Now please sit upright in your dearest, most trustworthy posture. Not leaning to the right or to the left. Not leaning forward or backwards. Settle into stillness. settling deeply into what is happening, settling deeply into how is happening.

[04:05]

steady, unmoving sitting. Steady, steady, unmoving sitting. This is the Dharma gate. This is the door to enter the truth. Think of that which does not think.

[05:45]

How do you think of that which doesn't think? non-thinking. This itself is the essential art of zazen. This zazen that I'm speaking of is simply the dharma gate of repose and bliss. This is simply the true gate to peace and bliss.

[06:57]

This sitting practice is sometimes called meditation on voidness, or meditation on emptiness, or meditation on causation. Meditation on causation, such a cold word, causation. Meditating on causation is to think of that which is not thinking. How do you practice that? Someone asked Joseph Campbell, how do you practice?

[09:15]

How do you live your life? And he said, follow your bliss. When thinking of causation, When meditating on emptiness, no one knows how to do this. If you think of emptiness, if you think of the inherent emptiness of all things, If you think of the bottomlessness of every experience, of the vastness of each thing.

[10:24]

If you do it properly, this is the Dharma gate of peace and bliss. If you do it and you get a headache or become frightened or bored, this is not the proper way. The proper way is your bliss, is your heart. Your bliss, your heart, has no signs, has no marks. It's not a particular thing. It's the wonderful middle way between denying yourself and taking yourself too seriously.

[11:43]

Where is that place? How is that place? This mysterious, ungraspable way, which you never apart from, is what we mean by thinking of the unthinking. Someone may say to you, Put your mind in the palm of your left hand. This is also an instruction in think of that which doesn't think. Or breathe through your eyelids

[12:51]

Listen. Listen to the birds from the bottom of your feet. So many instructions, many, many different kinds of instructions in the history of our practice have been given to help us find a way to think of the unthinking. But today I'm emphasizing that as you do this practice of how's thinking, of thinking how, you have within you also some intuitive sense of the proper way to do it.

[14:19]

It has no marks and yet you can be firm and certain that you're following through your own way of bliss and happiness and peace. In this dynamic middle way, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between the truth and a good joke. We're not really sure if the truth is different from a good sense of humor. We're not really sure if the true way is different from beauty, from our own experience of beauty with all beings.

[15:44]

I'm not sure which it is or if they're different. This wonderful dynamic spot, point where we live where a good-hearted joke and the truth are difficult to distinguish and perhaps not different. See if you can find that place. This place is not created just by each of us alone. All sentient beings help us. create the place where the practice lives. For example, some people now are reducing the amount of dairy foods that they eat because of problems with cholesterol.

[17:06]

So now if you go to our food table they have signs saying non-dairy or dairy. Yesterday in the snack area I saw a pile of butter and it had a label on it saying full dairy butter. Is this the truth or is this a joke? All sentient beings have created this joke and created this truth. Thinking of the unthinking, thinking of relativity, Dogen Zenji says, life is like when one goes out in a boat, though in the boat

[18:37]

One works the sail, the rudder and the pole. The boat carries one and one is nothing without the boat. Riding in the boat, one even causes the boat to be the boat. Please meditate on this precise point. At this very moment, the boat is the world, even the sky, the water and the shore have all become the circumstances of the boat. Unlike the circumstances which are not the boat, For this reason, life is our causing to live.

[19:41]

It is life's causing us to be ourselves. When riding in a boat, the mind and body, subject and object are all the workings of the boat. The whole earth and all of space are both workings of the boat. We that are life, life, this is we, are the same way. This is Dogen Zenji's happy description of an elaboration of think of the unthinking.

[20:46]

This is his meditation. This is an example of his meditation on emptiness. Meditation on how the entire world creates us and we create the world. He asks us, please meditate on the precise point where you make life and life makes you. And this, the proper way of doing this is repose and bliss. Sitting still, life is like when one rides in a boat.

[21:55]

Though in this boat one works the sail, the rudder, and the pole, the boat carries one and one is nothing without the boat. Riding in the boat one even causes the boat to be a boat. Please meditate on this precise point. This is a koan. This point that our ancestor is pointing to is the center of a great koan. See if you can sit there where riding in the boat you even cause the boat to be the boat

[23:16]

And you are nothing without the boat. Where you cause the entire world you live in to be the world you live in. And you are nothing but this world you live in. At this very moment, The boat is the world. Even the sky, the water, and the shore all have become the circumstances of the boat. Unlike the circumstances which are not the boat, For this reason, life is our causing to live. It's life's causing us to be ourselves.

[24:33]

When riding in a boat, the mind and body, subject and object, are all the workings of the boat. The whole earth and all of space are the workings of the boat. We that are life, life this is we, are the same way. What I have been saying is simply a footnote to the teaching of thinking of the unthinking.

[26:12]

I'm talking about a way of thinking. I'm talking about a way of thinking which is the Dharmagate of repose and bliss. Please meditate on this precise point. For the sake of the benefit of all living beings, please meditate on the precise point where all life causes you and you cause all life.

[29:29]

May our intentions

[29:58]

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