Like the moon, I feel pregnant. I feel, rather than a bulge in my heart, I feel a bulge in my abdomen. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't think this baby will be able to be completely delivered during this session. but it's going to come out a little bit more this morning. Thinking about this talk, I first thought that I was going to begin with an appendix to yesterday, but then I decided to put the appendix at the end of today's talk. And then I thought I would explain to you my plan for the talk today, which hopefully won't take too long.

[01:04]

I thought of it as a menu. A menu, by the way, is an English word that came from a French word. The French word means list or detailed. It comes from the Latin, Minutus, which means minute or diminished, which is the past participle of to diminish. Minueri, to diminish. So I give you the menu now. I thought I would begin by just giving something of an overview. I'll give you the overview now and then I'll go into the details. The overview is, first I'd like to again just briefly allude to the thing I've been emphasizing mostly in this practice period, and that is

[02:20]

Reversing the world. Reversing your tendency. Can I get that sutra book out of the way, please? Renouncing worldly affairs. The first step is renouncing worldly affairs. It doesn't mean to trash them. It means to let go. It means to go in the other direction. And I've been putting most of the emphasis on that. This is the counterclockwise swastika. The swastika going counterclockwise to you. During the Sashin, this is called to sit upright, still and quiet in the midst of the awareness of the self receiving and using the self.

[03:29]

This is a concentration in the realm of objective logic, in the realm of delusion. It's sitting upright in the realm of I'm separate from you and renouncing that approach, letting go of that approach. It's renouncing the world of conscious space, of temporal space. It's a dying kind of practice. And I might also just, well I'll say more about it later, that's the first phase. And that part is the beginning of this section that we've been chanting on the Self-Enjoyment Samadhi.

[04:36]

The next phase is the merit of this reversal, which I began to talk about yesterday. The realm of merit that you're initiated into by renouncing the world, as it says here, Where is it? Renouncing worldly affairs, the great earth, and all that. we shall renounce worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma. And in doing so, the great earth and all living beings together will attain the Buddha way. So that's what we entered into yesterday.

[05:37]

A new life after death. A new life of inconceivable cooperation in an inconceivable realm. entering a realm where we do not know things as objects anymore and where wonderful cooperation and miraculous benefits are being mutually bestowed. This is the realm of oneness, it's the realm of the merit of learning the backward step and practicing it wholeheartedly. The next phase is, in this text, is to re-enter the world of dualistic thinking, to re-enter the world of objective knowledge, and again bringing the merit

[06:53]

of dropping body and mind, bringing the merit of renouncing worldly affairs back from the world of oneness into the world of two-ness, into the world of separation, into the world that we create with our thoughts. So those are the three phases of the text, and I'll point out the parts of the text that deal with it. And then at the end, if there's time for dessert, the appendix will be about pain as a kind of way to bring us back to the ground in case we get a little excited about this trip in the landscape of merit. So I won't spend more time at the beginning on encouraging us to just sit, but again I will enter the discussion of the merit of zazen, the merit of dropping body and mind, which I did yesterday, and I would call the

[08:30]

If I may introduce another term, I think it's okay, you'll get to know it better later. The just sitting could be called an initiation by fire, initiation by narrowness, by kinkiness, by tightness, and by pain. Then you enter into this realm where when even for a moment you express, I should say it this way, when even for a moment you express the Buddha's mudra on your body, speech and mind by sitting upright in this samadhi, the whole phenomenal world becomes Buddha's mudra.

[09:32]

By completely accepting two-ness you get entry into the realm of oneness and there when you assume Buddha's mudra everything resonates with that and assumes Buddha's mudra. to just say a little bit that if you do not assume Buddha's mudra in the realm of delusion, although you do not experience initiation into the realm of wondrous cooperation with all beings and oneness with all beings, although what do you call it, the mudra you do assume also resonates inconceivably.

[10:42]

The mudra of denial, the mudra of unwillingness to accept your state, that mudra, that's another mudra, that mudra resonates too. I'll talk more about that later. So, the entire sky also turns into enlightenment. The Buddha to Tathagatas, as the original ground of life, increased their Dharma joy and renewed their adornments, their magnificence in the awakening of the way. Again, as I mentioned yesterday, Buddhas, you know, quite naturally exist in the pleasure of being Buddha. And they quite naturally give up this attainment and return to the ground of life where we can join them, all of us.

[11:58]

And the way we join them is by this dropping body and mind. When we drop body and mind, we join Buddha's in the ground of life, and we increase Buddha's Dharma bliss, and we renew Buddha's adornments, which are we. Which are us? We? Which are we? English lesson. We as beings who have dropped our body and mind, we as beings who have renounced our personal views, we as beings who really see how useless our own opinion is, such beings, we are the trophies of Buddha. We are the jewelry on the Buddha's body when we see that. They then, by the way, give up, take their jewels off,

[12:59]

go back to the ground and wait for the next arrival from hell to adorn their body by having recently renounced attachment to belief in the reality of hell. This is hell! Damn it! Don't argue with me! beings who have renounced that belief immediately become the adornments of Buddha who is waiting right at that level to receive you at the front door of hell as you go the other way. Also, in this realm of oneness, all sentient beings in ten directions and six worlds, hell and so on, at once obtain pure body and mind, realize great emancipation, manifest their original face. So there is a battle going on, you can see, even in the realm of oneness there's a battle.

[14:05]

Can you see it? Although we don't know it, our laziness and our unwillingness to be who we are is resonating into the realm of oneness. And that resonation, that darkness, is creeping up even on the Buddhas, not to mention every other sentient being there, and kind of like trying to affix and corrupt and infect them. Simultaneously, the emanations from the beings who have dropped body and mind are also resonating to them. So there's this struggle going on between the effects of laziness affecting everybody Your laziness doesn't just bug you, it bugs everybody. And it doesn't just bug everybody in this world, it bugs everybody in the world beyond this world. In the world free of this world, your laziness is still causing trouble. Simultaneously, the good benefits of awakening are also purifying these people's bodies and minds, giving them great emancipation, and so on.

