Unsurpassed, penetrating and perfected karma, is rarely met with, even an undressed million compass. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I am about to taste the truth of the I'd like to make a special bow to Hozon and Ron Nestor. Ron was the first person I met at BCC and we, since 1976, so I just want to say that.

[01:05]

And Hozan, I've known for almost, whenever he arrived, 85 or whatever. So today I was thinking about letting go and what is sushi but letting go and letting go and letting go. I have a few things to let go of that I'm just gonna share because it's influencing my state of mind quite strongly. I wanna say I'm not up for this today. I'm actually up for it because I'm always grateful for the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

[02:13]

So maybe I'm just not up to it. So I'm letting go of, I'm working on letting go of the fact that I'm not up to it, and I wasn't able to do the kind of preparation that I usually do for talks. Now that might be for, we'll see. So last week, our cat died. Bella. And a lot of you know Bella because she sits Zoom Zazen every day. So many of you have seen her. Bella loved Zazen and she especially loved it during the height of the pandemic because Nancy and I sat every day and she would come running into our laps, Nancy's lap.

[03:32]

I'm getting over that. She actually spent plenty of time. But anyway, I just wanted to say that because I think a lot of you know what she looks like. And when I would have my weekly coordinators meeting on Tuesday morning, we had this habit of waking up from her morning nap and screaming. I mean, a lot of older cats like to scream at different times of day, but she had a 10, 30 to 11 slot. And so I would be on Zoom and all of a sudden, Susan knows and other people know, she would announce herself and carry on for a while. So that's one thing I really miss about her.

[04:35]

She had another scream like right at bedtime, usually. About 7 p.m. That was her schedule. So we got her when she was four weeks old. She had been rescued from a, some abandoned field in Stockton. So we got her as a foster, adoption first, and then we adopted her, but she was smaller than the palm of my hand. So we really, and she was kind of wild, a little crazy, you know, she was frightened. But anyway, she went through so many faiths and she's, she was a really courageous cat. I mean, she came up into a home where there was another cat who was the queen of the house and she cut out her, she wouldn't let anyone brush her aside.

[05:43]

So, that's really, Nancy and I are going through this. Also, I was told that We're not having any Q&As, and so I usually start to relax when the Q&A starts. So I'm thinking, how am I going to talk for an entire hour? I don't crave microphones. So, you know, I'm usually trying to get monologue, so there can be a dialogue. So we'll see. So I'm basically an anxious person. That's my edge. That's been my companion throughout my practice. So I found it interesting when Karen Kotis in her talk said that she asked Sojin, are you nervous?

[06:57]

Something like that. Are you nervous? Because he had apparently thought, oh, I have to give a talk, kind of like he hadn't spent weeks on what he was gonna say. So Hozan said, excuse me, Sojin said something like, nervous? I mean, what is that? And I had experienced a lot of anxiety during especially Sashin's, because for me, calm down, I would get more anxious. It's like all the thinking was kind of like a channel for the anxiety. So I would develop anxieties during Sashin, and I went to Sochan in Dokusan, and he didn't know what I was talking about.

[07:58]

He would say . So I do want to talk a little bit about working with fear and anxiety in practice, because that's probably what I know the most of. But I'm going to read a little bit from Sojin's talk, Teaching and Letting Go. We talk about abiding in our essential nature. The sixth ancestor, Daikaino, talks about not straying from our essence of mind. And Suzuki Roshi, saying that we should always abide in our big mind in all circumstances.

[09:06]

Observing the breath, we can see that exhaling is letting go. Inhaling is taking up. As Suzuki Roshi liked to say, is more important than inhaling. Though you can't prove that. They're equal. But he put the emphasis on letting go, on emptying out. And strangely enough, coming back to life. Exhaling. And inhaling, we inspire and resume our activity. Birth and death on the blank screen we call life. Different Buddhist practices of meditation, they don't all say, put your attention on the exhale, but we do.

[10:11]

When I started with Zen, I didn't understand that because I thought, well, our attention's steady. What difference does it make if it's the inhale or the exhale? In fact, I found the inhale easier because I could sense it more in my nostrils. It was easier for me because it was more tangible, the inhale, and the exhale almost had to be part of my imagination. I couldn't really feel it as well down in the hara. But anyway, over the years, I've come to appreciate and go as the practice. And with our zazen practice, exhaling, We pay attention to that and just... When we sit zazen, we're faced with our minds and our karma.

[11:35]

We sit down and there we are with our karma. Thoughts come up, complaints, Anticipation, some of it could be very positive. Maybe I'll get enlightened this period, or what's for lunch, you know? Anything. It's just our stuff comes up. And it's all basically habit. Our mind just goes on habits. They repeat. So what we do is we let go momentarily, whatever the thought is. So it doesn't matter at all what you might be thinking. Positive, negative, neutral. It's letting go.

