And it should take, I think, for most of us, some preparation before the sesshin. I know I find myself like it when we enter the sesshin from the koan seminar or from a practice period. makes it easier to get into the sitting itself. I remember the first Sushins of Sukhirishi where, being the city, there was no work period, and there were no 30-minute periods, there were just 40 minutes. So we'd have six or seven 40-minute periods in an afternoon.

[01:04]

And sometimes he made periods longer, 50. One period once, there was a period that was two and a half hours. It was sort of like playing Russian roulette. I mean, you just had to decide to die. She said, all right, no matter what happens, I'll just stay here. It really cleaned you out.

[02:10]

There was nothing left afterwards. So, I don't know, we have to find some way here that allows us coming from, you know, not that much preparation to do a sashin that works for us. So I want to find some balance that the sashin is challenging but possible. Now, I think for a young person, a Sashin can open up one's life. And I think... For us older folks, where opening is past the point, perhaps.

[03:25]

No one cares whether we're open or not. Except we might care. In any case, for us older folks, I really believe that one Sashin a year or so helps one's basic health and vitality. As long as you do a few other things to help take care of yourself, too.

[04:28]

But also I would like us to Not just see Sashin as a psychological practice. And healthful practice. But as a way to deeply explore how we exist. So I'd like to tell you a story called A Woman Comes Out of Absorption.

[05:36]

Supposedly, the Buddha decided to go to a land where there was a great convocation of Buddhas. And for some reason Manjushri wasn't allowed to come. And when he did arrive, all the Buddhas went back to their original Buddha fields, their original lands. And near the Buddha of our era, Shakyamuni, the world-honored one, there was a woman sitting deep in meditation. And Manjushri said, That woman is in my place.

[06:41]

Why is she so close to the Buddha? This is Manjushri, despite his reputation for wisdom, at his most stupid. So the Buddha said to Manjushri, well, why don't you ask her yourself why she's in your place? By the way, this is case 42 of the Mumon Khan, if you're interested. So the Manjushri circled her three times and snapped his fingers and... Nothing.

[07:46]

He took her up to every heaven he could imagine and tried every magic power, every Siddhi he had. But she remained deeply in meditation in his place. So the Buddha said even a hundred thousands of Manjushris couldn't disturb this woman. But there is a Bodhisattva, Mumyosattva, who is from many lands, innumerable lands away in the earth. And momyo means, I believe, retained or contained light.

[09:03]

So as soon as the Buddha said this, momyo sattva appeared. And the Buddha said, would you please wake this, rouse this woman from her meditation. And Mawmya Sattva tapped his fingers once and she walked back and forth, smiled greatly. Now, if you're doing traditional con study, the teacher would ask questions like, why couldn't this woman be disturbed? Why did all the Buddhas go back to their original lands when the Manjushri appeared and so such force?

[10:15]

No. The point of koans is to bring you into your own situation. But they're also, the point of koans is to demythologize Buddhism. So your first reaction to such a koan should be something like poppycock. Bah humbug. Yeah. I mean, what's all this stuff about Manjushri? So in this koan, What is emphasized here is this woman in meditation.

[11:44]

In absorption, which is the best translation probably for the word jhana. Now, this jhana, in this story, it's a woman because this jhana meditation has no gender. And it has no gender. the concern with Buddhas or Manjushri or things like that. But the sense of this allegory is that her absorption was the same as Manjushri. So Manjushri couldn't disturb her.

[12:52]

And Manjushri's wisdom is beyond whether you're in meditation or not meditation. So this koan is... One, demythologized Buddhism will make you not get caught up in such stories of why is the woman and why is it Manjushri and so forth. But also to make you really see meditation or the jhanas as a, I don't know what to say, a unit.

[13:52]

A unit with its own integrity. So when this unit is present, Manjushri or a woman or the Buddha, this unit is what is. It's beyond and not concerned with man or woman or Buddha or many Buddhas or Manjushri or Momyo. And if you've had that experience yourself, you can respond to the questions about the koan with clarity, because that's your experience, and all this other stuff is some kind of meaningless allegory.

