First time he called me into his office, he said, you didn't do the Kokuyo thing. You don't do the clappers right. And I said, but you know, I've never done Sesshun Kokuyo before. And he said, no excuses. Right? No excuses. So, when he called me to ask me to do this talk, I was waiting for another gentle correction. But, alas... Anyway, so, when he did ask me to speak, we had a discussion about what would be useful on Day 6 and on Enlightenment Day. And so, he said, Make it relevant to Sashin and the fact that people have been sitting here for six days.

[01:01]

Something that will be encouraging. So, I immediately thought about the fourth paramita, virja, or zest or joyful effort. And cultivating a joyful effort during Sashin. Sashin is a great teacher for us. It supports us, it challenges us physically and mentally and spiritually, and how we discern the right amount and quality of effort is a really big question that comes up in terms of our being able to sustain ourselves for Sashin and really cope with the challenges of Sashin. So then I thought, well, how is this tie in with Buddha's enlightenment? Well, it ties in really well in the sense that Hozan spoke on Thursday about the life of the Buddha and the Buddha's path to enlightenment.

[02:03]

His coming from a life of privilege and nobility, Indian nobility, with all of the privileges, and then his response to experiencing the horrors of everyday life for people in lower castes. and how they were doing what they needed to do to survive in rural India. And after witnessing the ravages of old age and sickness and death, the thought of freeing all beings from these lives of suffering arose. You might call it the spirit of awakening or bodhicitta. And it led him to abandon his life of privilege to leave his wife and new child and go off in search of how to best work to save all beings from suffering old age and death. At that time in India, the spiritual teachers were primarily Hindu and

[03:10]

believed in all manner of austerities, renunciation. It was a life of extreme poverty. Many of them went off into the forest, completely away from the world. They ate very little. They did practices of concentration that were very difficult and required really a kind of physical effort, very purposeful kinds of efforts. But he still, after five or six years, started to, he got to the point where he was eating one grain of rice a day and completely emaciated and really extremely weak. And then he finally came to the feeling that despite all of this, he hadn't overcome his mental afflictions.

[04:14]

He still had. desire, he still had aversion, he still had delusion, he was not free, he did not find that within himself through these efforts. And as Alan said, then he started self-flagellation, physically beating himself, and there were people who did that. That still didn't work, surprisingly. I've never tried self-flagellation, but I do it, I do mental flagellation instead. So he was still traveling and he came to the outskirts of Bodh Gaya in India and Alan talked about how he remembered the childhood experience of sitting under a tree and experiencing complete release and freedom in doing so and he came upon a wonderful Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, outside Bodh Gaya and he sat there and he sat there

[05:18]

I guess the rest is history. He sat there and in his years of great effort, he really did not have joyful effort. He had almost gaming idea effort. He was trying for a specific thing. He was trying these austerities to see if they worked. So there was always a kind of a gaming idea. And that's, so that's why I really wanted to talk about effort, because effort, I really want to talk about effort, right effort, and joyful effort, and effortless effort. They're all a continuum of effort. And the Buddha exerted himself in his own life to an extreme degree. And that kind of effort did not result in enlightenment. Just sitting for eight days, and Working with his mind and being able to handle that kind of a situation, that was a different kind of effort.

[06:27]

He was just sitting there, not doing anything, just sitting. So here we are on day six of the seven-day Sashin. We came to Sashin from our various lives. filled with competing priorities, demands from job, family, friends, our own striving, perhaps troubled by the influence of desire, aversion, delusion, confusion, mental afflictions. Perhaps we've been trying different approaches to find peace in our lives. But somehow, the thought arose, I've heard about a seven-day sashimi. That'd be great. I can go to a 7-Day Sashim, I leave my life, I leave my family, and all I have to do is sit in a zendo. Wow. That's really cool. Tell my friends about it. I'm going to do this 7-Day Sashim.

[07:28]

I myself came in a different way. It was like, I say this, some people will laugh. A very eventful period. They tell me that that's how my life is, but... And I actually had doubts. It was like, am I... I am really feeling used up. Will I actually... I knew that it wasn't just peaceful. So, I said, how will I actually... Will I have the energy and the will and the dedication to make the kind of effort it takes to be here? and being with whatever comes up for me. So if you can with the illusion of... Peace and harmony and all that. Soon, very soon, you start awakening in a different way.

