and thinks he's in charge of the other one. So it is possible to be in pain and the body does not wish to be anyplace else. It is also possible to be in pain and the body wants something different. And that's pretty important. And then you get to see that that's really primary. Not your idea about practicing Zen. It's there, but it's not very important when the body says, this is not what we want. Move. Make me comfortable. Blah, blah, blah. That message, make me comfortable, is the whole universe coming forth and confirming yourself, which now is determined by the body. But if you don't put yourself in a position like this sashin or something, it's hard sometimes to hear the body telling you what to do all day. Because it doesn't really tell you what to do, it just wants something.

[01:02]

So this is so helpful, you see, to retrain us, to get us to reverse our usual attitude, which is self, primary, Mind primary. Mind dominating the body. The mind doesn't dominate the body. It doesn't. [...] And guess what? We think it does. Usually we think it does. That's our usual thing. We know it doesn't if we look at it just a little while, but if we just slip right back into it, it does. That's not true, even in daily life. And it's really not true in the artificially set up situation of meditation, which promotes us having the vision that it's not true that the mind controls the body. And it's not true that the body controls the mind either. Actually, it just determines it. The mind depends on the body.

[02:09]

The body doesn't really control the mind, otherwise it would control the mind to stop being a fool and causing problems. But the body doesn't do that. It just cries out in pain and then we say, somebody help me figure out what to do with this situation. And this is the meditation practice which will set you free from this delusion. which will help you accept your destiny as both as somebody who's deluded but also as somebody who is really actually the whole universe. That's who you really are. And that coming forth of this whole universe

[03:14]

is your real body, is your true self, is the true body of the self. And thank you very much, I have no complaint, is the way you deal with all the comings of the body, including the body, that wants to move, and including the body that doesn't ask you to move. Did you have a comment, Arlene? I did. Go ahead. I have always admired the persistence I like the time that you sit, but perhaps you could speak a little bit about the deterioration of the physical in your little back.

[04:20]

How do you work with that? So, how do I work with the deterioration of my body? Yes. Let's see. Well... It is my intention to let the deterioration of my body be the deterioration of my body. That is my practice. That is the practice. The deteriorating body is the deteriorating body. I think I need a little more.

[05:21]

Well, I can easily give you more, but is there anything particularly among all the mores that you like? Disintegration, yeah. Disintegration, yeah, I said disintegration. The practice is disintegration is disintegration. Disintegration means, it's kind of a value judgment, but anyway, aside from disintegration, the current condition of the body is the practice. So if you want to give an example of a condition and you want to know what the practice of that condition would be? Well, lower discs. So you have lower discs, you have like, well actually she said lower discs, but how about no lower discs? That's what I've got, no lower discs. This are the little cushions between the vertebra, you know? They call that the space between the vertebra, there's supposed to be little pads between there, you know about that? There's a vertebra, it's supposed to be a vertebra pad, vertebra pad.

[06:33]

The pads are called discs because they're shaped like discs. They're supposed to be like little spongy little, like little water-filled little cushions. Now if I had those, well, I'd probably play basketball or something. And I'd also be about an inch taller. But I don't have those. I have like little lines where, a place where the vertebrae meet. That's what I've got down there. No discs. Or you could call, what do you call it, dehydrated discs. So you're wondering what the practice is with that? Well, it's that that's the way they are. That's the practice. You want more? Can I just purple you? You said, first of all, could it cripple me?

[07:35]

Another way to put it is, could that condition be called being crippled? That's another way to put the question. Could that condition be called crippled? What's the answer? Yes. Depends on what you mean by crippled. If you mean, can you play basketball, then you're crippled for basketball for life. If you mean, can you walk, Maybe not. Maybe not crippled for walking. Could it eventually be that the condition would be such that one would not be able to walk? Yes. But then would one still be able to sit? One might ask. And the answer might be, he can't walk but he can still sit. Then could it get to the point where he couldn't walk and he couldn't sit? Could it get to that point? Yes. So then I think Arlene's question is, could I guess, should the self get the body to do something different? Hmm?

[08:36]

Not you, you wouldn't ask that question, no. So I think maybe your question is, should the self intervene for the sake of preventing this person from becoming crippled? Huh? And I would say that way of talking is our usual way of talking. Somebody, if this guy isn't going to do it, would somebody get in there and control that body? So that if he should happen to switch over to this way of the crippled body is the crippled body, that there's going to be a problem for this guy. So would somebody, if he's not going to do it, take care of him and get him to rest? Because otherwise he might not be able to walk. Something like that. That's why I said if you have some question about what to do, you can come to Doksan and I'll tell you what to do. You don't have to think about what to do. If you're not coming to Doksan, I guess you have to keep thinking about what to do.

[09:39]

But you don't have to do anything. You can actually switch from I'm running the body to the practice is the way the body is. The practice is the coming forth of the body. If the body says, if the body desires this and the body desires that, is it possible to listen to what the body asks for? Is it possible to let the coming forth of the body be the coming forth of that body? Is that possible? That's enlightenment. When you let the coming forth of the body determine the self, So you got this body which is semi-crippled or, you know, severely crippled or not so crippled. Whatever you say, you got this body coming forth. Some days it can walk, some days it can't. That's the body that comes.

