I appreciated our effort today during the new meal to put some energy into making our action more alert and more intense. Even though, even though it's a little bit, felt a little bit rushed, you know, our meal felt a little bit rushed, but because we were trying to make everything work very closely, But if we continue to have that mind or that attitude, pretty soon our meal will run very smoothly again.

[01:17]

We won't feel rushed, even though it may take ten minutes less. It'll feel very comfortable. In Soto Zen practice, we emphasize, we put a lot of emphasis on sitting Zazen. And Zazen is a kind of do-nothing activity in the sense of accomplishment, in the usual sense. And so it's pretty easy to, unless you counter that inactivity with activity, it's pretty easy to fall into a kind of lethargic feeling, or slowed down feeling, or unresponsive feeling.

[02:27]

moody or spaced out. I think spaced out describes it pretty well, all of those qualities pretty well. So we have to make a special effort to keep our self-alert and keep our activity fresh and keep our energy moving. So we fall into two extremes. One extreme is sitting really still for long periods of time. And the other extreme is inactivity, to really be active. And then of course there is the activity that falls in between those two extremes.

[03:29]

which is probably our everyday activity. But during Sashin, our active activity, the moving around part, the thinking part, should have a crisp, strong quality, fresh, strong quality. an alert quality. So, we try to put that quality into whatever we do. When we have a work period during Sishing, we feel that energy, a certain kind of energy that is like active samadhi energy. And you notice it when you start to work and your concentration is very focused.

[04:43]

And you find yourself working at a certain kind of pace that's very focused. But it's also, at the same time, easy to get kind of spaced out. So, we have to put some kind of boundary or framework around our activity so that it finds some direction and channel that energy. Zazen itself, sitting itself, is more free energy. It's like really letting go. We just let our energy go. But in order to do that, we have to have this very strong form.

[05:46]

We have to have a very strong form in order to let that free energy just go completely. I think I described it once before. I have this image of molten steel. When you pour molten steel, you have to have a very strong bucket for it, to contain it. And that's, our zazen is like that. We put ourselves into a very strong form. so that we can let our life force go. And then in our activity, our life force takes the shape of the various activities that we do. And so we try to direct that in a way that makes us move together harmoniously.

[06:58]

So in our meal we like to have everything working kind of is like a clockwork, you know, like a clock works. All of the movements are coinciding with each other to make a smooth, harmonious activity. So we put a lot of focus on the meal, how we do the meal. And we keep trying to make it work without any gaps, so that it's a one continuous activity. Like a dance, you know.

[08:01]

Soto Zen is kind of like a choreographed ballet. The form of our practice, the formal part of our practice is like that. And if you put yourself into the play, you can enjoy playing the part. If you're a server, you enjoy walking with the tray and you feel your movement on the floor and how you hold the objects and how you, when you get down and how you respond to the person that you're serving. And when I used to serve, I always used to enjoy that very much. I always felt like I was in a ballet. And I would always take great pleasure in getting up, going down, and then getting back up, and feeling the body movements, and turning around, and going to the next person, and so forth.

[09:15]

It's a kind of play that you have with your... kind of great, pleasurable play, even just allowing yourself to go through these movements. And when it works smoothly and everyone is involved in it, it's just like a wonderful kind of ballet. So in order for that to happen, everyone has to be completely alert so that when their part comes, they know how to play it. So the more alert everybody is during the meal, and the more ready to respond, the more it comes off.

[10:23]

So the head server has a big part has to be aware of what's the interaction between the serving part and the being served part, between that room and this room. And always make sure that the whole, he's kind of like the director. And he keeps the whole thing running very smoothly without missing anything. So I'm describing it kind of dramatically, a little maybe too dramatically, but it's like that. It's like it has that flavor. And when we participate in it that way, There's a certain satisfaction.

