I vow to taste the truth of the divinators' words. Good morning. I want to talk a little more today about this sashin, meaning of sashin, of unifying the mind, or bringing yourself all together right here where you are. Body, breath, and mind all with you, present on your cushion, not somewhere else.

[01:01]

And I have to admit that I was listening to some of Mel's lecture tapes from the session last week at the City Center. And so I'm going to use a theme that he used because it's so clearly illustrates this issue of unifying yourself. And I thought, wow, is that plagiarism? Well, Mel's my teacher, you know. It must be all right to talk about something in the way you talk about it. What I was struck by in listening to this tape, I may say, is There seemed to be something kind of magical about it because it didn't seem like he was ever getting anywhere.

[02:10]

He was just kind of wandering on. You know, you've heard him lecture so long that when's he going to get to the point? Then it was all over. It felt like he really had a class in basic Buddhism. How did he do that? Anyhow, he began with the text of Senjo and her soul are separated. Which one? Which one is the true Senjo? And... Excuse me. A lot of incense over there. This comes from an old... An old Chinese ghost story about a boy and a girl who were growing up together.

[03:24]

They were actually distant cousins, I think, and They were very fond of each other and her father said one day, oh, you and Ochi were so well matched. You should get married when you grow up. He was just joking because they were cousins. He wasn't intending that that would happen. But they took it seriously and they really liked each other and they grew up to love each other and thinking that they were going to get married. But when she got of marriageable age, her father chose someone else. told her and this was in China many years ago when that's the way marriages happened and she was so stricken that she just she just went to bed and Ochu was so upset that he decided to get in a boat and leave the village but as he was leaving he saw Senjo come running toward him and she jumped in the boat and went with him and they went

[04:29]

down the river ways and settled and, you know, developed their life together, had some children. After a number of years, Senjo said, you know, I feel... I mean, her father had been a very devoted father and she loved him very much. And she said, I feel I should go back and see my father and, you know, tell him where I am. And, uh... So Ochoa said, that's a good idea, we should do that. So they got in the boat and they went back up the river. And she stayed in the boat with the children while he went to see her father. And her father met him at the door and said, Oh, Ochoa, I'm so glad you're here. Senjo has been in her bed and hasn't spoken a word since you left. She's just waiting for you to return. And he said, I don't know what you mean. Senjo is in the boat.

[05:32]

And her father said, you must be crazy. And he went in to see her. And there she was lying in bed, you know, like in a coma. But she heard him and began to come to life. And the other Senjo came. And the two saw each other and embraced and became one. So this is the story on which this koan is based. So Senjo and her soul are separated. Which one is the real Senjo? Well, neither one. Separated. Could be, couldn't they? I mean, how could they be? I'm sorry, I'm too, I'm overconfident with this microphone here, I forget it. Gringotts, this microphone is also connected now to a PA system, which it didn't used to be. Excuse me.

[06:33]

So we're like that, you know. We become quite scattered. Our body is one place and our thoughts are another. Often enough. At least I have that experience. Has any of you ever had that experience? or our duty is one place and our desires are another or something, you know. We ought to be doing this, but I really want to be doing that. Anyhow, we find ourselves separated quite frequently. And how can we bring ourselves all together? right where we are. And then we have the aspect of what is, what is this self that we're unifying?

[07:43]

Where does it, is it just what's in, what's in the skin bag? Is that the limit of ourself, just our skin? What about this connectedness that we feel with things that are outside of the skin bank? Is that something other than yourself? Is there an inside and an outside? How real is this inside and outside? Where is inside and where is outside? Tozon... Tozon Ryokai of our lineage, whom we chant every morning,

[08:51]

was the author of the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which we chant at Zen Center a good bit. And in reading the, Deng Shan is his Chinese name, in reading the record of Deng Shan, there are a number of stories there that um, bring this up. In particular, in his relationship with his teacher, Yun-Yun, um, when he was, uh, well, one record says when, when Tozan was leaving him and another said when Yun-Yun was dying. Um, He asked his teacher in future times when someone asked me if I'm able to paint a likeness of my master, what shall I say?

