Now, all ancestors and all Buddhas who uphold the Buddha Dharma have made it the true path of enlightenment to sit upright, practicing in the midst of self-fulfilling awareness. Those who attained enlightenment in India and China followed this way It was done so because teachers and students personally transmitted this excellent method as the essence of the teaching. In the authentic tradition of our teaching, it is said that this directly transmitted, straightforward Buddha Dharma is the supreme of the supremes. From the first time you meet a teacher, without engaging in incense offering, bowing, chanting Buddha's name, repentance, or reading scriptures, you should just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind.

[01:18]

When even for a moment you thus express the Buddha seal, the Buddha mudra, in the three actions of body, speech and mind, by sitting upright in this awareness, the whole phenomenal world becomes Buddha's seal and the entire sky turns into enlightenment. The Buddha's work of transforming beings and thus allowing them to enter Buddha's way is accomplished. At the beginning of this session, I cited the Buddha's teaching of training in thusness, in letting the heard be just the heard, the seen be just the seen,

[02:48]

the imagined be just the imagined, and the thought just be the thought. And the Buddha said that when things are like that, this will mean the end of suffering. And this end of suffering is the end of suffering for self and all others. This is the practice of suchness, which is our way to save self, to save other, to help sentient beings to a life of peace and harmony. This week I have talked about two worlds, in a sense, meeting.

[04:00]

The world of karma, the world where I do things, where I practice, where I see and I hear, and the world beyond karma, where everything comes forward and realizes itself where everything comes forward and realizes the self. The world where I'm already here all the time and I go do things. The world of mud. The world of complexity and entanglement and birth and death. And the world beyond birth and death where everything comes forward And in the arrival of all things, we are born. These two worlds meet. And where they meet is called the Buddha mind seal or the Buddha mudra.

[05:15]

Zazen is to sit upright in the world of mud and clearly observe these two worlds meeting, to witness the Buddha seal right in the midst of your karma, and to realize the non-duality of the world karma and the world beyond karma, to realize the non-duality of the karmically created and the uncreated. They are a non-dual body of Buddha. But this does not mean that we shrink away from being an ordinary human being, being a self, being a doer, being a clinger, being a deluded being.

[06:24]

No. means we watch the world of delusion meet the world of enlightenment. We witness that perfect seal. We try to be comfortable enough and stable enough to see the Dharma. The Dharma is not the world of karma. And the Dharma is not the world beyond karma. The Dharma is the meeting of the world of self-created karma and the world where the self is not creating karma. It is the union of those two where Dharma is being demonstrated. It is the subtle meeting place So I've gone over this again and again.

[07:28]

Rather, I'm embarrassed to do it so many times, but my experience is it's very difficult to understand this completely. This is called the Middle Way, and it's very hard to understand the meeting of these two realms. Because again, we think, oh, we do it or they do it. Or maybe both of us do it. Or maybe nobody does it. But all those possibilities, according to our teacher Nagarjuna, are not going to make it. Nothing is created by me. Nothing is done by me. Nothing is created by the other person. Nothing is created by both. There's nothing that exists by this means and there's nothing that doesn't have a cause. Things are very subtle. They're so subtle that when we see this, everything, absolutely everything, is happiness and freedom.

[08:42]

But we must be thorough. ticket, the price of witnessing this reality is to be really thorough, is to be an adult and take responsibility for being alive. When I first came to Zen Center, I was already over 20 and had been in graduate school for a number of years. I guess I thought I might have, maybe I thought I was an adult. But I really wasn't very responsible. Even after many years of practice, I look back now and I see I still wasn't responsible. Now I'm almost responsible, almost an adult. Do you know that sesame salt that we pass out to put on our food here?

[09:46]

Do you know what it's called? Gomashio. That's what it's called. Goma means sesame, seed, and shio means salt. But there's a tendency around Zen Center, one of my old friends used to always call it gomashio, and I always used to say demashio. Pass out the gamazio. The reason why it gets to be called gamazio is because people say goma-sio. They forget the sh. They say gamazio. And then it goes from gamazio to gamazio to gamazio to gamazio. And then, finally, there's a crackdown. And we go back to goma-sio. Even the astute and precise Soku last night, who's very careful about every little thing, he even said, did you hear him?

[10:51]

We're going to pass out gomasio, he said. But from a distance, it sounded like gomasio. I said, what did you say? What is this stuck here when you came over? I said, what is this? He said, it's gomasio. I said, what? Gomasio. I said, gomasio. I wouldn't have dared to do that except Suzuki Roshi taught me how to speak Japanese, at least some phases of it. Every little thing is an opportunity to miss or to witness. our responsibility is to be there for everything. And if we're there for everything, we will have the ability to respond. But it's hard to be there, because we're lazy, right?

