Thank you all for still being here. And as is obvious, this is the first Sashin we've done as part of a practice period. And an experiment to have 20 or so more people come to the Sashin. But still, Sashin is something different from practice period. But let me say it. I was noticing it as I was putting on straightening my robes.

[01:04]

Did it ever strike you that it's rather funny to design clothes that keep falling off? I mean, they don't do that on the runway in American fashion shows. I mean, I hope they don't. But definitely, a lot of these kind of clothes, you don't belt them, you wrap them, and you don't. You don't really tie them to your body. You kind of get them in the territory of your body and then try to live in the middle. With most of these clothes, you don't really tie them tight. There are no belts. You don't really tie them to the body. Instead, you bring them into the area of your own body and then you try to live in the middle. In Eheji, in the winter, it's really cold and wet cold.

[02:17]

The wind comes right across from Manchuria. The snow wind, cold wind. So North Face was just being started then by somebody I knew slightly, and I had them design me a vest, a town vest that I could wear under my robes. And I tried wearing it, but it was a terrible mistake. And I even found an 11th century Chinese Buddhist poet who says, don't wear a down vest under your room. Because if your torso doesn't get cold, you can't keep your hands and feet warm.

[03:25]

Your body sort of shuts down and says, hey, you're cozy, and then you freeze. And I discovered this 11th century poet was right. And the general rule is you always have your hands and feet and neck open. They're called the four windows, three windows. Because then your body heats your hands and feet and this area and then keeps your body warm. because the body then warms this area and the calf area and the hands and feet, and that keeps the body warm.

[04:41]

So anyway, I understand you're wearing socks, some of you, and especially you, because you have a problem with your hands and feet. Yes, I understand that some of you are wearing socks, and especially me, because I have problems with my feet and hands. But I'd suggest you experiment with, if you can, without having socks. And you're not supposed to hide your hands under your robes unless there's snow blowing through the room. And in the summer it is extremely hot and muggy in Aiheiji. Yeah, and there's mosquitoes as big as small airplanes.

[05:55]

Who can actually puncture through your robes to, you know, find a blood vessel. So any place the robes have creases, I would try to pull the creases out of you. And then I got the lightest possible robes I could. And the lightest robes and the least expensive are made of what they call tetron, which I think is rayon. And the lightest robes are from, help me, Ms. Schneider, I don't know, Tetra, which I think is Rayon. What do you say, what is Rayon in English? I don't know. Rayon is a German word. Rayon is a German word? Anyway, so, but... that the Tetron or Rayon Oquesa was so slippery, it wouldn't stay up.

[07:02]

Really, all the time it was like that. And this Tetron, is there also a German word for it? No, it's a Japanese word. And I think it's Rayon, but I don't know. So I got some Velcro. And I sewed Velcro in the corners. So I was the one monk who everything didn't keep falling off. But you're not supposed to do this. Your robes are supposed to fall off. You have to keep straightening them and so on. And then they noticed that my robes didn't fall off. And then they noticed every time I opened my robes, I'd go... And then they noticed... Because the tetron would make a noise.

[08:16]

I mean, the velcro would make a noise. And one time when I was going, a group of young monks surrounded me. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. I also had an edge seat, and I would put my okesa from the side. I'd put it in the back. They didn't like that. I had to approach it from the front as if I was in the middle of the ton and climb on and do it. Maybe I might, if you all decide to bow to the Buddha instead of each other or something, I might say, no, no. Wait, can you say that again? If the servers all decided to bow to the Buddha instead of bowing to each other here, I might say, well, come on.

[09:33]

Yeah. But anyway, that's the way it was. And... So as I said the other day, a sashin and zazen in samadhi land on the other side of the ma board is a posture which allows you to open yourself to a, as I said, non-dreaming deep sleep mind and samadhi. Das ist eine Haltung, die es zulässt, dass du dich dem nicht träumenden Tiefschlaf und dem Samadhi-Geist öffnen kannst. And that possibility of Samadhi is related to don't move.

