitreya Buddha within ourself. And we pay homage to Monjushri Bodhisattva, our innate wisdom. And we pay homage to Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, who is Bodhisattva of practice. practices all practice. The personification of activity and the path within ourself. Each one of us is Samantabhadra Bodhisattva who practices all practices and Avalokiteshvara which is our compassionate nature.

[13:40]

It's not that we're paying homage to some great bodhisattva in the sky. It's right here. All these buddhas and bodhisattvas are ourself. And then we renew our vow to save all sentient beings from delusion. And we pay homage to the three treasures, which is also ourself and each one of us. Each one of us is Buddha, the Dharma is within ourself, and the Sangha is each one of us and all of us together. So it's a very wonderful ceremony because it brings us back to ourself and unites us all together.

[14:53]

And our faults, it gives us an opportunity to change, to accept ourself as we are. completely and to change and to accept each other completely and help each other to change. This Sashin has been a very interesting Sashin. Somehow, the way it worked out was a lot of people coming and going.

[15:57]

And Sachine is usually pretty strict. With some exceptions, everybody stays. Everybody comes in the beginning and stays till the end. That's strictly speaking what Sashin is. So you build up a certain atmosphere and power within the time limit. We said that people could come for certain periods of time some people come in the morning and go to work and then come back in the evening to complete a kind of cycle of working of zazen, working and zazen and it was a kind of experiment but it got a little bit out of hand and it kept getting more of an experiment than we wanted it to be but I have no bad feeling about it I feel actually

[17:08]

I have mixed feelings, but I have very good feelings about it, because what comes out of it for me is a way of thinking about, not sasheen, but practice period, which has always been in my mind, is a period of time of sitting zazen and working, or studying, whatever you do. and combining the two for a period of time. You can't do it for too long because everybody's, in a lay practice, everybody's life is too complicated. But we've tried to have a practice period for years, you know. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But I think for some of the people who did the sasheen this way, It was a kind of taste of how a practice period can be.

[18:15]

And I would like us to use that as a way of thinking about it. To use this experience as a way of thinking about that. And I would like to, if some of the people could share a little bit what their experience was. Not everybody, we don't have time, but some people. to share their experience of coming and going and some wanted to share their experience of just staying. Now James. I wouldn't have been able to come if it hadn't been mandatory for seven days or five days continuous.

[20:09]

But what I was thinking would be nice to have more intensive longs machines and have maybe a couple more times offered a little more during the year and have one or two of them offered Thank you. I came for the first day and then a few periods in the morning, and in the last two days, I stayed. And I... it was a... I had mixed feelings as well about the experience. It was a good learning experience, but by halfway through the week, I realized I'm not sitting for Hafez al-Shin. I'm coming to sit three times. And I guess that kind of took the pressure off in a way.

[21:22]

No matter how much I tried to just leave here and go about my activities, there was an underlying expectation of having a machine of mind. You know, it's very rare not to try and not make that happen. things like Simplify, just doing my work, just doing that, not watching television, not letting the natural layering take place, but it was just very difficult. It was very difficult, I think, for my family, too. So a lot of things came up for me. I like the idea of that kind of experience in the practice group, and to have sessions, a long session, either seven days, maybe people can sit four or five consecutive days, but not the part-time, day-to-day. I don't know. I don't know.

[22:23]

It's just my experience. Charles? I did part-time, not voluntarily. I got a phone call on Friday from an IRA client who demanded a delivery in two weeks. I had to change my plans for the last minute. Otherwise, I was finding myself almost ashamed. And the change schedule was to stay here through breakfast and then come back for dinner. And other than the time that I was at work, I had to basically live here, not to go home. That worked from the point of view of a practice period. I felt very strong practice. Not really sashimi, but a very strong sense of practice. I started getting stress peaks, and I realized when that happens, it's time to quit. Same thing happened on Thursday, so I was not able to do my job. On Friday, I just decided to sit and forget about work.

[23:26]

The kind of work that I do is probably not compatible with any kind of machine schedule. At least I couldn't do it. I don't think I would try to either sit all day than trying to do a job at the same time. So I guess, for me, an experiment is not a good result. Other people with different jobs have a more routine nature of the idea of doing it. Kate? Well, that's interesting that you just said about the type of job, because my job is one where, as part of my work, I do a lot of socializing. My job is very much a people-oriented job and making connections between people for various reasons.

[24:30]

My session schedule was that I sat the first three days entirely and then I sat half the day on Wednesday and went to work Wednesday afternoon and sat part of the day on Thursday. I'm also a part-time student, and I had classes on Thursday, so I sort of came and went on Thursday. I came to Zazen, went to class, came to Zazen, went to class, came to Zazen. And then on Friday, I didn't come at all. I stayed overnight Thursday at someone else's house, and I just didn't come at all on Friday. I went to work and did my job. But what I discovered was that my job being very much a social job, My interactions with people were very odd. Especially at the beginning when I first went back to work after the three very intense days of sitting.

[25:34]

The first day was okay because I was just doing office work. And like you say, the different types of work, I was able to just come in and do the office work and have a very quiet mind and come back and sit in the evening. But then the next day when I was in classes, and I was relating to people, I found that I was very hypersensitive. You know how you get very hypersensitive during Sashin? I was still in that very hypersensitive space, and I was trying to relate to people. So it was very interesting. And I found myself telling some of my closest co-workers that, I said, please forgive me. I'm still in Sashin a little bit, you know? I think you're really right. The type of job you do is, I think, going to a large degree determine how successful this kind of practice period is. Or maybe not how successful, but what the flavor of it is going to be. Because I think I learned a lot from having that experience of relating to people in a social kind of milieu with this machine right there behind me.

[26:42]

It's very interesting. We don't have so much more time. So the reason this whole thing comes up is because of the nature of our lives. It's lay people who practice. And so through this kind of grinding process, hopefully we can find a way to do it, to make it work. if we keep trying. I just want to mention the fact that for the people in the Sashin, who weren't here yesterday, we're going to have a ceremony called Shosan ceremony, which is a question and answer, where you question, give your question to of the doshi, or the leader of the shishin.

[27:47]

And it's a formal question and answer ceremony. And that's going to be this afternoon, just about the end of the shishin, 4.30, 4.30, something like that. And you can ask a challenging question or a dharma question or a nice question or you can just express something. The point is to express yourself some way and to have a dialogue. Some people call it combat. I'm not so interested in fighting you. I'd rather have a dialogue with you. Actually, you know, it's not a matter of somebody wins and somebody loses. I'm not interested in winning and having you lose, or having you win and having me lose. I'm not interested in that.

[28:49]

Maybe that will happen, but I'm interested in us furthering our practice through dialogue. And hopefully when we have a dialogue, we both win. Or the Dharma wins. But you don't have to say anything. You can just express something, you know. But you should come forward and do something. Mayling, do you have some questions? No. Okay. So, please think of your question. You may not be able to, you know, until the last minute. But I'll give a little talk before, a very short talk before, to set the tone.

[29:52]

And I think I'll sit on the floor down here. And there'll be a lavatan over there. And you can bow and sit in seiza. And put your hands and bow. And then you give a question, and then I'll give you my response.

[30:11]

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