[10:41]

This is the body coming forth. And the coming forth in this body is the dharma's strong, the self is weak. But the self is still there. It's just the self is born of this body in whatever state of health or crippledness it's in. Now what? Well, you got the body, you got the mind, you got the self. That's what you've got. Is this somewhat passive? Yes. Is it totally passive? No. There's a self there that can think of doing things. And the body and the self maybe decide, let's recline now, let's change the posture. But it isn't switching back necessarily to the self controlling the body, or the self being the subject and making the world and the body the object. It's a new world, maybe, a world of awakening from the delusion of the self being carried around all the time figuring out what to do with bodies.

[11:52]

Now does this promote health, this new approach? Is it a healthier way to live? It's hard to say because you don't have control groups for yourself. You don't have another person who's like continuing the path of delusion to compare to the one who's following the path of awakening to see which one has the better looking body. So I, you know, I can't really say. This is really a healthy, the way of enlightenment really is good for your body. It will help you understand the best way to take care of your body. I can't really say. But all I can say is that when you practice that way, you can really say thank you all the time. you can be grateful for having this body come forth and showing you who you are. You can be grateful about that.

[12:58]

You can be grateful about not being deluded. And you can even be grateful about seeing delusion for what it is, when you see delusion in self or other I've heard you say take care of your body before. Yeah, so now I'm changing from take care of your body to what? To let it take care of you. Yeah, let the body take care of you. Even if it means crippling or getting crippled? If that's the way the body wants to take care of you, I would say, yes, fine. I haven't seen that, though. I haven't seen the body taking care of you. But sometimes that's the way the body takes care of people. They're walking along the street, and a tree falls over on them, and they have a crippled body now. They didn't do the crippled body. The self didn't do that.

[14:00]

Now, someone says, oh, yeah, you did that. You walked down that street. You walked in front of that tree. You made that body crippled. Okay, that's delusion. You don't make your body. And I just happen to come up with an example where most people wouldn't think you made your body crippled by the tree falling over and breaking your back. Okay? So now you've got a crippled body. You've got a broken back. That broken back is taking care of you. You are born of having that broken back, just like you were born, before you had a broken back, you were born of that body. Your self was born of the body. The body is always taking care of you. But do you see that? So then you said, even if it means to be crippled, a crippled body can take care of you too. I'm not saying cripple your body, because that's switching back to delusion. Cripple your body so that your crippled body can take care of you. Whatever your body is, it takes care of you.

[15:01]

And what is your body? It's everything that happens to you takes care of you. And you say, even if it cripples you? It doesn't cripple you. Everything manifests crippledness or non-crippledness. That's what happens. You're not in control of whether you're crippled or not. We think we are. So we say, well, shouldn't I, like, do what won't cripple me? Well, yeah, I mean, if you're going to do stuff, then do non-crippling stuff. But this is delusion that you are in charge of whether you're going to be crippled or not. We are not in charge of whether we're crippled. I'm not in charge of me having desiccated discs. I didn't do that. Now, say, well, what if you hadn't done this, this, and this? Then would that have happened? Yeah, but I wasn't in charge of the things I did either. The things I did... were born of my body, and then the things I did had something to do with my body, but I wasn't in control of my body becoming what it became.

[16:03]

And who knows, I might have had desiccated discs if I had no exercise my whole life and just, you know, was suspended in water from the time I was born. Who knows what would have happened to those discs. But if I had been suspended in water for my whole life, that body would have been coming forth moment by moment and myself would have been born with that body and of that body. So I have been saying take care of your body, but now I would change to let your body take care of you. Watch how your body takes care of you. Isn't it saying things to you all the time? And isn't it kind of like searching to take care of itself by being itself? So the transition may be complicated from switching to I'm strong, Dharma's weak, to Dharma's strong, I'm weak. I see various worried people. You're afraid to let go of your old approach, which, you know, works fairly well, you think, sort of, sometimes.

[17:14]

Not that bad. So yeah, I would say, I would definitely say, switch from I take care of the body to let the body take care of me, which means let me trust the body as it comes forth and see how the coming forth of the body makes the self. And in that vision of how the coming forth of the body makes the self, in that vision, I hesitate to say, but I will say, you will know what to do. The self will know what to do. In other words, there will no longer be the self that thinks of herself as the conscious subject in control of the body. There will be a new self, an enlightened self, which is the coming forth of the whole universe. And that self will take good care of everything. But it's going to be a new one. It's not going to be the old one that was, you know,

[18:18]

dominated the body. He will be one that is interdependent with the body, and that one takes better care of the body. How can you facilitate that process? How can you facilitate the process is similar to, what can I do? How can I make this happen? Well, you can't. That's playing back into the old system. So how can I facilitate the process? The body. When I say that, you no longer have your grip on the situation, right? Right? So you have just let go of the delusion and you're ready to switch. You're ready for the switch to occur. You've let go of you being strong and you manipulating the dharma process of awakening. But then the dharma process is weak because you're still holding on to the control or at least the possibility of control or the attempt to control.

[19:30]

You're still in that mode and that hinders the realization that you're not in control. And nothing's in control of you, it's just that the way things are happening is you. If we're intimate with the way things are happening, we are awake. And this awake person is someone who has forgotten the idea that she's in control of anything. And she realizes the authentic mode of the self. And the authentic mode of the self is an awakened form of life which responds appropriately. This mode of life responds appropriately to the arrival of all things. But it's hard for us to hold on to the old view and understand the new view. So some people feel like jumping off a cliff or something like that. a reasonable kind of way you might feel, because you're letting go of your usual way of, you know, holding on and controlling events.