[10:01]

And this refers to the fact that at that time, The custom was that one could only paint the likeness of a teacher from whom one had received Dharma transmission. This was your teacher, your lineage. Then you were permitted to paint his likeness. So Yun-Yun thought a long time, and then he said, just this one, or just this man of Han, This man of Han, Han was the name for China at the time. And that was the traditional phrase used by a prisoner in admitting guilt. Just this one is.

[11:04]

And Deng Shan, was quiet and thinking about that response and then Yun-Yun said, Now that you have taken up this burden, you must be very careful. Again, the phrase of taking up the burden was another traditional phrase for assuming the guilt. So Deng Xian, who worked with trying to understand this exchange with Yun Yan. Yun Yan also, Yun Yan said to Deng Xian, once you leave, it will be hard for us to meet again.

[12:12]

And Deng Xian said, it will be hard for us not to meet again, or not to meet. So he had some sense of the oneness with his teacher. But as he was going through the mountains, he crossed a bridge and looked down at the stream and saw his reflection and had, as the books always say, a great awakening. He said, Oh, he is, he is now completely me, but I am not him. He is now completely me, but I am not now him.

[13:18]

In the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, this understanding is greatly expanded in the lines. It is like facing a jewel mirror. Form an image, behold each other. You are not it. It actually is you. So, this all speaks to me of this question of subjectivity and objectivity. Is there something which is object outside of yourself? Is there something with which you are not, you know, which is not part of you? Or is there some way in which

[14:26]

Which is the real senjo? Is there some way in which the real you Includes everything? The I think I've mentioned before here the the most compelling experience of... that I remember in my life. The experience that has felt the most real to me happened actually before I ever saw a cushion. It's what turned me toward Sazen. when I had an experience of identity with a riot squad policeman in a situation of very heightened emotion and awareness.

[15:40]

And at that time I was a political activist and a riot squad policeman would have been my definition of the opposite of me. If I wanted to say, you know, if somebody said, what is clearly not you? I would have said, a riot squad policeman, you know, those fascist pigs, right? So that was a really, you know, in every sense of the word, a mind-blowing experience that I should experience with complete, with much more real than any idea I have ever had, an identity with this not-me. It was just sort of Me and not me is not a real dichotomy, you know. There's just no such thing as that dualism of me and not me. And there was nothing.

[16:43]

I had not been a student of Zen or philosophy or Buddhism. I mean, I was, you know, I was a red-hot political demonstrator is who I was. And all this stuff was totally new to me. But my whole, the way I understood the world was clearly, I mean, the world in its reality as I experienced it was clearly different than I had understood it in any words that I had ever read or heard about or stood on soapbox and proclaimed before. And in my stumbling about trying to figure out what this experience meant, a friend gave me a book about Zen. Another friend told me about the Berkeley Zen Dojo. Zen Buddhism, boy, that is weird, you know, right? But I read this book and it made a lot of sense.

[17:44]

It was The Zen Teaching of Wang Po. I read it again a few years later and I thought, how could I have imagined that I understood this book? I, you know, if I ever have nerve enough, I will try it again now and see if it makes any more sense. But in it, he's talking about giving up conceptual thought. You just have to give up conceptual thought and see things as they are. And then I, you know, I met this friend who told me, told me about the Berkeley Sendoh, and again, I thought, Zen Buddhism moves. So I waited about five months before I actually set foot in the zendo for Zazen instruction. But, uh... And this was the great old attic up on Dwight Way. Once I had been there for Zazen instruction, it felt so right to me that pretty soon I was there every day.

