This text in which we just chanted has been a text that we have used in this lineage for about 700 years and recently we've been studying it again. I fielded it very nicely expresses the relationship between our sitting practice and I should say, I think it shows how our sitting practice is an expression of our relationship with all beings. and how our relationship with all beings is an expression of our sitting practice.

[01:05]

In our little brochure for this practice period, which we're starting now, We said that with every breath we take, we interact with and join the life of the wider world which supports and sustains us. This practice period is dedicated to the complete expression of our appreciation and concern for the world and the world's appreciation and concern for us. With full awareness of the suffering of our times, we join together and meditate and work on behalf of our planet and all beings. This is our way of saying our vow or our objective, our wish for this practice period and for our whole life.

[02:42]

Wendy's in my expression, which is a reworking of an ancient formula That was called the Bodhisattva vow. In the Lotus Sutra, it says that transforming all beings and allowing them to enter the Buddha's way This is the heart of our work. This is the heart of the enlightened mind. To allow all beings to be transformed and enter the Buddha way. And we have a way for transforming beings and allowing them to enter the Buddha way.

[03:50]

And that means has been directly transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors as the inconceivable Dharma. It is only transmitted from a Buddha to a Buddha without veering off. And this self-fulfilling awareness is its standard. sitting upright, practicing Zen, is the authentic gate to this unconditioned realm of self-fulfilling awareness. Although this inconceivable Dharma is abundant in each person,

[04:52]

It is not actualized without practice, and it is not experienced without realization. By practicing uprightness, we can enter into this self-fulfilling awareness. Self-fulfilling awareness is the same as ecological awareness. Self-fulfilling awareness is Dogen Zenji's way of saying what Shakyamuni Buddha called dependent co-arising. Awareness of how all beings and all things mutually create each other. It's an awareness of how we embrace and sustain all things and all things embrace and sustain us.

[06:03]

And to live at this point, all over the universe, where we are created by all things and where we create all things. To sit up right there and witness the unborn dancing with the born. The content of the Buddha's mind is this dependent core rising. The content of our mind is the same, exactly. Studying Zen is studying the Self. And studying the Self leads to

[07:10]

this self-fulfilling awareness. If you study the self, the teaching of dependent core rising will be revealed. But in order to study the self, we've got to be honest about who we are. And generally speaking, society does not encourage this. But fortunately we have this little place here where you will be allowed to be yourself. Really. And thus you will be allowed

[08:13]

to be transformed by that honesty and that uprightness. And thus you will be able to enter the Buddha's way. And you will be able to live from this ecological awareness. In my opinion, this is an extremely good deal. This is already going on. It's nothing new. It's just that it isn't realized without practice. And you won't be able to experience it without realization. So we will go back and forth this summer between considering what it means to be upright and honest and what it means to have this self-fulfilling awareness, to have our sense of self fulfilled, completed, even beyond our perception.

[10:04]

because our perceptual equipment cannot realize how completely we support and sustain each other. We can see a little, but we can't see it all. But we can be illuminated by this awareness which is beyond our perception. A week or so ago, I was shaving my head, and there's a verse, Agatha, which one can chant when shaving one's head.

[11:39]

Now, if you don't shave your head, you could chant it when you're shaving your face. If you don't shave your face, you could perhaps shave some other part of your body to chant it. If you don't shave anything, we have some other verses for brushing teeth and so on. But anyway, I was shaving my head, and the verse goes like this. Well, I think the way I said it was, I was there in this bathroom by myself, so I said, now I am shaving my head and my beard. I vow with all sentient beings to be free from self-cleaning. In the end, neither birth nor death exist. And I kept shaving and then I said it again, now I am being shaved. My head, my beard. And then I went back and said, now I am shaving.

[12:43]

I don't recommend necessarily go back and forth in your mind this way, but I did that and I felt really good about that. Seeing these two sides, that I shaved my head in that case and I was also being shaved. And everybody in Ten Directions was supporting me. The electric company was supplying electricity to turn the lights on. Somebody built the bathroom. Actually, somebody gave me the shaver. It's an electric shaver, and it's norelco. Suzuki Roshi's brand, by the way. Shaver of gurus. And I was also allowed to take the time to shave.