[15:01]

Or only to be treated just as it is, an allegory, not something difficult for you to answer or you're caught up in your own identity. Do you mind if I pat the translator? I keep talking away, and I don't know how she does it. I don't want to tell you every lecture how amazed I am, but anyway. So... So this momio, however, represents differentiated wisdom.

[16:20]

And on the one hand, her meditation has its own undisturbed integrity. Still, it has a larger integrity too, which is ordinary activity, and Momyo represents ordinary activity. Or realized wisdom. Or functioning wisdom. And Manjushri represents, in this allegory, fundamental wisdom. So we have here an ordinary person meditating.

[17:23]

And in essence, her meditation is the same as Manjushri. And in function, it's the same as this momio sattva of compassion. So Manjushri takes you into the heavens and momio comes from the earth, your wisdom functions. So this is a koan meant to give you some feeling for this, the essentiality and integrity of this, of the jhanas, of this meditation experience. So let me speak to you now a little bit about, in a more practical way if I can, about these four jhanas.

[18:39]

Because I'd like these to be an aid to you in your practice. And as you may see here, the way I was speaking about shamatha yesterday, it was dependent on vipassana. Zen teaches shamatha and vipassana as virtually one thing. Shamatha is the base. But shamatha is the basis for examination and analysis of vipassana.

[19:56]

But it's really the analysis of vipassana, the way of inner seeing of vipassana, that deepens and fructifies shamatha. So shamatha makes vipassana possible, and vipassana really makes shamatha a way we exist and function. And then shamatha becomes like in the koan we looked at in the previous week, great function and great potentiality. So,

[21:02]

So if you were studying something that you liked to do, sociology, physics, psychology, whatever it might be, love, I don't know, whatever you want to study, and if you studied And the word study originally means commitment, attentive commitment. So if you studied something with intention, attention, and commitment, And in that commitment, analyzing and examining. Now this would be like the first jhana.

[22:28]

Now, eventually you've come to really love this subject, and just studying it brings joy to you. And you feel tremendous joy in the study, and that joy itself becomes the vehicle of the study. Looking at Dr. Niko here, for example, if practicing medicine became a joy, that joy goes beyond the commitment. The joy itself is a way of studying. Now, that's like the second jhana. The joy itself leads your study. Die Freude selbst führt unser Studium an.

[23:59]

Now, in the third, if your study progressed so that it was now beyond alternatives, it's no longer about whether you do it or don't do it or like it or don't like it. You're virtually inseparable from the subject that you're studying. And it's this inseparability, not just joy now, which guides your study into discoveries in the material. And your creativity. And that would be the third jhana, equanimity. And now the fourth jhana would be, I think the best word in English is clarity. You just see the subject.

[25:11]

I think of a friend of mine, Larry Vito, who's one of the really good cooks in the United States. And when he cooks, I asked him, how do you decide what to do? If I decide to do something, I simply see a picture of the complete meal in my mind. He's so committed to cooking since childhood that he doesn't have to think about recipes, ingredients. He just sees the finished dish and the different things on the dish. And then he undoes that, works backward from that to what the ingredients would be and how it should be cooked.

[26:15]

So the fourth jhana would be that kind of clarity. Like if you look at a koan, it's just as clear as anything. Nor your body seems clear and transparent. And this is clear, like I think there's a phrase, on a clear day you can see forever. It's this kind of feeling of clarity. Now, I think people who are really immersed in what they do come to this kind of clarity and through joy and equanimity.

[27:35]

Now if the subject is not physics or medicine or love or psychology or sociology, But is you yourself. Then it's not... At first, in the first jhana, there's the examination and analysis. I'm using the field, stable mind field of shamatha. Now, the joy in study that arises from the commitment is not just a joy that guides you in the subject matter,

[28:42]

Because now you are the subject or the object. So the joy itself becomes the self-fulfilling activity. And Dogen has a whole fascicle called Self-Joyous Samadhi. Samadhi. Jiju-Yu-Sam-Mai. It's like a process, maybe we can say again, of cooking. The joy is not only now helping you study yourself, but it's cooking you.

