Dogen said, although the 90-day practice period is only as long as your forehead, it is unlimited time. And although the 90 days of practice period are unlimited time, They are as immediate as our eyeball. So how do we form the structure of true practice, as Pekaroshi mentioned? How do we form the structure of true practice in unlimited time? And how do we carve out a key? Seems like a tall order, but seems like that's what we're doing.

[01:10]

I also like what Suzuki Roshi said in ancient times at Tassara, something like this. In the midst of practice period, do not try to see yourself or understand it. Practice period has a wondrous quality of being deeply transformative and will stay with you for the rest of your life. Thank you, Roshi, and some of our elders, have been really questioning, examining, investigating, what is this business we call a 90-day practice parade?

[02:18]

Why this comes up is, maybe he's mentioned it already, but there are in the world today, in the West, in our country, I don't know about Europe, people who are doing practice periods on the Internet, or they're doing practice periods for a few weeks or a month or so, and they have shoesaws that live at home in their house and they come to this short-term practice place. So, Bankaroshi, in this respect, is very much a traditionalist for all his innovative, many wondrous innovative qualities, in experimenting on how we can fully and truly practice here in the West. He does raise this as a serious question.

[03:22]

Can it be called a 90-day practice period or implied a 90-day? Because we understand a practice period to be 90 days. Can it be called a practice period if it's not face-to-face or if it's a couple weeks? Anyway, in the process of raising these questions and asking himself and asking close friends and fellow practitioners about this, he's actually come up with some very strong and very clear affirmations of what our practice period is that we hold to, that have been practiced here in this country, like at Tassajara, which, of course, he helped to establish and formed with Suzuki Roshi, the first practice period here in the West. And our lineage goes back for hundreds of years in Japan and hundreds of years prior to that in China, where there's something about this ancient form

[04:38]

I should even take it further back than that, that Dogen talks about how our Chinese ancestors inherited this wonderful form of practice period. when the Zen tradition was introduced to China from India. And perhaps you know or have understood that Shakyamuni Buddha, a historical Buddha, practiced these 90-day practice periods for them in India. It was the summer practice period retreat where they stayed together as a sangha and practiced together for this designated period of time, and people didn't leave, didn't come and go. So, It's refreshing to me, because I've done a few of these practice periods, to see and feel Bakeroshi really examining it further and sharing with me, and I hope to share even a little bit with you.

[05:48]

I'm sure he will continue to explore it. For us to feel confidence How can we feel a deep confidence in this mysterious thing we call practice period? I mean, for some of us for whom this is a new form, a new formal way of living, it may seem strange and kind of not very familiar yet. And yet I trust by now, what are we, five or six month weeks into the practice period? We're beginning to get, I think, I said, the feeling of its rhythm. The four days on, one day off, four days on, one day off, then you let your study work.

[06:50]

It has a rhythm of its own. Then it has It has some quality to it, a practice period, this schedule, these forms, that even though we cannot understand it in the midst of it, as Izuku Roshi said, We can't see ourselves objectively. We can't know or measure what it is we're doing. There's no report cards. There's no first quarter, midterm, final exams. Other than our immediate experience, our empirical sense, that while there is something unknowable about a practice period, it's composed of very knowable particulars.

[07:58]

How to cook the rice, how we wash the dishes, how we sift the incense when we're cheated, how we hit the Han, how we light a fire, how we keep ourselves alert in study, how we go to bed and get a good night's sleep as much as possible. So there are myriad little details, forms that we practice, that we learn, that we, in a sense, ritualize in the sense that we do them again and again understanding that they, although they seem to be repeated, we understand that each time, each event is unique. And so we begin to cultivate a familiarity and an intimacy that isn't so readily available.

[09:09]

Maybe it's impossible to find. outside of these 90 days, 90-day practice. So, in the spirit of describing, in the spirit of one way of describing this practice period that Baker Roshi has picked up from Dogen, if this is unlimited time, what is it? How do we structure it? I want to share with you a few observations. In the unlimited hours and days of this 90-day practice period, we have this unique opportunity to study the self, in studying the self, to intimately investigate myriad qualities of time.

[10:27]

We have structured time. There is flowing time. We have obyoki time, lazy eve time, intense time, soft time, highly active energetic time, slowed way down time, shared time, solitary time, confusing time, clarifying time, walking mountains time, frozen river time, boiling water time, dish washing time, ritual enacting time, unknowable time,

[11:36]

A single snowflake's time. 84,000 trillion snowflake's time. So in our unlimited days and hours, where nothing is ever the same, we have this unique opportunity to explore an unfathomably wonderful and mysterious quality of what it means to be alive in this structured and unstructured time period. The, in a sense, all that's asked of us is to give ourselves over completely, to immerse ourselves into the liveliness of each occasion, each event, without holding back and yet to find, to endeavor to find our ease in these forms that may at first seem unfamiliar,

[13:05]

But to sense and to trust that this ancient way, which is neither new nor old-fashioned, immediately, timely, is giving immeasurable life to each of us. I also wanted to talk a little bit about breath. Because breath, obviously, or goes without saying, breath has this way of weaving itself through all these myriad faces, forms of time. And like that was a list that I

[14:10]

there are myriad forms or myriad expressions of our breath. Many of them are unknown or more or less unknown to us. And yet, in the same way that we understand that the various moments, hours and days of unlimited time, are never the same, we needn't try to have our breath always be the same. Sometimes we're short of breath, particularly at this altitude. Sometimes our breath is almost imperceptible. Sometimes we need to breathe hard and deep. I'm also interested in the root, how breath is the root of inspiration and aspiration, of course, as well as respiration, simply to breathe.

[15:23]

So what is the link between aspiration, to aspire to, to long for, to to endeavor toward way-seeking mind, we might say, thought of enlightenment, the deep desire to practice, to further cultivate and develop our practice? Is this not our one expression of our inmost request, our heart's desire is aspiration to practice. And inspiration, the spire, of course, you know in English, the spire is the breath part. It's the same spire. Inspiration, or excuse me, respiration, that spire is the breath. Aspiration, aspiration, that is the breath.

[16:27]

Inspiration is also the breath. So the breath runs through these enlivening and energizing qualities of our practice. That if we don't, if we haven't been touched by them, we might say that we don't really know our own breathing, or don't yet know our own breathing. Because to really be intimate with our breath, and to see it, know it from the inside, how it feels as it as this mysterious, ubiquitous, invisible quality stuff enters into our breathing apparatus, permeates beyond the lungs into the bloodstream. There is nowhere it doesn't reach. So to know that intimately, to sense it, even though we don't really have much language for that,

[17:36]

circulation and flow. In a sense, it's at the heart of our practice. So to aspire, our aspirations are what led us to this place. something each one of us has unique aspirations, has had and continues to have, I trust, that which we aspire to, that which we hold up in our highest heart's ideal, that's not we trust and know in some way, not merely idealism, fancy thinking. It's something that through this kind of practice, this ancient form of practice with in this held together by the care and trust of our lineage elders, we can feel, I can feel through Beka Roshi, I have felt many times through Suzuki Roshi.

[18:44]

And I can feel it in my reading and in intoning when I read Allah Dogen. I can feel that heart breath and it inspires me, and it is my aspiration. So what about inspiration? Do we feel uninspired? Ever? Sometimes? All the time? Or never? Inspiration. What is it that inspires us? What is it about inspiration that allows us to leap beyond the boundaries of our old, limited sense of self, is it not inspiration? Some mysterious power of the breath to motivate, to welcome afresh each moment, each opportunity, each unknown occasion.

[19:55]

and plunge into the unknown. With that, I leave you. And I thank you very much.

[20:07]

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