[11:27]

Service is the same way. It's kind of very formal. And it's kind of like a little drama, too, a little play. And it's ceremonious. But it's not ceremonious in the way that... It's ceremonious, but it's not a ceremony. When you read the sutras, Buddhist sutras, Buddha says, you won't get any merit from doing ceremonies, so don't do ceremonies. But you can't understand what he means.

[12:41]

You won't understand what he means unless you understand the background of what he's talking about. In India, in Buddha's time, the Vedic practices were very popular. Most people practiced the Vedic practices. And the Vedic practices were presided over by priests, a priesthood. And the priesthood was the mediator between the deities and between Brahma and the people. And the practice of the priests was to perform ceremonies. And the people would participate in the ceremonies. And the ceremonies were meant to... How can I say?

[13:48]

by performing the ceremony and participating in it, you would gain heavenly merit. So the priesthood was in this hierarchical position, which of people who performed the ceremonies for the populace in order for them to gain merit in various realms. So the ceremonies are very, very important. But in Buddhism, Buddha, of course, rejected all those kinds of ceremonies, which bestowed merit in the various worlds, the various heavens. And so when he's talking about ceremonies, this is what he's talking about. So there's a little bit of a distinction between ceremonies in that sense of the word and doing something ceremoniously.

[15:17]

So Soto Zen practice is very, very formal. Very formal. Rinzai practice is more, a little more rough. Less Buddhist in a way. more Taoist, maybe more Chinese style, whereas Soto Zen is more Buddhist and maybe less Chinese. It's hard to say exactly, but You know, the Soto practice, we use Oryoki in a very formal way, as we've been doing. And Rinzai practice, they use a different kind of eating bowl.

[16:24]

Ji-hatsu, it's called. And there's a spoon and chopsticks and just a little bag and some bowls. But it's much less formal. You don't have all the formality of the Soto Zen eating. And when you wipe your bowls, we have a Setsu, which we wipe our bowls in, but they wipe their bowls with their fingers and then lick off their fingers. I think a lot of us would prefer that. Kind of a little more crude practice. I myself, you know, favor more kind of informal, crude practices. Right? But I appreciate our Soto Zen practice and since this is the practice I have, you know, I do it

[17:32]

If I had happened to meet a Rinzai teacher, then that's what I would be doing. And I would be very pleased to be doing it. I'd probably look at Soto Zen. All of those guys are so ceremonious. But I enjoy our Soto practice very much. And I remember at Tatsahara, when I was shuso, that was in 1970, Tatsugami Roshi came from Japan to set up the monastic system at Tassajara. Before, Tassajara started in 1967.

[18:37]

And a lot of people went to Tassajara, not knowing quite what it was or what to do. They had some idea, but it was pretty loose and kind of rough. And just enough system to hold it together as a kind of practice place. In 1970, Tatsugami Roshi was invited to come to Tassajara to set up a monastery. He was the Ino at Eheji Monastery for 10 years. he came to set up a monastic system at Tassajara. And I was his first shuso when he arrived. And so he was my teacher.

[19:41]

And little by little, he introduced the practices during that training period that are what that is the common practice in Zen Center now, the whole system of practice. And I remember we used to practice timing the meal. Every meal we would time the meal to see how fast it was going. And he wanted everything done very quickly, very attentively, mindfully, in such a way that you'd forget everything else except what you were doing. No time to dream. No time to think about anything else. No time to wonder.

[20:43]

You had to pay very close attention all the time. So it became a kind of practice in mindfulness. And if you made a mistake, you noticed it. So it really kept everybody on their toes and kept everybody aware. And also, I cut down the time of the meals, and everybody's grateful for that because, you know, you sit sashimi during the meal, your legs really hurt a lot. And you're wondering when it's going to be over. And that's OK. So, if we don't have that kind of quality in our activity,

[22:05]

then we tend to get slower and slower, and pretty soon we get more spaced out. You can notice that this is a pattern that always happens. We tighten up the service. Our chanting gets tightened up. the way we operate gets put into a certain tight form. And then we do that for a while, but then pretty soon it starts to slow down. And then it starts to slow down more and more. After about a month or so, we're doing everything very slowly and kind of dragging around. And then we notice that, and then we tighten it up again. Don't drag out the sentences so much. Don't drag out the gathas so much. Because after a while, when you start doing something very slowly, you don't notice the spaces.

