This altar was built at Paul's shop, so the joinery structures, and Stan actually did the work. Paul and I designed it, and Stan made it. Paul is an old student of the Mississippi Roshis, and spent many years in Japan learning Japanese carpentry. And he's a dharma descendant of, or in the dharma lineage of, Pinchin Rev. Anderson. And recently he set up a shop to see what he could do in the world. appreciated the fact that we asked them to do it.

[01:15]

This walnut, it's very unusual to find 24-inch wide pieces of walnut, 8 feet long, and you just don't find that sort of thing anymore. And Daniel Leonard donated it to us a long time ago. He said, here's some walnut, build an altar." So I said, okay. But there was enough wood for two altars, I felt. So we just finished, almost completed the Founders Hall at Tassajara, and we needed an altar for that. So I divided the wood half So the old altar was built by a member named Bert.

[02:29]

I can't remember his last name. Long time ago. He did a really good job. Everybody loved that old altar. And this one, we have to get used to this one. Anybody want to say anything? Where is the old altar? The old altar is in my office. Do you want to come and visit? I remember when it took time and when the old altar was the new altar and it took us a long time to get used to that. It's the fourth day of our five-day Sashin.

[04:01]

Sashin is a kind of quiet time. I'm actually more busy during Sashin than any other time. When we have this June Sashin, we always have a lay ordination at the end. And of course, I don't get the robes until the very end and I have to scramble to do all the work that's entailed in that usually. And then we have the head student ceremony, or shuso ceremony.

[05:08]

And this time we also had this little ceremony. And many things going on that demand my attention. So my session, also I do dokusan all day. And I have to think of a lecture every day. And try to sit zazen. So my sasheen is in the midst of activity to keep my calm mind. So my sasheen is like the ordinary person's work in the world. How to stay centered. and calm, and keep my sense of humor, and my sweet nature, and not snap at people, and not see someone's fault and think this is the whole person.

[06:29]

This is one of the biggest problems we have with each other, is seeing someone's fault and thinking that's the whole person. So... Sashi... At some point in Sishin, many people come to me and they say, I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm not quite sure why I'm here. Or what is Sishin? Something like that. And so I want to say a little bit about it, Sashin is like going out on a boat, being on a little boat, a little teeny boat, in the middle of the ocean.

[07:51]

and you're all by yourself with nothing. And to get to this nothing is not so easy. Actually, it's not so easy just to get to this nothing and to be able to stay there. The practice of the desert fathers in the first few centuries of this era was something like that, to just be out there in the middle of the desert with nothing. And then you find out what it is that you rely on. What is the fundamental thing?

[09:07]

It's also like being in a boat. Dogen has a poem, which I forgot to bring with me. But it's something like an empty boat at midnight in the moonlight. just bobbing with the waves. So if we actually get to no place, it's pretty hard to stay in no place because we want to have some direction. If you're in the middle of the desert or the middle of the ocean with no reference point, you just drift. So we set up something.

[10:18]

If you're in the middle of the desert, you see a rock, a little stone, and that stone somehow attracts your eye and it becomes a reference point. You start relating everything to that stone. You start relating your life to that stone as a reference point. And then maybe you look around and you find some pieces of some debris, some sticks or something, and you start to build a little house. And that becomes a reference point. And when you have the reference point, you kind of know what you're doing. So, little by little, we create our world out of reference points.

[11:22]

And so we establish home, or we establish a base. And then from that base, we go out into the world. And we can travel a little bit further all the time as we continue to make our reference points in our base bigger and bigger. And at some point our base gets kind of complicated. And I remember Art Crum had this great cartoon It showed this empty field. First frame is this empty field with flowers, birds, and the sky, and a wonderful feeling. And then pretty soon somebody comes by walking. And then the next one, there's a path through the field.

[12:27]

Then the next frame, there's a cart. was drawn by a horse going down the path, and it starts to be a road. And then in the next frame, somebody comes and builds a house. And then in the next frame, there are more houses, and then there's a village, and then there's more and more people. And then there's sidewalks and streets and telephone wires. The last picture is just this junkyard with these huge ropes of telephone wires that were just crisscrossing everywhere. If you actually look at our streets, you see that they're like that. If you really just look, they're really like that. Some streets are just chock full of telephone poles and wires crisscrossing and cars and junk.