[29:54]

Now, in addition to the four jhanas, the form practices, There are the four formless practices. Like you were wanting me to add something. It was getting much too simple. So, I've been having a good time with this stick recently. And I know I talked about it in the Koan seminar. And I know it's an outrageous thing to carry around. And I feel a little silly with it. But I like it a lot. And it's a lotus staff. But what's interesting is here where your hand is, there's the lotus embryo rolled up in the leaf.

[31:15]

And here's the bud. And here's the seed pod. But there's no flower. Because the flower's in you. Or the flowers in the formless realms. Or all of this depends on the flower or there wouldn't be a seed pod and a bud and an embryo. They're called lotus embryos, actually, because when you look in them, you open them up, they occur in Japanese soups. You can find a little lotus curled up in it. You feel a little like an abortionist eating them. There's probably a tiny Buddha sitting on the left. So the lotus embryo and the bud and the pod all depend on the flower.

[32:44]

So true to Buddhist way of thinking, it doesn't have to be present. Because it's the condition for everything. Both Manjushri's realization and Momyo's realization. If the flower wasn't here, there wouldn't be the embryo or the bud or the pod. Okay, so... The four formless realms are limitless space, limitless consciousness, limitless nothing, whatever, and beyond awareness and non-awareness. Now, both of these realms ways of looking at meditation, the four jhanas and the four formless realms are really adopted from India by Buddhist tradition.

[34:13]

And the Abhidharma and Buddhist philosophy works them into much longer lists. But these are the root or source ideas and so it's worth looking at it as a way of looking at our own practice. Okay, so I'm trying to want to give you a sense of how the four formless realms work with the four jhanas. The four jhanas still are about form. There is examination or analysis or joy or equanimity and so forth.

[35:33]

Clarity is the closest to formlessness. On a clear day you can see formlessness. But form equals, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. So simultaneously the four jhanas are penetrated by, permeated by emptiness. It's sort of like matter and antimatter. anti-matter is calling to matter. What's the matter? Come here. And matter is calling to anti-matter. I'm sorry, my mind says an uncle matter too, but I have to stop such... Anyway, it's a woman in meditation here.

[37:05]

So, or it's... You know that, like when you're counting sheep, say. Or thinking about something to try to go to sleep. Sleep, while you're thinking about something, if you think about it in a certain way, that form, that thinking, that form, suddenly is permeated by sleep and it draws you into sleep. So while you're concentrating, or you're practicing with these, you're finding your practice merged with gratitude or ease or joy, Or you're examining things.

[38:09]

And you're discovering how to examine things without disturbing, without correcting your mind. For example, so you're using the tools of practice to... Can I ask you to tell us your little example about... You played with counting a different way. Okay. You don't have to translate it for me. Yes, I... So, inspired by Roshi's Teisho yesterday, I thought about starting again with the very basic, also in my practice, and to give my counting practice a certain attention, which has become a bit old-fashioned in recent times.

[39:15]

And then I looked closely at how I actually count. It's often the case, as Rosé said, that you count, one, two, three, and then you come to a thought, and then you can't continue counting, you're completely wrapped up in the thought, and at some point you notice it, and you start at one again. And I thought, well, how do I actually count? And it was very interesting because I realized that I just count by talking to myself. So I always say one, then I say two and so on. And when a thought comes to mind, then I can't do it at the same time, because then I talk to myself in the form of thoughts. And then I thought to myself, Skanda practice, Vishnana practice, somehow it would have to be counted differently. And then I thought to myself, maybe I should just stop talking to myself when I count, but do it visually.

