like I'm carrying a slate, which is filled with oil, brimming full. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? No? A little louder? A little louder? Yeah? Yeah? How about this? Lip out right? Do you feel like that at all? Like you're carrying a plate full of oil? No? What do you feel like? Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.

[01:02]

Motherless child. So that's why I feel like I got a plate full of oil. Because some people feel like a motherless child, and... You know, I... I got to be careful, right? Okay. I have to be careful because I can spill oil. This one side plate tilting this way is the mother with child on this side. On the other side, I know every direction I have to be careful of. So also, if I talk loudly so you can hear me, some people think I'm angry. If I don't talk loudly enough, you can't hear me. And that's discouraging, too, for some people.

[02:08]

You know, what volume do you use? Pretty tricky. I'm not exactly asking sympathy, but... Now that I think of it. There's a seat here. Somebody's having trouble hearing over there. Oh, there's a seat here. Sorry about that. There's somebody over there that's having trouble hearing. So if somebody's having trouble hearing, there's a seat here. So learning, continuing to try to learn the backward step, continuing to try to study the essential art of dazen, not the whole of dazen.

[03:20]

I'm not talking, I have not been sort of emphasizing all of Buddha's practice. but particularly the gig, the entrance to Zen practice. The way is perfect and all-pervading. How can it depend on our concentrated effort? The diamond vehicle is free and untrammeled. What need is there to wipe it clean? And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, well, you know. And I think

[04:24]

You can say it's a big discrepancy or a little discrepancy. Anyway, whether it's a big discrepancy, then it's a big discrepancy. If it's a little one, though, it's still important. Very important is little discrepancy. A hair's breadth deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement. What is this proper attunement? Proportuna is called naivete. For example, it's called learning the backward step. Learning the backward step is also called the sixth perfection, right? It's called the six paramitas. These practices of the six paramitas is not really doing anything.

[05:30]

Six paramita practice is what's called non-action. So in giving, you don't do anything necessarily. You just let things be as they are. And you do that as giving. And in ethical conduct, you study it in complete faithfulness to what is happening. So the six paramitas are not really doing anything. And yet, there is the slightest discrepancy. The big problem. So the practice of the six paramitas is simply without doing anything. Let there be no discrepancy in six ways.

[06:37]

Six ways of closing that discrepancy. Six modes of eliminating a hair's breadth deviation. The backward step is also not doing anything. It's not doing something. Ordinarily, we do think the backward step is to reverse our ordinary activity. But of course, when we hear about the backward step and we try to do it, we try to do something. That makes sense. That we could do that, but it doesn't work because the backward step is not another thing we do. However, in the process of trying to learn the backward step, we will try to do things. That won't work, but we have to try until we find out that this trying to do something is not the backward step, just the usual forward step.

[07:44]

The forward step continues to create prescriptiveness. More karma. More Harris-Brett deviation or huge deviations. Learning the backward step is a mystery. All they can say is, don't waste time. All they can say is, do it. Get on with it. But it's not doing anything. Total devotion and self surrender to what is happening.

[08:54]

This takes all your light energy and it's not doing a thing. This leaky, tumble down, grass cut. Let opening for the moon. All the while, this leafy, tumble-down grass pot left opening for the moon, and I gaze at it. All the while, it is reflected in the teardrops on my sleeve. All the while, it's reflected in the oil in this plate that I'm carrying.

[10:10]

And yet, if I spill this plate, I can't see it. Well, I can look up, I suppose. But can I spill the plate too? Now, one way I've been saying it is the first step is to sit still. Or stand still. Anyway, be still. Stop moving. And then learn this backward step. Or then think of that which doesn't think. But another way to put it is sit still.

[11:16]

And when you're sitting still, that sitting still is learning the backward step. So one way to say it is sit still and reverse your thought. Another way to say it is, when you're sitting still, your thought is reversed. Also, sitting still is not something you can do. You can't do that. You can't make yourself sit still. Sitting still is a gift. I won't use the Christian word for it.

[12:18]

Sitting still is a gift. However, the gift does not come to you. I say the gift does not come to you if you don't come to the gift. It's a two-way street. Well, There's no problem about you coming to it right now. You are coming to it. You are coming to it. You're putting out effort, and the gift will meet your effort. However, your effort has to be complete. It has to be total devotion. Spend self-surrender. You can't be holding back a little bit, keeping a little bit in your back pocket for some other time. If you're holding up, you get pulled out. If you're holding up, the sitting won't be still. If the sitting's not still, there's a Herzberg deviation.