[11:58]

Rumi says, the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You have to say what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People, actually all things, are walking back and forth where the two worlds meet. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. In the world of karma, there's something extra. It's called me. In the world beyond karma, there's something missing. It's called me. The two worlds meet. are completed by each other. The self-fulfilling awareness is to study the small self so thoroughly that that small self is fulfilled by everything else.

[13:22]

And that point of fulfillment is the Buddha seal. But if you back away from your karma, from being responsible for what you're saying, for being responsible and present for what you're thinking, being responsible and present for what you're posturing, if you back away from that, if you cringe from the complexity of human mud, you will not be able to witness the Dharma being unfolded on the surface of your small karmic world. even a tiny bit of flinching and cringing from the human situation. We won't get it. We won't see it. The great teacher, Fa Yun, said to Xu Shan, sounds like shoe shine,

[14:37]

Fayan, Dharma eyes, said to Shushan, if there is even a hair's breadth of difference, it's as though the distance between heaven and earth. How do you understand this? Xu Shan said, if there's even as much as a hair's breadth of difference, it's as though the distance between heaven and earth. Fa Yan said, if that's so, how can you understand it?

[15:40]

Xu Shan said, I am just like this. How about you, teacher? Fa Yan said, if there is even a hair's breadth difference, it is like the distance between heaven and earth. Xu Shan deeply bowed. To live with this hairs-breadth difference between the world of karma and the world beyond karma, to live with that, to not run away from that, is called sitting upright in the midst of the self-fulfilling awareness. This is the way the ancestors, the old-timers, are indicating as the true path

[16:47]

to enlightenment as the true path to show beings, to get beings to open their ears, to open their hearts, to open their minds to the Buddha's teaching, to see it demonstrated, to understand it and to enter it. This is why we emphasize this practice. It is really taught by this tradition as the essential way for peace and harmony. And it should be joyous because to be completed, to have my small life completed through this meeting, Even to feel the shadow of union is encouraging.

[17:58]

I should have talked about this at the beginning of Sashin, but, you know, there's an avalanche going on and I wasn't able to. But now maybe I am. It looks like I'm going to. And what I wanted to bring up was that I want to talk about the word sashin. And as background for that, part of the reason why I want to talk about it is that, you know, we say, what do we say? I vow to avoid all evil, to practice all good, and to save or benefit all beings, right? Something like that. Those are the three cumulative pure precepts of the Bodhisattva. They are what all Buddhas have held up, those three. Benefit all beings, practice all good, avoid all evil.

[18:58]

In the Zen tradition, particularly the Soto Zen tradition, we say it slightly differently. And the translation that I've been using lately is, I vow to embrace and sustain right conduct. Rather than I vow to avoid evil, I vow to fulfill or embrace and sustain right conduct. That's the same, plays the same role as avoiding evil. I vow to embrace and sustain all good, or all wholesomeness, and I vow to embrace and sustain all beings. In the old way it says, I vow to avoid, I vow to do, I vow to save, right? This is interesting for me because when I looked at the Chinese, I noticed that those three characters all start with the same Chinese character. And that Chinese character is translated in this rendition as embrace and sustain.

[20:13]

Embrace and sustain the forms of Zen practice, embrace and sustain uprightness and self-fulfilling awareness. Embrace and sustain gassho. Embrace and sustain prostration. Embrace and sustain all the forms. Embrace and sustain komashiyo. And embrace and sustain good and so on. But that character, what the character is, turns out to be, the character satsu, which is used to make the word Sashin. The word Setsu, Chinese character Setsu, with mind or heart, those two together. Setsu with Shin is pronounced Sashin. So I thought that was interesting. that the same character is used for these three as the way to relate to... It's the character for relating to right conduct, it's the character to relate to all kinds of good practices, and it's the character for relating to sentient beings.

[21:29]

The way of relating to right conduct, the way of relating to wholesomeness, and the way of relating to sentient beings, the same character. So what is this character? And like I said, I should have told you at the beginning, but I couldn't. Couldn't get it in there. So the word, the character Setsu, as I said, can be translated embrace and sustain. So Sashin is to embrace and sustain the heart. Embrace and sustain the mind. That translation is okay, but the word actually is much more dynamic than that. It's quite a word. Chinese is kind of a neat language. So what this character means is, part of the meaning of it is to touch or be in touch

[22:46]

But there is an active and passive side of this. So the passive side is that we are already connected. The active side is engage. Passive side is the mind is already connected and we are already connected. The active side is engage with the mind, engage with beings. So embrace and sustain or engage with beings. Also recognize you're already connected. The union of practicing and being practiced. This character originally, now it's written in a certain way, but originally the way it was written was it had a radical on the left side for hand, and the radical on the right side had three ears, three characters for ear.