[40:22]

And then I imagined a kind of calendar. There are numbers on the calendar sheets. And instead of counting, I always turned these calendar sheets around in my mind. And while I was doing that, it went so incredibly well, surprisingly well, I thought, hmm, that's interesting, that works. And I noticed how I manage to really count with the visual and to continue to count while now thoughts come in. So it was really a very amazing discovery for me to be able to do both, to count and to let thoughts come in, but they didn't disturb the counting. And then I thought, well, if it works visually, maybe it works in hearing, too. And maybe you all know that. I'm probably not telling you anything new. In America, there are call answers with an electronic voice that say, 602, you have one message.

[41:28]

And then I had that in my head. This is one breath, you have nine more. Ask your machines in English. And I thought, well, then I'll try something else. Even with this, how do you say this, the key sense. Do you know that game? Yes, when someone writes something on your back and you have to guess what someone wrote on it. To something like I love you or something like that. I thought, well, now I'll do it with my back, the counting. And I let someone write the numbers on it, and that's how it went.

[42:38]

And the amazing thing about it was, that... The more intensively I could count with these other Vishnianas, the more I could see this background mind, also in relation to my thoughts and how these two processes count, and on the other hand how these thoughts come and go, how less and less it bothered me. And I also noticed a dependence on the channel, so to speak, in which I count, how this background spirit also got other qualities. So he could, for example, also be something in the kinesthetic, so as if you were sitting in such a liquid that blubbered, or you are in such a field of such a very soft, or in a color. So it was really very, very amazing.

[43:42]

And I just want to encourage you with this story, really the very simple things, so occasionally to take it up and really start with Adam and Eve, really with such a beginner's spirit and to be creative with it. It's really very amazing how the first jhana, and I'm still there now, of testing and analysis, if you really do it, and really start at one point very simply from the beginning, how much the practice can open up again. Thank you. You said about the counting proprioceptively on your back. I've never thought of that. I'm going to try it. I even tried it with smells, but that was the most difficult.

[44:44]

And you pointed out that with each different way you tried it, a different consciousness came. Mm-hmm. So what she illustrates very well is that the tool you use produces a different consciousness. Now I'd like to talk about, but there's not time, how the alphabet contributes to the kind of consciousness we have and the kind of self we have. But in any case, back to finishing the jhanas. So the practice of uncorrected mind means you let everything be as it is. But you can try to develop a mind which brings clarity or attention to your mind without changing it.

[46:03]

Or rather without any intention of changing it. But of course everything you do changes it. So if practicing uncorrected mind you just follow your attention wherever it goes lighting up one thing after another. This practice itself enters you into the first jhana. So it's using a tool of going with your mind paying attention to attention itself, but that itself is the tool of the first jhana.

[47:19]

And from that gratitude, equanimity, clarity may arise. So here you're using the very intention of and practice of uncorrected mind to develop the jhanas. Now another aspect of uncorrected mind is to so deeply leave everything alone that everything keeps returning to emptiness. As we have no eyes, no ears, no nose, no mouth, etc. in the Heart Sutra. So while you're practicing and you're in the process of examining or analyzing or entering into gratitude, if you understand the presence of the four formless absorptions,

[48:58]

You feel these calling you as sleep calls you into sleep. But here it's the immeasurableness of space. which the limitlessness of space calls you from the examination into a very deep feeling. And likewise, the limitlessness of consciousness, you start to feel calling you. And nothing that can be identified, whatever, calls you. That's maybe the deepest call in some ways.

[50:05]

And Beyond awareness or not awareness or being aroused from your meditation or not being aroused from your meditation, the fourth formless realm calls you. So while you practice uncorrected mind, say following attention wherever it goes, You enter into the four jhanas. And the four formless realms in various ways call you.

[51:12]

And you lock in, you can feel yourself lock into a meditative state which you cannot be disturbed. Or you don't wish to be disturbed anyway. It has its own integrity. It's a unit that's beyond something you can measure. And you can stay in that and not even Manjushri can disturb you. It's the same as Manjushri's wisdom and absorption. Only a momio ringing the bell, calling you to the functioning of this practice in the world can rouse you. Only a momio ringing the bell, calling you to the functioning of this practice in the world can rouse you.

