Some of you, three of you, I guess, just flew here. One of you I picked up at the airport today. But you came in yesterday, right? And... And Ruth, when did you come in? You came here. Well, it usually takes about a week to get over jet lag, so you have seven days to do that. And... The altitude is also a problem for people for the first time, because we're at 2,600 feet about. So if you weren't living in Santa Fe, we're at 7,000 feet. Probably some change to come here from California. Somewhere else. And Denver's only a measly 5,000 feet. Only a mile high. So anyway, I suspect that will affect your sashin at least for a day or two.

[01:10]

And I'm thinking, I'm always thinking about how do you teach Zen, practice Zen together. And I particularly recently because I'm supposed to deliver the manuscript of the book sometime in the next couple of months. Half of it is supposed to be done this month. And I wasn't planning to talk about meditation practice specifically so much, but I find that when I started writing what I wanted to write, there's no way I could talk about much that I wanted to talk about without describing meditation in some detail. And then when you start describing meditation in some detail, you find very basic words like practice, mind, body,

[02:24]

you have to start defining because even within schools of Buddhism, the different way the body is viewed produce different schools of Buddhism, but alone the different way the body is viewed, say, in Western culture. So, during this sasin, I think what I'll try to do is present Zen as it is, on the one hand, quite simple, quite direct, very direct. On the other hand, a rather complicated practice. Or it may seem complicated as you become familiar with the way Zen looks at things. If you catch the feel of it, it's pretty simple. so you can continue your practice.

[03:31]

Maybe early Buddhists thought of Buddhahood as something very, very difficult to achieve. It took many lifetimes to do it. That was one way it was expressed. It's like if there's a samsara nirvana or the other shore. The bridge to the other shore was very far away. It took a long time to even get to the bridge. And then the next image of it was that, well, you might get to the bridge. But then the bridge was very, very difficult to get across. It took quite a lot of arduous practice. And then it developed that, well, the bridge wasn't so hard to get across, but once on the other side, there was lots of territory. In fact, Buddha wasn't at the other end of the bridge. He was way inland. So you got across the bridge, and then you had another long ways to go. At some point, I suppose...

[04:37]

some of these realized early masters, pre-Zen, people began saying, well, he or she is so much like a Buddha. Let's call him a Buddha. Let's say that on the pat. So in some ways, the idea of what Buddha is became more attainable and more in a human scale. But this concept of the bridge changed too. Because pretty soon the bridge was seen as going from here to here. And if you got on the bridge and it just looped back around and it turned you to your starting point. So then, then you have, in Zen practice, a problem. a kind of basic contradiction in Zen practice, which is that, in a way, Zen is the bridge.

[05:43]

Zazen is the bridge. But also, since the bridge goes back to here, you don't need the bridge. So Zen, which is the meditation school, in its most fundamental sense, doesn't need meditation. So what are you all doing here? Close up shop this evening. Okay. So then we have, maybe you, when you practice Zazen, you're retracing the whole history of Shakyamuni's life, Shakyamuni's Buddhism, and the history of Buddhism in the various ways you'll find yourself practicing. And at the same time, I think particularly for us, since If the bridge comes back to here, that practice is understanding that, radically understanding that the bridge comes back to here.

[07:05]

And understanding that is not so easy. It's the most direct way of practice, but the most elusive and considered the most difficult practice. So I think we need, as a companion to that practice, zazen. So zen really, basically, zen practice does not depend on meditation. But as a companion, partner in zen practice, zazen is almost absolutely necessary. I don't know if what I'm saying makes sense, but maybe it will become more clear. So there's a way of thinking in Zen which is

[08:12]

permeate sin, which is, I think, the simplest expression of it is not one, not two. But this sense of reality being something that is and is not simultaneous, this way of thinking is a way of thinking that you want to get into the habit of. Who am I? I don't know. Something's here, I don't know. So if you were doing Sashin, for instance, on the one hand, on the one side, I'd like you to not know where you are, what you're doing, forget about how you got here. The road map to this place got lost. All transportation shut down, and you don't know anything. what you're doing here, why, or anything, but you're here, so you follow the schedule.

[09:22]

Somebody dropped you down here on a journey, on an airplane, or from somewhere. So on the one hand, you don't know who you are or what you're doing here. On the other hand, the other side, as I said this morning during service, Every place you are is the center. Now the word kaya, like in Dharmakaya, Samugakaya, Ramanakaya, the three bodies of Buddha, the kaya, the body part, means body, but it means the realm of existence also. So it means your body, you can't say where your body begins and ends. Point of view. And this truth of the Four Noble Truths that there's a cause and because there's a cause we can change.

