And again, I propose to you that the zazen of this school is totally culminated awakening. Traps and snares of perception can never reach it. And this zazen Right now is living in stillness and silence. Again. When I say again, I hear my granddaughter, again. It won't really be again, but again. Zazen is intimate transmission. Zazen is the mind of the great sage of India.

[01:10]

Intimate transmission, intimate transmitting. And this intimate transmitting is living right now in stillness. We are all involved with the mind of Buddha in this intimate transmission in stillness now. Such a suggestion is hard to believe and hard to understand. There are stories about this intimate transmission, including stories that address how difficult it is to believe.

[02:13]

One of the stories is about a young person who lived with his parents, who did not believe in this intimate transmission. So he wandered off from it, from his home, where his parents were intimately loving him and intimately giving him everything they had. And he wandered away. It seems that part of the human drama is that we have to wander away from our true home. So he wandered and he wandered for 50 years. And today I'll shorten the story and say that after 50 years of wandering, he was destitute and really having a hard time just living, not to mention

[03:32]

enjoying the face-to-face transmission with his true parents, the face-to-face entrustment of everything that he had wandered away from. He long forgot of it, and by chance he wandered back into a town where his parents were living. And when he saw them again, to make a long story short, he could not believe that his parents were his parents, he could not believe that these beings were in an intimate, generous relationship with him. And he was frightened of them. They, however, were very happy to see their intimately transmitted and transmitting offspring. And again, to shorten the story, he went through a long period of, you might say, Zen training in which he could open up again to this intimate transmission where he could be still and open up and believe that he was the offspring and inheritor of this wonderful family.

[04:59]

We have chant after chant that says, the mind is intimate transmission. The teaching of suchness is intimate transmission. You have it. You have it. It's hard to understand that we have it. It's been given to us. We didn't take it. It was given to us. also stillness has been given to us by the nature of existence. It's hard for us to believe it and remember it and understand it. Nonetheless, we have this temple here to help us believe and understand. And the chapter in the Lotus Sutra where this story is told of the child who wanders away, the chapter is called faith and understanding. Thousands of years ago people had trouble believing this teaching and today we do too.

[06:14]

Zazen is living in stillness and silence now. And each moment of zazen is equally wholeness of practice, equally wholeness of enlightenment. Each moment of zazen is equally the same practice and equally the same enlightenment as the person sitting, you or me, and all beings. Zazen is living in stillness, and that Zazen, in each moment of it, is the equality of your practice and all beings.

[07:27]

the equality of your practice and your enlightenment with all beings is living in stillness with you every moment, each moment of zazen. Again, the ancestor says to us, When even for a moment you express the Buddha mind mudra, the shape of the Buddha, the seal of the Buddha, when you express this Buddha mind seal in your actions, for example, right now your action of sitting here, when even for a moment your sitting expresses the Buddha mind seal, which is your practice right now, which is the same as the practice of all beings.

[08:38]

So when you express the Buddha Mind Seal, the entire phenomenal world becomes the Buddha Mind Seal, and the whole sky turns into enlightenment. This may be hard to believe, that you're living in such a generous reality. But if you practice Zen for fifty years, you'll become more able to believe it and understand it. And you'll be very happy when you finally believe that you're living in Buddha's family all day long. and that you've always been welcome to do so, it just took you a while to open to it, to open to stillness. This is what you might call a broad awakening.

[09:49]

It's your awakening with all beings and it's all beings awakening with you. This broad awakening is the practice of all beings as you and you practicing as the practice of all beings. It's a broad awakening and a broad practice. And this broad awakening resonates back to you and helps you inconceivably so that in your sitting place there will be dropping off body and mind, which again resonates back to everybody and helps them inconceivably. And then they resonate back to you and help you inconceivably. This is zazen. Zazen is not just what I'm doing here in this seat and vice versa. For all practitioners, it's not just what's going on in your seat, It's how what's going on in your seat is the same practice as what's going on in all seats.

[11:00]

And that's happening inconceivably. I'm talking about it, but my words don't reach it. However, it uses my words to be proclaimed. It is being proclaimed. The flag of this teaching is being raised in this room It called to me to speak it, and I responded. I'm its servant, and I'm happy to serve it. It's beyond my ideas, but my ideas are the only way to realize it. It's beyond my gestures, but my gestures are the only way to realize it. It's beyond my speech. It must be deportment beyond hearing and seeing.

[12:05]

But we must use our visible and audible conduct to uphold it and realize it. We use our visible body to realize the invisible zazen body. We use our audible words to realize the inaudible, ineffable Zazen. It's hard to understand. Self-practice is identical to the practice and transformation of others hard to understand. And so Zen students in monasteries, at least the ones I've been in, often in shusou ceremony when they ask questions they say, how come we're just sitting here in the mountains with all the suffering in the world?

[13:12]

They do not believe that their practice is transforming beings all over the world. Sometimes they don't even believe it's transforming the other people in the monastery. But it is because of intimate transmission, living in stillness. So in our human relationships, face to face, we explore. We extensively explore. We have the opportunity to extensively explore in our responsibility to each other, this face to face transmission. and realizing this mind of Buddha happens in the face-to-face transmission, which we are exploring.

[14:18]

We are exploring it now. We have been. I pray we continue I imagine that many of you have heard or understand that the ancestor Ehe Dogen Daisho really loved Zazen.

[15:26]

Did you know that? Did you think that? He really praises Zazen. He worships Zazen. And he worshiped Zazen by writing about it, by talking about it, and by sitting it, and walking it, and thinking it. With all his actions of body, speech, and mind, he worships, he practices Zazen. But I want you also to know that Dogen Zenji worshiped face-to-face transmission. And I'd like you to know and understand that Sekito Gisen Daisho, who wrote Merging of Difference and Unity, worshipped the mind of the great sage of India. He worshipped intimately transmitting from west to east.

[16:33]

He didn't say it, but he also worshipped transmitting it from east to west. The mind of the great sage of India has been transmitted from the West, China and Japan and Korea, it's been transmitted to the East. For example, San Francisco Bay Area. It has been transmitted. It is being transmitted to us. And we are transmitting it back to Japan. Hakubun-san's going to bring it back to Japan. It's always been like this. But before Suzuki Roshi came to San Francisco, people didn't know. Now you know. So please take care of it. And Tozan Ryokai Daisho,

[17:44]

He also worshipped this intimate transmission. He told us that the teaching of suchness is this intimate transmission, is Buddhas and ancestors. And he said, you have it, please take care of it. All of our ancestors worshipped this face-to-face relationship of full responsibility. And again, full responsibility doesn't mean I have all of it or you have all of it. It means I'm fully responsible with you and you're fully responsible with me. We're all fully responsible. We really don't have too much or too little responsibility. We have the appropriate responsibility. responsibility. And it's full. It's full. And we're trying to explore it and learn it in our practice together.

[18:50]

We are being called by each other. We are being called by this transmission to be responsible. And we are responding. And we are, and our responding is calling. And we are being responded to. You have this responsibility. You are living it. This is the mind of the sage of ancient India. I have a dream that you are opening to this difficult to understand teaching.

[20:07]

And again, let me say again, all this broad awakening which is resonating back between each of us and all beings How that's working does not appear within perception because it is unconstructedness in the stillness where it lives. It is immediate realization. Thank you so much for your support so that I can appear to be saying the same thing over and over.

[21:27]

May our intention equally extend

[21:37]

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