As you may know, today and yesterday, several of us have been discussing your life. and presume that maybe all of you, or most of you, some of you, have some sincere and deep question of what that is all about. Who are they to manipulate my life? One of the lines, or one of the sentences, one of the phrases from Kadagiri Roshi's lectures on Gyoji said something to the effect that our practice or

[01:51]

best effort is actually sharing our life and death and our study and practice with all Buddhism patriarchs. That all Buddhism patriarchs may sound funny or extra, I think it may be the same to say that each one of us is sharing our life and death, study and practice, shortcomings and virtues, And how we do it, no one really knows.

[03:06]

How we share our life and death, study and practice is beyond what we can describe. In a talk I had with a student the other day, we were talking about suffering. And the idea came up that we practice Buddhism to help us alleviate suffering. The more we suffer, the more we want to practice, the more intensely we suffer, the more hard we'd like to practice.

[04:18]

I think that's true, but I think that may be only part of in that even though we practice hard, and even though we attain some samadhi, which I haven't got the faintest idea of what that is, I don't think, all in all, that anything we can do Actually, I'm 88. I've suffered it. But still there is something that we are doing or that we can do or there is something that our teachers, Buddhas and patriarchs say, have said, demonstrate with their lives that offers

[06:08]

offer something. I think the more we practice zazen, practice the way of the Buddhas and patriarchs, I think it's pretty universal to say the more we see or feel intensely how deeply immersed in suffering we are, or how entangled we are in the worlds and realms of greed, anger, hatred, self-delusion, egotistic clings. And I think that our trouble intensifies adding snow to piles of snow.

[07:23]

When there's The desire to eliminate, alleviate, get rid of. That kind of suffering. I was also asked by the director and others to say something about now, about this time of the practice period, to say something to wake us all up, to not let our practice get too silly.

[08:38]

being fritted away in some kind of delusional fantasies about what's going to happen after practice period's over. Last, more than a year ago, one of the shiso is in a very dramatic sort of illustration, I think it was during Hans Osnab's, got up from his cushion and grabbed the wake-up bell and started ringing it. He said, everybody wake up. But today, anyway, I haven't got the heart wherewithal to come up with something so original and dramatic. And actually I think, what I feel personally is that I feel very, very, very good about what has been going on in this practice.

[09:57]

Nevertheless, the practice period is not over. And no matter what we think, no matter how certain we think what's going to happen, ninety-nine and ninety-nine one hundredth percent of The possibility of it happening is likely not to happen, except maybe the fact that we're gonna die. So I think, anyway, the most important thing is to continue to care for Without expecting too much.

[11:38]

Being open to the many changes as they present themselves to us. I don't have much more to say to you. If somebody would like to throw something in, we can toss it around, or we can finish the evening out in zazen.

[12:54]

Yes. You said that you have, quote, the faintest idea of what Samadhi was. But I think maybe you probably do have some ideas or thoughts about Samadhi. It's a curious point for me because there's, well, I usually would spend 70,000 or so at best just sitting there. It doesn't seem any... And somebody in the other hand always seems to me like being mine or something of it. Well, something not exactly of it, but something of it. Anyway, I wonder if you might speak with me about somebody who's not of it. When I was sitting in the Rinzai temple that I sat for two months in Japan, there was a lot of talk about samadhi, about reaching a state of deep samadhi, and how important it was.

[14:05]

And try, as I did, I never could come up with anything that even approached the way they described what that is all about. It hasn't gotten any better since I've been at Tata Han. Like you say, the things that you read about in books. You know, I think I really hadn't thought about it much, hardly at all, and I was surprised when someone mentioned it to me just the other day he was able to enter Samadhi pretty readily. He could get there, but... Somewhere I read, I think it was in a book called What the Buddha Taught, I think it said something to the effect that even Samadhi is a form of suffering.

[15:11]

because it's transient, comes and goes. And I was very moved by that. But even though we, somehow to me that it was important as something, anyway, just reading that it eased in my mind something that I felt before that I had to get. After reading that I felt, well, It's good. It comes and goes like that. Maybe I don't need it. But I think an interesting, or to me an interesting point in that is there's really, to reiterate, nothing we can do. No state enlightenment or whatever to alleviate the incessant arising of and tingling greeds, angers, and follies.

[16:30]

One thing I was delighted to hear from Csikszentmihalyi was, I think the last lecture, one of the last sesshins that he gave to us. He said that it was during the middle days of a sesshin, the most painful and sort of agonizing time of the sesshin. He said the suffering that you have now, you'll have forever. The way he said it and the time that he said it, just in his inimitable way, slammed some funny, clear, diamond-like truth out in front of everybody. Because I think everybody was really thinking something to me. Everybody, I think, shared emotions. Most everybody laughed or responded. But that struck me in a way similar to that reading that thing about samadhi, some great state of mind.

[17:52]

Rather than trying to figure out or arrive at some way to get out of the situation of our life, is to see it and relate to it. and to actually share these difficulties with each other. And I was moved by that sentence from Nagyōji, I don't even know what he was speaking of, about sharing it with each other or sharing it with oneself and allowing oneself to experience it and not try to get out of it. is kind of mainstream and mainstay of practice. In these talks that the officers, Yvonne and Will Richmond and Niels and myself have been having the last two days,

[19:02]

As we look at the situation of Zen Center in Tassajan, your life, and how it's inextricably bound up in my life, our lives, it never fails that these aspects arise. And rest assured, rest deeply assured, that those people who are considering whether you stay on it as a harm, what is in sin, rest assured that they are not beyond greed, anger, and self-delusion. It's very interesting, those talks.

[20:15]

And there's a similarity between the intensity and the degree of involvement in those kind of talks we've been doing. And Roku Chinji meetings and Zen Center officers' meetings and board meetings. I wish there was some way I could probably share with you now, convey through a talk, what they are. But somehow I don't think I can. And I think, on the other hand, I think maybe some of you I was glad to hear what I think it was Todd said last night at the end that, you know, it looks like people always feel bad about the officers that sometimes they see that it isn't always that simple.

[21:30]

Anyway, I think without going into all the little details of what come up again and again, If anyone is interested, I think we can talk about it. But I think merely just our sitting together, practicing in this way, whether we feel close to one another or we feel some kind of anguish, extreme difficulty in living with one another, And whether we go through all those changes back home. Does that answer any other questions?

[22:56]

Oh, Larry. What if, uh, kind of, uh, we're talking about point level truths, but when I get out of there, like, the last two, you know, You don't understand? I'm trying to maybe ask him to elaborate. Stop talking about it. No, no, no. Maybe you could say a little bit more because I don't quite see clearly your question.

[24:02]

Yeah. They saw me. Saw me. It's the same. It's like, out. It's the same with everybody else, but like, it's like the other one. There really was none? It's the same thing. It's the same with all the people you care about. It's the same with everybody else. [...] You know, one thing that I've been stuck in or trying to talk about during all the lectures that I've been given has been in the heart surgery.

[25:18]

and what we, you know, we said every day. I don't know how, if any of you anymore hear what we say. Sometimes, many times I find I don't say it. It's just a trick for me. But every once in a while, one of those phrases will coming up and capping me on the ear. There was no suffering, no end of suffering or something.

[25:56]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_61.16