[15:10]

Fortunately, we're We're very luminous beings so this whipping effect doesn't really hurt us that much. We keep going on. At this time, this is all in one time by the way, all things realize correct awakening, all things, not just all things. Myriad objects partake of the Buddha body. you, or me, or one, or us, or them, leap beyond the boundary of personal awakening, turn the unsurpassable great Dharma wheel, and expound the profound wisdom, ultimate, unconditioned, beyond all human agency. Hell beings do this. Now they do that anyway, but through the entry point of letting go of all thoughts and all personal views, like a personal view about what would it be for a hell-being to turn the interpassable wheel of dharma?

[16:35]

What would it mean for a hell-being to realize great emancipation? We have ideas about that. Once you give up your ideas about that, then hell-beings accomplish these wonderful freedoms. Now, the next thing that happens is that this awakening, as you can see, is very broad. It's beyond personal and it affects all myriad beings. it resonates back to the yogi. So, the yogi, sitting on herself thoroughly, drops self, enters this realm, realizes all this, and then all this resonates back to her.

[17:38]

And then, of course, it resonates back, back and forth. This is the imperceptible mutual assistance or intimately, imperceptibly, inconceivably helping each other in the realm where there's no objects, where there's no knowledge. This is the realm of merit in the realm of non-duality. and I sort of said the text to you. I think you heard it. Such broad awakening resonates back to you and helps you inconceivably. You will in Zazen unmistakably drop away body and mind, cutting off various defiled thoughts from past and realize the essential Buddhadharma.

[18:45]

So you drop body and mind enter this realm, help all beings in that realm attain these great liberations, and then that resonates back to you and causes you to drop body and mind again. You enter, join in this work, and joining in this work then reinitiates you into how you got in the realm again. I just got to see, I mean, did you come in with all this merit? You get tips upside down and shake all the merit out of you, and then put right side up again, and it all comes right back to you again. And then you go out the door, back into the world. Re-equipped with completely cleaned up merit, which you gave away when you entered the realm of oneness. If you went into oneness and kept the merit, it wouldn't be any good to you when you leave oneness. But you get a whole new set of oneness, and then you go back out. into the conventional world, the world where we meet each other, where we think again that these are objects.

[19:56]

This is the world created by our karma. This world is created by our karma. Our karma is the shape of our consciousness, moment by moment. That's how the world is created. We re-enter the created world, the world we make, we're back in it now, but we're equipped with the results of this reversal. And not only reversal, but giving away the merits of that reversal in the realm, in the inconceivable realm of zazen. Now, we're talking about the re-entry. Thus, you will raise up the Buddha activity at innumerable practice places, places, locations, where places of Buddha Tathagatas everywhere, cause everyone to have the opportunity for ongoing Buddhahood and vigorously uplift the ongoing Buddhadharma.

[21:12]

vigorously uphold the changing Buddhadharma, the changing Buddhahood in the world. Because grasses, earth, trees, walls, tiles, pebbles all engage in Buddha activity, those who receive the benefits of wind and water caused by them are inconceivably helped by Buddha's guidance or Buddha's influence, splendid and unthinkable, and awaken intimately to themselves. Those who receive these water and fire benefits spread Buddha's guidance or Buddha's influence based on original awakening, and because of this, all those who live with you and speak with you will obtain endless Buddha virtue and will unroll wildly and wildly, inside and outside the entire universe, the endless, unremitting, unthinkable, unnameable Buddhadharma.

[22:27]

Although it's been said many times, many ways, this is completely true. And this refers to living the life of vow. Now, I'm going to tell you some stuff and it's going to sound like, I don't know what, like I'm describing something you can see, but I don't really mean it that way. And maybe I can tell you. Well, put it this way. It's something you can see when you live in vow. Like when you live in vow, you can say, that's true. And you can talk about why or something, but really, it's just kind of a way you talk when you're living in vow. A sophisticated person could cut this to shreds, but a stupid child might fall for it completely and jump right on board and drop body and mind and be on the merry-go-round of all Buddhas. Let's see what happens to you and me.

[23:38]

Ready? Once we sit Zazen, this is about this, you know, in this world, right? Once we sit Zazen, like we've been doing this week, once we sit Zazen, our entire environment actually and completely changes. Also in the realm beyond knowledge, that completely actually changes too. But in the realm that we can see, and touch, and smell, and taste, and think about, and see as not us, and see as us, and so on. In that realm, too, there's a complete transformation when we sit Zazen. Even when we sit Zazen incorrectly. Of course, the way it gets transformed in that case is bad, but, you know, don't worry about that. because you're going to cause trouble anyway, so. Once we begin to sit, the whole world changes.

[24:41]

So here's some stories. Now, again, these aren't proof. These are just, what do you call it? Do you know, have you heard about Buddhas being 16 feet tall and being golden and have big earlobes? I don't have very big earlobes, excuse me for being personal, but probably people who have a lot of faith think that my earlobes aren't that small. You know, objectively speaking, Suzuki Roshi was not that cute, but we thought he really was. And people who have faith actually think some of us are cute too. When my faith is weak, sometimes people don't look so cute, but when I get stronger, they start getting kind of cute. It's just like they start looking like Suzuki Roshi in a way. In that same kind of not cute, cute way. The nirmanakaya is still kind of, you know, but the sambhogakaya, the blue spot, he starts coming out.

[25:47]

And I can see his little webs between your fingers and stuff. I see you scooping up all those sentient beings with your little paws. These stories are stories to the faithful. So, to the faithful, these will be proof. To a sophisticated person, this is kind of like, what's he talking about? Sitting with Zazen changes the whole world. So here's a story about me. When I was a young fellow, I opened, it was, I think, Life Magazine about things. I opened Life Magazine. Do you people ever read Life Magazine? Do you ever not read Life Magazine? These are Buddhist magazines, Life, okay, Look, and Time.

