Enlightenment lives in stillness. Enlightenment is living in stillness. Living in stillness is enlightenment. The great, inconceivable mind of awakening and spiritual liberation lives in stillness, which is its context, the context, the realm of awakening.

[01:03]

What I just said could be called a teaching. Over a meal, someone said to me, told me a story. I don't know if I remember it correctly, but what I remember is something like this. It's a story about a rabbi who said, keep all the teachings close to your heart, on your heart. However, most people's hearts are rather hard, rather covered over. by some kind of toughness, which has been conjured up in response to pain.

[02:36]

The rabbi said, and he said, but sometimes the heart breaks. And when it breaks, if the teaching has been held close to the heart, the teaching can enter. I think that's the story I heard. And I imagine that when these teachings enter the heart, they are a great good medicine to free the heart from pain, to awaken it to truth. The founder of Zen Center said that Zazen, our sitting meditation practice, is, I remember him saying, the great tenderizer. Maybe he just said a tenderizer.

[03:43]

Our sitting practice, our sitting meditation practice, which we do a lot of here, thousands and thousands of hours of sitting go on here with many people, thousands of people sit. And the sitting practice has this potential to tenderize the body and mind. So we sit still And by sitting still, we learn how to be, we have an opportunity to learn how to be generous, careful, gentle, and tender, and patient with the pain of our life that may arise when we sit still, when we attempt to sit still.

[04:49]

And this process, in this process, as we learn to be still, try to be still with our pain, that interaction, trying to be kind with the pain of our life, of our life inwardly and our life as it is in relationship to others, as we do this work, our body and mind becomes more and more tender. We practice sitting still, we become more tender and we enter actual stillness in which enlightenment lives. We have been in an intensive meditation retreat here for about two weeks.

[06:15]

We have another week to go. People have expressed that they've had some difficulty. There's been quite a bit of illness. People have headaches, sore throats, various kinds of pain. And they have endeavored to practice kindness with the difficulties and may continue to do so. They have told me also that they are sometimes very tired. We have long days here of meditation and work. and they become tired and stressed around being tired.

[07:18]

Sometimes they feel they're so tired that when we have teachings they can't even stay awake for the teachings. And then they feel perhaps frustrated that they can't stay awake or barely stay awake and in their sleepiness can't understand what's being said or what's being offered and discussed. And then they feel pain. They imagine various things like that they're wasting their time in this meditation retreat. And then they feel pain at the thought that they're wasting their time and so on. And people have other stories that arise in their minds during meditation retreats, like they sometimes think that other people don't appreciate them or think they're a bad person. People actually think such thoughts in meditation retreats.

[08:24]

And those thoughts, if we believe them, of course, are painful. But also, it's painful if you have a thought that people if you have a thought that people appreciate you and you believe that, that will also be painful. It may not be so obvious, but I propose that to you. And it sometimes appears that when people get tired when they're practicing Zen meditation, sometimes people think, well, the thing to do when you're tired when you're exhausted and weary, practicing long hours of meditation, the thing to do is to force yourself to continue no matter what. To be tough with yourself when you feel weak and tired.

[09:32]

But actually I've been suggesting be kind to yourself when you're feeling exhausted. And sometimes when you feel exhausted and you're kind to yourself, you do continue your effort even when you're exhausted. But sometimes when you're exhausted and you're kind to yourself, you rest. Now here's an opportunity to sing a song. Zen folks get weary. Zen folks do get weary. Wearing the same shabby clothes. And when they're weary, try a little tenderness.

[10:49]

They may be waiting, just anticipating things they may never possess. That one struck a chord. Things they may never possess. So while they're waiting, try a little tenderness. It's not just sentimental. They have their grief and care. And a word that's soft and gentle can make it easier to bear. It's really simple. Oh no. Just a minute.

[11:56]

I forgot a line here. Oh, here it is. You won't regret it. Zen folks won't forget it. Love is their whole happiness. It's all so easy. Try a little tenderness. The practice of sitting still is oftentimes quite difficult, but to continue, as I'm suggesting, tenderizes us to the point that we actually open to the stillness in which enlightenment is living. But we have to take care of ourselves

[12:59]

in the long effort in order to relax and open to the tenderizing process. The rabbi said sometimes the heart breaks. Well, that can happen too, but we aren't always given some opportunity to break our heart, but we can tenderize it almost all the time. We don't have to have a big tragedy to break our heart open. to let in the truth which we've been defending against. We can work on it in a more gentle, consistent way by trying to be sitting upright in healthy posture and still. But it's hard to sit upright in healthy posture. It's hard to... moment by moment, be aware of your posture.