[18:47]

As a matter of fact, I volunteered to be Jikido every day, and finally Mel said, I don't think we're gonna let you be Jikido anymore, and I said, why not? He said, you're too attached. There was something about the ambiance of the Zendo that was so... I don't know. I just... It was so different than the world I was in and I felt so at home there. I just wanted to hang out there. Upstairs in the attic, not just with the people. I wanted to hang out up in that room where I sat Sasa. And then I met Suzuki Roshi. We went over to his lectures sort of in a group when I was first going to the Zendo. And when I met Suzuki Roshi,

[19:51]

I mean, I was looking for who could help me understand this experience I had with this policeman. And when I met him, the sense I had of him was, he understands about that. And later I was trying to think, why did I think he understands about that? And I think it's because how I saw him was that he didn't see any separation between himself and me. The way he interacted with me is he didn't he didn't see me as an object. I mean, I don't know how he saw me, but how I felt was I didn't feel objectified by how he related to me. And he seemed to relate to kind of everything like that. I remember somebody else saying to me once, well, the trouble with you is you think you're not me.

[20:56]

But I didn't get that feeling from that person that I got from Suzuki Roshi. And in fact, how I understand Tozan is, I'm not him, you know. His experience of me may be that I'm him, and that may be okay. But my experience of him is that he's me, not that I'm him. you know, if I understand what Tozan is saying. It's that he's included in this experience of subjectivity. That everything is subject and nothing is object. So I can get that as an idea and I can understand, you know, that that's... I can understand from that initial experience with the policeman and a few additional moments of clarity that I've had that that's probably how reality really is, you know?

[22:09]

I can't live in that reality all the time. I got the feeling from Suzuki Roshi that he was more often than not in that reality. And that was what was so inspiring about being around him and about his teaching. That he saw the world, he saw the non-dual reality of the world more often than not. When I go back and read Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which I've done over the years many times. The most recent time I went back and sort of started reading it from cover to cover, at a certain point I said, every talk in here is about non-duality. I never had seen that before. What he had to teach us was that the world is not two. He was always saying, not one, not two.

[23:10]

It's not that everything is exactly the same as you, but it's also not exactly different either. You know? We are each sort of unique manifestations of whatever this reality is. But we are all manifestations of the same reality. And somewhere in there we're completely connected It's really interesting to look at Suzuki Roshi's teaching, how he taught with words, with this... with this kind of new insight that I just got.

[24:12]

Every time I read one of his lectures now, I say, oh, there, he's looking at it this way now. And now he's looking at it this way. Now he's looking at it this way. But he's looking at the same thing all the time. He's looking at this not one, not two all the time. You know, somebody asked me once, was he enlightened? I don't know. I don't know what enlightened is. He never talked about enlightened. He really wouldn't talk about enlightened. But whatever it was, I liked it. Whatever it was, It felt really real to me. It felt like he had an understanding of reality that connected him with everything and that allowed him to accept everything just as it is.

[25:25]

Just as it is. There was some kind of phrases that he used a lot, like, perfect just as you are, or we have everything we need, or complete, lacking nothing, or, and this not one, not two. The not one, not two I remember hearing over and over again because it was always a puzzle to me about what it meant. But any of the things that we think about in terms of duality, anything like that, any separation, he would say, not one, not two. It's not that they're identical. It's not that self and other are identical like, you know, a bowl of mush, you know.

[26:33]

But it's not that they're separate. So our practice is to is to continually try to experience directly. What the reality of our life is? What is this life force that we express? What is this, you know, Why did we come sit down on a cushion, you know? What made us do that? Whose big idea was that?

[27:38]

I mean, I don't think many of us sit here for five days because we think it's a good idea because we can get a lot better ideas, probably. There's something, there's something, I can't say what it was when I first sat down on the cushion that made me feel, oh, Something It was not in my head because in my head this was a really weird activity to be taking up It doesn't make any sense, you know, I mean if you if you try to think about it logically or something, what's the sense of it? But if you feel what your response to it is there's some kind of sense there And it feels very trustworthy. Whatever it is that brings me here to sit on this cushion feels very trustworthy.