[13:34]

But at the same time, there's always this field. This empty field is still the empty field, but we can no longer see it. Right this place here, this block of houses is an empty field. But you can't see the empty field. You only see the reference points that we make to ensure our safety, which in the end strangles us. So in some sense, the safer we get, the more it kills us. So when we do zazen, and especially when we sit sasheen, we let go of the reference points and just return to the empty field.

[14:45]

But it's hard to do that. It's hard to let go of the reference points because we really depend on our reference points as we grow up. And then we start wishing we were somewhere else or craving something, wanting something. But the longer the Sashim, the easier it is to let go of everything and just return to the empty field. Then when we return to the empty field, we start building our reference points again. So during Sachine, when we start losing our reference points, we start to think, well, there's nothing going on.

[15:57]

There's nothing here. There's nothing. What am I doing? What am I doing here? What's this all about? I thought that there was something here when I started, but now I wonder about it. So I always usually say to people, well, what did you think about when you decided that you were going to do that? What's your original intention? In practice, our original intention is very important. To keep our original intention and keep returning to our original intention is very important because even though we may not understand what practice is or know what we're doing, our original intention has some purity.

[17:00]

It's a pure thought. The intention to practice whether or not it's for one reason or another, is a pure thought. And to always come back to that point of reference, you always confine yourself. You know, life is inspiration and expiration. inhaling and exhaling. So inhaling we call inspiration, bringing to life, so to speak. And so when we do something, we like to be inspired. If you're an artist, you like to be inspired. If you don't have inspiration, you can't be an artist, even though you may

[18:04]

try to do something. So the inspiration informs the process. Then you find a way to express through the inspiration. But you cannot live on inspiration alone. Inspiration is kind of like ambrosia. It's the food of the gods, but we also live on the earth. So with our feet on the earth, we can sustain ourselves. So our intention is what keeps us, our feet on the earth, is what keeps us moving and sustained. So that's the most important thing in practice. intention and inspiration.

[19:11]

Original intention is the backbone of practice, because you cannot continue to be inspired all the time. There will be a point, no matter how inspired you are, there will be a point where you will wake up one day and say, what am I doing? What is this? Why don't I turn on the TV? Why don't I do something else? I mean, what the hell's going on here? This is losing the inspiration. So, that's why when you get up in the morning, you don't think about whether you're inspired or not. When the alarm clock goes off, you just get up and you just put your clothes on, even though you may say, again, another day, this early? Nevertheless, You put on your clothes and you go to the Zen Dojo. And then, life comes to life.

[20:15]

So, this is why in Zazen, we don't worry so much about whether we're feeling good or whether we're feeling bad. Usually when we do something, We try to do something that makes us feel good. That's usual. It's human nature. We try to do something that makes us feel good. But feeling good always turns into feeling bad. And then it goes to feeling good again, then feeling bad. This is the alternating cycle of good and bad. You can't sustain always feeling good. Because no matter how much you try to sustain feeling good, at some point you start feeling bad. No matter how much you try to get comfortable, you will get uncomfortable. So you may set yourself up to have the most comfortable position possible.

[21:24]

You know, pillows and cushions and waterbeds. But after a while, it gets very uncomfortable. So, the main thing is our intention, because intention doesn't depend on feeling good or feeling bad. Often, we'll say, I feel really good. I think I'll go to the zendo and sit zazen. That's good, but the motivating thing that brings us to practice is our intention. And whether we feel good, feel bad, is the scenery of our life.

[22:29]

The real core of our life is our intention. The real core of our life is our vow But we mistake the core of our life for good feelings and bad feelings. And then when good starts alternating with bad, we have a hard time finding ourself. Because it's very slippery territory. Real slippery. Feelings are not reliable, as you may have noticed. Nothing's reliable. Actually, there's very little that's reliable. And certainly feelings and emotions are not reliable. The only thing that's reliable is your intention and your vow. Whatever intentions or promises you make and keep.