[26:54]

So anyway, I looked at Life Magazine and they had this article in there on Buddhism. And they had different kinds of Buddhism. They had Tibetan Buddhism with these guys with those fantastic faces and stuff, dancing and stuff. And then they had the Zen Buddhism, right? And there was a picture in there of this guy whose name is Hisamatsu Shinichi, who's a Buddhist layman, and It was a picture of him sitting on a tatami mat from the picture photographed from his back and the light was coming in the door. So his body was a dark shape like that on this light surface. And on the bottom it said, in deepest thought. And I looked at it and I said, Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, it's a beautiful picture and deepest thoughts should look beautiful.

[28:03]

That guy sitting in Zazen converted this boy. Him posing for that picture, sitting in Zazen, converted a boy. I didn't even know what he was doing, but I said, I want to do, I want to think like that. When I was a graduate student in psychology, I had an advisor and he was a really smart guy. And for some reason he liked me. And he spent a long time talking to me. Actually, he asked me to do a research paper one time on separation anxiety.

[29:11]

about the pain and fear we feel around separation, you know, from Freud and Jung and also from animal research, Harlow and rats and stuff like that. And one time we were discussing my paper and he said, you know, he was starting to notice also that I was getting interested in weird things. He started calling me the Swami. You know what I think the Zen Buddhists do about separation anxiety is they identify with everything as a way to overcome it. And I thought at the time, how superficial. But now I think it's pretty good. But anyway, at that time I didn't think it was very deep. I thought it was kind of a put-down of Zen Buddhism to make it so simple. I was still pretty sophisticated. Saying it was superficial, you thought that Zen Buddhism was?

[30:15]

I thought Zen Buddhism was deep. And his comment was too superficial. Because I thought it was too simple, you know? Anyway, he was really smart. Much smarter than me. And... Anyway, I won't get into how smart he was. But one day I was walking through... I was walking down 4th street, you know, 4th street, positively 4th street. I was walking down 4th street. And with Bob Doon. And we walked by McDonald's, which they had just built. And I looked into McDonald's and I saw my advisor. And he was about 6'2 or 6'3, a very skinny person with a huge head. in the forehead about this long. Just, you know, E.T.

[31:21]

after college or something. Anyway, he was sitting eating his hamburger, and he had his legs, you know, his legs crossed, you know, the way people cross their legs in a chair, and he would wrap them around two or three times. Which I thought was pretty yogic of him, actually. I appreciated that side of him. I tried to do it, but my legs are too fat. By the time I left college I could do it once. So his legs were in a yogic posture but his spine was curved over into a question mark and he had his head way down in the hamburger. And I looked at him and I thought, I don't want to be his disciple. The way he's thinking right now is not beautiful. He looked like that statue of the thinker that Rodin made. And I thought, that kind of thinking, I don't like that kind of thinking, that that thinker's doing. I thought, if that's Western thinking, even though they're smart, I don't want to do that kind.

[32:23]

I want to do this pretty kind of thinking. Later I found out that that statue was supposed to be a guardian outside of a larger project which Radbo Dan was doing, where he was going to have a, like a park or something, in a section called Hell, That figure was supposed to be outside hell. That's how you get in hell. Put yourself in a posture like that. Anyway, I decided no. So Hisamatsu, Hisamatsu's body took me out of the university where I was trying to practice Buddhism but it kept popping the seams of psychology. That person's body, that Buddha mudra converted me and I became his disciple even though I couldn't meet him because he was in Japan. And I read these Zen stories and I found out that what this guy was doing there, sitting like that, was Zazen.

[33:34]

So I started to practice Zazen. I started to get into that posture. I couldn't tell what he was doing with his legs in the picture. But then I got a book that explained what he was doing and I started doing it. So, that's a story about how his doing Zazen transformed me. Even though other things were influencing me, the beauty of the Buddha Mudra, converted me." And then, of course, we say, the nine years of his wall gazing, the influence of the nine years of his wall gazing are noticeable still. Bodhidharma sat for nine years facing the wall. and how many millions and millions of people have been influenced by that sitting.

[34:34]

And what kind of merit, what kind of, you know, infusion of inspiration made it possible for that person to sit there for nine years? You see, he came from this realm that I just described, that I just read about. coming from that realm, you can demonstrate this incredible vow in the world. And when people see it, they are helped in some ways that you can see, but they're helped in many other ways that you can't, just by sitting. in this world, in this world where people are going so many different directions at once, in this world which has... everybody wants vision, you know, some direction in this situation. It's hard to see it, but when you sit, somehow you show the world something.

[35:49]

Even though you may be sitting in your room all alone, no one's even watching you show. And of course, Suzuki Roshi, then after Hisamatsu Sensei, Roshi, whatever, Zenji Sensei converted me, then I came and studied with Suzuki Roshi, who continued to convert me by the fact that he actually did sit. and also Kadagiri Roshi sat, he sat a lot, kept sitting and sitting and sitting in this world. So, you know, I have this conflict actually living at Zen Center in I want to encourage people to sit. but I can't tell which is the best situation to encourage them.

[36:52]

Maybe I should just completely shut up and just face the wall. Maybe that's the best thing to do. Maybe I shouldn't give lectures and maybe I shouldn't do dogsong because maybe it's confusing. If I just sat maybe that would be the clearest thing I could do, the best thing I could do. Maybe you understand it well enough now so if I sit you won't think I'm just concentrating Maybe you'll understand what I'm doing. Maybe you'll see that I'm not just trying to concentrate my mind and give myself peace by doing that. I have actually more fun doing doksan, to tell you the truth. Part of the reason why I have more fun doing doksan is that a big demon appears in It sometimes appears in Dzogchen too, but a big demon appears, the worst of all demons appears in Zazen quite often.