[52:21]

Thank you very much. Usually on the, often on the third day, a kind of softness comes into our practice. Softness is one word, but it has the sense of being able to see smaller things. You can begin to perhaps hear the voice inside your voice. And even cultivate the voice inside your voice.

[53:38]

And you begin to feel a person inside the person you are. This person inside the person you are is softer and also stronger than the kind of rough person we usually are, the kind of roughness we have. I suppose for us, if it was just softer, it might be a problem, but the fact that it's softer and stronger gives us some confidence. Yesterday I described the meditation practice about as well as I can do it at this point anyway in my life.

[55:07]

So probably depending on you know, your ears and your practice. You heard what I said yesterday to various degrees. But I feel you, I'm sure you heard it enough that if you want to continue practicing, it will work in you or with you. I think I enjoyed very much Ulrike's description of counting yesterday. I'm not sure her examples of how to count will be in meditation manuals in a century.

[56:28]

Such meditation manuals are usually a bit simpler than that. But it's a very good example of the playfulness, creativity, that needs to come into practice. And most important probably, the ability to recognize the different states of mind that come up with different ways of actualizing a practice. And she also noticed that, at least I think this was the feeling, that when you count in words, you open up the mental space of thoughts. I don't want to go into this too much but I referred to it yesterday, the alphabet.

[57:45]

The alphabet is phonetic. It gives signs to sounds, not to ideas. And so it allows us, although for a long time people only read in two ways, Hard to believe, but what I've read is that until the 12th century, there's no reference to reading except for the ears of others and for your own ears. And it wasn't until the 12th century that it was really accepted to put spaces between words.

[59:06]

And if you write out words as a scribe does, without breaks, you can't read the words unless you put them in sausage links with spaces between them. It's a problem that English speakers have with some of these long German words that seem to go on for a page. If you write it out without breaks, you have to say it with your lips to read it. You can't read it with your eyes. So what I'm pointing out in this is the specifics of this are Ivan Illich's research.

[60:30]

that from around the 12th century we begin to have reading with the eyes, which creates a mental space. Many things follow from this, and it's in that century when paragraphs, titles, quotations, the ability to have an index, all of that occurs in the standard way of writing and reading. This is really a little, you know, not so pertinent to our Sashin perhaps, but I'm always trying to find out why and how we Westerners are different in our self and in our mental space than Asians.

[61:55]

Because it makes a difference in how we practice. So I'm convinced, this doesn't have to do with Ivan Ilyich, I'm convinced that our phonetic rooted mental space is particularly conducive to the way we think and the way we think about ourselves. Chinese, for instance, is ideograms. Literally, you think in pictures, you think in ideas. And the sound of Chinese characters is quite arbitrary, differs from north to south.

[63:04]

It's not just a matter of dialect or pronunciation. Und der Klang dieser Schriftzeichen, der ist ziemlich willkürlich und hat mit dem Bild gar nicht viel zu tun und unterscheidet sich sehr von den Orten, also Nord oder Süden und so weiter und hat jetzt nicht unbedingt etwas mit Dialekt zu tun. Now we think quite naturally in pictures and that's most common in dreams. Nun, wir denken also auch in Bildern, aber am ehesten in Träumen. Now, when we practice, there tends to be a shift to thinking in pictures. As was illustrated by Ulrike's various ways of counting, which was kind of a shift to counting through visual images or pictures.

[64:10]

And when you do start to practice your And coming into, and I think again it's useful to recognize or accept, a new way of thinking in images. And when you do that, your dreams start becoming more vivid. And you start being able to enter your dreams as a more familiar way of thinking. And you can enter more easily too into the thinking of koans, the more visual thinking of koans.

[65:17]

And the access to the koans, these visual images of the koans become more accessible to you. So in the end what I'm saying here is just to notice the contagiousness of words and thoughts and so forth and how they move in a mental space we've created through our language. Now, putting that aside, let me come back to... Yesterday I gave a description of meditation practice from the Zen point of view. And you can find that in your own practice, firm that up in your own practice as you wish.