[10:40]

Und diese Möglichkeit des Samadhi bezieht sich auf, dass sich nicht bewegen. To see if you can really, at least as much as possible, not move. And sometimes, Sukhiroshi, during Sashin, when people would start getting, you know, the second or third period in the evening, we didn't have work period, we did it all, sitting all morning and all afternoon. And there were no Zabutans, just a Zafu. So we just sat on the tatamis. And, yeah. And here, I mean, sometimes I think one of you is going to show up with five.

[11:43]

Maybe a big pile, you know. Which, you know, I understand some of you need it, but still, let's try to keep it to one. A thick one's okay. But in the beginning, during a period in which people were beginning to... I mean, I think I've told you the story. Once he let us sit for two and a half hours without ringing the bell. On the third day. Which, without bragging, I can say I did it. I was just so desperate, I decided to do it.

[12:45]

And I sat beside Graham Petsche, my friend, and he never moved. So I thought, well, I'm at least going to try to be as good as Graham. And in those days, you know, they didn't have Xerox machines and things like that. They had onion skin. Onionskin is the kind of paper you use in a typewriter which makes a, with a carbon copy. Durchschlagpapier, ja. Und damals gab es noch keine Kopiermaschinen, sondern es gab Zwiebelpapier oder Zwischenlagepapier, Durchschlagpapier, mit dem man Kopien gemacht hat. And the schedule was always, of course, you make several copies, was printed on onion skin from a mimeograph machine.

[13:50]

And every, you know, hour or so or another 45 minutes, he'd come into the Zendo and pick up the schedule. We could hear it rattling. And we'd say, oh, okay. And then he'd go back upstairs to his room. We'd hear clump, clump, clump, clump. and after about two hours Graham leaned forward once and leaned back and I thought I got him And somehow I did it. But, I mean, it wasn't that Sugiroshi was a cruel taskmaster. It was just what they were used to doing in Japan.

[15:28]

I mean, they don't have saboutons, except for sleeping on. I mean, you have them in a private house, but not in the Zender. So, in addition to don't move... The other thing you want to kind of try to reach, reach, achieve is no choice is mine. Now, even if, may I say, Gisela, you have stomach problems, may I say that? Yeah. And sometimes she just has to take care of her stomach. But still, even in that, you still want to see if you can have a no-choices mind.

[16:31]

And it may be that sometimes I have no choice but to accept my stomach. But sashin is not a time to have a lot of choices about how you want to practice, etc. Ideally, as much as possible, you're on your cushion according to the schedule. With the others. Yeah. Now, some people discover no choice mind.

[17:34]

Some people discover no choice mind. Like Steve Stuckey, who's the central abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. who suddenly at the beginning of our practice period was given a few months to live because he has pancreatic cancer. He was fine from one day to the next. I've mentioned it before to you. So he invited me to, he's going to have a stepping down from, he's stepped up to every challenge in his life. It's a phrase we have. But in this case it's a stepping up to a stepping down ceremony. From being stepping down as abbot.

[18:39]

So there's going to be a small ceremony and he asked me if I would send something to be said during the ceremony. And so I wrote something this morning and sent it to him a little bit ago. It's going to be December 8th. And obviously I can't go, but I sense something. But he is surviving as well as he is, which is quite well from what I hear, because he has a no-choice mind. He's completely accepted his situation without any thoughts, why me, or could it have been different, or something. Yeah, it's like someone has to go through this on this planet, and in this case it's me.

[20:21]

So a no-choice mind sometimes is forced upon you. And I've seen it happen to people, particularly when Ihsan had the first hospice for AIDS in San Francisco. That no choice mind when you realize it, it's beyond realizing, it just is. Functions like an enlightenment experience. Everything's different from then on. So one of the pedagogy of Sashim is to try to create the opportunity where you can be in the midst, allow yourself into the midst of a no-choice mind.

[21:46]

It's not like you're in prison and you're chained to your Zafu. That's an idea, though, but... Because you choose to have a no-choice mind. And you choose it, and my feeling is it's a kind of opportunity, a kind of vacation. Maybe a painful way to start your vacation, but still a kind of vacation. And we've been talking and, you know, I haven't even started speaking about what I was thinking of speaking about. Well, well. We have no schedule.

