and I'm surpassed, penetrating in heaven for a favor. This is the first day of our five-day seshin. That ends our 33rd practice period. And this is the first day of summer, right? Wow. That's amazing. It's a beautiful summer day.

[01:05]

It's very clear and bright. getting warmer. So welcome everybody who's sitting here in the Sendō and those of you who are out in Zoom land. The word for the day, the Japanese word for the day that came to me earlier this morning is gambate. Gambate, which means do your best. I remember when I was at Tsuyo-ji in Japan, the ino passed us in the hall the first day and just bowed to us and said, GANGATE! Which I think

[02:06]

Implicit in that is the feeling that we're doing something hard and it's not going to be easy. We're not like we're doing it correctly or doing it to our satisfaction, but just do your best. So, this five-day seshin, and for me, my experience is the first day is often the hardest because the tendrils of the life that I've been involved in yesterday and the day before are still clinging to me, and it takes It takes this day or so to really become fully absorbed in the activity of Sashin.

[03:17]

And I will say that, you know, since the pandemic, we keep thinking, oh, we're kind of... at the other end of it, right? Yesterday I was thinking about the pandemic. The pandemic is just like the mafia. In The Godfather, in Godfather Part III, Michael Corley would say, Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. So we're constantly being pulled back into the pandemic and dealing with it. That came very close to home for me.

[04:19]

We went on this wonderful trip to help Sioux Moon teach in Italy, and then to have a carefree mother-daughter week with Sylvie in Paris, and she got COVID. and then came home. In fact, we'd been apart for three weeks. And then there she was, and we had to eat separately, we had to sleep in separate rooms, and it was hard. So this pandemic, we're not forgetting about it. So what we have done is we've organized our schedule uh to simplify things and you know i still have in mind i still have the wish to get all day uh our decisions that so many of us did for all those years uh but that involves you know three meals a day and uh it's hard to do so

[05:37]

I think we will get back to it. I'm not sure when. But anyway, we have these days which go from 7.50 until 5.30. And as of the opening of practice period, we're experimenting with outdoor oreochi, which is great. Step in that direction. But part of the challenge of these days is It's less often that we face that kind of implacable wall of pain and difficulty that we may have experienced in our decisions that we're used to. And there's a function to that difficulty. The function to that is if

[06:39]

The purpose of sushin is to touch the mind, which is what it literally translates to, or touch the heart-mind, then we're not always ready to do that. Sometimes we need some, what Suzuki or she often talked about it, we need some rules, or we need some structures that put us in the space where we can't do anything but touch the mind. And this shorter form creates its own challenge. You still can. You can touch the mind. It's not necessarily that something is missing, but you have to find to do that.

[07:41]

So, you know, instead of having the complete experience where we wake up really early and we go, we sit until 9 and we're really tired and we go, we have the challenge of maintaining the continuity of Sesshin mind from, you know, through the early evening and through the evening and in the early morning. And I want to really encourage you to find a way to do that. And a few suggestions, just for things to keep in mind. And this is what I'm going to try today. First of all, don't watch television.

[08:48]

And really minimize your screen use of all kinds. But don't get pulled in. There's something weird and mysterious about those screens. I remember Really long ago, it was in the early 70s, I had a hernia operation, I was in the hospital, and it happened that the night after I had this procedure, I was in this hospital room and the television was on, and it was a blackout. You know, it was a blackout in New York City, so all the transmitters And so all you got on the screen was snow, you know, blur.

[09:48]

And it was really weird because so long as that screen was on, I could not keep my eyes. It had nothing to do with the images that were on the screen. It just had to do with the activation of it that sort of pulled my mind out of my body. So, please, try not to watch television. The other thing, really minimize any unnecessary conversation in your household. And that might mean making an agreement with those you're living with, just saying, I'm in Sesshi now, and I really want to contain... So can you help me to do this? And one way that we express, you know, a conversation like this is, and I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, sometimes referred to as leaking.