[14:02]

But it's possible if you're kind to yourself, kind to your posture. So someone also asked recently, pointed out recently that there's, some people are teaching what's called stress reduction and they're using, some of the people are teaching are people who have been trained in the Zen or other Buddhist traditions and meditation, and they're using some of the teachings about how to meditate that come from the tradition of the Buddhas, they're using those for the purpose of stress reduction. And the person said, maybe should we try to convert the people who are doing stress reduction to Buddhism? And I said to that person that stress reduction is part of the practice of the way of enlightenment.

[15:11]

Stress reduction can set the stage for tenderizing, can set the stage for opening up If people are feeling stress, they often will be unable to relax with the stress. And if they don't relax with the stress, their heart, their body and mind are tense and rigid and hard. And reality is being held away by the tense heart, body and mind. So reducing the stress It isn't exactly to turn down the stress, but to try to support the body and mind to meet the stress in a way where there could be relaxation with the stress.

[16:14]

So the way of meeting the stress, many ways of speaking to people and touching people and talking to people to help them relax with their stress, relaxing with the stress, could say reduces the stress. But even if the stress doesn't get reduced, you can still develop relaxation with it. And we develop that by being generous towards the pain, the stress, and being careful of it, and being patient with it. And then we can start to relax with it and calm down with it and enter the stillness of it. And there, in the stillness of the stress, wake up to reality. Another thing that comes to mind is the story of a duck, a duck that became separated from his or her mother.

[17:49]

Now that duck, in the story, the way I heard it when I was a kid, they didn't tell that that duck really was stressed out about being separated from her mother and was in a lot of pain walking around without a mother or, you know, a family. But I can imagine, although I wasn't told that when I was a kid and I heard the story, I can imagine now that this duck was not very trustful of the world Because, you know, it had this wonderful relationship for a while with its mother, or at least with the egg it was in. And then indirectly, the mother that was taking care of the egg, the mother did a pretty good job. The duck survived. But then the mom went away. And maybe that was really hard on the little duck's heart. So the duck didn't even know it was a duck.

[18:58]

This is maybe the R-rated version of that story. Or maybe it's PG Teenage. Maybe teenagers can handle the prospect of how difficult it might be to be separated from your mother. Anyway, the story usually starts with the ducks walking along and come to some water, body of water, like a pond. And the duck sees... some ducks in the water doing this. Do ducks swim on the water? What do they do on the water? They cruise on the water. They sail on the water. They float. They move serenely over the water. And so the little duck saw the other ducks and the other duck said, Hey, sweetheart, how are you? Come on in. And the little duck said, I can't. I can't go in the water. I'll drown.

[20:06]

I'll drown. And the duck said, no, you won't. You're a duck. You know how to swim. You know how to be in here. And the little duck said, I'm not a duck. I don't know what I am. And then one of the ducks said, oh, here. We got something for you. here's a stick. This is a special stick. It's got a hook on it. It's a sky hook. And you can hook it on the sky and you just hold it and then you'll be able to swim with us. So, the Latak took the sky hook, hooked it on the sky and went into the water with the other, those strange creatures which she thought were different from her. They were more mature than They understood things she didn't understand, and they could help her. So they gave her this skyhook. She used it, and then she could swim around with them, and she enjoyed that.

[21:10]

One day, they were standing, the ducks were by the edge of the pond or whatever, and a fox came or something, and they all jumped into the water, and so did the little duck. But she forgot her skyhook. And there she was in the water. And the other duck says, said, where's your sky hook? And the duck said, I forgot. I said, what are you doing? Oh, I'm floating on the water nicely like you. I guess I'm a duck. So, you know, stress reduction techniques are like a sky hook. that may help us realize that we have the ability to be still with our life, which includes be still with the stresses of our life.