[28:48]

I mean, I used to... Maybe some of you are still doing it. When I used to sit, the first few sessions I sat, I used to go, immediately following session, to Fenella Steam Baths up on Market Street. Is it Fenella? Anyhow, there was an old, an old steam bath up on Market Street that had been there for, built by some Finns along around the turn of the century. all the fires had old cobblestones from from San Francisco early streets in there because they were a particular kind of stone that would hold the heat without cracking and unless I think was in heaven Anyhow, you immediately would go up there and have a massage and and the sauna, you know and I would sit in the

[29:59]

in the Zendo thinking about my sauna. Because the reason that I brought that up was because I was about to say, and I said, that's a lie. I was about to say something about sitting on the cushion. But nowadays, when I'm sitting on the vision, I really don't... mostly don't think of anything I'd rather be doing, but those days I used to think, boy, I'd really like to be over with it and the sauna. But it is true that as I continue this practice, There just doesn't seem to be anything else that I really want to do. I don't know what I'm doing here, but there isn't something else I'd rather be doing.

[31:06]

Maybe it's like that. I don't know what that's got to do with it all, but that's what came out of my mouth, so there it is. So when you find that you're somehow separated from yourself by your thought process, It's usually thoughts are what separate you from where you are. One useful way to bring yourself back together is to bring your thoughts to, your attention to, just what's happening right now.

[32:18]

And breath, of course, is one of the things that's happening right now. That could be a pain in your knee. It could be something that's happening right now. It's okay. Give it your full attention. Give it your total devotion. Yeah. I love you, knee. You're my knee. You're part of me. Nice knee. Because if you say, God, I hate you. Get away from here. You know, what's... I mean, it's just going to set up a whole lot more tension, you know? Ted Brown used to say, on his knees with heart to say, you're going to hurt me like that? Well, take that. I'm done. It just didn't help. So whatever it is that takes you away from

[33:22]

right where you are. Include it. Bring it here. If you have some big emotion that comes up and you think it's connected with something that happened yesterday, never mind getting caught up in the thoughts about what happened yesterday. Pay attention to the big emotion that's here now. What's it like? What's the physical sensation? How's breath? How's posture? Is there tension somewhere? Is my jaw clenched? Am I squinting? What's happening? What's actually happening right here and now? Never mind what happened yesterday and forget about what I'm going to do about it tomorrow. What's happening right here and now?

[34:27]

Bring yourself back to this very one. Just this one. Just this one includes whatever comes up in your mind. But don't go chasing around about it and chasing it out the window and down the road. Just stay right here with what's happening right here.

[35:34]

Probably it's time for, it's too late for questions? Did I talk too long again? We have a couple of minutes. Are there any questions? A few weeks ago I got into a discussion with a friend concerning social change and where mythicism comes in. there, and then come to Zendo, and then figure out what it's all about. I was trying to tell my friend how wonderful this practice is, and how in doing this, hopefully, with social change, I could come to that out there. But I was stumbling, and had to give it to Camille Sengain-Assad. making sure he's talking for just as long.

[37:07]

I mean, it forces him to translate too well. Yeah. Well, just from my own experience, I had... What I found was that I was fighting for peace. You know? I mean, that's what I was doing. And I mean, actually, we use that expression politically. You know, it's fight for peace. You know, what are you doing? Like, how can peace come out of that? And what had happened just before that experience with the riot squad policemen was I had gone out to San Francisco State where they were having a student strike and had been quite violent the day before and there'd been an appeal by leaders of the strike police for members of the community to come out and interpose themselves between police and students to prevent further violence.