[23:35]

Because we create our life. It looks like life is there and we live it, you know, somehow, but it's there, but at the same time, we create our life. Just like on the empty field, there's nothing. And then we set up something, and that's a reference point for our life. And then we decide, well, I'll build a room on the left, or I'll build a room on the right. No, I build a room on the left. So you build a room on the left, then you say, well, then I'll build a path down here. And pretty soon you've constructed a life. And whichever way we go is the development of the life which we create for ourself, even though we're always meeting circumstances.

[24:39]

Circumstances in a sense, are not our creation. But in another sense, they are. It doesn't look like we create the circumstances, but when we respond to circumstances, the way we respond to circumstances is how we create our life. So, in combination with causes and conditions, we set up a life. And once we start going in a certain direction, our life just keeps going that way. And we choose on the basis of our direction. It's always discriminating on the basis of our direction. So, that's why we have to be very careful of what we do.

[25:43]

action, our actions, our discriminating actions, is called karma. And then the result of our actions is called the result of karma. Karma result. And then what comes out of that is called the fruit. Something is born out of our actions. And then we eat it. Whatever that fruit is, we eat it. It's a good expression. Sometimes we say, well, you have to eat it. So we have to be very careful. And when we know what our intention is, we can decide how our life goes, actually. That's called freedom. Buddha Dharma is based on freedom.

[26:48]

We can decide how our life goes, but at the same time we have to accept what life offers. So we have to, we can, we create our life based on what life offers. Life offers a few boards so I can decide how to build my house. So there's plenty of raw material, but it's up to each one of us to decide how to build that house. We start building and building and pretty soon our life gets very complicated. And we say, what am I doing? So we start sitting Zazen.

[27:52]

And to get free from, to help us to be free from attachment to what we built. So, to bring together the empty field and the construction of our life, this is something that we have to think about. How we, within the construction of our life, to know that we're actually walking on the empty field. There's really nothing. But this nothing is the field for everything.

[28:58]

So when everything goes, we should be able to feel comfortable just in the empty field. So sashin is the experience of just existing, pure existence. But there's associated with it the fact of life, which is life is painful. So just accepting the fact that life is painful, we can sit in peace. If we don't accept the fact that life is painful, we can't sit peacefully.

[30:07]

We can never get comfortable, no matter how much we try to get comfortable. The one thing about pain is it hurts. We can never be comfortable. So this is what we're dealing with. The empty field, the fact that pain hurts, and the fact that we can let go of our constructions. So in the end, we do have a construction, called Sashi. We have reference points. If we could just all go out in the desert, you know, and sit.

[31:10]

Or go out in the ocean and not even see each other, you know, and just sit. But we, as human beings, we need reference points. So we sit together and we have a structure and a style. which allows us to do just this. And so that we don't get lost. We don't get lost out there on that big sea or that big desert. And we can encourage each other and feed each other, actually. Because if we were just sitting, what would we eat? You know, Buddhist monks are not allowed to feed it themselves. They're not allowed to get their own food. A Burmese monk, Busi Lananda, who uses Zazendo, when I was at Green Gulch with him at a conference, you know, everybody stands in line to get their food.

[32:20]

And he was standing in line, but he didn't know what it was to get his own food. He's not allowed to serve himself. So he was just standing there. He didn't say anything. So he said, choose. So I just had to intuit what he wanted, and he was very kind. Thank you.

[33:25]

People take care of him, but he has a debt. Everybody has a debt of some kind. Nothing is free. Everything has to be paid for in some way. So he pays for his food by teaching the Dharma. And by being himself. By being strict with himself. But really, he's just drifting around on the empty field. So when you have a problem, any problem with Sashin, often these problems will come up the first, the second day, or the third day, or the fourth day.

[34:52]

By the time Sashin is over, pretty much our problems have become reconciled. So that's why I say, to people who are having this kind of problem, just keep sitting. Just continue, you know. Because the more you sit, pretty soon you just don't care anymore. Even though pain hurts, you can still sit comfortably with it. So I want to encourage everyone to don't let this get in your way.

[36:02]

Our mind, you know, our body exists on the empty field, but our mind also exists on the empty field. The empty field of the mind is no thinking about myself as myself, but then As we meet circumstances, we begin to think about ourselves and we begin to construct thoughts and concepts in our mind. And then our mind becomes so overburdened with mental constructions that It makes it hard to see, really, because we're always filtering through the mental constructions.