[37:54]

We've heard about some demons around here, but what's the worst demon? Boredom. Boredom's the worst, the super worst. It's not a fierce demon that's scaring you. Those are helpful. They're helpful. Very helpful. But the most helpful demon is the worst demon. And the worst demon is boredom. That's the one you have to face when you sit by yourself. Whereas in Dog-San, people... God, it's really interesting most of the time. Occasionally, a great Bodhisattva enters the room and starts boring me. Oh, you're having fun in here, huh? Well, we're going to use the zazen now. Because here's a demon. See if you can stay awake with this one. Don't send that guy in here again, Daigu. If you're going to send people like that, just go back to the zendo.

[39:01]

There was a Zen teacher, I think most of you know his name is Sawaki Kodoroshi. When he was a young boy he was a monk and he was at a temple and they were doing what we call Seigaki ceremony, feeding the ghosts, feeding the uneasy spirits. And Japan is very well organized. The spirits in Japan come back to visit in July and August. So everybody can do their, they have all the Segaki ceremonies at that time, most of the Segaki ceremonies. And all the Japanese people spend like a month just going all over Japan to visit their various ancestors' uneasy spirits. Isn't that nice that they come back at that time of year? So anyway, they were doing Segaki ceremony and they finished it, the old bone ceremony, and I just got to say this. Seigaki ceremonies can be done any time of year for uneasy spirits, but Obon is kind of like this time when all of them come back for it.

[40:13]

Other times they come back sporadically according to certain circumstances. And in Europe too, they used to have things better organized too. They used to all come on Halloween. But now it's kind of like all over the place. So you got to do Seigaki ceremonies more often. After the ceremony, that the abbot told the monks to take the day off, and so they all went to town, except for Sawaki, the kid. He didn't know what to do in town. Notice here, that thing we've seen in some of our ancestors. Real stupidity. He didn't know what to do. So what did he do? He decided to do zazen. So he sat Zazen. I don't know where he sat Zazen. He sat Zazen someplace. And then this woman who lived in the temple who was... Sometimes in Buddhist temples in Japan you have the monks, but sometimes there's an old lady there who is the mother-in-law, who is the mother of the priest or something like that.

[41:25]

or the mother of the previous abbots, something like that. Anyway, she's an old woman who lives in the temple and she's boss. She's boss. All the younger women are servants and she even bosses the monks around. And this particular one, they say, really drove the monks hard. She's a real tough cookie. She opened the door and saw this kid sitting in Zazen And she was awestruck and prostrated herself to him. And this boy thought, wow, Mrs. Azen is fabulous stuff. I didn't realize how it is. And you may have read in the Zamaio Zamai, King of Samadhi Samadhis, Dogen says, as soon as you cross your legs, you leap.

[42:35]

You leap into the precincts of all the Buddhas, and all the demons go running away when they see that form. This kid saw that. the stupid kid who didn't know what to do in town, saw that just sitting in that form converted this woman who lived in a Buddhist temple, who lived in a Zen temple. Suddenly, maybe she never even saw anybody sitting before, maybe she never went to the Zendo. I don't know. Anyway, he was converted and he decided from then on, he said, I'm going to practice Zazen for the rest of my life. And he did. He also gave some lectures, but anyway, he went all over Japan, sitting Zazen. And well, the influence of his activities is really immense, this guy. Almost all the Zen groups in France, and actually also in Germany, not all of them in Germany, but a lot of them in Germany, Italy, Spain,

[43:44]

some in England, but all of them in France, practically, are from one of Kodo's disciples. Again, a sophisticated approach, you can see that this isn't really that simple, but anyway, this influence of you assuming that mudra in this world is also infinite, and really infinite. Of course, there are There are other forces in this world, so it's not going to like flatten them all out all of a sudden, but it is a tremendously effective influence in this world, Dogon is saying, and the child in me believes it. The sophisticated person in me thinks more sophisticated thoughts than just believing that and deciding to spend my life doing that. But the sophisticated person in me decides to do a million things. The sophisticated person in me has to make elaborate plans to control myself into which book to read, because the sophisticated person in me can't decide which book to read, because there are so many good books.

[44:57]

The simple, childish person in me can decide I'm doing one thing for the rest of my life. Like Koitsu says, just only one thing. The child who can believe these stories, who can be converted by a picture, can decide to do one thing, and to do something so simple that true intimacy can be realized. The sophisticated person can't go for anything, he can't decide what to do, and just running around crazy. However, if we can live this vow and dedicate ourselves to the Bodhisattva way, the sophisticated person gets to enjoy the ride. and read various interesting books. I'm into French thinkers now, it's really great. And Daigudi tells me all kinds of interesting things to read too. Today he told me about this latest research on RNA.

[46:01]

Well, I'll get into it later. But without my simple vow and my childish mind, I would be a total wreck with what my sophisticated mind, with what my discriminating mind would put me onto. I was a wreck in college before I saw this picture. Enjoying it and interacting with all beings. And I forgot at what point Galen says, Well, what about Samantabhadra's vows? So this one vow to sit zazen should include Samantabhadra's vows. Thank you. You know Samantabhadra's vows? Well, briefly, I mean, I'll tell all ten, but briefly, to pay homage, to align

[47:12]

your life with all Buddhas, to praise all Buddhas, to make offerings to all Buddhas, to confess and become aware of your non-virtue, to completely accept your deluded mind and admit to see from there and rejoice in the merits of others, to beg Buddhas to teach, homage to Shakyamuni Buddha, take pity on me, teach me, to beg Buddhas to stay in the world, to stay in the dualistic world, to stay in the world of oneness, to stay on the ground of life so we can meet them, to beg them to do that, to do all the practices, the infinite practices, each one of infinite scope, that all the Buddhas do.