[66:26]

Now, the next step in practice would be, what questions do you bring into practice? Now, this morning I asked three or four questions. What are the facts of your life? What is essential in your life? And these two questions are to look at your lived life, the person you find yourself to be. And on this spot where you're sitting, there's several things there. There's your mind, your body, and yourself as a person. And how that is manifested in your lived life.

[68:00]

So one object of meditation is that which is always present. Now that object is not present in the sense that you have to constantly be focused on it, because it's always present. But we do, it's always present, but we do objectify it and let it be in the background of our mind. Now I also asked, what is the wisdom mind that knows neither birth nor death? And in the koan, or the practice seminar we had before, the Sashinai spoke about, you notice the leaves moving this way and that.

[69:23]

Particularly here in these windy trees, you can see that. And very simply, you also then can recognize that in order to see the leaves move this way and that, there must be a stillness to your mind, a continuity to your mind. So you not only see the leaves that move, you see the stillness of the mind that allows you to see the leaves that move. When you really recognize that and make a shift and identify with that stillness of mind,

[70:27]

We can come into knowing, tasting that mind which knows neither, is not permanent, but knows neither birth nor death. Now we can go again to Ru Jing's poem. Ah, the original face, it knows neither birth nor death. Spring is in the plum flowers, entering a painted picture. And the mind that connects us with everything, that's intimate with everything, from the most subtle form of us human beings to insects and plants.

[71:59]

And these are most simply spoken of as the wisdom mind and compassion mind. Or wisdom body and compassion body. But we really need, like this woman who did and didn't come out of absorption, we need to really find this experientially, directly in ourselves. Now, we can ask each of you is sitting on this place, and right where you are is a mind, a body, and a person. Let's keep it simple. Now, this is always present, these three things. And now you can, through the teaching, you can refine that question, that object of meditation.

[73:31]

And ask yourself traditionally and very powerfully, is your mind the same as your body? It's related, certainly. Is your mind different from your body? Well, if I didn't have a body, I wouldn't have a mind. It's not the same as my body, it's not different from my body. And your body, etc., is it the same as the mind, you know? And then is the person you are the same as your body? Not the same. And yet it's completely dependent on your body and your mind. So if your person, the person you are, is not the same as your body,

[74:36]

and not different, not the same as your mind, and not different. How does this person exist? We can study the person, and we can study separately the mind, and we can study separately the body. Now are you qualified for this study? Because this study goes to the root of what human beings are and what our society is. But no, we're not qualified. Some important person should decide this. The bishop. The king. Cole. Clinton. You know, the word cathedral means seat. And to possess something was always done with your ass.

[76:25]

To possess something means to sit down on it with your posterior. That's what possess means in English. So we say, where is the seat of the government in Bonn or Washington? Where is the seat of the bishop, the cathedral, which means chair and seat? So there's a real sense in Zen to sit down on your own seat. This is the county seat, the government seat, the throne, the cathedral. This is, you are your own authority. And you can only find this by taking possession of who you are. Or sitting down in your own authority.

[77:36]

And this takes some strength and courage. Who else? No one can do it for you. So what is here? Maybe you don't really care. Some of us care. Some of us are so weak we can't help but care. Because we can't get it straight unless we go to basics. Some people can glide along, but us anxious types, we need to find out what's really going on. How do we exist?

[78:38]

Body, mind, person, not the same, not different. How do they come together? And you can begin to study these things through the aggregates of mental and physical aggregates. As we've done, the skandhas, the vijnanas, the four elements. This is a more probing way to look at mind and body. And we can use psychology and friendship and experience to study this lived life.

[79:54]

And finding your seat, you can begin to ask yourself in your strength and softness, What is this person that appears to my mind? What is this person that appears in the particular mental space of my thinking? What about when I change my interior space to a more visually rooted space? What is the person that appears when I'm more concentrated and in meditation? If a different state of mind appears when a Rika counts one way and another, then a different person appears in meditation than in your lived life.