[20:43]

You know, it's a delusion, but we have some comfort in the sense of, this is how I control the world. So this thinking of letting go, one might anticipate being overwhelmed or whatever. You name it. Anything can happen. Again, what can I do or how can I facilitate or what can I, the self who's talking right now, do to make this thing go well? Well, you're the problem in the first place. You don't make it go well. But to try to eliminate you isn't the point either. It's rather that if you stop trying to make it go a certain way by, for example, sitting, you'll notice that this delusion of what can I do to make it happen, this actually is key to your suffering. And also, it's not true. It is a delusion. You do not make things go well or not well.

[21:44]

The self does not make things go a certain way. That's not how they go. We are not in control of the universe. And we kind of know that when we sit. We see that. What is it that is turning attention to the body? What is it that is turning attention to the body? So you have the activity of the attention turning to the body, and now you want to have something that's turning it. Right? So that's the same model. There is something which turns the attention to the body. Like I can say, you know, what should I do? And I say, the body. And then someone might say, with attention or with awareness.

[22:49]

There's no body without awareness. A body without awareness is a non-existent body. You say, what about a dead body? That's not a body. If you look at somebody, if you look at something and you say that's a dead body, over there, there's not somebody who thinks that they have a dead body. You say it's a dead body. For you, it's something you see and you call it a dead body. That's not a body for anybody but you, and you have consciousness. or it's not a body for anybody but you and other conscious beings who look at that and call it a body. There's not somebody over there, some self, who thinks they have a body anymore. When there's body, there's consciousness. And when there's consciousness, there's a body. But body's first. What is it that turns awareness towards the body? Is that what you said? The awareness of the body is already there.

[23:57]

That is the body. When there's a body, there's awareness of body. So, what is it that turns awareness to that? That's a redundant question. But there's another question, maybe, that you could have, that could arise. Did you say I failed? Failure happened. This coming forth of failure, OK? Failure came forth. Did that realize something? Did that show something?

[24:58]

It showed the intimacy of the body failure. What? Body failure? No, the body. Failure coming forth as a body. Failure coming forth as a body. I didn't think it was failure coming forth as a body. But that's what occurs to you, huh? I thought it was realizing a self. a subject, was it the body that failed or was it the subject that failed to come up with the question that created the sense of failure? I was experiencing it as neither of those, just as that sense of failure was coming up as an object of perception. As an object of perception? Namely, and I'm thinking, that's a body. That's a type of body. But when you see it as a type of body, is it a failure? It's a failure body.

[26:11]

A failure body, yeah. But that's not a failure as a failure body. Failures belong to somebody, don't they? Usually. But if you, if when failures come you see them as failure bodies, then that's happening before there's a person there who came into the situation and had a failure. That's a different perspective to have failure bodies come. Usually I'm there first and then I fail or I succeed. This other way is failures are coming and then there's me. But this person doesn't have any problem with failures because I forgot this person. It's just the arrival of a failure which confirms the self. It's not about something the self did.

[27:15]

It confirms the self. It gives the self life, just like being crippled can give you life. If you're crippled, that's the body that gives you life. But if you see it the other way around, you can be very unhappy. because you can try to not have a crippled body or to try to manipulate your crippled body and so on and so forth. But having a crippled body can help you, can help you moment after moment, realize you, confirm you. And great activity can arise through this Primal passivity of life. Primal passivity of life. Primal passivity of life. And then toes sprout. Thigh muscles pop up.

[28:16]

There's running and screaming from this inheritance of all dharmas giving life here. this toe sprouting happens, and then the toe sprouter learns that it has a self, that it does things, and then we are deluded. But before that, there's great activity with nobody doing it, just the whole universe coming forth and creating this miraculous life form, and then that changes into another one, and that changes into another one, and that changes into another one, and there's great activity there, great activity. including the eventual ability to imagine failure, but it's the failure body of the whole universe. I wish I learned that in grade school.

[29:19]

What did you say? I said I wish I learned that in grade school. You know, if you grow up in a bilingual family, usually, I don't know usually, but often I think you're slower to learn to talk. You know what I mean? I don't know if that's always the case, but our daughter is pretty intelligent, but she didn't speak until a little bit later than some other kids. But I think it's partly that she was learning two languages or three languages. So if we would teach children certain things at the same time they were learning other things, they might be kind of slow, perhaps. But I think you could learn both. But one is more essential than the other in terms of getting along in this playground. But you could learn them both, but they might be kind of retarded in terms of learning process if you were teaching both sides of the story from the early days.

[30:19]

But children already know the one side, and then they learn the other side. So it would be more a matter of reminding them of what they knew before, to keep upholding what they understood before they learned this new thing. And that would maybe slow them up in learning a new thing. So if mother looks at you very excited, you know, at the same time that she's excited about, you know, you, she also conveys to you what? That you are the arrival of all things as her. If she does that at the same time, it might be a more complicated message. So it might be harder for you to learn certain things. So, it's tricky. But anyway, we've got to learn now. So I guess I'm going to try to find another way to say, you know, take care of yourself.