[22:19]

We have to learn how to be still with our stress in order to realize the big stillness the actual stillness of our life is that we are who we are. And each of us being who we are, a human or a duck, that is stillness and that is where enlightenment lives. Enlightenment lives in each of us being exactly who we are, completely still with who we are, not moving from what we are, But strangely, we have to be tenderized into being, inhabiting this body which has various discomforts in it, or in which various discomforts arise. Like this body, when insulted, feels pain.

[23:23]

When unkind words are said to it, or when it, I should say, when it thinks unkind words are said to it, when it thinks unreasonable things are offered to it, like swimming in water, when it thinks that that's a cruelty or unkindness, that thought gives rise to pain. However, if we can be tender with that pain, we can enter the stillness where we become free of believing the story and the pain that believing these stories gives rise to. We can realize spiritual liberation in the stillness of the night. But again, we're very sensitive when people frown or snarl. Once again, when we imagine or when we have the story that someone's frowning on us or snarling at us or insulting us, or even when we see someone who's not necessarily relating to us, but we see someone who is very tense and afraid, we may feel pain.

[24:42]

Someone may come to us and not say something bad about us. They may just say, I'm afraid of you. And we may find that painful. There we are, feeling pain. How can we be still with that pain? And again, be still with that pain until we become so tender that we enter reality. So one method is practice sitting, and when you're sitting, do stress reduction practices to help yourself to be tender, become more and more tenderized. Practice generosity towards all the stories that arise in your mind, all the stories about

[25:58]

imagining people don't like you, people don't appreciate you, imagining that you've been cruel to others, that they've been cruel to you, all those stories, practice generosity towards them, welcome them, and be careful of them. Those stories, if we're not careful of them, it will be antithetical to the tenderizing process, the process of being ready to enter reality. And be patient with the pain. Be in the present with the pain. And then we can calm down. And the calming again prepares us to enter the stillness where enlightenment is living. Someone moved his legs over to my left and many people looked at him.

[27:00]

We're sitting still here and when somebody moves, it's a big deal. You are welcome to stretch your leg out, my friend. Please feel supported to be a duck or a human who moves his legs. Thank you for taking care of your leg. We are sensitive to each other. We sit together and when a person moves, when we're sitting still and somebody moves, it's kind of like a major event. We sit in this room together during periods and if somebody moves, it's like, well, almost headline news. We don't necessarily go and say, did you see so-and-so moved? But sometimes people just say, why did so-and-so move? Why did they get up and leave? Maybe they had to go to the toilet. Anyway, when we're doing that form of sitting still, trying to deal with being a human being, again, trying to completely be a human being, because if we can completely be not a human being, but this human being right now, that is enlightenment.

[28:18]

In that complete form, congruence with ourself, there is the stillness of awakening. And that's very difficult to learn how to do. And when we finally do, which is great, and we enter reality, the next moment comes. And the next moment, to be continuous, is the process of training and enlightenment. Another slant on this is Oh, here's another. There's a cartoon story about a great Zen master who was on TV and he was being interviewed or she was being interviewed and they asked the Zen teacher, what do you teach your students? What's the way of enlightenment? And he said, to be still. And the interviewer said, to be still?

[29:22]

You mean, if people are still, they realize enlightenment? That's all? He said, yep. Are you a Zen teacher? He said, yeah. So I heard that in Zen, they often give stories to the students to study. And the students study the story, they hear the story from the teacher, and then they go to talk to the teacher about their understanding of the story, and then the teacher says, okay or not. And then they study it some more, and they go to the teacher, and the teacher says, okay or not. And then sometimes they go to the teacher, and then with the teacher, they say their understanding, and the teacher says, you are enlightened. You understand everything. And so the interviewer says, is that true that people have those kinds of practices in your school? He said, yeah. He said, but I thought you just said that all that was necessary is just be still. He said, yeah, that's all that's necessary, just be still. Well, why the stories?

[30:24]

Some people need these stories in order to be still. They won't be still unless you give them stories. So they're wiggling around, you know, like people usually do. Wiggling around like people usually do. In other words, holding themselves away from being themselves. We wiggle away from being ourselves. That's our deep habit. We wiggle away from being still. And so, what can we do to encourage ourselves to stop wiggling away and be ourself? Well, sometimes giving Zen stories does. So they give a Zen story to the student who's wiggling, who's not quite yet completely willing to be herself. And then she studies the story and she goes and talks to the teacher about the story. And in the process of discussing the story, she and the teacher can see that she's not really being herself.