[11:04]

So it's letting our feelings, instead of containing our feelings, and having to work with them internally. We share them in a way that sometimes it's an unconscious attempt to sort of get rid of them or to change the focus. So see if you can limit any unnecessary conversation. There's a lot of hours. There'll be a lot of hours into the evening. And I'm not going to say you shouldn't read anything. But what I would say is if you're going to read something, pick up a Dharma book. Read the Dharma. Read something that's in alignment with our activity.

[12:09]

And that's a helpful thing to do. And finally, remember, you can always just sit zazen. You can sit zazen everywhere. Or you can take a walk and make it a mindful walk. Not ginhin in this really slow manner that we do, but even if you're walking at a normal pace, Feel your breath and feel your body and just maintain our Sessheen mind in that way. So yesterday I was looking around looking through the Suzuki Roshi archive, which I love to do.

[13:15]

And I did a search for Sesshin. And I found this talk, which I'm going to reference and we can talk about a bit. It was a talk from an October session in So it was early Sashim. And this is from the afternoon lecture. It appeared in an edited form in the wind bell later that year in 1965. Suzuki Voshya says, in Zazen practice, the most important point, this is This is one of the 108 most important points, right?

[14:16]

The most important point is straightforwardness, as the sixth ancestor emphasized. So I wanted to read you, then that sent me back to look at the Platform Sutra, and I found this passage. Oneness is straightforward mind at all times, walking, staying, sitting, and lying down. Straightforward mind is the place of practice. Straightforward mind is the pure land. Only practice straightforward. And in all things have no attachments whatsoever. This is called the Samadhiya Oneness. So Sukiroshi goes on about the sixth ancestor. According to him, if we always remain in our true nature, we have our way and we are expressing our true nature.

[15:25]

But this straightforwardness does not mean to remain lazy without making any effort to improve yourself. When your true nature is covered or bound by something, Even though you try to express your straightforward nature, it is impossible. If you always remain straightforward, you will have some confidence within the straightforwardness. Whatever we face, we should accept and respond to without fear, without being caught by anything, any fear. It is not easy to be straightforward. If you realize this, you will accept pretty hard discipline to keep your true nature. So I don't know about you, but I hadn't really encountered, I don't remember encountering Suzuki Roshi speaking about straightforwardness.

[16:38]

I think it's good to think about, what does that mean? You know, there's another expression in Zen which is, just go straight. And I think that what he means by straight is just doing one activity after another in the proper order. And this is also, we can think of this as, if we're speaking about it in the proper order, we're speaking about ordinary mind, right? As we read about it in the dialogue between Nansen and Joshua, a famous dialogue which we've studied many times, Joshua asks Nansen, what is the way? He says, ordinary mind is the way.

[17:42]

And Joshu asks, shall I try to seek after it? And Nansen replies, if you try for it, you will become separated from it. Joshu keeps questioning, how can I know the way unless I try for it? Nansen said, The way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion. Not knowing is confusion. When you have really reached the true way, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong? And with these words, Joshu came to sudden realization. So, That seems grand, if you will.

[18:50]

But it's not so grand. It's just the ordinary way we know what to do. So we have a schedule. So please try to be here before the bell rings. Try to be on time with everybody. That's the straightforward way. It's not so complicated. It's not a matter of grandiosity. It's just a matter of doing things in time and in space, and doing them together, because that's our intention in Sashin. In Sashin we do things together. But in order to do things together, each of us individually has to take complete responsibility for that togetherness. If we're out of time, if we're out of place, then we're drawing energy away from the oneness.

[19:56]

And, you know, to what the sixth ancestor said, the samadhi of oneness is straightforward mind at all times. So you could say, The samadhi of oneness is responsibility, your practice, but also, which he doesn't say, but I think is our larger understanding, the samadhi of oneness is something that we are all manifesting together. We sit next to each other. We have oryoki, which is something that we do together, and all of us in our own time, in our own space, but together. So the samadhi of oneness is not, does it belong to you?

[21:01]

And this straightforward practice that Suzuki Roshi is encouraging us to follow is the practice that we create together. Otherwise, there'd be no need for sishin. You know, otherwise we would all find our little space to meditate in, and we would just do it whenever we decided to, when we do it in place. And we would not be creating collaboratively, collectively, a samadhi of oneness. In this talk he says, what I want to talk about now is how to orient your mind in practice.