[31:33]

You know, let yourself be taken care of. Listen to your body. What's it saying? It doesn't speak English, right? So what's your body telling you? What's your body telling you? What does your body desire? What does your body need? What is your body? What information is coming to you? What's coming forth? What's coming forth? What's coming forth as your body? What is it? So maybe that's the way I would say it. And I would also say that if you... If there's a you who's running the program here and getting the body to follow the schedule, I would say, please don't be too harsh on your body. Be gentle with your body. Be kind to your body. But when I say that, I'm sort of still buying into the system of delusion of you taking care of your body.

[32:46]

So I say that with, you know, if you're deluded, then be a kind deluded person. Be a gentle deluded person. Because if you're deluded and you push yourself too hard, then you'll stop. Then your body will say, don't ever go back in that meditation hall again. Because every time you get in there, you torture me. And your body will say, we can't get up this morning. The body will say, you can't think of Zen Center anymore. You've forgotten entirely about Zen Center. You cannot conceive of Zen Center. You can't find Zen Center. You don't know where the Zendo is. You must stay in bed for the rest of your life. The body will stop you. It will take revenge if you aren't kind to it. So if you're still operating from the deluded point of view, I would say be very encouraging to your body.

[33:48]

Find ways to make it enjoyable for your body to be here as much as possible under the circumstances. Do it so that you'll do it again because we need to do a long meditation. We need lots of information to reverse this habitual deluded pattern so we're convinced that for all things to come forward and confirm the Self is enlightenment. And that to carry the self around and try to do the practice is delusion. We need to be convinced. And sitting in meditation, we get lots of lessons that that's the case. So one sesshin may not be enough for most of us. Two sesshin may not be enough. Ten sesshin may not be enough. So would they need to be enjoyable enough so we do enough of them so that we You know, we let the Dharma be strong in our life and let the self be weak, which is a big change, a big transition.

[34:55]

Poor little Buddhas, you know, they're wonderful, but they got weak selves and strong Dharma. They don't have no self. And they used to have, a lot of them used to have really big strong selves and weak dharmas. But then they let their self kind of like get a little softer, a little weaker, and not so much huffy-puffy in charge. And they let the dharma get strong. The dharma took over and then the dharma's been running things ever since and now called Buddhas. The dharma says, you cannot attach to anything. That's not what you can do. You are realized by everything. not manipulating everything. This is who you really are. You're somebody who's grateful for constant learning opportunities and has great activity in enlightenment, but you don't do anything on your own. This is the weaker self, stronger truth of the Buddhas. And we need to be convinced that this is the way to go, to let it happen.

[36:01]

And the way we let it happen is the body, the body, the body. What's the body? Everything that comes to us is the body. Everything. And sometimes the body says, you must move. And sometimes we listen to it and it moves. Fine. Then there's another moment, and another moment, another lesson, another lesson. You mentioned something earlier about... I mentioned something earlier about? Not being addicted to making yourself feel good. Not being addicted to making yourself feel good. Yes, that's one of the extremes that the Buddha encourages us to let go of. And not being addicted to making yourself feel bad, to make sure you're not making yourself feel good in an addictive way.

[37:08]

Okay? I mentioned that, yeah. Did you say that's it? Well, so, how do you know what you need? Do you mean, if you're not sure if you're doing something to make yourself feel good in an addictive way, how would you find out if you are? Yeah. Well, if you're not sure, I'd be happy to hear about the situation and tell you what I think. Doesn't mean that what I say will be right, but I can give you some feedback. Usually people know, but if... I find most people do not, the one they don't know about is how they're making self feel bad in order to avoid feeling like that, how they're feeling. The main thing is to, the practice is to work with how things are coming, okay, with the arrival of everything. That's what you work with. But we sometimes don't want to work with that. You know, we the self wants to work with something other than what's being delivered.

[38:12]

In other words, we complain. We want something other. We don't say thank you. We want to trade this experience in for another one. We have these two basic ways to avoid what's happening. And avoiding, the way we avoid what's happening are addictions. And a lot of people now have found out that if they use having pleasure as a way of avoiding facing what's happening, they get criticized for it, for the addictions that give you pleasant feelings to distract you from your experience. So they say, you know, people get jealous and punish me for doing those pleasure things, but if I punish myself, they don't seem to bother me as much. They're not jealous of the way I punish myself to distract myself from what's happening. But these are still two different kind of control trips that you use to try to manipulate what's happening, which we're often into. So if you're not sure if you're doing that, in other words, if you think that you're just accepting things as they're coming to you with no sense of, I'm going to manipulate the body to be a different way, or I'm going to manipulate what's coming to me, if you don't think you're doing that at all,

[39:27]

then it's good to check in with somebody because it's fairly likely that you're, you know, kidding yourself. Because most people are messing around usually a little bit most of the time. And of course some people mess around, you know, intensely and severely in order to distract themselves from what's happening. They'd rather have super big pain than the pain that's being delivered because super big pain is still the pain that comes from me being being in control. I got myself into being a drug addict. So, you know, that's some sense of like self in control there. Rather than just flat out this kind of like primal passivity of receiving all things coming to me moment by moment, or I should say all things coming moment to moment. And this primal receptivity of life to that. And then the birth of the self. So we have trouble actually being enlightened, being awake.