[12:36]

So in the beginning, usually towards the beginning of Sashin, Our thoughts are faster. We're settling down from whatever happened before we started this, whatever happened at home when you left or the night before. There's just a lot of racing around of the mind, but slowly through our stillness and this incredible opportunity we have this week, to just sit zazen and take care of the basic necessities, eating, doing dishes, serving meals. Just having that opportunity allows us to deepen the practice of letting go. And so,

[13:42]

As the thoughts start to slow down, you'll notice, I'm sure you've noticed this, if not this sashim, perhaps in the past, that bring yourself back to your breath quite as often as the first couple of days. So, Here we are, we're creating, we're using a kind of muscle, a muscle that trains the mind to let go of things and to loosen our attachments. So I always noticed It was kind of a relief to let go of some of the things that were bothering me or frustrating me as I sat or had my mind in full view, which can be painful.

[15:03]

So when I let go, I breathed a sigh of relief and then Very often, in seemingly a nanosecond, I'd be back there. However, when you repeat this, that nanosecond widens, and the grasping, there's less grasping, letting go. dropping the grasping. Sojan always said, the big problem is yourself . So as we practice letting go over and over and that nanosecond turns into maybe

[16:10]

a few seconds, which is kind of a lot, considering how active the mind can be, or longer. That happens because we're letting go of the self. When Dogen talks about dropping body and mind, it's not that mysterious, really. Dropping body and mind really a mystery. I remember going on a long meditation retreat in the Theravada tradition. I spent the first five days replaying a screaming fight I had had. It was so awful and painful that the level of attachment

[17:13]

But slowly, that vast, there was spaciousness. I really appreciate what Karen talked about yesterday. What is the way? and ordinary mind being the way. The way might be, you know, this inner battle in the mind with someone who's not even thinking about you. And then, part of Heron read this from the koan. Quote, when you find the true way without doubt, it is as vast and boundless as outer space.

[18:29]

So how do you get from this being totally attached fight and thinking that I'm absolutely right and why doesn't she get it after 60 years? And there's that, and then there's the vast and empty space. Well, they're not that different. And I have to say, letting go isn't so much... You can't really boss yourself around and say, Okay, let go. Let go. You know, that doesn't work. So instead, we place our mind on our exhale, our breath. We find another place to set our attention.

[19:37]

One person said a few years ago, we can choose where we place our attention. So in Sushi, We put attention on what's right in front of us. The breath, zazen, the posture, walking, oreoche. It's all so beautiful when we get out of our way.

[20:43]

I remember Sotun loved orioki, and there were several, there was more than one where he gave all seven lectures on orioki, and I was mad. I thought, I didn't come here to talk about how you fold your napkin every day, and you know, which direction your set faces. because those were the kind of things I had a hard time with him saying. Why do we have to do things this way and that way and all that? Although I actually paid a fair amount of attention to it, I mostly knew how to do it all. So I was learning, but I thought, well, why does he have to talk about this, you know? But then when doing Orioki,

[21:53]

The harmony of the whole thing, the beauty of the practice comes forth for me when I basically wasn't there. Worrying about it, watching other people, concerned that, you know, do they know it and is someone going to help them? You know, just all sorts of things. Ross talked about this in his talk, Distractions from Orioki. But it's a wonderful practice of letting go. Okay, so I want to go back a little bit to my... working with anxiety. Thank you, Connie.

[22:59]

So, I started going on longer meditation retreats, more in the Vipassana tradition, because they were longer, you know? There was a place to go, and there were some I really learned a lot from, so that was part of the reason. But in Vipassana retreats, you really don't do much except sit and walk. They start quite early. They did at the time. They start about 5, end at around 10. But you don't have servers, and you don't have service at all. except evening refuges. There isn't a lot of activity like we do here. So, even though our activity is not supposed to be a distraction, we're not sitting as much in seated zazen.

[24:14]

You know, you don't cook for hours. You don't, well, basically all sitting in silence. And I never knew anyone there, rarely. So they were strangers to me and there weren't people that I could just kind of sneak an eye at, sympathetic, whatever. And you're taught that you're not supposed to make eye contact. So you're kind of doing it on your own And as my mind started falling down after quite a few days in my case, there was silence. And I had spent my life wishing for silence.

[25:16]

And when I finally got it, it scared the daylights out. Actually, not at first. At first, I was overjoyed. I felt this joy that was not like an intellectual idea. It was like a fountain. But then I had a reaction to it. It was so, for me, unheard of. When I started to think about it, I got scared. I spent about five years working on that. This fear, this open space started coming up a lot during sashim, even like a two, three day sashim. I talked to Mel.

[26:17]

He was, I'm sorry, Mel. It wasn't helpful with that, with the particular problem. And one thing I have learned with fear is it's really hard to let go of fear. I was never, I have never been able to say, you're afraid. I've been able to let go of other things more easily, like anger, say, but Fear is just so overpowering, but what I did learn is you just keep going. It's still whatever is in front of you. You just do it. Fear, no fear. So I started having images, being who I am, and in my fear states, I kept seeing this,

[27:18]

And I know that that was my imagination, my own projection of my own fear, but it kept coming up in the same way that I was in a forest faced with a lion. And that would really scare me. And I know about this. So, One day, it was the labor ace of Sheen, and we used to do it for three days, and I was the Doan, and I was sitting right there, and I was having a moment of deep silence. I felt some trepidation, and the lion was there. And I tried to sit with it, and Sojin was right there, And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I've never heard this before, he started talking and he said, quote, let the tiger in.