[10:30]

There's suffering, because there's a cause of suffering we can be free of suffering. Because there's a cause we can change. So everything's changing. It's one state. Everything is cause. Because there's a cause, we can change. So the law of cause and effect, in Buddhism, I think we tend to understand it as some kind of, and it is understood in a simplistic way, as some kind of chain of events that led to this moment. Like a kind of A led to B led to C led to D. But in practice, it's much more like we're in an eddying sea of cause and effect. Do you, in German, know what eddying is? Eddies? Like in the ocean. In the ocean, if there's little currents or in a stream, little streams and a little leaf on the stream goes this way and that goes that way.

[11:40]

That's what kind of eddies are. So we live in a kind of eddying sea of cause and effect. And we don't put in Buddhism any boundary to the sea of cause and effect. And if you take some... I mean, in a way, Zen or Buddhism is common sense carried to uncommon lengths. A common sense carried to an uncommon thoroughness. So if you take some expression like, what is the universe, what is the boundary of the universe, or something like that, this is an expression or this is a statement that always exceeds any story we can make of it.

[12:46]

Now some teachings, some mythologies, some story of how Japan was formed, etc. Take a basic question like that, how was Japan formed, how was the earth formed, how was the universe formed, and turn it into a story. But Buddhism does the reverse. It doesn't turn that into a story. Or it says it's a story which can't be told. And applies that way of looking to the minute details of your life. So your story exceeds the capacity of your mind. Your story exceeds your capacity to know yourself. Does that make sense? So when we say, Bodhidharma says to the emperor, who are you? Bodhidharma says, I don't know. It doesn't just mean emptiness. It also means the sense that your story exceeds what you can know.

[13:55]

The knowing surpasses knowing. And Buddhism doesn't try to give a story or an end to that. And when they try in sutras, it becomes so cosmic and becomes so huge, eons of time encapsulated in moments, and those moments are again eons of time. So Buddhism explodes the story of it. Now this isn't meant just for the sutras, it's meant you explode your own story. That's part of what you do, as you try to stop interfering with your story. That sounds like a strange way to describe the practice of non-self, but it's a story which you can't give a self to. So in the way in zazen practice, you're not like in early Buddhism trying to sit down and clear your mind and achieve samadhi.

[15:06]

You're trying to sit down in the midst of your story and not interfere with it. The strange trick is, the more you can sit still, the more the story unfolds. The less able you are to sit still, the more you control and encapsulate the historical people. Strangely enough, the shadow, those of you who are anywhere near my age will remember the shadow whose Lamont Crashing could disappear. And I always wondered where Lamarck Cranston got his cloak that allowed him to disappear. And I realize now it's Zazen. Because if you sit down, you can really sit still. Disappear in your own story.

[16:08]

So zazen practice is, again, has this contradiction of not one, not two. It's your story. This is a very private experience. My style and my insubjurasi style of doing zazen, of practice, was to leave you alone in your own story. Not try to direct your practice all the time. Leave you alone. Just sit here. sort of stewing in your own juice, your own story. You can. Because in some ways, this is simple direct practice, but the hardest form of practice because there's still a little form to it. The form is you, yourself. So at one side, this is your life. It's not like a soap opera.

[17:16]

This is your life. At the same time, it's not your life. It's Buddha's life. And this way of practice has been practiced by millions of people. There are many lineages which have brought this practice like a garden hose from the Buddha, sprinkling this. So strangely, when you become most abandoned in your own story or disappear in your own story, letting whatever happens happen, not distinguishing between the dust on the mirror or the mirror or the mud in the glass or whether the mud settles or doesn't settle or the water or the mud, it's all in life. So the bridge ends up here.

[18:16]

Begins here and ends here. And if somehow you can enter this most private realm, become familiar with this most intimate private realm, it is very close to If you can actually be present with awareness. You begin to have a subtle shift between the story to a kind of wider awareness that includes The story disturbs you, doesn't disturb you. Maybe it no longer disturbs you in the daytime, but at nighttime, you still have uneasy dreams.

[19:23]

As your practice gets more resolved, the uneasy dreams become more resolved. So you're sitting, anyway, in the midst of it. or dreams, or your personal story, personality, and so forth. And we sit dozen in a way where it's sort of intermediate. Sleepy, awake, dreaming. You're in a territory that's neither awake nor sleeping. And if possible, as your practice gets better, you're awake in the middle of this, awake and not sleeping, but not exactly awake in the usual sense. And to really kind of dramatically enter into this, you need to not give yourself any outs.