[13:51]

Maybe if some people knew I was shaving, they'd say, hey, what are you doing shaving? You shouldn't take your time to shave. But anyway, they weren't saying that to me. They were letting me shave. So I was allowed and supported to cut my hair. I was being shaved, and I was also shaving. And I mentioned, but I'd like to mention again, that since we're having a one-day sitting, we sometimes call these sashins. And the word for sashin, the Chinese character for sashin, it's a character which has hand on one side, one half of it. The left side of it has character per hand, and the right side, the old character has three ears on it. And this character is off sometimes, and then the other character, that's Setsu, and the other character is Shin.

[15:01]

Two together are pronounced, instead of Setsu, Shin, they're pronounced Sesshi. And Setsu, one of the meanings of Setsu is to gather, or to order. But it also has the meaning of engage, or embrace, or sustain. But this character also has what I just said was the active side of the character, to embrace, to sustain, to engage, to order the mind. And that's one way people understand saishini, is to gather the mind, to order the mind, to sustain, embrace and engage with the mind. This is part of it. But there's another side, and that is to be gathered by the mind, to be sustained by mind or heart, to be embraced and engaged by the heart or mind.

[16:13]

So it's alright to spend some of your time when sitting perhaps in actively engaging and ordering your heart. To concentrate and collect your heart in this room or in the fields around here. That's fine. That's the active side. But the other side is Experience that the mind, that your heart and mind are being gathered, are being engaged, are being embraced and sustained and ordered. The mind you have, the heart you have right now is being sustained. It is given to you. It is ordered by all events right now.

[17:17]

People sometimes ask me how I am, and lately I've been sticking to the formula, couldn't be better. Most people like that one. I could also say couldn't be worse. It's the same thing. But if I say couldn't be worse, then they make a face. If I say couldn't be better, they say fine, great. You couldn't be better or worse, is what I suggest, because the way you are has been sustained by such an immense network of causes and conditions. The way you are right now has dependently co-arisen by all things. That's why the way you are right now is worthy of your attention and thorough wholehearted study.

[18:26]

But again, it's hard to study something if you don't admit it. So we have to admit who we are so we can study it. And if we admit who we are completely and study it, this is our place to study ecological awareness. Standing in this zendo, standing in a field of flowers, The place to start is to study the self. What feelings do you have? What perceptions do you have? Those flowers are embracing and sustaining you. Those flowers are your perception. Those flowers are you. Those hills and the sky are you. Those people you're working with are you. They're telling you who you are. This character Setsu, which is half of Sesshin, in the strictly Buddhist sense, means to save all sentient beings and to take in all sentient beings with Buddhist compassion.

[20:11]

So sitting here, can you take in yourself, your own experiences, Can you feel supported even by your pain? Figure out what it's trying to tell you about yourself. I was just in the mountains at Tassajara, and we had a one-day sitting there, which was quite an achievement during guest season.

[23:10]

I haven't seen such a thing, maybe ever. And quite a few of the resident students attended. And the next day, At the swimming pool, I heard one of the new students say how the one-day setting went for her, and she said that she found that if she just constantly kept thinking of new and interesting stuff without a break, it worked out just fine. I listened to her and I didn't say anything, although I felt something coming up into my throat. So she discovered a way to get through the day, and that's fine. On the other hand, the various kinds of thoughts that may come into your mind today, whether you're intentionally flooding yourself with them or not,

[24:21]

I don't have much to say about them. Mainly I just suggest that you try to be upright in the midst of the flow. In the midst of the flow. If you can be upright in the midst of all the things that will be happening to you today and from now on, you may be able to enter into this awareness of the ecology of your body and mind. Just to sit is what we say, and we don't want to make the practice an object, something we do, but just let the practice be the practice. Just let the practice practice the practice.

[25:28]

And don't run away. But please don't misunderstand that this kind of uprightness and letting all things be just as they are, letting your thoughts, emotions, impulses, perceptions, feelings, letting all that just be as it is, just being upright and letting this practice take care of itself. and letting this way realize itself, this does not mean that you forget the purpose of your sitting. It is to let all beings be transformed and enter the Buddha's way. In our sitting we should never forsake anything, any being. We should just give up all of our personal agendas.