[23:59]

So I don't know exactly what the hand's doing. Maybe the hand's going like this. So it has something to do with listening. And the hand. I guess, you see, in one sense it's active, reaching out. In the other sense it's receiving. embrace and sustain, be embraced and be sustained. The bodhisattva embraces and sustains all beings, also is embraced and sustained by all beings. This dynamic interaction. And again, if there's a hair's breadth of deviation between I embrace and sustain and I am embraced and sustained, we've got a problem. somehow this dynamic union of action and not action, of engagement as an active process and as a passive thing.

[25:03]

Thich Nhat Hanh has this term, interbeing, and the word interbeing the first part of the word interbeing is the same character, Setsu. The second part is a character which means to manifest or actualize. But that word manifest or actualize also has a dynamic, a passive and an active. Be manifested and manifest. So to be engaged with manifestation and to be engaged by being manifested. Again, this dynamic. Some other meanings of this first word, setsu, in sesshin, is guiding. Guiding the heart. To sit and guide the heart. But again, to sit and be guided by the heart. To gather or collect.

[26:13]

That's the meaning I used to hear. To gather the mind or collect the mind. Collect the heart. And again, many people's experience is when people sit in Sashin and they try to gather the mind or gather the heart, and the more you try to gather it, the more it says, hands off, man. I'm getting out of here. Leave me alone. What are you doing? And the more successful you are at roping it in and getting under control, the more it says, okay, one, two, sleep. One, two, three. Bored. Bored. One, two, three. How did I get into this? Revenge. This is the world of karma. On the other hand, if you leave it alone and walk away, it says, hey, come back. Come here. In the world of karma, no matter what you do with this mind in terms of gathering it, you're going to have a problem. But anyway, you do, and you have the problem, and that's part of Sashin, is gathering the mind and realizing...

[27:17]

that you've got a monkey mind here. And the more you sit, the more you realize you've got a monkey mind. And the more still you sit, the more you realize that you are a totally emotional creature on the karmic side. But if you don't try to get... People who don't sit and gather their mind don't even necessarily know that they're wild. going to a bar sometimes. I mean, they're like off the walls. You say to them, hey, you people are kind of excited. What, me excited? Come on, I'm not excited. They're totally cool, but if they tried to sit still, they would realize, if they gathered the mind, they'd realize they are wild, just like everybody else. Monkey mind. But the other side is the mind is gathered in Sashin. And I watch people, you watch people, we all watch people. They sit here inside as karmic beings. They're doing this thing, you know. They're trying to legislate the mind.

[28:19]

They're legislating the heart. There's all kinds of wars going on. On the other side, you look at them, they're totally gathered, perfectly collected. Not by their effort, but by the universe. The universe has collected you all perfectly onto your places all during the whole sashim. And even when you got off your places, you were exactly where you were all the whole time. You were never one iota off. But that wasn't karma. That was everything coming forward and realizing you. That was your enlightened person who was here all week. And we'll be here all next week too, even when you leave the room. But the karmic person might be different next week. The karmic person might not be gathering you in and fighting back. But wherever you are, Again, exerting that karmic being, exerting that deluded person, you will find at the surface, at the limit of being a human being who is trying to get herself under control, at the limit of that, you will find your responsibility and your ability to respond, and you will see, perhaps, the meaning of these two worlds.

[29:33]

Another meaning of this word satsu is overseeing, as like an imperial regent, to oversee your heart. Another meaning is to condition, like condition your hair, hair conditioner, to condition your mind. This is quite obvious that people's minds get conditioned, their hearts get conditioned by Sashin. By the end of Sashin they have these nice, you know, reconditioned hearts. And they fly out of here and use them, you know, at tea and stuff. I'm sorry I'll miss the tea. Another meaning is to correct, to correct the heart, to correct the mind. But again, these two sides. One side is people sit down, they do sesshin, they try to correct their mind. That's the karmic side. The other side is your mind is corrected by everything coming forth and correcting you. Another meaning is to nurture. Another meaning is to assist. Another meaning is to represent, like as an agent.

[30:37]

You sit here and you represent your heart. Vatis people sit here all week and say, what are they doing? Oh, they're representing their heart. What's their heart? Oh, they want to be bodhisattvas. So they sit here to express that. They're representing something which it's hard to see it. So they demonstrate it by this representative action of practicing Zen, which of course they would not attach to. Another one which I think is interesting, another meaning is overlapping duties. You have overlapping duties to your heart. Another one is to assume responsibility for your heart. Assume responsibility for your mind. Another one is to hold or press. These are meanings which this word has, which when you put them with mind or heart, is what we call sashin.