[20:33]

So that's why all those speakers, I emphasize, this being something you're in the midst of doing, the other side of it is to follow the schedule as carefully as possible. Now I should talk a little bit about form. This morning service and then you did the meal chanting and I won't talk about, I don't think, as I had in two or three sessions, including the one I did in Europe, in some detail about this orioke, the eating bowl practice. The phrase, form is emptiness, is again carried to uncommon thoroughness. Because it means that everything is form.

[21:41]

Your thought is form. We can almost say material. So when you make an offering at the altar, in Buddhist practice you're making an offering of the incense. There's two kinds of incense there. But when I stand there at the altar, I am also making an offering of the flowers in the altar, the light, the candles. I'm making an offering of the room. I'm making an offering of you. I'm making an offering of my mind. I'm making an offering of my attention, and so forth. Now some of this is explicitly stated in ceremony. We say we have offered light, incense, flowers, something from the sky, something from the sea, etc. We don't usually say, but you're trained to also offer silently your mind.

[22:57]

But Buddhism was, this aspect of Buddhism was probably reinforced in China where ritual is one of the, I can't remember now, the main Confucian things the world is made up of. One of the main divisions is ritual. So, the sense here in Buddhism, again, is that this stick is separate from me. Obviously, I treat it that way, and I sometimes don't always carry it, but yet it's also not separate. So, again, we have this idea of separate, yet not separate. separate, yet not separate. Tathagata, the largest name for the Buddha, is thus come, thus gone. Is it reality or something, whatever you call it, a pulse.

[24:06]

Now practice is for you to live in that pulse. Practice means you recognize you live in an eddying sea of cause and effect, that everything you do affects everything else. There's no place you can draw a boundary And because of this, the main social service of Buddhism has been culture. The main way Buddhism has tried to practice in society is to sneak Buddhism into the culture. So that people are doing Buddhism without knowing they're doing it. And that's what the eating bowls are all about. So when you do the eating bowls, you're basically making an offering at the altar. You're offering yourself to the eating bowl. The person serving you is offering the food to you and so forth. So on the one hand, it's devised as a kind of ritual.

[25:15]

And you come in and you do these things and you bow here and there. But at each point in it, you should be actually doing it. So if you come and you serve Gerald, and then you serve me, and then you serve the next person, at each point, it's completely centered. And you just get in the habit of this. I mean, you can understand it. It kind of makes sense. And it sounds sort of maybe a new AG or a hip or something. But you have to keep doing it until it's a habit. It's a habit that's alive. So you finish serving me and you actually bow to me. Not sort of a little bit to the side or a little bit to the right. If you actually are bowing to me, then we're separate and yet not separate because I can feel your body. I can feel the line of your body.

[26:18]

If you're standing here and your energy is up and down your central chakra, Here, I don't feel you the same way. I can, but then I have to make the effort. You make the effort, and then I make the effort, and then we bow. That's why when you pick up the bowls, you're always picking things up and moving it into the center line and then out. And the same when you bow to Geralt. When Geralt picks up his bowl, he's making offering of the bowl to you. And it's an offering to Buddha, it's an offering to... We don't know the limit of where this offering reaches. So by saying the bridge loops around and it's here, ends here, starts here, and ends here, it's that this is practical and this is spiritual.

[27:20]

This is spiritual and this is practical. I forget which is which, actually. Whether this is spiritual and this is practical, I don't know. But it's that key. Spiritual, Buddha, ordinary life, practical life. So if the bridge starts here and ends here, you have to find a way to be in the midst of that without retreating from it or trying to make it different or trying to give it an ending or turn it into something else. It's a kind of constantly being on the hot, cool seat. So Buddhism is the practice of body, speech, and mind. And these divisions that Buddhism makes are quite important because we can divide the world up into mind and body, material and spiritual, etc.

[28:34]

But Buddhism always divides these things up so the divisions reconnect. So body and mind are two ends of a spectrum. Speech is another part. Mind, speech. Body, speech, etc. So this is a kind of form of emptiness. Emptiness form physicality, spirituality that's present. And if you grasp one, it's the other. If you grasp the other, it's the other. You find a way to be in this pulse without grasping. Now I'm presented with trying to teach sin to myself and to you. And there's been a lot left out of Zen practice. In other words, it's not told.

[29:36]

For a lot of reasons, partly it's the style, partly it's oral tradition, partly it's sectarian polemics, and so forth. Maybe I could talk more. Part of it is, is it's been mainly taught in an apprentice-like monastic tradition. And Zen has been taught the primary division is between people of no time and people of a lot of time. People of a lot of time live in monasteries. People of no time, there's practices for them who are busy merchants or farmers or whatever. Now, you and I are neither full-time monks in the sense that we have our lifetime for learning in a situation like this living, or many years, nor are we busy lately.