[22:12]

For the beginner it is inevitable that there will be hard discipline. It's not just the rules, the discipline is just like what we have to do with our body. You know, for reading Sojin's memoir and looking at, I'm sure that many of you could testify to the fact that the first years of practice were really, really hard. You know, we had to figure out how to work with our body, how it to stretch and open, and how to work with our mind. And that was its own difficulty. And then as years go on, we got other difficulties. So...

[23:15]

She says, the observation of rigid rules is not the point, but if you want to acquire vital freedom, it is necessary to have some strength or to have some discipline in order to be free from one-sided dualistic ideas. When you see something beautiful, you will stay there as much as possible. And when you are tired of it, you will go to another place. You may think that this is freedom. You are enslaved by your surroundings. Not at all free. That kind of life is just material and superficial. Because of freedom, because of our true nature, which wants to be free, our true nature wants to be free, we start to study something and we choose between good and bad, right and wrong.

[24:33]

Some people may think, if we were like cats and dogs, this kind of desire will not satisfy our own inmost desire. After striving and seeking freedom, you will realize you cannot attain freedom. So that's exactly what nonsense says in the koan. He says, if you try for it, you will become separated from it. Of course, if you keep up this kind of effort for a long time, you will develop a kind of intuition so that you will know what you should do without thinking so much. You'll have a certain intuition.

[25:37]

But this kind of experience is not religious experience. Religious experience is not only intuition about what is good or bad, but also joy happiness and composure. So there is a treasure to be discovered. And I think that I'm sure that by the end of these five days, as we've settled into our practice, many of us will be able to at least spend some moments with this treasure. We'll see it all around us. We'll see it in the glow of the sky. We'll see it in each other's faces.

[26:39]

And it won't necessarily be some big enlightenment experience, although it may be, but it will be exactly the freedom that he's talking about as religious, as joy, happiness and exposure. There's a lovely section in this talk here. Dogen Zenji said that Bodhisattva Canon changed the direction of a sound by hearing it. Usually the sound comes from a bell, and you hear it. You think, there is a bell, it's a wonderful sound. I heard that this morning, just, there was something about the sound of Gary's bells. It was quite, it was just, and enveloping.

[27:42]

It's a wonderful sound that was met by, that was created by the meaning of the bell, of Gary's true nature, and of all complete receptivity. And that's what creates beautiful sound, beautiful tone. So usually sound comes from a bell, and you hear it, you think, there's a bell, it's a wonderful sound. But when Avalokiteshvara He made the sound at the same time. Do you understand? He made the sound, not the bell. You made the sound. You practice zazen. Zazen is there. The sound... The bell has a part of it.

[28:46]

Gary has a part of it. And if you're not here, there's no bill. You have a part of it. It comes to mind at least what I think I remember of a very strong experience that Aiken Roshi had. in Japan and he'd been practicing for quite a while and hadn't passed the barrier of Mu. And one morning during the service the bell sounded and all of a sudden he rang

[29:51]

with the bell. And he actually echoed, physically echoed the sound of it. And that was his opening experience. So it's exactly what Suzuki Roshi is saying. He made the sound. But it's also true that each of us is the essential ingredient. Our hearing is what makes the sound. Our vital freedom will be like running water, raining from the mountain and passing through valleys and fields, reaching the sea. There's no freedom for the water to return to the mountain. But at the same time there is vital freedom.

[30:55]

This kind of life is called religious life. To attain it is to practice zazen without the idea of gaining. To expect some result from your practice is like trying to hear the bell from outside yourself. To try to achieve something when you hear the bell from the outside only. If you do not have the faintest idea of gaining, the sound will arise from you. When the bell is sounding, you are sounding. Stop your gaining idea when you are ready to accept, ready to respond to the slightest sound which will come." So, and then he says, this is the ability that will come by practice, that you will you'll gain by practice that Saritoksha gain. So what he's talking about is, in the course of session, we've given ourselves to this total receptivity, to respond to the sound of the bell, to respond to the rhythm of our day,

[32:18]

to respond to the sunlight with the shadow if it falls. Just to respond. This is our creativity. This total receptivity and response. Not an idea that we're imposing on it. We are now studying practicing zazen in one room. That's exactly what we're doing. That's what he says. And, you know, here we are practicing in what Sojin Muroshi called the one-room schoolhouse. And I think of it, you know, as... I think of this as like an arc. To me, this room is like an upside-down boat. The keel is up there.