[13:25]

And then you can try to think of the unthinking or try to learn the backward step. But it's not something you can do. What you can do, though, is you can do what you're doing. You can do what you're doing completely. You can do this. So, total absorption, for example, in your mudra. Total absorption in the way you hold your hands. Completely. Devotion to your hands with not the slightest reservation. That's sitting still. Total devotion to your hands is learning the backward step. Trusting everything to your breathing.

[14:36]

Trusting everything, your whole life, all your body and mind, all your energy, all your resistance, all your doubts, throw everything into breathing. That's learning the backwards step. Yesterday, I had a discussion with the practice leaders of this session. I talked with them about what I'm talking about to see if they had some suggestions. And one of them said, everything is the essential art of Zoggan.

[15:41]

Everything as it is, each thing as it is, is the essential art of satsang. But is there any, the slightest discrepancy? As you come down to your experience, is there the slightest discrepancy? As long as there's the slightest discrepancy, there's something separate. There's something looking at it. There's an object still. Even that tiny bit of pulling back, that tiny little bit of pulling out, put that out too. There's nothing pulling back. All there is is the object. Then there's no object. If there's a little bit of something looking at that object, that's enough to be doing something. How can you completely give yourself to your experience, moment by moment?

[16:57]

How can you take everything that's happening and convert it onto your life? This is the big learning project. We have an expression in Soto Zen, a Japanese way of saying it is menmitsu no kapu. Men means cotton. Mitsu means secret or secret, but secret like the secret of intimacy in a family, the secret between mother and daughter. Very close. so close it's almost secret, and yet it's so well known. That kind of feeling can mix with kama, and translate it as minute attention to detail.

[18:03]

Such a minute attention to detail that there's just the minute attention to detail. In other words, there's just the detail, not even attention to detail anymore, just taking care of this. completely. And kapu means the wind of the house, which means the style of the house. The style of the house up then is this simply taking care of the little tiny details of the moment after moment life. This is the same thing as learning the backward step. This is thinking of the unthinking. You know, I mentioned this thing about turning the spoon around. And I noticed that the spoons are not turned around.

[19:06]

They're facing the selves. And I appreciate your responding to that. And it's not necessarily that you do what somebody says, but simply Taking care of the spoon, which direction the spoon is going. The innocence of putting a spoon in facing that way. Taking care of that kind of thing. And with the sense that there's no more to be done at that moment than that. If there's anything more to be done than that, there's something more than that, than is the slightest discrepancy. Can you have the devotion, self-surrender, and confidence to just take care of that spoon when you put it back in the gamassiya? And know that that is Buddha's work. Well, looks like you can.

[20:07]

Looks like you did. Now again, I've got this oil on the plate, and I want to talk about something, and I'm going to be very careful now when I talk about this. It has to do with this business about, maybe you've heard about this, that they say that the Buddha, the enlightened being, always, always, they don't say always, always, they just say always, turns the dharma wheel in the midst of fierce flames. I'm bringing this up partly because I think that a number of us experienced, during Sashi, fierce flames all around us.

[21:17]

Are these still brush piles? Anybody know what I'm talking about? I'll just say, does anybody not know what I'm talking about? No, okay. These fierce flames are the cosmic fire. The fierce flames are the vivid, energetic, dynamic, unpredictable reality all around us all the time. Now, we live in this little box of concepts, little box of concepts of objects, which often protect us from this fierce fire.

[22:22]

And as we sometimes, the walls start getting holes in them. The shack, the hut start to break down. And fire and moonlight start to shine into the holes. And we sometimes get frightened. And of course, we have part of the heat for the fire is pain. But I want to say a little bit more about this being in the middle of these flames. The Buddha's in the middle of flames. It's not like they're in the middle of flames and they're kind of like, you know, kind of like, get back there. You know, and they're sort of batting back the flame. They're squirting fire extinguishers on them or, you know, protecting their face. Or running away. There's flames in all directions, you see, so they can't get away. Under their feet, on top of their head.

[23:26]

Front and back, you can't. You can't touch them. You can't run away from them. All around you, this huge mass of fire in every direction. And then they're not cowering from it. It's not in the middle of the flames and cringing that we turn down the wheel. It's in the middle of the flames and being at rest of all things, at peace. In the middle of those flames, there's a cool breeze across your eyebrows, they say. So when you hear about this, you may say, well, I don't know. I don't see that. I don't get that. But actually, that's what I see. I see people turning the dharma wheel in the midst of flames, but at the moment they turn the dharma wheel, they are cool as a cucumber.