[08:30]

You start feeling pain. Your back hurts. Your knees hurt. You start feeling maybe mental pain, mental anguish. Thoughts come up that were subliminal in your subconscious start bubbling up. Something you haven't wanted to think about. some grief, some loss comes up. And you're having to suddenly sit like Buddha did, you know, when the Mahārāja arrived, with that grief, with that loss, with that desire. And you're also asked to be harmonious with lots of different kinds of people. And you would think that would be easy. Maybe if you haven't been to a 7-Day Sushi. But people are different. We're all different. And so we look at difference when you're tired and when you're sitting quietly and someone else is snoring or someone else is noisy or you are in the kitchen and someone is

[09:37]

asked to do something and they don't do it quite the way you want them to do it, or you're working together in a project and you're more aggressively active and you think the other person is being lazy. These are kind of things we experience in Sashim. And so we have to give up our preferences. Surgeon talked about preferences. Well, Sashim is the cauldron. We have to give up our preferences. Um, we, we don't, we don't get to pick our seat like we always do, you know, and most of us come and we have a seat, right? That's kind of our tendency, our comfort place. We have our comfort place. Well, no, not only do you have to give up your seat, but you have to sit next to somebody who might be doing something, or you don't care for them or whatever. Um, you might, you might find yourself starting to be cranky or tired. And wondering, oh. This, I can't just go, what I usually do might be, okay, I'll just go to my room and be quiet and be without people.

[10:40]

No, you're tired and you still have to sit and you still have to interact with other people and you still have to do your position. So you really don't have a choice. You're here and you're stuck. So, and, you know, the other thing is what I'm saying about, oh, eating, you know, you have to eat what's given. You definitely have to eat what's given, and we privileged people are so fussy, you know, of what we will eat, what we will not eat. The porridge is too thick, the porridge is too thin. My surgeon helps you out with that if you're the cook. He has no preferences. He has no preferences. So, we come to a realization pretty soon within the first couple of days that this is no picnic. That we have to, we have to actually exert a great deal of effort. We have to use our, set our intention and our vows.

[11:43]

I'm going to stay here. I'm going to be practicing with this group of people for the benefit of this group of people. It's not about me. I really, I know it wouldn't be, you know, I wanted it to be this other way, but this is what it is. I have to say this is what it is. And it's okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. It's okay. But that takes a lot of effort. Because when you're tired, and you want to take a nap, the clappers come for work period. And you know, you think, well, maybe I'll get a nice cushy job putting stuff in envelopes. And no, you're in the garden crew, and you're going to have a lot of fun in the garden. Or you're having to do some other physical labor that requires a great amount of effort. Or you're asked to do something that actually requires you to pay attention and actually have a mind that's working, which I find that's the hardest thing for me.

[12:45]

Because my mind gets caught, gets lost sometimes in the emptiness, and I am spacey. So then I'm asked to do something that is very technical perhaps, requires some detail and attention. And I have to use everything I've got, everything I've got to be able to focus in that way. So I wanted to just very quickly talk about what is effort. The definition of effort is exertion of physical or mental power. So, I say it will take a great deal of effort to complete and live through. Also, in earnest, have an earnest strenuous or strenuous attempt. So, it's that would be an intentional effort to keep to the schedule, regardless of preferences. Another definition is something done by exertion or hard work.

[13:48]

Oh, I thought it would be easy, but kneeling in the mud to weed the garden takes a lot of effort. An achievement, such as art or literature or Buddhist study, that kind of effort Uh, could be translated in cutting through the temptations of the Mars to complete a 7 day session. That is a big effort. The roots of the word. Effort come from the Latin laborious attempt strenuous exertion. Force, impetuosity, strength, power. Force out, exert oneself. Exfortiare in Latin. Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt. That's no other. So we got it.

[14:50]

But some of these definitions really sound like the Buddha's effort, right? They're all exerting effort. with the mind of, they sound like the mind of doing something, the mind of a goal. They don't capture what we mean by right effort, and right effort as the sixth step in the eightfold path. So, what is right effort? Right effort involves actually not so much. Doing as becoming it requires. Cultivation of wholesome activities, cultivation of of morality, cultivation of uprightness, and releasing unwholesome qualities.

[15:57]

Abandoning negative states of mind. Getting rid of expectation. Getting rid of judging that arise. And learning how to sustain positive mental states. Cultivating that transformation. when we're sitting, of unwholesome emotion, negative states of mind. How do I be with that, be through that, to the point where I can let that go? So that I can, when I have something to do, I'm not carrying these negative mental states. I'm acting in an upright way for the benefit of all beings. It's an intentional. It helps us. It's developing this. This attitude. Of wholesome and beneficial action that bodhisattvas vow to accomplish, so it's avoiding.

[17:02]

Avoiding, not avoiding, because I don't want to say that. That's very un-Buddhist. It's not avoiding. It's learning how to manage negative mistakes like anger or jealousy or judgment. Those things come up. We're human beings. Those things come up. But how do I be in a group of all these people? and be harmonious with those states. It doesn't work. Whatever I do becomes tainted by these negative mind states. So, I'm doing an action or a position with a negative attitude. It is going to show in that action. It's going to show in my speech and action. So, how can I exert an effort that is according to... that is right effort? There's a story about the... the Tang dynasty monk who meditated day and night. And he thought he was practicing harder than anyone else and he was very proud of it.