[26:34]

all of our human cravings, all of our understandings. But these things are naturally given up if you just let them be. So, in one sense our practice is just to be upright and sit. The other side is we need to understand the Pendant Core rising. Once you have ecological awareness, then you can just sit. And you don't have to do anything once you understand dependent co-arising. Once self-fulfilling awareness is here, then naturally you make the correct response or the appropriate response. So again, if I may make a little kind of a thing which I mentioned before, a little phrase, and that is based on

[28:05]

an interaction that happened between Yun Mun and one of his monks, where the monk asked him, what was the Buddha's teaching during his whole lifetime? And Yun Mun said, an appropriate response or an appropriate statement. But literally, What it says in Chinese is one character which means facing something, another character which means one, and another character which means to teach. So there's various ways to read what he said about what Buddha's teaching was during his whole lifetime. One way to read it is an appropriate statement or an appropriate teaching or an appropriate response. That's true. But more literally, it is facing one, teaching. Facing one thing, you teach.

[29:12]

Meeting one thing, you teach. But also facing oneness, you teach. So it means both that each thing we meet, Each shovel, each person, each flower we meet, in that meeting is our teaching. There's no fixed teaching. It always arises between us and each thing we meet. But also, if we meet the oneness of ourself and other, meeting that oneness, facing that oneness, the teaching comes forth. Teaching from this oneness is the appropriate response. This is what Buddha was doing his whole lifetime. But again, we have to admit, I'm here separate from you. You're here separate from all things.

[30:16]

It's through that separation that we realize connection. So facing separation, facing this one thing that we're looking at that's not us, is the same place where we will face and meet oneness of ourself in that thing. And then teaching comes from there. This is to sit upright in self-fulfilling awareness. This is to sit upright Meditating on dependent co-arising. This is to settle into the truth of cause and effect. The great teacher Wang Bo got a letter from one of his friends who was having problems with a student and asked for some help. So, Wang Bo sent his student, Lin Ji, to check out the situation.

[31:28]

As Lin Ji was about to leave, Wang Bo said to him, well, what are you going to do to help him out? He said, I'll know when I get there. Usually we want to go to help with some idea of what we're gonna do when we get there. That's okay. We can't avoid that habit. But really, I hope we also have the faith that actually when I get there is when I'm gonna find out what I'll do. And I trust that the situation will teach me. So again, that character, which means embrace and sustain, has a hand and three ears. Hands are important. You can hold them up to your ear. You can also reach out into the world.

[32:31]

You can pick up a shaver. Electric shaver or just a little shaver. For example, actually there's a little shaver that's coming to Green Gulch, Sue and I understand. and a little baby girl is coming, being adopted by some of our members. And some people want to know beforehand what's going to happen. We'd like to know beforehand what's going to happen when this living being comes in our midst. It's normal. Now, ordinary Pregnant women have all kinds of hormonal sedatives, so they don't think too much about what they're going to do. They had to think, now, well, how am I going to deliver this baby? They'd go nuts. They still can think about it a little bit, and they do go a little bit nuts. Fortunately, they have all this relaxing medication, naturally supplied.

[33:36]

So they mostly just handle it moment by moment, and they usually do pretty well. But it's hard for us to trust that we'll be able to handle the situation. So we come with all kinds of stuff, and that's called delusion. It's not really delusion. It's just called delusion. Anyway, you don't have to do this all by yourself. and you can't do it all by yourself, and nobody else is going to do it for you. But there is a certain part that you have to do, and that is you have to take responsibility for your position, I have to take responsibility for my position. You have to study yourself. You have to keep up on yourself.

[34:38]

You have to keep abreast of yourself. That's your responsibility, that's my responsibility. Nothing's harder, but also that complete responsibility for yourself, for keeping track of yourself, for being aware of everything you do, is the gate to this great awareness, which we call Buddha's mind, of the pentacle arising, or we call the ecological, the total thorough ecological awareness. Again, ecological awareness must completely include what you're doing. It isn't just looking at the hills. I want to read something now.

[35:47]

And the reason why I want to read it is because it's beautiful. And I think it's usually hard to read things to people, for me to read things to people. Usually when I read the people, it's kind of like separating. Better to speak directly from my own experiences. But I want to read this anyway. Maybe it'll work. We'll see. This is a kind of, what do you call it? This is from a book. And the name of the book is The Famished Road. Written by a Jamaican man named Ben Oakry. I'm going to change a little bit, please excuse me. But anyway, in the beginning, there was the unborn. And it was like a river. The river became a road, and the road branched out into the whole world.

[36:58]

And because the road was once a river, it was always hungry. In that land of beginnings, spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing, and sorrowing. We feasted because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played because we were free. We sorrowed because there were always those among us who had just returned from the world of the born.