[23:12]

And you can space something out, more and more, but you don't notice that that's happening. But the whole thing is going to... So in order to have some feeling of rhythm, some feeling of revving yourself up, you have to tighten everything up. So we do that with a service and we do it with a meal. And it keeps us, our energy higher and keeps us more alert. It doesn't give us time to fantasize and wander around. Rinzai Zen is more like that. They put a lot of emphasis on that kind of activity all the time. In Rinzai Zen, after Zazen, everybody stands up just like that.

[24:18]

They go... This is Soto Zen. In Rinzai Zen, everybody's already up. I don't know how they do it. They sit shorter periods. Generally they do. 30 minute periods. 35, sometimes longer, sometimes an hour. Actually, they vary the periods more often. Chikijitsu is a person who is in charge of the sitting, timing the sitting. So whatever he wants to do, he does. If he wants to let the zazen go for an hour, he does it. If he wants it to be 20 minutes, that's what it is. So nobody knows exactly what it's going to be. Interesting. People sometimes want to have that kind of practice. But our practice is more 40 minutes.

[25:20]

40 minutes. But actually, Suzuki Roshi used to vary the periods by everybody thinking it was going to be 40 minutes. And then just going on. Sometimes saying, at the last minute, say, we'll sit for 10 more minutes. Something like that. or just letting the period go on. That's very good for us. And sometimes he would just get up and hit everybody. Just go right down the line. Bang, bang, [...] bang. So I'm happy that we can

[26:41]

I'll cooperate to make our practice more lively, more energetic. Rinzai Kinyin also is very fast, walking fast. We walk slowly, not very fast. So sometimes we do that kind of Kinyin, but we don't have space here to do that. In America, the Rinzai centers and the Soto centers, they touch each other and cross over a little bit, but not very much. Rinzai sticks to their practice, and Soto sticks to their practice. And some people have a kind of combination, but that's kind of... frowned on by both camps a little bit.

[27:44]

But I think that eventually there'll be more mixing up. It's kind of inevitable. Some American practice, actually, whatever it is, will emerge. But it's good that each practice keeps its own place right now. So that we can find out what those practices are thoroughly. We should know our own practice thoroughly. Actually, it's not necessary for us to study Rinzai Zen. And it's not necessary for Rinzai people to study Soto Zen.

[28:48]

Each one is complete. But when we understand that, then we have some freedom to accept the other one, to practice the other one. Maybe you'd like to discuss something, a question? Since we haven't been having a practice discussion, maybe we could have a public practice discussion. was a difficult day for me, especially in the morning.

[30:08]

And I reached one point, sitting where the pain in my legs was just excruciating. I tried every little trick that I knew, accepting it, rejecting it, whatever. And it just got one more intense. And finally I just was And I had a very strong feeling that what I was facing was just myself. It's not so much a question.

[31:17]

Well, it's a good point. It's a barrier, you know, and... The question is, how do you... What do you do, you know? How do you keep from crossing your legs? What was hard to do was cry out loud. I felt by doing that, that was taboo. I shouldn't do that. And I also felt that by not doing that, I was really repressing. It felt natural. Well, The barrier will come up each time, and it's a kind of wall.

[32:22]

And the problem is, how do you get through that wall? And not being able to say something, not being able to go anywhere, is necessary. You can't go anywhere. Someone described Zen practice as this great ball of fire. You know, you can't swallow it, you can't spit it out. That's like that. You can't swallow it, you can't spit it out. What do you do with it? And in the next moment, what do you do with it? In the next moment, what do you do with it? Pretty soon you realize that you're still there. You still have it. And you're still there, and then there's the next moment. And you're still there, and you still have it.