[40:28]

That's the hardest thing for us. It's the most unfamiliar from the point of view of this self that we carry. Sleep, definitely. Sleep is usually on the side of, you know, for most people would be on the side of indulging in sleep as an addiction to pleasure. But some people have nightmares, so then they would say, you know, you can't fault me because I have nightmares, right? It's not like I'm trying to avoid my problems because I have terrible dreams. And they'd probably say, yeah, I can't criticize you for that. But really... that is another extreme. Both of them are ways of avoiding what's happening. So, it really is about that. So, yes. My body, your body, says rest. Everything is interdependent. Yes. You don't rest because you're not you.

[41:35]

So no rest. I don't know. Let's go back to your example again. The body has a desire to rest. Okay? That's arrived now. The body does not rest. The body says rest, but the next moment the body does not rest. So you give an example of where the body desires rest and then the next moment there is no rest. Is there still the desire for rest? There may be. So this goes on. Okay. So the accumulation is no rest. Let's say, so your scenario is there's a desire for rest and then there's no rest and a desire for rest and no rest. Desire for rest and no rest. How does that happen? Okay, so one scenario is, what comes is the issue of rest, bodily rest comes, okay?

[42:41]

Right there, you don't have to go into the next moment yet, right there, what self is born in the arrival of the bodily experience of wanting rest? What self is born there? Right there. You don't have to go into another moment. Yeah, is there a self born there? Yes, but is there no self, or is there a self born of that arrival? Yes. Yes, so is there a self there? When the body manifests the desire for rest, does the self appear there? Yeah, so you've got a self that's arising with this desire for rest. Okay? Okay? So you got that? Now this self is a self that wasn't there before this desire arose.

[44:04]

Okay? It co-arose. It arose in the arrival of this desire. This self is not an a priori conscious subject It's something that was born with the body. Okay? This self is a true self. This self is a self which is nothing other than the arrival of this bodily sensation, this bodily desire. Okay? Now we got enlightenment. Now what would you like to know about enlightenment? Pardon? No, no, there's no next moment. No. That's one of the things about enlightenment. It doesn't have next moments. Let's deal with this moment. What can we deal with this moment? We have realized enlightenment now, okay? The self is no longer trying to run the show.

[45:07]

The self is now being realized and confirmed by the arrival of a desire for rest. Is it really all right? Is enlightenment really all right with you? It is. You have just accomplished the point of your life. Do you think you care about the next moment anymore? Do you? You think you do? Hmm? I don't think so. I don't think there is a next moment. I think you're enjoying this one. You're enjoying being with a body that wants rest.

[46:08]

Don't you ever enjoy having a body that wants rest? Don't you enjoy having a body that wants to urinate? Don't you enjoy that? Don't you enjoy a body that wants to shit? In discussing the practice of the Buddha way, there's a little phrase that I think I could discuss with you that might be helpful so that I can use it different ways and so can you. And that is the phrase or the compound, I think it's shusho in Japanese. Shu means, is short for shugyo, which means practice or cultivation. And sho means realization. verification, confirmation, proof, authentication.

[47:34]

So the compound of practice realization or practice confirmation or practice verifications used in various English translations to practice and confirm are to practice and authenticate all things. By conveying self to them is delusion. to practice and confirm all things, anything, anything, but any particular thing, several things and all things, to practice with the world in that way is delusion.

[49:05]

What way? Conveying self to it. Like, that's mine, or not mine. Anyway, to be holding the self and get it involved with everything. carry the burden of the self and then meet the world and practice and realize. This is delusion. To try to understand Buddhist practice or life or love or happiness, the truth, to try to understand these things, while carrying the self, by positing a self as a conscious subject. So we are living here, we're living someplace, and we put the self up as a conscious subject and

[50:15]

And holding the self, carrying the self, projecting the self onto everything, this is delusion. And most of us talk about our practice that way. And in Doksan, so far in the Sushin, I've been suggesting alternative ways for people to express their practice. or actually to express practice. Could it be that practice is not something that I own? It's hard not to say, what is your practice? Because if I say, what is practice? They think, are you asking what practice truly is or what practice is for me? How about maybe neither? Or maybe evocate what practice truly is, not what your practice is.

[51:21]

What's practice? So I don't trap the people by saying, what's your practice? Sometimes I do it by accident because it's unnatural to say, what is your practice? But, you know, it's more like, what is practice? What is practice? What is the practice? What is practice? But usually, even if I don't say, what is your practice, people answer, tell me what their practice is. I say, my practice is that I do this and I do that. This is a free country. You can practice that way. You, you, self-conscious subject, can practice Zen. It's a free country. However, that is a delusion. Not a big delusion, not a little delusion, just plain that's the definition of a delusion. It's not anything but that. So people say,

[52:27]

My practice is feeling my bodily sensations." And I said, well, how about just practice is bodily sensations? Just drop out and make it simpler. Practice is bodily sensations instead of my bodily sensations. I am aware of the out-breath. How about practice is the out-breath? or practice is breathing out. Is that okay? So far? Yeah. Somebody else says, well, even if I try to give up this perspective of me doing the practice, me practicing various practices, even if I try to let go of the thing of me turning the Dharma, I get into the same trap of now I'm trying to not turn the Dharma, or I'm trying to be turned by the Dharma.

[53:50]

My practice is be turned by the Dharma. My practice is to let go of me turning the Dharma. My practice is to let go of me practicing this practice or practicing that practice. It seems like a trap. Yeah, that's a trap. You just described a trap. And if you enter into that kind of practice, you have just entered into a delusion practice, which most Buddhists practice that way. most people who think that they're Buddhists. What I mean is that I'm the Buddhist and I practice like that. And Buddha accepts all such people. But then Buddha says, that's delusion. After being forced to say that, Buddha doesn't want to say that, but Buddha says, that's delusion. So then somebody says, well, what am I to do? And, of course, that question is, again, another delusion.