[28:27]

And then he repeated it, let the tiger in. Don't grab its tail. Now, I don't know what to make of that exactly, but you definitely don't grab its tail. So, to me, grabbing its tail is like trying to control it or stop it. You just can't. but I've never known what to make of that incident.

[29:27]

I told Lori about it. She remembered it. I don't know if anyone remembers it here. It was in the early 90s. That's what I remember. So anyway. I'm gonna read another little Sojin piece. Okay, he says, I do not hang on to anything. That's my secret. I believed my teacher when he said, don't get caught by anything. I really believed it. And then not only did I believe it, I started acting it out. So that's where I'm at. Don't get caught by anything. I'm able to not dwell on something. The news is what the news is.

[30:28]

My anger is what my anger is, that's all. And I am trying to do what I can to dissuade my and everyone's anxieties. I don't have much anxiety. I'm gonna die. I'm on my way. What should I do, worry about it? Everyone does this. Everyone escapes. This happens to every single person that ever lived. What should I worry about? What is there to worry about? I'm just not that kind of person. This is what I decided when I was young. I said, I want my life all the way up to the end. And when it's time to go, I go. That's part of, that's life. Life is death.

[31:32]

So we experience it every moment. Here we are. Next moment, here we are. This happens every moment. I remember that talk very well because this was towards the end of his life, and this was one of his Zoom dialogues. where he spoke to us regularly as he was dying on Zoom. And he had one stipulation about these meetings, which is, there's only one topic, birth and death. So he said, you can ask anything you want, but it has to be death. And I just remember that line, him saying, I'm on my way. Very matter of fact. So funny story that I've told before, but I haven't told it too many times, I hope.

[32:47]

So it was a Saturday morning during the work period and I was assigned to clean the bathroom. And Sojin, after our Saturday work period, I forget the order of things, but Sojin was gonna give the lecture. So I go to clean the toilet, and it's clogged. You know, it's a big mess. And I spent that whole, period in between, like that work period and the talk, just like a 30-minute zazen period, I spent the whole time trying to declog the toilet. And working, and then I looked up and everyone had disappeared. They were all going into the Zento and it was time for lecture. I thought, I should, I'm someone to help me. So I take the plunger out that I've been using for

[33:56]

ever and I'm standing in the courtyard with the plunger in the air and I'm waiting for somebody who looks like they know what they're doing to maybe help me but everyone is gone and all of a sudden I hear a door shut and a click and it's Sojin in his room and There he is walking towards Zendo and I'm standing like this with the plunger. So he says, what's the matter? And I'm apologetic and I'm saying, the toilet's clogged and I can't. So he says, well, let's fix it. He takes the plunger right from me and he goes into the bathroom and he says to me, come here. This is how you use a plunger, he's telling me. So he does it really carefully that I didn't know about.

[35:02]

So he gives me a whole lesson on how to plunge a toilet while everyone's in the Xendo waiting for him to talk. So he laughed. to do it and he wanted to correct me, which was his form of loss. So whenever you got a correction from Sojin, it was like, I love you. So anyway, and he was beaming, you know? So it didn't take that long, but he helped me. We both got the toilet fixed. And then He washed his hands and walked out. Latisha was waiting for him and he went and gave his talk. So that's an example of letting go.

[36:04]

I see you're about to relieve me with the striker. So I thought it was going to be longer than this because of no Q and A. But is this right, 45 minutes? That was, why did I worry about that? Oh, I have five more minutes. Okay, I wanted to read one more Sojin piece. This is called, this is from a different section, Transformation. Sashin is the practice of patience, great patience. The root of the word patience is the same as that of passion, both of which refer to painfulness and suffering. Patience is the ability to endure.

[37:06]

To endure the painfulness in our life is an ennobling quality. I really appreciate something that Dalai Lama said about patience. He said, patience is not waiting to get what you want. It's being present with what you have. I mean, I've had a lot of patience, and I used to think that patience was just not complaining while you wait for what you want.

[38:12]

But then I realized it has nothing to do with that. The word he used was endurance. But enduring isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean gritting your teeth. It means being present with it. And that's what it is. Sojin was talking about. I'm on my way. I'm gonna go. That's life. Pain is life. Not getting what you want is life. Fear is life. Keep going. So I'll stop. Thank you all. And I want to say that I'm really appreciative for

[39:25]

the efforts to keep this machine silent. I know that Colleen and Susan Ross, I don't know, had a lot to do with that, but thank you. That really helps us wake up minimizing distraction.

[39:55]

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