[38:07]

They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all the suffering they hadn't redeemed, all that they hadn't understood, and for all they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back into the land of the unborn. There was not one among us who looked forward to being born. We disliked the rigors of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love and the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying and the amazing indifference of the born in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe.

[39:13]

We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind and few of whom ever learned to see. Our queen was a wonderful personage who sometimes appeared in the form of a great cat. He had a red beard and eyes of greenish sapphire. She had been born uncountable times and was a legend in all worlds, known by a hundred different names. It never mattered into what circumstances she was born. She always lived the most extraordinary lives. One could pour over the great invisible books of lifetimes and recognize her genius through the recorded and unrecorded ages.

[40:27]

Sometimes a woman, sometimes a man, She wrought incomparable achievements from every life. If there is anything common to all her lives, it is her genius, which might well be the love of transformation and the transformation of love. With our spirit companions, the ones with whom we had special affinity, we were happy most of the time because we floated in the aquamarine air of love. We played with fawns and fairies and beautiful things. tender sibyls, benign spirits, and serene presences of our ancestors who were always with us, bathing us in the radiance of their diverse rainbows.

[41:40]

There are many reasons why babies cry when they are born, and one of them is the sudden separation from the world of pure dreams. where all things are made of enchantment and where there is no suffering. The happier we were, the closer was our birth. As we approached another incarnation, we made vows that we would return to the spirit world at the first opportunity. We made these vows in fields of intense flowers and sweet-tasting moonlight of that world. Those of us who made such vows were known among the born as spirit children. Not all of them recognized us.

[42:50]

We were the ones who kept coming and going, unwilling to come to terms with life. We had the ability to will our deaths. Our vows were binding. Those of us who broke our vows were assailed by hallucinations and haunted by their companions. They would only find consolation when they returned to the world of the unborn, the place of fountains, where their loved ones would be waiting for them silently. Those of us who lingered in the world, seduced by the annunciation of wonderful events, went through life with beautiful, faded eyes, carrying within us the music of a lovely and tragic mythology.

[43:57]

Our mouths utter obscure prophecies. Our minds are invaded by images of the future. We are the strange ones, half our being always in the spirit world. Not wanting to stay, we caused our mothers much pain. Their pain grew heavier with each return. Their anguish became for us an added spiritual weight which quickens the cycle of rebirth. Birth was an agony for us too, a shock of the raw world. Our cyclical rebellion made us resent, made us resented by the other spirits and ancestors.

[45:12]

Disliked in the spiritual world and branded among the living, among the born, Our unwillingness to stay affected all kinds of balances. With passionate ritual offerings, our parents always tried to induce us to live. When the time arrived for the ceremonies of birth to begin, The fields at the crossroads were brilliant with lovely presences and iridescent beings. Our queen led us to the first peak of seven mountains. He spoke to us for a long time in silence.

[46:20]

You will cause no end of suffering. You are a mischievous one. You will cause no end of suffering or no end of trouble. You have to travel many roads before you find the river of your destiny. This life of yours will be full of riddles. You will be protected. and you will never be alone. We all went down to the great valley. It was an immemorial day of festivals. Wonder spirits danced around us to the music of the gods, uttering golden chants and lapis lazuli incantations to protect our soul across the interspaces and to prepare us for our first contact with blood and earth.

[47:25]

Each one of us made the passage alone. Along we had to survive the crossing, survive the flames and the sea, the emergence into illusion. The exile had begun. These are the myths of our beginnings. These are stories and mood deep in those who are seated in the rich lands, who still believe in mysteries. I was born not just because I conceived a notion to stay, but because in between my coming and going the great cycles of time had finally tightened around my neck. I prayed for laughter and a life without hunger.

[48:34]

I was answered with paradoxes. It remains an enigma how it came to be. that I was born smiling. As our happiness increased, we became closer to our birth. Our queen always lived the most excellent and fruitful lives. It didn't matter what circumstances she was born into, she always used them well because she believed in mysteries and didn't waste time. Can you remember this story?

[49:42]

Does it remind you of something? So here we are in the realm of the born, of blood and earth. We are protected and will never be alone. But we have work to do. We must be thoroughly responsible and honest about what's going on. I sincerely invite you to be responsible and to be honest about what's going on, to express yourself.

[51:10]

I really hope that this place, this green gulch, is a place you can trust, is allowing you to be yourself, to admit yourself, to honor yourself, to study yourself, to see what that self is, to see its limits, and to see how it's created by everything, sustained, protected, and never alone. In our intention

[52:11]

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