So here we are, it's third day. We're all getting tenderized. I was just reading a book which I read years ago and haven't read for a long time by Sawaki Kotoroshi called Approach to Zen. I don't know, excuse me, by Uchiyama Roshi, a disciple of Sawaki Kotaroshi's. I think of Uchiyama Roshi as kind of an uncle of mine because Joshin-san, my sewing teacher, was also a disciple of Sawaki Kotaroshi and a Dharma sister of Uchiyama Roshi and practiced with him for many, many years and took care of him when he was ill. both Sawaki Kotoroshi and Uchiyama Roshi. And I love his just simple, direct, straightforward way of talking and I couldn't resist it.

[01:09]

I brought it to read some of you. Some of it to you maybe hoping it would arouse your interest to read the whole thing yourself because I can't sit up here and read the whole thing to you. I just... Some of you may know Refining Your Life which is a more recently published book of his with lectures and translation and commentary of the Tenzo Kyokun, the Dogen Zenji's instructions to the head cook. So you may already appreciate his just very direct and straightforward way of talking about this practice and his devotion to practice. When Sawaki Kodoroshi was dying, he asked Uchiyama Roshi to be the abbot of Antaichi. And he said, I can't be Abbot. I don't know anything about anything but Zazen. You know, I don't know anything about services. I don't know anything about rituals. I don't know anything about ceremonies. I don't like any of that stuff. I don't want to do any of that stuff. All I know is Zazen.

[02:09]

He says, fine. Just you be Abbot and do Zazen. So part of what he describes in this book, which I guess I didn't really appreciate at the time I read it, He talks a lot about Zazen and it's sort of four Westerners and two Westerners. His temple is one of the few which has welcomed Westerners in Japan. And this book is a response to or speaking to the Westerners whom he met and kind of responding to how to describe Zazen to a person who comes from our tradition, you know. So I really recommend it. And I'm sure it must be in the library here, although it's 10 or 15 years old, I guess.

[03:10]

But he describes it on Taiji Sesshin, you know. He calls it a Sesshin without toys. Everybody faces the wall, including him. There is zazen, kin-hin, and meals. Period. There's no dokusan, there's no kyo-saku. He faces the wall along with everyone else. He's happy to talk to anybody about zazen before sesshin or after sesshin, but every month they have a five-day sesshin in which everybody sits and that's that. Nothing else happens. Right after the meal they have kin-hin. They have a 30 minute bathroom break somewhere in the day. And it's just all up to you, you know. But he talks about Zazen as the self settling itself on the self or the self taking care of the life of the self. And it's just completely up to each person to do their own practice.

[04:16]

And it's just kind of mind-blowing to think about. It's a shame like that, isn't it? I mean, I want to try it somewhere sometime, but I've got to find somebody who's willing to do it with me. He just talks about the kind of trips that you can't get on. He says, for instance, we don't have Kiyosaku because it's sort of like, because you can trip out on it, you know. You're sitting there. You're bored to death. You know, nothing but Zazen all day. And no talking and no lectures and no... no doksan, no nothing. So somebody gets up to carry the stick and then he gives you something to talk about, you know. Oh, I mean, he probably thinks there's something wrong with my... there's nothing wrong with my posture. I mean, even if he wanted to hit me, he couldn't hit me. There's nothing wrong with my posture. Just gives you something to talk about, you know. Just... just starts all that... all the wheels going. So, there's... there's this seshin with that... any distractions except the ones you bring up yourself and so after a while you take care of them yourself.

[05:22]

Anyhow, that's his theory. He says, I did the first session of this kind in 1964 after having done many kinds of sessions and now that's all we do in on Tai Chi. I'm a far out. That is really... It's fascinating. I mean, I hear I'm all worried about taking care of people all the time and Sashina's about taking care of everybody and Sashini's thing. Sashina's about everybody taking care of himself or herself. That's what it's about. That's what we're doing here. It's for each one of us here taking care of ourself. And we can trust ourself. We can trust our life to ourself. Anyhow, I want to just read you a few passages so you get a little sense of how he teaches and maybe you'll be inspired to read the book.

