So, I've been thinking about Sashin practice. And I often do and I would like to again think about it aloud with you. Another person left Sashin. And I've also talked with people who aren't here now, who've had a pretty hard time after Sashin, so intense, and then afterwards they become depressed.

[01:14]

And I want to think about it aloud with you because even though some of you may not affect you in this way or be so difficult. I want to take responsibility for the difficulty since I'm the one asking you to supporting you in doing this practice. First of all, again, this is a monastic practice transported, not just by me, but by others into lay, as a lay practice.

[02:22]

Now, I don't know quite where to start, because there's several things I'd like to talk about. Let me talk about... Why... Let me say something personal. Other than being born, I would say... The two most important things that happened to me, one is meeting Suzuki Roshi. And the other is doing sashins. If I hadn't done sashins, I can't imagine it, because I can't imagine even being alive if I hadn't done sashins.

[03:26]

Now there's a book, there's a couple books out now by one person that are the first really, I would say, um, um, Where shall I use? Sophisticated criticism of Zen Buddhism. Now, I bring it up. Maybe sophisticated is maybe the right or wrong word, but in any case, it's a debunking... Debunking? Debunking. To throw you out of your bunk.

[04:45]

No, it means to make something, to find what's wrong with everything. Yeah, well, it's like saying, well, they're doing this for this reason, but they're really doing it for prestige or self-interest or money. They're not really doing it for the reasons that they say they are. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, it's sophisticated in that it's mounted with tremendous academic apparatus, quotations, etc. In a way, it's good, because on one level, everything this scholar says is true. Whenever you build institutions or develop a practice, any of it can be corrupted.

[06:07]

And it's one of the reasons that Tsukiroshi, among many of the reasons, but Tsukiroshi left Japan. And what's sad about this scholarship of this man is that he can't see, he doesn't really know what's going on, and he can't see, he always goes for the lowest common denominator. Or the most negative interpretation. And what I feel good about these books which were recently published Is it so thorough and researched and convincing in its debunking that it makes very naked or very clear that something real must be happening?

[07:32]

So I bring this up partly in the context of the Sesshin because for the most part what we experience is the difficulty of the Sesshin. And there's also a lot of social pressure once you're in it to continue. And I know we need this help of each other. At the same time, I sometimes feel a little badly about it. In a way, this is such a... I mean, I think Sesshin practice is a pretty extreme practice. The more you let yourself into it. Now, what are the reasons we do Sashin? One is it makes us very raw. And we need a certain rawness to reach a liminal state.

[09:12]

Do you know the word liminal? Subliminal? Liminal means a psychological threshold where change can occur. Now, if Sashin puts us into a liminal state or a threshold state, Now, this can be criticized as a depossession, in other words, not being possessed, but in a trance state, but a state which undoes your culture or ego so that you are depossessed rather than possessed. Now, this can be criticized as then a form of creating a kind of hypnotic state where you can be programmed. So I want to speak, because if you practice much, you are aware that you enter a kind of liminal state.

[10:32]

Now... This is also part of what I was speaking about yesterday, following Randy's talk. Because the practice of the body of the whole earth, it's the Tathagata, is a kind of is dependent on a kind of melting process within you. Now, part of the reason we do sashins is because there are some things that can only be taught in sashins.

[11:45]

Teaching is very context-situational, very context-based. That's one reason you have Cresta, and I hope we can sometime build a little building for Doksan and for Chosan, for tea together. Why in the buildings in monasteries there's a teaching hall as well as a Buddha hall and so forth. Because what's strange about teachings or any subtle teachings is they can't just happen anywhere in any context. As you may know, when you do a sesshin, just the walking around the ponds here teaches us in a way that wouldn't be possible if we weren't in sesshin.

[12:56]

Or how we simply hear sounds, birds, cars, and so forth. As I said the other day, we almost feel like there's a substance that's neither outside nor inside nor both. In which we begin to experience things. And there's no way to know about this or experience this except doing something like Sashin. Dogen speaks about hearing the striker, the mallet, before it hits the bell and after it hits the bell.

[14:15]

And I don't know if it's... if... And you can't try to do this, but I don't know if you've noticed that sometimes before someone hits the bell, you know what the sound is going to be like. They do it. And so this is not just a figure of speech of Dogen. He's speaking about an actual experience. So one reason we do sashin is because it brings us to a certain rawness and where we can have a pretty direct sense of the suchness of being. Not just being alive, but the kind of stuff of being without any way to protect ourselves from it.

[15:24]

And sometimes we feel, I think in Sashin, a tremendous strength. You may feel the column of your body. And even reach the point where it doesn't matter what happens. Anytime in your life you feel. You're ready to meet whatever calamity, joy, disease, problem can come. It just comes. Or even a host of mosquitoes on your cheek. And then other times you lose that immediately and your whole life seems spread out on a table in front of you.

[16:51]

With all the voices that haven't liked you speaking through the table. And all the times you feel you've let people down or you're not understood or you can't be understood. And then you feel lost and pretty dispersed. But even then, spread out on this table of equivocation, you can find your strength. This is a territory of beginning to feel layers of consciousness.

[17:52]

And the play of intention and attitudes within those layers of consciousness. I don't know any other way that this territory can really become visible to you and experienced by you except through sashing. There's many ways we can live our life, but this kind of knowledge of how we exist is the particular teaching we find out through Sashin. Und es gibt viele Arten, wie ihr euer Leben leben könnt, aber diese Art von Wissen kann eben nur durch die Besonderheit der Sashin-Praxis erfahren werden. Now, there's also one other reason we do Sashin and we do it together is and do it in a way that where we take refuge in the schedule.