[18:08]

To become a Buddhist teacher, that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to become a Buddha. The teacher picked up a tile and began polishing it. The monk said, how can you make a mirror out of a tile? And the teacher said, how can you make a Buddha by sitting? So right effort is not what we do. It's the mind that we do it with. The mind not controlled by thoughts of attainment or thoughts of being a model student. So the core question is how do we do something diligently and wholeheartedly and not get caught in gaining idea? Not get caught in judging ourselves or others. So once we have perfected that completely, we're ready to go on to joyful effort. Because we have worked with our mental states, right?

[19:12]

We have hopefully done that. You can't really have joyful effort, inspired effort with a lot of baggage. It just doesn't work. So we have to do the hard work that comes. So, Shanti Deva says that joyful effort is an enthusiasm for virtue. What is its antithesis? It is spiritual sloth, clinging to reprehensible Reprehensible craving for lounging around due to being indifferent to the miseries of the cycle of existence. Not seeing or attending to the suffering of others or to your own awakening and freedom from suffering. So it is. He also says it's it's being in just uncaring.

[20:15]

Uh, seeing despondent relatives with their eyes swollen and red with tears and their faces and on their faces, the impact of their grief. Yeah, and enthusiasm for virtue. What it is to be it's antithesis. It is spiritual sloth clean to the reprehensible apathy and self contempt. Spiritual sloth arises from indolence and craving for lounging around due to being indifferent to the miseries of the cycle of existence. Not seeing or attending to the suffering of others or to your own awakening and freedom from suffering. And he goes on to say, seeing despondent relatives with their eyes swollen and red with tears on their faces. You expect results. He's very preachy, so you have to... You expect results with no effort. While in the clutches of death, you acted like an immortal.

[21:19]

Hey, miserable one, you are destroying yourself. Norman Fisher points out that the other side of sloth, which would be busyness, is also a hindrance to joyful effort. Running around, keeping yourself busy, doing so many things to avoid actually sitting down and confronting your own resistance to awakening and your own settled mind. You think you're doing a lot of good. You think you're going to get here, [...] and really you're exhausting yourself and you're actually, it's impossible to do all these things and actually focus on your practice and practice in a meaningful way. So that's the other side of it. The other hindrance is fear. Tormented by your own vices, hearing sounds of hell and befouling your body with excrement out of fear.

[22:24]

What will you do when you are so terrified? I fear thinking I shall have to sacrifice my arms, legs and the like for countless eons. I shall be cut, pierced and burned and split open many times, but awakening will occur. But this suffering is like that of extraction and removing the pain of an embedded splinter. So we're afraid. We are so afraid of letting go of ourselves and our thoughts and who we think we are and what we think is right. Because it's really scary. We talked about fear earlier. Fear of loss of self is fear of going to hell. You know, what do I, what would I do? What would I do? And then Fisher says, joyful effort requires having the courage to go through the fear. Letting go of an egocentric self and giving wholeheartedly. And recognizing that saving well-being includes your small self, but isn't your small self.

[23:35]

So what are the benefits of joyful effort? On account of abandoning vices and accumulating merits, owing to the aspiration of the spirit of awakening, awakening, which carries away. If I want to save all beings, I must acquire many good qualities for myself and for others. It may take eons, so cultivating patience. William Fisher says it seems hard to intentionally commit to a path of good, good health, good conduct, devoting yourself to the well being of others good. And he gives some examples of how doing that actually actually focusing on 1 thing. making an effort on one thing and seeing, carefully looking what stages you go through with that one thing is really a key to getting away from the fear of the whole thing, which seems too enormous. So he gives examples like, you know, you decide you're going to go on an exercise program and you start the exercise program and you have to start slowly and then you have to build up and it hurts and you're sore

[24:46]

And you have to take time out of your day, but still you do it and still you do it. And then gradually the pain goes away. and gradually new energy comes forth in yourself so that by then you really love it and so every day you go running and you're happy when you go running. You realize the benefits of having done the work. And he uses that as a kind of a real life, you know, and obviously he's using that as a metaphor, an example for the kind of effort it takes. It seems hard. It seems like, do I have to face myself? Do I have to feel the negative, those horrible places I've been hiding. Do I have to do that? Yes. There's no getting out of it, especially when you're in Sashin. There's no exit. So then, what comes next after sort of being beaten down and feeling your fear and feeling your resistance is really making a commitment, recognizing, yes, I know it's going to be hard, but I'm really going to make an effort.