[06:29]

He says Zazen, the Zazen we do is not something at which we succeed only when we strictly maintain our total concentration and perfect posture. The purpose of Zazen is not to decrease delusion and desire and finally to extinguish it completely. In Theravada Buddhism, the complete extinction of delusion and craving is called nirvana. And Zazen is done in search of this. But if one takes this kind of enlightenment to be the truth of human life, then this is nothing but saying that the truth of life is not life. However, because in Theravada Buddhism the cravings in human life are the cause of suffering, one extinguishes them and seeks the bliss of nirvana. But isn't seeking to get rid of pain and to gain the bliss of nirvana a desire and craving? Actually, this too is desire, and just because of that, the one who is practicing is in self-contradiction and must suffer.

[08:07]

And because of this, there are the words The practice of the Buddhas and the patriarchs is completely different from the way of Theravada. In a sutra it is said, well, never mind this, this is that particular line, I don't like it. Shall I say sectarianism? The zazen of the Buddhas and ancestors, the zazen of true life is not like this. Because desires and cravings are actually a manifestation of the power of life, It's simply no good to hate them and try to extinguish them. But on the other hand, if as a result of this we are pulled around by desire and craving and chase after it, then life becomes fogged over. The important thing here is that we don't cause life to be fogged over by thought. Rather, we should see all thoughts, desires, and so forth as things on the foundation of life. Let them be as they are and still not be dragged around by them. It's not a matter of making great effort not to be dragged around by desire.

[09:15]

One just wakes up and returns to the reality of life. As applied in Zazen, this means that even if various thoughts occur to you, they will all vanish by waking up to Zazen and returning to your posture and breath. And then he quotes Jung Chia's Shodokan, which I don't know. He says, neither try to eliminate delusion nor search for what is real. This is because ignorance, just as it is, is the Buddha nature. This worldly body itself, which appears and disappears like a phantom in this world, is nothing other than the reality of life. When you actually wake up to the reality of life, there is not any particular thing which you can point to and say, this is it. That's the end of the quote. Even in the case where one is completely off the track and things develop to the point like a vivid figure of some thought or delusion, it will disappear instantly when one wakes up to Zazen.

[10:22]

The person who is himself doing Zazen is really made to experience with his whole body that thoughts are nothing but empty comings and goings without any real body. But this cannot be easily understood if you do not actually practice Zazen. To say that you cannot realize this without doing Zazen is an extremely self-assuming expression. But the reason I say so is this. Usually, we're quite unable to recognize that what we think about in our heads is nothing but empty comings and goings. We plunge our heads too far into our thoughts and live too much in the world of thought. Once we think of something that we want or like, we assume that the simple fact that we think we want it or like it is the truth. Then, thinking that because this idea is the truth, we ought to seek it, we chase after it everywhere and end up developing greed. Also, once we think of something we hate or dislike, we assume that the simple fact that we think we hate it or dislike it is the truth.

[11:27]

Then, thinking that because this idea is the truth we ought to follow it, we chased after the idea until we finally turn it into anger. In other words, the activity of our everyday lives is almost all the result of chasing after ideas like this. We cause a vivid image to become fixed and then even more importance is placed upon this fixed delusion and desire. We only act by being carried away by delusions and desires. And so forth and so forth. Almost all people in societies throughout the world behave by being carried away by desire and delusion. Just because of that, the Zazen which we do comes to have a great significance. When we wake up in Zazen, we are truly made to experience the fact that all the things which are developed in our thoughts may vanish in an instant. In other words, we almost always stress the content of our thought, but when we wake up, we wake up to the reality of life

[12:39]

and make this reality of life our center of gravity. It is then that we are made to realize that all the desire and delusions within our thoughts are nothing but empty comings and goings without any real body. When this kind of desire and experience becomes a real part of us, even in our daily lives, We will not be carried away by the comings and goings of lifelike images. We will be able to wake up to our own lives and begin completely afresh from the reality of life. Gosh, I mean, I can't say anything better than he says it. Is it alright with you if I read a little bit more of this? Then are desires, delusions, thoughts, and such all things which primarily do not exist and should be denied?