[19:14]

Und es ist eine andere Art, warum wir Sashin tun und wir tun es zusammen und wir nehmen Zuflucht im Zeitplan. And even if you're the Eno or the... Tenzo or the Doan, you have your own schedule. You don't use that as a way to change your schedule. So you just take refuge in the schedule the way we take refuge in how we're anchored in the present mind. And through this taking refuge in the schedule, we also open ourselves to, what can I say, the mutuality of being. And one reason we practice together is to support each other, and the other reason is to open ourselves to this mutuality of being.

[20:21]

And sometimes I think, you know, I know it helps to have a phrase or a koan or turning word that you can stay with. And sometimes it's one you make up yourself. Yesterday, the one that I came up and I stayed with was, it's going to sound funny, but it was eating at the edge and entering at the center. And I almost said it in the hot drink last night, but I said it would sound too strange. But I was really enjoying playing in the large territory of this phrase, eating at the edge and grazing at the center. No, no, entering at the center. I suddenly felt like... like Nanchuan's water buffalo grazing here and there.

[22:10]

And it became a practice for me of the sameness of everything without interfering with differentiation. Now Randy again presented the practice more of the monastic style where you're just doing it and you don't really know so much what you're doing but you just do it or stay with the phrase to zazen and so forth. But I'm trying to use the Sashin more to, since you're lay people, to lift up the practice a little so you can see into it. You don't have to just osmotically receive it. Like when Sukhiroshi gave me this drawing that's on the cover of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[23:24]

He was in his cabin at Tassajara. And he said, he asked if I'd like one, and I said yes, and he gave me this one. And all he said was that the means, as Randy said, the body, the Tathagata is the body of the whole earth. No, I never, when he would say something like that, I would never take it as just a kind of turn of phrase. Like you don't really hear the mallet before it hits the bell. It's just a nice idea, poetic idea.

[24:24]

Or there's no such thing as the body of the whole earth. I always took these things as I didn't debunk them or I wasn't so skeptical. I took them as must mean something. I knew that if anything in this world is authentic, he was authentic. So I didn't presume I understood it, but I presumed there was something there. So living together, you have a chance to create this cauldron over some time. And you can do it much more mutually because he can wait for me to do something. So he'd spent a lot of time some years earlier giving me teachings about Dharmakaya, Samarkaya, Nirmanakaya.

[26:03]

So my first sort of effort or practice or feeling was, Tathagata is not Dharmakaya, Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya. So what would it be? And then I would ask myself, how do you practice with it? How do you practice with a phrase like the body of the whole earth? Being, you know, pretty simple. I would just say, well, I don't know what to do, so I'll repeat the phrase. The body of the whole earth. Then you start thinking body.

[27:17]

A body, your own body. Then I would notice other people's bodies. And get to know what a body feels like. I mean, like you can feel another body across a room. Now, can you feel the whole earth in a similar way? And what is whole? What's the word whole? Earth, does that mean trees and mountains? Does it mean the planet, you know? I actually took these things quite seriously, or I don't know if serious is right, but I completely engaged myself with them.

[28:20]

I did my lot, and I could say I did nothing else but this. Maybe it's still true, but on top of that, I do my regular life. And then I would have a chance that with this kind of effort and asking myself this kind of question, I would then If I had some chance, I'd say, what is tathāgata? Or I'd find some way to express it. Does that mean tathāgata? No. Or something. And he would say something, and so over a period of time, my sense of the practice of the tathagata as the body of the whole earth developed.

[29:42]

Or tathagata as suchness. Now, Dogen has a phrase, ji-ju-yu samadhi. Now, this idea of Dogen's is that Jijuyu Samadhi is self-joyous Samadhi. It's the idea that realization transmits realization. Enlightenment transmits enlightenment. So the sense here is, is through sasin practice and zazen practice, you begin to realize the samadhi that realizes samadhi.

[30:54]

And that's one reason Sashin practice is so bare, is we try not to give you too much. Mainly I want to talk to you in a way that opens you to your own suchness. just as you are, without any ornaments. And it's a kind of difficult place to go to in many cultures. To go there, you need dancing for 48 hours or psychedelics or something. And in Sashin, if you don't fight it too much or you enter into the fighting, you sometimes can touch yourself in a very deep way. Or deep may not be right, just be present with yourself in a very unornamented way.

[32:07]

Now the sense in sashin practice is this creates the possibility, this liminal state, this threshold state of what Dogen calls ji-ju-yu samadhi. A self-joyous transformation of our own being. But again, it's not something you can seek. It may be a kind of absolute honesty is the condition. An honesty with yourself, an openness with yourself. Again, a kind of rawness.

[33:33]

Mm-hmm. I think that's enough for now. Since we're about to chant, let me say one way you can experience this, have a sense of this elixir I was speaking about yesterday and am speaking about now. A kind of medium of being itself, which in itself is a kind of medicine. is sometimes you can find sound reaches throughout your cells.

[34:56]

There's a kind of inner sound that meets the sound of our chanting. A kind of inner sound that meets, hears the bell before it's struck. Maybe you can practice now with the inner sound or the sound of the body of the whole earth. Often we need some phrase like that to touch this elixir. To touch this self-joyous samadhi. Thank you.

[36:07]

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