[48:29]

Did I say to do? To vow to do. And to vow to serve all sentient beings in whatever way would be beneficial to them, and to vow not to serve them in ways that aren't beneficial. And then, I don't know if you're counting, but number ten is to dedicate the merit, to give away and turn over the merit of all these nine practices that you vow to do. and to give over the merit of vowing to do them to all Buddhas and to the welfare of all beings. These are the ten vows of universal goodness Bodhisattva. These ten vows, they all should be in this only one thing. When you do Zazen, all these ten should be there.

[49:34]

or all these ten are there. They are all there. And all this, however, does not appear within perception. You don't see this necessarily. I told you these stories, but these don't actually appear within perception. Like I say that I saw that picture and I got converted, but that's not really how I got converted. The way I actually was converted I couldn't see. Something happened in my heart that I could not see. But somehow I could see the effects of it, or I could talk about it or something. But the way it actually works is imperceptible. Otherwise, you could just go around and turn everybody's heart on to Zazen, or turn your own on, and you'd do it.

[50:45]

It's imperceptible. It doesn't appear within consciousness, but all this happens. And the reason why it's imperceptible is because it happens in the unconstructedness of stillness. It is immediate realization. What can be met with, cognition, what you can be aware of as an object, is not realization itself. Because realization is not reached by this deluded, dualistic mind. In stillness, mind and objects merge in realization and go beyond enlightenment. So I can't go into the rest of this. So I have to give up. I give up. And now it's time for dessert. A bitter dessert.

[51:46]

Just in case anybody got excited, I did. To bring us back down to the ground. And also to encourage re-entry into the difficult work of renouncing worldly affairs, the difficult work of renouncing our worthless attitudes and opinions, which we think are priceless jewels, and the truth beyond all truth, because, actually, I've got to admit, I'm right. So it's not that easy to give it up. I know what Buddhism is, so it's going to be mighty hard for me to give it up as a worthless attitude. You people, of course, have it easier because you don't think you know what Buddhism is, do you?

[53:00]

Would some other people tell me some jokes like that, please, even though I didn't hear it? I think I know what he was saying. He was trying to be as evil as me. So pain, [...] pain. Oh, can I tell some stories about pain now? Relax, relax. I'm going to tell a story about pain. Now, can I tell a story about you, Dasha? Something you told me? I didn't tell you this yesterday, I just listened, okay? But now I might respond to you, okay?" My response, she said, I hope this is okay, tell me later if I'm bad. Anyway, she came and she told me she has some difficulty sitting, like we do, and she says, I go to yoga class and so in Zazen I go to yoga class and

[54:06]

I'm very peaceful and relaxed, concentrated, right? And not thinking to go someplace else, right? What else do you want to say? Anyway, she likes the yoga class. So do I. Nobody's bored in yoga class, are they? I'm not criticizing you, Donald. But yoga class, the way we're doing it here, no demons. Everybody's entertained, relaxed, present, awake. So then afterward, Dasha went back to the Zen domain for two periods. Calm, relaxed, present, And then her mind wakes up and starts running all over the place again, like it was before the yoga class.

[55:13]

Nervous, you know, restless. Why? Dasha says, Why? I say, I don't answer why questions. So I'm not answering questions, but I'll tell you something. And I caught another yoga teacher. I was at Donald's yoga room one time and he had ... Judith Lassiter was teaching the class and I was lying on the ground and she was talking and she said something like, if you stay in any yoga posture long enough, and I thought she was going to say, you will find an incredible bliss. And I was going to go. But she said, if you stay in any yoga posture long enough, you will find some discomfort. Can you translate it here?

[56:19]

However, if you go into one yoga posture, these yoga postures, a lot of them feel really good for a little while. And then, just before you get to the discomfiture, or even quite a while before you get to the discomfiture, you can move to another one, which also feels quite good. But if you stay in some of those yoga postures that Don put you in, you stay there for one hour, two hours, two days, three days, you'll start getting restless. You start saying, this is enough, Donald, let's change the posture. I'm getting tired of this one. My mind is wandering. If you stay in any place long enough, you stop moving in any posture, any yoga posture, you will notice you're uncomfortable. If it's not a yoga posture, you may not notice. You may continually be able to hide from deep suffering that is being caused by your dualistic thinking. Not to mention, well, same thing.

[57:42]

There are several other not to mentions that are the same thing. When you sit in the lotus posture a long time, the restlessness, the greed, hate and delusion The demons arise. They would also arise in any yoga posture that you go in, but if you move often enough, you don't necessarily notice it. Still, yoga of many postures helps us be able to sit a long time so that we can uncover gross, not-so-gross, subtle, and extremely subtle forms of suffering. Extremely forms of suffering means suffering that's subtle itself, plus that goes with something that's very subtle. Very subtle suffering sometimes with very subtle cleaning, with very subtle separation of self and other.

[58:46]

It's painful. And that pain is telling you about a subtle delusion that you probably wouldn't be able to notice if it weren't for that pain. Sometimes subtle delusions have big pain with them. That's when it's the basketball coming at you. That's the best thing. Like if the pain that went with the most subtle delusion was big, then if you hit that one, all the other ones would go. And if you sit still long enough, the root suffering of the root delusion will become very obvious to you, and you'll back yourself into Nirvana. Judith also said, the yoga teacher also said, if you watch people when they're asleep, they're moving all the time. Even when they're asleep, they're lying comfortably in bed, but they keep moving to a more comfortable position.

[59:50]

Because even in your sleep, you get a little, slightly uncomfortable, so you move. Unless, of course, you're a really good Zen student and you just go, poof, and never move all night. But by really good Zen student, I mean you're totally oppressed You don't dare move. One time this little boy came over to our house when Thea was three and he was four, came to visit. And Thea was always wiggling and twisting and had trouble going to sleep. And he said, I'll show you how to go to sleep. He laid down, put his hands up to himself and said, just go like this and don't move. And he did, he went like this and went... And Thea just couldn't get that. That's why, Dasha. So if you want to, you can try yourself. You can sit as I was in just a little while and then move into another posture and go back.