[31:42]

I think all these meanings are relevant. And a particular Buddhist meaning of this word, aside from the word heart or mind, is to save or accept sentient beings, to take in sentient beings with Buddhist compassion, to embrace and sustain. But, this is from the dictionary, but... I emphasize also the other side. It's not just that you embrace the sustained beings, that you take them in, but they take you in. And actually, not so much they take you in, but they are the taking in of you. So that's the word sashin. Very dynamic, this word. and you can use this word after this formal session is over you can continue to embrace and sustain you can continue to guide and be guided by your heart again to sit upright in the awareness of how you guide and are guided by your heart to watch those two sides to watch all your efforts to express your heart are completed or fulfilled

[33:05]

by the guiding of your heart by all things. This is called Sashin. And the question of, you know, how active we should be, engaged Buddhism, This interbeing, which is the source of engaged Buddhism, it's coming from the same place, the same question, the same area, the same observation. It can lead towards action in the sense of out in the world and engaging various kinds of things. It can go towards sitting. Sitting. And in commenting on these precepts, one of our ancestors, one of Dogen's disciples said that the ultimate form, excuse me, in this practice of sitting there in the mud, being upright, this includes or this is the practice of patience.

[34:20]

And in commenting on the patience which arises in conjunction with this meditation practice, the Zen teacher Senne says that the ultimate form of the merit of patience is to transform living beings. The ultimate form of the merit of patience is the transformation of living beings. is to let them be transformed and enter the Buddha way. This is the ultimate merit, the ultimate form of the merit, excuse me. The merit has formless and not formless, but the ultimate form is the transformation of beings and them entering the Buddha's way. Patience with what? Patience with this very dynamic reality and being patient with our pain The reality is not painful, but if we don't accept our pain, we won't be home and we won't be able to witness this reality.

[35:25]

Witnessing this reality is given to us by being patient. Patience is the primary cause of this witnessing. Us witnessing saves all sentient beings, transforms them, and lets them enter the Buddha way. This kind of patience is the practice of Buddha. And it is the original intention of bodhisattvas. And what do you need to practice patience? Mud. You need the world of karma to practice mud. You don't practice mud in the world beyond karma. You don't practice patience in the world beyond karma. But if you're patient with the world of karma, you will realize the non-duality of these two worlds, which is called the truth body of Buddha. For beings to be transformed and enter the Buddha's way is the fruit of patience.

[36:39]

And only those who are patient can realize freedom from the separation of self and other. And conveniently or inconveniently, the separation of self and other is painful. Painful for those who have been embracing and sustaining their hearts, and whose hearts have been embraced and sustained. So that's my review of the week. And I appreciate very much your sitting this week and your bowing and your chanting and your eating and your sleeping.

[38:03]

and your patience and your uprightness and your awareness of this very subtle interaction of you and the rest of us. In this way you are, you are upholding the practice of suchness. You are the lifeblood of the Buddha way. And if you do this practice thoroughly, this is what pleases the Buddhas and makes them alive. The fact that we are willing to practice their way means that they were good teachers.

[39:12]

It means that they are good teachers. So you're already doing it. I was visited by the People, the committee that checks on Sashin's, they came to me last night and we reviewed everybody's conduct. These people know the workings of all Saint Jinping's hearts and they were very happy with you. They just said, please ask them to continue forever until there's complete enlightenment throughout the whole world. So I said I would ask them for you, ask you for them. Actually, I should have asked them, well, will you continue for them if they continue for you? so thank you very much and excuse me for leaving early and I also would like to do something interactive but I didn't prepare you for that possibility so maybe you're not ready to do anything particular but if that happens

[41:03]

That will happen. And I appreciate also all many little animals that you put in my office. Little bulls and little frogs. And I got a book about how to make mud pies, which I forgot to bring. And anyway, thanks for all the flowers. And so on. Oh, and also for future study, just by coincidence, the next case of the Book of Serenity is called the Iron Ox, Shreya Fung's Iron Ox. And it's about this Buddha mind seal. So you might study that case, which kind of, I think, is very nice, goes into very nice subtle details about how this mind seal works.

[42:19]

I'll just tell you what he said, the first line is, the mind seal of the Buddhas is like the working of an iron ox. When it's removed, When the seal's removed, the impression remains. But when it's left, the impression is ruined. Just suppose it's neither removed nor left. Is the sealing right? Is the not sealing right? See that question? If you leave the seal on, you ruin the impression. If you take the seal away, the impression's left. What's the proper way of sealing? So this case goes into the subtleties of the action of the Buddha seal.

[43:23]

So you might want to study that for the next few weeks, those of you in the Koan class. And if you're not in the Koan class, you still might want to study it Case 29, Book of Serenity. I hear noxes. I hear bulls. They are in...

[44:16]

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