[54:53]

If I try not to do anything, it's a delusion. If I try to do something, it's, what am I to do? There's another delusion. But still, go ahead and ask the question. So she says, what am I to do? And I say, the body. The body. I don't do the body. You don't do the body. The body. There are other kinds of practices, but for now we have a practice called the body, which I cannot do. The whole universe can do it, though, and the whole universe does do the body and delivers a body every moment all over the place.

[55:58]

And each body gets to be a body. Each body receives a body until it doesn't anymore. There's a practice that's free of practicing while carrying a self and conveying the self to the practice and to other things. So what am I to do? The body. And I think I said, how is the body? And she said, rolling thunder. And I said, sounds like practice. The body. How's that? An eagle.

[57:03]

A storm. An earthquake. A great song. But that's not what it is. That's just how it is. That's how the practice appears to you. It comes like that as a body. It comes as all things. To practice and verify or confirm all things while carrying a self is delusion. For all things to come forth and practice and confirm the self is awakening.

[58:13]

Awakening from the delusion of carrying the self to everything. So there's a transition from the self turning things to things turning the self, to the delusion of the subjective consciousness doing the practice, to the awakening of the practice doing the self. So how does this transition occur? That's a self-centered question. But anyway, it occurs by studying the Buddha way.

[59:20]

And studying the Buddha way is to study the self. To model yourself on the Buddha way is to model yourself on yourself in a physical form so that you can see that it's a delusion that the self does the practice. So as you can see, that it's the body that is the practice, that does the practice, that this lump of red flesh, that this chunk of raw meat is

[60:24]

What practices? modeling the self sitting as a body. After the self sitting as a body, one can take a break from the self as a conscious subject. This thing about practicing having my practice and doing it in relationship to a body, having myself and then getting my body to do the practice is to make the self a subject and make the world an object.

[61:38]

Make the self becomes the subject and it verifies the surrounding world. This is delusion. To use the self to verify the world. To use the self to understand the world. This is delusion. So in meditation, we don't put the mind, the consciousness, as the subject which verifies the world first. That's our usual approach. subject, the self, which practices, uses the body to practice, which uses the body to have a conversation, which uses the body to get food, which uses the body to practice precepts. We have to do that. We seem to have to do that.

[62:49]

And after doing it that way for a while, we think that that's the way it is. But actually, The reason why we put the mind first is because the body's first. It's for the sake of the body that we put the mind first. It's hard to get through high school without putting the mind first. and playing the game of use the mind to practice the body and practice your friends and confirm and realize social life. So we play that game, I got a self, you got a self, let's use ourselves to manipulate and confirm the world and we can date. This is for the body that we date

[63:52]

not for the mind. But then the mind becomes predominant in dating and practice, and it becomes a subtle matter of how to put the body back first. The body determines the mind as subject. And then we think the mind determines itself as subject and the body and other things as objects. That's a delusion. We are born into this world a chunk of uncooked meat. And we are born as an object. We are not born as a subject. We do not know this subject thing. We are born as an objective, fleshy being. And we learn this subject thing, and then we project the subject thing all over the place.

[64:57]

There's reasons for this process, but we forget that it's the body that's first. So in meditation, we put the body first. We put the body into a form, into a posture. We have the body conform to a form. And then we start to see, what do we see? What have you seen? Have you seen something since you've been putting your body into a form? Now, some of you may have seen some mental desires, but mostly you're seeing physical desires when you put your body into a form. It's the physical desires that become strong during Sashin.

[66:02]

That's mostly what I've been hearing about. Physical desires and delusions. People are not crying out for enlightenment. the crying out for freedom from pain, physical pain. Physical desire is strong when you put the body first. This is an artificial means to realize that usually the body is first. Even in our ordinary life when we're going around carrying the self and and using the body. We usually have that approach, using the body to live our life and even to understand Buddhism, and using Buddhist teaching. I use my breath, I use my bodily feelings, I use Buddhist teachings, I use lunch, I use these things to practice.

[67:09]

Even in there, the body still really determines the self. And in the extroverted American society, we're worried about being passive. So we hear about Dharma strong, me weak, Dharma turning me, that sounds passive. Well, yeah, it is. The meditation posture puts emphasis on being passive. This doesn't sound good. Aren't I supposed to be active? Yes, that's the I system. I'm active. Switching to I'm passive doesn't sound healthy. The meditation sitting cross-legged, anyway sitting still, emphasizes our primordial, the primordial passivity of life.

[68:23]

There are impulses, yes indeedy, and they have a lot to do with being born. But once born, You're just sitting in there and the miraculous thing happens. It's a miracle. Just a little impulse to be born, a mom and a dad, And what happens? A little body, a little body, a little egg with a little sperm insinuated ahead of the rest of them. And this little egg with a tiny, tiny little sperm splits into two. Does the cell do that? How does it happen? Who does that? Who splits that egg in two? It's the body, it's that chunk of not yet even meat that's splitting by its own cosmic cooperation program.