[31:25]

with the story. She's got the story and she's got herself. She's kind of like trying something other than just be who she is with the story. She hasn't quite been able to be still with the story. And so she and the teacher can work together and see if the teacher can also be still with her story of being the teacher. Sometimes the teacher has been wiggling away from being the teacher. And they work together until they find this stillness So by using the story, they finally get to the place where the job is done. Stillness. But they had... So the story is like the sky hook for this end student, maybe. Or the body sitting in a room upright, trying to be still or, you know, trying to work at being still. That is the sky hook. That's the thing you can work with to attune yourself to being yourself.

[32:32]

All day long we have something to attune to and we have habits to think we have something other to do than to be ourself. And somebody said, also said to me recently, when I heard you say that all we have to do is be ourselves, that we don't really, on the path of enlightenment, we don't have anything else to do other than be ourselves. She said, I felt paralyzed. She said, but now I understand that what you mean is that all we have to do is be ourselves and then all the actions that come from being ourself will be beneficial. And I said, right. It's not that you're supposed to freeze. Just stop running away. But you may need lots of stress reduction to be able to not run away, because being present might be... When you first start being present, you're not quite completely present, so you're somewhat stressed.

[33:38]

When you're completely present, there's no stress. There's no stress in the system because you're complete harmony, complete congruence. On the road to congruence, you discover the stresses of incongruence. The road to congruence is through being kind to incongruence. And the road of being kind to incongruence involves being kind to anything people need, anything that might help them be congruent. Like a skyhook helping a duck become a duck. She can't imagine she's a duck. It looks like a scary thing to be a duck. We didn't even talk about flying. But ducks do know how to fly.

[34:40]

They can fly and do amazing things up there in the sky together. And here's another take on it. When we feel oppression, like oppression, distress, from others, when we imagine others and we feel oppressed by them, or when we look at ourselves and we feel oppressed by the stories we have of ourselves. I heard of three methods to deal with the oppression, to deal with the stress. Again, one is hate it. Hatred is one way to deal with oppression. Fight it. Crush it. That's a familiar one. And now there's this huge debate in the United States of whether people who are trying to fight their oppressions should be armed or not. Some people feel like, well, if people are going to fight their oppression, let's not have them have lots of weapons.

[35:45]

Just let them use their words, perhaps. Anyway, that's one method which we are very familiar with, right? People who are hating oppression, hating inward oppression towards themselves, within themselves, and hating oppression that they're doing towards others and that others are doing towards them, that they imagine they're doing to others. They hate themselves for it, and they hate others who they imagine are being oppressive to them. That's one method. The other method is to be devious, sneaky. So, for example, if you're a meditator and you're sitting still and you feel stressed, you could be devious about how to deal with the stress. Instead of being kind to it and generous towards it and gentle with it and careful of it and patient with it, you could try some kind of distraction or take some drugs.

[36:50]

It would be kind of a deep, and also don't tell anybody about it. Keep it secret. And trick your way through it. That's another method. Or another way is passive aggression. Fight in a way that people don't know is fighting. Strike back in a way that can't be proved. You withdraw your love from somebody to get them rather than just attack them. That's another method of dealing with oppression. Both of those methods have some effect. The third method, which some people might think is silly, is to surrender to the oppression. Surrender to the stress. Surrender to the pain. And forgive it. Surrendering to the pain, forgiving the pain, is the path to becoming tenderized.

[38:00]

It's the path of entering reality. It isn't just, okay, but it's kind of like, okay. It's more like, okay, okay, okay, yeah, okay. Really okay, really like, thank you? No, yes, thank you. Not I like it. I don't like the pain, I say thank you. Thank you is the path to tenderizing myself in the face of the oppression. And somebody said, what about the oppression? Yeah, what about the oppression? Well, shouldn't we get rid of it? I have no problem with getting rid of it, but what about when it comes back? What about when it's present? If it's gone, we don't have to talk about it. If it's here, I'm talking about how to enter the stillness of the oppression, wake up and become free of it without moving the oppression at all.