[60:54]

And you'll notice you won't get restless. And you can also pick one of those yoga postures and stay in it for a week. And see if you get restless. You will. You will. That's why yoga postures are good, as they show you this. Everybody is suffering all day long. Everybody, Buddha said. The deluded person in us is suffering all the time, non-stop. It's just that in yoga postures you become aware of it. And in some relationships, some yogic relationships, you become aware of it too. Now this brings me to, in some sense, dharma transmission. Yeah, you can ask questions now. This is dessert time. Go ahead.

[61:56]

Why? Thanks, Rahim. Try again, Michael. I don't answer why questions. I think there is, now what is it? Did that hurt your feelings, Michael? Good. Now why wouldn't he? I'm not asking you though. What's the reason why he didn't bring it up? I think he did bring it up, he just doesn't bring it up often.

[62:59]

And he's, you know, the way that people talked in his time was different than the way they talk now. So he says, awake or asleep in my grass hut, I always say homage to Shakyamuni Buddha, please take pity on me. That's the way he said it. This is a liberated Zen master who's still suffering, who's still struggling at how to teach, who's still asking Buddha for help because he's worried, he's anxious, he's feeling inadequate, he's wondering if he's living up to his responsibility, which he feels is very great. He's suffering. But he doesn't say, I'm suffering necessarily. Other places he says other things like that, particularly in his poetry, He reveals some pain, but he doesn't say, I'm in pain, but you can feel it if you know the background.

[64:08]

Even just strictly physical pain is kind of a big part of our practice. Yeah, it was for him too, you can believe that. His teacher said one time, Ru Jing said, If you're sitting and the pain becomes too much, uncross your legs. I heard that one time. But that was maybe enough. There's not much reference to it, but also ... Anyway, it's true, there's not much reference to it. He doesn't talk about suffering beings that much either. Yeah. brighter than other times, some things are so much a part of the fabric of life that they don't talk about them. And my sense of that time in Japan is that there was a lot of pain and suffering, and it was just sort of like... Yeah, I agree.

[65:18]

He used to have... he had a temple in Uji, which is south of Kyoto, and he used to do kihin along the Uji River. and step over the corpses. He lived at a time which just happened to be lots of civil war. He saw a lot of dead people on the streets. And like, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh doesn't talk about suffering much, have you noticed? He talks about being happy and relaxed, you know. He doesn't, you know, he talks about taking it easy. He talks about how Zen Center is too much into pain. We push the people too hard here. People don't smile enough. But where did he come from? He can't even read his mail every day. He reads his mail once a week. And he's still got so many friends over there. Can you imagine how you might not have to mention, remind yourself of suffering so much when you've got friends who are in prison and stuff right now.

[66:25]

So that's part of it too, I think. The donor lived, you know, where war was right in his front yard, so he was more understood. Yes? You once suggested also that a lot of the teaching or lore or something about kings passed just month to month, not in the literature. Yeah, that's right too. Right, that's true too. So like Donald yesterday offered in the yoga class something he discovered that helped him to sit, a way of organizing his cushions. But if you put all those things in a book on describing how to do Zazen practice, it would be a huge encyclopedia about all the different things you could do to cope with find a cushion and put a cushion on top of it, cross your legs, and then they're done. Dogen doesn't even say about crossing your legs in the other direction, because that's sort of inelegant. So a lot of the texts, in order to get them in a reasonable length of pages, they eliminate all the stuff about how much to eat, and when to go to the toilet, and how to wash your hands, which is just in the monastery.

[67:49]

That's part of the reason, I think. That's a good question, thank you. Yes? Yeah, right. Yeah. Right. Thank you. That's true too, I think, who were very psychological at this time in our history, and Japan was not very psychological at the time that Dogon lived. I would say they lived in a more mythological world, and the expression of ethos in literature is not strong in Japan at that time. They don't tell you so much about certain character patterns. certain mores and customs of their culture in the way we do psychologically. They would do it more in terms of you know clothes and flowers and room decorations.

[68:59]

So another thing I want to mention in regard to pain was about this Sashin, which as I said from a certain point of view was the schedule, looking at the didn't look very hard. It doesn't look like a hard schedule compared to some of the schedules Jim found in the files with 20-minute breaks and getting up at 3 or 2.30 or whatever and also the person being forced to go. So in some ways it looks easy but part of what I thought about this session and what I actually heard and is that although the schedule wasn't so hard, I think some people were able to uncover some pain in this session that they hadn't been able to do in so-called harder sessions. And what sometimes happens with people is that if they're pressed too hard, if the pain gets too much, they start closing down to that extreme pain, and then they also close down

[70:11]

often to the more subtle pains. Whereas if that extreme pain is not there, they don't tense up. And the next kind of pain maybe they can receive in a relaxed way. And then to receive that pain in a relaxed way, more and more subtle pains that also might be able to uncover. So, what I found in this session is actually, it seems that all the people aren't like, you know, They don't have the kind of pain that they've had with other sesshis. They have uncovered new kinds of pain during this one, which are, I think, associated more with their own delusion than with, for example, being angry at the monastic society. Either the monastic society in the form of the authority figures who represent mindfulness, responsibility, and righteousness,

[71:12]

hating those ones, because they're coming down on you, or being down on the ones who represent irresponsibility, mindlessness, and evil. When the schedule gets really strict and tight, the people who are going with it sort of hate the people who aren't, and the people who aren't hate the ones who are upholding it, which is, you know, a very good kind of suffering to be, you know, being aware of. But this session, I haven't heard so much about that, Although I heard a little bit about it. I got a few notes, a few tomes, about various things that I suggested. But the persons that sent me these tomes, one of them said at the end, excuse me for pontificating and thank you for your patience. That's an awareness there, that there was some patience operating in the reader. But to tell you the truth, I sheltered myself somewhat from some of these tones by reading the beginning and the end.