[69:43]

Now I have a daughter. How did that happen? And she has a baby. How did that happen? And that baby inside her is a boy. And he's 10 inches long. How did that happen? How did he get to be 10 inches long, just sitting there, floating around in there? How did the egg go from being a little round ball to being a 10-inch tall boy curled up in a ball, sucking his thumb? How did that happen? Hey, is he passive, that guy? Occasionally he kicks. But mostly the maze, you can kick and I can kick, but how did he get to have feet with toes? How does that happen? And then you can kick. Is this passive? Mostly. Who's delivering all this growth opportunity?

[70:49]

How does it happen? How does the world come forth and confirm and realize him? He can't get away from it. Therefore, his delusion is not activated. He doesn't think he's doing this. Even his mother doesn't think she's doing it, and yet it's happening right inside her. Someday there will be a self there, maybe. in that boy. He will learn that self. He will learn about it. But it's all starting with the body. And that self, when it happens, will be something that happens because infinite things came forth and made that self happen. Then he'll learn to put the self first and project it back on the world which gave it to him.

[71:55]

And then he'll be deluded. And then he'll suffer until his grandfather makes him a Zen student. There'll be no interference this time. Sure, take him, fine. Teach him about his body. When you sit in any posture, when you put the body in any posture, just put the body in a posture and you don't mess with that posture. Just let the body be in that posture and you will realize some discomfort and some delusion.

[73:07]

When you don't move, you realize how much the body wants to move. When the body doesn't move, the desire to move becomes sometimes quite strong. when the self runs the show, they're still suffering, but the self can move the body when it's in pain. So we don't really notice how much we want to move unless the body is put in a situation to teach us how much the body's desire to move makes us think we can move it. This is not really what the self is. And if you sit still, you'll see that the self is not practicing and confirming the body. The body comes forth, and then there's a self.

[74:14]

But we need to put the body first to see this. to see that really the Dharma is strong and the self is weak. That really everything coming forth, the way everything is coming forth, the way everything is coming forth, how does everything come forth? How does it come forth? You know, physical pain, thunder, earthquakes, a million faces, sunrises, all these things coming forth, which one is the self? They all confirm the self, and when they all confirm the self, then the Dharma is strong. The self's not there before. The body's before the self, and the body is a thing coming forth. The body is a thing coming forth.

[75:22]

The body is a thing coming forth. Whatever comes forth is your body, your true body, and that confirms the self. Practice is to model the self on that process. Not to hold the self aside and do something, including that process, but model the self on how the self is born. Model the self on the self that is appearing in the arrival of everything. Model the self on that, and you'll forget this idea of the self that's doing the practice. And you will see that that is a self that's illuminated by everything in the universe. I heard about people behaving in ways that, well, I thought were really the way to live, and these people were Zen monks.

[76:49]

When I was a kid, I thought Jesus was, generally speaking, from the stories I heard, I like Jesus and I like some of Jesus' disciples. But I couldn't relate to Jesus. I didn't understand his practice by and large. But the Zen monks I heard about, I almost could understand their practice. And then I've heard that they practiced putting the body first. to put the body in a form and let that form be the practice. And even in that form, the self is forgotten. So I practiced that form and I thought before I practiced that form pretty much that I could kind of get my body to do some sort of what I wanted it to.

[78:04]

I was young and if I wanted to walk someplace or jump someplace or climb someplace or do some physical thing, generally speaking I could do something like that. If I wanted to run 100-yard dash in under nine seconds, I couldn't do it. But I could run pretty fast. I could experience running anyway. Maybe not as fast as I liked, but definitely if I tried to run, I could run. Most of the time I thought so. I thought that I could get myself, get my body to run. I had that delusion. So I thought I could get my body to sit. So I had my body sit. But then after I sat for a while, I had trouble sitting. Somehow running, you run, you don't expect to break the world's record when you run.

[79:09]

You just try to run and you sort of run. So you think, well, there I did it, right? Doesn't that seem possible? And now I walk. Now, at certain ages, you try to walk and you can't. Like when you're little, you try to walk and you can't. So you're not so sure that the self can get the body to walk. But sure enough, at a certain point, a lot of people get to that place and the self gets the body to walk. So the body goes along with this delusion. I can get my body to stand up and walk. And it's a wonderful moment of conquest of delusion. Great moment of delusion. And the child very happy to be so successful. Everybody claps. You did it. You didn't grow your toes, but you stood up. And you walked. And we feel great. Delusion is not so bad after all, is it? It's a great moment of triumph over the body.

[80:12]

Get that body walking. Though those streams are rolling, keep those doggies walking. It's a great moment, isn't it? Yeah. You think so. But then sometimes you can't walk, and then you think, oh, this is not so great. Can't get the body to move now. Uh-oh. It never was that way, you know, that you got the body to walk. This is delusion. But we have to do this. We can't say, okay, kid, you're not going to be able to walk. You can't walk. Could we get the kid to wait until the whole universe walks him? Pretty tough. We'll see on the next kid. Anyway, now that little guy who's kicking, he doesn't think he's doing this.

[81:23]

But he'll learn to think that he's doing the kicking, which now he doesn't think he's doing. Just like he doesn't grow the toes, he doesn't kick the foot. He doesn't think he grows the toes, he doesn't think he kicks the foot. But he will learn to think he kicked the foot. And if we wanted to, we could get him to think he grew the toes. If that was part of our social agreement, that we grow our toes. I mean, some people think that they grow their toenails, I suppose. I grew my toenails out. Right? I grew my hair long. Sometimes people say I let my hair grow long, but some people say I grew my hair out long. We do, right? We can do that. I grow my hair, I grew my toenails, and I do my practice. If we look carefully, we see that this is, you know, really silly, what we usually think. What we usually think is not true. It's not authentic.