[30:40]

We're somewhere in between. And the question is, what that's usually left out has to be brought back into practice. And... since so much of the practice is actually carried in the context. As body just doesn't mean your body, it means the dimension of existence, the realm of existence. That much of the teaching occurs in the realm of existence. And so you have all of these, this way of life that you're getting a little taste of here, And you're partly learning how to create here. Those of you who live here and those of you who are even here for a short time are actually participating in finding a way to make a life like this work for one week or three months or one year or whatever. So when we chant in the morning, I think, do these people really want to chant all this stuff?

[31:55]

And the Sandokai, which is an important document within our lineage, still, we don't chant very often, and I can even forget how to chant it. So we have to read the card. But you know, it's not so different for Japanese people. This is not ordinary Japanese. It's a kind of Chinese-Japanese, Sanskrit-based stuff. And I think if you hear it from a distance, if you're in the kitchen, this chanting sounds probably quite nice. But if you're in the midst of doing it, you think, what a bore. This is troublesome. I wish I could do something else. Or sometimes you may. And I have people express that to me. But every time I ask a sesshin, shall we do at the end of the sesshin? Should we simplify the chanting?

[32:57]

Should we have less of it? Every time so far people say no, they want it. We're continuing to do it. But we're not just continuing to do it because you, at least after the sesshin is over, want to. but also because I think, again, this is the practice of body, speech, and mind, and speech, the tantric school in Tibet, in Japan, is called the true word school, Shingon. And words or sounds are, in Buddhist practice, are, again, physical objects. So while we're chanting, I bow, we put up our hands, I go up to the altar. And you want to chant so that it's not chanting with the mouth or the mind, but it's a physical feeling, and it's not exactly singing in Buddhism.

[34:03]

You're actually trying to get it. I wanted to bring actually a record player up and some records of chanting. I wouldn't get into the car. And let's try it in this session to listen to it. Someone was coming up from Santa Fe tomorrow. I'm going to bring it, but they are not coming. Because I thought we might try chanting it. I always feel it's more related to the way dolphins and whales sound, human sounds. There's a certain feeling you get in your body, and then you, once you get that feeling in your body, you pick up that feeling, which isn't exactly sound, from other people, and then a contra, a overtone, begins to occur in the chanting. That overtone is the main point of the chanting. But speech is thought to be a kind of joining of body and mind and a joining a kind of

[35:31]

joining with another person and with the world. Since we can't draw a boundary of where this sea of cause and effect ends, or where your story ends, or where the consequences of your actions end, whether you're at work, you don't know just how you do something. We know with a good teacher, You may just be fooling around with him or her and it looks like you're doing nothing but something happens. You feel something and you weren't doing anything but ordinary things. Because Buddhism has this sense of hiding the teaching in physical objects and how you pass something. How you stand And it's the most powerful way to teach practice, to teach Buddhism.

[36:40]

So what I'm trying to give you a sense of is that much of Zen teaching has been traditionally carried scholars can't ferret it up because it carried in a kind of apprentice like violin makers detail how you sit at the desk and how you arrange your tools and So anyway, this week you have a chance to explore this. And I'm trying to keep enough of the Asian, Chinese, Japanese form so that you come up against it for one week. You come up against it. It's rather difficult. A little bit unfamiliar. Two, so it puts you into a kind of unfamiliar space. So you're not quite, you don't know quite where you are. And three, just hope you get a sense of this.

[37:52]

Everything is an offering. Everything is generosity. Everything is gratitude. At the same time, you have resistance, anger, annoyance at the person next to you across the way, or annoyance at yourself, or depressed with yourself. And you sit down, body, not body, emptiness or spiritual, not spiritual. Your breath is, maybe your body is still, but your breath is trembling. On your breath trembling, you can feel your mind trembling. Your breath gets more smooth. Your mind gets more smooth. Then some other thing comes up. You count your breaths, count your exhales. Try to sit with a lifting feeling through your back.

[38:54]

Your chin a little pulled in. Your body relaxed. Get some movement. And then less movement. Then maybe some samadhi. Some concentration. Then some other thinking. Then we do kini. Then you chant. You don't know what you're chanting. Then we eat. After a while, you don't know where you are. But somehow, you're also exactly here. That kind of feeling, if you locate that kind of feeling, stay with that kind of feeling, Now you may find out something.

[39:57]

You may feel something.

[39:58]

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