[37:12]

So the body and the mind are really one piece, but we separate them. And it's okay to separate them. But we also must realize that they're not separate. Now, sometimes, if you turn on the water to wash the pots, you find that you have to pee. That sets off something in your body. Just hearing that sets off something in your body. So, that's just an example of how our body and mind work together as one piece. It comes with old age now. I just read it the other day. a mental construction.

[38:36]

Just like a birth and death is a mental construction. So it's pretty hard to let go of that and just be. just to concentrate, just to let the mind follow the breath, thinking mind, let consciousness concentrate on the body, posture, and breathe it. But thoughts come up, like, out of nowhere, looking for something. The mind is always seeking something to construct.

[39:41]

It's a great builder. So, letting go of the mind, the constructions of the mind, and just accepting whatever feelings, accepting all the thoughts and all the feelings, and just being free of them. As long as we're trying to hold them down or get rid of them, we become attached to them. As soon as the painful feeling arises, we want to escape from it. Very natural. So we have to go against our natural tendency. And instead of escaping to open up to it, As soon as we set up a reference point, then you see that on one side of the reference point is pleasure, and on the other half side of the reference point is pain.

[41:11]

And the reference point is me. As soon as you take me out, then they just flow together. So when you say, my legs hurt, you set up me. Or you say, I have this, you set up I. But this I is a construction on the empty field, even though it doesn't feel like it. It is, because you can let go of it by being one with pleasure, being one with pain.

[42:18]

It doesn't make any difference, whichever side. When pain arises, this is just pain. When pleasure arises, this is just pleasure. When it goes, it just goes. If you desire one and dislike the other, you set up a reference point. So, pretty hard to stay in the empty field. But it's a wonderful place. But it's still this world. In this world, there's pain.

[43:19]

Buddha says suffering is the mark of existence. Pleasure and suffering are the mark of existence, but nirvana is also the mark of existence. Nirvana means taking out the reference point from I and let things be. But as long as we're in this world, this is the world of pain. This is the painful place. And you can't avoid the painful place, no matter how much you try. So you have to decide what kind of pain do I want?

[44:27]

Usually we decide something on the basis of, what kind of pleasure do I want? That's our usual way of deciding something. What do I want? Somebody says, what do you want? You don't say, I want my legs to hurt. You say, I want an ice cream cone. I want a lover. I want happiness, money, blah, blah, blah. But you can't do it. As long as we're here, the characteristic of this world is pain. So you just choose your pain. So when you choose your pleasure, you also should look at the other side and say, well, what kind of pain is this pleasure going to bring me? And am I willing to accept that pain that comes with this pleasure?

[45:37]

You got to look at it from both sides, but we don't. We get ourselves in a lot of trouble. It's inevitable. Hard to do. So when we sit tzatz'in, sit tzatz'in, we do decide, because if you've done it before, you know it's painful. But there's also something beyond the pain. No matter how painful it is, there's something beyond the pain that makes me continue to do it. Something wonderful. It's like within the pain, there's great pleasure. And within the pleasure, there's great pain. And to be able to sit right in the midst of it, without falling off to one side or the other, is it.

[46:51]

Just don't desire something other than what's right here. And you can do it. This is called waking up to what is. So we're constantly waking up, constantly falling asleep, dreaming. I wish I was... Maybe if I move a little bit, a little bit more comfortable. So, this is... And the attitude that allows us to do this is our intention.

[48:01]

If you start relying on your feelings, you can't do it. Because your feelings, in an extreme position, your feelings will say, don't do this. I don't want to do this. I want my ice cream cone. So just please, if you continue to follow your intentions, you'll have great confidence in yourself. The only way you can really have real confidence in yourself is by following your intentions and honoring your intentions and honoring your effort. As Rebecca said the other day, honor your effort, not your profession. Don't get off on worrying whether you're perfect or not.

[49:06]

Just honor your intention, your effort. That's perfection. And honor your intention. Then you'll have wonderful confidence. And our good and bad dark and light, pleasure and pain will not throw you.

[49:38]

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