[82:26]

What's authentic is the whole universe. comes forward and then there's a self. The whole universe comes forward and there's a body, a wonderful, miraculous, ten-toed body. And then there's a self, which is a servant of the body and determined by the body, and then can think that it runs the body and forget about its origins. in the arrival of all things, and then we got problems. So the practice is to set up a situation, somewhat artificial, to reverse this delusion and put the body first so we can see that the self, the subjective self, is not first. It isn't there before we go into the room. but we actually think it is. It's not something in addition to the rest of the universe, but we actually think it is.

[83:29]

We are supremely deluded, we humans. This is our destiny, but there's another destiny which is more true, which we don't face, which is the destiny of our primal carnal, objective being, the way we were born. We weren't born as conscious subjects. We were born as objects of the universe that the universe made, and we were a body. And our problem is to return, to reverse this process of self-delusion and go back to the body that we do not own and see that the body is not under the sovereignty of the subject.

[84:39]

And I won't say that the subject is under the sovereignty of the body. The body has no idea to control the self. You can't have the self without the body. The self depends on the body. The self determines the body. This object determines the subject, but the subject doesn't have any idea to control the subject, and it doesn't. The subject creates a delusion that it can control the body to some extent, but it can't at all control the body, except in dreamland. It can interact, it is interdependent with, it co-arises with the body. Once there's a self, it comes up with the body. If there's no body, there's no self. Actually, they're interdependent.

[85:44]

It's not that one's in charge. It's just that one is first and the other is second, and we reverse them. And now I have to switch, reverse it back in order to see that it's not true. It's not happiness to try to have this illusion be true. I didn't quite finish my story. Anyway, I tried to sit, but I couldn't. And I was really amazed that I couldn't sit. I mean, I could sit. I did sit. I sat for a minute or two minutes or five minutes or ten minutes. But I was really surprised that I couldn't sit for 40 minutes or 50 minutes or 60 minutes or 90 minutes or three hours. How come I couldn't? How come I couldn't sit as long as I wanted to? I was really surprised because it seemed like, well, you just sit there and, you know, there you are.

[86:54]

And then that's fine. I got myself into sitting posture and I was sitting. So I'll just do this for a while. But then somehow it was hard to continue. How come? Was it because of the pain that I had trouble sitting? Well, not exactly. It wasn't because of the pain because sometimes you have pain and you have no trouble sitting. You know what I mean? You ever have any pain and have no trouble sitting? It does occasionally happen. That you're in pain and you have perfectly no trouble sitting. It can happen. Sometimes, you know, I'm not trying to get sympathy anyway, but sometimes I sit for a really long time and I'm giving talks like this. Sitting here with my legs crossed, you know. There is some pain here. How come I just keep sitting here all chipper with the pain? Hmm?

[87:56]

Well, how come? Tell me. Is it because I don't notice it? Hmm? No, I'll tell you, it's not because I don't notice. How come I can sit here with my pain, you know, and babble on like this? and just continue. Whereas before, when I was first sitting, I sat and I had pain, but I couldn't continue to sit. How come? I'll stop talking now so you can answer. Hmm? What? Delusion, yes, but not really. Not really delusion. Delusion is that I thought I should be able to sit. Because I put my body in the position, and then I'll sit there, boy. We'll tell you when it's time to move. I heard some stories about people sitting a long time, so why don't you do that? We'll be back later. You just sit there. So why don't you try two hours? Here's a nice little room with white walls and a green carpet.

[88:59]

You can look out the window at the bare trees with the birds sitting in it. This is... Pardon? No, that's not why I can't continue to sit. Why couldn't I continue to sit? Or rather... Oh, you're answering why I can continue to sit. No, that's not why either. The reason why... Huh? No, no. Oh, now I'm in charge? Before I was in charge, so I couldn't sit. Now I can sit because... Who's in charge? Huh? You're in charge, yeah. You're in charge. That's right. Because you're in charge, I can continue to sit. As long as you want me to sit here, I'll sit here. Because you're in charge, which means the body's in charge. When the body's in charge and the body wants me to sit here, I'll sit here. As long as my body wants me to sit like this, no problem. If the body's got pain and the body wants to sit like this, the body sits like this, basically, very happily.

[90:04]

Now we can get it to move. Okay, now these people want to... Now they're telling me they want me to move. Okay? Now they're telling me they want me to stop. So, that's my body too, so I stop. But as long as you don't tell me to stop, And even if you do tell me to stop, it takes a while for me to get the idea. The body is in pain but perfectly happy to continue to sit in the position in which it is feeling pain because the body doesn't want to move. The body in the form of all you and the body in the form of this body doesn't want to move. That's why it can continue to sit in the pain. But when the body wants to move, whether it's pain really strong or pain a little bit, then there is this thing called the body wants to move, and it's very important. It's primary.

[91:07]

It's the origins. It's of this body. self that thinks it can do stuff. It made the self that thinks it can make the body do stuff. Now they're in cooperation, hopefully, and unfortunately sometimes.

[91:28]

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