[13:43]

This is not at all so, because even thoughts which produce desire and delusion are manifestations of the power of life. However, if one continues the thought and is carried away by desire and delusion, life is obscured and stifled. When we wake up to the presence that we, he's referring to a diagram, when we wake up to the reality of Zazen, and from this standpoint of waking up, we can see that thoughts, desires, and delusions are the scenery of life. If it's during Zazen, they're the scenery of Zazen. There is scenery only where there's life. There's no scenery where there's no life. While we are living in this world, there will be happiness and unhappiness, favorable conditions and adverse conditions, interesting things and boring things. There will be pleasant times and painful times, times to laugh and times to be sad. Really, these are all the scenery of life.

[14:45]

Because people plunge into the scenery of life or carried away by it and end up running helter-skelter, they become frantic. Even though various lifelike images appear to us during Sazen, we can see the scenery of life for what it is by waking up to our concentration and posture. Well, I can't read the whole book. Anyhow, I think you can see that it's... a very cogent discussion of zazen and its... and how it relates to our daily life and how this... how this zazen is just settling our life on... on itself. This expression of... of Karagiri Roshi's, which I like so much, to settle the self on the self and let the flower of your life force bloom.

[15:52]

um, to trust yourself completely to the self, to this, um, to this vastness of ourself which we often find obscured by our continuing thoughts. And how we do it is just to stay with this breath and this posture, moment after moment, hour after hour, day after day, you know. Our whole life to stay with ourself, to keep coming back to ourself. to just get pushed right up against the wall until we give up our struggle with ourself.

[17:09]

You know, I... I hesitate to talk about koans as if I really understand them, but anyhow, in the Record of Tungshan, There's a story about Dungshan wandering in the mountains and meeting an old monk living in a very remote part of the mountains. I think it was called Lungshan, Dragon Mountain, or sometimes called Hidden Mountain. And they had this conversation about, you know, there are no roads or paths here, you know, how did you get here? And there's this whole conversation about that. And, you know, Deng Xian has met this monk in the mountains, and he pays him some respect, sort of perfunctorily. And they have this conversation. At some point, he said to him, well, you know, why do you stay here in the mountains?

[18:17]

You know, what makes you want to stay here in this mountain? He said, well, I saw two clay bulls fighting. and they fell in the ocean. And since then, fluctuations have ceased. And the story said, Dung Shan then paid his respects with greater decorum. So, I don't know what he was talking about when he said he saw two gley bulls fighting, but it brings to me, anyhow, the image of this you know, having this dualism of, you know, this struggle between small self and big self or any dualism, actually any dualism. This made-up clay bowls, you know, struggling with each other until they just fall into the ocean and disappear.

[19:22]

And we have to go through the struggle until we give it up. Nobody can do it for you, and nobody else can give it up for you, and nobody can tell you it's a good idea to give it up. I mean, people can tell you it's a good idea to give it up, but so what they tell you, you know? It's really the self taking care of the self. And it's really nobody else can do it. There are two things. You can do it. You can do it. And nobody else can do it. Both you need to know. And other people can encourage you and offer you the opportunity and we can all get together like this and help each other by having a session where we can work on it together. But even though we're all working on it in the same room, we're all working on it one at a time.

[20:25]

We're each one working with our own self. This one, just this one is sitting sashimi. And we make it possible for all of us to do that by coming together and doing this. Pretty hard to do it by yourself. pretty much impossible. The encouragement of everyone doing it together is what makes it possible, you know. And people preparing meals for us and bringing them to us in the zendo so we don't each have to go do it ourselves. And somebody keeping time for us and, you know, all of the people doing all of the things that it requires to make a session go. And each of us participate in it, but It takes all of us to make it happen. So a tremendous amount of what comes up for me every time I sit a long sitting, you know, after the struggling, you know, and so forth, is a feeling of gratitude.