[24:31]

Everybody know what a cucumber is? So one friend of mine told me that one of his big encouragements in practice, one of his big learning experiences was when he was resting during sesshin. But my point is he was in the middle of sesshin when he was resting. I really would like everybody to just relax. Just relax. Be comfortable. Take a rest in the middle of Sashi.

[25:33]

Surrounded by fierce flames of the schedule, of choreography meals, of lectures like this. Take a rest. Enjoy yourself. It's OK. And gently, carefully, wholeheartedly turn the darn wheel without doing a thing, without doing anything other than this. You don't have to do anything other than what you're doing right now to turn the darn wheel. But we need those flames around us. We need to be cornered. We need to need to turn the darn wheel as though our life depended on it. And if your life depended on it now, you've got to turn it on now, on this, not on a better this, on this this.

[26:38]

And with relaxation and joy, you turn it. But you are surrounded. by a burning reality that encourages you to turn it. A burning reality which encourages you to take care of the little details of life with no reservation. With no reservation means not holding back anything, not the slightest discrepancy, and also I can never say everything, but also not doing more than is necessary. Not holding back and not overshooting it either. Not sitting up too straight. Not overspilling. That's why this plate is brimming full.

[27:48]

It's ready to spill over, but not too much, but also not too little. There's no room for error, but also it isn't going over. Being a motherless child is flames. But take a rest in the middle of being a mindless child. Relax and enjoy yourself. So you know about Ananda, the Buddhist disciple? He was the most... He had the best memory of all the disciples. And he remembered everything he heard Buddha say.

[28:50]

He was Buddha's attendant for 20 years. And not only did he remember everything he heard Buddha say, but he also remembered everything he heard from other people that Buddha said. So after Shakyamuni Buddha died, they had a convention. They were going to have a convention of all the enlightened disciples. to review and collect together his teachings. And they wanted to invite Ananda because Ananda knew more than anybody. But Ananda was not enlightened. So they had a kind of a problem to let him into the convention. So all the enlightened disciples got together and really encouraged Ananda to wake up before the convention. And with all that support, you can imagine all that fire around him, okay? Five hundred enlightened beings bearing down on you to work in your meditation to get awakened in time for the conference.

[29:54]

And he really tried his hardest. He was a very devoted person. And he tried and he tried and he tried. And the night before it happened, he kind of said, you trying to go to bed? And he kind of said, ah, yeah, I didn't. And he just sort of walked into his cell and just sort of threw himself into mid-air into his bed. And in mid-air, before he hit his bed, he woke up. So you try, you know, you try your most sincere, you do everything you can to be who you are. where you are, what you are. And then when you can't do any more, you've done all you can do, you just sort of give up and rest. Take a rest. And a gift comes. But not before you do your part. And it isn't done.

[30:59]

When it happens, it isn't something you do. It's something that happens, but it doesn't happen unless you really do your moment by teeny teeny tiny little moment. But now you're lucky. You don't have to work at creating a fire. You got the fire. I think. If you don't have the fire, you should get in the fire. There's one right here. And then just relax. And remember that looking at the moment's fine, but it's already reflected in your effort. It's reflected in your effort. It's reflected in your caring, in your human caring right there.

[32:01]

It's reflected perfectly. But it's not reflected in half a teardrop. It's reflected in a whole teardrop. People don't understand how they can do the backward step, how they can think of the unthinking. But you can't do it. But you can realize it. One person felt that when the monk came up to Yashan and said, when Yashan was sitting, after Yashan was sitting, the monk said, what are you thinking like when you're sitting still?

[33:17]

And he was sitting still, and he just looked to see how he was thinking. And he noticed that he was thinking of the unthinking. He didn't do this thinking of the unthinking. That's just what this thinking is like when he's sitting still. And that's what you're thinking like when you sit still. That's the kind of thinking you're doing. I want to scream.

[34:57]

I think it's so important, the practice. It's not a scream of anger, though. It's a scream of joy. And the practice I'm talking about is the practice that everybody can do, not just me. Or I should say everybody can celebrate this practice. And basically, it's just to really value, to completely value your posture and your breathing and your mudra and your lunch, to really appreciate everything with your total being, to completely do it. to completely celebrate moment by moment, including your resistance.

[36:04]

Whatever it is, it's a great opportunity to practice the backward step, to see, learn, study the wonderful backward step And then the body and mind drop away of themselves, and your original face is manifest. So please, hear these words. I don't know.

[37:03]

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