[81:07]

Or different in your thought space than in your dream space. Or different in the space through realized clarity of mind and body. When your body is suffused by clarity and energy. No, I use the simple example often of holding this up and creating a field and looking at this object again. But that's just an example, but really what you're holding up and bringing up into this space is not this stick, but your lived life. Do you like the person, do you feel good about the person that appears in your mental space?

[82:33]

What about the extraordinary fact that other kinds of persons that you are appear in other mental and spiritual spaces? And which one of these persons do you want to be? And how are you going to figure it out? Are you going to make a choice? Are you going to bring them all together or develop one or the other? And what about the difference between the person that appears in your innermost space and your mental space?

[83:38]

The person that's closest to your heart and the person you find in your lived life? Does your lived life support the person that's closest to your heart? Can you change, really, without doing great damage to yourself, the person that's closest to your heart? Your lived life does have its own integrity. But does it support the kind of person we feel closest to being and want to be? These questions are the basic questions that are always present of meditation and of mindfulness practices.

[84:57]

And the courage with which you bring these questions into your life And the courage with which you face the consequences of these questions determines how deep your practice is and how deeply you are a human being with others. Now, so one object, subject of meditation is these things that are always present and the refinement with which we can look at them through the teaching. And then there's also the obstacles and hindrances in our practice. The delusions.

[86:08]

The things that interfere with us looking at ourselves or acting on what we feel. Now in an easier practice there's a lot of rules and morality and development of attitudes. Zen has chosen a path of clearing out your psychic and physical channels with the difficulty of being itself. And sashin is a practice designed, a ritual actually, designed to bring us into our own difficulty. What I find amusing about the schedule is no matter what schedule I create, as long as it's, you know, actually still a sashin,

[87:21]

Beginners find it all equally difficult. The schedule we had a few years ago, beginners found the same difficulties people find this. So really, if I'm making the schedule somewhat easier, it's for the old-timers, so they can keep doing it. So they don't have to feel, oh, God, I have to go back to boot camp. And yet it's, do you have the phrase boot camp?

[88:35]

Boot camp is the word for the initial training in the Marines and things like that. Oh, yeah. March for miles in the mud, you know, and things like that. So, you know, and it, but, so I want Sushin to be enough for the old timers to continue their development and practice. So what you come down to is the sashin has to be, the schedule has to be enough to bring us into our own difficulties. So if I take a stricter place, hey, what's the problem?

[89:41]

There's food. Nobody's actually being hurt. There's no war going on. I mean, war is a kind of puberty rite, which we can do without. We have no serious walkabouts in our culture. You know, put on a backpack and get in a jet plane is about as far as it goes. Yeah, there's not much difficulty in our life. And no one tells us what kind of courage and strength is actually necessary to be alive. So Zen has made a decision to immerse us in our own difficulty.

[91:00]

When the difficulty that arises from within you is not there, I mean, we are quite happy for no reason. If you're not happy for no reason, you're not a happy person. You need distraction or some kind of satisfaction or something from other people. A monk asked Bai Zhang, what is the extraordinary affair? And Bai Zhang said, sitting alone on the mountain. Finding your own seat. So again, sashin should be difficult enough that you actually have to become honest with yourself to sit.

[92:30]

Until you're completely honest with yourself, there's some difficulty in sitting. And compassionate with yourself and with others. I guarantee you, when you are, and you're no longer attached to excitability and distraction, most of the difficulty of sitting melts away. And if I sound a little tough, let me say that most of the struggle seems like nonsense. Although I find I'm involved in this nonsense quite a lot myself.

[93:36]

But I still know deep down it's not important. So this is a shortcut practice. Do you want to take the shortcut? Clean out your channels, your psychic and physical channels and come to a real honesty with yourself. Pull the film off things so you can really find your own seat and study yourself Bring these questions into your life. Through meditation practice and psychological practice or however you want to approach it.

[94:43]

And we are each as qualified.

[94:45]

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