[21:42]

It's a feeling of gratitude to I remember my experience of Tongariro at Tassajara, which is not like Sesshin in that you just sit, there are no bells, and there's nothing. It's more like the Sesshin that he's describing, you know. You're just there, and it's all up to you. It's at a certain point, I became aware of other people outside the zendo, going around taking care of Tassajara while I was sitting there, you know. And I had kind of been made aware of this a little bit because I'd brought a long letter from my daughter from Japan to her good friend who was there and was one of the staff at Tassajara. And she'd had it for several days before Tangario started, and I asked her if she'd read it yet. No, she hadn't had time to read it, but she'd been too busy.

[22:44]

And somehow that thought occurred to me as I was hitting Tongariro. All these people are so busy. And what they're doing is they're making it possible for me to sit here. And I began feeling really grateful to all of the people outside of Tongariro who were making it possible for me to sit. And then that gratitude just began to go back to all the, you know, to Suzuki Roshi who had brought this practice from Japan and then all the way through the lineage of Everything that had happened that made it possible for me to be sitting here now It was just an overpowering. I just started to cry with a sense of gratitude for this opportunity It was not at all what I expected But it's been my experience throughout this practice some deep sense of gratitude for for this practice being here for me to do it.

[23:49]

And it's part of what gives me the certainty that I have that there's nothing in the world that I want to do more than trying to keep making this practice available There just isn't anything, there just isn't any other game in town for me that's worthwhile. So this sense of gratitude just fills me sometimes. I mean, my gratitude to each one of you for sitting. I could sit up here, it wouldn't be the same thing. I mean, I could sit all by myself, but it requires all of us making this effort together, somehow, to bring Sachin alive. To make it possible for any one of us to really settle on himself or settle on herself.

[24:59]

Settling on yourself, and can you trust this self. I mean, if you just give up all of your... all of your list of conditions that you have that, well, I'll settle on myself when I come up to this mark and this mark and this mark and this mark, then it'll be okay. I'll accept myself that way. If you just give up your list of conditions and accept yourself right now, as you are, completely, this moment, can you trust that? Will it be okay? Will you just run amok in the world? Can you trust your fundamental intention? Can you trust that you are Buddha right now? Can you trust this Buddha nature? That you're not either gonna run amok and trample all over everybody else and you're not going to

[26:11]

be trampled over by everything in the world that you have to defend yourself against with whatever your habits are. Can you trust yourself just to be who you are completely right now? Let's do it. Is there anything you want to talk about? Yeah. Sometimes I have the idea that when myself is settling on myself, that of involvement with the whole group, sort of a combination of what you're talking about. So I wanted to check with you on that.

[27:11]

A sense in Kim Hintz, being part of a caterpillar now, which is very lonely, and that myself is really just being part of a body that is also part of a... I think that when you become completely settled, you do notice your connectedness with everything. It's this phrase of Suzuki Roshi's that he used so much, not one, not two. You're not completely separate and independent in that sense. We're totally interdependent. The way the Buddha expressed or is said to have expressed his enlightenment experience or his awakening was something like that I awakened with all beings, with all beings, were awakened together with me.

[28:17]

So that connection is certainly there. And yet each of us is a unique expression of it. This is a little bit what we talked about. It goes back to your first lecture, the first day, where you said that we are all right just as we are, and everything is all right. And that's one kind of practice. And then there's also, I think you said, practicing with continuous effort? Yeah. Yeah. Right. OK. Thank you. I was going to say, I mean, I just got so carried away and excited. Because the other thing I was going to talk about today, what is this? To make effort when everything's okay. What does that mean? This sort of one continuous effort.

[29:25]

Suzuki Roshi used to say, you're perfect just as you are. If someone would get too complacent with that thought, he would say, well, there's always room for improvement. It's sort of like... You know, on days when you were full of self-doubt, he would be very, very encouraging. And on days when you were being kind of puffed up and proud, he would sort of knock you down a peg. He was usually very encouraging to me because I mostly had a lot of self-doubt during the early years when I was practicing with him. But one day I went to see him. It was fairly early on and I'd been practicing and I'd been counting my breath and it seemed like I'd counted every breath, you know.