[25:52]

And he says, Shanti Davis, after first examining one's means, one should either begin or not begin. Surely it is better to begin and turn back once one has begun. So it's kind of like a really making a commitment. I am going to do this no matter what. I am going to do this no matter what. Upon completion, you must cultivate virtue, be upright and ethical, and overcome the mental afflictions of desire, pride, and self-centeredness. Raymond Fisher calls it integrity, developing integrity. And for me, that kind of means integrity is really embodying virtue, morality, and living in that way. Only that way can you continue to practice and have the energy to practice, but also how can you be of help to other people if you are not if you have not developed that integrity so that you can actually and that that efficacy to teach other people or engage other people in the same thing.

[27:00]

Shantideva also says, you develop a self-confidence by watching the benefits of your effort. So when you're dieting, you can lose weight. And when you're sitting, you can have less busy mind. When you're sitting and something is asked of you, you can just say yes without resistance. One important thing when talking about joyful effort and effort in general is just not forgetting yourself. Norman Fishers does a lot of talking about this. Don't forget yourself. All beings includes you. Sometimes when we think we're going to commit ourselves to a path of saving all beings, we forget. and we're going to drive ourselves just like the monk driving himself or just like Shakyamuni Buddha driving himself to the point of near death or near exhaustion for the rest of us from trying to do too much. That saps our energy and that takes away our ability to help all beings.

[28:17]

So it's really good to develop a practice, it seems to me, With what mind am I doing this? Am I doing this with a mind of generosity, of intention for the well-being? Who's doing it? Who's doing it? What is the being? What is the being? Who's the being that's doing it? So, that kind of leads me to effortless effort. Effortless effort is effort without partiality. When you're assigned a position, totally engage in it. It's really not who is engaging in it, there's just engaging in it.

[29:26]

You drop judging mind and gaining mind. One of Shanti Deva's teachings was, an action is performed for the sake of happiness, yet happiness may not occur. So the goal is the goal, it's not a goal, it's the effort itself, which is the activity. The activity is not producing something like this, an image that if you don't get the outcome you want, you failed. If I didn't give my full effort to it, then I need to think about that. If I give my full effort to it, that's all I can do. That's all I can do. If I just last for the seven days and I really made a full effort and I have to sit in a chair

[30:27]

you know, a crawl. I've made a good effort. I've stayed here. I've stayed with my mental afflictions. I've stayed with my emotional conditions. I've stayed with everybody. I've worked together with everybody. And somehow out of that effort of all of us working together, just doing. So, and really starting to develop what Dogen talks about in the Four Methods of Guidance, identity action. So it's not about me. So when you're cleaning the bathroom, you're just cleaning the bathroom. It's not about what you think about that job. That was my biggest wake up during when I was Juso. Cleaning the bathrooms. that was not something I had a preference for. But after about the fourth or fifth or sixth time, I really, it was a great thing.

[31:30]

I just was cleaning the bathroom. I got really engaged in the little crevices around the windows and, you know, the little thing in the floor between tiles and, oh, maybe I can get something out here no one's cleaned before. But I really was very interested. I really just found, okay, that's what I'm doing. That's what I'm going to be doing for six weeks, cleaning bathrooms. So I just became, became cleaning the bathrooms. There wasn't any goal or any attachment at all to that after a while. So really, when that's happening, there is no actor. There's just acting. There is just effort. There is just joyful effort. Joyful effort is happening. And we see it all around us, right? When you see a cook, some cooks are joyful sometimes and not joyful other times. But if you go into the kitchen and there's really effort happening and harmony, you see, whoa, look at this.

[32:31]

There's just cooking happening. There's just a bunch of beings and cooking happening. When you're cutting the carrots, just cut the carrots. There's no carrot, there's no meat, there's just cutting. So this is really the totally engaged effort of effortless effort. Effortless effort becomes joyful just because of that. Because how can you not be joyful if you're not carrying a lot of baggage into your activity? You have no expectations. All I'm doing is weeding. Look at that weed! Oh, oh, now that looks nicer. Oh, you know, just actually not even thinking that actually not even thinking that if you if you're really doing it. You're not thinking that but yes, yet it's in your consciousness. You're doing some benefit for for in such a being. That benefit is happening, benefit is happening. And that merit that we generate, and we generate a lot of merit during Sashin, doing these things when we're doing it, which we happily give away and dedicate to all beings.

[33:40]

It's not our own merit. It's not the project I just completed that was really great. It's not how perfectly I did that. It's not about perfection. It's about effort. And if someone's sincere and engages fully, then they're there. When the effort becomes just a flowing from one activity to the other. Okay, the bell rings. Okay, I'm going. That kind of effort is very different from the striving and the crawling and the craving and the dissatisfaction. So hopefully, people have gotten a taste of that during sashimi. And if not, you still have a day and a half. But don't have any goals. It may or may not happen, but you may just have glimpses, and that's enough. You may have one experience cutting a carrot, and that experience can be really life-changing.

[34:46]

It really can. So the expectations don't have to be great. Just concentrate on something and give it your whole heart. So, I don't know if we have any time for questions, but...

[35:01]

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