[72:18]

Not the whole thing. You don't necessarily have to subject yourself too much. Maybe you read your mail once a week. Or if you get a letter from some people, maybe you put it down for a few days, just wait until you're calm, and then open. or cover your tummy with a fan. Didn't get that Leslie? I know, I know. So, now comes a little bit scarier kind of discussion and So, I did not say that pain is not real. And I did not say it's not real. I think pain is the first truth of Buddhism. And the Buddha did not say pain exists.

[73:29]

He just said the first truth of Buddhism is pain. He did not make an existential statement about pain. It's just the first truth, the name of first truth is pain. The name of first truth is not there is pain, or pain belongs to this category of existence. That's not what he said. Right? Go ahead. What? I'm trying to remember some of it, but I can say things like, not to get what one wants is suffering, to be stuck with what one doesn't want is suffering. Yes, but that's not an existential statement. Is it? Well, kind of. Well, how is it? Mutie? Mutie? How is it an existential statement? Do you mean by existential it has to pertain specifically to the nature of existence? Yeah, that's what I mean. Taking an existential stand, that it exists or does not exist.

[74:35]

Do you think he did that? Ever? Ever? I think one could make a case, but I'm not going to be able to. I say Buddha did not take existential stands except, you know, what do you call it, I don't know what. I don't know of him taking no existential stand on putting anything in any existential category. All I know about him saying is not to do that about anything. However, he did say, when you do wholesome things, you get good results. When you do unwholesome things, you get bad, painful, unpleasant results. He said those things you say, but he didn't say that this existed or didn't exist. That's what I mean. But he did say there is pain. He just didn't say that it exists. And he defined pain. Pain is clinging to the five aggregates. That's the definition of pain.

[75:35]

If you cling, itself clings to something, that's the definition of pain. To carry the self forward and confirm things, that's delusion, that's pain. So pain comes from delusion. Now, to have pain in your knee or to burn your finger on something hot and feel pain, that pain is not this kind of pain. The kind of pain he's talking about can happen when you're in pleasure, when you have physical sensations of pleasure, mental sensations of pleasure, or pain, or neutral. This kind of pain that is the first truth pervades all states when there's clinging. Now, that sometimes is hard for people to see, but that's why we practice yoga, to see that pain pervades.

[76:36]

If you hold still, you'll see that. And this pain arising from separation, between separation of self and others, that pain is pervasive as long as there's that separation. Its existential status is not an issue. The point is, its appearance is an indication of a delusion. Buddha does not get into discussion of... he refuses to discuss the existential status of anything. He rather directs the yogi to look at what the pain is indicating. The pain is indicating delusion, and therefore now use the pain to locate the delusion. Locate the delusion and be liberated. And delusions are always located. Now I propose this to you, and this is tricky, but my basic proposal is, from my experience, is that pain at a distance.

[77:39]

First of all, the pervasive pain comes from having things at a distance, or being separated from something. That's where pain comes from, the pervasive pain of all existence. Then, if you then do the same with the pain, or put the pain at a distance, then putting the pain at a distance compounds your pain. And then pain bothers you, then pain afflicts you, and also pleasure afflicts you. But when pain is put at a distance, then it's double pain. It's pain-pain. So what I propose and practice myself, but not always, because sometimes I get bored and don't do it, what I practice is I try to get close to the pain. I try to get inside of it, I try to get to the dead center of it, to the present of it. And when I get close to the pain, and when I'm not separate from the pain, the pain does not bother me.

[78:44]

But if I'm a little bit away from the pain, that can be extremely painful, and just disrupt everything. And it's very difficult to get close to some pain, and therefore it's a real problem. The same with a koan. When a koan is at a distance, koans are a problem. They're problems. They're afflictions. When Buddhist teachings are at a distance, they're afflictions. When you get close to the koan, really close, the koan is not a problem anymore. The pain is not a problem anymore. That's what my experience is. Now, someone said to me that when she was a little girl she had got a frog and she was told at the pet store that the frog did not eat fish and she put it in with her fish and she fed the frog shrimp and the frog got fat and then it kept getting fat and fatter and fatter and the fish population seemed just to be dropping.

[79:53]

So maybe she made the frog into a fish-eating frog and then The frogs were separated, and by various kinds of scientific research it was concluded that the frog had become a fish eater. So the question is, if you find that you're a fish and you're living with a frog that eats fish, what should you do? The frogs start to nibble on you. I guess my proposal is, basically, that if the frog starts nibbling on you, that your best bet as to figure out what to do, whether you should change your bones, ask the frog to stop or whatever, that your most creative and appropriate response will come from being very close to the sensation of being eaten, if that's what's happening. And that if you separate yourself from that painful sensation of being attacked, afflicted and so on, to that extent your response will be relatively ineffective.

[80:56]

all kinds of weird things might happen, like you might think, well I probably deserve it, or you know, or this person's doing this to me because of this, this and this reason. All this kind of talk won't necessarily be the appropriate thing. Maybe the appropriate thing to do is just to get away from the thing. But if you're confused because you're so disoriented, because you're separating yourself from what's happening to you, you know, you're trying to bat the baseball while you're running around in the stands somewhere. You don't have much of a chance. You don't have much of a chance. That's my proposal. I know it's hard, but that's what I propose. Now, do you have some discussion about this? Well, let's say you have a pain in your knee. You feel a pain in your knee. Get close to it. Do you know how to get close to a pain? Feel it. feel it like like and also maybe notice that you kind of like resist feeling it notice that you flinch did you have that feeling of flinching from something of turning away of closing your eyes when i used to play football uh i was quite you know a game kid but sometimes at the when they hike the ball and we sort of like the two lines went

[82:29]

I would close my eyes. My coach said, you know, are you closing your eyes? I said, I guess I am. It's hard to keep your eyes open as you smash into somebody else. It's hard to keep your eyes open when somebody smashes you. What I'm proposing is you try to keep your eyes open every moment. Keep your senses open as it happens. And if it's pain, try to feel the pain all the way to the bottom of it. Feel the sadness all the way to the bottom. I'm not talking about going and indulging yourself in painful situations. I'm talking about when you find pain, to get really close to it. And at the place of getting close to it, you'll find out it's you. And if it's you, it's not a problem. And it's not a problem.