[33:23]

It's backwards, but we're backwards, you know. Some of you have practiced asana for a long time. Some of you started just now. We have our own way, even though we practice in the same way. Just practice sasana until you get accustomed to the right posture. And when you get tired of it, you should try to be alert. Be alert. Try to respond. And just express yourself in the right way. This is how we practice sasana. This is all we need to do. So just find straightforward mind within yourself and appreciate it and do it.

[34:36]

So I'm going to stop here and leave time for some questions or comments. Are we passing the microphone? Yeah. Good. So Joe has the microphone. And you can raise your hand in here, and you can also online if anyone has anything they would like to ask or share. Joel has a question. Yeah. Hi. Thank you for that talk. It was wonderful. Thank you. I have a recollection, which for me embodied very much straightforward mind, but in a way, it sort of captures what we usually think of it. I remember a show song, and Mel was going to give the show song, and that he wasn't showing up.

[35:49]

And you went out and called, and Mel had just spaced up. and you came back and said that and had a big smile on your face and kind of thinking this is kind of funny and so it just sounds awesome and that whole thing would seem not to be straightforward mind but as you were talking about straightforward mind that arose for me and realized i experienced it as straightforward mind i mean This is great. I mean, Mel forgot. I came up for this a day early for a session, and it was great. So anyway, just so that I put that out, I mean, so looking at how straightforward my manifest sometimes is really weird. Thank you. Could you hear that? Some people could. Not completely. Right. So what Joel was recalling was a...

[36:53]

Shosan with Sojin, where... show up. And I guess I went and called... I have no recollection of this. I went and called him, and he had spaced it out, and so we just sat Zazen. Yes. So that's everybody's straightforward mind. With that day, it was probably our Zazen mind, and it's our Zazen mind, and... you know, my just accepting, okay, this is what's happening. What do we do that's what's appropriate? It's, you know, this koan that I really, it's really central for me, you know, what is the meaning of a Buddha's lifetime of practice and appropriate response? You know, so that's, That's an appropriate response.

[38:02]

Ross. Thank you, Rosanne. We opened your talk today about the difficulties and how hard it is at the first day and that you felt things cling to you. And my experience is that... I also have feelings of things clinging to me, but in Zazen, I realize I'm clinging to them. I'm wondering how you understand this interplay between other clinging and self-clinging and activated and we kind of maybe lose our center and maybe point outward or we regain a center and maybe point inward and how we go back and forth. Yeah. I think that that's right. It's not those clinging to us, we're clinging to them.

[39:03]

And in the course of the day, we discover how to let them go. And we, you know, like, I was surprised this morning. You know, I was in a grumpy mood when I woke up. And I knew I just got to get out of bed and get dressed and it'll be okay. And then I came down here and I felt like Zazen was very deep and I wasn't thinking about anything else. So that transition, so today that was an easy transition for me. Other times, not so easy, but yes. It's me that does the clinging, not the things clinging to me. Thank you for that. I'm glad that you woke up. Thank you.

[40:05]

Questions? Thoughts? Mira and then Judy. Well, I want to go back to the street. Wait, let's use the microphone. Oh, sorry. I want to go back to the street. because that seems to be the main point of this talk. And I'm still not really clear what that means to me. So I'll just say what my idea of it is. It's a straightforward mind. It's just doing what we've done next and not making any commotion or big deal or complaining about it, just responding to what needs to be done. I think that's right. I don't think it's rocket science. But it's not always so easy to do because we're brought up in our self-centered ideas. But is that a definition?

[41:11]

That works for me. Completely, yeah. And other people, I wanted to know what other people thought straightforward mind meant. Yeah, I'd like to know. Judy, then Carol. Thank you. During a first day, at least for me, a lot of what's happening somatically, is how feelings, painful feelings, grief, is down to the marrow. Really intense. And to touch into that, it's also important to know how much is enough, right?