[22:59]

I mean... Oh dear, the wrong translator. Well, we've been speaking about in practice period that... like at the end of the Hokkyo Sanmai, Dumschan's poem, the last lines are, just establish continuity. And this is called the host within the host. So this is a complex, this word continuity is a complex idea.

[23:59]

But I mean, complex, when you approach it, It's a road which goes in lots of different directions. It's continuous in a lot of directions and you have to figure out which direction is practice. So what is continuity? The world right now is continuity. But there's these different ways of looking at things. We think of the world right now as out there is over there. Wir stellen uns die Welt gerade jetzt als da draußen ist da drüben vor.

[25:03]

And we think of the four directions, north, south, east, west. Und wir denken an die vier Richtungen, nord, ost, süd und west. And I've pointed out occasionally that in yoga culture they talk about the ten directions. Und ich habe schon öfter mal darauf hingewiesen, dass man in einer yogischen Kultur von den zehn Richtungen spricht. And it's not just, you know, they just added a few, you know. It's because they conceive of directionality as coming toward them, not away from them. So if I think of things approaching me, they're approaching from this direction. In this direction, the eight, north, south, east, west, north, east, south, etc. And so, and up and down makes ten.

[26:04]

Because the world approaches from above and below. Weil die Welt auch von oben und unten zukommt. Die Welt ist kontinuierlich, aber sie ist kontinuierlich auf eine Art und Weise, dass sie auf dich zukommt und deine Verortung wird. If you explore that, it's a different feeling of being in the world. So the world itself becomes a continuity. It's a happening space, not a container space. And it's just out there like a container.

[27:18]

It's happening and happening toward and through you. And as you know the koan, what was that? Oh, that's geese. Where have they gone? They've flown away. And he grabs his nose, twists it to his disciple. When have they ever flown away? When have they ever flown away? If the world is coming toward you, it doesn't fly away. You're in the midst of a continuity. And then there's mind appearing on everything. It's a continuity. And for some reason, what's been discovered is a no-choice mind lets you begin to feel a kind of invisible flow

[28:36]

I don't know. I mean, invisible flow? There's no invisible flow. I just said that. But it feels like that. It feels like really when you have a no-choice mind and you just say, okay, live or die, this is where it is. This is where I am. Whatever I'm going through, I'll go through on the cushion. Again, of course, there's exceptions. More during practice period than Sashin, but anyway, there's exceptions. But with or without exceptions, there still is this discovering the feel of a no-choice mind.

[29:38]

And you really may, I hope, you begin to feel what I mean when I speak about this invisible or silver even flow. That is not only continuity but also contains us. So I always say in English, because I have only got a certain number of words, we're not in a container world. But we are in a world which contains us. A containing world.

[30:56]

And this sense of a flow of an invisible continuity which begins to surface in us. Surface through this opening, a kind of opening that comes when you have no choice. It's a continuity which contains, is containing, a containing continuity. Best I can do to say it that way. Okay, and this containing continuity, you can let it, you can feel it sometimes, begin to contain the people around you.

[32:02]

Containing which contains phenomena too. It is now me. Tsukiroshi sometimes in the middle of a certain periods in Zazen and Sashin. As well as a few times rattling the onion skin. The two and a half hours is only once in ten years. Yeah, though sometimes it was an hour and fifteen minutes or so, and sometimes five minutes seems like a lot.

[33:16]

But often when there was a particularly difficult period or right near the end of the sashin, he'd suddenly say, don't move. And surprisingly, everybody is like, dead silence would come across the room. Everyone could do it. I'm afraid I'm not Suzuki Roshi. And I didn't grow up in Japan. So I'm unlikely to do that. Well, unlikely to do that. But it is the case that this don't move, no choices mind opens us to containing continuity that will change your life.

[34:31]

Always everything is enough. Thank you very much.

[34:51]

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