[83:33]

It may be a problem that your legs are crossed. And from that place you can see, I think I'll uncross my legs. Or I think I'll take a little meditative walk. And even the legs being crossed is not a problem unless you keep them crossed too long. So when pain comes, and you feel it, and you become intimate with it, you can tell what you should do. You can do the appropriate thing, which is sometimes that you keep sitting, and sometimes you move, and you learn which is which. But if you don't get close to the pain, you do not learn very well. That's my experience. that the people who learn fastest are the ones who are the closest. In Judo, I used to play Judo and I noticed that the people who learned the fastest were the ones who got thrown the most.

[84:39]

The ones you played with that sort of like excuse the expression, who were like, you know in dancing, what do you call it, women's lib has not yet made a strong impact on dance classes. They still have the leaders and the followers. It's cute, it's like back in the 50s. Arthur Murray and all that, right? Anyway, the dance classes they still say leaders and followers and the men get to be the leaders and the women are the followers. Maybe. Well, the good women. The women who don't follow, it's really sick. They try to lead, you know, and then the men start following. Oh, it's a mess. Anyway, in Judo, the ones who learn the fastest are the ones who, when you're playing with them, they call it play, they just follow you. Wherever you take them, they go. That's also what it's like to play with a master judo player.

[85:46]

There's nothing there. It's like playing with a, let's say, with a towel. They go like this, they go like that, they go like this. And then, when they feel like it, you go like it. No matter how strong you are. Up to a point. The people who don't learn anything in Judo are the ones, when you go there and you try to move them, they don't move at all. They're really strong. You can't move them at all. And you go this way, they don't come with you. They don't learn anything. And these people get thrown all over the room, they just get better and better and better, more and more skillful and have a ball. Same in Zen. So, But it's hard, it's hard to go with it, you know, especially if it hurts. But if you're close to the pain, you can go with it. And by the end of Sashin, when I adjust postures, I adjust the posture at the beginning of Sashin, but at the end it's really fun to adjust postures because you go to people's backs and the places which were like rocks before, you push and it moves a little.

[86:55]

At the beginning, the person's like, don't move this, this might hurt. Don't move it! But after they've been sitting in pain for a week, if they get close to it, you go like this and say, yeah, it might hurt a little bit, try it. It's not like, I have no pain, now don't give me any pain, or I have enough pain, I'm not going to have any more. No. I'm with my pain. If it hurts, we'll see. I'll let you know. But anyway, things start moving. People's backs become soft. Zazen is a tenderizer. So now, seventh day, you people are much more tender than at the beginning, and so that's nice. So this afternoon, if I adjust your posture, it will be fun for me because you'll be putty in my hands. But really, you must not agree with me.

[88:04]

What's the problem? Please, please struggle with me on this one if you don't agree. Yes? Could you speak up please? Did I say might? You will. You are. Yes? Isn't it as narrow again? Yes. and I don't want to actually talk about that.

[89:10]

I think that maybe I'll try that, but I find somehow that's where it is. Right. Well, it's because, it's also because you're changing into a different kind of narrowness. You just kind of... If you have the narrowness of posture and pain in your knees and sadness of memories or whatever that you're working on in Sashin and then you go to the narrowness of cutting carrots. It's a different kind of narrowness. So you have to open up another realm which again shows you another aspect of separation. That's part of the difficulty. So part of it is to go again and do Zazen again in the world but also in different situations in the world from where you have been doing during Sashin maybe. But again, you start the process again of this settling into the narrowness and when you settle into it, then you go up around again.

[90:22]

The clockwise, the counterclockwise event, you settle into the clockwise and then as it gets difficult, If you resist the difficulty, then you're going with the clockwise, you've long forgotten where you came from, then you have to reverse it. And if you reverse it, then you come around again. And really, of course, they're the same thing. You reverse, the reversing is accepting the narrowness. The narrowness means separation. Narrowness is the narrowness between you and the other things. If I accept my separation from somebody who's far away, it doesn't have any pain. It's when the separation starts to get close, like people in Somalia don't bother us as much as if we were in Somalia, but they also don't bother us as much if we hadn't heard about them, or if we heard they're in another world system.

[91:26]

As things get closer, the separation gets narrower, it gets more and more fruitful to get into it, and also more and more painful and embarrassing, and we flinch from it more. We flinch from the thing which we most want to see, most. That's why we have to be still. If we're still, we have a chance, even if we flinch, to catch the flinch and say, Now try it again. There's the flinch. After a while, maybe the flinch won't happen. And then you settle deeper. Another flinch. Another flinch. And see it, and stops, and go deeper. This happens in our muscles, happens in our minds. At the same time, as I say in this session, I see that sometimes, if the pain's too much, people just flinch, flinch, flinch, and go into a spasm and blank out.

[92:28]

The important thing is that when something happens to our body, to our mind, and you go into a spasm, or you go into a fit, the important thing is it shouldn't be so strong. It's not effective if you go into unconsciousness. So, probably nobody has ever been enlightened in an epileptic fit, but I think people have been enlightened in other kinds of seizures. Dostoevsky is another one. Did you ask, Michael? I already said Dostoevsky. Abraham Lincoln. I think Dostoevsky had lots of enlightenment experiences in his fits. He was epileptic, right? I said that? Dostoevsky was an epileptic also. He was depressed and epileptic. I think he went into deep, deep fits in response to his pain, but he was awake in his fits, and therefore I think his awakeness in his fits, I think, has saved many beings. I think there was some zazen in his fits.

[93:33]

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