[38:14]

So I went out there, you know, supporting the strike. My son was one of the strikers. He was in jail the night before, actually. And I got out there and I was kind of spent the morning there before the kind of planned confrontation of a rally that was illegal and blah blah. And I was kind of watching what was happening and so there were pickets and there were jocks taking pictures of pickets getting in the way of people going into their classes and then there were, then there were strikers who came along and started a fight with the jocks and took their cameras and smashed them. You know, there was a lot of kind of violent interactions between you know, and I was watching this and saying, where's my side? You know? Because my actual, my political activism had come from earlier days when there wasn't so much confrontativeness and there was a black student strike and there was just a lot of anger and rage in the whole thing.

[39:25]

And I was already feeling like, I don't know what side I'm on. I mean, I... So, something had started to change before the actual confrontation of what's happening here. You know, there's not any real... Given my sort of non-violent preferences, you know, there wasn't really, I mean, up until then I had seen the world in terms of good and bad, you know? My side's the good side and the other side, you know, whoever doesn't agree with me is the bad side, pretty much, right? I knew what was right, you know, right and wrong, black and white. I mean, I'd seen the world completely dualistically, just completely, from very early on. It was very much black and white because my father had been a civil rights activist in the South in the 30s.

[40:28]

And we'd had crosses burned in the yard and we had the house shot into and, you know, he was taken out and beaten up and left for dead, which he survived for a few years but actually died from the sequelae of. So I had a real strong sense of right and wrong and good and bad from all of that. But it didn't include violence as being on the good side. So there I was. I was in a state of really quite a confusion there before this event happened. And I think that's sort of one of the things that made me open to seeing things in a different way than I'd seen them before. I don't know. It was a very heightened situation altogether for me. in which in which it happened, but You know some sort of totally concentrated state of mind by the time the confrontation happened So it doesn't happen just you know Concentration that kind of concentration that allows some clarity doesn't just happen on the cushion.

[41:51]

It can happen in any very intense situation We make an intense situation in cechine, right? We construct a situation of extreme intensity. That is, if we want to have some clarity, we're very intense about how we fit cechine. I don't mean tense, but I mean we keep turning our energy toward sitting immobile. Because we can't do it, right? But we keep trying. So we keep bringing our full energy back to just this breath. We keep intensifying that by trying to be more and more still. And in that intensity sometimes clarity will present itself. I mean, you know, it's like grace, you know.

[42:52]

All we can do is be ready for clarity. We can't make it happen. This isn't speaking to your question, really. In the meantime, there's people being oppressed. The government, you know. And we're going to fix it. And we're going to fix it. This is my fixing it. And I turned around and looked at myself and said, you know, I have to fix this first. I can't do anything. This instrument won't fix anything. This instrument is just rushing around, you know, just rushing around making trouble, you know? When, you know, and I think the reason I feel that way is because when I saw somebody like Suzuki Koshu who had really worked on on clarifying himself, everybody who was around him felt great.

[43:56]

He didn't go around and say, you should feel peaceful, you should feel settled on yourself and at home, you should feel good about yourself. It wasn't sort of like, you should anything. He didn't should anything. I never heard him say should once. He said, you are a Buddha. or you're perfect just as you are, or you're completely acceptable. They didn't say you should anything. And I was spending my life saying you should do this and you shouldn't do that. To everybody else, I mean, I knew how everybody should do their life, you know, they should, right? And, you know, including governments and so forth. We live in a world which is created by all of us. And we share the karma of our times. And there is violence created by violence, and there's violence created by greed, and there's oppression created by greed.

[44:59]

And we can try to work on our own, but we really can't do much about others' greed, hate, and delusion. except offer them some way to do something about it themselves. And we can... Thich Nhat Hanh's approach to Buddhism is very much an engaged Buddhism. But he begins with, you've got to be peace. And then you can engage in a peaceful way, in a way that from your unified body and mind inspires peace.

[46:02]

You know, when he says, call me by my true names, he's saying, I am the 12-year-old who was raped by the sea pirate, and I am the sea pirate. And until you can include the sea pirate or the oppressors, you know, you can't do anything to really change the situation. That's how I understand what this teaching has to do with social action. Now I guess my time is up.

[46:45]

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