[42:12]

And that we're holding one another to stay buoyant. And I'm wondering if you might say a word about how that flows with the importance of face-to-face practice discussion, dokusan. What's the straightforwardness in that? Well, first of all, I think that in the course of our zazen, if those are experiencing that kind of emotional pain and challenge, just like really hold it gently and tenderly and

[43:18]

But hold it carefully, don't necessarily wrap your arms, throw your arms around it, if you know what I mean. And I think one of the things that can happen, one of the things that can happen in Doka-san is You say what it is you are experiencing and feeling. And in the act of saying that, there's something mysterious that can happen, something unburdening. In the act of saying it, you're not carrying it all alone.

[44:23]

I always find that really helpful. Hosanna, I want to go back to Amira's comment about straightforward mind, doing what's next. I believe it does include complaining. It might include complaining. It might include... In other words, whatever emotions are there, they're going to be there and we can still do the next thing forward. And maybe even by taking that next step and one step and the next step, those emotions will shift. If they could wait for a pure mind, nothing's in my mind, now I'm going to take the next step.

[45:27]

What do you want to do? Do you have a comment about that? Yeah. I think the challenge is how to do something completely. If you're complaining, complain completely. And be prepared to move to the next thing. You know, don't get caught there. The problem that I have anyway is that I may be doing something and I find my completely winding in and out of that activity, and that takes me, that takes my awareness away from that activity. So maybe it's best to just really fetch, really grieve, really weep, And, you know, there's something about this image that Suzuki Roshi puts out towards the end of the talk of the water rushing down the mountain.

[46:37]

You know, it doesn't go back. It just moves, it moves in a straightforward, in one direction. and uh so if we can allow that unobstructedness to manifest in our lives i think that's that's a way of thinking of straight are there other definitions of straightforward other uh other things that this calls up for people anyone out there or in here Mary and then Susan. The word that keeps coming to mind the word that keeps coming to mind for me is authentic or unelaborated. I'm sorry Mary, what was the first word?

[47:39]

Mary saying the word comes to mind for her is authentic or unelaborated, right? Yeah, that's That makes sense. I think the challenge there is there can be a part of your mind that's judging what's authentic or not. Is this authentic? And, you know, that can be really... We can get ourselves into a tangle about that. But, yeah. You know, that story that Joel told, it struck me that one could say a mistake had been made. I mean, he forgot, right? That was a mistake. But, you know, that's all it was.

[48:42]

Like, it seems like part of being straightforward is not adding something extra. Like, you make a mistake... and then you move on and not creating stories about what the mistake means. So did you talk about why do people think when they make a mistake that it means they're a bad person. It doesn't mean that. It just means you made a mistake. So to me there's something about being straightforward that's connected to that. Not adding an extra layer not adding a story. And if you do, just noticing that and just, that's the practice, drop it, right? Yeah. I do think that, you know, this is like the clearest articulation of it that just kind of rose out of what you just said.

[49:46]

I feel that Somehow I learned from him how to make mistakes. And certainly I learned... There was something... He didn't teach me this directly, and it may not even have been his way, but he accepted his mistakes. And what I learned was to... When they work hard for somebody, myself or anybody, I learned to laugh at them. You know, if I overslept, okay. And the world is not going to end. You know, if I oversleep or if Sojin misses Shosan, there's greater difficulties on our planet. And so to learn how to make mistakes,

[50:51]

And also to learn when you have to take responsibility for a mistake. It's not on the table, right? Right. But you have to look at the context. But that might be the very next thing. And that's still being straightforward. Right. Instead of dwelling on the mistake which often prevents you from doing the next thing. Right. something extra. Right, so it just, if a mistake, you know, impacted another person, just to talk to them and to apologize or see what they're thinking. Yeah, this is part of our practice, a lot of our practice. How do we encounter ourselves, first of all, and then, of course, how do we count encounter others who are also, in a sense, no other than ourselves.

[51:55]

So maybe... I saw two answers. I'll give you the last question. Follow the schedule. That's straightforward. It is. Well, maybe that's the last word. Okay. And the schedule says we need to end now.

[52:36]

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