[39:10]

How to enter the stress, how to enter the pain, and discover the stillness there and become awake to reality and be free of the pain. Proposing that no matter what it is, no matter how bad it is, it is possible if you're tender enough to enter the stillness of the thing that's difficult. and find peace and freedom there in the middle of it, right in the middle of it. And that's the place you always find it is in the middle of it, not at a distance. But to be present with pain, to be in the middle of pain, we need to be very tender. We need to be soft. We need to have a soft body and a soft mind. And when our body is hard, we need to work with the hard body, the tense body, the rigid body, the gripping body.

[40:14]

We need to work with it gently to guide it to be soft. The soft body in mind is ready to drop away and enter reality. One more. When we sit here a long time, or other meditation retreats we sit here, people often, particularly when they go outside on a break, they say everything seems to be glistening or shimmering or sparkling. It's like, you know, they often report that. they don't necessarily think that somebody's fixed the outdoors while they were sitting and made it, you know, more interesting for the meditators that the little fairies are out there while we're sitting making everything nice so when we come out we think meditation is beneficial.

[41:18]

Most people understand something changed in them. so that the things look different, so that the world looks different. And sometimes even indoors we get it, but when we change perspective sometimes it's easier to see it. So again I propose that what happens there is that we open to the way the world is actually calling to us. When our heart is hard, when our heart is not tenderized, we sometimes have a like we look at a floor and we think the floor is pretty much just a static hard surface when we become tenderized we open to the floor and the wall calling to us beckoning us to relate not necessarily asking us to move the floor, move the wall

[42:24]

but asking us to respond to it, to inquire what it is. It's calling to us for a relationship. Usually, if our heart is hard, we don't notice that the floor and the wall and the earth and the sky are calling us. But when we become tender, we open to that. We open to it. And then, in that openness, we can continue to be still. Yeah, stillness. So I think last week I said, last Sunday I said that stillness was the key to entering reality.

[43:40]

Today I feel like it's a little bit more like practicing stillness is the key for entering true stillness. Practicing sitting still, practicing being with ourselves, not changing again. So I think when we finally are completely ourself, by gently guiding ourselves and tenderizing ourselves into being ourselves completely, when we actually are completely ourselves, that stillness of completely being ourselves is waking up to reality. And it's a waking up which is not separate from what is awakened to. So it's kind of stillness is both a key that enters It's the environment in which reality lives and it is also the reality itself. Okay, that's probably enough.

[44:50]

So I thought I might end on a sad note. Okay? Ready? I don't want you to go away too happy. I'll sing another song. It's a song about how hard it is to be tender. This is a hard song to sing. I mean, just hard for me to sing, but easy for you. I tried so hard my dear to show that you're my every dream. Yet you're afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme. A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart.

[45:58]

Why can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart? Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue. And so my heart is paying now for things I didn't do. In anger, unkind words are said that make the teardrops fall. Why can't I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart? It's hard. We have great challenges inwardly and outwardly to being ourselves. And I think it's possible for us to be ourselves.

[47:01]

And if we can be, that's enlightenment. And that will help other people learn how to do it too. We can show them how to do the hard thing. It might be helpful to tell you that starting on Monday, tomorrow evening, for five days, 60 or 70 of us will be sitting in this room. And some of us will be sitting here for you and for each other.

[48:10]

We'll be sitting here for you, we'll be sitting here trying to be still doing the hard work of being ourselves in this meditation hall from five in the morning till nine at night together we'll be trying to learn to be still and practice enlightenment we're trying to practice enlightenment we'll be trying to do a enlightened practice and we'll be doing it for you please know that and as best you can you're invited to join us. Wherever you are, you're invited to join the practice of being yourself. And if it's difficult, know that we're here having a hard time too. And some of us are trying to, you know, sneak out of here. Because it's really tough to be me. It's really tough to be ourself.

[49:12]

But I'm suggesting that is where enlightenment lives, in you being still, in you being completely yourself. I'm smiling because somebody is yawning during this talk. It's you. Is it boring or are you just having low oxygen? What? It's his fault. He forced you to come? Anyway, you are welcome by me to yawn.

[49:57]

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