[30:34]

And I was feeling real pleased with myself and I thought, Well, gosh, you know, sort of like I've mastered that, then I should go find out what's next, you know. So I went up to see him and I said, Suzuki Roshi, I can count every breath now. I don't miss a single breath in Zazen. And so what do I do next? And I was kind of expecting, oh, that's very good. He said, don't ever think that you can sit Zazen. That's a big mistake. Zazen, sit Zazen. I'd never seen that side of him before. I mean, it kind of blew me away. And he had said, thank you very much. Usually he was saying, you can do it, you can do it. But boy, that time, it was really interesting. So I've always wanted to be a good girl. And I've always wanted to be a good girl. There isn't any such thing. Um, but, but I have always, so, you know, my effort then was kind of aimed at being a good girl and doing it right.

[31:46]

Um, so then I went back, well, gosh, it's Azen, it's Azen, well, and I've had this big question, you know, what is it? What does it mean if you're already perfect just as you are, if you're already Buddha, what does it mean to make effort? I don't know. I mean, this is still my question. I keep working at it. But I keep working at it, you know. I keep sitting sides down and trying to figure out what does it mean? What is this effort we've made just to be ourselves? Why does it take so much effort just to be who we are? We keep adding so much stuff, you know? And so the effort, I think, is just to see, well, what is it that I'm carrying around extra today? Can I put it down? Now, that doesn't seem like effort to put it down, but it is effort to put it down. Because, you know, gosh, this is the me I know.

[32:53]

I'm familiar with this one. And if I put it down, can I trust that, you know? Can I trust What will happen if I don't carry around this habit and this habit and this habit? Who will I be? Who will I be? Will it still be me? I don't know. I don't know. Probably it'll be more me than it is now because what I've noticed about a lot of these habits is I'm trying to be like this person that I admire, and I'm trying to be like this person that I admire, and I'm trying to be like this person that I admire. Which, you know, I tried to be Reb for a long time. You know, I mean, I've mentioned that before. It's kind of foolish. I mean, it's really silly, isn't it? I mean, when I was a 50-year-old woman and he was a 25-year-old man, I was trying to be him. You know, and he's an athlete. Anyhow, it doesn't make much sense.

[33:55]

But he was kind of bright and shining, and gosh, I thought, wow, there's a real monk. I want to be like that. So it took me a while, but somehow I remember somebody said to me once, You know, you're really disgusting. I watched you at the Center General meeting. I watched you at the meeting. You never took your eyes off of the whole meeting. It was really disgusting. And somewhere around that time, you know, with a few remarks like that, I began to realize, you know, this is silly, you know, but besides it being ridiculous, it's sort of like nobody wants me to be Reb. You know, Reb is Reb. Right? People want me to be me. What's that? You know?

[34:59]

That was sort of the start of trying to find out what's that. It was actually very helpful for this person to say that to me. This is a person who is one of the most direct, uninhibited people I know. And she was always saying stuff like this. But it's really helpful to have friends like that. It may not be comfortable, but it's helpful. Because, in fact, It's ridiculous, and it's impossible, and it's not what practice is all about. Practice is all about being this one, just this one is. Each one of us needs to make this jewel shine. I'm getting back into my old tunes again. Oh, gosh. I don't, you know, single track, do I?

[36:02]

Anyhow. This is the Buddha we have to manifest in the world. This life, this is it. We may get another chance, another life with a different one, but this life, this is it. And how do we do it? How do we settle on this one and let it shine? And inspire others, not to be like us, but to be themselves. If you completely trust yourself and completely settle on yourself, you can be open to whatever is around you. There's nothing to, you know, there's nothing here to defend then. And so you can respond directly to what's right in front of you because you're not protecting any territory.

[37:08]

And I don't know exactly whatever can help you do that, but clearly that's not an easy thing to do, right? I mean, I think clearly we all recognize we protect territories. We have some idea of who we are. We like to have Approval and approbation, you know, we don't like to have criticism And so forth So clearly it's there's an effort involved there To let go of some of these things that you know is waiting is watch at me Okay So there is some effort there to settle on yourself Even though yourself is perfect as it is There's an effort to settle there.

[38:04]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