[33:23]

Then there's the next moment, and you're still there, and you still have it. And the more you're there, and you still have it, then the next moment, you're still there, and you still have it. And you forgot about not wanting it. And then the bell rings. And then, the next time you sit, it's a little easier. But then it gets hard again. Toward the end, it's pounding in your ears. You feel your heart kind of in your bloodstream. But you still stay there. You don't move. How do you accept it? How can you be comfortable? When we talk about comfort, we're talking about real comfort, you know, to exist with it, and composure.

[34:37]

So, on each one of those breaths, you know, or each one of those pumps of your whatever, you know, each moment, you have to find composure all over again. So you have to be very with it, very alert, And there's just the breath. And just get into your breath. And then get into the next breath. And it's hard. It's hard to find that breath and to just stay with the breath. To focus just on the breath. And then when you do that, you find that your body has become very still. And only the breath, just the breath is moving. Nothing but breath is going in and out, and the body itself is very still. And it's just one moment, after the next moment, and then the next moment. But it's not really next moments, it's just all this moment.

[35:42]

So, in a sense you're in continuous time, not cut-off time. You're not really in moments. Just one continuum of time. And the more you can do that, the more you can find composure, find calmness, the deeper you have to go. You just have to go deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. And then samadhi gets stronger and stronger and stronger. And then, when you talk to somebody, it's wonderful to talk to somebody.

[36:49]

There's something wonderful about it. And then when you do some work, it's wonderful to contact everything, because you've gone so deep into yourself, or you've gone so deep that you're very close to things. Things don't get so exaggerated

[38:05]

But in Korean Zen, sometimes they shout during Zazen. So in Korean practice, when they sit Zazen, they shout. Dr. Seo was this Korean abbot who used to come around years ago. And when he had sashimi, people would shout. when they said it. That was part of their practice. Japanese quiet. At this end of when we've had three periods of Zazen in a row, today I get shivering fits when I stand up. Yeah, that's kind of muscle tenseness, you know, when you have a lot of pain, then you tend to get tense without meaning to, you know, and then you stand up and you kind of get that quivering, shivering feeling.

[39:59]

It's just a phenomena, you know. comes and goes, but it's tenseness. What we do when we have pain is we tend to tense up. That's a reaction. So when we sit zazen, we try not to react to that, that way. And instead, we purposely let go. Instead of going like this, we try to go like this. Open. Open. Open up. Open. Open the legs. Don't tense them, but keep opening them up. Open it up. And then open up your breathing. The more tense you get, the worse it is.

[41:03]

And the more open you are, you just let whatever is happening flow through, and without attaching. This is called attachment, grasping. So, when we sit, we should consciously be thinking about letting go. Consciously, you know, find out where you're tense. Because when we sit, we're really meditating on our body. If you're not meditating on your body, you're not sitting Zazen. And so, what have you got? These various parts of the body are all attached to the vertebrae. So, the vertebrae is the most important part in the sense of this posture. And all the parts are hanging off of it, in some sense. So, each part is independent, but they're all connected.

[42:11]

They're all connected, but each one is independent. So, the more independent you can let them be, the more relaxed you are. And yet, you have perfect form, because you're lining them all up. You kind of keep good posture. Good posture is most important. And then, find out where, what's holding it all up. What's holding it up? And then what's not necessary to hold it up, you can let go of. Your shoulder blades aren't holding it up, Your neck isn't holding it up. Your shoulders aren't holding it up. Your arms aren't holding it up. Everything is cooperating.

[43:13]

All the parts are cooperating. And the more you can get them all to cooperate, the more you can let go of that extra tenseness. And then all you have to do is feel the pain in your legs. But you can open, open your legs. So, there's only so far you can go with talking about it. So, without avoiding it, and without being attached to it,

[44:28]

what we're always dealing with, whether we're sitting or not.

[44:40]

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